Chapter Summary: While clearing out a goblin den, Yasha finds a human captive being defended by an unexpected protector.
Chapter Two:
In a Goblin Hoard (ft. Yasha)
Yasha swung her sword and felt the resistance of bone. For an instant, the Magician's Judge scrapped, then jerked free in a glut of viscera. Blood sprayed across her face, twisted into a grimace. Another goblin sprang at her. Its shriek filled the starry night, and she struck again. After that, it was just a matter of keeping going.
Yasha could see her friends as they fought. Beau was deft, surging between fighters who were, for once, almost as dexterous as she was. She grunted, using her fists, her staff, her heel. There was blood on her face, too. Hers or her foe's, Yasha didn't know. There wasn't time to find out.
Green fire, Fjord's eldritch blast, flared in a darkness mitigated only by the fires they'd set, bales of hay burning. Jester's high, chanting voice hung over the field, as did her translucent, deadly lollipop. And Molly, an icy shadow of infernal curses and slashing scimitars, weaved in and out of the fray. Yasha noted them one by one, anchoring herself as she tore through their hissing, clawing enemies. Then the furor of her rage rose up, and she knew little more than the cracking of bones and the snapping of teeth for some time.
When Yasha came back to herself, the battle was over. The ground was littered with bodies, and the fires burned on, though lower. Jester was picking though the corpses, and Yasha saw Molly and Fjord with their heads together in conference. They seemed relatively unharmed.
"You alright?" It was Beau, limping up beside her. She looked exhausted, drained of her usual post-victory exuberance.
Yasha looked around the battlefield, feeling a pang of regret. The goblins had been creatures, and murderous ones at that. She'd heard the stories, of babies snatched from basins, of the mutilated remains they left behind, discarded and desecrated. Still.
"I'm tired," Yasha admitted. Her sword hung in her hand. She needed to clean it before it could be sheathed, but she couldn't bring herself to touch the warm ichor, which seemed to steam in the coolness of the air.
Beau nodded. "Yeah I get that. You want to look around for the kid?"
That was what had sent them here in the first place. This clan of goblins, native to the area, had grown arrogant as they bloated in numbers. The local community had ignored the missing sheep, the lost dog, the mangled cow, but not the child. The child had been the last straw.
"I'm afraid we won't find him," Yasha admitted.
"Gods, let's hope not," Beau said. She really did sound weary. Her staff was sinking into the ground, and as she leaned against it, the wood bit into her cheek. "Still, we could look for proof. For his mom." So the poor woman could lay him to rest, so she wouldn't have to wonder.
Yasha inhaled deeply, centering herself. She seated her blade, not in its sheath, but in a loop of her belt. "I'll take the south."
They picked through the encampment, if it could be called that. Goblins weren't known for their infrastructure. There were fire pits, and hollows insulated with straw which might have been sleeping places. There was evidence of past meals. Yasha examined it all methodically, alert for a patterned bit of fabric from a child's tunic, a small shoe. She found nothing.
While scanning a horizon hazy with smoke, she tripped and nearly fell over a corpse. Yet when she looked down, she found the body partially obscured. Intrigued, she shifted a bush, and the entrance to an underground tunnel was revealed, crumbly with dirt. "Beau," she called.
Beau arrived shortly and squinted at her discovery. "That looks nasty. You sure you want to go down there?"
"I can hear breathing."
Beau lifted her staff. "A lot?"
"No, and they're trying to be quiet."
"Well, we did get hired to clean this place out. Guess it wouldn't be right to leave it undone."
Beau started to limp forward, but Yasha put a hand on her arm. "Flank me," she requested.
Beau looked as though she might argue, but in the end she lit a torch and gestured forward. "Go slow. That passage is narrow, and I won't be much help until it broadens out."
They pressed inside. It was a hollow more than a cave, with bits of tree root hanging down, and chalky earth, and frost. Yasha was alert for traps, but the only one they encountered – a trip wire attached to a crossbow – had already engaged. Yasha and Beau had to step over the dead goblin, a bolt sticking out of its eye socket. The breathing grew louder, until finally, as the ceiling cleared overhead and the tunnel widened, Yasha saw them. The first figure was a bundle of rags whose skin was gouged with blood. When it shifted, chain links slid together. A living captive.
The other was a goblin.
The light from Beau's torch was barely visible behind her back, but it did catch the goblin's eyes. It shrieked, and Yasha raised her sword, but instead of attacking, the goblin wailed, "Stay away! I'll tear your throat out if you touch him."
