Nine Goblins(43)

“I th-think so…” The girl took her hands away from her face. “Please, you must save me! Take me away from here, before he returns!”

“Door’s open,” said Nessilka. “Why didn’t you just leave and go for help?”

“L-leave?” This clearly took her by surprise. Didn’t rehearse that part of your speech, did you?

“Seems a bit weird to stay here and make breakfast while you wait for this wizard of yours to come back.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not very nice,” she said. “It’s been horrible, and I’m the sold survivor—”

“Sole survivor,” said Murray, who had never in his life been able to resist correcting someone’s grammar.

Nessilka winced, and wondered when he’d taken out the useless earplugs.

Murray coughed apologetically and stood up. “And you’re actually not,” he said. “There’s at least one old guy in a little house on the edge of town who could probably pull through with a bit of water and some tending.”

“What?” This information somehow did not seem to gratify the human at all. “Old Man Houghton? How—” Her face smoothed out, and she said, in a much different tone, “Oh. That’s wonderful, of course!”

Nessilka and Murray glanced at each other.

“You don’t know! It’s been horrible!” said the girl, and burst into furious tears.

Were all human civilians this wet? Nessilka didn’t much like humans to begin with, what with the taking-her-homeland bit and lately the always-trying-to-kill-her bit, but she’d give the human soldiers this—they didn’t cry at you. Not until you’d cut their legs off, anyway, and that didn’t count.

“Uh, Sarge…” said Murray.

The human sobbed.

“There there, yes, you’ve suffered terribly. ‘Scuse us a minute,” said Nessilka, grabbing Murray by the arm. She yanked him back towards the door and hissed, in furious Glibber, “Are you out of your mind?”

“I think she’s the one who did it, Sarge!”

“Well, obviously! And I ought to bust you back down to private for disobeying orders!”

“But Sarge, I think—”

“You’re not going to work,” said the girl, in a clear, carrying voice without a trace of a sob.

Nessilka wheeled around, and found that the girl was between them and the door. Her hand dropped instinctively to the haft of her club.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” said the girl. “You were supposed to be elves. The elves were supposed to come and take me away to find John, and you’re just going to ruin everything.”

The human’s eyes were very bright. Crazylight, thought Nessilka. Sane people’s eyes don’t look like that unless they’re dying.

“Let’s not do anything rash,” said Murray, spreading his hands. “We can talk about this—”

Ten steps, thought Nessilka. Over the back of the pew and ten steps and then club her.

“You won’t work at all,” said the girl. “And if Old Man Houghton’s still kicking around—what a mess.” She sounded annoyed, but her crazylight eyes gleamed, and Nessilka knew that she was probably already too late.

The sergeant lunged.

She got over the back of the pew and two steps farther and that was all. The girl opened her mouth and tilted her head back a little, and a sound came out.

It was that maddening, half-heard conversation sound, but louder and closer and painful. The words cut right through the center of Nessilka’s head like the teeth of a bonesaw. The human’s lips were hardly moving but her throat was vibrating strangely and great gibbering gods Nessilka wanted to go towards it, it was important that she go towards it, but it hurt, it felt like the two halves of her skull were grating together and the girl was backing away from them but she had to get closer, perhaps if she could just hear what the voice was saying the horrible grating in her head would stop because if it didn’t stop the bones in Nessilka’s ears were going to shatter and she was going to go deaf and why was she moving so slowly, because the girl was backing out the door but her feet seemed to stick to the floor and Murray was moaning and she wanted to smack him because his moaning was making it harder to make out the words and oh gods, why hadn’t she used the club when she had a chance—

And then Blanchett brought his club down on the back of the girl’s head.

The sound cut off instantly. There was a thump as the human wizard—she couldn’t have been anything else—folded up and hit the ground. Nessilka heard herself cry out in anguish and relief. So did Murray.