The wind runner book 10.., p.18
The Wind Runner: Book 10 (The Wandering Inn), page 18
“Lyonette.”
She jumped. It was the first time Numbtongue had said her name. But the Hob was full of firsts. He asked for her sword. She hesitated and then handed it to him.
“Wait—”
They tried to stop him at the door. But Numbtongue ignored them, and none of them could stop him. Not without killing him. He walked out into the Floodplains alone.
It was muddy. There were undead. Numbtongue walked past them. Sometimes, he had to fight, but they were zombies. A few Ghouls roamed around. But the adventurers had come out of the inn and handled them. And Numbtongue walked further.
He stopped as he spotted a tall undead among the others. A huge, hulking Hobgoblin, shuffling around lifelessly. Numbtongue stared up at him.
“Eater of Spears.”
The zombie did not react to the name. It turned. Numbtongue stared up at him. It hurt. Not just to see him. But to see what a waste it was. A zombie. If Eater of Spears could have seen himself in death, he would have been offended. At least be a Ghoul! Or a Draug. He would have been pleased to be a Draug, surely. And what a monster of destruction he would have been. But as he was, he was just a zombie. Practically harmless. Numbtongue walked past him as Eater of Spears looked around sightlessly.
He had never met Eater of Spears. He had never talked with him. But somehow, Numbtongue knew what he would have said. Somehow…
It was further up. Past the Floodplains, towards the mountains. Numbtongue climbed, legs trembling despite the food Erin had made him eat. He climbed higher, choosing the surest footholds.
A memory. A Goblin thing. It was a thing of Chieftains. A power of their people. Or a curse. Because a Goblin could remember all the failures, all the triumphs of the past. All the grief.
There he was. Up the hillside, slumped in place. Numbtongue climbed higher. A zombie tripped and tumbled past him. The Hobgoblin gasped with the effort. He could sense the adventurers following him. But for now, he was alone.
He reached the place, panting, propping himself up on his sword. He looked down.
A Goblin had died here. A Hobgoblin. One among many. But not the same as the rest. Unlike the others, who had died with their backs to the sky, he was lying on his. He stared up at the sky, a smile on his face. Rot had yet to consume him, but had started.
And he was dead. Pyrite’s chest had been torn open. Fire had burned him. Numbtongue looked down and recalled the face in his dream. He tried to connect it to the face he saw below him. But there was nothing that matched.
Slowly, Numbtongue sat. He looked around, but the battleaxe that Pyrite had wielded was gone. Numbtongue shrugged and reached for something. He fished at Pyrite’s side and pulled at a rough hemp sack. Then he hesitated and reached for the Hobgoblin’s head.
Pyrite’s jaws were closed. It was hard to open them, but Numbtongue saw what he knew was there in the back of Pyrite’s mouth. A glowing blue gemstone. Numbtongue plucked it out and put it in the sack. Then he just sat, watching the adventurers climb towards him.
A memory. He looked down at his hand and felt the warmth. Pyrite stared up at the sky, still smiling. And Numbtongue looked over.
“You did it. Good job.”
Then he looked up. A Ghoul leapt at him. Numbtongue rolled and slashed. The Ghoul staggered as Numbtongue’s sword slashed deep into his shoulder. The [Bard] turned. He saw the Ghoul’s body tense. Something in it told him it would lunge—here. Numbtongue dodged, and the teeth snapped down inches away from his arm. He swung his sword in an arc, and the Ghoul collapsed.
“Thanks.”
Numbtongue looked down at Pyrite. Then he stood. He tried to lift the Hob, then just gave up and cut off his head.
——
He buried him with the others. There were five graves on a hill across from the inn. Numbtongue dug the sixth. He said no prayers, spoke no words when he placed the head in the ground and covered it with soil. When it was done, he looked at the markers.
Garen. Noears. Headscratcher. Shorthilt. Reiss. And Pyrite. There were others, but these were the ones he’d found. He looked out and saw Eater of Spears wandering about. No one had dared end him yet.
