The other two humans stood a little straighter, startled by the question. They watched the elf intently.
After a pause, the elf nodded, his face slack. He was nearly unconscious.
"Damn," said the blond man. He looked up at the other two humans, a smile crossing his face.
There was a whisper in the wind, followed almost immediately by a thump. At the same moment, the huge man with the dark hair bent back, his hands clawing behind him at the dull-colored arrow that had struck him directly between his shoulder blades. The arrow was sunk in almost to the feathers. The man made a strange wheezing sound, then pitched forward on his face.
"Oh, great Istar!" the woman said, wide-eyed. Her hands pulled her sword free, and she and the thin, blond man ran for cover behind separate trees. They crouched down, both clearly visible to the goblin. The man on the ground did not move. The elf hung limp from the tree, his chin against his chest. The wind started to blow harder.
The goblin slowly reached down to his side. His fingers touched the curved wood of his bow.
The blond-haired man, his nerve gone, made a break for it. He took off from his tree, running in a straight line for a clump of bushes about a hundred feet away. The woman started after him, but she must have heard the arrow as it went past her, for she dropped to the ground, rolling until she was behind a pair of close tree trunks. From there, she could hear the blond man scream as he writhed in the leaves and dead ferns.
"I surrender!" the plain-faced woman cried in the trade tongue. "Don't shoot! I've got kin who'll pay my ransom!"
"Then come out!" the kender's voice called. (It figured, thought the goblin.) "Leave your sword!"
"I've got a big ransom!" the woman yelled again. The goblin could see the white in her face, as pale as a drowned man's skin. She looked as if she would be blubbering any time now. The blond man was not so much screaming now as making short, gasping cries, trying to pull out the arrow buried deep in his lower back.
"Just come out slowly," said the kender. "Very, very slowly."
The woman tossed out her useless sword, then got to her feet. Her legs shook as she placed her hands on her head. "Don't shoot me!" she yelled again, looking around with huge eyes and a trembling lower lip.
"I'm over here," said the kender. He stood up, his bow lowered but his arrow nocked.
The woman saw him and stared, surprised at his size and obviously reconsidering her chances of survival. The goblin could see it on her face. If I can get close enough to that little bastard, he knew she was thinking, I can make hash of him. It's my only chance.
"My kin can pay a big ransom for me," she said, her voice gaining strength. "Lots of gold, I swear it. Just don't hurt me. Promise me that you won't hurt me."
"I promise," said the kender.
The long arrow that thumped into the woman's chest took her by surprise. She staggered back, her hands still on her head. Her eyes grew terribly big and round before she fell over backward. She never made a sound.
The goblin lowered his bow. It was the first time in four days that he'd hit anything on the first try. He waved at the kender, then started down the slope toward the gasping blond man.
The goblin found the minotaur sitting in front of the cave, gnawing on a deer's thigh bone. The overwhelming odor of dried blood and ripe manure carried on the air. The goblin was actually getting used to it.
"Eh," said the goblin, almost apologetically.
The minotaur, ears up and alert, glanced in the goblin's direction. Yellow teeth tore away a scrap of deer meat. The thick chain links hanging from the beast's wrist manacles swung and clinked.
The goblin swallowed the bile churning in his stomach, but he went on, even daring to smile. "Kender and me hunt deer, but kill humans. Shoot three. We find damn elf, much bad hurt, bring him back. Elf no good, eh? I know, but maybe elf know woods, good ways to hunt. Maybe we make him teach us. Want maybe keep elf alive for now. OK?"
The goblin hesitated, wondering if any of this was sinking into the minotaur's brain. It hadn't spoken a word since they'd found it. Humans said minotaurs weren't very bright, but this one had to be dumber than dirt.
The minotaur continued chewing on the bone, watching the goblin with its dull brown eyes. The goblin felt he had done all he could to safeguard the elf's survival, at least until the issue of the magical sword was cleared up. After that, the minotaur could dine on Silvanesti meat when the kender's back was turned, for all the goblin cared. The goblin nodded to the minotaur, then went back to help the kender carry the elf up to the cave. There they laid the elf out on the kender's bed — a pile of rags on the packed-earth floor.
The kender was frantic to do things for the elf. Before long, the elf was undressed, wrapped cozily in the kender's own blankets. The goblin busied himself by going through all the loot that he had taken off the bodies of the rangers and the elf as well. The kender gently washed the elf's face. The goblin carefully counted thirty-six Istarian gold pieces, ten Istarian silver coins, and two rings. It was more money than he'd ever had, even in East Dravinar in the good old days. He couldn't spend it, but it felt awfully good. He wrapped the money in cloth to muffle it, placed it in a pouch, then tied it inside his clothing behind his belt, where not even the kender's light fingers would find it.
He lifted the elf's backpack and looked it over. Its quaint, elaborate tooling and stitching occupied his curiosity briefly, then he undid the straps and looked inside.
He snorted. Books and papers… and a small bag of gold coins, twelve of them, each with an elven king on one side and a swan on the other. Silvanesti for certain. The rangers must not have gotten around to searching the elf's gear if they had missed this. The goblin palmed the gold and was about to empty the rest of the backpack's contents into the fire pit when he noticed the biggest book.
Except that the book in the elf's backpack was white, it was just like the red spellbook the goblin had seen a Red Robe reading one day, three years ago, on the banks of a mountain stream. Of course, the goblin had given that wizard a wide berth. It wasn't smart to mess with wizards.
The goblin eyed the book before gazing at the battered elf. If the rangers had found the book, the elf would have been dead long ago. The goblin wondered if that wouldn't have been best. A minotaur knew but one way to kill you and would at least be quick about it; a wizard knew a thousand, and he often took his time. The Istarians burned wizards at the stake, but it was not uncommon for whole Istarian villages and towns to go up in flames themselves shortly after such events. Better to turn away from a wizard than to raise your hand against him.
The goblin chewed his lower lip.
Better to turn away, but maybe better still to make a wizard your ally — even an elf — if you could do it.
The kender, muttering to himself all the while, finished cleaning and dressing the elf's wounds. The goblin, coming out of his reverie with a start, made a production of relighting the fire until the kender went outside to wash off in a stream. Once he was alone, the goblin carefully replaced all of the Silvanesti coins and made sure the elf's things were in order inside the pack before strapping it shut. He then took both the backpack and the elf's pouchladen belt and stored them in the back of the cave where the minotaur and kender weren't likely to find them. (The kender had already fully explored the shallow cave and was unlikely to search it again.) Then there was nothing to do but wait — and think.
The elf regained consciousness later that afternoon. The kender was beside himself with joy and talked without stop for two hours afterward, pestering the elf with questions that he lacked the strength to answer. This gave the elf a chance to eye his surroundings and take in the goblin and minotaur; upon seeing the latter, the elf's eyes widened and he seemed too afraid to move. The goblin kept to the background and took care of minor chores that the kender usually handled, saying nothing. The minotaur merely grunted when it saw the elf, then went outside and sat down to dine on a freshly killed boar taken from a pit trap, noisily tearing into its dinner with its bare teeth.