New story!
I wrote a story! WOO! It's about goblins again - I had all those other good ideas, including the ones everyone suggested a while ago, but for some reason this story stuck. For ages I've been wanting to write about the goblins again, and do some stuff that's a bit different to what people normally write about goblins...
Even Goblins Fall in Love
[Oh, and this one is for Rory - he sort of suggested it, even though I don't think he meant to.]
“Girls, girls!” Matron Hinna glared sternly at her charges. A couple of the young goblins were diligently applying their needles to the stack of barely-cured hides in the centre of the cave. Most, however, were applying the needles (and their fists, knees, elbows, feet and teeth) to each other.
“But Miss, we’re bored,” whined Gika, the most outspoken of the girls.
“Yeah!” added the others, all attention now focused on Gika and Matron Hinna. “We don’t wanna sew these stinky skins,” muttered someone at the back.
“Sewing’s boring. Wanna go out an hunt an kill stuff, like the boys do.” Gika glowered at the matriarch. More muttering broke out, spreading round the cave like a sullen flame.
Hinna sighed. She remembered feeling just like this when she was a girl with a needle and an attitude of her own. In fact, she still felt like this sometimes. Especially at this time of the year, when all the boys in the caves grabbed their spears or swords or rocks or whatever else came to hand and raced off down the mountain to the woods and fields below for the Great Hunt.
“It wasn’t always like this. Now, the Great Goblin Chief Pulch makes us do this..” Renewed muttering issued from the darker edges of the cave. “And then he gives us food and stuff and makes sure the elvses don’t get us. And we get sparklies if we do this well.” Some of the girls looked thoughtful at the mention of sparklies and their eyes lit up like the gems they were thinking about.
“But once,” she continued, growing more confident now the girls were quiet thinking greedy thoughts, “it was different. Not like this. Do you want to know why? The boys don’t get told this story, but I’ll tell it for you.” She leaned forward, offering them the secret. The girls loved secrets almost as much as they loved sparkly rocks, and a secret that the boys didn’t know was the best sort.
“Yes Miss!” went the chorus. “Tell it, tell it!”
“Has it got fighting in, Miss?” asked Gika. “And monsters and wizards that the goblins beat an mash up?” “Has it got sparklies in?”
Hinna nodded. “All those things. But it’s a love story...”
“Aww, Miss! Don’t want a love story - that’s yukky!” Squeals of outraged disapproval rang out around the cave. “Love’s for elvses - eeuurggh!”
Hinna sighed again, and glared the girls back to sulky silence before continuing. “Even goblins fall in love. But not like elvses do, not with flowers and poetry and soppy stuff like that.” Several of the girls made vigorous vomiting gestures with sound effects at the mention of such things. After the noise had died down, Hinna looked slowly round her audience. “So, do you want to hear this story? Or do you want to get back to your sewing?”
“Story, story!” chanted the girls. “But no soppy stuff...” Gika said firmly.
“Once upon a time - that’s how you start a story properly, and as this is a good one it might as well get started right - there lived a goblin girl called Tira. Tira was a very pretty girl with lovely wrinkly warty green skin and eyes that sparkled like the finest rock crystal. She smelled as good as a week-dead elf, and her bogies were the sweetest ever. There was only one thing stopping her from being the perfect girl, maybe even one of the Chief’s wives, and that was her temper. She couldn’t abide sewing and cooking, and she prefered big sharp rocks to sparkly ones.
One morning, she sat in the Sewing Cave with the other girls, listlessly working like on every other morning. This morning, however, she could hear the gleeful shouts of the goblins outside who were preparing for the Great Hunt. For the boys, this meant a week or so of rampage, slaughter and fun till the elves and humans in the cities found out and chased them back to the mountain. For her, though, it just meant yet more skins to sew and then having to listen to all the boasts and stories when the boys got back. Tira was fed up of listening. She wanted to tell the stories.
Looking down at her despised sewing, she had an idea. She was making a jerkin and trews to be worn by one of the rowdy boys outside. But it wasn’t that big, and these things never fitted anyway. She just needed to make her green-black hair a bit more ragged, and find some more mud to disguise her indoor skin, and then swap her horrid old woolly dress for one of the suits she was making...
