"It is a good thing that the dwarves have reclaimed the halls," I agreed.
"And a good thing, too, that you happened by Rico's group," Jak added.
"Tharman was a happy soul this morning," put in the nervous barkeep.
It seemed so normal to me, and you have to understand that I was used to anything but normal in my dealings with the various surface races.
"Did you get Rico back his slave?" Jak asked bluntly.
My last bite of food suddenly refused to go down my throat.
"Nojheim," Jak explained. "The goblin."
I had seen slavery in all its brutality in Menzoberranzan, the city of my birth. Dark elves kept many slaves of many races, working them brutally until they were no longer useful, then torturing them, butchering them, breaking their bodies as they had broken their spirits. I had always felt slavery to be the most repulsive of acts, even when practiced against the so-called unredeemable races, such as goblins and ores.
I nodded in answer to Jak, but my sudden grimace put the man off. Aganis nervously cleaned the same plate several times, all the while staring at me and occasionally putting his towel up to wipe his sweaty brow.
I finished the meal without much more conversation, except to innocently discover which farmhouse belonged to Rico. I wanted no answers from these two. I wanted to see for myself what I had done.
I was outside Rico's fenced-in yard by dusk. The farmhouse was a simple structure of boards and logs, mud patted in against the cracks to keep the wind out and a roof angled to handle the winter snows. Nojheim was going about his chores-unshackled, I noticed-but no one else was in sight. I did see the curtains of the single window on this side of the farmhouse move a few times. Rico, or one of his family, was probably keeping an eye out for the goblin.
When he was done tending to a goat tied near the house, Nojheim considered the darkening sky and went into the small barn, barely more than a shed, a short distance from the house. Through the many cracks of this rough structure, I saw the light of a fire come up a moment later.
What was this all about? I could not reconcile any of it. If Nojheim had initially come to Pengallen at the head of a raiding force, then why was he allowed such freedom? He could have taken a brand from that fire he had burning in the barn and set the main house ablaze.
I decided not to get my answers from Rico-decided, since I knew in my heart what was going on, that I would get no honest answers from him.
Nojheim went into his pitiful slobbering as soon as I walked into the shadows of the dimly lit barn.
"Please, oh, please," he whined in his squeaky goblin voice, his fat tongue smacking against his lips.
I pushed him away, and my anger must have been obvious, for he suddenly sat quietly across the fire from me, staring into the orange and yellow flames.
"Why did you not tell me?"
He glanced up at me curiously, his expression a clear image of resignation.
"Did you lead a raid against Pengallen?" I pressed.
He looked back to the flames, his face twisted incredulously as though that question should not even be justified with an answer. And I believed him.
"Then why?" I demanded, shifting over to grab his shoulder and force him to look me in the eye. "Why did you not tell me Rico's reason for wanting you back?"
"Tell you?" he balked. His goblin accent had suddenly flown. "A goblin tell Drizzt Do'Urden of his plight? A goblin appeal to a ranger for compassion?"
"You know my name?" By the gods, he even pronounced it correctly.
"I have heard great tales of Drizzt Do'Urden, and of Bruenor Battlehammer and the fight to reclaim Mithril Hall," he replied, and again, his command of the proper inflections of the language was astounding. "It is common talk among the farmers of the lower valleys, all of them hoping that the new dwarven king will prove generous with his abundant wealth."
I sat back from him. He just continued to stare blankly at the flames, his eyes lowered. I do not know exactly how much time passed in silence. I do not even know what I was thinking.
Nojheim was perceptive, though. He knew.
"I accept my fate," he replied to my unspoken question, though there was little conviction in his voice.
"You are no ordinary goblin."
Nojheim spat on the fire. "I do not know that I'm a goblin at all," he answered. If I had been eating at the time, I surely would have choked once more.
"I am like no goblin I've ever met," he explained with a hopeless chuckle. Always resigned, I thought, so typical of his helpless predicament. "Even my mother … she murdered my father and my younger sister." He snapped his fingers to mock his next point, to accentuate the sarcasm in his voice. 'They deserved it, by goblin standards, for they hadn't properly shared their supper with her."
Nojheim went silent and shook his head. Physically, he was indeed a goblin, but I could tell already by the sincerity of his tone that he was far different in temperament from his wicked kin. The thought shook me more than a little. In my years as a ranger, I had never stopped to question my actions against goblins, never held back my scimitars long enough to determine if any of them might possibly be of a different demeanor than I had come to know as typical of the normally evil creatures.
"You should have told me that you were a slave," I said again.
"I'm not proud of that fact."
"Why do you sit in here?" I demanded, though I knew the answer immediately. I, too, had once been a slave, a captive of wicked mind flayers, among the most evil of the Under-dark's denizens. There is no condition so crippling, no torment so profound. In my homeland, I had seen a contingent of a hundred ores held under complete control by no more than six drow soldiers. If they had mustered a common courage, those ores could surely have destroyed their keepers. But while courage is not the first thing to be stripped from a slave, it is certainly among the most important.
"You do not deserve this fate," I said more softly.
"What do you know of it?" Nojheim demanded.
"I know that it is wrong," I said. "I know that something should be done."
"I know that I would be hung by my neck if I tried to break free," he said bluntly. "I have never done any harm to any person or any thing. Neither do I desire to harm anyone. But, this is my lot in life."
"We are not bound by our race," I told him, finding some conviction finally in remembering my own long trail from the dark ways of Menzoberranzan. "You said that you have heard tales of me. Are they what you might expect of a dark elf?"
"You are drow, not goblin," he said, as if that fact explained everything.
"By your own words, you are no more akin to goblins than I am to drow," I reminded him.
"Who can tell?" he replied with a shrug, a helpless gesture that pained me deeply. "Am I to tell Rico that I am not a goblin in heart and action, just a victim of merciless fate? Do you think that he would believe me? Do you think that sort of understanding is within the grasp of these simple farmer folk?"
"Are you afraid to try?" I asked him.
"Yes!" His intensity was surprising. "I'm not Rico's first slave," he said. "He's held goblins, ores, even a bugbear once. He enjoys forcing others to do his own work, you see. Yet, how many of these other slaves did you see when you came into Rico's compound, Drizzt Do'Urden?"
He knew that I had not seen any, and I was not surprised by his explanation. I was beginning to hate this Rico Pengallen more than a little.
"Rico finished with them," Nojheim went on. 'They lost their ability to survive. They lost their usefulness. Did you notice the high cross-pole beside the front gate?"