Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 6: The Last Gullcracker

When the last of the zombies had collapsed into a smoldering heap, Gristleburst hopped down from his tree. Smoke drifted slowly over the bodies of the dead, and a burning redpitch pine spat flaming sap into the night, but nothing else moved in the darkness.

Maybe this time he’d finally done it. Maybe this brutal, exhausting fight had been enough to free the last of the Gullcrackers from their cursed thralldom.
Grabbing a blackened stick of pine, the goblin began poking his way through the corpses. He counted five, ten, five again, ten again, five again, ten again—no, wrong, that last one was a single zombie that had exploded into pieces, not two separate bodies. So one shy of three tens.

That was all his tribe. They were all dead.

Loneliness descended upon him, its weight leavened with grim relief. They were all dead. His work was done. And now he was alone in the world.
Alone, except for–

Gristleburst circled back around to the biggest of the humans, a large male who’d fallen facedown into the scorched humus, next to his acid-spitting axe.

A moment’s examination convinced the goblin that the human wasn’t seriously injured. Just concussed and a little singed, no worse than Gristleburst had accidentally done to himself at least five-and-one times. If the goblin left him, and no scavengers came to finish him off, he’d live.

The two females were also still alive, although the yellow-striped one had been badly hurt by the zombies. Her thigh had been ripped deeply, and was bleeding hard. This one wouldn’t survive without help.

Gristleburst sat back on his haunches, sucking his teeth.

Did he want to save the human?

If the humans died, he could take their things.

On the other hand, they could hardly stop him from taking their things now, and they had, even if unwittingly, helped Gristleburst end his long and arduous quest to lay his dead tribe to rest. He had been hunting down zombies by ones and twos for too many tens-again of days to count—a long, terrifying, lonely time. Several times he’d nearly been killed, either by the undead or by one of his own misaimed bombs. If the humans hadn’t blundered into the forest and drawn the entire horde to one place, Gristleburst might well have died before finishing off his cursed kin.

Maybe that made them worth saving.

He had a few minutes to decide. Gristleburst heaved the yellow-striped female onto her back and rifled through her belongings, looking for something that would tell him whether these humans should live.

She had a golden bauble around her neck. A god-thing, but not an important one. Under her cloak, she had a leather bag that held bandages, bad fish-food, worse cheese-food, and some small glass bottles. Gristleburst opened one curiously, sniffing the contents and then plucking one of the sheets of defeated writing from his armor. Carefully, he spilled an experimental drop across the page and flipped up his blast goggles for a better view. He tracked the liquid’s viscosity, the way its color and odor changed as it was exposed to air, the swiftness and length of the fine vein-streaks it made in the paper’s weave.

As Gristleburst studied the liquid, he blinked in surprise.

This was a potion of magic. Not science, which didn’t surprise him, given that humans were primitive fools who understood nothing of science and relied on such crude and perilous occult arts as writing. Obviously he couldn’t expect such creatures to have any grasp of alchemy. No, the surprise was that any of these three should possess magic, and healing magic, at that.

Gristleburst hadn’t expected that anyone capable of magic would be defeated by zombies, even as many zombies as the Gullcracker tribe had become. Possibly—no, probably—these humans had only stolen the magic potions.

But, still, that meant they were capable of stealing magic. They might know where to get more of it.

And since he could use the yellow-striped female’s own potions to heal her, it wouldn’t cost him much to find out. He circled around the fallen human, pinched her nose, and poured the bottle’s remaining contents down her throat. As the wound in her thigh closed, and the female coughed her way back to consciousness, Gristleburst clambered back up into a tree. He didn’t want to be caught on the ground if these humans turned out to be hostile.

The yellow-striped human roused soon after he’d dosed her. She went to the other two, applying salves and bandages to their injuries. Gristleburst crouched on his branch, interested to see how they reacted to his handiwork.

“Doesn’t look like we’re going to be getting much help from the Gullcrackers,” the red-haired human said as she sat up groggily. She looked different from the other two, Gristleburst noted: her ears were pointed, and her features had a foxlike sharpness that the others didn’t.

Maybe she was from a different tribe. Or perhaps her parents had prayed to the Mother of Monsters for their child to be blessed. If so, they must not have offered a very good sacrifice, because the female’s deformities were trivial, plainly useless, and not at all intimidating.

That was good. He didn’t like dealing with Lamashtans. Not the serious ones, anyway.

“Everyone’s alive?” the male asked, even though the answer to his question was obvious. Maybe he’d been more concussed by the bombs than Gristleburst had realized. “I thought that bomb-thrower in the trees wanted to kill us.”

That was him. Ears pricked, Gristleburst leaned closer.

“Who?” the yellow-striped female asked.

“There was a goblin in the trees,” said the one with the pointed ears. “I saw him too. He hurled bombs into the fight, though it wasn’t clear who he was aiming at. But I guess he must have meant to help us, since we’re still alive and the zombies aren’t.”

“He might still be around,” said the first female, plucking at the bloodsoaked ruins of her pants leg. “Someone gave me a potion, and it wasn’t either of you two. You were still down when I got up.”

That sounded like a cue. Puffing his chest out proudly, and straightening the bits of defeated writing on his armor, Gristleburst leaped down from his branch in a shower of singed pine needles. “Yes! Gristleburst saved you!”