Hacking and tangling her lovely hair was the worst bit. She had always been secretly proud of it, even though she hated everything else about being a girl. She also had to do a lot of sneaking about so that Matron didn’t find out what she was up to, but Matron was busy with a whole warren full of girls and several new babies on the way.
By sundown she was following the trail of dust and stink down the mountain, on her way to the Great Hunt. She had taken her best pointy rock, carefully hidden from Matron for months since she found it one day on the way to the Mushroom Cave. Now it would get the chance to hit bears and badgers, maybe even an elf, like a proper goblin rock.
She slept the first night on her own, under an overhanging rock next to the trail. She slept the second and the third night alone too. After the crowded, noisy, smelly fug of the warren the silent open space seemed cold and big. She told herself that she wasn’t scared of it. She wasn’t scared of anything.
On the third morning she reached the edges of the Big Forest. She had heard so many tales of this place that going into it was like stepping into a story. But she wasn’t scared of it, she was sure of that, and on the way she also found a long pointy stabby stick to go with her rock. The trail was even easier to follow here, a broad mess of broken green stuff, footprints and mud. By the third afternoon she could hear the noise of a goblin camp. The sounds of swearing, singing, fighting and just shouting were thrilling.
Tira hurried on, running and leaping through the battered undergrowth.
Arriving at the camp, tired but elated, she was met by a huge boss goblin.
“Who’re you?” he grunted. Tira gulped. What kind of names did boys have? She’d never actually spoken to one. Their voices were funny too.
“Urg...” she spluttered, attempting to get the voice right before moving on the challenge of the name.
“Right, Urg,” snapped the boss. “Why’re you late then? Shoulda been here two days ago with the rest of the boys.”
Again, Tira thought quickly. “Got lost,” she muttered. The boss grunted again. He seemed to accept that. Tira imagined what her Matron would have done to a girl who turned up late to the Sewing Cave with such a lame excuse. She grimaced. The boss took this an an expression of guilt and regret. He waved to a sagging tent a few feet away.
“Space in there.Go, now!”
Apparently boy goblins had different ideas about ‘space’ too. The tent was even more crowded than the warrens. Boys sat around drinking, playing with dice, comparing weapons and scars, and generally arguing. One was singing. The singer’s voice was deep and rough as a chasm in the mountain, and the song he was singing appeared to be about a famous victory over a human wizard. None of the other goblins were listening. Nor did they pay much attention to her entry. She shuffled further into the tent, and managed to get a space of sorts near the singer. Close to, he smelled like fresh bath-mud and something else that she could’t place. She realised that she had never been this close to a boy before ever, at least one that wasn’t try to hit her or order her about, or as far away from Matron and the Sewing Cave. She grinned.
“You like the song?” asked one of the other goblins, elbowing her in the ribs.
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Hur, hur! We got us another girlie!” The goblin pointed, and suddenly all his mates were laughing too. Tira nearly panicked - discovered already! What would they do to her? She was about to run from the tent but then she realised that she was surrounded by other goblins. Big, armed goblins. She pulled her stab-stick off her back.
“Who you calling a girlie?” she growled, hoping she sounded fierce and male. The singer looked on from the edge of the circle. She thought she saw him smile ever so slightly like he wanted to encourage her without attracting any more attention.
“Song is good - about human squishing. Are you saying youse don’t like humans getting squished?” she challenged when none of the boys around her moved to do anything. She could do this - it was nothing to standing up to Matron. This time the singer definately smiled at her.
“No. Squishing is good, squishing fun,” decided the hulking goblin who had kicked off the confrontation. “Sing more!” he demanded, and suddenly the singer was in the circle with her, both of them surrounded now by open, toothy grins instead of just teeth.
The singer launched into a new song, a rude one about some goblins and a human girl, and all the goblins clapped and joined in on the chorus. Tira didn’t know all the words, she didn’t even know what some of them meant, but she clapped and hooted as loud as anyone.
At night, after the goblins had finally settled down to sleep and snore, Tira found herself lying next to the fragrant singer. She was too excited to ever sleep, and it seemed like he was still awake too.
“Who’re you?” she whispered. “Your songs are good.”
“I’m Hizs,” he answered. “No one ever likes my songs, but you got them all to listen. Thanks,” he said.