Stunned, Yasha took a step back. She'd seen goblins take hostages, but this was different. For one thing, the goblin's face and arms were livid with claw marks, like it had been fighting its own. It pressed into its captive, not like it wanted to hurt him, but like it wanted to hide. Yasha didn't know what to make of it.
The captive was human. He was gagged, but his eyes were open. Yasha could see him squinting at her in the sudden brightness of the torchlight, and she couldn't help but notice the way his hands, chained at the wrists, held onto the goblin. Not to struggle, but with a kind of desperation. Both of them stared at Yasha, and in both of them, she saw fear. Like prey animals hiding in a thicket who'd found themselves in the jowls of a wolf.
"Hello." The word fell out of Yasha's mouth. She spoke in Common, of course, not Ghukliak, and it snapped the human's eyes to her. They widened, and his hands scrabbled at the goblin's back.
"Mm," he said.
Then Beau pushed through the hanging roots, coming upon the confusing scene, and the first thing she saw was a goblin crouched on top of a living person. Her reaction was instinctual. Yasha called to her, but the staff was already snapping toward the goblin's skull with bone-crunching strength. It was a perfect blow. A killing blow. The goblin's huge, globular eyes stretched for one final moment. It had time to give a warbled yell.
And then the human lunged from his prone position, turned his shoulder, and curled around the goblin. The staff struck his back. Bone crunched audibly, and a muffled cry of agony joined the goblin's scream and Beau's grunt of surprise.
Beau dropped her staff, shocked. She clasped her forehead. "Gods, I didn't mean –"
The man crumpled. Though the gag prevented him from speaking, he was putting off little sounds of pain, and the goblin was in something like a panic. It nuzzled his neck, stroking his hair with claws that caught and pulled. "Please don't die" it cried. "You can't. Not after everything."
Beau returned to herself. Striding forward, she grappled the goblin. It fought back, but not well. Yasha went to tend the captive. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his shoulder was shattered. He was also almost naked, and without the protection of clothing, she saw pits of gouged flesh, the bite marks. He'd been with the goblins for some time.
She could try to strongarm the chains, but not in this confined space. The leather gag, though, was another matter. It had been tied behind his ear so tightly she couldn't undo the knot, and despite her care, she left a shallow cut on his face when she cut it free. It came loose crusted with saliva, and he coughed, the edges of his mouth raw. After a long moment, his eyes fluttered up, and he blinked at her, his rescuer. Then he went rigid.
"Not," he rasped, and his voice was like an unoiled crank. His croaky words had no meaning to her, even as they grew in volume, and he began to struggle. "Not, not!"
Yasha tried to calm him. "Hush, now."
On the other side of the den, the goblin started keening again, renewing its struggles. "Let me go! Stop it! You'll hurt him!"
"What do you mean, we'll hurt him?" Beau snarled.
"Don't harm her," the man begged. He stretched out his arms feebly, and there was no longer any doubt that he was, in fact, trying to reach the creature.
"Beau," Yasha said. "Restrain that goblin, but don't kill her. There's a story here, and we'd better hear it before we make any decisions."
Someone distant called, "You okay in there?"
It was Molly. Jester could be heard in the background, which meant Fjord wasn't be far behind. Yasha looked at the man she was holding upright. There would be time to figure this out later, but for now they needed to get him out of this hole.
"What the hell is that?"
Fjord was staring at the goblin, bound with ropes and shivering on the ground at the edge of their camp. They'd moved north, away from the carnage. Not far, though. The man had not been fit for travel, and then there was this other complication...
"She's a goblin," Yasha said.
"I know it's a goblin. Why didn't you kill it?"
"She was protecting him," Yasha said, glancing toward the tent where Jester was working on their reclaimed captive. The man was filthy, and so skinny it was hard to know how he was alive. They'd given him all their blankets, but he still shivered.
"Goblins don't defend people," Fjord said. "They barely defend each other."
"This one did," Yasha insisted.
"Then it was being territorial or something. It's a goblin."
Beau tucked her arms around herself a little too tightly for it to pass as anything but a self-soothing gesture. "I don't know, Fjord. I'm the last person to throw in a good word for somebody, but this was different. It cried. Like, cried-cried. And that guy, when he got the gag out of his mouth, the first thing he did was plead with us not to hurt it."
"Not to hurt her," Yasha corrected.
Fjord passed his hands over his face. "This is ludicrous." He looked down. "I don't suppose you have anything to say for yourself."
The goblin shuddered but refused to look at them. "She's afraid," Yasha said softly.
"Afraid? You saw that place, Yasha. You know what they probably did with the kid, and look at that poor bastard. How long has he been with them, do you think?"
