Crypt of the shadowking - Mark Anthony [84]
"Sure," Ferret said. "But I'll tell you one thing. If the barrow I found it by was Talembar's, he didn't have many friends when he died. It's not much to speak of."
The thief was not exaggerating. The barrow he led them to was little more than an irregular heap of dirt about six paces across and knee high at its center. "I found the coin sticking out of the dirt near the base of the mound," Ferret explained. "The barrow looks fairly eroded. I suppose the coin was washed out."
“This barrow isn't shaped like any of the others," Mari noticed. "All of the Calimshite barrows are almost perfectly round. Whoever built this mound seems to have just tossed the dirt on haphazardly, probably just enough to cover whoever fell here. I can't imagine it holds anyone who was very important."
Let's find out," Caledan said, taking the spade and sinking it deep into the soft turf covering the barrow.
He had dug down barely a foot when the spade ground against something hard. He knelt down and brushed away the dirt from the hole. He pulled out the object that had caught the spade. It was a bone, yellowed and cracked with age, gnarled and knotty-looking.
"What sort of bone is this?" Caledan asked.
"Let me see," Ferret said, taking the bone from Caledan's grip. He turned it over in his hands, studying it carefully with his beady eyes. "It's a thighbone," he said after a moment. "But it's not human." The others stared at him in amazement.
"How do you know that?" Man asked him.
"Isn't it obvious?" Ferret rasped. "Whoever this bone belonged to, he wasn't all that good at walking upright. See these small bumps here? They'd be much bigger on a human, or a halfling for that matter. And look at the shape of the knee joint. It's all wrong. No, whoever this was, he had dreadful posture. I imagine his arms dragged the ground when he walked."
"Like a goblin?" Caledan asked, and the thief nodded.
"That's a good bet. Goblins have never been very good at standing up straight. What's more, this bone has knife marks all over it"
"You mean from a battle?" Man asked.
The thief shook his head. "No, more like from a butchering. I'd say that, after he died, our friend here was the guest of honor at a big feast-and the main course as well."
Mari gagged in revulsion.
"Goblins!" Tyveris spat like a curse.
"Ferret, how did you come to have so much knowledge concerning anatomy?" Morhion asked. If Mari hadn't known better, she would have thought she saw a flicker of amusement dancing in the mage's eyes.
"A good thief needs to know how the human body is built, Morhion," Ferret explained cheerfully. "How else would you know just where to slip the dagger in when you need to kill someone quickly and silently?" The companions regarded the thief with vaguely disgusted expressions, all except for Morhion.
"Interesting," the mage mused. "Very interesting."
Caledan's spade turned up more gnarled, knobby bones and flakes of rusted metal that might have belonged to weapons of some sort. It was clear from the number of bones that there were at least a dozen individuals buried in the mound.
Finally Caledan unearthed a low-browed skull with two nubby horns and a protruding snout. Its thick jawbone was lined with sharp, yellowed teeth.
"That's a goblin, all right," Caledan said. He had seen enough of the foul, twisted creatures in his lifetime to recognize that, given a little hairy, warty flesh, this skull would suit a goblin quite well.
"You don't suppose these are some of the goblins that killed Talek Talembar?" Estah asked.
"It's possible," Caledan mused. "But even if they were, I'm at a loss for how that could help us."
"Give me the skull," Morhion said. Caledan looked at the mage questioningly, but handed over the goblin skull.
"What are you going to do with it?" Mari asked.
"I'm going to speak with it," Morhion replied.
"No offense, Morhion," Ferret said, "but I've found that you tend to have more luck interrogating subjects when they're a little, er, fresher than this. I think you're a few centuries