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Caleb doesn’t realize anything is wrong, at first. He’s too deep in the book he lifted from a merchant’s cart in the last town they passed through. It’s a rare enough pleasure, a book he hasn’t read, a corner by the tavern fireplace where nobody has seen fit to bother him for hours.
For hours, his brain supplies distantly at some point, and something about that should bother him, but he is too busy to care about discerning what it is. It’s not until he’s turned the last page and tucked the book away in his coat pocket that he realizes he is stiff and hungry and that his glass is long since emptied. The sky outside the tavern’s windows is growing dark with early evening, and he stands and stretches the kink from his back while Frumpkin winds around his ankles, complaining.
The tavern is not busy, a trio of travelers and a few of the local farmers the only ones there now that it’s past suppertime. Caleb scans the room once, then a second time, but he doesn’t see Nott. Unsurprising, he can hardly expect her to sit silent and still every time he finds himself absorbed in something, but usually when she goes roving on her own she comes back to nag him into eating something at mealtimes.
Caleb doesn’t get uneasy about it until he checks the single dingy room at the back of the tavern, the one he and Nott rented for the night. Nothing, no sign of her. He backtracks into the common room, slinks around eavesdropping with no particular stealth on the other patrons. He does not hear anything worth being alarmed over.
“I beg your pardon,” He asks the barkeep, lifting Frumpkin to his shoulders so he can bury his fingers in warm, comforting, calming fur, “But my little companion, have you seen her about?”
The woman frowns and shakes her head. “Went out about midmorning, I think. Not been back since.”
Caleb throws a cursory thanks over his shoulder, already halfway out the door.
The town is small, the few shops already shuttered at this hour, but he backtracks down the main street just in case, peers into the general store’s windows, checks the door of the tailor’s shop. Fighting a sensation he refuses to call panic, because he is sure that Nott is . . . Nott is . . .
His foot catches an object and sends it skittering over the rutted road. A dented flask, one he knows too well. Caleb bends down and picks it up, feeling his stomach clench. Nott is gone, and she didn’t go willingly.
He moves away from the main street, leans up against the sides of houses and strains his ears, peers into every dark corner. Nothing. Nothing.
Until finally in passing he hears, through the cracked glass in a kitchen window, a word that can only be goblin, and he drops to the dirt without even thinking about it twice and closes his eyes and pushes himself out into Frumpkin, whose hearing is better than his own.
The cat leaps to the windowsill, hunkers down, and Caleb-in-Frumpkin hears caught this afternoon and more dangerous these days and took it out of town to kill it.
Save the law the trouble.
Old forester’s --
Caleb’s eyes snap open and he is running as soon as he’s on his feet, scared and desperate and angry, leaving Frumpkin to follow him when he will.
Caleb know the place, he thinks he does, because the two of them passed it on the way into town through the woods this morning. His heart hammers, he isn’t built for this kind of exertion, but he has no time, he ran out of time hours ago and didn’t even know it, and how many hours ago did they take her, how many hours have they had her, nobody knows better than he does what can be done to a person in the span of ten minutes, let alone an hour, let alone hours and hours and hours . . .
The forest is thick and it’s getting dark but Caleb doesn’t let that stop him, though he wishes not for the first time he had Frumpkin’s eyes, or Nott’s, with their ability to catch light where his can’t. If he steps wrong, if he stumbles or takes the wrong turning, it will waste time that he -- that Nott -- doesn’t have.
If he hasn’t already wasted too much. If he isn’t already too late.
What he finally sees is the glow of a fire, unmistakable among the trees, and he forces himself to slow his steps, to catch his breath. He creeps up on the clearing and crouches beyond the circle of firelight, peering through the branches of a pine.
There's three of them, ragged stupid-looking men sitting around the fire in front of the ramshackle hut, drinking and congratulating themselves. Caleb feels something bubble up within him, hot and furious, as one of them raises Nott's mask and holds it mockingly up to his own face.
These men are not bandits, not soldiers, they are common village bullies slightly drunk on small beer and their own cruelty, and they live just long enough to be afraid before the magic courses through them and leaves their corpses in the dirt. Caleb doesn't even give himself time to panic about it, he just barges across the clearing and through the door of the hut, Frumpkin at his heels.
Nott is lying in a huddled heap in the corner, bound hand and foot, and there is a dingy burlap sack over her head tied with cord drawn too tight around her neck. Were it not for the sound he'd be sure they had strangled her and thrown the corpse in the corner.