Molly peeked tiredly from inside the tent. "He's coming around. You want to try and talk with him?"
"Go. I'll keep an eye on this. Whatever this is," Beau muttered beneath her breath.
Inside the tent, the atmosphere was hushed. The lantern was turned down, and Jester put a finger to her lips when they came inside. "He's still a little out of it," she explained, "and he's very weak."
"He keeps saying 'not' over and over," Molly added. "Plus a jumble of other words. Not sure it's common."
"He spoke common before," Yasha said. She sunk down near the head of pallet, placed a hand on his repaired shoulder.
The man seemed to recognize her, because he tried to sit up. "You –"
"Just relax. You're in a tent on the Amber Road near Felderwin. We were sent here because of the goblin encroachment. We found you in their camp. You're safe now."
The man was shaking his head. A tear ran down his nose. He sounded incredulous. "Safe?"
"Yes, you're safe," Yasha told him.
"I did my best to heal you," Jester said. "But you were hurt really bad, and your lungs sound crackly, so you should take it easy. You're going to need time to get well."
"Can you tell us your name?" Yasha asked.
He looked at her, and she could see the captivity in him. Who knew how long it had been since anyone had asked? "Caleb," he whispered.
"Hello, Caleb," she said, squeezing.
"Can you tell us what happened?" Fjord spoke up. "How you came to be there?"
"I was with a caravan passing through the forest," Caleb said. He had a strong northern accent, which interested Yasha. "There'd been rumors of trouble, and it seemed unwise to travel alone. We were just past the twelfth mile marker when they attacked us."
"Goblins."
"I burned some of them. Maybe that's why they didn't kill me. Maybe they were angry. They dragged me back to their camp."
"What did they want?"
"Information. On town, roads. But I'm not from here. I don't know much of anything worthwhile."
"Did they torture you?"
The man closed his eyes. It was answer enough. That he was alive at all to face those memories was a kind of miracle, though one that came at a price. Yasha asked, "How did you survive?"
He came a little more alive. "Not," he said.
"We don't understand you, friend," Molly spoke up. "What do you mean by 'not'?"
He shook his head. "No, Nott. The girl. She saved me."
"That goblin outside saved you?"
He jerked. "She's here? She's alive?"
"We brought her with us," Fjord admitted. "Beau's keeping an eye on her."
"I need to see her."
"I don't think that's such a good idea."
It was then that Caleb showed the first spark, a glimmer of the steel that lay beneath the pale and weakened surface. "You don't get to decide that. I would be dead without her. She fed me, gave me water. She kept the others from killing me when everything went to hell. I want to see her."
Fjord looked to Molly. "I don't know. I don't understand any of this –"
"What is there to understand? Yasha interrupted. "The two of them connected in a moment of extremity. They both deserve to see if that still means something."
"Yasha. I'll say it again if I have to: It's a goblin."
The man made a sound like a snarl. "I don't care. I don't care. She –"
"Hush," Yasha shushed him. "Do you want to see her now?"
"Ja," he said. "Yes."
Yasha was the one to loosen the ropes. "He's asking for you," she said.
The muscles in the goblin, which had been tensed to run, went slack. She drew her hands to her chest. "He does? But why?"
"He said you saved him."
She sniffled. "Goblins hurt him. They starved him. Tortured him."
"Did you do those things?"
"Sometimes," Nott admitted. "When I had to."
"But you also fed him and looked after him and spoke to him," Yasha said. "I think we'd all like to know why."
For a long moment, it seemed like Nott wouldn't answer, like maybe she didn't even know the answer herself. She twisted the ragged burlap she was wearing between her fingers before finally, she admitted, "I don't like hurting people."
"No?"
A pair of tears streaked through the gore on her face. "I'm not a very good goblin. It was lonely. He made me less lonely. That's selfish, right?"
The shame in her voice was so cognizant, so reflective. Recognizing it, Yasha felt a little shame of her own. Goblins were monsters. That was what she had always been told. But it was hard to give that viewpoint credence listening to this girl. Yasha gestured toward the tent. "Do you want to see him?"
Nott shuffled closer to the warm light, almost compulsively. She looked up at Yasha. "It's really okay?"
Yasha's heart pounded. She was caught between a feeling of self-recrimination and the sensation of wild hopefulness. "It's okay," she said. "He's waiting."
Yasha had only twice witnessed fate. Once was on a tundra when she met the Stormlord, lightning in her heart and the wind on her breath. The other had been on the road near Rexxentrum when she met a lost-looking purple tiefling who could only say the word 'empty.' Now, as she stood just far enough outside the frame of the tent as to lend some privacy, she found herself privileged to be in attendance at a third such meeting.
