The group had gone off to a perfectly fine bed down area and far superior spot to rest the night. Those lying squirrels. But they were still surrounded by goblins and the chieftain they first met, with his feather crown and it didn’t seem like they were going to leave with goblins only offering good directions.

  “You must join us.” He insisted.

  Nettle spoke, more awake and more careful now. “We don’t understand.”

  “It is written into law, when you stumble upon one during the burials, they too must attend the graves. All you meet of any tribe, of any people, must attend or their spirits do not yet get to rest. You must leave your supplies and come with us.”

  Bodi scowled down “Little shorty-“

  “Shut up, Bodi!” This time it was Laural who cut him off. “The chieftain is speaking.”

  Bodi glowered, suddenly. Goblins and orcs were not known to get along well. Bodi was displaying why. The disparity in size did not matter so much as the way they approached each other. Name orcs with derision for no reason.

  Nettle maintained their current status of not getting into a goblin riot. “We will join you to the burial.”

  “Is this a good idea?” hissed Krit to Nettle.

  It was low enough that the chieftain could not hear it as he left, the clacking of bracelets and rustling of feathers dampening his hearing.

  “They asked us, and in this current situation, it doesn’t hurt to comply. Take your weapons if you can.”

  “What I they steal from us?” asked Spoon.

  Even Bodi glared at him, but Nettle spoke evenly. “They can do whatever they want. It’s important that we go with the flow. When in Rome, do as Romania. Besides what will they take other than the horses and if they want rid of us, they’ll help. If not, they won’t.”

  As they spoke to one another, goblins, still singing and chanting, flowed past them with torches and wild eyes. Some cried. Others screamed. It was a strange half lit word on a dark night of no moon since the moon got hit with a hiatus. It all smelled that horrible scene of smoke and hitting things that were not wood. There were many caskets although they could not see all of them.

  Not the chieftain but a goblin woman swathed in many sheafs of woven together corn husks that flashed and whirled took them into a circle, with other swaying goblins encircling them. The woman spoke with a strange thick accent to them in their language, that almost did not sound like words.

  “Sing, sing, sing foreigners. Sing, sing, those not of our tribes. Sing for the dead!”

  None of them knew what the sounds of the burial party meant. So they made a mimicked jangled sound. Nettle muttering what sounded like a Fae prayer for the dead. Laural keened a strange synth syncless sound that anyone who’d met and elf could recognize. The death sound was familiar even to the goblins or they simply did not choose to make the strange party sing right, because no one bothered her. Although with an elf the animals might know the sound Kriti mumbled along well enough matching the pattern. Bodi beat his spear into the ground and grunted as he walked.

  Spoon somehow began to make what sounded extremely close to the words. For his efforts, they gave him a single grass necklace which he dipped his head for. The chiropractor was in sync and rhythm saying, “We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die.”

  It punctuated the night with a tiny hint of the panic they’d all begun to feel. Leaving the horses felt like leaving behind everything they’d need to not be thrown into the coffins with the dead Goblins.

  They were marching in a burial party with strangers, many, many strangers. They’d stumbled into the goblin woods and slept in the path and now here they were without any of their usual stuff. They could make a dent but against this kind of force, none of them would survive. And they all knew it. Instead, they sang and sang. A darkness stealing into burial party the song changing bit by bit.

  The march to nowhere in the dark with no one turned angrier. Hisses and chattering, a swirling, swirling, swirling forever of the dancers in huge multi-colored skirts. They cut off the main path, and the whole party flattened out further. The sound of stumbling weeping and screams grew louder. The anguish increased in intensity. These sounds punctuated with anger and a solemnness barely concealing it.

  The circle widened and was resplendent with goblin dancers in grass skirts, with gritty grubby goblins. Warriors who’d been protecting their front and back of the party, now apparently in a location where the greatest danger sat in the middle of their group. These made occasional sounds but pointed their wood knives if any of the strangers ceased making the correct sounds. And they walked under this more uncomfortable of at least forty for them in the middle of many more than that. Hundreds possibly it. With all the strangeness and changing of light nobody might ever know. But they were not foolish enough to think themselves safe.

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  The party ahead of them quieted but this was not like other stops. This item a wave of dead silence followed over the entire goblin. A silence of death, and it carried an ill wind.

  They all quieted without being told and this time the wild knife wielders were only halfway watching them. Their green faces turned lighter shades of green and a sense of restless seas and unease followed. One of the younger goblins pointed at the fringes of their group and quickly fired off a few words.

  Spoon countered in a clicking tongue.

  “What?” demanded Bodi, as he had the most hostile eyes on his face.

