The Hob's Bargain

moment if I was attributing human characteristics to someone—or something—arguably not human at all. I dismounted in order to give myself some time to think.
    â€œIf you are no lord, then I am no lady—call me Aren.” I remembered something Gram said to me once, a reason the hob wouldn’t give me his name. Names had power, she said, and the wildlings kept their names to themselves.
    â€œAh, but every lovely woman is a lady in her own right,” he said.
    I frowned at him. I couldn’t afford to have him take me lightly—besides, I didn’t like it. The village men talked down to all the women. I hadn’t noticed it until they’d quit doing it to me. They treated me as they’d treat a man, even those who were wary or frightened of my talents. “Call me Aren if you want me to answer.”
    It occurred to me—too late, as usual—that arguing with the hob about names was a stupid thing to do when approaching him for help. I’d come here prepared to grovel, and I would, if he’d quit…flirting with me. No one knew where Kith was.
    â€œAren, then,” he agreed blandly, but I had the impression he was laughing at me. “And Caefawn will do, Aren. It is not my name, but it is indeed what I am.” He touched his staff to the ground gently. “You come for the hob’s bargain.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œAh,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Before the king’s mages came, claiming this land for whatever kingdom they owed their allegiance, human and hob lived side by side. There were things the humans had that my people did not. For these our peoples would trade. One thing for another, by which bargain neither party was the worse.”
    â€œYou”—he pushed back his hood—“need my help, no?”
    I remembered those features clearly, but even so, face-to-face they were shocking. Reddish-brown eyes, catslitted and slanted, laughed out of a dark gray face. If he had been a carving, I would have said he was beautiful, but the color of his skin and eyes made it difficult to see past the strangeness. Black hair threaded with silver and white was pulled back into a thick braid that disappeared in the depths of his cloak.
    His ears were pointed and large; the right one was pierced several times with a chain that looked as if it were made of tiny wooden lengths woven in and out though the piercings. Three small, red feathers dangled from the end of the chain.
    When he smiled at me, I saw his eyeteeth were long, like the fangs of a cat. His ears fanned gently; from the expression on his face, he did it to frighten me—like a child clapping his hands to tease a deer into running away.
    The knowledge he was doing it on purpose didn’t stop it from being unsettling, but it did make me mad. I felt my jaw jut out in an unladylike fashion that aggravated the soreness from the blow I’d taken in practice last night.
    I’d rehearsed this speech all the way here, but I had intended to deliver it in supplicating tones, not bark at him like a territorial dog. “We need your help. There are raiders in the valley, and we can’t stop them alone. I don’t know what we can provide to you in return, but if you can help us, you are welcome to anything we have.”
    â€œDon’t promise so easily,” he chided, apparently not upset with my tone of voice. “I will talk to your elders before we seal the bargain.” He tilted his head and looked out over the valley. “First, I will prove to them that my help is useful.”
    Duck pushed his nose into the hob’s shoulder, bumping him with a strength that would have sent me stumbling forward. Caefawn swayed a little. He scratched the horse under his bridle, then pushed him away gently, murmuring something for Duck’s ears alone.
    Shaking his cloak back over his shoulders, the hob started back down the trail at a rapid pace.
    When he pushed his cloak back, I saw he wasn’t fat at all, not even muscularly fat like Koret. He was just broad. The other thing I noticed was that he had a tail. The very end was tufted with long, dark hair, silver-streaked like the hair on his head. The rest of his tail was covered in short silver hair, like a dog’s, though it twitched with his irritation like a cat’s.
    For some reason the tail made him much more alien than the red cat-eyes and the fangs. He certainly