hobgoblin lay face up, an arm flopped down beside an
empty wine cask in the grass beside him. He’d been
stabbed through the darkened leather armor over his
abdomen. A second stab wound, blue-black now, was
visible in his throat. His left ear was missing, too, cleanly
cut away. He had not even gotten up; he had died sitting,
then had fallen back.
I reached up and felt my own ears. Both were still
intact.
“Maybe you could tell me a bit about what you want.”
The dwarf’s voice was steady and low, his axe arm still
raised for a strike or a throw.
I looked beyond the dwarf at the half-forested hilltop.
No one else was around. “Looking for someone,” I said
finally.
This didn’t answer everything, but the dwarf let it go
for now. “Got a name?” he asked.
“Evredd,” I said, the word sounding like a mumble. I
covered the wound and said it again, more clearly.
The dwarf’s flint-black gaze went to my chest. “You a
dead boy, ain’t you?” he said.
I found it hard to answer that. It wasn’t something I
wanted to face.
“You a rev’nant, I bet,” the dwarf went on, knowingly.
“Been dead a bit, I can tell. I seen dead boys before, but
not walkin’ ones like you. You a rev’nant, come back to
get your killer man. That right?”
He was talkative for a dwarf. “Who did this?” I asked
him, indicating the bodies.
The dwarf looked at me a while longer, then glanced
around, one eye still on me. The sky was darkening with
the coming sunset, but the rain had stopped. Behind the
dwarf by a couple hundred feet, in a tree line, was an
irregular outcropping of rock, overgrown with vines. A
wide gully or eroded road ran out of the woods and
undergrowth, then off along the top of the cliff toward the
south.
“Can’t say,” said the dwarf, looking back at me, then
down at the bodies. “Just got here myself.” Rainwater
dripped from the axe blade.
I stood up. The dwarf fell back, his face tight, and
raised his axe arm.
“No,” I said, but it came out as a gasp. I put my hand
inside my shirt. “No,” I repeated. “How long . . . What
day is this?”
“Sixteenth,” he said, his eyes narrowing again.
I’d been dead for a day, then. The hobgoblins had hit
on the twelfth, and I’d left on the next day. “Are more . . .
people with you?” It was hard to get the words out in one
breath. I’d need lots of practice at this.
The dwarf hesitated. “Just me,” he said. The dwarf
grinned nervously and adjusted the grip on his axe. “I
didn’t make you a dead boy, and if you a rev’nant, you
ain’t gonna attack me, I reckon. You save that for your
killer.”
I had no urge to bother the dwarf if he didn’t bother
me, so I guess he had a point. I scanned the ground for
any clues to the identity of my murderer. The dwarf
stayed back, but soon got up the nerve to examine the
stabbed hobgoblin again, checking for valuables with one
eye locked tight on me.
The heavy rain had destroyed virtually all the clues
there were – tracks, crushed grass, everything. For all that,
I could still put together a few things about my killer. He
had used a crossbow, probably a dwarven one. He knew
about weapon poison. He could probably climb cliffs; he
must have gone right up this one after killing me, then hit
the hobgoblins. They’d been drunk and tired, but the lack
of other bodies indicated that he’d moved with
considerable speed, killing them before they could shout
warnings, even to each other.
But if he’d killed hobgoblins, why had he also killed me?
He must have known I was after them, myself. And if he
could see well enough to shoot me this accurately, he
couldn’t have mistaken me for hobgoblin scum. I pondered
for a minute, then looked off the cliff. I could still see a
man-shaped impression in the muddy ground below,
where I had fallen. I scanned the field out to the horizon.