“Not necessary,” it answered the woman, kneeling in the wet grass so that its eyes were on a level with Phin’s. It smiled even wider, showing more and more teeth.
“Mr. Phoarty,” Edgewise said in something closer to the simpering tone it had used months ago. “Please accept my sincerest apologies for your rough treatment, and for your removal from Souterm.”
Phin sputtered into his gag and heard a quick snikt! behind him, like a sword coming smoothly out of its scabbard. He had a pretty good idea of just what sword and scabbard had produced the sound, and he felt a chill. He also shut up.
“For the love of…” Edgewise’s bronze eyes flicked up over Phin’s shoulder. “Can you not put a leash on him or something?”
“Don’t look at me,” another voice said behind Phin, this one belonging to a man with a flatter accent, vaguely Exlandic. “I can’t even talk to him. Just to her.”
This started a flurry of conversation, at least three voices in as many languages. Phin waited as he had no other options until at last the goblin waved for silence and pasted the leer back on its rubbery face.
“As I was saying, I am sorry. My…friend, here, thought that you were attacking us. He only acted to defend himself against what he thought was a threat.”
Phin had not even seen a goblin with the four people who had walked past him in the rain, to whom it now seemed he probably should have called out before he had activated the magic of the scrying staff. Phin had not done so only because he had spent a thoroughly miserable night at his station getting soaked to the bone and he did not feel like blathering with any travelers if he could just wave them through. He had in no way expected the staff to blaze into life like a star. That had startled Phin as badly as it had the people in front of him. Not that he had tried to cut off anybody’s head over it.
Phin continued to glare at Edgewise mostly because there was nothing else he could do. The goblin seemed to take it as an act of hostility.
“Look, I’ve no quarrel with the Circle Wizards and this was all just an accident. I should not even have come out here but I heard the commotion and did not want it to turn into anything worse. Understand?”
Phin made an affirmative noise against the gag. He had no idea what the goblin was talking about but he did not want to seem stupid.
“Excellent,” Edgewise said, and reached behind Phin’s bowed head to undo the leather cord holding the gag. Phin spat the chewed strap on the ground in front of him and when he opened his mouth fully his jaw throbbed even worse. Two teeth felt loose when he pressed his tongue against them, but at least they were all there.
“Where have you taken me?” Phin said thickly.
By way of answer Edgewise stood and took a step to one side. Down the road behind the goblin Phin could see the great bulk of Souterm looming in the middle distance, a dense multi-colored sprawl in the gray and green world.
“We are just a few miles north,” Edgewise said. “You were only out a couple of hours.”
Phin wanted to feel the side of his head for the view out of his left eye seemed substantially occluded and that side of his face ached. His bound hands made that impossible and as he glanced down at the bindings, Phin blinked. His hands were tied at the wrists with a leather thong, palms flat against each other and with each finger bound in turn to its mate with twine. Even the thumbs. It was quite impossible to make any sort of hand gesture for even the simplest spell.
“It will be easy enough for you to get back to town,” Edgewise said, extending an arm in a soaked rain coat back toward the city. “I am sure many wagons will be back on the road before long, should you not feel up to walking.”
Phin turned his eyes back on Edgewise and something else instilled at Abverwar churned in his empty stomach.
“Why that is a right hospitable thought, you filthy Magdetchoi foulspawn!” he shouted. “When my Circle comes for you, I shall have them go half-easy on your green hide!”
The goblin’s rubbery brow bunched in a scowl and its metallic eyes hardened.
“Wizard, do not be a fool. I am the only thing keeping you alive.”
“I will mention that at your trial,” Phin sneered. His heart was racing but his voice was level, and his bruised face had returned to its stony cast of superiority.
“Goblins have no right to trial in the Empire,” Edgewise said coldly.
Phin snorted. “What was that? Are you actually fishing for sympathy from me? After assaulting me, kidnapping me, and destroying Circle property? I am supposed to feel bad about your poor, downtrodden people?” Phin’s voice had no accent from Thol left in it but his hard laugh still boomed with an echo of the high mountain country.
Edgewise’s lips curled back in a snarl.
“Sir, if I might?” a different voice said from behind Phin. Footsteps approached on the wet grass and a man came into view, not the swordsman who had attacked Phin but the other one who had been pushing the handcart. He was a rough-looking character, stoutly built and wearing a battered black jerkin with rings of mail stitched to it, a scratched helmet, and rough trousers jammed into heavy boots. He squatted and took Phin by the shoulders, helping him to a seat against a cartwheel with his bound hands in his lap. The fellow grinned in a manner Phin assumed was supposed to be friendly but the rough beard and damp sprig of coal-black hair poking from under his helmet gave his face a roguish, almost wolfish quality.
“Mr. Wizard,” the fellow said, kneeling on his haunches in front of Phin with forearms on knees. His Codian still sounded vaguely Exlandic to Phin‘s ear though the fellow looked nothing like an Exlander.
“This was all a misunderstanding, but we didn’t mean anything by it. Come now, sir. The fault was all on our side and you need never see any of us ever again. Mr. Edgewise isn’t really with us, he just happened to get caught up in events and in truth he has been more worried for you than anyone.”
“Is it from you that he is keeping me alive?” Phin demanded, sounding stronger than he felt as the man before him had a rather nasty-looking double-headed axe slung across his broad back.
The man smiled, still less than comforting. “We are not going to kill you, sir, or we would have done it while you were napping. It just happens that Mr. Edgewise is from your city, and he wants to be sure there is no trouble with you and yours. He is sorry about this, we all are, and there’s no reason in the world for it to be any more unpleasant than it already has been. What say you?”
“Unbind me.”
“Aye, I will. Then we can all go on our separate ways, not another harsh thought between us, eh? So long as we’ve your word that the whole matter ends here.”
“Unbind me.”
The man glanced away toward the others still standing behind the cart. There was some talk between two people – a gruff-voiced man and a soft-spoken woman – in a foreign tongue. When it concluded the man in front of Phin produced a knife from a boot and carefully cut free each of Phin’s fingers, and then his wrists. It took a little doing as the man’s knife was dull and the blade notched.
“Please do not do anything sudden, sir,” the man said as he finished. “Our friend with the big pig-sticker is a jumpy sort, as I’m sure you’ve discerned.”
The man put his knife away, stood and took a step back. Phin moved slowly with his back feeling as sore as his head. He pulled himself to his feet beside the handcart.
He looked across the cart and met the gaze of the grandly-armored warrior who had nearly taken his head off at the shoulders. The man, plainly a Far Westerner, glared back at him coldly and still held his fearsome blade naked at his side. He spoke sharply.