The Hob's Bargain

Without the humor, his face was cold and frightening. Even though I'd seen what he'd done to the grim and to five… no, six raiders yesterday, I'd forgotten he was dangerous. The smile had only to leave his face and I could see the hob was a predator. I hoped he never considered me prey.

I decided it would be best to change the subject. "With those fangs," I said casually, "I'm surprised you eat oatcakes." Yeah, I thought sarcastically, that was a good subject change.

But it actually seemed to be one, because the hob grinned and said, "Oatcakes are good, but I do like a few hillgrims or a deer now and again. Trolls, though, are poor eating. No matter how well you clean them, they still taste like the north end of a southbound horse."

I laughed. This time, when his face sobered, it didn't scare me. I think it was because there was no coldness in his expression.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Ask me what you like, but I find that I don't remember a lot of personal things. It's… disconcerting. Some things are as clear as yesterday, but anything I cared about might as well not have happened. I suppose that's the mountain's doing. She has only me left."

He didn't seem to be finished, so I waited.

"We hobs tend to be a gregarious people," he said finally, after wiping his hands on the grass with rather more attention than such an action deserved. "I think she took my memories so I would live."

I thought about what I'd feel if someone took my memories from me. Took all the pain and guilt, leaving me free of it all—and marveled he still stayed near the mountain.

"Perhaps it's just the effect of the passage of time," I offered. "It has been a very long time."

He nodded his head politely.

"How is it that you survived, when no one else did?"

"There may be more hobs, elsewhere," he said. There was a wistful tone to his voice: as much as he wanted to, he didn't believe there were any more.

He ran his fingers up and down his staff. "I can remember a little. There was a battle with… something." He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "I think it was an army of humans. Many of us were killed, and I was hurt badly. My people took me to a cave we used when our own magic wasn't enough, a place where the mountain mends her children. I was there when the death-mages did their work. I was the only one that the mountain could save." His nimble fingers fiddled with one of the feathers on the chain in his ear, and he abruptly changed the subject. "You said that you were attacked this morning. By what?"

I launched into a description of the things that had come boiling out of the baker's basement, though I was thinking about his relationship with the mountain. Did it serve him or did he serve it? When I handed him the stone ax, he took it and tested it on a hair he plucked from his head. Laid on the edge, the hair split neatly in two.

"Turned to earth, eh?" he asked thoughtfully. "How did the village celebration of the spring equinox go?"

"Equinox?" I stumbled over the word.

He raised an eyebrow. "The coming of spring."

I frowned. "We celebrate the harvest, but the spring is planting season."

"Ah," he said. "Do you have a winter celebration? In my day, folk—even humans—celebrated the changing seasons: spring, summer, winter, and autumn."

"No," I said. "At least nothing devoted specifically to the seasons. What does that have to do with anything?"

He grunted. "It might have nothing to do with it at all—or not. Let me think on it."

A butterfly flew by and landed on a wildflower near the wall of the manor. I watched it for a bit, rolling his answer this way and that. He said I could ask anything. "Why are you agreeing to help us? I mean, I know that we need help—yours, someone's. You seem anxious that we know how much you can help us. Why do you need us?"

An emotion crossed his face too fast for me to tell exactly what it was. He dug into the grass with his staff. "Because the mountain says I do. What is it that they do for you?"

Startled at his question, it took me a moment to reply. "What do you mean?"

He pursed his lips, looking at the place where his staff had dug through the grass into the dirt. "What do they do for you? The old man cares, perhaps, but it seems to me that he looks to you for aid in saving his village rather than having any true affection. The one-armed one, Kith, yes. But soon, I think, the singer will destroy him if he doesn't do it himself first. Maybe the big man with the beard cares. How long do you suppose the zealots, the ones who hate anything that hints of magic, will let you live?"

"Spying?" I asked angrily, raising my chin.

He said nothing.

It was my turn to look away. What he said hurt me, but I couldn't afford to forget that they needed him. And I needed them.