Nine Goblins(37)

And gods above, don’t let Algol get a case of the heroics…

“I promise,” said Sings-to-Trees. She eyed him warily, but he was a civilian—and another species—and she probably didn’t have the authority to order him back to his farm.

Also, it was hard to assume authority when you only came up to the bottom of somebody’s ribcage.

Blanchett scrambled down to them before long, covered in leaf mold and mud but none the worse for wear. (Actually, the mud improved his odor significantly.) Sings-to-Trees checked his ankle again and pronounced it acceptable.

“Tell me,” said Murray, assembling earplugs out of moss and half an old candle, “did you hear the weird voice from earlier?”

Blanchett pushed a finger under his helmet to scratch. “I guess, yeah. Some kind of mumbling, wasn’t it?”

“And you didn’t feel any compulsion to go chase after it?”

Blanchett looked puzzled. “A what?”

“A comp—an overwhelming urge. You know?”

“Err. No?”

Murray gave it up as a bad job.

He finished the earplugs and handed them around. “This won’t block all the sound. I don’t have the equipment. But if you start to hear something, if you hum or sing, that should drown it out.”

“Can I sing “The Bird In The Bush?” asked Blanchett hopefully.

Nessilka had a brief image of exactly how absurd the three of them would look trying to sneak up on the enemy while singing dirty drinking songs, and wondered if it would be any better if they were singing martial tunes or just humming really loudly. “Sing whatever you like, Blanchett.”

“I’m not sure if they’ll work even then,” Murray said. “It might not be a real sound, you understand? If it’s magic, it could be something in our heads as easily as anything else.”

“We’ll have to hope, then,” said Nessilka. “Blanchett, this is a direct order. If you hear the weird mumbling again, and Murray and I start running towards it—you are to stop Murray by any means necessary, even if you have to hit him on the back of the head and sit on him.”

“That’s ganking-a-superior-officer, Sarge,” said Blanchett.

“It’s in a good cause, Blanchett, and that’s an order. If the wizard gets me, you two go back home, pick up Sings-to-Trees here, and go find Algol.”

“You can get court-martialed for ganking-a-superior-officer,” said Blanchett.

“I’m telling you, Blanchett, it’s on my orders.”

Blanchett screwed up his face in the bear-listening position. “He says…if you’re dead, it won’t matter if it was on your orders.”

Nessilka pinched the bridge of her nose and prayed for patience, no less so because the bear was probably right.

“…but he also says to do it,” finished Blanchett. “So that’s all right then, Sarge.”

“As long as we’re all in agreement,” said Nessilka wearily, and shoved moss and wax into her ears.





They left Blanchett un-earplugged, since he apparently wasn’t affected, and he had flatly refused to wear them unless the bear got a pair too. As the bear didn’t really have much in the way of ear canals, so it just seemed easier that way. There was enough crude hand-sign available in Glibber to be able to communicate simple orders, and Nessilka didn’t feel like a complicated philosophical discussion at the moment anyway.

Sings-to-Trees halted under the last trees, gazing out across the waving fields of the farmland. He frowned, and said something, and then when Nessilka pulled out an earplug, he repeated himself. “The melons haven’t been harvested. That strip along the drainage ditch—they always grow melons, it’s got the most moisture—but they all split on the ground and rotted.”

“How long does it take for melons to go bad?” asked Murray, who had also removed an earplug.

“About five minutes, sometimes,” said Sings-to-Trees. “But these should have been harvested a few days ago, I think.” He frowned.

Nessilka nodded. “Well, that gives us more of a time frame.” She reached up and patted the elf on the shoulder. “Try to stay out of sight. Hopefully we’ll be back before long.”

They put in their earplugs, looked at each other awkwardly, then Nessilka nodded sharply and signed, Move out.

There was a main road not far away, and a hedgerow running along one side of it. They stuck to it as closely as possible. It was taller than a goblin and made Nessilka feel less exposed. Small birds hopped through it. Murray pointed to one and Nessilka nodded.

So it wasn’t all the animals, then. That was something, anyway.