Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [27]
True to his word, Max took it upon himself to be the strong and steadfast leader of his father’s wishes and his own fanciful imagination, whose resolutely unflappable example kept panic from spreading to the troops. Max pictured himself a solid rock of calm assurance in the storm. He circulated time and again, throughout the large room, going from one cluster of people to another, imploring them to refrain from fear, and assuring them that his father and Squire Peep would come in no time to explain everything. The trouble was that Max wasn’t actually all that calm himself. His voice betrayed considerable worry, and there was a wild and unsettled look in his eyes. And since, while making his rounds, he also tried to recall and report the grim things he’d overheard in the kitchen, which were anything but reassuring, he was generally more successful at reigniting fears than at settling them.
From time to time they could hear the muted sounds of the activities outside, as the detachment of the human officers and their goblin troops — for such were the green-skinned monsters called — which had broken off from the main column and fanned out over the property, corralled animals and put them to the sword (or the axe, or club, or whatever other weapon happened to be most handy). In one truly horrifying moment they heard the pleading voices of the estate’s talking animals, begging not to be killed.
“They’ve gotten into the Talking Stable!” Hans Kruft cried. He was the chief stable master and therefore the one in charge of the so-called Talking Stable, where those magical animals with human language were lovingly housed and cared for. “Why would they kill them, too?”
“They’re all just meat on the hoof to goblins,” young Manfred said, his voice unusually bitter. “I saw a few gobs off a ship once, back when my family lived at the far seaport of Land’s End. Makes no difference to a goblin if a beast can talk or not. Into the stewpot they go. And not just talking beasts. Did you happen to see early this morning, when Big Jurgen and Tiny Jurgen were both cut down in the fields? None of us quite knew what was occurring yet and they just naturally resisted — you know how those two can get. Well, you can bet your last mark that they’ve also been stripped of their meat by now. Nothing but a few bones and red stain left of those two, because gobs take everything — the meat and guts both. Gobs will eat anything that was once alive. Even their own fallen comrades.”
“Bonny Lumpen!” Peter cried from across the room. His eyes were filling with tears building enough weight to go streaming down his face.
“Your old mule’s dead now, boy,” Manfred said. “Sliced and hanging in the gob cook’s larder, ripening for mess.”
“Manfred Jakob Walder, you must stop that kind of talk this instant!” Mrs. Peep was suddenly on her feet and as red-faced as anyone had ever seen her before. “Can’t you see you’re scaring us all over again? Think of the children!”
Manfred had his mouth open, about to say something else, but he shut it with a loud wet smack of his lips and sat down abruptly, embarrassed and beginning to turn as red as Mrs. Peep.
“Everyone should be quiet now, until Father and the squire arrive,” Max called out. It was very good advice, and might have been heeded, if Max had been older than his mere fourteen years, hadn’t been so trembling of voice, or had even a portion of the authoritative qualities he desperately imagined in himself.
“You’ve been bleating that same tune for three or more hours, boy,” another of the field hands said. His name was Wilhelm and he was a big fellow with a pudgy belly, but