She leaned back and addressed the sky. “Blanchett, I know you’re in there. You just need to sit tight until the bear comes back, okay?”
His lips moved. It might have been Yes, Sarge. It might have been almost anything.
The tent flap was pulled back, and two more elves emerged. Nessilka sized them up as they approached. Was one Captain Finchbones?
“The one in the armor?” guessed Murray.
“No,” said Nessilka, who knew a bit more about command. “The one who looks tired.”
And indeed, of the two elves approaching, one looked exhausted. His shoulders were stooped and his long white hair made him look old instead of ethereal.
He had weary eyes. Nessilka clenched her fingers together.
If you are going to be captured—and if you are a goblin soldier, this is always at least a possibility—it is rarely a good idea to be captured by tired people. Tired people make mistakes. Those mistakes are rarely in your favor. For every guard who dozes off or who fails to lock the prison door, you get a dozen guards who forget that they’ve taken the safety off the crossbow, who mistake a plea for water for an assault, or who fail to loosen the ropes before somebody’s hand turns black and falls off.
Tired commanders are even worse. Tired commanders have a tendency to want problems to just go away.
Nessilka knew that she, Murray, Blanchett and a town full of corpses added up to a very big problem.
The tired elf squatted down in the mud in front of her—he was wearing very good boots—and said “I am Captain Finchbones.”
“Point to you, Sarge,” muttered Murray.
“Do you understand this language?”
“Yes,” said Nessilka. She licked dry lips and wracked her brain, trying to remember vocabulary. “Most. Need you explain some words.”
Finchbones nodded. “I wish to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Explain to me why you were in the village.”
Nessilka hardly knew where to begin. “We were in woods. We heard very strange noise.” Should she mention Sings-to-Trees? If they went to his farm, they’d find the rest of the regiment. Damn. “A magic noise. We had to walk to it.”
“Why were you in the woods?” asked Finchbones.
“A wizard—” Damn, what was the word for transported? “—moved us.”
Finchbones eyebrows went up at that. “A goblin wizard?”
“No!” That was all they needed, to have the elves thinking that they had wizards that could dump whole regiments behind enemy lines. “No. Human.”
“Why did a human wizard send you into my people’s lands?”
Murray muttered, “Careful, Sarge…” in Glibber. The elf behind him made a warning noise.
Nessilka sighed. There was really no answer that was going to paint them in a positive light. It was best to be honest. At least if they were prisoners of war, there were supposed to be rules about how they were treated.
“In battle. Ran at wizard.” Her hands were tied, but she managed a vague pantomime of attack with her head and one shoulder. Finchbones nodded. “Wizard moved. We moved too. Then we were in woods.”
Murray cleared his throat. Apparently he spoke this human dialect better than he spoke Elvish. “We think he was trying to run from the battle, but he brought all of us with him.”
Nessilka winced a little at all of us, but presumably that could apply to three people as easily as nine.
Finchbones shifted so that he was addressing both Murray and Nessilka. “Where is this wizard now?”
Nessilka shook her head. “Asleep.” That wasn’t the right word, but it was as close as she was going to get. “Left wizard asleep in woods.”
“Dead?”
“No!”
“Unconscious,” said Murray.
Finchbones nodded.
Nessilka tried to explain that they’d given the wizard some water and put a blanket over him, but she wasn’t sure how much of that came through, or whether Finchbones believed her.
She hated not being able to speak clearly. It made her sound stupid, and people thought goblins were stupid enough already.
“Who is in command?”
“I am,” said Nessilka. “I am—” She looked helplessly at Murray.
“Sergeant,” said Murray.
“Sergeant Nessilka. I am in command.” She licked her lips again. “I ask…fair. Fairness. Treatment of soldiers.”
“Prisoners of war,” said Finchbones.
Nessilka nodded. So did Murray.
Finchbones steepled his fingers. “And yet the people you have killed were not soldiers.”
“Did not kill people!”
Murray said, “The village was like that already. Already dead.”