Graves. The dead. Liscor. And Erin. Numbtongue sat down. He laid his head back, against Headscratcher’s cairn. As he did, he noticed a small yellow flower lay on his grave and Shorthilt’s. Numbtongue looked down at it. And he saw a small white Gnoll tending flowers in his mind.
For some reason, that made him smile. He closed his eyes. As he did, he rummaged in the sack he’d taken. He pulled something out.
The blue gemstone. Numbtongue felt at it with his claws, then shrugged and put it in his mouth. He bit down, feeling the hard stone resisting his teeth. Hard, harder…
Crack.
Numbtongue opened his eyes. He blinked, took the stone out, and spat out two broken pieces of tooth.
“Ow.”
He put the gemstone back in the bag. Maybe he needed to practice. And he needed a pickaxe. Numbtongue closed his eyes again.
[Miner Class Obtained!]
[Miner Level 1!]
[Skill – Durable Picks obtained!]
The Hobgoblin opened one eye. Level 1. And he’d only thought about it. But it was enough. He didn’t need the class. He had a memory.
How to spot a vein in the mountain. Which spots contained the best gemstones. How to spot a dangerously loose shelf of rock. How to fight. How to dig up grubs.
Knowledge. Numbtongue’s hand twitched. The dirt on Pyrite’s grave blew a bit as the wind picked up. The Hobgoblin looked over at it. He closed his eyes and tried to dream again. But the dream was gone. Only the memories remained. A gift.
Numbtongue closed his eyes, covered his face, and began to cry.
6.03
The inn was too small. That was all Erin could think. She felt—tired. Not necessarily calm. Not that much better either, really. She was just out of tears. Too drained to keep crying.
But maybe a bit better. Seeing Numbtongue in Liscor had hurt with a sharp pain that had been worse than all the days of being alone with her thoughts and guilt. Worse, and still better. He had reminded her of what was important. Not what others thought, but of her friends.
Pawn. The Soldiers had stood aside to let Erin pass. They knew her. And they knew Pawn. She was glad of that. Part of Erin had been guilty for leaving him and wallowing in her own grief. But he had not been alone.
Hundreds of Workers and Soldiers, sitting around him. A quiet room with colorful symbols speaking from every wall. There was something eternal there, even more than Erin’s [Immortal Moment]. Religion—no. A sense of weight, of peace. Regret and sadness too, but there had been relief as well. From Pawn and the others.
They would not be forgotten when they were gone. And that simple fact had been enough to drive Erin to tears. But they had not been the same kind.
Now, she sat in the little room that was hers but really Lyonette and Mrsha’s old room, staring up at the ceiling. It felt closer. The inn felt smaller, and not just because the third floor was missing. It was too cramped or she was too large, as if she’d tasted the Faerie Flowers again. Her inn, the place where she’d been so happy to live for months, was far too small.
She couldn’t stay here. Not when every memory she had was of the Goblins eating in her inn for that one night, of Headscratcher sitting at her table, Shorthilt polishing his sword. And of Rags, of all the Goblins who’d passed through her doors.
No killing Goblins. Just thinking that hurt. Erin hated herself. She was disgusted, guilty, and heartbroken. But those were just words. Erin had none to describe how she truly felt.
Too small. She had to do something. Erin lay on her back as, below her, people walked in and out of her inn. She didn’t need to hear them. She didn’t need to even close her eyes. She could feel them. And she knew Numbtongue was out there, on the little hill with the graves, digging another one. That wasn’t something she just knew; Ceria stopped by to tell her that.
“Uh—we’ve got to keep fighting. But we’ll make sure Numbtongue’s alright. We’ve already told the other adventurers—they knew already, but we made sure—there’s this giant we have to take care of tonight. So…”
Erin didn’t look at her. After a while, Ceria left. Erin wished, vaguely, that she’d said something. She wasn’t being a good friend. But she couldn’t be.
Ceria hadn’t been there. She hadn’t fought. Halrac had shot arrows from the walls, or so Erin had heard. Typhenous threw a few spells. Falene had apparently broadcast everything.
So what? They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t laid down their lives for a city they didn’t even live in. Part of Erin hated everyone and everything. But that wasn’t really it either.