Tira didn’t know what the last word meant, but she grinned anyway.
“I’m Urg,” she told him. “I want to sing too!”
“Tomorrow,” Hizs promised before settling down to sleep, letting out an enormous musical fart as he did so.
Tira-Urg grinned even wider and soon she was asleep too.
Tomorrow Tira-Urg joined the great mass of goblins that raced out into the woods, a green, whooping tide of mayhem. Tira-Urg used her rock to bash at every non-goblin thing that passed, just as the other goblins did. Like the other goblins, she diddn’t hit very often but she did manage to hit a couple of small furry things that smelled like they’d taste good that evening. Some goblins were throwing their stab-sticks at the flying birds that fluttered and squawked ahead of them, but most of the time all they got was a long trudge through the undergrowth looking for their stab-stick afterwards not a bird.
Returning to the camp with her furry things dangling by their long floppy ears from her hand, Hisz ambling beside her and singing just for her, Tira-Urg felt just about as happy as she could be.
Over the next few days of the Great Hunt the goblins explored further into the forest, setting up a new camp even further from the mountain after they had caught pretty much everything that moved (slowly and on the ground anyway) around that area. Tira-Urg’s hunting skills improved daily, and soon she could contribute bigger creatures to the carts full of carcases that sat in the centre of the camp waiting to be hauled back to the caves. When she thought of all those skins she wouldn’t have to sew, Tira-Urg couldn’t help feeling a bit smug. The other goblins seemed to have accepted Urg without question - he hit stuff, drank beer, sang rude songs or farted along to the tune like everyone else. So his voice was a bit squeaky and he was a bit little but no-one really seemed to care. If only she’d known it would be this easy - she could have left the Sewing Cave years ago!
Best of all, she usually hunted alongside Hisz, and she was doing well at learning the songs. He had even lent her a simple skin drum to bang when he sang at night for the tent.
That night, though, there were no songs. Glig, one of the goblins from their tent, hadn’t come home from the hunt that night. A couple of the smaller, quicker goblins were sent out to look for him, Tira-Urg with them. Soon they smelled a bloody smell, familiar from the wagons. It was a dead smell, a soon-to-be food smell, and some of the goblins started to get excited, thinking they’d found a kill someone else had missed - maybe a downed bird that the killer couldn’t find in all that undergrowth. But they’d find it! Their eyes were sharper than the other goblins, that’s why they were out here. Birds were a good but difficult kill - flying tasty meat and pretty feathers.
They crashed eagerly towards the smell. Soon, however, it was accompanied by a very un-bird-like noise. A groaning, swearing noise. Some of the swear words were very expressive - surely only a goblin could swear like that?
In a few minutes they had found Glig. He was bleeding copiously from big gashes across his chest and belly, and one of his legs was bent in ways that looked wrong for anything alive. The spit that the smell had woken in Tira-Urg’s mouth suddenly went cold and there seemed to be too much of it. She swallowed hard, trying not to scream.
They got Glig back to the camp by carrying him. This was much slower than finding him, and Tira-Urg had to fight the whole way back not to be sick. Her legs didn’t seem to want to work right. As soon as they had got their injured mate to the sawbone’s tent on the edge of camp, she dashed straight for the privy. She didn’t want any of the other goblins seeing her weakness, least of all Hisz. Whatever would he think? He’d probably make a new song for her - ‘Urg the Cowardly Goblin’. The thought nearly made her sick again.
The other goblins at the tent seemed subdued, but none of them appeared to have an urgent desire for the privy, or wobbly legs that wouldn’t behave. Tira-Urg let the others explain what had happened, then slunk to the back of the tent to lie down.
Sleep wouldn’t happen. Images of Glig’s leg and the memory of that smell kept interrupting her usual thoughts of hunting and Hisz. She tried memorising song words but even that didn’t work. She rolled back and forward, cold and sweating.
“Watch it!” muttered the goblin next to her. It was Hisz. When he realised who it was, his glare softened. “Can’t sleep?” he asked. Tira-Urg nodded. “Worried about Glig?” She nodded again. “Don’t be - he was a git. Never liked songs.” Tira-Urg grinned weakly.
