“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 Mithral 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 dwarf 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 Underdark’s denizens. There is no condition so crippling, no torment so profound. In my homeland, I had seen a contingent of a hundred orcs held under complete control by no more than six drow soldiers. If they had mustered a common courage, those orcs 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, orcs, 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?”
I shuddered when I pictured what use that cross-pole might have been put to.
“I’m alive, and I’ll stay alive,” Nojheim declared. Then, for the first time, the determined goblin allowed his guard to slip down, his sullen expression betraying his words.
“You wish that the raiding ogres would have killed you,” I said to him, and he offered no argument.
For some time we sat in silence, silence that weighed heavily on both of us. I knew that I could not let this injustice stand, could not turn my back on one-even a goblin-who so obviously needed help. I considered the courses open to me and came to the conclusion that to truly remedy this injustice, I must use what influence I could. Like most of the farming villages in the region, Pengallen was not an independent community. The people here were within the general protection of, and therefore, under the overseeing law of the greater cities nearby. I could appeal to Alustriel, who ruled Silverymoon, and to Bruenor Battlehammer, the nearest king and my dearest friend.
“Perhaps some day I will find the strength to stand against Rico,” Nojheim said unexpectedly, pulling me from my contemplations. I remember his next words vividly. “I am not a courageous goblin. I prefer to live, though oftentimes I wonder what my life is truly worth.”
My father could have said those very words. My father, Zak’nafein, too, was a slave, though a slave of a different sort. Zak’nafein lived well in Menzoberranzan, but he detested the dark elves and their evil ways. He saw no escape, though, no way out of the drow city. For lack of courage, he lived his life as a drow warrior, survived by following those same codes that were so abhorrent to him.
I tried to remind Nojheim again that I had escaped a similar fate, that I had walked out of a desperate situation. I explained that I had traveled among peoples who surely hated me and feared me for the reputation of my heritage.
“You are drow, not any goblin,” he replied again, and this time I began to understand the meaning behind his words. “They will never understand that I am not evil in heart, as are other goblins. I don’t even understand it!”
“But you believe it,” I said firmly.
“Am I to tell them that this goblin is not an evil sort?”
“Exactly that!” I argued. It seemed reasonable enough to me. I thought that I had found the opening I needed.
Nojheim promptly closed that door, promptly taught me something about myself and about the world that I had not previously considered.
“What is the difference between us?” I pressed, hoping he would see my understanding of the truth.
“You think yourself persecuted?” the goblin asked. His yellow eyes narrowed, and I knew that he thought he was being shrewd.
“I no longer accept that definition, just as I no longer accept the persecution,” I declared. My pride had suddenly got in the way of understanding what this pitiful wretch was getting at. “People will draw their own judgments, but I will no longer accept their unfair conclusions.”
“You will fight those that do you wrong?” Nojheim asked.
“I will deny them, ignore them, and know in my heart that I am right in my beliefs.”
Nojheim’s smile revealed both an honest happiness that I had found my way, and a deeper sorrow-for himself, I came to know.