  “The young one said we’re the trouble. An ill omen to be removed. I told them we are in the party of burial.” Spoon explained quickly. “The older one is saying you do not kill during burial, as this is the season of winter being summer. I’m not sure I’m catching some of the extra meanings in it. Something about being against nature? My Goblin’s pretty poor.”

  A new chant broke out suddenly.

  Unbidden, Spoon translated.

  “The fires and floods. The fire and floods. Damnation. Ruin. Fires and floods.” He shook his head, translating it no further.

  Now their guards screamed this too, anger suffusing the place. The temperature of a rising riot flooded in heat. When the dancers had been going, they’d smelled the flames and the death, now it was hot spiced cloves as a drink got handed around. A drink of bitterness and pain as all the goblins took it reluctantly and taking only the barest sips. Death is a bitter cup to hold. A bitter cup to hold is life also.

  Finally, though the woman appeared in the strange semi-light.

  Spoon translated. “Fire and flood, foreigners.”

  She took Spoon’s arm and spoke in a rapid fire that Spoon clearly shook his head at. “She’s speaking too fast. I don’t understand.”

  Nettle grabbed Spoon’s arm, refusing to let him be pulled from their circle. “We stay together in this!”

  Next nearest, Kriti grabbed Nettle and the whole party of six made a single chain of hands, with Bodi and his spear at the end out of necessity.

  The woman kept pulling Spoon and the older guard pointed with his knife. She had no light and they knew not the way. This part of the forest they stumbled and clung together. The lights too dim as they were dragged through the entire party. Beyond that what could they do? Passed the bodies and then the forest fell away, opening up before them.

  Fire had swept through this area, devastating the forest in a way that seemed wholly unnatural. A brighter light ahead had been produced by the group of the goblins putting together a mass sort of creatures that might be will o’ the whisps but in a much brighter condition than typical. Three goblins held each of their giant globe, pointing them down on the place area like floodlights, and at least fifteen of these globes.

  This light dazzled their eyes, and then they saw it.

  A chasm lay before them. Parts of a few ropes were being put onto old stakes and by the ground one could see the worn path as it came around and across on the other side, one could see. There must have once been a rope bridge across the area. After the fire, the bridge, the way to their burial ground had gone.

  A huddled family of goblins sat. A woman with one child weeping for all she was worth. Screaming in between fire and floods. A wail of loss. Beside them places carefully on the ground and minded by a fulltime watcher, a pallet of cloth wrapped tightly. But next to that pale, others and others. The two sat by four pallets, and beyond them in the devastated forest and with the light there, they could see many wrapped bodies. Many little huddled groups too bereaved to do anything. And the attitude of loss whipped out the anger behind in the group. Hers was only loss and no way to get to their traditional burial grounds.

  The swaying woman let go of Spoon and went to a huddle group of both the chieftain and many other elders, big or with many times, pillars of the community.

  This time she stopped and pointed at Nettle, he should sit.

  Nettle wordlessly shook his head but this time a few goblins were angry, were full of sadness. Spoon was trying to use his limited goblin to say whatever he could to them. But it wasn’t working. Now other goblins were running over, their eyes full of tears or shedding them. The anger was right there and no chance to get out of it. They tore Spoon away from Nettle and pushed the others back, by weapon of small eating knives or sticks or whatever came to their hand, rocks or clumps of grass in their grief considered a weapon. Their eyes were on the speared orc, three dragging off the spear and suddenly he was off the ground and struggling, being taken away by the swarm.

  The others could not break free from the crush of being shoved back from the area. Spoon too struggled, unable to move forward under the crush of goblins. Only Nettle further in the front could charge over using a green shield to push them all away and covering Bodi in an eggshell. The shiny magic covered him even as they turned their attention to the new enemy. Spoon was fighting, biting, and shouting mangled goblin in-between. He even bit at the neck of a goblin on his chest, but with little effect.

  The orc was saved but they were holding and dragging away Nettle. They were dragging Nettle though. The woman leaped to her feet and in anger rushed over this time taking the foreigner. With her chittering leading the way, they all dragged him she debated things. One put a knife to Nettle’s throat, but he shouted over it.

  “Spoon, the chiasm! Tell them the chiasm!”

  Spoon shouted in goblin. Yelling whatever words he could.

  Beise the dancer woman, a goblin socked Spoon in the stomach, shutting him up.

  They decided then and grabbed Nettle chanting again the same words.

  Spoon yelled in English, “By flood and fire!” and then more words, which hopefully involved the chiasm.

  Everyone was fighting as the woman’s group suddenly tossed Nettle into the empty gorge.