Episode 12: The Only Weapon Left

It was getting really hard to catch my breath and nearly impossible to concentrate. "I still don't understand why you wouldn't sell me any ore."

"Your story is obviously a lie. Orgrimmar wouldn't have sent you, so therefore you must be a bandit. This is our hospitality for bandits." Squinty gestured grandiosely with the boning knife he held. "You're welcome!"

"But Orgrimmar hasn't received a shipment in months." I resisted shaking my head as I feared I might lose consciousness again.

"Lies and also lies!" he snapped. "We haven't missed a shipment since that one sandstorm..." he flipped through pages on a ledger, "...thirteen months and three weeks ago. I watched the loading of every last shipment, and have initialed each entry here." He tried shoving the paperwork in my face, but I couldn't have cared less.

"Perhaps the shipments didn't make it?" I was reaching; looking for any doubts he might have had.

"Ha! You wish. My brother-in-law, Nuzak, operates the shipping company. If there was a problem with one shipment, he would have said something when he picked up the next." He squinted at me even harder than usual, as if trying to figure out what I was up to.

My head was feeling fuzzy again... not now... please not now... "Maybe he sold the ore to someone else?"

"Inconceivable!" the little beast barked. "Orgrimmar is the mine's largest customer. Even if Nuzak found someone willing to pay more, they wouldn't have bought it all. Orgrimmar would still be receiving some of the shipments. Ergo, you are a liar, and soon to be perishables."

"Well... well..." Think! Think, damn you! Fight through the dizziness! "perhaps he didn't deliver it."

"Oh, and he just acted like he did?" The little creep pranced in front of me just to emphasize his point. "I suppose he paid me my share out of his own purse, and just pretended he was selling the ore.

"Why, Mr. Cow, why in this fantasy world of yours would my brother-in-law part needlessly with so much of his own gold? Just to piss off Thrall?"

I felt so dizzy; so tired. I didn't want to have this conversation, and to try to come up with things that I couldn't possibly know. I just wanted to sleep; to lay down and sleep.

Squinty was so angry that he got in my face and screamed. He held open one of my eyes so that I couldn't look away. "Do you have any idea what Thrall would do if we refused to ship him ore? We're only two days away from Orgrimmar. He would march his troops in here and slaughter every last one of us!"

I started giggling. In my mind I saw Thrall, the mighty warchief, mining for lead in a dirty hole. "Thrall must be pretending he didn't receive them," I said. "Perhaps he wants to be a miner." It made sense to me at the time. "Or perhaps he wants his army to mine lead." I wasn't trying to goad him. It just came out that way.

"You are a stupid, stupid cow. You don't understand anything about how the world works, do you? If we wouldn't provide Thrall with ore, then he'd take the mine and sell it to someone who would."

Now, Thrall was wearing a admiral's hat, and dancing a little jig in my mind. Squinty's brother-in-law, Nuzak, was playing the accordion for him. "He should sell the mine to your brother-in-law, Nuzak." The giggling returned.

"Exactly," the Goblin agreed, "someone ruthless, like Nuzak, could buy the mine for only a few silver on the gold..." There was a long-ish pause. "And then deliver the ore he didn't deliver earlier... and make back the money he had invested..." The little creature suddenly seemed a lot less sure of himself. "...And a healthy profit..."

"I'm sorry, Squinty, that was a mean thing for me to say, just now. I hope you will forgive me." I meant it. I really did feel sorry. The Goblin just stared, speechless. "No one would kill off family." I tried to make that "pssht" sound of his to show how stupid I had been. "For what? Gold?"

He stared in silence, his little mouth hanging open. Then he said the funniest thing I had ever heard in my entire life. In retrospect, it didn't seem so witty, but at the time it was hilarious. "We're all going to die..."

Squinty backed away from me, but I was rocking back and forth from the hook, laughing as hard as I could laugh. "We're all going to die!" I screamed. "We're all going to die!"

He backed towards the fire, and so did Mr. Beedle. Fatso came out, and all the other Goblins as well. I kept on screaming that we were all going to die. Screaming and laughing my lungs out, while what looked like the entire Goblin nation gathered around the campfire to talk.

Someone stepped inside the shed with me and closed the door. My little joke stopped being funny again. But I didn't want that feeling to go away, so I tried to spark it up again, "Did you know that we're all going to die, Johnny?"