CHAPTER 1.25 - RETURN TO HIGHBARROW: RIAN
Rian smiles but mellows the game as Joral’s giggles begin to soften. The little boy’s eyelids are drooping, and while his sister is more attentive it’s been a rough day for the pair of them. He marvels at Erin’s resilience, having presumably woken mid-kidnap in the early hours of the morning. He scans the visible patches of sky through the canopy – too many hours ago. Even without the terror of the goblinoids and the threat of death these kids must be exhausted. His smile drops entirely; they don’t have long until sunset and still hours of travel to go. Can’t even increase the pace in the dying light. Surviving a night in the forest with children to protect would be tenuous enough without one of their group sustaining an avoidable injury. Slow and careful; always the fastest way. Rian’s mind twitches away from his father’s voice repeating that lesson.
His avoidance brings him to the Shits, of course. The thought of how easily Graasht and his small band dominated Filthstink, a thriving community by goblin standards, had already been rolling around his head. Of course, the Shits answer the why, the how. He shakes his head ruefully, freezes the movement as he realises that Erin has slumped, the side of her head resting on the top of his.
-x-
He’s had to abandon the stockade – well, what will be his stockade – for the day. The work of felling and stripping the trees is backbreaking, seems endless. He’ll have plenty of logs for the stockade wall, but Rian’s running short on other supplies and needs protein to supplement the fruits and nuts he can forage. He’s frustrated by the slim pickings from his garden. It’ll be much more fruitful (literally, and vegetableful he thinks) next year. He suppresses the qualifier ‘IF he makes it that long.’ He can’t return to Oakbridge, and that’s the only place people know him. In any environ other than these wilds he has no real skills.
He stops dead when he hears the scream. The single voice is a weird mix of a young girl and an old man who’s smoked all his days. He closes his eyes, turns his head in an arc, trying to lock onto the source, the sound doppling off the tree trunks, shredded by the ground cover as it travelled. A second scream and he’s running. He’s only been in the forest for a couple of years, but feels confident in his footing, gratified that he knows it like the home it’s become. As he gets closer, he can hear a struggle, a panicked fight for life.
He's slightly off angle as he bursts through some brush, head snapping to the left where the largest badger he has ever seen is looming over a body the size of a five-year-old. Scratch that, maybe four. The badger, easily five feet long, turns and hisses angrily as he impinges on its kill. Rian realises the ‘child’ has ears like bat wings, skin a vomitous yellow. He can’t tell if it’s alive or dead.
The difference becomes academic as the beast charges him. He’d rather not do this but lowers his spear nonetheless. The little cave in which he lives is well equipped, but not for treating an infected wound. And this beast’s teeth look filthy as it covers the ground with worrying speed. He tries to focus, shutting down a sarcastic thought that his current shelter will be a lovely cool storage for his body. The thought manages to spark his anger. His uncertainties disappear, as does any fear of this beast. He will survive this. His spearpoint catches it between the neck and shoulder, the shock of the impact jarring him and almost putting him on his backside.
The creature’s still snarling, foam on its fangs as it claws forward, teeth snapping on air. Snapping becomes a theme as his weapon’s wooden shaft splinters and cracks. Rian lets his right hand off the haft of the spear, scrabbling for the handaxe on his belt. His eyes widen as the badger, maniacally twisting towards his face, almost rips the spear from his hand. He hears the wood splitting further, the badger pulling the point through itself. Smells its rank, predator breath on his face.
Then he breathes again as he watches the light go out of the thing’s eyes. It was so intent on attack that the spear found something vital. Rian gently works the tip of the shaft, not yet split through but useless for hunting. It might last one good stab. He hopes.
He turns his attention to the small creature on the ground. It’s dressed in a primitive garment made from fox fur. As he quietly races over, he sees the thing’s chest rise and fall. Doesn’t know whether this is good or bad news. He hasn’t heard anything good about goblins. Nobody has. Thankfully, his childhood terror of them is diminished somewhat by the fact that he’s twice as tall as this one. Plus, it’s covered in blood, apparently its own. Hardly terrifying. He feels a little sympathy, curled as it is into an automatic, defensive foetal position. Then the odour hits him. It smells dead.
He checks over the ugly little thing, finding a gash in its thigh bleeding heavily. He drops his backpack; grabs some clean cloth he carries specifically for bandages. Jumps when he hears the old man/little girl scream, this time a couple of feet from his face. The creature’s awake, waving a knife that was under its body. He holds up the bandage he retrieved, noting more fear than anger in the thing’s eyes. It stops waving the blade woozily, exaggerated bafflement on its face. Rian makes a gentle noise, touches the goblin on the leg below the wound. The thing jumps but seems to process the pain it’s feeling. It faints again as Rian begins to bind the injury.
-x-
Reawakening, the little guy immediately looks for his knife. Sadly, Rian knows for certain that it’s male – the fox fur hides very little. It seems doubly confused that Rian left the weapon where it was dropped. It checks out the bandage, seems satisfied with that, then seems to have decided it’s safe. He would, of course, later learn that goblins’ fatalism provides them a gap similar to bravery, where the worst hasn’t happened yet, so might as well breathe in the moment. It hobbles painfully up to where Rian is sat next to the badger’s corpse. It does a comedic looking-him-up-and-down, but then its attention is fully taken by the animal. Looks at it like someone appraising a block of gold they don’t own and couldn’t aspire to. Cocks its head towards Rian, ensures his full attention and then mimes a huge, questioning, eating motion.
