Chapter 7: Three People, No Common Word
The High Goblin tried to follow the smaller footprints on a leg that had stopped agreeing to carry him.
He managed four steps.
On the fifth, his knee folded.
Hrk.
Mataon caught the back of his coat before his face reached the sand. The fugitive twisted immediately, stone knife coming up between them.
Mataon let go and raised both hands.
"Excellent," he said. "Our first shared phrase is still attempted stabbing."
Barni planted himself beside the small footprint and growled west.
The message needed no translation. Someone was ahead. Something might be behind. Standing in open sand arguing about which mattered more was a poor compromise.
Mataon pointed at the bandage. Then at a dark overhang past the gully. Then he put two fingers against his own eyes, pointed back along their trail, and held up one flat palm.
Watch. Shelter. Stop.
The fugitive pointed west. At the second prisoner.
Then struck his own chest twice and tried to stand.
His leg failed faster this time.
Mataon looked at the fresh blood darkening the packed cloth.
"No."
The word meant nothing. The tone did. The High Goblin’s ears flattened.
"Do not turn this into a contest," Almina said.
"I am trying to prevent him from winning."
"Winning what?" Zahr asked.
"The right to collapse further from cover."
Barni barked once.
The fugitive looked at all three of them as if the world had grown a new and deeply irritating species around him.
Mataon pointed at the overhang again. Then he put the spear on the ground.
The High Goblin watched the weapon go down.
Mataon stepped away from it and pointed at the stone knife.
For a few seconds the only sound was water sliding over sand.
Shhhk. Shhhk.
The fugitive’s grip tightened.
And Mataon understood the refusal, because it was correct. He had just asked an injured escaped prisoner to give up the only object still under his control, while his own weapon lay within reach.
The request had been practical. It had not been equal.
He pushed the spear further away with his boot and sat down beside it.
The High Goblin considered him. Then Barni. Then the overhang. Then the trail west.
Finally he lowered the knife.
Not surrendered. Lowered.
It was enough.
The overhang was sixty meters off, hidden under roots that had grown across a shelf of black stone.
Barni checked it first, tail low.
Scrt. Scrt.
A moment later his head reappeared. He sneezed, looked personally offended by the smell, and went back in.
"Approved by the local housing authority."
"The local housing authority has fleas," Almina said.
"That explains the inspection fee."
It was shallow, dry at the back, and narrow enough that anything the size of the Stalker would struggle to get in fast. Two ways out. The open front, and a root crack behind the stone shelf, too small for Mataon’s shoulders and exactly right for Barni.
One exit for people. One for the official.
Mataon set three stones on the ground.
He pointed at himself and touched the first. At Barni and the second. At the High Goblin and the third.
"You have founded a council," Zahr said quietly.
"I have founded three stones."
Barni sat on his.
"The opposition has occupied a seat."
Almina made a sound that was either a sigh or a short prayer for patience.
Mataon moved his own stone toward the entrance, pointed to his eyes, and traced a slow circle through the three positions. Watch rotation.
The High Goblin frowned.
Mataon repeated it. Himself, then Barni, then the fugitive.
The knife tapped the third stone.
Tik.
Then the High Goblin pushed Mataon’s stone out of the circle entirely and pointed west.
Mataon was not on the watch rotation. Mataon was supposed to go.
"An ambitious first amendment."
The fugitive pointed at Mataon’s two working legs. Then at his own wound.
That was harder to argue with.
Mataon put his stone back, pointed at himself, then west. He set Barni’s stone at the entrance and the goblin’s at the rear.
Barni moved his own stone back beside Mataon’s.
Mataon looked at him. "You object to being left behind?"
Barni showed one small tooth.
"Motion carried."
The plan was still useless, because the fugitive could not follow anyone until the wound was clean, and Mataon had no antiseptic, no needle, and no wish to find out whether Ashvale infections came with levels.
