When they were almost out of sight, I recovered sufficiently to make my own feet work. I followed their quick pace, my mind cold with shock. We half-ran in this manner for several hours, until the air smelled of fresh grass without the touch of smoke and the tang of blood. The warriors chattered as they went, heedless of the need for quiet in enemy territory, and they passed their wineskins back and forth. I, who was once feared and respected by them all, could have been invisible.
Dawn was almost upon us when Zeth slowed to a stop. As the warriors drew up to him, Zeth collapsed on the ground to rest.
I looked down at the puffing half-breed.
"Captain Kergis," gasped Zeth, though I had made no sound as I had come up, "you do not understand, do you?"
"No," I said, not even thinking of lying. "It is your will."
"It is my will, you say, but I am empty," Zeth returned, still out of breath. "I am the cup that holds the drink, but not the drink itself. I am the mouth, but not the word."
"I don't understand this," I said. "I don't understand any of this. We are warriors. We don't-" I broke off, trying to frame my thoughts. "We fight warriors, not worthless farmers. This is cowardice, to kill the dregs and the helpless! We fight those who can fight back! It's the way to win wars."
Zeth finally caught his breath and sighed as he lay back on the grass, resting on his elbows. He let his head fall back, staring up into the endless night.
"Captain," he said softly, "you are more blind than I am."
I knelt down on the grass a dozen paces from him. Strength seemed to flow out of me into the air. The warriors were drinking and laughing aloud in the distance.
"You wish to kill me," said the half-breed. "I can feel it. Sometimes I can see things, when the gods borrow my head and I see through their eyes for a few moments. But other things I can hear and taste and feel for myself. You would be glad to see me dead."
Zeth cocked his head in my direction, without looking directly at me. "It was the insult, you see, that drove me to this."
When I did not respond, he nodded to himself. "You do not see, then, not even the insult. The taint. My birth. You do not even see that."
"I see it," I said under my breath. I was thinking about killing him right then with my sword, the gods be damned. It would be easy.
"You see only this body. You see that I am different. You see that you wish to kill me. I hear it in your voice. But you do not see the insult. You cannot learn what I am teaching."
Zeth turned his head away in the direction of the warriors. In a few moments, he got to his feet and walked away.
After a while, I got up, too. Goblins milled around the field, aimless and tired. I guessed from the sky that dawn was only three hours away. We had to be off to make camp. Someone would find the massacred village, and the word would be out. I looked back and saw in the moonlight that our trail would not be difficult for vengeful parties to follow. We had to move or else die here.
I found Zeth sitting on the ground, talking to himself in a low voice. He paused and turned his head as I came closer, my boots crunching sticks beneath them.
"We must get out of here," I said flatly. "We have no time to delay."
Zeth turned away again. He was still talking to himself. Or to someone I couldn't see. "He does not understand," he whispered. "He cannot see where they are weak. It is the same place we are weak."
He was motionless for a time, then got unsteadily to his feet.
"Lead us on," said the blind half-breed. "South. We must hurry to our next teaching."
The following night, about twelve miles south of the half-ling village, we attacked an isolated farm. Two of our number were wounded but stayed on their feet. We left the farm a few hours later, after Zeth spoke again about the maggots we came from and the gods who watched us. The dozen humans of the family that had lived there now hung by their feet from the ceiling rafters in the dining hall, butchered like deer.
Those who had been my warriors took some of the meat with them.
"Do you see more clearly, Captain?"
I did not look away from the dark horizon as I marched. "No."
Zeth hummed tunelessly to himself. "It is just as it was with me," he said at last. "They would ask, 'Do you see more clearly now?' And I would cry and say, 'No! Give them back to me!' But that was not possible. They had thrown them out already. They were given back."
"Your eyes," I said after a pause.
"My mother said she would put them back, but she had no hands. My father had cut her hands off after he had attacked her and planted the seed for me. He had cut off her hands and left her to die. He was a human, but it was not a human thing to do. He was a hunter, she said, a hunter who had chosen her as his prey. She went out for water and he caught her. He tried to be a goblin. Surely, now, you see it."
I licked my lips. I had lost my warriors and did not care what happened to me anymore. "No."
Zeth sighed heavily. "The insult," he said slowly, as to a child.
I didn't bother to answer.
The next day, a scout shot a rider from his horse as the latter passed our camp at full gallop. It was a remarkable shot, given that the sun was full and we could barely see. The rider tried to crawl away but was found. Zeth did not even need to make a speech. The goblins knew what to do.
The rider was a human soldier from Durpar. Our doings had been discovered. Someone had sent for help against us.
"We can't go farther south," I told Zeth. 'The danger is great. We've got to head back, or at least go west where they won't look for us right away."
"You do not understand," said Zeth.
We went on south. We caught a farmer on a hay wagon, then two field hands, one human and one halfling. We surrounded a cottage on the edge of a woodlot, but there was only an old woman inside.
"We are cowards," I said, looking at the old woman's body as it swung in the breeze. I did not say it loudly, as goblins were all around. I no longer felt like one of them. They had betrayed me. Death was better than this.
"We are goblins," said Zeth. He stood with his back to the tree from which the old woman hung. He looked high into the branches. "We have been like humans for too long. We did not understand what the gods wanted of us. We forgot their lessons. We forgot the maggots."
"I've been listening to you talk about teachings and lessons and forgotten things, and I am sick of it," I said. 'Tell me what the lesson is, or I will kill you."
The talking among the goblins stopped. Those who had been my warriors were now motionless, holding drinking flasks and cups and jugs pilfered from the old woman's cottage. The goblins were all around me, watching me.
"We have been like humans for too long," said Zeth. His voice was calm and peaceful. "We forgot that the gods made us from the lowest of all life, then gave us the burning inside to become the highest. They gave us the will to gain supremacy at all costs. Yet humans challenge us at every turn. Humans think they are better than we in every way. All know this-goblins, ores, giants, elves, dragons-all know this is true. Humans believe only in humans. None of the rest of the world matters to them. Soon we all come to believe that, and we lose the vision the gods gave us to see our way up. We lose our will, and then we are gone."
Zeth pushed away from the tree and walked slowly over to the hanging corpse. He put out his hand and touched the body, causing it to slowly spin.
"It was only when my grandfather put out my eyes that I began to see for the first time," he said. "The gods gave me the vision. Humans do not understand us and call us evil. They think we do terrible things just because we want to, because we are selfish. They call it evil, what we do, and I will call it evil, too, because the humans hate it so."
Zeth looked directly at me. "We do evil, then, but we do this for the gods. Humans do not see that our evil is like love, in that it is greater than the self. Our evil reaches out to embrace the world and slay it, as the gods did, so that it will be ours. Our evil is as warm and red as love, and it enters the world in the same way love enters the heart- through the least defended places."