“Uncle Akraz needs your help now. Will you help him? Will you tell Hwega, your moma, that he’s in trouble?”
“She’s working,” said the child. “I’ll get my brothers and sisters. We’ll help you.”
Laya had her doubts about the wisdom of it, but that was how, a short time later, a small army of goblin children followed her back to where she had hidden Akraz’s body. They ranged in age from three to ten, all grubby, scrawny and ragamuffin. But they all seemed to adore their Uncle Akraz and since there were at least a dozen of them, they were able to help Laya lift and carry the big man back to their den.
The den was just a long, narrow hole in the wall, with no furniture, no candles, no adornments of any kind. Ugly iron hooks protruded from the raw stone of the upper walls and ceiling of the den, to hold baskets and animal skin containers. Rats scrambled from one basket to another with impunity. Roaches moved in herds across the walls. A hearth fire burned in a niche to one side and a big clay jar filled with brackish water sat at the very back of the cave. Greasy leather mats, now heaped together in one tall pile, indicated what probably served as beds during sleeping hours.
To Laya it more closely resembled a dungeon than a fit place to raise a dozen children. She could hardly bear the thought of bringing Akraz into this filth. How could she heal him in an environment like this? The very air of the den made her skin crawl and her throat itch. The miasma stank of smoke and dust and urine and rot.
No other options existed. Laya had no choice but to try to find the least soiled of the mats in the corner to form a bed large enough for him to stretch out upon. She poured some of the unsavory water from the back pot into a smaller pot over the fire, to boil.
“You wanna eat?” one of the older children, a girl, asked Laya. The girl grabbed one of the baskets off the wall to show Laya the skinned and dried rats inside. “We also got centipedes, if you want soup.”
Laya felt her last meal flip upside down in her stomach. “No, thank you.”
Once the water came to a boil, Laya lanced the spider bite on Akraz’s shoulder and cleaned out the wound. She wrapped his shoulder in spider silk. Without her people’s magical salves with her, there was little else she could do for him but pray to the gods of Light for his recovery.
Please, she begged them silently. I know he is not one of your own, but he is a good man inside, where it matters. Surely you can see into his heart.
“One of the big spiders downstairs bit him, huh?” asked a little boy. He nibbled his thumb. In his other hand, he clutched a toy sword made out of several rat bones tied together with tendons.
No one would ever mistake these scallywag children for elf children, but Laya could see that these young goblins had not yet been deformed by dark fires of Zathstragomal. They had smooth skin, pointed ears and big eyes, like elf children. Under their smudges and snot, they were actually quite cute.
“Yes,” said Laya. “But Akraz killed three of the big spiders before they got him.”
The boy’s eyes lit up and he waved his sword. “I’ll bet he did! Uncle Akraz can whop anybody! He’s killed more than a thousand elves!”
“Yes,” sighed Laya. She caressed Akraz’s fevered bestial brow. “I know.”
Unholy caterwauling jerked Laya out of an uneasy nap. An adult goblin woman with sagging breasts and a hideous countenance waved a stone club at Laya.
“Thief! Intruder! Invader! How did you get into my home?”
The gaggle of children surrounded Laya to protect her from the attacking banshee.
“Ma! Ma! It’s okay! We let her in. She knows Uncle Akraz!”
“Akraz?” The goblin woman hesitated.
“Look!” The children pointed to his form, barely visible in the dim, ruddy light of the cave. “There he is.”
“A spider bit him.”
“But he killed three of them!”
“We helped carry him here.”
“You must be Hwega,” Laya said. “Akraz’s sister.”
“What if I am?” Hwega said belligerently. “What business is it of yours? And who in the Thirteen Hells are you? You’re not even a goblin! What are you? A human?”
“A friend.”
“Non-goblins don’t make friends with goblins. Even goblins don’t make friends with goblins. Tell me the truth or I’ll bash your brain in. Don’t think I can’t!”
A cough, low and male, interrupted them. Almost too weak to hear, a wheeze followed, whispering, “Hwega.”
“Akraz!” Laya rushed to his side. “You are awake!”
“Akraz? Is it really you?” Hwega also came to his side and searched his face. What she saw in the monstrous abomination there must have reassured her. “It is you. Who is this woman? Why is she helping you?”
“She is my slave,” said Akraz hoarsely. “Do whatever she asks as if the order came from me.”
“If you say so, Akraz,” Hwega said dubiously. “But—”
But Akraz had passed out again.
Hwega frowned. “If Grob comes home and finds Akraz here, weak like this, he’ll kill him.”
“Grob?”
“My husband.” Hwega spat. “A drunken loser. He hates Akraz because Akraz is ten times the goblin Grob will ever be. And Akraz hates him, because Grob beats me and the cubs. All the nice things Akraz gets us, if we don’t hide it real good, Grob steals it and sells it for more booze. Normally, Grob would slink away like the coward he is when Akraz comes around, but now…” Hwega just shook her head.
“I would like to return Akraz to his own den, but I can’t carry him there myself,” Laya said. “Not only is he too heavy, but as a…slave…I would be seen and questioned. Can you help me?”
“Maybe,” said Hwega. She chewed her lip and studied Laya. “I recognize what you are now. You ain’t human, and sure as the Dark God lies, you ain’t a goblin. You’re an elf.”
“Yes,” said Laya.
This simple confession elicited a startling reaction from the children, who had been listening quietly to the conversation. At once the oldest children began to shout curses and the youngest to cry and wail.
“Elf! Elf! Ma, don’t let her eat me!” screeched one little one, burrowing into Hwega’s lap.
“I’ll kill it right now!” cried the boy with the bone sword. He flew at Laya like a whirlwind, hitting her with the toy.
“Shut up and sit down, all of ya!” bellowed Hwega. Cowed, the goblin children shrank into quiet balls. However, they crept so that their mother stood between them and Laya.
“She ain’t gonna eat ya,” said Hwega. “Didn’t you hear? She’s Akraz’s slave. She’s so afraid of what he’ll do to her if she disobeys him, that she risks her life to drag his unconscious body through deadly spiders and miles of caves.” Hwega gave Laya a sharp look. “You think she would dare eat her master’s favorite nieces and nephews?”
“I ain’t scared of her,” said the boy with the sword. “I ain’t scared of any elf.”
“Good goblin,” said Hwega. “Now get out of here, all of you. Scat! Go catch rats. We have only a few dried ones left and you know your pa will eat half of those tonight, if he’s sober enough to eat at all. What will that leave for the rest of you? Scat!”
The children emptied from the den, leaving a heavy silence in the smoky air behind them.
“I know some of Akraz’s boys in the army,” Hwega said. “Boys that would side with him even against the Dark God himself. But I gotta know first, before I get them down here to help him, what kind of real trouble he’s in.
“I guess maybe you are his slave, because I don’t see how else you coulda got to Mount Murk. It ain’t no vacation spot. And it ain’t hard to see what Akraz would want with a pretty elf slave girl like you, though he ain’t never brought one home before. Coulda had plenty if he’d wanted I bet.
“But you coulda left him to die from the spiders if you wanted to run away. Even if you were too scared to run, why bother coming here? I may not be a general like Akraz, but even I got brains enough to see that don’t add up.”