CHAPTER 1.17 - HIGHBARROW: II
Hugo returns to his comrades, apparently chastened, as Atheran stalks off muttering curses under her breath. Anuk sees shamed embarrassment on Thae’s open face, but Hugo seems more mischievous. She realises she’s struggling to determine whether this is her implicit mistrust of the halfling or an accurate assessment. On balance, she feels fine with her bias either road.
As they’re led onto the village green, their passage draws eyes and focus away from the work of slaughtering livestock. The villagers look worn and demoralised; eyes crinkled with fatigue and the death of hope. Atheran, notably, spends a little time with each cluster of her folk. Warmth spills over her still-terse tone as she makes physical contact with whomever she speaks. With them, she’s the image of a village elder. Someone with whom you’d neither play games nor step out of line, but with whom you would entrust your darkest fear or seek crucial advice.
Anuk spots the occasional brief smile touching the older woman’s face as her rolling gait propels her through the clusters of people. She sometimes hears her group mentioned, as ‘travellers’ or ‘guests’; neutral, unthreatening labels for a group of armed strangers showing up at the worst time. Atheran, reaching the edge of the groups, turns back to look at them –Anuk feels the woman focusing on her – then tips her shorn head towards the northwest of the village. The older woman puts a tight, kindly smile on her face as she excuses them and asks that the villagers allow their visitors through.
As Atheran slowly leads them towards the edge of the village, she quietly issues instructions. They may be allowed to help, assuming they can be of help; even then, they must take care with the feelings of the children’s parents. Make no promises, but don’t imply that the kids mightn’t be returned safely. Be kind, be gentle, hold any information they glean for when Atheran can speak to them privately. In fact, Atheran eyeballing Hugo, leave the talking to her. “That’ll be simpler at least.” She looks older, careworn in the moment.
They come to a small, tidy house. It’s well-built, with a reasonably sized vegetable garden fenced off inside the hundred-or-so feet before the forest fringe. A man in hunter’s garb, bow over his back, is standing with a couple in their early thirties. Obviously the parents. The father is broad-shouldered, around 5’8”, untidily tousled blonde hair spilling past the nape of his neck. The wife looks puffy-eyed, has obviously been crying, but seems to be holding her emptions tightly in check. She’s a couple of inches shorter than her husband and what Anuk thinks of as ‘farmer build’. She’s broad, flesh around her face softened but she seems as physically capable as her husband. She’s twisting a bright red square of cloth in her hands, maybe a handkerchief.
Atheran approaches them, nodding to the hunter. He returns the gesture and steps away towards a small bundle on the ground closer to the forest edge. As her attention’s drawn that way, Anuk’s sure it’s a body, child-sized, covered with an old sheet. As she gets to the couple, Atheran reaches out to take the mother’s hands into her own. She gives a squeeze, Anuk noting the woman’s back straightening, as the elder warmly says “Rach.” The ‘a’ is flattened, like a contraction of ‘ratchet’. She stands in silence for a moment, then turns, places a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Jeran. I’m so sorry to put you trew this, bot could I ask yez to go back over this morning?” She gestures back to the four of them, Thae raising a hand of greeting towards the traumatised pair. “For moi friends here?” Wise. Anuk sees it less as a vote of confidence, more a sanitising of Atheran’s misgivings in front of the parents.
The man sighs shakily, takes a deep breath as if to put his thoughts in order. Rach, however, looks them each in the eye, then begins talking quietly, purposefully.
“We’d normally be up before the dawn, but we were all tired after…all the upsets of late. Soon as we were out of bed, I checked in on the kids. Jor, our son, is only five…” The woman’s face twists, a fat tear spilling from one eye as she pushes through the account. “…Our little girl, Erin is eight. I shouted Jer soon as I saw. Their window was open, had horrible greasy handprints on it, and their…their bedsheets had rips on ‘em.” The man immediately moves a big hand over his wife’s shoulder, pulling her into a comforting, supportive embrace.
“I’ll not hide it, I’m not ashamed, I screamed right then.” Rach sniffs. “And I kept screaming their names as much as I could, but I was in a fright.” The woman exhales, emotion shaking the breath. Her husband squeezes her shoulder, nodding. He takes over. “Oi ran out quick smart. Still in moi noightgown.” He reddens slightly, shakes his head, then re-gathers and indicates their guide. “Atheran here, she couldn’t’ve been called over boi us, but she was there in a flash!” Anuk sees that despite the woman’s feelings about adventurers, these people see Atheran as a hero. Suspects this insight, if voiced, would send the woman into a tirade.
Atheran, for her part, looks guilty, haunted maybe. She thanks the couple, gently suggests they might want to move inside, head tilting towards the hunter and the corpse. “Marek’ll stay outside for yer protection.” They see the couple’s mouths opening as if to resist, but Atheran continues “Please, get yourselves a coop a tea, spend some toime wit each other. If yez need to be busy later, yez could help with the work on the green, but nobody’d begrodge yez som space to deal wi’ this.” The couple look at each other, the man’s resolve beginning to collapse towards tears. He’s led back into the house, his wife’s arm on his lower back, soft words spilling out of her.
The hunter, having overheard the conversation and implied order, gives each of them a grave nod as he positions himself at the corner of the house where he can keep an eye on the door and still scan the forest. Atheran stiffly steps towards the bundle on the ground, standing awkwardly over it as the four approach. Anuk can see the woman’s pride in conflict with her disability, but Rian steps forward, muttering “Can I take a look?” gesturing at the bundle.
