Same goal, though.
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The night was always comforting. The sun always burned her eyes, her skin, made her peel like a blanched peach. Not a peach; peaches had too much color.
Persephone tried to make her eyes focus on the task at hand. Anne looked back at her, quiet, weak. She’d just woken from another fit of coughing, and another new bloodstain on the dirt. Neither one of them said it, but they both knew what it ment. The boys were asleep; they were trying to make up for Anne’s lack of work. The hobgoblins didn’t care, as long as it got done. They still cut Anne’s rations, out of principle, but she wasn’t eating anyway.
She’d gotten so thin. She looked like death.
Persephone looked up to the moon. Her eyes might’ve been red; they might’ve been the palest of silvery blues. It always depended on how the light caught them. Anne insisted they looked like an angel’s, of course. Those were always the eyes smiling at her when the day got too hard, always the eyes watching over her when the disease was too much.
A hobgoblin walked by, in disheveled maille, half marching, half swaggering. They were proud of where they were; a half dozen miles from Eveningstar gorge and as of yet unmolested by any of Lord Winter’s hirelings. Getting free labor from humans, no less.
Anne coughed and broke the swagger mid step, leaving only the march, approaching angrily. It shouted something in goblin; Persephone only knew a few words. It said “human” at some point, to be sure. Anne kept coughing, and certainly couldn’t help it. It was enough to wake the boys up, at least, on the other end of what was best described as the corral they were being kept in.
It took Persephone a moment to register that the two were roused by the ordeal, and in that moment the hobgoblin cocked a fist, and swung at Anne, flattening out her cramped and wracked body. A bubble of blood escaped; it might’ve been a split lip, it might’ve come from consumption-infested lungs. It was enough to make Persephone rise to the creature, and was given the ham the goblin kept on its arm in answer. It numbed her lip and made her face throb. She was sure it would swell, but that thought fled as her vision blurred and the world stopped having an up.
She was on a knee when she could see again, Thax wrapped around the hobgoblin, feet hooked together in front of its ribcage and arms a mass of veins and saliva, smothering and crushing everything on the thing’s face.
"What are you doing!?" Persephone’s voice was panicked, but with the projection of a stage whisper. She might’ve been shouting; she never was loud. Thax mustn’t have heard; he was wrapped around a mass of hair, popping, and jingling.
She grabbed his arm, and he looked up, then blinked. The simple act of closing and reopening his eyes seemed to clear the bloodlust, but the deed was done. No way to tell how long the thing had been dead, but Thax let go, and it didn’t start breathing again.
"Oh gods, now what? We can’t get away, and they’re going to kill us when they find that!"
"I don’t know. I couldn’t just let him hit Anne! Or you! She’s sick, and you..." he stopped, then shook his head. "Why don’t we run?"
"Because Anne can’t." Greg spoke up, leaving the 'idiot' at the end of that statement to be implied. He was a mercurial sort; sensitive, she supposed, and this certainly made him morose. Made him sound it.
"So I’ll carry her." Thax answered. His logic remained as his physique suggested; problems are best solved by lifting heavy things and hitting mean things.
"And what happens when we get caught? Can you run faster scared while carrying a girl than they can mad with a sword?" The temporary voice of pessimism grumped.
Persephone was only somewhat paying attention. They had fine opinions, but they would either flee or die, so the choice was already made in truth. The corpse had lost its maille, and the maille had become a blanket for the sick. Persephone gathered her coughing friend into a mailled bundle, then kicked the hobgoblin’s sword toward Thax.
"We need to go." She said, eyes down. They were doomed, to be sure, but a death being prevented from running away would be quicker than a goblin execution. They’d be whipped to death then. Like this, they might be stabbed or shot.
It took a moment for the boys to respond, but the same thought seemed to sink into them, stirring both to movement. Thax took up the sword and jogged ahead, eyes moving about. Probably not the best idea; he never was any good at noticing anything. Persephone had the better eyes, at least at night, but she couldn’t fight, and Thax could.
It wasn’t long before they were caught. Or, more accurately, until the poorly-dressed pale woman carrying a girl covered in maille was caught. Thax was too quick and Greg could hide. The one that found her didn’t mince words. It rushed forward, sword held at the ready. Persephone hunched over and winced, expecting the end, but it did not come for her. She looked up, and the thing’s eyes had glazed over. They were pointed at her, but something was commanding it, at least enough to keep its sword from her.
It had a soothing feel, whatever it was. It would be days until she would think about it enough to decide a source. For the time, she kept low, back straining under the much-reduced weight of her friend while she moved, half between a jog and a lumber, away.
It would be two more days before they made it back to Eveningstar; the Helmlands were hard to travel through. Anne would insist that Persephone was the very image of Selune’s grace that night, and that’s why the goblin couldn’t hit her. She would insist that it was just fear and luck, or perhaps the sliver of pity in the creature’s blackened and twisted little heart. It was all the same to her; getting home meant that Anne would get rest and clean water, and that she would survive. That should be enough for now.