Rian shakes his head, embarrassed for a moment by his expression of distaste. The creature gives this no notice, wicked teeth bared in a gleeful expression. Surprises him as it leaps onto the badger’s head, violently stabbing out the thing’s dead eyes. The vicious little guy stops, breathing heavily to the point where Rian expects him to pass out again. It then pantomimes an attempt to lift the badger’s limbs one at a time, obviously gauging the weight of meat it wants to carry. The conclusion towards which Rian has been moving crystallises, and he taps the goblin’s shoulder. The thing startles again, confirming that it feels at his mercy and not entirely safe. Watches in confusion as Rian expertly hog ties the beast, grunts as he heaves it onto his shoulder, then leans towards his new friend, arm curled to mime carrying.
-x-
That was how he met Rek. At the time, the little goblin was just one of a mostly-family cluster. Not even a member in great favour, it appeared. After all, two of his group (they didn’t take great pains over labels like ‘brother’, ‘cousin’ or the like) had left him for dead when the giant badger attacked. At least they looked happy to see him on his return.
In fact, he returned a hero. As the little guy guided them through the woods, safe in the perch of Rian’s arm, he had become quite subdued. Rian had thought this might have been concern at inviting a (relative) giant to their hiding spot. Instead, on their arrival he was immediately impressed with Rek’s guile. They had only hammered out words for directions, trees and such en route, but this was Rian’s education in how much of their language was context, gesture and wild facial expressions.
It was immediately apparent that Rek was painting himself the hero of this piece, showing off the post-mortem eye stabbing to the ten or so other goblins celebrating his survival. Rian had to stifle a laugh when one of the older goblins (later learned to be Rek’s father Drek) queried the spear wound and Rek, without hesitation, pointed out the damage to Rian’s weapon. Suppressing the chuckle, Rian flexed the spear shaft hard enough to fully break the split wood. He had already contemplated this, a weapon too broken to use being worse than none. He looked down at the resultant item, somewhere between the length of a dagger or a shortsword, shrugged. Only when he looked back up did he realise that the rest of the group was dragging the body away to be butchered. Meanwhile, Rek was staring into his face with a look of joy.
Again, later, he found out that the family’s first pass at Rian and Rek’s arrival had been along the lines of ‘much good meat, not far to drag it.’ A part of him, learning quickly from the creatures, wished that they were referring only to the badger.
-x-
He understands how Filthstink was so quickly reshaped by Graasht. Rek used his bond with Rian to grow his status and even grow the clan. They engaged in ‘trade’ of sorts. Literally, Rian would make garments, armour: odds and sods, really, from offcuts or substandard hides. These would be received with glee by the clan, and ‘gifts’ would be given in return. They quickly realised that Rian had little use for their food, so instead he became the repository for any weird stuff they happened across.
Most of this was dross, but occasionally something genuinely useful would show up. Like a beautiful uncut amethyst the size of Rek’s hand. Or a bag of coins that chilled Rian with the thought of the owner tracing it to the family. Or to him. The thing was, Rian would have kept ties to the clan anyway. Despite his present glut of company, he can’t dispute the number of times the society of goblins, as rough and ready as that was, was preferable to his habitual isolation.
Plus, he was learning their language, their intricate structure of sliding favour. Until Rek introduced Rian to the clan, his father had been the nominal leader of the group. Apparently simply by dint of being the eldest member. Drek had zero interest in, nor aptitude for, leadership. He had none of his son’s guile, no vision of a life better than squatting in a burrow abandoned by some other creature.
Under Rek’s governance, they found a cave on higher ground, one of the many blobs of stone projecting out from the forest’s floor. And they absorbed information like sponges. Anything Rian taught one of them, as a respite from his endless technical chores building his home, he would see replicated by the clan, iterated and even improved upon. He accepted that it was bigotry to believe that goblins, even with all of their crassness and filth and chaos, were stupid. Their twitchy little minds were hungry, if anything. Of course, the rest of them was usually hungry too.
-x-
He returns to the present, the smell of the forest reinforcing the memory of the burrow. He checks on the kids, now soundly asleep. Thankfully, the little ones aren’t stirring as they approach the stench of the corpse pit. He can’t help but look as they pass, noting the swelling and corruption of the little bodies, still slightly horrified by their bonelessness. In fact, with the long shadows they strike him as filling out more of the pit. He’s mostly past when he notices that Thae, rearguard as always, is staring at the pile, face mirroring his own confusion.
Belatedly, a thought strikes him, and he spins round. His blood turns cold, he’s about to hiss a warning when he sees Hugo raise his right hand, pointing Fruk’s ring towards the pile. A shout dies in Rian’s mouth as the little man’s lips form a word and a gout of flame shoots towards the charnel pit.
The pile shudders, quakes, rises. Thae’s eyes are boring into him, into the children, head tipping, urging him to go.
Feeling like a traitor, Rian ducks his head and charges away from his friends.