He asked the archive a narrow question. Only what he could do with what he could see or already carried.
<---------------------------------------------------------->
[All-Knowing Worlds — Local Application]
Recommended immediate actions:
flush visible debris with clean water;
apply steady compression;
replace saturated material with the cleanest dry covering available;
reduce movement of the injured limb.
No visible plant can be confirmed as a safe antiseptic with current information.
Warning: Healing function unavailable.
<---------------------------------------------------------->
The answer was almost insultingly simple. Clean water. Pressure. Nothing exotic.
"The divine medical service has confirmed that water remains wet."
"It also stopped you applying an unknown forest poison," Almina said.
"Then its bedside manner is improving."
The gully water was no good, and boiling took fire and time he did not have. So he put his palm flat on a damp patch of mineral sand and pulled out only the water held between the grains.
<---------------------------------------------------------->
[Druid Extraction]
Target: Drinkable water
Source: Saturated mineral sand
Yield: 1 liter
Estimated Mana cost: 3
Proceed?
<---------------------------------------------------------->
Cold water gathered above his hand in a trembling sphere. He guided it into the flask and lost a thin stream through the bad seam.
"Eighty-six," he murmured, watching his mana go.
The High Goblin had backed against the stone wall.
So Mataon poured a little of it over his own reopened palm first. He wiped it with a clean strip of hide. Then he set the flask and the cloth down halfway between them and moved back.
The fugitive did not move.
Barni walked over, sniffed both, and drank one mouthful from the flask’s edge.
Then he looked at the High Goblin.
The fugitive said one short word.
Barni answered with a rough run of sounds from deep in his throat.
Mataon understood neither. The effect was immediate. The knife came down another few centimeters.
"I am beginning to suspect I am the least qualified negotiator here."
"You are the only participant attempting minutes," Zahr said.
The High Goblin took the flask.
He would not let Mataon near the wound. He cleaned it himself, jaw locked, while diluted blood ran across the stone.
Drip. Drip.
Mataon cut a wider strip of hide and demonstrated a pressure wrap on his own thigh. The fugitive watched once, took the material, and did it tighter than Mataon had.
When it was done he leaned back and closed his eyes for three breaths.
Only three.
Mataon used the pause to build the smallest administration of his life.
He set the flask beside an open hand. Water.
He struck two knuckles against stone. Danger.
Two fingers toward his eyes. Watch. One hand sweeping forward.
Move. Palm up. Stop.
The High Goblin repeated none of them.
Instead he touched his knife to the floor twice.
Tik. Tik.
The sound carried through stone better than knuckles, and could be made without lifting his head.
Mataon copied him.
Then the fugitive closed his fist for stop, instead of showing an open palm.
And Mataon understood the correction as it happened. An open hand could also mean empty, or surrender, or harmless. A closed fist could be read through leaves, and it asked nobody to trust anybody.
He replaced his own gesture with the better one.
The High Goblin watched him take the correction. Some of the tension went out of his shoulders.
Not because Mataon had taken charge.
Because he had not insisted on keeping it.
Five meanings. Three people. No common word.
It was not a language. It was enough to prevent one avoidable death, which was more than most languages managed on their first day.
Then the fugitive opened his eyes fully and pulled the chain fragment out of his coat.
He cleared a patch of damp sand with his palm.
First he drew a long rectangle. Inside it, rows of short lines. At one end, a square, and he pressed the chain into it.
A camp. Rows. A controlled enclosure.
Then a second square beyond the first, joined by a narrow line.
Mataon pointed outside, at the smaller footprints.
The High Goblin touched the second square.
Then he dragged the knife straight through the middle of the whole drawing.
Krrt.
One enclosure became two.
He pointed east, toward the smoke. Then west, along the second prisoner’s trail.
Mataon looked at the divided shape in the sand for a long moment.
The prisoner ahead of them had not escaped the same place by a different route.
The camp had been split before either of them ran.