But the sound is there; wet, ragged inhalations and badly-stifled, pained whines on the exhales. She sounds hurt and she sounds terrified, and it only gets worse when he steps into the room and his boots make noise against the cracked stone floor.
Nott hunches violently into herself, shaking her hooded head back and forth with panicky, desperate motions. "No," She tries to scrabble back against the wall, to find shelter that isn't here to find. "Please no more, if you let me go I'll go away and you'll, you'll never see me again, only please, no more --"
"Shhhh, hush." Caleb is across the tiny room in no time, on his knees at her side, and his fingers work at the knot holding the hood in place. "You are safe, Nott, it's only me."
"Caleb." Utter relief in her voice. The knot comes loose and he lifts her up, yanks the bloodied burlap away so he can see the damage by the light from the open door.
Her face is a bloody, battered mess; one eye is full of blood and her right ear is torn, the hoop she usually wears ripped away. Her teeth have cut her mouth with every blow, or at least Caleb hopes that's the only source of the blood that's run down her lips and chin. There's a series of long, shallow slashes marring the skin from her hairline down her forehead, across one cheek and over the bridge of her nose. The cuts were made deliberately and slowly, judging from how they missed -- just barely -- her eyes.
Nott stares at him for a moment, shaking, and then she leans forward and buries her face in his chest without speaking, choking on a sob. Caleb raises a hand on instinct and sinks his fingers into her hair, cradling the back of her head, letting himself finally feel some measure of relief. They've taken her cloak and her mask, stripped off the wrappings that concealed her face and ears -- that might be what happened to the earring, he reflects dully -- and she is strange like this, exposed.
He lets her cry raggedly into his shirt until her voice resolves itself into hoarse words. "Are they dead?" She doesn't raise her head.
"All of them, yes." Caleb moves his free hand to work at the tangle of wire they've used to bind her wrists. They've broken two -- no, three -- of her fingers. The work was disorganized, sloppy. Just stupid men causing pain in whatever way next caught their fancy. If he'd been faster he might have spared her the worst of it. If he’d been paying attention it might not have happened at all.
"Good," Nott says viciously, as the binding comes loose and her arms fall forward. She raises her undamaged hand and grabs a loose fistful of his coat. "Good. Thank you."
"Nichts zu danken." Caleb frees her feet and lifts her like a child, and she lets him. Her blood makes a wet, sticky patch in his only shirt, but oh well. He's been bloody before.
He carries her out of the hut and settles her against a tree near the fire, ignoring what remains of her torturers. Frumpkin rubs his side against Nott's arm and Caleb delves into the pocket of his coat and hands her the flask. Nott clutches it like the contents are priceless.
Caleb shrugs out of his coat and drapes it over Nott, ignoring her shocked noise, and then he goes to retrieve her mask and to rummage in the pockets of the nearest corpse. They’re going to need money, money for a healing potion, money for new bandages, money for a different place to stay in a different town.
There’s not much to be salvaged; the bodies give up a handful of mixed copper and silver, a ring that might be worth something, a knife of good enough make to be pawned. He hides that in his waistband, under his shirt, thinking about the cuts on Nott’s face. The dead men's bags are discarded against the wall of the hut, and Caleb rifles through them ruthlessly, discards most of what’s in them. There’s a water skin and a ragged shirt that will do for bandages in one, a little hardtack and salted meat in another. He takes the sturdiest bag and fills it with what he’s managed to find, slings it over his shoulder before he goes back to Nott.
Nott hasn’t moved except to unscrew her flask, and she drinks from it occasionally while she stares into the dying fire. She’s trembling, probably in shock, and Caleb wishes he was the kind of person who would know how to do something useful about that. Frumpkin is curled up in Nott's lap, watching Caleb with unblinking eyes.
"I didn't even steal anything." Nott says hoarsely, in an offended tone, as if that is the greatest injustice of this night. Caleb wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to revive these men and kill them again more slowly with all the awful skills at his disposal.
Instead he slides down to sit next to her and puts his arm around her shoulders. Holds her until the shaking stills itself a little and she leans into the embrace.
"I will need to stoke the fire if we are going to stay here." He says quietly. There's an offering in it; he'll take her away from here if she'd rather, but they're probably better off near the fire than they are in the woods. He doesn't dare take them back to town.
