Between the dung beast and this lot, Sheemzher's spear had taken a beating. Most of its dangling ornaments were gone, but the flaked stone head was still firmly attached to the shaft. The goblin's hat was gone. Rozt'a retrieved it from the bog. Its crown was crushed, the brim, torn. It would never hide his wispy hair again. Sheemzher took it from her gently, his lips a-tremble as though he'd lost his dearest friend. Dru didn't know if goblins could cry, but the rain left credible tracks down the red-orange cheeks.
The Lady Wyndyfarh might have done her servant a favor when she taught him manners and dressed him up in the manner of men, but if Dru were a competent judge of emotion, she hadn't added any happiness to his life.
Tiep emerged from the ferns. His hands were clapped against his temples and his eyes had the look of cheap wine, but that was considerable improvement.
"Remember how you got here?" Dru asked.
"No." He noticed the array of corpses and took a backward stride that nearly unbalanced him. "What—? What's happened? Where are we? I remember it starting to rain, then nothing until I was on my knees over there."
Rozt'a slipped her hand under his elbow and guided him toward the horses. There'd been no time to tie them properly, of course, but none of the five liked the bogs and they'd stayed close together.
"We got ambushed," she explained as they walked. "You took a stone on the head. You're bleeding. That's not rainwater coming down the side of your face."
"What about you?" Dru asked Sheemzher when the other two were past.
"Demons no harm Sheemzher." The goblin fumbled with his hat. He tried, and failed, to put it on.
"There'll be other—"
Sheemzher cut Dru off with a stream of words that had to be curses in his own language, then he threw his hat onto the ground and stomped it mercilessly. "Demons!" he shouted and stomped the nearest corpse instead. When abusing the corpse with his boots couldn't quell his need for revenge, Sheemzher attacked it with his spear. He stabbed it between the ribs and in the abdomen and took aim at its skull.
Dru had seen enough blood for one day and, grasping the upward end of the spear, put a swift stop to the goblin's mutilating rage.
"Demons!" the goblin turned the word into a song.
"Not demons," Druhallen insisted. "Cousins, maybe. Your cousins. And they took exception to you Sheemzher, in a big way."
Sheemzher struggled to free his spear from Druhallen's grasp. When that came to naught, he nudged the corpse with his foot. Its lifeless hand flopped to the ground. "Count fingers, good sir!" The goblin waved his open hand in front of Dru's face. "Five fingers. People have five fingers. Sheemzher have five fingers. Sheemzher's mother, sisters, brothers all have five fingers. Five. Five. Five!"
The misshapen corpse's exposed hand had seven fingers, all of them cruelly twisted. It couldn't have made a fist or scratched its head without pain. Its other hand had five functional fingers and was, to Druhallen's eyes, identical with Sheemzher's. Dru mentioned this and other similarities, but the goblin remained adamant: demons and goblins had nothing in common but hatred.
Well, they weren't the only blind race under the sun. Dwarves insisted they weren't related to the duergar and more than a few elves disowned the drow. Dwarves and elves, of course, were justly proud of their heritage. It boggled Dru's mind to think that goblins held themselves superior to anyone else that walked on two legs. He recognized a lost cause, though, and left Sheemzher alone with his delusions.
"Something's meddling with the local goblins," he said to Rozt'a when she was repacking the medicine chest.
"That would take some pretty potent sorcery, wouldn't it?"
He shrugged. "Probably, and a twisted mind. You hear about it every so often, someone's trying to make a stronger this, a more docile that. The Thayans do it, mostly with the dead, but they've conjured up some fairly reliable orc changes, a lot of unreliable ones, too. An orc's bigger, harder to control than a goblin, but they're as close as dogs and wolves. A mage who could change one, could change the other."
"So the Red Wizards are back to meddling with Netherese magic?" She concluded her remark with a sigh and shut the chest with more force than was necessary.
"I didn't say that."
"You were thinking it."
Dru hadn't been, but only because it hadn't occurred to him. Now that it had, his mind was alive with connections and possibilities.
"Well, add this to your thoughts. Tiep needs rest. He's blaming himself for what's happened—not that he shouldn't be, but he throws off healing at the best of times and guilt is making everything worse. He's walking and talking, but he's punch-drunk from that rock and feverish from last night's filth. He should bounce back quick enough, but we'll up the odds if we settle in now for the night."
