“The people of the forest walk on invisible paths.”

Ek’na Kellen, centaur ethnographer.

We moved at a steady pace, the cleared undergrowth making the going easy. Hugred was surprisingly graceful for being a zombie. His stride was measured, taking into account changes in elevation as we went up and down gentle hills.

In fact, he handled himself better than Esen, who tripped over every root and got her head slapped by branches. She had clearly never gone off the path in a forest, and he, in his previous life had. It got me wondering about how he thought, what he remembered.

I looked at his face for signs of what was going on inside. His jaw hung slack, but his clouded eyes immediately drifted to my face when I came into view. So he did see me. But what did he know about me? While I was pondering this, Maarken offered breakfast for the road. 

Both Esen and I turned down the salted meat and were stuck with hardtack. The meat had too much iron for my tastes. I could eat it but it wouldn’t do my stomach any favors. I perched on Hugred’s shoulder and nibbled on my biscuit. It would make a better weapon than food, honestly.

I could see Maarken’s smile at being the only one eating the jerky. I was unfortunately used to it. They hadn’t found a way to make food tolerable for goblins on these long trips. Maybe I should invest my share of the silver in that. I could buy a whole stretch of pasture and raise animals for their milk, then sell the cheese for long journeys. I could even experiment, buy some animals nobody had ever milked. I’d be a legend among goblins.

“If I made manticore cheese, would you guys like to try some?” I asked my companions.

“What?” Esen didn’t seem to have comprehended the question.

“Manticores only eat humans. That’s cannibalism by proxy.” Maarken grumbled, but I could see the flickers of a smile at the edge of his lips.

“Ah, but do you two count as humans? Legally I guess, but come on, Esen is blue and her ears are longer than mine!” I leaned back to point behind me.

“I don’t really care what I am considered in Gurngamos, but manticores eat elves as well as all beastfolk. It seems they consider all of us human enough. Not goblins though, or other beings of other worlds.” Esen shrugged and tweaked one of her ears with a look of annoyance. I guess she didn’t like the comparison. Not sure why, I liked her ears.

“So I guess the Empire would let you keep them if you only feed them beastfolk.” Maarken chuckled near-silently, stopping himself when Esen shot him a glare.

“Well I’m not doing that. No manticores then. Has anybody ever milked a dog?” Before I got an answer, my nose wrinkled and my ears drooped. The sweet-and-sour sulfur-tinged scent of rotting meat had met my nose.

A chance breeze coming from straight ahead carried the smell, a sickly torrent of stench coming back at us. I looked back and saw that the others hadn’t noticed yet. The human sense of smell was truly pathetic. Another breeze came through and I gagged. It was strong, strong enough that there was no doubt. That much death out in the open meant a massacre.

“Guys, there’s something ahead.” I warned them, and Essen nodded. She had taken her helmet off to give her ears free range to swivel about.

“I hear flies. Lots of flies.” She confirmed. I lifted my own ears and realized she was right. There was a low drone in the air, still so quiet even I could barely hear it. It was getting louder the closer we got, and I began to hear its patterns shifted, rising and falling as thousands of flies moved about.

“Flies? Bodies?” Maarken grabbed one of the javelins from his belt.

“Probably. I don’t smell anything yet, but I think Pargrym’s nose is better than mine.” Esen drew her own weapon, a strange short sword without a guard, but with an odd little hook just by the handle. It was longer and thinner than the sword at my hip, definitely more for thrusting than slashing. I nervously shuffled on Hugred’s shoulders as they pushed past me, taking instinctive roles on the frontlines.

The smell just got worse as we pressed on. I slid from Hugred’s shoulders and slunk to the back, as far away from my companions as I dared to get. I would only get in the way if we ran into a fight. Even so, I found myself fumbling to draw my sword. It was heavy in my hands, made for somebody twice my size. If I was attacked, I doubted it would do me much good.

Then, they slowed. Both of them crouched and moved low, creeping up to an edge that was coming into view. There was a gulch ahead, maybe 20 feet across. Waves of flies hovered in and out of sight, so dense one could barely see the opposite side for their masses.

The stench crawled down my throat, now taste as much as smell. I couldn’t even force myself to approach further before Maarken made a move. He stood tall, took a perfect throwing stance, and hurled the javelin into the canyon. A moment later, he jumped and I could hear him sliding down to the gulch’s floor.

“What is he doing!?” Esen hissed as I caught up to her. I couldn’t tell any better than her. Nothing below us made any sense. Through the dust and flies I caught glimpses of a landscape of twisted horse limbs and shattered wood. Something shiny blinked through the haze, Maarken’s hammer raised in battle. I caught a glimpse of flesh, the same tone as Maarken’s.

A naked human came into view, trying to climb up the other side of the gulch. No, not a human. Humans bled red. From the point where Maarken’s javelin had pierced the creature’s abdomen, there was just a drip of yellowy bile. It failed to get a grip on the cliffside with half-skeletal fingers and turned, revealing what it's blood suggested; a ghoul.

