"In the beginning of all things," said Zeth, his voice growing stronger, "there was war between the gods and the rebellious earth, and the world was struck down and slain. Darkness covered its face; winds and sea lashed its corpse. Nothing grew on its naked rock or stirred beneath the cold moon. As the world lay dead, maggots were born from the blood shed by the gods in the battle, and the maggots burrowed into the flesh of the world and feasted upon it, celebrating the victory of the gods.
"Then came forces of light, and there arose a sun over the land. The light burned the eyes of the maggots and made them cry out. The old gods heard them and were moved to rage. One of the old gods put forth his hand and said, 'A debt is owed our children as well as to us, and now our children shall claim it.' He changed the maggots into goblins, and he gave them a commandment, that the goblins would always remember the days of darkness when the old gods were victors, when nothing grew on the world, when there was night eternal and deep. And the goblins would remember always to claim the debt owed them and their gods by the forces of light."
Zeth swept a hand toward the flaming cottages beyond the gathering. "Here we are tonight, the spawn of the maggots, and we are still asked to remember what our god asked of us, but we have forgotten it all." His hand fell. "At highsun tomorrow, a band of riders will come to this place, and they will see what we have done. They will taste the ash from the houses and feel the heat from the blackened fields. But will the riders fear us? Will the old debt have been repaid?"
The half-human paused expectantly, though none of us spoke. "No. The riders will have seen burned villages before. They will have seen slain farmers. Why should they fear us-we, the firstborn, who are descended from the maggots who fed on the world?"
Several goblins stirred restlessly, their faces crossed with confusion. Even the prisoners had ceased whimpering to listen.
"Would you fear us?" asked the half-human, pointing at a goblin in the crowd. "Or you? We have only burned a little town. Who is alive in the world who cannot do that? Little pixies could do that." Zeth's face cracked into a shallow grin. "Even humans could do that." There was a pause, then he added, "I should know."
He let the silence grow. I shivered. There was a change in the atmosphere when he said the word humans, and we looked at him and remembered what he was.
"Even humans could do that," he repeated. "We've lived so long under the sunlight, away from the night and the truth, that we've forgotten who we really are. We've started to think-" Zeth leered as if he would laugh "-that we're human."
None of the goblins moved. Their tight faces were like stone. His words were a mortal insult, the basest slander. Yet they rolled off Zeth's lips as if they were a shabby truth at which the knowing world snickered. Only the warriors' knowledge that Skralang was his grandfather kept Zeth from a speedy death.
Zeth's thin fingers reached into the air. "Are we human now?" he called out. "Can we do only things that humans do? Do we remember anything at all that our gods taught us? Has the sun burned it out of us, the memory of where we came from?" He then shouted, his face twisted with rage. "Do you want those riders who come here tomorrow to laugh at our night's work? Do you want them to ride here and see this and say, 'Looks like humans' work, bandits maybe, just nasty old humans, good thing they weren't goblins.'?"
The half-human raised a hand to the black heavens. "My father was a human! He cursed me with his taint! My eyes were not red like yours-they were blue! Blue, like a human's! Blue like the day sky! Where are my eyes now?"
He suddenly pointed at one goblin in the crowd, his white finger like a sword. "You! Tell me! Where are my eyes now?"
The goblin's lips trembled as he mouthed a word silently.
Zeth's face came alive with fury. "Tell me, dog, or may the gods burn you where you stand!"
"Your eyes are gone!" screamed the goblin. He fell to his knees. "They are gone!"
"Yes!" Zeth shouted at once. "They are gone! My eyes were human, and my grandfather gave them back! My grandfather gave back my eyes! These holes in my face are a thousand times better than the taint of my blue eyes! What my father was, his human taint, was cut out of me! I am more goblin now than are you, because my soul is free! My soul is clean, yet yours writhe with the taint of humanity! The proof is among you, there-the farmers you have taken prisoner! You've treated them as humans would treat prisoners! They beg you for mercy, mistaking you for humans! How far have we fallen for them to think we, the children of maggots in the flesh of the dead earth, are capable of mercy?"
The silence was absolute save for the crackling of fire. Zeth trembled all over as if in the last stages of a fever.
His face turned up, looking over the heads of us all. "I feel their eyes upon us. Can you feel it? Can you feel their eyes looking down upon us? In another moment, they will turn away, and we will be lost. Our people will be lost. Our Night-below will be lost. All that we once were will be gone. Will you show them, our very gods, that you remember that you are not human?"
He looked down. His hand swept in the direction of the prisoners. "Prove it now!" he said. "Let the gods see what I cannot."
No one moved. Then one of the warriors silently pulled his long knife, turned, and lunged for the prisoners, seizing one by her hair. He dragged her screaming from the group. Warriors clubbed down two halflings who tried to pull the prisoner back.
The goblin with the knife snarled his left hand in the little halfling's hair and yanked her head back. Her hands tried to ward off the blows as his knife came down once, twice, again and again and again and again, until her hands flopped down into the dust of the road.
The other prisoners screamed with each blow. Abruptly flinging his dagger aside, the warrior seized the body, lifted it over his head as its limbs swung limp, and hurled it into the mass of prisoners, splashing them with gore.
The halflings screamed anew, but it was a sound I had never heard before from the throat of any being. It was mindless with terror, a sound like that made by animals in a slaughtering pen. In that moment, something old inside me awoke and hungered for the taste of blood. I became a wolf in a pack that had seen its prey go down, prey that could not get up and escape, hot prey that would be salty and wet in my mouth. I stepped forward as the rest of the warriors surged in on the wailing prisoners.
But the step was all I took. I held back, not knowing why, as the warriors who had been mine gave in to their hunger and tried to sate it.
Blood-mad goblins murdered prisoner after prisoner in hideous fashion. Onlookers shook their spears and stamped their feet, shouting their approval more loudly and wildly with each death. I watched from the side as if I weren't really there. I was no stranger to cruelty, but what I watched were not the actions of warriors I had raised and trained. They were the deeds of fiends out of Hades.
When the cries and struggles of the last prisoner had ceased, the warriors broke into ragged cheers. Flasks of ale and foul wine had appeared, and many of the warriors drank deeply from them. What had happened to them? I could not even find words to order them to stop, to turn themselves back into soldiers.
"Leave the bodies out," called Zeth. "Let the sun look down on them tomorrow and review our night's work. Let the world see what the children of maggots do to have a debt repaid. Our work has only begun." He swayed, then turned and headed off again to the south, away from the smoldering village.
The goblins followed him easily, the warriors who had once been mine. Not one looked back at me as they went.