They left the field to the vultures by noon. Hazy smoke hung low, bitter in my throat. My brothers-in-arms lay scattered in the mud, blue stag banners mashed into the muck and stained with blood. I couldn’t lift my sword. Couldn’t even lift my head when one of them found me.

  A goblin. Small, shoulders roped with sinew, eyes black as coal. He sat cross-legged across from me like we were scouts at a campfire, not enemies on a field. From his belt he drew bread and a waterskin. He bit the bread first, to show me it wasn't poisoned I imagined, then held both out as an offering.

  I should’ve spat, should’ve swatted it away. But I was thirsty, starving, and probably dying. Better to die with something in my stomach. I drank deeply, my ribs letting me know that something was fundamentally broken in me with each gulp.

  “Listen,” he said. “Not long. You listen.”

  His voice was steady and calm; he knew I was no threat like this.

  “You call us raiders. Killers in the dark, thieves in the reeds. Me? Fisherman. My tribe peaceful. We knew the tide, the nets, how many small ones to throw back so the river keeps giving. My mother.. she say I was made for the river.”

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  He looked across the field where his kin laughed over the dead while looting the spoils of war. He didn’t smile.

  “Then your 'heroes' came. Adventurers, you say. They wanted ears, teeth, trophies. Find no warriors, so they kill and take what they find. Old men, children, women in the fields. Left no one breathing.”

  He paused, bread still in hand. I tried to turn my head away, but couldn’t. He spoke true, the Baron considered goblin killing to be sport.

  “I come back early,” he said. “The first man I see, he cutting an ear from my nephew. So proud of prize, not look up. My fish knife... my rage show me what to do. First cut messy, second easier. By sundown, I know how force a fish spear through your ribs. Lessons I not want. Lessons your kind force me learn.”

  The wind shifted; I could smell the burning dead. He kept talking, low.

  “I try to go back to nets. River not want me, I not want it. No sleep, kept seeing our dead. So I follow rumor I hear from others, to the Night Market, think find cure for my sickness. No cure, found purpose. Found work. Humans who want other humans dead.”

  His gaze fixed on me, unblinking, as he took a long pause.

  “I not hate you,” he said. “I hate the choice you give me. Hate that the sword fits my hands same as the net used to. Hate what you make me.”

  He took back his waterskin, dropped the stale bread, and stood.

  “This why your keep burns. You forge me into monster you say we are. Your own kin seek out the Market's worst monsters to kill humans here. Done now."

  He walked over to me while slowly drawing a filet knife from his belt.

  "But still need proof. Proof get me coin." He pushed my head to the side, setting the serrated edge of the blade between my skull and ear.

  That sound, my screams mixed with his laughter, was the last thing I ever heard.