“It’s just - the blood, and he looked so broken - what if I get like that?” Or you do? she added to herself. She whispered as quietly as she could to Hisz, so that none of the others overheard. She’d never dare say things like that to them, and she wasn’t entirely sure she ought to have said it even to Hisz.
“Nah, not you - not if you keep your eyes open and bash hard.” He looked at her curiously. “This your first Hunt?” he asked after a tense minute of silence.
Once more, Tira-Urg nodded, too scared to say anything at all. Would he laugh, or tell the others? Or worse...
He did laugh a little, but quietly and without any kind of scorn. “Well, hope it isn’t your last,” he whispered to her and she got the feeling he meant it. “Go to sleep, else you’ll be too tired to dodge those fierce bunnies tomorrow...”
Soon she was fast asleep, dreaming dreams of Hisz.
On the way to the hunt the next day, Hisz stayed close to her. “Together we’re less likely to get slashed like old Glig did,” he explained. “There’s something bad out there.”
“What happened to him? Did sawbones fix him?” she asked.
“Naw, he’s dead. Now quiet else we’ll scare all the little bunnies.” Tira-Urg had no trouble keeping quiet, but soon her thoughts were distracted by the hunt. Well, mostly by the hunt. With Hisz beside her, it was even easier than usual to slip into fantasies about his voice, the lively look in his eyes, his scent, the way that drip tended to hang off the end of his bulbous nose... She found herself wondering what his bogies would taste like... There was only one problem - he would never share bogies with another goblin who he believed to be a boy too. What if she told him her real name? She almost didn’t dare to even think it, but if she could tell anyone it would be him. And the others at the warren said she was pretty - maybe he’d be pleased. Only she’d spent ages working to stop being pretty. The thoughts raced around and around her mind, faster every time she looked at him.
“Elvses! Run!” The screech cut through her thoughts. Hisz grabbed her arm.
“Come on, we can’t bash these,” he said, already looking for a way through the trees.
Tira-Urg turned to run too, but not before she got a glimpse of what was coming through the trees towards her. Tall, pale shapes that smelled of nothing at all, moving so quietly through the trees that the goblins hadn’t even aware of them till they were less than fifty paces away.
“But what about the victories? The ones we sang about?” she cried.
“Not today. Run, and we might yet sing more songs.” The urgency in his voice finally got through to her, and she followed him as close and fast as she could.
A high whining sound split the air around her, followed by a wet thud like dropping meat into the cart. Tira-Urg was running alone. She turned and almost tripped over Hisz. He lay still on the leaf litter, face down, a slender stick embedded through his back. Tira-Urg bent low, heedless of other arrows flying around her faster than birds. She gently turned Hisz over, cradling him in her arms like Matron with a newborn. His eyes were already glazing.
“Sawbones!” she yelled, trying hard not to let tears into her voice. “Somebody! Help me carry him,” she called. All the other goblins were gone, disappeared into the leaves, suddenly as stealthy as the elves. She was alone with the arrows and the elves. Alone with the body of the goblin she had l... she couldn’t even think it. Her mind seemed to be breaking apart. She grabbed the hunting spear Hisz had been holding and, belting out a scream fit to tear the world to pieces, she rushed at the elves.
She lost count of her kills that day, and when she was finished she returned to the rapidly-packing camp. She was drenched in blood, her once pretty hair and skin and her clothes all dripping with it. She strode through the camp to the Head Boss, the Great Goblin Chief himself, and she emptied her hunting sack at his feet. Elf heads rolled out.
The other goblins declared her Chief on the bloody spot. She led the goblins against the elves and their human allies for the rest of the season, achieving record kills with relatively few goblin casualties. Then the survivors returned to the mountain, and soon the forges were belching steam and weapons whilst the girls sewed the elf-skins into armour that the shamans blessed to be harder than the mountain rock.
Tira-Urg became the greatest and bloodiest war Chief this clan has ever known, and no-one except the Matron ever knew her true nature. Yes, of course Matron knew, and she told the next Matron and so on and so on... Matron always knows.”
Slowly the girls came out of their rapt trances and closed their gaping jaws.
“Come on, girls - story’s over. Let’s get on with making this armour - unless of course we have another Chieftaness in the making amongst us...” She laughed, and most of the girls laughed with her. They had thought hard about what had happened to Tira-Urg, and now they picked up their needles and attacked the skins with renewed enthusiasm, chattering like jackdaws about the story.
