Behind her, the massive lizard man was holding two dead goblins aloft by their ankles and shaking them. A few scraps of leather and dirt fell from them, along with a fairly large quantity of blood. There was no purse, though. The lizard man grunted and slung both bodies toward one corner of the cave. They landed with a crack of breaking bone that made Will wince.
A hint of sympathy entered the woman’s face. “Not how you spend your typical evening?” she asked.
Will shrugged helplessly. “Not even a typical day.”
The woman cracked a smile at that. The hard planes of her face transformed, curves appearing out of nowhere at her cheeks, and even a small dimple revealing its presence.
“I’m Lette,” she said. “That’s Balur.”
Will stared at the lizard man. Balur. The word sounded foreign. He had the feeling that this was a moment when curiosity might equate to a feline fatality, but he couldn’t quite help himself. “What is he?” he asked.
“An obstinate idiot,” Lette said without a pause.
Balur shook out two more goblins and flung them at the corner. “You being flirting is not helping us find our purse any faster,” he said without looking up.
“At least,” she spat back, “my version of flirting is a little more sophisticated than whipping my britches off and proffering some coin.” Without pausing for breath she turned to Will and said, “Get any ideas and I shall feed you your own testicles.”
Will was still watching events through a thin haze of confusion. His head still hurt from running into the tree. He wanted to sit down and ignore everything in the hopes that it would go away. Except Lette. He thought Lette could stay.
He realized he had not introduced himself. “I’m Will,” he said. “I’m a farmer.”
Lette nodded. She looked back at Balur. “How about farming?” she asked the lizard man, apropos—as far as Will could tell—of nothing. “Working with your hands. Very physically demanding, farmwork can be.”
Balur grunted. “Bad for reflexes. Ruin muscle memory,” he said, leaving Will none the wiser.
Lette sighed, sank to her knees, and started rummaging through the possessions of the nearest corpse. Behind her, Balur had moved on to a different part of the cave. He shook out two more goblins, then, disappointed, flung them away to start a new pile.
As they landed there was a muffled yell.
Balur hesitated, arm still outstretched from his throw. “Got a live one,” he said.
Will’s stomach tightened, a sharp knot lodging near his kidneys. He looked back at the entrance to the cave. He could slip away. They wouldn’t notice. He could …
He could what? Run into more trouble? It was unlikely he would come across any other well-armed strangers to brutally slaughter all of his problems. Given the many and various ways the world had tried to screw him over this night, staying with Lette and Balur actually seemed the safer option.
Lette had her short sword out once more and was advancing on the source of the sound, Balur by her side. They slowed as they came close. Then with a speed that surprised Will, Balur darted forward and grabbed something. It wriggled and writhed in the lizard man’s massive hand as he held it aloft.
It was bigger than the goblin corpses littering the ground. And it was wrapped in ropes. Balur had it by its ankles, but it still took Will a moment to realize the massive scruff of hair at the bottom was a man’s hair and beard.
“That’s not a goblin,” Will said, just in case stating the obvious would help.
“Might be in league with them,” Balur said, eyes narrowed at the struggling form. Grunts and squeaks emerged, and Will realized that one of the ropes had firmly gagged the man. “Maybe be killing it just in case.”
“In league?” Will said incredulously. “He’s tied hand and foot.”
Lette nodded. “Farm boy makes a compelling case.”
“I am still thinking I should perhaps be squishing it. Just in—”
“I’m still thinking about spaying you,” Lette cut in. “Put the poor bugger down.”
Grudgingly, Balur lowered the man to the ground. Lette’s knife appeared in her hand, apparently without having traveled through the intervening space between it and the sheath at her waist. The knife flashed in a single stroke, and the bonds fell away.
A dirty, disheveled man emerged from the looping mass of rope, shouting as he came. He was naked except for a pair of discolored undershorts, and a fairly thick coating of mud. He was rail thin, but with a small potbelly sticking out, as if he had at some point in the past swallowed a child’s ball and it had obstinately stuck in his system. His arms too were more muscular than his frame might suggest, and his hands were disproportionately large. His face was almost entirely lost in a shock of hair and beard, long, tightly curled bristles standing out in wild clumps.
“Varmagants!” he was screaming. “Barph-cursed wotsits! Menagerie! Cursed and hexed vermin! Thy cannot prevent me. I am the inevitable! I am the word of the future that shall come! I am the inescapable odor!”
Both Lette and Balur took a step away from the man. Lette’s sword was up once more.
It was rather a shock to Will that he recognized the man.
“Firkin?” he said.
Lette glanced at Will, quick and darting. “You know him?” she said fixing her attention back on the raving, half-naked man.
Will took a step toward him. And, yes. Yes he did. It was indeed his father’s old farmhand, Firkin.
Memories flooded Will. Sitting with his father and the farmhands on a summer’s day, all of them laughing at Firkin’s tall tale. Up on Firkin’s shoulders, his mouth full of stolen apple flesh, racing across a field, his father chasing and cursing. Watching Firkin tell jokes as his father branded the pigs. Passing bread out of a kitchen window while his mother’s back was turned, Firkin gathering the rolls up in a fold of his shirt. Sitting and talking about dragons and dreaming of revolution. Watching Firkin tickle the cow’s backside with a porcupine quill and then watching as the cow’s kick sent him halfway across the yard. Laughing so hard he thought some part of him might rupture. Firkin and his father standing in the yard, yelling at each other, red-faced. Will and Firkin sitting slouched beneath a tree, daydreaming about stealing a dragon’s gold from beneath his nose. Firkin drinking so much he fell off the table, and his father, not far behind him, laughing so hard he joined him on the floor. His mother slapping Firkin full across the face, the red handprint standing out stark on his pale skin. Firkin telling him that he didn’t want company right now, and the first feeling of utter rejection in his life. Then riding a cow madcap down a hill, Firkin running behind full tilt, switching its behind. His mother holding him, sobbing and shouting at the same time. Asking his father where Firkin was. Days spent listless and wandering. Then a meal interrupted by a knock at the door, his father rising, words exchanged with an unseen man, voices rising, the scuffle of violence, and then Firkin framed in the doorway, his father on the floor, lip bloody, horror in Firkin’s eyes. Then Firkin from a distance, a shadow shape that haunted distant fences. Riding with his father into town and seeing a man shouting at people who weren’t there—he only recognized him as Firkin as they passed him on the way home. The moment when he realized he was used to that sight, not bothered by it anymore. His father’s funeral—seeing that familiar shadow that used to haunt the fences. Watching Firkin being thrown out of the tavern again. Again. Again.
And now here. Firkin. The village drunk. The village crazy. A man who seemed to be waiting for everyone to forget why they gave him the dregs from their plates, the spare copper sheks they couldn’t spare.
Firkin chose that moment to vomit noisily and messily over the floor. It was a practiced movement—tip and pour. He straightened, wiping his mouth. “Darn varmints,” he said. “Gone went fed me some of the pootin’.”
Nobody seemed up to the task of asking him what “pootin’” was.
Balur regarded the filthy, scrawny man and then shrugged. “Is looking goblin-y to me.” He hefted his hammer.
“No!” Will yelled, darting toward the old farmhand. “No, he’s not. He’s a friend.”