The humans were gratifyingly astonished. They stumbled back with wide eyes and expressions of relief and alarm. “Are you a… Gullcracker?” the red-haired female asked.
“Yes. Last of Gullcrackers. Rest are this now.” Gristleburst gestured to a heap of gore and blackened bones, mostly hidden by a drift of charred needles.

The humans looked at each other. Then, softly, the yellow-striped one said: “I’m sorry. We hoped to help. Do you know who did this, or why they attacked your people?”
Gristleburst blinked at them. Was it possible they didn’t know? Had they not yet encountered the foul ones?

Perhaps the foul ones were so afraid of humans that they hadn’t attacked the human town as they’d attacked the goblins and kobolds. If so, these three might be formidable allies.

Or maybe they were just fools who had somehow failed to see the obvious, but even fools were useful for standing in front of zombies while Gristleburst hurled bombs from behind them. Certainly he’d seen that they could do that much, at least.

“Foul ones did this,” he told them. “Foul ones and Fangsparks.”

“Foul ones?” the male echoed, confused.

“Humans who give themselves to the False-Named One. The Truth-Eater. Their faces are empty like his. They become… un-human.” Again Gristleburst was perplexed that they didn’t already know this, but then perhaps the foul ones disguised themselves when they walked among humans. They’d hidden themselves when they first came to the Gullcrackers, and to the Fangsparks as well.

“Foul ones went to the Fangsparks first. Kobolds are stupid and easily tricked,” Gristleburst added, contemptuously. “They made promises, offered poison drinks. The Fangsparks swallowed the promises and the drinks. Now they belong to the foul ones.

“Then foul ones came here. More promises, more drinks. Gullcrackers not so stupid, didn’t swallow. I put their brewings on my papers to see their truth–” Gristleburst touched the flapping, singed sheets pinned to his armor “—and told Gullcrackers what they really were.

“Foul ones didn’t like that. They don’t like when you see truth. They attacked, and turned our dead against us. Even the children. We burned many, but could not burn all the bodies in time. In the end, some fled. Most died. Only I stayed, to put the dead to rest. Now this is done.” Gristleburst paused, adjusting his goggles to hide the embarrassment of tears behind them. He’d won. The Gullcrackers were free. No use thinking about the rest of it.

“What will you do next?” the red-haired female asked.

“Don’t know.” Gristleburst had never thought about it. Surviving the zombies, and killing them, had absorbed everything the goblin had. He’d never contemplated what came after.

“We’re hunting the… foul ones… too,” the female told him. “Maybe we could join up. You could help us find them, and we could help you get some justice for what they did to your tribe.”

Gristleburst considered the possibility. He’d daydreamed about taking the fight to the Fangsparks and foul ones, but it had never been a realistic option. There were too many kobolds in the tribe, and the foul ones’ magic was too fearsome to chance on his own.

But if he wasn’t alone…

“Look,” the red-haired human told him, apparently mistaking his deliberation for reluctance. She fished around in her satchel, pulling out a string of striped ceramic gourds. “Bombs. You can have them if you help us.”

Gristleburst cocked his head at the offered bombs. He took the string from her, running his clawed fingers over the hard clay casings and examining their construction with an expert eye. He cracked one and then another neatly open, sniffing the contents of each gourd before replacing the caps and fuses.

The human’s work was a little crude, and the blasts didn’t look very powerful, but Gristleburst wanted the bombs anyway. They were made to explode in different colors, incandescent red and blue and burning gold, and some of them looked like they’d make interesting shrieks or whistles as they went off. He did like shrieks.

“Also potion,” he told them, stuffing the string of bombs into his pants. “You give potion too. Then Gristleburst will help.”

“Wonderful,” the male human said, relieved, as the yellow-striped human took out another healing potion and gave it to Gristleburst. “Where do we find these Fangsparks?”

Gristleburst shoved the potion bottle into an insulated pocket on his pack. Precious things, like potions, had to be kept well protected from his bombs. “North. Foolish to go there first, though. Fangsparks and foul ones have many poisons, many tricks. Smarter to go to the witch-pond first. Get ready there.”

“The witch-pond?”

“Where mushrooms and stinky roots grow around the old green rocks. Useful for brewings. Rocks are good too. Many magics leak into them. Very powerful.” Gristleburst mimed an explosion with his hands, to underscore the point.

“Do you mean Stone Ring Pond?” the red-haired human asked. “Where the druids are?”

Gristleburst reined in his impatience—how many times did he need to explain it?—and nodded to the humans. They couldn’t help that they were slow-witted. “Go there, make brewings, then go to Fangsparks.”

Again the humans looked at each other. Evidently they had no leader to tell them what to do, which explained why they couldn’t decide anything. Finally the red-haired one said: “All right. Stone Ring Pond, and then the Fangsparks. Where the foul ones wait.” She glanced at her companions. “Anybody want to do anything else first, or are we ready?”

“I think we’re ready,” said the other female.

The male said something too, but Gristleburst wasn’t listening anymore. He’d already begun to lope through the woods, heading for the witch-pond with allies at his back, bombs in his pants, and new hope in his heart.

Let the Fangsparks see what it was like to be the last one alive.