Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [146]
Zeth's thin fingers reached into the air. "Are we human now?" he called out. "Can we do only things that humans do? Do we remember anything at all that our gods taught us? Has the sun burned it out of us, the memory of where we came from?" He then shouted, his face twisted with rage. "Do you want those riders who come here tomorrow to laugh at our night's work? Do you want them to ride here and see this and say, 'Looks like humans' work, bandits maybe, just nasty old humans, good thing they weren't goblins.'?"
The half-human raised a hand to the black heavens. "My father was a human! He cursed me with his taint! My eyes were not red like yours-they were blue! Blue, like a human's! Blue like the day sky! Where are my eyes now?"
He suddenly pointed at one goblin in the crowd, his white finger like a sword. "You! Tell me! Where are my eyes now?"
The goblin's lips trembled as he mouthed a word silently.
Zeth's face came alive with fury. "Tell me, dog, or may the gods burn you where you stand!"
"Your eyes are gone!" screamed the goblin. He fell to his knees. "They are gone!"
"Yes!" Zeth shouted at once. "They are gone! My eyes were human, and my grandfather gave them back! My grandfather gave back my eyes! These holes in my face are a thousand times better than the taint of my blue eyes! What my father was, his human taint, was cut out of me! I am more goblin now than are you, because my soul is free! My soul is clean, yet yours writhe with the taint of humanity! The proof is among you, there-the farmers you have taken prisoner! You've treated them as humans would treat prisoners! They beg you for mercy, mistaking you for humans! How far have we fallen for them to think we, the children of maggots in the flesh of the dead earth, are capable of mercy?"
The silence was absolute save for the crackling of fire. Zeth trembled all over as if in the last stages of a fever.
His face turned up, looking over the heads of us all. "I feel their eyes upon us. Can you feel it? Can you feel their eyes looking down upon us? In another moment, they will turn away, and we will be lost. Our people will be lost. Our Nightbelow will be lost. All that we once were will be gone. Will you show them, our very gods, that you remember that you are not human?"
He looked down. His hand swept in the direction of the prisoners. "Prove it now!" he said. "Let the gods see what I cannot."
No one moved. Then one of the warriors silently pulled his long knife, turned, and lunged for the prisoners, seizing one by her hair. He dragged her screaming from the group. Warriors clubbed down two halflings who tried to pull the prisoner back.
The goblin with the knife snarled his left hand in the little halfling's hair and yanked her head back. Her hands tried to ward off the blows as his knife came down once, twice, again and again and again and again, until her hands flopped down into the dust of the road.
The other prisoners screamed with each blow. Abruptly flinging his dagger aside, the warrior seized the body, lifted it over his head as its limbs swung limp, and hurled it into the mass of prisoners, splashing them with gore.
The halflings screamed anew, but it was a sound I had never heard before from the throat of any being. It was mindless with terror, a sound like that made by animals in a slaughtering pen. In that moment, something old inside me awoke and hungered for the taste of blood. I became a wolf in a pack that had seen its prey go down, prey that could not get up and escape, hot prey that would be salty and wet in my mouth. I stepped forward as the rest of the warriors surged in on the wailing prisoners.
But the step was all I took. I held back, not knowing why, as the warriors who had been mine gave in to their hunger and tried to sate it.
Blood-mad goblins murdered prisoner after prisoner in hideous fashion. Onlookers shook their spears