She was so young. Even though she was twenty and she’d be twenty-one soon. She was so young. Erin had asked the Goblins to fight for her. Die for her. And they had. She hadn’t thought of the costs. She hadn’t had any other idea than to wave a stupid flag.
She was young. And stupid. And she couldn’t do anything now. Be anything. If she were older, more mature—
“Ryoka’s mature.”
Erin whispered to herself, feeling her sore eyes wanting to close. But she kept them open, staring at the ceiling. Ryoka felt mature to her. She was always thinking of consequences. She’d warned Erin about Toren, about what would happen if people brought technology from her world. But even Ryoka was only a year older.
How did adults, real adults, handle things like this? How did they live with the pain tearing them up? Erin still remembered the first Goblin she’d killed. She still remembered when Klbkch had died. And she had lived through the death of the Horns of Hammerad, Ulrien, Brunkr, the Goblins…it was so much. So many names and faces. How did people live like this?
She was so young. And weak. And she couldn’t be. Not anymore. Erin slowly sat up and buried her face in her lap. She had to be…not stronger, but older. She could never, ever let this happen again.
Slowly, Erin thought about her inn. How small it felt. How fragile. Her walls could cave in, despite her Skills. Her inn wasn’t large enough to contain even one tribe of Goblins. And it was so poor. So defenseless. It couldn’t even save Noears on the roof.
“Never again. Ever.”
And when Erin said that, she thought of her inn. Not just as a building, but those in it. And she thought of two faces. Lyonette and Mrsha. They were part of the inn. If there were anyone Erin would trust more than anything, it would be them.
Ceria and the Horns? …No. Not them, or the Halfseekers or Griffon Hunt either. Definitely not the Silver Swords or any of the other teams. It wasn’t that Erin thought she couldn’t trust Ceria or Halrac with her life. But this was more than that.
In Erin’s head, she narrowed her focus down, separating friends from that thing that made them something more in her mind. Drassi? Ishkr? No. Olesm, no. And perhaps never again. Relc—no. Klbkch? He had died for her. But no.
Who else? Only a few more names sprung to mind. No, three. Numbtongue. He was the last one. Yes, a thousand times over. But who else? Krshia? No. Selys?
Erin paused.
“No.”
Ryoka, maybe. But she wasn’t here. And—no, not her either. That left only two.
Of the Antinium, it was Pawn and Bird whom Erin thought of. Pawn? She wanted to say yes. But she remembered him, surrounded by his people. And she thought the answer was no. He had made his own place. So…Bird?
He was a child. And before she had met him, he had nowhere else to go. Bird had always been different. He had fought for her inn, tried to rescue Mrsha. More than that, around her, he was silly and absentminded and—
Yes. Him. That made four. Four in the entire world. Even Erin’s closest friends didn’t qualify, but those four—
Erin looked up. She wiped her eyes and checked her arm. Her skin was dry. She’d stopped crying. She would again, Erin had no doubt. There was an ocean of tears in her that would never run dry. But there was something she had to do. What she should have done ages ago. A week ago, eight days. Erin stood up and went to find them.
——
Lyonette stared at her hands in the kitchen. She was making dinner. Or rather, she was going to cook up some supplementary dishes to go with the pantry’s supplies. Erin’s prefabricated meals had nearly run out, but Lyonette had learned to mix Erin’s cooking and hers. So she’d take a dish of meatloaf, boil some fresh pasta and sauce with it, and thus create an acceptable dinner.
The quality wasn’t really that important. Her guests cared about quantity over quality now. The two adventuring teams would come back late in the night, starving and smelling of sweat and corpses, and eat whatever she put in front of them while washing it all down with alcohol. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem—if it really was a problem—was Lyonette’s hands. They’d been hurting, and she’d only now stopped to look at them.
They were cracked. That was all. Red and cracked, the skin open, exposing painful red flesh that hurt every time Lyonette touched something with them. A healing potion would sort it out. But Lyonette had stopped in cleaning the kitchen to stare at them.
