Tad awoke with a start. He pitched forward, bracing against a fall from several hours before.  Flailing, his left hand struck truck bed’s wall of wooden slats and dropped the Wraith’s Edge.  It clattered on the bed’s floor.  The boy flexed his right hand, where a slimy coating made it feel numb to the child dawn air coursing over his naked body.

Glum fell onto the boy as he threw a blanket over him.  “Oh Tad, Tad, it’s so wonderful,” he sobbed while squeezing the young goblin tight.  “You’re back.  You’re safe and alive.  We’re all alive. We’re all alive thanks to you.”  He cupped the back of the boy’s head and touched their noses together. “Don’t ever do that again! Never again!”

There was no raging Dread Lord about.  Not only were they not in the keep, but were rolling down a road in one of the Service Corps’ trucks.  Ayara leaned against the far wall.  She rolled the Eggfinity about in her gloved hands, watching Tad and Glum with a bemused smile on her face.  

“What happened,” Tad asked aloud.  He rubbed the grease away on the blanket, bunching it in his right hand.

“You did good,” Glum whispered several times.  He let the boy go and plopped himself on the truck bed.

Stretching her languid body across the bed, Ayara retrieved the dagger.  She threw it and the Eggfinity into a coarse burlap sack and cinched it shut.  She handed him the bundle, tilting her head to the side as she did.  Looking where the elf indicated, Tad saw Gohta and Yurzan seated against the wall opposite him. Keg and Greybrow, huddled together in the corner, were snoozing among a pile of weapons.   Bigrummar walked alongside the truck with his head hung low.  When their eyes met the troll flashed him a faint smile.  He no longer wore that golden feather about his chest and seemed somehow lesser for it.

Leaning against truck cabin was Lt. Chrincha.  He kept watch of the goblins inside. “Just keep driving,” the elf grumbled whenever one of them poked their head out the window to glimpse the Keep. In the middle of the truck bed, working a concoction set on a stack of leaves which fizzled and emitted a stream of white smoke.

 “It keeps us hidden!” Henri told the boy while sweeping his arms across the plume.

At the end truck bed, their feet hanging over the edge, were Toran and Bonnelle.   They stared down the road at the Keep.  A red mist encompassed the building and stretched skyward, where it splashed against the clouds.  Toran was hunched over with the dwarf rubbing his back.

“Where’s Hohza?”  The only response was everyone’s forlorn stares and Toran’s weeping in the distance.  Tad took the burlap bag from Ayara and hid it under the blanket, which he clutched to his chest.

“Don’t,” Ayara whispered.  She pinched at the blanket to hold Tad, but let it slip between her fingers as he wandered away.

The elf and the dwarf were talking with hushed tones and long faces.  It reminded Tad of the way Glum became distant if someone mentioned a former colleague now enjoying their Eternal Shift.  Tad plopped himself on the other side of the elf.  They others were silent.  “Hohza,” Tad finally asked.

The doctor pointed at the Keep.  “That light is called the Dread Pyre.  It’s the energy released when a wraith is killed.”

Tad’s eyes widened. “Hohza did it?”

Nodding his head, Toran opened his mouth as if the speak, but then shook his head.

“Thanks to your help, Tad,” Bonnelle said.  Like Tad, she was swathed in a dark blanket with scraps of her golden dress peeking out from under the rough cloth.  “Were you and the War Master close?”

Tad shook his head.  “I’d only just joined his War Party.  He seemed different from the other orcs.” Tad shrugged. “Nicer. Smarter. Even heroic,” he answered.  A broad smile crept across his face, urged on by vigorous nodding.  “I’ll miss him. But I’m glad he got to do something I know he’d wanted to do for a long time. Something everyone said was impossible.”

“It is something to celebrate.  Although Withering Sorrows was a dear friend as well. We often talked about the burden they felt over their heritage as a wraith.  I wish they’d learned to free themselves from it.  I wish they’d left Hohza with a chance.” His voice broke. He choked and touched his hands to his throat. After some snuffling cries, Ayara crawled across the truck bed and held her uncle.  “My son,” Toran whimpered repeatedly.

After muttering apologies to the doctor Tad returned to his boss.   “What happens now, boss?”

“I don’t think I’m your boss anymore,” Glum answered.

Tad stared at his boss, lip trembling.

Glum patted the boy’s head.  “You never read those manuals fully, did you? Killing a Dread Lord is an instant promotion to Chief Managing Director!”

A laugh started in Tad’s heart but was choked by sorrow on the way out.  He leaned into Glum’s shoulder, half crying and half laughing.  They’d lived but been robbed of a home.  Forget returning to the Machines Works! The goblins known for assassinating a Dread Lord would find no safety in the Land of Darkness.  “I’m so sorry, Glum.  I just wanted to keep you from being hurt! What can we do now? I’m sorry,” Tad burbled.

Mussing the boy’s hair, Glum waited for him to calm. “Whatever comes next, I’ll be here with you, I promise,” his voice was smooth, like a machine working without a hitch.

Bonnelle strutted past the goblins on her way to Lt. Chrincha.  She and the militant elf began some whispered negotiation.  Ayara, with Kornin’s arms draped across her shoulder, watched them for a moment.  Then she unwound his hold and crouched before Tad. 

“They’re negotiating the terms of my uncle’s cooperation with Yendell.  He’s adamant that you be allowed residence there. Just outside of Yendell, actually, in a place called the Rockpile.”

“A pile of rocks sounds like the furthest one can be from a Machines Works,” Glum groused.

Doubt flashed across Tad’s face, wringing his lips into a tight frown.

Rolling on her feet, Ayara leaned closer to the boy.  Her lips to his ear, she whispered “are you scared,” in a way that surprised him; soothing, rather than accusing.  Showing fear was to be feared in the Land of Darkness.

“A little,” Tad eked out the words, nodding as he did.  The scarf over her head brushed against his cheek.  Te material was light, but scratchy.

“That’s normal.  I was scared when I had to leave Yendell when I was young. I’ll help you through it.”  She mussed his hear as she pulled back.  They nodded to one another and then she returned to Kornin.  Tad traced their gaze to the last, fading light of the receding moon.

Tad and Glum stayed slumped against each other.  The rolling of the treads beneath, crushing dirt and stone along the road, lulled the boy to sleep despite the sun blooming to the west.  Just before he dreamed, it occurred to Tad that maybe he didn’t want to hear tales of Ottis the Odd Goblin being a hero that battled hordes of orcs.  He just wanted to hear of Ottis, after all his misadventures, getting to be a good boss to a kid goblin.