CHAPTER 2. WARDEN OGL'S OATH AND A SLEEPLESS NIGHT

At the end of the day, many goblins busy with the affairs of their goblinum made a point of seeing the Warden, to tell him about the work they’d done. Though the Warden never actually required this of them. He simply knew that any instruction would always be carried out, because goblins, with rare exceptions, were very responsible and obedient creatures. So this wasn’t a law, but rather a long-standing tradition.
So now, too, Mor, Vuk, and Nuk were walking toward the center of the goblinum, where the Warden’s house stood. In goblinums generally, all the important buildings were located at the center. Here were the workshops, the cellars for storing mutton, skauti, and other supplies, the woodshed, the weapons storehouse, and the pens for sheep and riding rams. Together they formed a large circle, within which lay an empty stretch of ground — the central round square.
The only one who found no place on this circular street was the Bee-master. His workshop stood at the edge of the goblinum. Long ago, the Bee-masters had tried to carry out their work alongside the other craftsmen. But nothing good had come of it, because the bees kept stinging everyone and made it impossible to work.
The rest of the goblinum’s territory was taken up by streets lined with round stone houses. All the streets led to the center. Seen from above, the square and streets would look very much like the sun, with rays spreading out from it in every direction. Perhaps such an interesting shape was simply convenient for daily life. Or perhaps it was an echo of some ancient memory, preserving the image of the sun as something longed for and unreachable, for those who back then were not yet called goblins.
Around the goblinum lay the fields where potatoes were grown, and the meadows where the sheep grazed. And all of this was surrounded by forest. The other goblinums looked exactly the same. They resembled little stone islands, scattered across a vast green sea.
“Is Warden Ogl here?” Mor asked a stout gobliness who was dozing on a bench beside the Warden’s house.
“Ah, it’s you,” she drawled, opening her eyes and looking at Mor, Vuk, and Nuk with indifference. “Yes, he’s home. Greasing the locks with ram fat. Because they squeak something awful and don’t shut properly.”
For some reason, the gobliness had a habit of answering at great length, and telling people things they hadn’t even asked about.
Without so much as moving from her seat, she immediately called out loudly for the Warden. The young goblins even flinched at the sudden shout. A noise sounded from inside the house, and a moment later a stocky goblin appeared in the doorway, with an especially large nose and rather large hands that immediately caught the eye.
The Warden had a stern look about him, made even more pronounced by a small scar near his right eye and a completely bald head. But this sternness was only skin-deep. Everyone in the goblinum knew that Ogl was fair and level-headed. That was exactly why the previous Warden had chosen him. His forbidding appearance simply helped him get his instructions across better to the other goblins.
From morning till night, Warden Ogl was busy with the affairs of the goblinum. The entire household was under his charge. Goblins, after all, owned no land of their own, nor any sheep of their own. Everything was held in common. They worked together, and then together enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
Goblins came regularly to the cellars for food. And no one took more than they needed. After all, if one ever found himself still hungry, there was always something crawling underfoot to be had. Only over the skauti did the Warden keep an especially watchful eye. Goblins loved this drink so much that one of them alone could drink enough for several.
The Warden was also responsible for defending the goblinum in case of danger. Though all the goblinums of the Bignose clan lay deep within the forest, so no serious danger threatened them, unlike the goblinums out on the edges. Though even there, trolls hadn’t shown themselves in a long time. The goblins very much wanted to believe that their enemies had already died out.
Such was how busy Warden Ogl was. He did, of course, have helpers. The gobliness Nora, who had just called him, for instance. She was the Warden’s wife.
She was seen on the bench almost every day. No one knew exactly what she did there. But their deep respect for her husband kept anyone from doubting that such a helper was truly needed. Besides, everyone could see that she did help. Sitting on the bench, Nora would call out loudly for the Warden whenever someone came looking for him.
So now, too, Ogl came out at his wife’s call and saw Mor, Vuk, and Nuk.
“Greetings, mighty slayers of beetles. How did your first working day in the field go?” the Warden asked with a good-natured smile.
“All good. The beetles are gathered and squashed. Now the potatoes can grow in peace,” Vuk answered cheerfully.
“Yes, Warden. We finished it in a single day, even though the sun was especially hot today and there wasn’t a breath of wind. But we know this work matters a great deal, because the future harvest depends on it, and that means the lives of all our goblins too,” Mor said.
The Warden nodded with satisfaction. Once again he felt certain he hadn’t been wrong to put Mor in charge.
“Was the food you took yesterday enough for you? Perhaps next time you should take bigger baskets? I know young goblins get quite ravenous while working. You didn’t go hungry today, did you?” he asked with concern.