No one had told her that too much soapy water led to the skin drying out, especially in the winter. It wasn’t something she’d ever had to worry about at home. Back home, she’d had hand creams and ointments from the kingdom’s [Court Alchemist], and her family had imported other luxuries for her and the other members of her family to use. Perfumes, oils, tonics, and so on for the ladies. And while the men didn’t use such frivolities, they had the best healing potions, experts to take care of their horses and gear and wait on them hand and foot.
Now, Lyonette was cleaning the underside of the stone oven, her hands bleeding a bit. A bit dirty, certainly sweaty. And she’d caught herself doing it, so she’d stopped and sat on the floor.
She looked down at her chapped hands, at the red skin. It hurt. Lyonette touched one of the cracks to make sure and winced a tiny bit. It was nothing to what she’d been through. Starvation, Toren, Raskghar—all the fear and pain was nothing to this. But this hurt in a different way.
Look. Look at yourself. Lyonette found a clean plate and tried to find her reflection in it. She only saw a distorted image. What did her hair look like? She wore it high up, in a bun so it wouldn’t get in the way. Was her face dirty? How did it look?
“It doesn’t matter.”
Lyonette told herself that. But it did. Pawn had reminded her she was a [Princess]. She had clung to the class, for all she’d denied it. She was a [Princess]. Of course it mattered.
She had loved having servants. She enjoyed hand creams and not having to clean outhouses or be on her feet all the time. Who wouldn’t? She missed those things—only, she’d not thought of them for a while. She’d had to survive. And then—she’d had Mrsha to take care of. It was easy to live for someone else. But she still missed it.
The girl’s hands tightened together painfully. She was a [Princess]. What was she doing here? For a moment, Lyonette blinked back tears. She wanted to go home. But there was Mrsha and Erin and—
She looked down at her hands. She had run away to be important. To level up and feel like she had a purpose. Well, she’d found it. All the adventure she ever wanted and a purpose greater than herself. In fact, Lyonette had thrown away part of herself, the spoiled part, trod it into the mud and snow to become the Lyonette who could help the people she cared about. But that part of her was still there. And she felt it.
She wanted to be a [Princess] again. She was no [Barmaid]. Lyonette bowed her head. And then she heard Erin calling her name. She looked up and remembered her vow. Slowly, Lyonette stood. She had been a poor [Princess]. And now she was a [Princess] without a castle, living in poverty with cracked hands. But despite her failings, even when she was still in Terandria, spoiled, with barely any levels, Lyonette had still had one thing that made her royalty.
Pride. And she would not forsake her oaths. So Lyonette stood and walked out to speak with the only girl in the world she would work for.
——
Mrsha was sad.
That was all.
She was sad for Goblins. Not the same Goblins who killed her tribe, but Goblins. They had been kind. They had saved her and the others. And they had died for her. For Erin and Liscor. She didn’t have to understand more than that.
So the Gnoll cub curled up. She was sad, but she couldn’t keep crying. She was just sad. And she wished she were bigger. She wished she were as big as Brunkr, as wise as Krshia. As smart as Selys. As kind as Erin. As…just like Lyonette.
But she was small. And she couldn’t make Erin feel better. She couldn’t help Lyonette that much. So Mrsha curled up and felt terribly, terribly sad. Erin was sad. Lyonette was tired. She was sad. Numbtongue was the last one.
Mrsha wanted them to smile again. She dreamed there was a spell in Krshia’s book that could do that. So Mrsha had read it and read it until her nose started to bleed and Krshia slammed the book shut. She wanted to help. But Krshia had said it was too much for a child.
So she was sad. Until she saw Erin come down the stairs and call her name. Then Mrsha looked up. And hoped, with all the hope in her heart, that something good would happen.
That was all.
——
And Numbtongue stopped crying after a few minutes. It was, after all, a waste of water. He looked back at the thing he was resting against. Headscratcher’s grave. Guiltily, Numbtongue sat up. But if anyone would have lent him a shoulder—or a gravestone—it would have been Headscratcher.
What would he have said if he could see Numbtongue? Laugh and make a joke? Tease him?
No—Headscratcher would not. Neither would Shorthilt. Numbtongue looked at the second grave, marked by stone. Someone had laid a broken sword across the top. They should have buried him with the sword. Numbtongue scooped up some of the packed earth with the blade and corrected the mistake.
