Chapter Thirty-Eight - A Respite

“Charlie,” Caroline said. She didn’t sound rightly pleased.

I looked up and found the woman hanging off the front of Rusty, the entire mech’s shoulder armour was lifted up and off thanks to a chain that led up and to the rails near the ceiling. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Caroline glared. “What’s wrong is that poor Rusty’s been mistreated even worse than I suspected. Poor baby has some scarring on the inside of his arm!” She flicked something down and I only-just caught it out of the air. “That could have cost him an arm if he was any less lucky.”

I eyed the thing she’d thrown. A bit of metal, small and squashed. It took turning it over this way and that to figure out that it was a bullet. “Where was this?”

“It slipped in under the plate and bounced around. Why were you getting shot at?”

“That was a lucky shot,” I said as I tossed the bullet up and caught it again. “And we were shot at my goblins. We ran into a pair of goblin mechs out on the way here.”

Caroline paused. “Goblin mechs? Pure goblin?”

“Well, one of them was,” I said. “The other was a gnomish utility mech that the goblins got their hands on.”

She swore. “Those little monsters. The things they do to proud, respectable mechs. It isn’t right.”

I nodded. No point in disagreeing with her, not when she was in a mood. It was already noon out, and the air, even in the shaded garage, felt like it was nearing boiling. Daggerwren was always a humid place, which made the already harsh warmth of mid-day worse somehow.

You couldn’t sweat, not when the air was already dense with wet.

I glanced back and up, taking in Rusty where he sat. Literally sat. Caroline had moved some blocks behind to give the mech something to rest on. She wanted him to be comfortable while she tinkered away.

She’d wasted an hour of our morning with that already.

I sighed. “How long’s it going to take?” I asked.

Caroline scoffed. “As long as it takes. You have no right to complain when you’re the one who was piloting Rusty when he got this worked up.”

“I think it’s the goblin’s fault, more than mine,” I said.

“Hmph, maybe. Did the goblins ask for you to go bothering them?”

“I didn’t go bother them, we were ambushed,” I said.

“Then you should have been paying more attention!” She reached back and tugged at a chain that ran up to a pulley. It dragged a metal box into the air that swung about as if on the end of a pendulum until she stabilized it with one hand and pulled some tool from it. Soon she was bent back over Rusty’s shoulder. “At least a day,” she replied. “Maybe two.”

I rubbed at my nose. Two days. Probably three. Caroline was awful at judging how long things took, and while I could let her work all night until she crashed from exhaustion, I actually valued her as something of a friend, and insisted that she got some sleep whenever she was working on Rusty.

“Two days will do,” I said.

“You’re lucky, you know,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Rusty here.” She patted the mech’s head. “He really cares for you.”

I didn’t feel like poking at her particular brand of eccentricity. “He’s a good mech,” I agreed. “Is there anything you need?”

“Time? Maybe some peace and quiet and some... alone time with Rusty here.”

“Right... I’m going into town. You’re nearly out of food, and I’ve got some questions that I’d like answered. I’ll see you around.”

“Sure thing! If you die, I’m keeping Rusty for myself though.”

I waved. “You do that.”

Stretching until my back popped, I took off and headed into Caroline’s home. I found Clin within, dutifully brooming away at a stack of sand that had snuck into the house. He’d done the dishes too, and it looked like he had been picking up a few things and tucking them away too.

“You’d make a great housewife,” I said.

“Thanks,” he replied. “I’ll take it as a compliment. I do prefer keeping my workplace clean. I can’t see why that shouldn’t extend to wherever I’m living.” He gestured around the kitchen and the living space beyond that.

“Don’t get too used to the place, we’ll likely be heading out soon enough. Caroline will probably be done with Rusty sometime after tomorrow.”

“That’s longer than I expected,” he said.

I shrugged a shoulder. “We got hit. Nothing too bad, but damage is damage, and we’ve been pushing Rusty hard.”

Clin nodded. “Does it mean that we’ll be here for all that time? If so, then the gnomes might catch up to us.”

“They might,” I said. “We’ll have to see. I don’t know if they’ll come this far looking for you, this is a little out of the way.”

“It wouldn’t cost them much to divert a patrol this far, if only to paste more of those awful posters around.”

That sounded reasonable enough. “I’m heading into town. There’s not enough food here for three of us.”

“There’s hardly enough for a single person,” Clin said. “Half the things in the pantry don’t look edible.”

“Hmm, then it’s probably for the best that we head out and buy more. I want to talk to the sheriff about those goblins too. Something tells me that if the gnomes had the balls to arm up one little band of the green-skinned bastards, they didn’t stop themselves from arming another.”

“I’ve been thinking on that, ever since you gave me the wonderful task of digging for goblin cores.”

I turned towards the door. “Want to come with? You can tell me about your fantastic thoughts while we walk.”

Clin seemed to consider it for a moment before he grabbed his coat and hat from a set of pegs near the door and followed me out. He’d come from his own volition, which meant that if he was caught by some gnomes, it was on him.

“The things that the goblins had. They were older items, correct? Out-dated equipment?”

“Some weren't that old,” I said as I stepped out of the garage and into the full light of day. I reached into a pocket and tugged out a bandanna. No need for a full mask within the walls, but it wouldn’t do to not cover up a little. That, and it helped keep our identities a little safer.

“If it wasn’t old.... Why would they be giving new military equipment to the goblins?”

“Oh, it wasn’t military. None of it was. The ammo crates being the exception.”

“Ah, I see. So civilian equipment then.” The elf rubbed at his chin, noticed my bandana, then pulled out a piece of cloth and tied it up over his nose. “Probably less expensive to give away. The way the gnomes operate, it wouldn’t be hard for them to confiscate that kind of equipment from a citizen that’s in poor standing.”

“How much do you think they could get away with giving to the goblins?” I asked.

Clin adjusted his hat, then raised it to tuck his ears into it. It didn’t take too much to hide them from anyone looking, but I didn’t mention it. “The gnomes likely don’t see the goblins as much of a threat.”

“They’re a pest to anyone in the wastes,” I said.

“But the gnomes aren’t in the wastes. They’re usually in their mountains, and they have constant patrols of their roads and passes. I doubt many goblin tribes have found any success installing themselves in the Shadow Heights.”

“So, they wouldn’t see anything wrong in using the goblins to their own ends?”

“Likely not. At least, not if the general population learns of it. As far as they’re concerned... and this extends to the elves as well, goblins are little more than uncivilized children. A lot of people believe that they can be taught.”

I snorted.

“You laugh, but there have been factories where a good number of the workers were goblins. They can be industrious.”

“Sure,” I said. We reached the wall that circled around Caroline’s yard, right where a pair of doors were set into the wall. I tugged one open and peeked on the other side to find a lonely street. Homes on either side, but no one out and about.

Clin moved in ahead of me, and I followed behind him, pulling the gate closed as we left.

We were in the nicer quarters of Daggerwren, about three bends in the road away from the town centre where the markets and all the important buildings were located. Still, nice or not, it was all relative. Nice for Daggerwren wasn’t nice for most other places.

I kept my fingers loose, ready to reach for my revolver. Clin, didn’t seem to know that he was in any danger, but he often seemed clueless about that sort of thing. “Keep your eyes open,” I warned. “There are worse than pickpockets here.”

The elf jumped a little, then eyed the street for trouble.

“Where are we heading first?”

“Sheriff's office. Then we’ll grab some goods for lunch.” There was a twist in my gut. Something telling me that I ought to be hurrying up.

I hated that feeling. It always comes right before things take a turn for the awful.

***