Shalma's Destruction (Part IV)

The next few days are spent in the goblins’ cave, alternately resting and indulging in the exterminated broods’ remaining perishables.  Shalma leads by example in both. 

You haven’t been with Shalma’s band very long, but long enough to notice a recurring pattern of intense bursts of action followed by lengthy respites.  At first blush, it seems like a sound strategy.  The men appreciate the downtime and, by allowing their itch for adventure to return naturally, a vigorous effort is ensured when it does.  But recently the recesses have protracted to the point of diminished returns.  By day three, some grumble while others lapse into languorousness.

Despite this, preparations for the next adventure—whatever it may be—are made.  Weapons are sharpened, armor is repaired, and the remainder of the goblins’ larder is divvied among the men.  It’s an efficient group and everyone knows their role. 

Except you.

“Shalma has a use for you,” Skasnell had mentioned your first night in the cave, but he gave no indication as to what it might be.  You’d ask Shalma yourself if you weren’t worried it would cause the beautiful barbarian to rethink her position.  “You’re right.  You’re of no use,” she would say, before lopping off your head with her broadsword or snapping your neck with her bare hands.  You imagine she could do either with commensurate ease. 

You shudder.  Not at the thought of death—Shalma had already taken from you everything worth living for—but at the lost opportunity for revenge.  

For now, you try to keep a low profile.  It’s difficult when you stick out like a dollop of gray amidst Shalma’s colorful contingent, but if your childhood art lessons taught you anything, it’s that, if worked enough, gray can blend with its surroundings.  That’s why you keep pestering Skasnell for training.  You don’t want to draw attention for your ineptitude…or die because of it.   

Besides, the sessions get you out of the cave and your mind off Shalma.  Not only are you conspicuous when loitering around, but you find yourself obsessing, unable to take your eyes off the barbarian’s burgeoning belly.  The crease you noticed a few nights ago appears to be growing.  Deepening and lengthening with each pull of dried meat and gulp from her goblet. 

Perhaps these lazy sabbaticals will expand as she does?  Creating a slippery slope of mutual cause and effect?

“Focus!” Skasnell shouts, taking your breath away with a poke to your gut with the butt of his shield.  “Where’s your mind today?”

“Sorry,” you gasp, clutching your belly.  “Just thinking about the future.”

“Worrying about the future in combat is a sure way to guarantee you won’t have one.”

You nod at Skasnell’s sage advice and rub your tender tummy.  You wouldn’t go so far as to say the two of you were becoming friends, but the robust warrior was becoming something of a mentor.  Your swordplay had already greatly improved and, though he would never admit it, you believe your diminutive size and quickness relative to the other men in the company offer him a bit of a challenge. 

But not today. 

The burly warrior sheathes his sword and drapes his hairy arm over your shoulders.  “Let’s take a break,” he says, walking you back toward the cave. “I think we’re all a bit antsy" he muses before whispering, "Perhaps it’s time to get Shalma off that big barbarian butt of hers?”

You smile.  Skasnell is the only one in the troop who could get away with such an off-color comment about its leader, but you certainly never imagined him uttering something like that to you.  He’s obviously taken notice of your growing kinship…as well as Shalma’s growing ass.

Approaching the cave, an unfamiliar but delicious smell hits your nostrils.  The mystery meat stored in the goblin’s larder was fragrant, but unpleasantly so, having been dried and doused with various pungent preservatives.  This was different.  This was fresh.

You find Shalma kneeling by a campfire outside the cave’s mouth, her broadsword extended above its flames.  Skewered at its tip is the carcass of a plump bird.  Much of it is plucked and roasted brown, but the head remains, shriveled and withered from the fire, its black eyes and beak frozen open in fear and wonderment of what the hell just happened.

Shalma rises to your approach, the meaty crease along her bare midriff disappearing, and yanks the smoldering bird from her blade with her bare hand.  “Care for some squab?”

“Where did that come from?”  Skasnell asks, ogling the befuddled-looking fowl.  

Shalma nods to a bit of rolled parchment lying in the dirt by the fire.  “The prince sent us an invitation.”   Then she hoists its flame-roasted courier.  “And a snack!”   

That’s when you notice the singed purple plumage ringing the bird’s neck—a hallmark of the prince’s royal fleet of carrier pigeons.  That certainly explains the bird’s bewildered expression.  It was probably expecting a bite of bread as a reward, not for a sword to be shoved up its keister.

Skasnell retrieves the document and unrolls it.  “Here ye, hear ye, all who are worthy.  By royal decree, Prince Harrington declares the festival of fall to begin VII Kalendas Septembris with a feats of strength competition in Darrumburgh open to all.  To the victor goes the spoils!”  Skasnell lifts his eyes from the calligraphed parchment.  “Something smells fishy.”

“Maybe it’s all them spoils?”  Pug had wandered from the cave and stood by Skasnell as he read.  If anyone was an expert on fishy smells, it was Pug.

“This was just written,” Skasnell says, holding the letter to his nose.  “Don’t you find it curious that the festival is slated to begin in two days and we’re exactly a two-day journey away?”    

Pug shrugs.  “Better than it starting in two days and us a three-day journey away.”

Another man, Sil, a scruffy axe-wielding warrior, emerges from the cave.  “We should enter.  One of us would surely win.” 

More men gather around the fire, grumbling in agreement.  They look hopefully at Shalma for affirmation and, potentially, a bite of her tasty-looking bird.   

They get neither.

“Why compete for spoils when we can take them?” Shalma says, emphasizing her point with a giant bite from the royal pigeon’s breast.   “I have it on good authority that a caravan—fatter and juicier than this bird—will pass by in a few days.”

“Authority?  What authority?” Skasnell asks, clearly irritated at having been kept out of the loop.

Shalma smiles and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.  “Trust me, luv.” 

Skasnell frowns but doesn’t respond; the rest of the men mutter and moan.

“Speak up!”  Shalma screams, throwing the bird’s mutilated carcass into the fire, causing it to flare.  The action has the opposite effect on the men, and they fall silent, most staring mournfully into the flames as the meaty bird’s remains sizzle away.  “If anyone has something to say, say it!”

Skasnell elbows you and whispers, “You wanted action.  Maybe you should say something?”

Inserting yourself into a heated debate isn’t exactly your idea of lying low, but perhaps Skasnell is right.  Perhaps the time has come to assert yourself.

What do you say?