It was almost entirely human, at least to my eyes. The thing that stood out most were its lips, or what was left of them. Only ragged fringes remained, putting a permanent ear to ear grin on the creature’s face. The teeth within looked like the diagram I had seen of those belonging to a werewolf.

They were just the slightest bit too canine for a human mouth, jutting out awkwardly in a prognathic overbite. But the eyes were completely human but for their urine-yellow backdrop, and the only expression I saw in them was fear.

I wanted to yell for Maarken to stop, but I hesitated. I would have to explain why, afterwards. I doubted either of them would care much for me saying the monster looked scared. Was this much empathy wrong? Humans always seemed callous to me, but even other goblins wouldn't care about the death of an enemy. That was just the way of the world. So I sealed my mouth and watched.

This was the first time I had seen Maarken fight. Most fights I had seen before were training matches between mercenaries and a few squabbles between my fellow goblins. Both had taught me that violence was ugly and clumsy. Maarken taught me something different.

He fought like it was a dance; a few perfectly practiced steps in the right order leading to an inevitable finale. The cornered creature lashed out with its skeletal claws, but Maarken simply leaned back and let the swipe pass his face by. Before the creature had recovered its balance, he had already closed in and hooked his leg behind its knee. He punched with his hammer and the creature fell with several less teeth and a crushed nose. I could hear the crunch when he swung for a second time. He left the creature’s body where it lay and walked back to look up at us from the bottom of the gulch.

“I doubt that’s the only one around, but they’re mostly nocturnal.” Maarken pointed at an intact wagon. “That would be ideal shelter. If we get the drop on them-”

“That’s not what we’re here for. Are you forgetting that we’re looking for a town? This is a damned dead end!” Esen yelled. “That wagon you’re pointing at is one of ours! They weren’t stealing the silver for sale, they just didn’t want us to have it! Come on, let’s get out of this slaughterhouse.”

"But I don't see any silver." As much as I would rather look away, I had been scanning the mound of horseflesh and broken wagons. There were many upturned chests among them, but the valuables were nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, hell, he's right. The forest would be rough on our wagons even with the path cleared. Look, some of the wheels are broken. They must be ditching them and carrying them the rest of the way with something else." Esen pinched her nose as her own eyes picked across the bottom of the gulch.

"Not horses, clearly… I hear some beastfolk ride their werewolf allies. Or maybe they even got some centaurs to help them. We are close enough to the borders for some to get through." I suggested.

"We should look for clues before it gets dark. Hugred, in." Esen slid down the embankment and Hugred followed, flopping right onto the hard dirt. Reluctantly, I followed. The cloud of flies gave way to let me pass, then closed up again to lock me off from the sky.

Down here, it became easier to read the landscape. The mound of wreckage wasn't just a mass of parts. I could see individual horses and tell how long they had been there by how much was left of them. Towards the bottom they were little more than a few broken bones, but the most recent, our horses, were fresh.

Their largest muscles had been eaten away and most of their organs pulled out, leaving intact horse backs with skeletal legs underneath. It seemed most of the stench came from those in the middle. When left to their own devices the ghouls would pick every last scrap of even the most rotten meat off skeleton before smashing the bones and eating them too.

But if they kept getting fresh meat, there was no reason to pick their meals so clean. Even scavengers preferred their food fresh. As a result, those horses which had never been finished were what lay covered in maggots, bloated with the gasses of decomposition. The presence of the ghouls likely kept wolves and other natural scavengers away, leaving nothing but the flies to slowly finish the job.

The wreckage formed a dam for the tiny river at the center of the ravine, making it expand into a wide puddle. I realized that many of the flies around us were probably mosquitoes. Thankfully, mosquitoes avoided me, bit I pointed them out to Maarken and Esen, who immediately began to swat themselves all over. I considered it a fair bit of retribution for the unlucky ghoul who lay across the river. Whatever the sins of its people, it hadn't done anything but try to feed itself.

Despite the clouds of thirsty mosquitoes, Esen approached the pool and searched the mud for prints. I myself saw several signs of squirrelfolk. Their prints looked just like a small human's, except for the impression of claws that could sometimes be faintly made out. I stepped in the mud next to one to compare. My own prints were more bird than human. It had always fascinated me.

As much as I superficially resembled a human, nothing about me really matched them. Was that what caused our strange relationship with Gurngamos? Too different to threaten their supposed position at the top, but similar enough to fit in the system. I paced around the edge of the pond until I came across a footprint similar to mine.

For a moment I thought I had somehow doubled back onto my own trail, but that wasn't it. The birdlike print may have vaguely resembled mine, but it was multiple times the size of my own prints. When I saw the cloven hoofprints mixed in with them, I realized what I was seeing.

“Guys, you’re gonna want to see this!” I called out. Maarken was the first to get over to me, and he  immediately swore when he realized what he was looking at.

“How the hell did they get hippogriffs!?”