On my way back to the river’s edge, I took the gully back near Sergeant Kurtz’s old position, if only just to avoid the circuses of flies that were hot and close in the day’s rising heat up where most of the dead bodies were clustered. That’s when I came upon the forgotten and forlorn Jabba. Our prisoner. The one I’d interrogated for the sergeant major.
The little goblin was just sitting there in the gully, dejected. All by himself. He hadn’t managed to get free from the zip ties and chains he’d been left in, and none of his comrades had bothered to help during the assault last night when they’d owned most of the island. Or maybe they never even saw him here in the dark. Our prisoner.
He saw me coming along the gully and watched me warily, cowering against the massive piece of deadwood in the bare rock-covered dry streambed. I could see he’d tried every which way to get himself loose. But all to no avail.
I approached cautiously.
“How come your tribe never came to get you?”
I said this first in Arabic and tried it again in Turkic. I think he understood it both ways by the twitch of his floppy ears, one of which had been nicked in some long-ago battle. The look in his beady eyes was one of mistrust. They were big and brown, and the former malevolence was all gone now. They were almost melancholy in a way. Reflective. Resigned. As though awaiting some fate and merely supposing I was here to pronounce it. Like a dog three days too long at the pound.
The grim realization of all our fates setting in. That was it. There was something almost human about seeing that in the little monster’s face.
“No fit’tah fight-fight anymore. Slave now. Sugburahshazz say… say Jabba slave now to Sugburahshazz and Howling Rock Clan. Sug say… he come back after killah-all and mark me with hot dagger. Then Jabba no more war. Jabba serve Sugburahshazz. Jabba live until big pot boiling needs eats. Then…”
His claws went wide. As if to say, That’s all she wrote, folks.
I looked at him for a long moment and tried not to think about what I’d just done because what I’d just done was done for all the right reasons, and
none of them were moral. But still, it was one of those things that had to be done. And so… I’d done it.
I’d live with it. Fine.
“I don’t think… Sugbur…”
“Sugburahshazz,” finished the little thing. “Sugburahshazz clan war chief. Biggie gobbie kind. Bigger than Nomashahazz the Crooked Nose. Big. Big. Bigga allee.”
He almost seemed proud of this. That there were big “gobbie kind” even if it was not him who was big. It gave him a momentary comfort, and I felt sorry for him. Because I don’t think those others he’d named probably ever thought of him with anything like pride. Just a guess. But I was betting it was a good one.
“I don’t think he’s coming back, Jabba.”
I looked off toward the hill. Remembered all the dead enemies we’d passed on the way down to the river. Even here, standing in the dry gully, I could smell the waves of monsters that had been cut down out there, shot through, exploded, had rained mortars upon, and otherwise been done to death by every means the desperate Rangers could think up. And then some.
Sugburahshazz and the rest of the clan were probably being used for Ranger Body Toss. If they’d made it that far.
“No coming back?” asked Jabba quietly. I shook my head. “Don’t think so.” “You leave Jabba die?”
I shook my head again.
He closed his eyes and then… exposed his neck. It was obvious that in his culture I was supposed to slit it now. Or, given the fangs of the orcs and needle-sharp teeth of the tinier goblins, they probably just tore open a jugular. That would be their preferred method of execution.
“Tell ya what, Jabba…”
He opened one big watery eye and stared at me. The neck was still bare and taut. His football-shaped head and ears tilting away from me.
“I’ll let you live,” I offered.
Jabba blinked both his eyes and shot his head around, sniffing the air.
Ears twitching. Tongue tasting.
It was at that moment I had a thought. He’s kinda like a pet dog. I was
just going to leave him and let him work out how to get free, but then I thought… maybe one act of mercy might wash away what I’d just done. What I was trying to ignore and what was circling around in the back of my mind.
And I also thought, if he’s like a dog… then maybe… just maybe… I could train him. Plus, he was a source of intel. In his own way he knew a lot more than we did about this strange new world surrounding us. He knew something about the players and enemy locations. And who knew? Enemies of “gobbies” might just be friends to Rangers.
“You make Jabba slave?” the little thing asked forlornly.
“No,” I said. “You wear the chain until I trust you. You carry gear. You help Rangers and you behave, and I’ll feed you and keep you safe from everyone. Deal?”
Jabba nodded his goofy head up and down vigorously. Then stopped as a new thought occurred to him. A new thought that caused a glimmer of mischievousness to cross his comic features. You could see the advantage he had in his mind swimming across his expressive face. You could see that what he was thinking was very important to him.
“Will Jabba have more… moon god potion? To help Ran-jers?” he whispered as though talking about something most sacred.
Every muscle in his body strained forward expectantly. As if to telegraph, Will this be the outcome?
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s some left. You do good… and you tell me everything I want to know… no lies. And there’ll be some moon god potion for Jabba.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” panted Jabba, suddenly breathless. “Jabba do anything. Anything warrior want done. Steal, kill, stab with green poison. Jabba do all tricks for soldier man. Moon god potion now for Jabba Jabba?”
I shook my head.
He’d used his own name twice, and I wondered what that meant. I was learning about goblins now. And I’d get an up-close-and-personal master class about them from this one. That had to have some value for the command team.
“No. None of those things, Jabba. Just carry and behave. No steal… or kill… or poison. No tricks. Just information. Help Rangers. And then a Coke… er, I mean… a moon god potion.”
