Wyrms

A coarse-looking fat woman rode in the driver's seat, calling to the villagers who drew the carriage, urging them on with curses and promises and taunts. It was the old man who was injured, then. Only the one? And a young boy like that-Tinker always had his eye out for a catamite. Something strange had passed in the forest.

Unlikely that Tinker was alive, with an outcome such as this. Whatever they were, they must be more formidable than they looked at first. That was all right; Reck understood that. She, too, was more formidable than she seemed.

She met them at the gate. "Carry the man in, if he can't walk," she said. "Leave the carriage there, and the rest of you go home."

"They killed Tinker," one of the villagers said.

"And half his men."

The fat woman was feeling boastful. "I killed half of em myself, and you can trust there was a mark or two on every one!" Could be bluster, but no. Reck saw bloodstains halfway up her arms. Some of the blood was her own. "You can wash in the basin outside here. Get that wound clean."

The fat woman washed as the villagers brought in the old man and laid him on the physicking table. The boy and the fat woman came in to watch; Reck paid no attention to them. The man had an arrow in his throat, lodged well in. It had passed behind the windpipe, so he had pain but no blood in his breath.

Blood was still welling slowly from the base of the wound. Reck leaned down and sniffed it, then put forth her long tongue to lick it. She heard the fat woman grunt in revulsion. The boy said nothing. There's something wrong with the boy, thought Reck. But she couldn't place it; more important was the taste of the old man's blood.

"Poison," Reck told them. "A nasty one. This wound won't heal. The blood won't stop flowing."

"Then we don't take the arrow out?" asked the fat woman.

"You were right to leave it in."

"What will you do?" asked the boy.

"Nothing." Reck turned to the villagers. "Go away, I told you. You've done all you can!"

"You'll do nothing!" said the boy. "Then we'll go on to the next village, thank you." The boy spoke in a voice that said that he expected to be obeyed.

Hum, the blacksmith's boy, answered on the way out the door. "Oh, this one's the girl goblin. It's the brother that's the healer."

"A girl!" cried the fat woman. "How can you tell, with goblins?"

"When you see the brother, you'll know. He's got him a tine this long. Never wears nothing but his fur."

Reck was used to the way humans ridiculed geblings to their faces. If geblings had been larger than two-thirds the average human height, they might have refused to bear it. But as long as geblings wanted to live away from Cra

"When will your brother come back?" asked the boy.

Reck didn't answer the question. Instead she studied the boy's face, then sniffed the air again. That's what was wrong. The boy had no ridge of bone above the eyes, like most human males. And there was the smell of menstrual blood on him; the living blood from the old man's wound had masked it. But there was no lying to Reek's nose.

The door closed behind the last of the villagers.

"I said, when will your brother come back?"

"First," said Reck, "tell me who you are, and why you're pretending to be a boy."

Suddenly she felt a strong hand gripping her wrist, twisting her around. It was the old man. She had thought him unconscious, but now he held her like the jaws of a purweck. She might have hit him in the groin and made him let go, but she saw no reason to add to the pain he already had.

"You can fool humans," she said, "but not a gebling with half a brain. What the eye can't see, the nose can smell."

"Let her go," the girl said. "It's my time of month, remember? I forgot that geblings could smell it. It's a gift I wish I had."

The old man's grip relaxed. Reck did not move until he pulled his hand away.

"The old man's name is Angel. He's my tutor and my friend. This magnificent woman is Sken. She included herself with the purchase price when we bought her boat to leave Heptam." The girl smiled. "I was going to tell you my name was Adam, but now that you know my sex, I won't tell you my name at all."

"How do you propose to pay us, if Tinker robbed you?"

"Tinker didn't rob us. He only proposed to rob us.

His men ran our horses off, but we gave them more than they expected. We thought to buy more horses here. But it seems no one has horses to sell."

"The army takes them," Reck said. "To humans, they leave one horse for farming. Geblings get no horse at all."

"I don't want your horse. I just want Angel healed."

"My brother is coming."

"You haven't even sent for him."

"I don't have to send for him. He knows the animals of the forest. They see all that happens here, and tell him."

The girl looked over at Sken, as if to say. What kind of superstitious nonsense have we got caught up in here?

The old man murmured, "We aren't villagers. We know that geblings can call each other. You don't have to tell animal stories to us."

"It's the animals of the forest," Reck said. "But I learned long ago never to argue with a man who thinks he's a scientist."

"I'm a philosopher. This arrow in my throat hurts like bloody hell."

"I'm sorry. My brother may be far away. He may be a while in coming. There's nothing we can do."

"I'm thirsty."

"The arrow may pass right through your swallowing throat."

"It does."

"Then you don't get a drink, either."

The girl and Sken both sat, then, the girl on a stool and Sken on the floor, leaning against the wall. Reck went back to her work, feathering the arrows she had made yesterday. It was a fine and tedious job, made no easier by the labored, painful breathing of the man on the table.

Will came in soon after, carrying water. He did not look at the visitors, except for a glance at the man on the table. He set one bucket of water by the fire, and poured the other into a large jar by the table. Only then did he face the visitors.

"Will," he said, introducing himself.

"Sken," said the fat woman.

The girl said nothing.

"You live here?" asked Sken.

Will nodded.

Sken looked from him to Reck and back again. "Abomination," she said.

Will gri

Sken relaxed a little. "It's foul for a gebling to own a man, but as long as she doesn't get the pony ride-"

"I'd say it's none of your business," said Reck, "and that you have a strange way of talking when you want this man to live."

"I speak my mind," said Sken.

"Then your mind is manure," said Reck.

Sken took only one step toward her. Both Angel and the girl cried out for her to stop. Will cried out also, but to Reck. Despite the cries, however, it was no sound that stopped Sken. It was the sight of Reck with her bow already in place. Only a moment, and she was ready to put an arrow wherever she wanted.

"No, Reck," said Will.

"They come as beggars to my door, and then accuse me of letting a human mount me. Though if any human ever tried, you're the only one that might live through it."

Angel spoke weakly from the table. "Forgive this woman. She was raised on the river, and never learned to speak civilly to anyone."

Reck let the bow relax. Sken tugged at the neck of her dress and sat back down, looking into the fire. Goblin baiting had never brought her so close to death before.

The gebling merchants that bought river passage in Heptam were meek and never answered back. This wasn't the first time Sken had had to revise her understanding of the way the world worked. But she never liked it.