Free The Goblin Corps by Ari Marmell Page B

as it was now, for example.
    Once more silent as a ghost, the kobold drifted into the crowd, alert for any opportunities that might—there! One man, knocked aside by the bugbear’s passage, had just now clambered back to his feet, glaring and shouting along with the others. He seemed mostly uninjured, although his immaculately coifed black hair was now dangling in all directions and his soft green tunic was ripped along one sleeve. Even more important, though, was that his coin purse had been knocked loose when he fell. It hung now from the back of his belt, dangling by a single cord. A cutpurse far less talented than Gork could have performed the operation with no chance of discovery.
    Or, to be more accurate, no chance of discovery
by the victim.
Gork’s grasping fingers were perhaps half an inch from the pouch when a hand dropped down from the side and fastened on his wrist.
    I’m slipping. That’s two bystanders in two days who’ve spotted me.
A high-pitched growl building in his throat, the kobold swiveled his head, scowling at the man who’d grabbed him.
    Well, at least it wasn’t one of the watch this time—or, if it was, he wasn’t on duty. This human wore a typical peasant tunic, gray in hue, and brown breeches. Dull, sandy-blond hair topped his head, and duller brown orbs peered out from beneath it.
    “You shouldn’t be doing that,” he informed the kobold, as though educating an ignorant child.
    Gork, for his part, wasn’t in the mood to be educated. “Get your hand off me before I eat it.”
    The human just cocked his head to the side as though puzzled.
    Great. Not only was I spotted, it was the village idiot who got me. How embarrassing! Time to go.
    He couldn’t, due to the angle, quite get his mouth around a finger this time, so he settled for taking a small chunk from the edge of the man’s palm. The ripping noise was satisfying to hear, as always, though the absence of any cry of pain was somewhat mystifying. Still, the man let go, and Gork began to back away….
    Aagh! Oh Stars, what
was
that?! Gaaahh!
Snout twisted in revulsion, the kobold spit out the flesh on which he chewed, gagging to the point of dry heaves. It was a testament to the anger of the crowd that they stayed focused on the departing bugbear, rather than devoting any attention to the retching kobold in their midst.
    Finally, as his stomach ceased trying to climb up his throat and his tongue ceased trying to climb
down
his throat, Gork saw just what it was he’d been trying to swallow.
    Lying on the cobblestones beside him was a puddled mass of…Well, Gork wasn’t sure
what
it was. A substance, fleshy but not quite flesh, quivered beneath the tiniest layer of a hard, thin material.
Chitin
, Gork realized abruptly. And the entire thing was coated with some off-yellow ichor that had the color and consistency—but most clearly not the taste—of custard.
    “What the fu—?” Gork began to ask nervously of the man beside him. Only, even as he watched, the figure ceased to be a man at all. Over the span of perhaps twenty seconds, the stranger’s head sank to the level of the kobold’s own, the skin wrinkling horrendously as the body beneath it shriveled. The man’s—no, the
thing’s
—nose flattened and stretched, becoming nothing less than a snout! The skin retracted, tightening up so that it once again matched the size of the form that wore it, but it began also to harden, to shift in hue from an ugly human pink to a much more natural and attractive stony gray. Even the clothes twisted and writhed, altering size and shape to remain consistent with the being that wore them. Finally, Gork watched the creature’s eyes fold inward, as though turning themselves inside out, and then pop open into reflective orbs that were the mirror image of Gork’s own. Only the short sword the creature wore, which the kobold hadn’t even noticed strapped to the human’s side, failed to change shape.
    Gork blinked in amazement at the