Face seemingly saved, Atheran nods. “Oi saw this little fekker roight at the edge of the wood. Oi think ‘e got injured on ‘is way out the house or summin.” As Rian pulls back the sheet, they see a wretched little humanoid, grey-skinned head at an impossible angle. This is largely due to an arrow nailed through his neck from back to front. “Killed ‘im clean, bot oi’d never’ve been able to catch ‘is pals even if oi could’ve seen ‘em.”
Thae cranes forward as Rian’s hands run over the body briefly. “Are they usually this malnourished?” Thae asks, seeming to activate the shy man. He looks up “Goblins’ diets are shit, but they can usually eat just about anything. This one’s stringy. Even for them.”
Anuk can see the man’s words drawing the elder in. Thae also appears enrapt. The half-elf notes “He’s got fungus on him.” Rian nods, looks up from his kneeling position. “Not unusual. You get used to stink if you get used to goblins. But he looks unhealthy.” Rian stands, scanning towards the forest line. Atheran looks about to speak, but the big man’s focus is away from her. “Well, they’ve left us clear tracks, and time’s wasting.”
He looks round, catches the surprise on Atheran’s face. She stammers slightly: “I…I was fixin to offer yez some food, maybe ask if you’d…” Rian scans the faces of his comrades, sees no disagreement there, turns to face the elder. He stoops, looking the woman in the face. “You’re needed here. That’s clear. We have to prove ourselves.” He stands, tight smile directed at his companions. “Let’s see if we can sort this out.”
With that, Rian stalks towards the forest. Thae gives a nod to Atheran, a smile to Anuk as she begins to follow. At her back, she can see Hugo give another courtly bow to the elder, saying “I hire only the best.” Smug. Little. Fuck!
-x-
A half hour later, Anuk feels her entire recent life has been picking through this fucking forest. Rian’s back in his element, the rest of them following as best they can. Seeing him do this without the previous exhaustion is, she supposes, impressive. He’s showing them the marks he is following. Clusters of broad, taloned goblin feet, barely holding together as a group, surround obvious drag marks. Rian explains the tracks in his clipped style. He opines that the older child’s been bound or shoved in a sack. The variation in the depth of the goblin footprints indicates that the little boy’s likely being carried, regularly passed from one halfling-sized creature to another. Spreading the load. The smell here is awful, the woodsman tilting his head towards a blob of unspeakable shit. “They didn’t rest long. We shouldn’t stop.”
-x-
Another two, two-and-a-half hours later, Rian has slowed, motioning them to follow suit. He whispers that they’re around where Night led them in a circle earlier. At this, all of the group – aside from herself – are weapons-readied, each of them scanning the forest around them. For the past few minutes, there has been an increasingly intense smell. Even without Rian, Anuk feels she could follow her nose to the source. Then again, normally nothing could persuade her that’d be wise.
Rian follows the tip of his pike as he pushes forward. As the stench reaches a crescendo, she hears Hugo curse, even Thae stifles a cough. Anuk has long-since covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief. She sees the people ahead stop still, slows as she draws level with them. Looking over Hugo’s head, she sees a shallow pit poorly dug into the forest floor. The rest is horror, but she finds herself drawn into its fascination.
The pit is filled with goblin bodies, but wrong, melted-looking. The tiny things are coloured from grey through sputum colours, yellows, greens. Thae scans the pile as Rian leads them skirting around and away from it, resuming the trail he has been following. As they move away, Thae talks quietly but urgently. The goblins were killed, bladed or blunt weapon violence; apparently their skulls and bones were removed post-mortem. It explains the wrong shapes, the deflated look. Hugo seems to be struggling not to vomit.
Rian estimates the pit might contain 30 bodies; he isn’t sure but guesses that would be the bulk of most tribes’ numbers. Thae and he bandy theories. Could it be inter-tribe warfare? Intra-? Thae again acknowledges the apparent malnutrition and mouldering, suggesting an illness or plague? Admits that’s difficult to pin down with their boneless nature. They wind up in silence, each trying to guess a pattern with too few clues. Except Hugo, who’s still wrestling with his gorge.
-x-
Another hour passes, Anuk’s calves feeling the land sloping upwards before her limited view through the trees confirms it. Then the trees are thinning out, the land becoming successively stonier, and she hears Hugo sighing in time with her own souring mood as the slope steepens.
Their progress slows when patches of stones projecting from the forest floor switch over to patches of soil gripping to stone and scree. Thankfully, the goblins are easy to track and appear not to be deviating much from their course. They must be nearing the coast, she feels, as the air takes on a tang of salt which would have been lost with more trees around her. Their progress slows further as the terrain becomes featureless stone. Rian wordlessly gestures for them to stop, and scans slowly, left to right and back again. Anuk guesses he sees as little as she can on the featureless hillside, as he sets off again on the course they have been following since the last obvious goblin spoor.
The incline plateaus, and the forest seems to have tried to re-establish itself patchily as they approach a long cliff, the stone wall jutting out of the ground up ahead. Rian re-orients, although Anuk admits not by much, as patchy evidence of the troop’s progress re-appears. The soil here looks positively ill, the trees taking on twisted forms. Despite the day’s brightness, she feels a chill looking at the yellowed, patchy grass over which they’re passing.
Then, suddenly, Rian hisses and they all drop to the ground just behind the final trees at the shadow of the cliff wall.