Gika, however, looked thoughtful as she picked up her sewing.
Even Goblins Fall in Love
[Oh, and this one is for Rory - he sort of suggested it, even though I don't think he meant to.]
“Girls, girls!” Matron Hinna glared sternly at her charges. A couple of the young goblins were diligently applying their needles to the stack of barely-cured hides in the centre of the cave. Most, however, were applying the needles (and their fists, knees, elbows, feet and teeth) to each other.
“But Miss, we’re bored,” whined Gika, the most outspoken of the girls.
“Yeah!” added the others, all attention now focused on Gika and Matron Hinna. “We don’t wanna sew these stinky skins,” muttered someone at the back.
“Sewing’s boring. Wanna go out an hunt an kill stuff, like the boys do.” Gika glowered at the matriarch. More muttering broke out, spreading round the cave like a sullen flame.
Hinna sighed. She remembered feeling just like this when she was a girl with a needle and an attitude of her own. In fact, she still felt like this sometimes. Especially at this time of the year, when all the boys in the caves grabbed their spears or swords or rocks or whatever else came to hand and raced off down the mountain to the woods and fields below for the Great Hunt.
“It wasn’t always like this. Now, the Great Goblin Chief Pulch makes us do this..” Renewed muttering issued from the darker edges of the cave. “And then he gives us food and stuff and makes sure the elvses don’t get us. And we get sparklies if we do this well.” Some of the girls looked thoughtful at the mention of sparklies and their eyes lit up like the gems they were thinking about.
“But once,” she continued, growing more confident now the girls were quiet thinking greedy thoughts, “it was different. Not like this. Do you want to know why? The boys don’t get told this story, but I’ll tell it for you.” She leaned forward, offering them the secret. The girls loved secrets almost as much as they loved sparkly rocks, and a secret that the boys didn’t know was the best sort.
“Yes Miss!” went the chorus. “Tell it, tell it!”
“Has it got fighting in, Miss?” asked Gika. “And monsters and wizards that the goblins beat an mash up?” “Has it got sparklies in?”
Hinna nodded. “All those things. But it’s a love story...”
“Aww, Miss! Don’t want a love story - that’s yukky!” Squeals of outraged disapproval rang out around the cave. “Love’s for elvses - eeuurggh!”
Hinna sighed again, and glared the girls back to sulky silence before continuing. “Even goblins fall in love. But not like elvses do, not with flowers and poetry and soppy stuff like that.” Several of the girls made vigorous vomiting gestures with sound effects at the mention of such things. After the noise had died down, Hinna looked slowly round her audience. “So, do you want to hear this story? Or do you want to get back to your sewing?”
“Story, story!” chanted the girls. “But no soppy stuff...” Gika said firmly.
“Once upon a time - that’s how you start a story properly, and as this is a good one it might as well get started right - there lived a goblin girl called Tira. Tira was a very pretty girl with lovely wrinkly warty green skin and eyes that sparkled like the finest rock crystal. She smelled as good as a week-dead elf, and her bogies were the sweetest ever. There was only one thing stopping her from being the perfect girl, maybe even one of the Chief’s wives, and that was her temper. She couldn’t abide sewing and cooking, and she prefered big sharp rocks to sparkly ones.
One morning, she sat in the Sewing Cave with the other girls, listlessly working like on every other morning. This morning, however, she could hear the gleeful shouts of the goblins outside who were preparing for the Great Hunt. For the boys, this meant a week or so of rampage, slaughter and fun till the elves and humans in the cities found out and chased them back to the mountain. For her, though, it just meant yet more skins to sew and then having to listen to all the boasts and stories when the boys got back. Tira was fed up of listening. She wanted to tell the stories.
Looking down at her despised sewing, she had an idea. She was making a jerkin and trews to be worn by one of the rowdy boys outside. But it wasn’t that big, and these things never fitted anyway. She just needed to make her green-black hair a bit more ragged, and find some more mud to disguise her indoor skin, and then swap her horrid old woolly dress for one of the suits she was making...
Hacking and tangling her lovely hair was the worst bit. She had always been secretly proud of it, even though she hated everything else about being a girl. She also had to do a lot of sneaking about so that Matron didn’t find out what she was up to, but Matron was busy with a whole warren full of girls and several new babies on the way.
