The goblin lifted his chin, judging the distance to the kender. The spear could reach him with a good toss, and the machete with the right spin. But the kender was doing nothing to require immediate action, and he had no obvious weapons. 'Too fast, say?' the goblin asked, mildly curious.
'Yeah,' said the kender. 'He would have run right into my pit in another three steps.' The kender stuck out his bare left foot and nudged at the thick patch of leaves before him. A stick shifted, revealing a long, dark split in the ground. The goblin carefully took a step closer and saw that, indeed, there was a pit in the center of the dry gully. It was an expertly done pit, at that.
The goblin stepped back, eyeing the kender with a faint amount of respect. He hadn't seen a kender in years and had thought they were all dead in these parts. Pointing down with his machete at the dead human, the goblin asked, 'He want hair bounty on you?'
'I guess so,' said the kender, still looking at the man. 'I was about to skin a deer when he saw me. He just started running after me, and I ran away.' The kender sighed and looked up at the goblin, the hunter forgotten. 'Say, are you hungry?'
The goblin's empty stomach lurched when the deer was mentioned. He could go for several days with no solid food, but it had already been two days and the taste of grass and leaves did not appeal to him. He had been an informer and extra muscle for a human moneylender in East Dravinar when the Kingpriest's men had broken into the warehouse, with magical lights and swords in their hands. The goblin was the only one to get out through the skylight before the vigilantes seized the rope. The screams of the thieves and other thugs had grown faint behind him as he fled across the rooftops to escape into the countryside. Stolen food from farm houses had helped for a while, but the farmers, after the first half-dozen break-ins, had been prepared for raiders.
'Are you hungry?' the kender repeated, still waiting for a reply. 'I mean, I've got a whole deer, and the meat won't go to waste with two to eat it. Do you want some?'
The goblin thought about it some more, fearing a trick, but his stomach won. 'Yes,' he said simply, marveling at the novelty of it all. No one had ever asked him if he was hungry before. No one had particularly cared.
He'd just make sure the kender didn't try anything without catching the wrong end of the machete first. Just to be safe, he picked up the spear, too.
'Well, let's be off, then,' the kender said, waving the goblin on to join him as he set off into the woods. 'Mind the pit. It took me a week to make all the stakes.'
'We really should go back and bury the human at some point,' the kender said, kicking through a big pile of brown leaves. 'I mean because of the wild dogs and wolves and things. And the smell, too. I don't live here, so it wouldn't bother me much, but I have some pits here, after all, and there are always humans about, you know. I wonder if anyone will miss him — the man, I mean. No one ever seems to miss us, people like you and me. The humans have each other to look after. We have no one. We just have to stay alive when the humans come. That's the way it's always been, hasn't it? My parents told me it wasn't, but I learned different. They said some humans were nice. I never saw the nice ones. Maybe my parents were telling me a story, right? They always used to tell me stories about heroes and dragons and ghosts and elves. They told some good ones. Do you know some stories to tell? I bet you do, the way you handled your sword. I was sure glad to see you, even if I had the pit ready. You never know what might happen. I found a wolf in one of my pits once and I nearly fell in looking at him. The wolf was almost dead, and I felt sorry for him, so I had to kill him. I forgot that other things besides humans might fall into the pits. It would have been
… um… i-ron-ic if I had fallen in. My father taught me that word. He was good with words. What's your name?'
The goblin hesitated. The kender's chatter was more than a little annoying and was bound to grow worse, but playing along with the charade of friendship would keep the kender off guard for now. Kender were supposed to be trusting, if unbearably nosy. 'Do not have one,' he said stiffly.
'No kidding? No name at all? I've never heard of that before. Didn't your parents call you anything?'
The goblin had never known his parents, having been sold into slavery as an infant and having escaped in his teens. He had been called many things by the human thugs who had also worked for the moneylender, but none of the names were worth remembering.
'Eh,' the goblin said at last. 'Do not know why.'
'How strange,' the kender said. 'I thought everyone had a name. Mine is…' The kender stopped, then looked down in sudden embarrassment as he walked. 'Well,' he finished quickly, 'what's important is that we're alive, and that's what counts. My father always said that. He was smart.'
The deer carcass lay on a hillside among a pile of leaves. A broken arrow shaft protruded from the space behind the deer's front left shoulder; a bow leaned against a nearby tree. The deer had been cut half open, and flies swarmed about the entrails. The kender searched in the leaves for a moment, bent down to pick up a long-bladed knife with a bone handle. The goblin tensed, but the kender merely sat down by the deer to finish dressing it.
The kender continued talking throughout the whole process. His easy patter about the forest and its secrets were of more than passing interest to the goblin, who suspected that he might have to live in the wilderness for some time to come. The kender had obviously lived here long and had learned much.
In the back of his mind, the goblin knew that one of these days it might be necessary to kill the kender, particularly if food became too scarce to be shared. Until then, he would listen and learn, and would watch his back just in case the kender's syrupy friendship turned out to be as false as a human's.
The goblin watched his back, and the kender talked and talked. The kender borrowed the goblin's things, and the goblin took them away again. Three weeks flew by. The winter rains were now six weeks away.
The minotaur had fallen into a stagnant pool of cold water and red leaves, where it lay unconscious. Its breath rasped slowly and heavily as the leaves endlessly rustled around it and flies feasted on the open, filthy wounds across its back and shoulders. The twenty-foot length of mud-choked iron chain, linked to the manacles on its wrists, had gotten snagged on a log, which the weakened minotaur had been unable to pull loose before collapsing.
The goblin caught the kender by the arm as the latter approached the huge brown figure. 'Damn, you crazy!' he growled. 'What you do, eh? One bite, we all bones.' He hefted the boar spear in a muscular red fist. 'I finish it and sleep good.'
'No!' The kender grabbed the goblin's arm and pulled it down. For a second the goblin started to resist, almost turning the spear to run it into the kender's chest, but holding off. Instead, he simply shoved at the kender with his free hand and sent him sprawling.
The kender immediately got to his feet, face filled with rage. 'No!' he shouted. 'I want to help him! If it was you, I'd help you! Look at his chains! He was a human's slave! I want to save him!'
'We have no food to feed him in winter!' the goblin retorted. 'We live good, bellies full now, but food gone when rain come. You say you hungry in cold rain, hunting bad. He hungry, too. What you feed him, eh? You like him chew off leg?'
The heated argument continued unabated for several minutes. Finally, the goblin cursed and turned his back on the kender, walking the two miles back to the cave where they lived. Damn the little bastard! Did he want to start a city out here in the forest? The fool was not thinking with his head. The minotaur was more dangerous than a company of city guardsmen. The goblin once saw a chained minotaur bite off the arm of its slave overseer, though it knew it would be killed for its crime. The minotaur had roared with laughter until the massed humans had beaten it unconscious with clubs before dragging it away to its fate.
The goblin fumed and stamped around the cave, finally realizing it was cold. The kender had always gathered wood in the evening while the goblin sharpened their weapons and relaxed. Everything had been just fine until now. The goblin knew how to use the fire-starter bow, but he didn't know where the kender found all the wood for the fire pit. When he went outside, all he could see were sticks and leaves, no burning wood.
And the kender did most of the hunting and cooking, too.
The goblin stamped around some more.
Maybe the minotaur could be bargained with. The goblin had no illusions about whether or not the minotaur would be a grateful and friendly ally, but even a brute like that would see the value in having two lesser beings tend to its wounds and hunt for it. And having a monster like that around might not be a bad idea, if it could be managed. Minotaurs were as savage and brutal as could be imagined. They were damn strong, mightier than