Vuk had already opened his mouth, but Nuk beat him to it. He said the food had been plenty, and that some had even been left over at home. And that next time they’d take the same amount again. While Nuk was talking, Vuk shot his brother a displeased look, since he held a very different opinion on the matter. But Nuk didn’t notice, and went on to mention that they hadn’t even had a chance to drink their skauti yet.
“What’s left over is yours to keep. But I want to give you one more tasty reward. In honor of your first working day, so to speak. It’s corn. Our neighbors brought it recently and traded it for riding rams,” the Warden said, gesturing toward the river, beyond which lay the nearest Bignose goblinum. “It won’t be available to everyone else until tomorrow, but the three of you can enjoy it this very evening.”
“That’s wonderful! Such a treat that nothing else could possibly be needed!” Vuk exclaimed joyfully.
Mor and Nuk nodded contentedly as well. In their goblinum, everyone loved corn. But for some reason, they never grew it themselves. Probably because their neighbors grew it in abundance and regularly brought it to trade. Warden Ogl was always glad to agree to such exchanges, and afterward distributed the corn fairly among every household.
So now, too, the four of them set off together for the cellar, where Mor, Vuk, and Nuk each received three ears of corn and hurried home to try the treat.
The Warden, meanwhile, went to fetch the locks, to lock up the cellars for the night. He did this every evening. Not because his goblins were thieves, but simply for the sake of order.
Still, tonight he had one more reason.
The neighbors who had brought the corn had told him that, the evening before, they’d noticed three unfamiliar goblins near their fields. They were not Bignoses. The strangers said they were lost and were looking for the Road of the Four Clans. They were kindly offered a night’s stay in the goblinum, with an offer to set out together the next morning and guide them to the right road. But the strangers refused and left quickly.
The neighbors found this suspicious. After all, the Road of the Four Clans wasn’t hard to find at all — it ran right along the river. And so these strange travelers roused Warden Ogl’s suspicion as well. Usually, someone with nothing to hide was glad to accept an invitation into a goblinum.
That was exactly why he’d decided to grease the locks with ram fat, so that come evening, every door would shut securely.
Having dealt with the last lock, the Warden set off for home. Along the way, he thought again about the suspicious trio of goblins roaming the surrounding forests. This thought made him remember his most important secret. It was the Vow of Silence concerning the Ant Power. He knew that many Wardens had long since forgotten both it and the Scroll. But Ogl and his predecessors were different. They honored the memory of their ancestors. None of them had ever broken the Vow of Silence, and each had always faithfully passed it on to his successor.
Remembering the vow, Warden Ogl had no intention of breaking it now, either. After all, no one had attacked them.
Still, it’s probably worth taking a walk out to the anthills sometime, without drawing attention to it. Or maybe, after hundreds of years, the ants have lost their power? That would be bad for us. Because if the trolls ever attack again, we’ll be in real trouble without the Ant Power. I hope it still exists. It’s our only salvation — and, unfortunately, our curse, the Warden thought as he approached his house.
Meanwhile, Mor too was approaching his own home. He was in such a good mood that it showed on his face as a contented smile. Even the old goblin who lived across the way noticed it. And there was no telling whether he’d been watching Mor, or simply looking out his window, admiring the way darkness was swallowing the goblinum.
But Mor didn’t see this. Right now, all his thoughts were on the corn. With those thoughts still in his head, he walked into his small yard, and a moment later, into the house.
It was a round stone house, like everyone else’s, with three windows and a reed roof. Its interior could be called very modest. Then again, other goblins’ homes were just the same. Goblins, after all, weren’t terribly demanding, and could easily make do with little.
So there was nothing in the dwelling besides a wooden bunk piled with hay and a few stumps. Stumps played a very important role in goblin homes. They served all sorts of functions. One day a stump might serve as a chair, and the next as a table or a shelf. And in the homes of especially lazy goblins, it would often end up as firewood for the hearth, which was set up in the middle of the dwelling once the cold weather came. In large families, stumps could take up nearly half the house. But Mor had only two. He needed no more than that, since he lived alone.
And not because he wanted it that way. Quite the opposite — he would rather it weren’t so. But fate, or whoever governs it, had parted Mor from his father and mother when he was only just taking his first steps in this world.
On that unfortunate autumn day, his parents had gone into the forest to gather mushrooms and never came back. No one ever saw them again. Some goblins were certain they’d been attacked by wolves. Others said they might have been captured and driven off into slavery, far to the south. Tribes of people lived in those lands. They were hypocritical and cruel creatures, very fond of using slaves for labor in their settlements.