Nott nods against his shoulder and her gaze slides over to where the corpses are lying. She doesn't say anything.
She doesn't need to. Caleb squeezes her shoulders gently and gets to his feet, leaves the bag with its meager contraband with her. He rolls up his sleeves and drags the bodies into the hut, closes the door on them. He's going to burn it to the ground tomorrow, when they leave this place.
For now he gets to work, brings more wood for the fire and lays out the silver thread around the perimeter of the clearing. By the time he finishes Nott is half-dozing, her head lolling against the bark of the tree behind her, the flask emptied on the ground at her side.
Caleb settles himself at her side and touches her shoulder. "You should let me clean your wounds."
"Do I look that bad?" Nott speaks without opening her eyes or raising her head. She's trying to make it into something like a joke, but the exhausted catch in her voice and the way she flinches when she speaks spoil the attempt.
"You have looked better." Caleb delves into the bag and finds the water and the spare shirt. Nott cracks an eye and watches him distantly while he tears off a strip of cloth and wets it.
She hisses and grimaces as he clears the blood away a little at a time, as gently as he can, and he steadfastly concentrates on what he is doing and not on memories of dressing other wounds, another friend, a different life. He's trying not to hurt her any more than he has to, she's already been hurt too much for one night, for more than one night, but he can't avoid it entirely.
The fingers he leaves for last. They both know it has to be done, if the bones start to set crookedly they'll stay that way later when a healing potion does its job. But Nott still hesitates before she nods and holds out her injured hand to him, bracing herself against the tree. She sinks her other hand into Frumpkin's fur. Nott's fingers are so small in his own and Caleb wishes for a cleric or a physician, for a better place to do this, for things from the kind of life that he doesn't deserve and they can't afford.
"Es tut mir leid," He says quietly, and then he pulls and twists and pushes the bones into something like the right places, binds them up tight with scraps of torn shirt so they'll stay where he's put them.
Nott is shaking and swearing by the time he's done, pale and tear-streaked beneath the fresh bandages. "I really need another drink," she says in a strangled voice.
"I know," he says, an apology. He sinks down at her side and puts his arm around her. It’s a poor substitute for something that would numb the pain, but it's all he has to offer right now.
Nott takes it, shifts under the coat until she's half-sitting, half-lying against him, and closes her eyes. Frumpkin mrrts sharply, grumpy about being jostled, and he stands up and arches his back in a slow, pointed huff before he re-settles himself and starts kneading the coat under his claws.
Caleb threads his fingers into Nott's tangle of green-black hair, keeping himself as still as he can so that she can rest. Gods know she needs it after this day. The only sound is Frumpkin's purring, shockingly loud, and the crackling of the fire.
"You're a good friend, Caleb." Nott mumbles into his side, more asleep than not.
Caleb huffs out a breath. That is nothing close to the truth, and he wishes she knew that without him having to say it. But she's already asleep by the time he gathers his thoughts, and he's not enough of a bastard (or maybe he’s too much of a coward) to wake her.
With his free hand he fingers the tangle of copper wire in his pocket, the wire they used to bind her hands. They could easily have killed her, and suppose he hadn't happened to finish his book when he did? Suppose things had gone just a little bit less in Caleb's favor; what else might have been done to her before he managed to arrive?
The two of them are safer together than they were apart, true, but safety is still relative when one of them is a goblin and the other is . . . well, is only Caleb. If they could find a few other people in similar straits, people with whom it might be safer to travel, people who won't care too much about Nott's looks or his total lack of social graces,. . .
Well, so it's a big if. But he would have thought anyone besides Frumpkin being willing to stay with him like Nott has to be impossible not so very long ago, and now look. So it's possible.
Until they can find company, though, he’ll have to be sharper. More vigilant. Better.
He’ll make up for this. He’ll make it right like he’s going to make so many other things right, when he has the power to do it.
In the meantime he can teach her things. She’s sharp, a fast study, and Caleb knows of a few cantrips she can use to get out of trouble.
Caleb gingerly lifts his hand from Nott’s hair, takes the wire from his pocket and starts bending a short length of it over and over again, until the bend grows brittle enough to break. Until he has two little bits of wire the length of his thumb.
Tomorrow, he thinks. Tomorrow, when they’re on their way to somewhere better. Tomorrow he’ll teach her how to call for help.