In the shadows thrown by the lamp, Caleb looked tired. His face was sunken, and Jester's healing had not left him without scars. Some of them raked across his cheek, and they were unavoidably the marks of claws. When she saw them, the goblin warbled with grief.
"Nott," Caleb said.
"You remember my name?"
"How could I not remember? It was one of the things you gave me, at great risk to yourself."
She shook her head. "I should have given you more. I should have helped you escape."
"They would have killed you."
"How can you say that?" Nott cried. "How can you care?"
Caleb stretched out his hand. It wavered between them, but he was stubborn and refused to lower it until her reluctance eroded and she shuffled closer. There, facing one another, he said, "You saved my life, Nott. I must thank you."
"You shouldn't thank me."
Caleb's voice was soft and so earnest. It filled the tent with a sense of sacredness, a place where the world could not reach. "Even before the caravan, I had been alone for years and years. No one had been kind to me. Not for a very long time. When you held my hand in the dark, I didn't want to let go."
"But I'm a goblin," said Nott.
"I'm a murderer," Caleb answered. "Worse than your kinsman. Worse than that...butcher who hurt us both."
"No," Nott denied. She clutched his hands. "Don't say that. You're good. I know you are. I can see it in your face."
"I'm not," he insisted.
"Then I don't care." She threw her arms around him. "I don't care, if it's you."
He embraced her in return, clutched at her with all the strength his body had left. "Stay with me," he asked in a voice that broke.
Her voice wavered. "Can I?"
"Don't leave."
"Please," she begged.
For a long while, they stayed like that, locked in an embrace that seemed equally desperate on both sides. It was like seeing a key nestle into its designated lock. They fit together. Only after a long time did they draw apart, both wrung out. Nott used her sleeve to rub at his face, and he gave a chuckle that sounded only a little unhinged. He caught her hand. "I couldn't tell you before. I'm Caleb."
Yasha stood outside, keeping vigil and thinking. Viewed from the lens of the world, she knew what she was witnessing would be been seen as wrong, perhaps even perverse, but what she saw was two friends brought together by a storm – two souls, destined to be together, bound by invisible threads.
Beau came up beside her and peeked into the tent. "They really are going to stick together, aren't they?"
Yasha would have wagered her wings. "Yes, I believe they will."
"Dangerous," Beau muttered. "People won't understand. They'll try to hurt her, and they'll hurt him if he tries to interfere." She fidgeted with her staff, uncomfortable with the memory of what she'd almost done.
"It was an accident," Yasha said. "You acted on instinct."
"Yeah, well, my instinct was to exterminate without question, and that's exactly what's going to happen if those two are stupid enough to go waltzing through a marketplace or try booking a room in an inn. What are they going to do? Live in the woods and become hermits?"
Yasha set her shoulders. "We could look after them."
Beau's eyebrows flew high onto her forehead. "Us look after them? A goblin and some homeless guy?" She barked a laugh. "Oh, Fjord is going to love this."
"Jester likes them."
"Jester likes everybody," Beau retorted. "And don't get me started on Molly. I've seen him feeding strays when he thinks we aren't looking."
Yasha didn't bother arguing. Instead, she gestured toward the canvas. "Just listen, Beau." There was sweet music coming from inside the tent; Nott was sitting in Caleb's lap, and she was giggling. Even from here, they could see the grin on his scarred, weary face. "I don't know about you, but that's not something I want to get in the way of."
"It's cute," Beau admitted begrudgingly. "Plus, did you hear the way that skinny hobo barked at Fjord? Now, that was funny. As for Nott, she packs a hell of a punch." She rubbed her ribs in rueful memory.
"So we keep them," Yasha said.
Beau looked at her. "You're really asking me to back you on this."
"You were there." As far as Yasha was concerned, no further explanation was needed.
With an aggrieved sigh, Beau folded her arms over her chest. "Yeah, yeah, alright. We keep them. Even though I just know we're going to regret it."
Yasha turned toward the tent, that fluttering, wistful hope stirring once again in her stomach. She wanted to believe in this; that borders and boundary lines could be surpassed. That traditional foes, even ones who with a history of terrible violence, could mend and become friends. "I want to watch them grow together," she admitted.
"You're such a softie, Yasha," Beau accused.
Yasha said, "Yes."
Author's Note: The theme for this chapter was, what if Caleb and Nott came together, not in prison, but because Caleb was made captive by Nott's clan? It would make the Nein witness to the birth of their relationship, which really appealed to me. Yasha's point of view, when I gave it a try, seemed exactly right to seal that moment. She is an advocate. :)