In the goblinums, it was said that for the heaviest labor, people rounded up trolls and tormented them terribly to break their will. But for other kinds of work, they rounded up goblins instead, tracking them down in the forest and carrying them off. It was also said that people kept many slaves from their own tribe as well. But whether any of this was true, no one knew for certain. So what had really happened in the forest that day, no one could say.
From then on, Mor’s grandmother took charge of raising him. She was a kind and caring gobliness, and far from foolish, besides. Perhaps it was from her, in fact, that Mor had inherited his gift for such level-headed thinking. But last summer his grandmother had died, and the young goblin was left entirely alone.
The feeling of loneliness sometimes began to weigh on him. But he never let it take him over completely, because he remembered his grandmother’s words:
“Mor, you will never be alone as long as you remember your loved ones. That invisible thread will always connect you to them.”
Her words helped him a great deal. Though he barely remembered his father and mother, and could only picture them in his imagination, he still hoped that they were out there somewhere, in this very world, still among the living. And he had no doubt that they remembered him just as he remembered them.
Even though many years had already passed, Mor firmly believed that life could not punish him so cruelly, and that someday he would once again feel the gentle warmth of his mother’s hands and the strong embrace of his father.
With these thoughts, sad and yet full of hope all at once, Mor finished off the last of his corn and looked out the window. The sun had already set completely. Mor thought about lighting a candle, since he’d still meant to drink some skauti. But he gave up the idea after all, since the invigorating drink would keep him from falling asleep for a long time. Pleased with tonight’s tasty dinner, he scratched his belly and headed for his bunk.
Mor expected that after such a hard day in the field, sleep would take hold of him quickly. For now, though, a faint noise that had appeared in his head kept it at bay. At first, the noise seemed to Mor very much like the buzzing of a mosquito. He even waved his hand around his head, remembering today’s vampire flies. The noise didn’t go away — if anything, it grew louder.
A moment later the noise stopped abruptly, and Mor, without meaning to, found himself carried back in his mind to that morning on the potato field. He realized now that the noise had been a memory, working its way through his other thoughts, and now finally making itself known.
What was so unusual about it, exactly? Mor asked himself, forcing his memory to finally give him an answer to the riddle.
The field, hidden under green bushes, the meadow, and the forest all around it. Today it had been completely still and silent. After all, there hadn’t been the faintest breath of wind to help the trees stir their branches, or even just their leaves, to stretch themselves a little. Except, that is, for that one tree — one of the two tall ones.
Wait! That’s it — there’s the answer!
Now Mor remembered noticing the tree that had, for some reason, taken it into its head to break the general stillness and stir its branches. It hadn’t lasted long, and it had looked unnatural. But the branches really had moved for a little while. He hadn’t imagined it. Now he was completely certain of that.
This was what had been troubling him all day, and what was keeping him from sleep now.
But what could have made them move? Trees can’t just wave their branches on a whim, the way we wave our hands. Or are there some kind of magical trees in our forest that can?
Agitated, Mor kept asking himself this question, over and over.
Maybe it was birds, playing and hopping from branch to branch? Just as we were walking home, we saw two of them. But to disturb a tree that mighty, the birds would have to be the size of a goblin, and those were small. And still, someone was definitely climbing that tree. And whoever it was must have been large, since the branches sagged under their weight — that’s what I noticed.
I know of only three kinds of creatures like that: goblins, trolls, and people. Though trolls don’t count. They haven’t been seen in these parts for a long time. Besides, not every tree could bear the weight of one of those giants.
But people… Could it be the very ones who steal goblins and drag them off into slavery? And today it just didn’t work out for them, because there were too many of us.
Poor Mor badly wanted to believe that this was exactly what had happened to his parents. He understood that a slave’s life was no enviable thing. But it gave him at least some hope that they were still alive.
And what if it was a goblin? Then why would he have been watching us? He wouldn’t have climbed that tree for no reason. Maybe someone meant to steal our harvest? That seems unlikely. The harvest hasn’t even grown in yet. And goblins aren’t thieves. At least, I’ve never heard of any. This is all very strange.
Mor had more questions than answers.
With thoughts like these, he watched the dawn arrive, and only then realized he hadn’t slept at all that night.
Maybe it’s all much simpler than that, and it was just some forest animal climbing that tree — one I simply haven’t heard of yet? After all, I’ve barely been anywhere. So I can’t know everything about what’s out there.
Mor comforted himself, hoping to get at least a couple hours of sleep. And it worked. The moment he pushed away his thoughts of goblins, people, and trolls climbing trees, sleep took hold of him at once, pulling him down into long-awaited oblivion.