By sundown she was following the trail of dust and stink down the mountain, on her way to the Great Hunt. She had taken her best pointy rock, carefully hidden from Matron for months since she found it one day on the way to the Mushroom Cave. Now it would get the chance to hit bears and badgers, maybe even an elf, like a proper goblin rock.
She slept the first night on her own, under an overhanging rock next to the trail. She slept the second and the third night alone too. After the crowded, noisy, smelly fug of the warren the silent open space seemed cold and big. She told herself that she wasn’t scared of it. She wasn’t scared of anything.
On the third morning she reached the edges of the Big Forest. She had heard so many tales of this place that going into it was like stepping into a story. But she wasn’t scared of it, she was sure of that, and on the way she also found a long pointy stabby stick to go with her rock. The trail was even easier to follow here, a broad mess of broken green stuff, footprints and mud. By the third afternoon she could hear the noise of a goblin camp. The sounds of swearing, singing, fighting and just shouting were thrilling.
Tira hurried on, running and leaping through the battered undergrowth.
Arriving at the camp, tired but elated, she was met by a huge boss goblin.
“Who’re you?” he grunted. Tira gulped. What kind of names did boys have? She’d never actually spoken to one. Their voices were funny too.
“Urg...” she spluttered, attempting to get the voice right before moving on the challenge of the name.
“Right, Urg,” snapped the boss. “Why’re you late then? Shoulda been here two days ago with the rest of the boys.”
Again, Tira thought quickly. “Got lost,” she muttered. The boss grunted again. He seemed to accept that. Tira imagined what her Matron would have done to a girl who turned up late to the Sewing Cave with such a lame excuse. She grimaced. The boss took this an an expression of guilt and regret. He waved to a sagging tent a few feet away.
“Space in there.Go, now!”
Apparently boy goblins had different ideas about ‘space’ too. The tent was even more crowded than the warrens. Boys sat around drinking, playing with dice, comparing weapons and scars, and generally arguing. One was singing. The singer’s voice was deep and rough as a chasm in the mountain, and the song he was singing appeared to be about a famous victory over a human wizard. None of the other goblins were listening. Nor did they pay much attention to her entry. She shuffled further into the tent, and managed to get a space of sorts near the singer. Close to, he smelled like fresh bath-mud and something else that she could’t place. She realised that she had never been this close to a boy before ever, at least one that wasn’t try to hit her or order her about, or as far away from Matron and the Sewing Cave. She grinned.
“You like the song?” asked one of the other goblins, elbowing her in the ribs.
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Hur, hur! We got us another girlie!” The goblin pointed, and suddenly all his mates were laughing too. Tira nearly panicked - discovered already! What would they do to her? She was about to run from the tent but then she realised that she was surrounded by other goblins. Big, armed goblins. She pulled her stab-stick off her back.
“Who you calling a girlie?” she growled, hoping she sounded fierce and male. The singer looked on from the edge of the circle. She thought she saw him smile ever so slightly like he wanted to encourage her without attracting any more attention.
“Song is good - about human squishing. Are you saying youse don’t like humans getting squished?” she challenged when none of the boys around her moved to do anything. She could do this - it was nothing to standing up to Matron. This time the singer definately smiled at her.
“No. Squishing is good, squishing fun,” decided the hulking goblin who had kicked off the confrontation. “Sing more!” he demanded, and suddenly the singer was in the circle with her, both of them surrounded now by open, toothy grins instead of just teeth.
The singer launched into a new song, a rude one about some goblins and a human girl, and all the goblins clapped and joined in on the chorus. Tira didn’t know all the words, she didn’t even know what some of them meant, but she clapped and hooted as loud as anyone.
At night, after the goblins had finally settled down to sleep and snore, Tira found herself lying next to the fragrant singer. She was too excited to ever sleep, and it seemed like he was still awake too.
“Who’re you?” she whispered. “Your songs are good.”
“I’m Hizs,” he answered. “No one ever likes my songs, but you got them all to listen. Thanks,” he said.
Tira didn’t know what the last word meant, but she grinned anyway.
“I’m Urg,” she told him. “I want to sing too!”
