The silence was absolute save for the crackling of fire. Zeth trembled all over as if in the last stages of a fever.
His face turned up, looking over the heads of us all. 'I feel their eyes upon us. Can you feel it? Can you feel their eyes looking down upon us? In another moment, they will turn away, and we will be lost. Our people will be lost. Our Night-below will be lost. All that we once were will be gone. Will you show them, our very gods, that you remember that you
He looked down. His hand swept in the direction of the prisoners. 'Prove it now!' he said. 'Let the gods see what I cannot.'
No one moved. Then one of the warriors silently pulled his long knife, turned, and lunged for the prisoners, seizing one by her hair. He dragged her screaming from the group. Warriors clubbed down two halflings who tried to pull the prisoner back.
The goblin with the knife snarled his left hand in the little halfling's hair and yanked her head back. Her hands tried to ward off the blows as his knife came down once, twice, again and again and again and again, until her hands flopped down into the dust of the road.
The other prisoners screamed with each blow. Abruptly flinging his dagger aside, the warrior seized the body, lifted it over his head as its limbs swung limp, and hurled it into the mass of prisoners, splashing them with gore.
The halflings screamed anew, but it was a sound I had never heard before from the throat of any being. It was mindless with terror, a sound like that made by animals in a slaughtering pen. In that moment, something old inside me awoke and hungered for the taste of blood. I became a wolf in a pack that had seen its prey go down, prey that could not get up and escape, hot prey that would be salty and wet in my mouth. I stepped forward as the rest of the warriors surged in on the wailing prisoners.
But the step was all I took. I held back, not knowing why, as the warriors who had been mine gave in to their hunger and tried to sate it.
Blood-mad goblins murdered prisoner after prisoner in hideous fashion. Onlookers shook their spears and stamped their feet, shouting their approval more loudly and wildly with each death. I watched from the side as if I weren't really there. I was no stranger to cruelty, but what I watched were not the actions of warriors I had raised and trained. They were the deeds of fiends out of Hades.
When the cries and struggles of the last prisoner had ceased, the warriors broke into ragged cheers. Flasks of ale and foul wine had appeared, and many of the warriors drank deeply from them. What had happened to them? I could not even find words to order them to stop, to turn themselves back into soldiers.
'Leave the bodies out,' called Zeth. 'Let the sun look down on them tomorrow and review our night's work. Let the world see what the children of maggots do to have a debt repaid. Our work has only begun.' He swayed, then turned and headed off again to the south, away from the smoldering village.
The goblins followed him easily, the warriors who had once been mine. Not one looked back at me as they went.
When they were almost out of sight, I recovered sufficiently to make my own feet work. I followed their quick pace, my mind cold with shock. We half-ran in this manner for several hours, until the air smelled of fresh grass without the touch of smoke and the tang of blood. The warriors chattered as they went, heedless of the need for quiet in enemy territory, and they passed their wineskins back and forth. I, who was once feared and respected by them all, could have been invisible.
Dawn was almost upon us when Zeth slowed to a stop. As the warriors drew up to him, Zeth collapsed on the ground to rest.
I looked down at the puffing half-breed.
'Captain Kergis,' gasped Zeth, though I had made no sound as I had come up, 'you do not understand, do you?'
'No,' I said, not even thinking of lying. 'It is your will.'
'It is my will, you say, but I am empty,' Zeth returned, still out of breath. 'I am the cup that holds the drink, but not the drink itself. I am the mouth, but not the word.'
'I don't understand this,' I said. 'I don't understand any of this. We are warriors. We don't-' I broke off, trying to frame my thoughts. 'We fight warriors, not worthless farmers. This is cowardice, to kill the dregs and the helpless! We fight those who can fight back! It's the way to win wars.'
Zeth finally caught his breath and sighed as he lay back on the grass, resting on his elbows. He let his head fall back, staring up into the endless night.
'Captain,' he said softly, 'you are more blind than I am.'
I knelt down on the grass a dozen paces from him. Strength seemed to flow out of me into the air. The warriors were drinking and laughing aloud in the distance.
'You wish to kill me,' said the half-breed. 'I can feel it. Sometimes I can see things, when the gods borrow my head and I see through their eyes for a few moments. But other things I can hear and taste and feel for myself. You would be glad to see me dead.'
Zeth cocked his head in my direction, without looking directly at me. 'It was the insult, you see, that drove me to this.'
When I did not respond, he nodded to himself. 'You do not see, then, not even the insult. The taint. My birth. You do not even see that.'
'I see it,' I said under my breath. I was thinking about killing him right then with my sword, the gods be damned. It would be easy.
'You see only this body. You see that I am different. You see that you wish to kill me. I hear it in your voice. But you do not see the insult. You cannot learn what I am teaching.'
Zeth turned his head away in the direction of the warriors. In a few moments, he got to his feet and walked away.
After a while, I got up, too. Goblins milled around the field, aimless and tired. I guessed from the sky that dawn was only three hours away. We had to be off to make camp. Someone would find the massacred village, and the word would be out. I looked back and saw in the moonlight that our trail would not be difficult for vengeful parties to follow. We had to move or else die here.
I found Zeth sitting on the ground, talking to himself in a low voice. He paused and turned his head as I came closer, my boots crunching sticks beneath them.
'We must get out of here,' I said flatly. 'We have no time to delay.'
Zeth turned away again. He was still talking to himself. Or to someone I couldn't see. 'He does not understand,' he whispered. 'He cannot see where they are weak. It is the same place we are weak.'
He was motionless for a time, then got unsteadily to his feet.
'Lead us on,' said the blind half-breed. 'South. We must hurry to our next teaching.'
The following night, about twelve miles south of the half-ling village, we attacked an isolated farm. Two of our number were wounded but stayed on their feet. We left the farm a few hours later, after Zeth spoke again about the maggots we came from and the gods who watched us. The dozen humans of the family that had lived there now hung by their feet from the ceiling rafters in the dining hall, butchered like deer.
Those who had been my warriors took some of the meat with them.
'Do you see more clearly, Captain?'
I did not look away from the dark horizon as I marched. 'No.'
Zeth hummed tunelessly to himself. 'It is just as it was with me,' he said at last. 'They would ask, 'Do you see more clearly now?' And I would cry and say, 'No! Give them back to me!' But that was not possible. They had thrown them out already. They were given back.'
'Your eyes,' I said after a pause.
'My mother said she would put them back, but she had no hands. My father had cut her hands off after he had attacked her and planted the seed for me. He had cut off her hands and left her to die. He was a human, but it was not a human thing to do. He was a hunter, she said, a hunter who had chosen her as his prey. She went out for water and he caught her. He tried to be a goblin. Surely, now, you see it.'
I licked my lips. I had lost my warriors and did not care what happened to me anymore. 'No.'
Zeth sighed heavily. 'The insult,' he said slowly, as to a child.
I didn't bother to answer.
