The old soldier, weathered and bloody, stumbles over his fallen enemies. Even in the darkness of the overrun monastery, the goblins’ bodies are already withering. The stench of their quick decay burns his nose, and he holds his breath as he leaves the passage in which he’d once more wrested out a victory, just one more in a long line of mortal struggles that had to end.
Others possessed such a line, or had. He’d known them, learned from them, and learned, as the years stretched on and he himself joined the austere rank of old man, that his too must end as all such lines end.
He sighs. His sword feels heavy, but he has found that, without it, his arm feels wrong, unbalanced; so, he holds onto his blade, his weary eyes scanning the darkness for further attackers.
He understands the character of his enemy. Routed last week, the survivors had dispersed. The old foolishness of kings and generals still companies him. The desire to rid the world of this menace might sound good in speeches, but the surrounding, the capturing, the execution of pleading prisoners, few could stomach. And so, every few years the goblins returned, murdered, raped, and cannibalized the helpless, and the helpless turned to their kings who promised to do what they would not do and had not ever done.
Here he had tracked down just one of the myriad bands of greenies. The monks were dead and turned into stew, and children were missing from the nearby villages. The same thing that always happened, year by year.
He understands. When they grow big and strong enough off of their victims, then they attack, brave and stupid. The smaller ones, scared and stupid, hide in the shadows, waiting for your back with a knife. He wasn’t sure if he was thinking about princes or goblins now.
Stopping in his tracks, half-blind in the darkened corridor, he sniffs. Yes, there is the odor, his enemy is near. Relaxing his muscles, he listens, breathing slow and low as he waits. A sound, a scraping, a hiss—two of them, he realizes, struggling, one trying to sacrifice the other and run. His luck. Treading softly, he approaches their quarrel.
In the blackness, he can just make out their shapes, the diminutive and twisted goblin pups locked arm in arm, gasping as they struggle with one another. With one swing, he frees both their heads. The two corpses stand there for a moment, as though the bodies might keep on wrestling. After a second, though, the corpses seem to figure that further fighting is moot now that they’re dead, and, freed from their heads, they go about their own business of decay.
The smell is not so bad from the younger ones, but they sizzle loudly, and he fears moving forward when the noise of their burning flesh might mask some still stalking monster. So, he holds his nose and waits.
He is slow and methodical, and he moves through each room and hall, searching every cranny and corner for anything green. Nothing can escape; nothing, he hopes, can circle back. Empty, all empty now, save for the last place, the chapel. Separate from the rest of the monastery, the little, steepled building sits upon a small, grassy mound. Stone steps lead an arching path up to its door.
The uncut, vaguely flat stones are arrayed in a spiral pattern around the place of worship allowing the tired soldier an easy march of the perimeter before entering the unknown. But the stained glass provides little insight, and, he fears as he nears the door, only serves as a forewarning, his rising shadow alerting any occupant of his coming.
They would already know, he reminds himself.
The door is kicked in in the usual way, and the waiting goblin and the old soldier waste no time. The goblin is armed with more than the crude club of his brethren, a rusted sword stolen from some battle, and the two blades meet with a clang. The man grunts and the goblin sneers, pressing into his enemy. A stepping to the side, a twirling of the wrist, and a sword spinning and shining like a wheel of fire: the tip of the well-polished steel cuts into the greenie’s backside, and the monster howls and turns, swinging his sword dark with dried blood at the soldier’s head. The old soldier drops into a lunge, ducking under the attack and perforating the goblin’s guts.
Satisfied with this mortal blow, the many battled warrior smiles as his enemy lets forth a bellowing scream. Then he feels the motion in the other body, feels it through his sword; he sees the falling shadow, but his lunge is too deep, his legs too tired, too old. He tries to free his sword and meet the blow, but his blade is retarded by the soggy flesh of the greenie. He has only time to save his head by falling to his side.
The rusted blade hacks into his shoulder and neck, cutting past the worn leather of his pauldron and stinging his flesh. With the blow, the two fall to the floor of the chapel. The varied colors of the gospel scenes paint the two prone forms in jeweled light that blackens the flesh of the dying monster. The old soldier pays this no mind, though. He keeps his eyes open for as long as he can, marveling at the beauty of the broken spots of light.
The world is fading, and he wonders if this is truly death, the final finality. He sighs, gazing up at the lattice held image of his Lord being brought down from the cross, the limp figure wrapped in white while the blurry, blurry to his eyes, blue shape of his mother cradles her dead Son.
The sun is streaming through the colored window. Its light has already disinfected the room and burned away the corpse of the last goblin; the monster’s only remnant, the sword still wet with the blood of the dead man lying on the floor of the chapel, his old, battle scarred face a face full of peace.
Tale Told 