Free The Goblin Corps by Ari Marmell Page A

spoke directly into the bugbear’s ear.
    “Listen up, Jhurpess. You don’t like crowds. That’s fine, I can understand that. We all have our problems. I, for one, just happen to hate sparrows. Can’t stand the little fuckers. Pathetic feathery little bodies, those—anyway, point is, you don’t see me goin’ around and throwing a conniption any time I see one. If you’re gonna react this way every time the humans get a little ample, we’re gonna have a serious problem, ‘cause they’re sort of common around here. Thicker than flies on a shit pie, really. You won’t be much good to me, or the rest of the squad, like this.”
    “Jhurpess not want to be good to squad. Jhurpess want to go home, where it quiet.”
    All right, fuck this. I tried it the friendly way!
The bugbear wailed yet again, this time in reaction to the orc’s fingers digging harshly into the fur on the back of his skull and yanking his head back.
    “I ought to kill you right here, you pathetic little weasel!” Cræosh snapped at him. “You’re not a bugbear! You’re a
teddy
bear!”
    A growl sounded deep in the simian’s throat, and Cræosh noted a single hand reflexively grasping at the handle of the massive club.
Good.
    “But if I did that, I might get King Morthûl kind of pissed at me—and whatever else you might have heard, I never met anybody
that
stupid.” He lowered his own face, bringing it within inches of Jhurpess’s own. The bugbear’s breath spread over him in a noxious caress, and he forced back the urge to gag through sheer willpower alone. Obviously, there were still tiny bits of orc decaying between the creature’s teeth.
    “Just like he’d be angry at
you
,” Cræosh concluded, “if you tried to back out of this now. You want that, Jhurpess? You want the Charnel King angry with your monkey ass?”
    Eyes wide as bucklers, the bugbear shook his head as fiercely as the orc’s grip permitted.
    “Well, you know how to avoid that?”
    Jhurpess blinked.
    “By
standing the fuck up
, that’s how! Take a good look around you! It’s crowded, it’s loud, it’s smelly, it’s annoying! See it, feel it, and then deal the hell with it and move on! You got it?”
    The bugbear rose to his feet, head twisting this way and that as he tried to take in the entire scene at once.
    “If it makes you feel any better,” the orc added more gently, “think of them with plates under their asses and gravy on their heads.”
    Jhurpess stopped twitching. Slowly, a big grin settled over his features, and he actually licked his lips.
    “Finally,” Cræosh muttered, and turned his attention back to the guide. “Now, can we get to the damn barracks already?”
Before anything
else
goes wrong!
This was looking to be a
very
long assignment….
    Unless, he realized, they died fairly early on, like most Demon Squads he’d heard about. Considerably cheered, Cræosh lightened his step as the mismatched trio marched toward the barracks.
    Gork watched, whiskers twitching in contemplation, as the hulking duo followed their reluctant guide through the market’s heart. For a moment, it looked as though the bugbear was about to have a relapse of the fit he’d suffered on the way in. But before his orcish companion could say anything, the simian critter had abruptly straightened himself up. With a bellow that, from Gork’s distance, sounded like “Get out of way!” he plunged through the mob, pushing, shoving, and—in a few cases—bodily tossing people from his path. Obviously, Gork realized with a sense of foreboding, the bugbear was too stupid to do anything in half-measures. Terrified or hostile—there didn’t seem to be anything in between.
    And these, unless he was very much mistaken, were his new teammates.
Dragonshit.
    Still, there was one distinct advantage to having so volatile an ally. It meant that, more often than not, everyone’s attention would be on the bugbear and not on his far smaller, less conspicuous companion.
    Much