You’re never going to believe whose cart it was.
Astryx jogged easily beside the draft horse, the pommel of her blade tracing a silvery figure eight behind her in the afternoon sun. The legendary adventurer didn’t seem to tire and never rode on the cart with the rest of them. Possibly it was a fitness thing. There didn’t look to be an ounce of fat on her body. She also did not appear to sweat.
Or my other traveling companion.
The goblin, whose name was apparently Zyll, slept upright on the buckboard beside her. Her sharp-toothed mouth was open, and a pointed pink tongue lolled halfway to her chin. Occasional snores whistled from her nose, like the peeping of a new-hatched chick.
She’s . . . unique.
When she looked up again, she startled. Zyll stared back with clear interest. Her mouth remained open, tongue still out, but she was very, very awake.
Another of those peeping snores escaped her nose, though.
The goblin did not seem at all uncomfortable, even swaddled as she was in hemp.
“What did youdoto end up here?” Fern hadn’t intended to say it aloud, but she didn’t suppose it mattered.
“Maybe you should ask in goblin?” called Astryx, not even a bit winded.
Fern couldn’t tell if the question was pointed or not.
“Would she tell me?”
Astryx’s shoulders rose and fell. “Why don’t we find out?”
Well,thatdefinitely felt like a test.
The rattkin’s mind raced, given that her goblin vocabulary was uniformly inappropriate for polite conversation.
“Spenka tu drott?”she managed, hoping Astryx didn’t know that one.
Zyll’s brows rose in surprise.
Which was only natural, Fern supposed, since she’d just been asked if she liked to drink her own pee.
An answer was not forthcoming.
“Tales vary. They usually do,” said Astryx later that evening in response to Fern’s now long-unanswered question about the goblin’s misdeeds. The elf unbuckled her baldric and slipped the sword from her back, still in its sheath. She propped it carefully on the fallen log she was using for a bench, and then squatted before their small campfire.
On the hill behind them, an ancient, craggy dolmen framed a black window into starlight. The mournful, far-offchuk-whoooof a nightbird made their campsite feel unfathomably remote.
“One of the more recent ones involves the Seventy Saint army, up in North Territory.” Astryx nodded toward the goblin. “Allegedly, she disrupted their whole supply chain, and they ended up stranded for an entire winter in the mountains, eating their boots for breakfast.”
Fern wrinkled her brow, gingerly extending a hunk of the detestable cheese toward Zyll’s deadly-looking mouth. “That’s enough to warrant a bounty on your head?”
The goblin’s jaws creaked wide, her tongue lolling. Still bound and tethered on the ground next to the wagon, she waited, unblinking, until Fern tossed the rind of cheese, as though flinging meat to a starving dog. Zyll snapped her smile closed over it and swallowed without chewing once.
Astryx shrugged and prodded the fire. “The Seventy Saints seemed to think so. Probably objected strongly to the taste of boots.”
“It’s not . . .evil,though . . . ?” tried Fern, making a game attempt to tear a heel off the loaf of bread Astryx had provided for the evening meal. Boots were probably more appetizing.
“A bounty isn’t a moral judgment,” replied Astryx patiently. “Usually it’s someone offering money for a person to be delivered someplace, usually a person who doesn’twantto be delivered to that place.”
Fern prepared to respond, but Astryx continued.
“Trust me, good and evil become a lot less easy to spot after a few hundred years of doing this.”
Fern observed Zyll for a moment, wondering seriously whether she’d asphyxiate on the bread if she gulped it down like she had the cheese.