“Tomorrow,” Hizs promised before settling down to sleep, letting out an enormous musical fart as he did so.
Tira-Urg grinned even wider and soon she was asleep too.
Tomorrow Tira-Urg joined the great mass of goblins that raced out into the woods, a green, whooping tide of mayhem. Tira-Urg used her rock to bash at every non-goblin thing that passed, just as the other goblins did. Like the other goblins, she diddn’t hit very often but she did manage to hit a couple of small furry things that smelled like they’d taste good that evening. Some goblins were throwing their stab-sticks at the flying birds that fluttered and squawked ahead of them, but most of the time all they got was a long trudge through the undergrowth looking for their stab-stick afterwards not a bird.
Returning to the camp with her furry things dangling by their long floppy ears from her hand, Hisz ambling beside her and singing just for her, Tira-Urg felt just about as happy as she could be.
Over the next few days of the Great Hunt the goblins explored further into the forest, setting up a new camp even further from the mountain after they had caught pretty much everything that moved (slowly and on the ground anyway) around that area. Tira-Urg’s hunting skills improved daily, and soon she could contribute bigger creatures to the carts full of carcases that sat in the centre of the camp waiting to be hauled back to the caves. When she thought of all those skins she wouldn’t have to sew, Tira-Urg couldn’t help feeling a bit smug. The other goblins seemed to have accepted Urg without question - he hit stuff, drank beer, sang rude songs or farted along to the tune like everyone else. So his voice was a bit squeaky and he was a bit little but no-one really seemed to care. If only she’d known it would be this easy - she could have left the Sewing Cave years ago!
Best of all, she usually hunted alongside Hisz, and she was doing well at learning the songs. He had even lent her a simple skin drum to bang when he sang at night for the tent.
That night, though, there were no songs. Glig, one of the goblins from their tent, hadn’t come home from the hunt that night. A couple of the smaller, quicker goblins were sent out to look for him, Tira-Urg with them. Soon they smelled a bloody smell, familiar from the wagons. It was a dead smell, a soon-to-be food smell, and some of the goblins started to get excited, thinking they’d found a kill someone else had missed - maybe a downed bird that the killer couldn’t find in all that undergrowth. But they’d find it! Their eyes were sharper than the other goblins, that’s why they were out here. Birds were a good but difficult kill - flying tasty meat and pretty feathers.
They crashed eagerly towards the smell. Soon, however, it was accompanied by a very un-bird-like noise. A groaning, swearing noise. Some of the swear words were very expressive - surely only a goblin could swear like that?
In a few minutes they had found Glig. He was bleeding copiously from big gashes across his chest and belly, and one of his legs was bent in ways that looked wrong for anything alive. The spit that the smell had woken in Tira-Urg’s mouth suddenly went cold and there seemed to be too much of it. She swallowed hard, trying not to scream.
They got Glig back to the camp by carrying him. This was much slower than finding him, and Tira-Urg had to fight the whole way back not to be sick. Her legs didn’t seem to want to work right. As soon as they had got their injured mate to the sawbone’s tent on the edge of camp, she dashed straight for the privy. She didn’t want any of the other goblins seeing her weakness, least of all Hisz. Whatever would he think? He’d probably make a new song for her - ‘Urg the Cowardly Goblin’. The thought nearly made her sick again.
The other goblins at the tent seemed subdued, but none of them appeared to have an urgent desire for the privy, or wobbly legs that wouldn’t behave. Tira-Urg let the others explain what had happened, then slunk to the back of the tent to lie down.
Sleep wouldn’t happen. Images of Glig’s leg and the memory of that smell kept interrupting her usual thoughts of hunting and Hisz. She tried memorising song words but even that didn’t work. She rolled back and forward, cold and sweating.
“Watch it!” muttered the goblin next to her. It was Hisz. When he realised who it was, his glare softened. “Can’t sleep?” he asked. Tira-Urg nodded. “Worried about Glig?” She nodded again. “Don’t be - he was a git. Never liked songs.” Tira-Urg grinned weakly.
“It’s just - the blood, and he looked so broken - what if I get like that?” Or you do? she added to herself. She whispered as quietly as she could to Hisz, so that none of the others overheard. She’d never dare say things like that to them, and she wasn’t entirely sure she ought to have said it even to Hisz.
