Children of the Revolution
Shog cleared his throat. This was it: the most important day in his life. He couldn’t fail. For his compatriots. For goblindom.
He climbed to the top of the soapbox and raised his arms.
Nothing happened. The assembled goblins kept chatting in their usual manner, which entailed producing a high level of noise. Shog sighed, put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
It was a long, ululating whistle, loud and clear.
The goblins shut up and looked around.
“My dear goblins!” Shog said, seizing the moment. He knew how hard getting the attention of an assembly of goblins was. A sea of red eyes with yellow pupils converged on him. “My dear goblins! I’ve assembled you here to speak to you about freedom!”
There were murmurs. Shog knew he couldn’t stop. He pointed at some of the goblins that stared at him.
“Do you think you’re free, perhaps? Or you? I’ll tell you: no! Just because we live here, in the city, and have food and water and commodities, we think we’re free, but we’re not! And why not, I ask you?”
“The… the orcs?” said a voice.
“The orcs! The orcs, who make us call them Masters! The orcs, who take us to battle to fight their own wars, forgetting about ours!
“What quarry did we have with the dwarfs last week, I ask you? Or the elves last month?” Shog knew he was pushing his luck here. Most goblins couldn’t even tell one day from the next. “None, I tell you, none! We could live in peace with all the other races, if only the orcs left us alone!”
“But how will we feed ourselves?” asked another voice.
“We are goblins! We are Goblins!” said Shog, sounding the capital G. “We will prevail! Our ancestors hunted and fed themselves, that is known! We can do it again! And I bring you the proof of what I say!
“All of you us have heard the legends. All of us believe they cannot be true. Yes, you know what I’m talking about,” Shog said, as the goblin crowd nodded. “The stories that talk about a tribe of free goblins, far away in the Southern Mountains! A tribe that never submitted to the orcs! A tribe that has survived to this day!”
With a carefully choreographed flourish, Shog stepped aside. It was an amazing feat, since the soapbox was quite small, but even more incredible was that a second goblin, who until then had remained covered in a cloak, climbed up to take the little space available.
She looked different: her skin was a dark green, almost as dark as an orc’s. She had red and yellow tattoos on her face and arms, and she wore a collar made of shiny, bright stones, and most stunning of all, a large hat made of eagle’s feathers that fell to her back.
“This is a representative of the Free Tribe, my dear goblins!”
There were shouts and screams, as the goblins piled trying to get a better look. For a moment, Shog feared he was going to lose control.
Then there was a shrill screech, and the goblins all shut up as one, and put their hands to their ears. Shog turned, and saw the Free Goblin blowing into a strange instrument which produced the noise. She stopped and nodded to him.
“This… this is just a token of their magic, my dear goblins! The Free Tribe will teach us and we’ll thrive!”
“Let her speak!” the crowd started. Shog was expecting this.
“She will now speak for you all, but you will not understand her. For the members of the Free Tribe do not speak Orcish, but the original Goblin long lost to us!”
The female Free Goblin raised her hands. The assembly fell into silence once again; she made an impressive sight, arms tattooed in blood and sun.
Then she spoke.
No one understood her words. They were alien to them. After so many centuries living with the Orcs, the goblins had forgotten their own language.
But something happened. Shog noticed it, because it had happened to him. As the Free Goblin spoke, the others started murmuring and nodding. Their brains didn’t understand the words (something not that uncommon amongst his fellow citizens, Shog acknowledged), but their hearts did. For Goblin was more than just a form of communication: it was part of the goblins, and helped make them whole.
Shog stared at the Free Goblin as she kept her tirade, now lowering her voice to almost a whisper. She kept raising it, slowly, slowly, until it was a loud holler. And then, first one by one and then in large numbers, the goblins joined in, roaring words they didn’t understand, their hearts aflame and their minds united with purpose.
Shog smiled.
Right then there was a large commotion by the entrances, and a large number of orcs walked. They were heavily armed and, judging from the state of their armours, had just came from a battle. They carried large sacks on their bags and covered their snouts with pieces of cloth.
“Goblins!” said the larger one, a Black Orc warband boss Shog knew was called Zogog. “We’ve had a great victory today! Your warmachines gave us the triumph over our enemies! Here’s your part of the loot!” Zogog gestured as he laughed maniacally.
And then the orcs threw the sacks over their heads. Shog shivered in fear. As the sacks fell amongst the goblins, they opened and things rolled off from them…
Cheese. Every sack contained, Shog estimated, some 25 large wheels of cheese. The orcs fell back, fearing the smell and taste that was unbearable to them.
The assembled goblins roared in delight, as they threw themselves upon their favourite delicacy.
“Cheese?” Shog heard a voice pronounce hesitantly beside him. The Free Goblin was already sniffing, then she grinned and leaped on the closest heap of writhing goblin flesh and cheese bits.
Feeling himself irresistibly attracted by the smell, Shog shrugged.
“Revolution can wait, I guess,” he said.
And he leaped as well.
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Fuck You, That’s What. The challenge this week was to write up to 1000 words about going against authority.
Somehow the words Goblin Liberation Front got into my mind, and the way to let them out was to write a story. I felt like adding some humour to it, and an unexpected (and I hope funny) ending.