“Nah, not you - not if you keep your eyes open and bash hard.” He looked at her curiously. “This your first Hunt?” he asked after a tense minute of silence.
Once more, Tira-Urg nodded, too scared to say anything at all. Would he laugh, or tell the others? Or worse...
He did laugh a little, but quietly and without any kind of scorn. “Well, hope it isn’t your last,” he whispered to her and she got the feeling he meant it. “Go to sleep, else you’ll be too tired to dodge those fierce bunnies tomorrow...”
Soon she was fast asleep, dreaming dreams of Hisz.
On the way to the hunt the next day, Hisz stayed close to her. “Together we’re less likely to get slashed like old Glig did,” he explained. “There’s something bad out there.”
“What happened to him? Did sawbones fix him?” she asked.
“Naw, he’s dead. Now quiet else we’ll scare all the little bunnies.” Tira-Urg had no trouble keeping quiet, but soon her thoughts were distracted by the hunt. Well, mostly by the hunt. With Hisz beside her, it was even easier than usual to slip into fantasies about his voice, the lively look in his eyes, his scent, the way that drip tended to hang off the end of his bulbous nose... She found herself wondering what his bogies would taste like... There was only one problem - he would never share bogies with another goblin who he believed to be a boy too. What if she told him her real name? She almost didn’t dare to even think it, but if she could tell anyone it would be him. And the others at the warren said she was pretty - maybe he’d be pleased. Only she’d spent ages working to stop being pretty. The thoughts raced around and around her mind, faster every time she looked at him.
“Elvses! Run!” The screech cut through her thoughts. Hisz grabbed her arm.
“Come on, we can’t bash these,” he said, already looking for a way through the trees.
Tira-Urg turned to run too, but not before she got a glimpse of what was coming through the trees towards her. Tall, pale shapes that smelled of nothing at all, moving so quietly through the trees that the goblins hadn’t even aware of them till they were less than fifty paces away.
“But what about the victories? The ones we sang about?” she cried.
“Not today. Run, and we might yet sing more songs.” The urgency in his voice finally got through to her, and she followed him as close and fast as she could.
A high whining sound split the air around her, followed by a wet thud like dropping meat into the cart. Tira-Urg was running alone. She turned and almost tripped over Hisz. He lay still on the leaf litter, face down, a slender stick embedded through his back. Tira-Urg bent low, heedless of other arrows flying around her faster than birds. She gently turned Hisz over, cradling him in her arms like Matron with a newborn. His eyes were already glazing.
“Sawbones!” she yelled, trying hard not to let tears into her voice. “Somebody! Help me carry him,” she called. All the other goblins were gone, disappeared into the leaves, suddenly as stealthy as the elves. She was alone with the arrows and the elves. Alone with the body of the goblin she had l... she couldn’t even think it. Her mind seemed to be breaking apart. She grabbed the hunting spear Hisz had been holding and, belting out a scream fit to tear the world to pieces, she rushed at the elves.
She lost count of her kills that day, and when she was finished she returned to the rapidly-packing camp. She was drenched in blood, her once pretty hair and skin and her clothes all dripping with it. She strode through the camp to the Head Boss, the Great Goblin Chief himself, and she emptied her hunting sack at his feet. Elf heads rolled out.
The other goblins declared her Chief on the bloody spot. She led the goblins against the elves and their human allies for the rest of the season, achieving record kills with relatively few goblin casualties. Then the survivors returned to the mountain, and soon the forges were belching steam and weapons whilst the girls sewed the elf-skins into armour that the shamans blessed to be harder than the mountain rock.
Tira-Urg became the greatest and bloodiest war Chief this clan has ever known, and no-one except the Matron ever knew her true nature. Yes, of course Matron knew, and she told the next Matron and so on and so on... Matron always knows.”
Slowly the girls came out of their rapt trances and closed their gaping jaws.
“Come on, girls - story’s over. Let’s get on with making this armour - unless of course we have another Chieftaness in the making amongst us...” She laughed, and most of the girls laughed with her. They had thought hard about what had happened to Tira-Urg, and now they picked up their needles and attacked the skins with renewed enthusiasm, chattering like jackdaws about the story.
Gika, however, looked thoughtful as she picked up her sewing.