The goblin hunt was over. Across the cave's torch-wavered gloom, the five adventurers caught their blood-choked breaths. The Priestess knelt over the slaughtered little greenskins, praying for their souls, but the Slayer cuffed her head. Hauled her up with the armoured fist, told her, look to the women. Infant goblins' blood clung to the Priestess' hair and collar as she complied. A human rapist could be forgiven–exactly because the vilest man carried a soul and the hope of humanity. But to forgive the concept of rape, in grinning, scuttling form, was toxic-twee sentimentality at its most insipid–so the Wizard Boy, Joachim Tresckow, thought.

The women, the goblins' captives, were still bleeding. One raised her body up from cold stone, arms thin and shaking; the other only twitched. The weeping, soul-howling joy of their rescue…was poisoned and pitiful as the goblin had made everything, when they burnt their homes and killed their families. They were the lucky ones, there would be life for them tomorrow-apart from the third woman, who was dead–but their eyes were barren. The Priestess couldn't meet such eyes; no real, feeling man ever would. Only the Slayer.

The Slayer had killed two hobgoblins and beaten the third senseless, along with two of its little brothers. All had been dragged to the central cavern with four snapped limbs. Jo Tresckow watched in silence. The Slayer knelt down, lowering that stained and twisted steel mask close to the captives.

"You're safe now. I'm with you. Those cockroaches are alive, but you can kill them with this club. I will stay with you, until you're ready to crush them."

The older of the women grasped the brandished weapon; choked down her tears. The younger one hid her eyes.

"… mother. I want my mother! I want to go home…!"

"You will not leave this place until those cockroaches are dead. Trust me on this."

Then the Slayer threw off her helmet. Her ponytail fell down like a black banner.

Her voice was hoarse and low, but it cut the girls to their hearts. It hauled their broken souls upright; clothed them with the strong and shaking embrace of grief. Then with the robes of hope, and respect. As the scarred steel hand of a woman, and eyes like dead and mighty stars, guided their first and faltering steps.

"You're stronger than goblins. We're stronger. Fight them, and live."

Indeed, raping women did not make goblins strong; even hobs were no stronger than orcs. After a while, the older woman tottered up; the Priestess helped her to keep her feet. As a farmer's wife, the woman had slaughtered pigs before, and buried tiny children. This was something no woman should ever have had to do, but she would do it. She smashed the club down until the hobgoblin had no head, screaming her dead son and husbands' names.

The younger girl cried in terror at more blood and death, until the Slayer gathered the poor thing to her breastplate and carried her out of the caves. The thumps sounded briefly behind them, but the Slayer never stopped speaking to her, or looking into her eyes. Another adventurer followed them with a torch, to the sunset gloom of the surface.

The Slayer was still speaking softly to the girl when Jo and the others emerged from the caves. The rescued woman reached out stained hands to the younger girl, who fell sobbing on her bosom; however dirty they both were, they were free. The older woman would be a farmer's wife again, and she would do more to lead the younger girl to recovery than the Slayer ever would–except through the village self-defence class run by an elf girl the Slayer had trained.

In the past ten years her disciples and former companions had trained self-defence militias in every village; the goblin threat to small hamlets had made every sane cottager leave for the towns. The cockroaches still slipped through, but a thousand heroes, men and women, kept up the fight. When men looked the goblins victims in the face, they would not let their sisters, wives and neighbours be taken–though it disgusted Jo Tresckow that they needed any cajoling to give up their safety and lives. Certainly, no one who saw the Slayer could say that the rescue of raped women brought back nothing but sobbing, half-comatose mouths to burden the parrish.

-0-

Every time he watched the Slayer drag broken women to their feet and splint their souls, after yet another goblin extermination quest–Jo Tresckow felt a little bit more useless. The sleeping gas spell he had developed (and named for his dead, disgraced, forever-beloved sister), had made clearing all but the largest caves the trivial matter it deserved to be. But there were always more caves, and bigger ones. And his sister, the only human who would ever speak with him and understand, was bones in a goblin cave. He hadn't seen her die in the darkness, but every day she wasn't there his mind burned. Fixed, thoughtful and earnest, on a holocaust of goblinkind.

He found the Slayer alone, on a rock outside the camp, the helmet once more hiding her face. He sat by the rock, until he felt he could speak.

"Were you meditating, meine damen? Not praying, surely...?"

"I haven't prayed since I put this armour on. Until the gods fall in the dirt and suffer as we do, no one will save me but myself, and no one will condemn me again.

"I feel I will never comprehend the strength of women. What they endure through and live, year after year…but it fills me with more sadness than hope."

"Idiot." The Slayer grated, "Women aren't that strong. We fall down and cry; we despair and don't rise again. I want to scream and tear out my teeth, when we rescue a girl, but she can't come back…though I don't curse them. It could have been me, that stayed broken. Sometimes I think it was. "

For a minute, Jo was silent with his thought. The Slayer continued her silent, nightly battle; wrenching back all her strength and triumphs from the jaws that howled Liar, Failure, Victim.

"Nightmares?"

"Of killing monsters and being killed by them. Not so different from our days. The other rescued women, living out silent lives of peace in their villages, are all heroes...but this life is the best for me. I fought for it. To use the power I have to save everybody I can. Always."

"How did you come back, at the beginning? What was the road, or…?"

"…the toll? My father's gift, the martial arts I disgraced…I can't truly use them in this heavy armour, but I can't fight without it. I couldn't go back to the fight, without armour and a sword. I lost my name. The ones who knew me are dead. That fearless, smiling girl is dead…but father told me that death and rebirth are only steps on the warrior's path. For years, I thought he lied to me about everything. I was weak, a coward, a victim…I'd failed them…I'm so sorry, Jo…"

The Slayer's grip on her swordhilt was white. Joachim knew the names of the dead dummkopf peasant-boy she'd loved twelve years ago, and of his own dead sister Ilsa Tresckow, were still too pain-charged for her to speak. One day, he would tell her he could forgive her.

"In the temple I couldn't even practise my father's arts, at first." The Slayer went on, "It seemed like a sick, filthy joke. But one of the sisters said once that meditation and Tai Chi might help me heal–that woman deserves more statues than any dragon-slayer. I spent hours thinking of nothing but a flower, or a stone, and turning away from nightmares. It was talking with that blessed sister that truly saved me, but I needed something to get me through the nights, when I was alone. The other nuns told me to praise all the gods, for all my saved, defiled life. She told me that nothing could take the purity of my soul, and nothing I ever did would be unblessed.

"I got better, or I thought I did. I sewed clothes for the poor. I prayed for strength and forgiveness; any scrap they might throw from their mountain. I would have cursed the gods to hell back then, but I was too afraid. I sat up with the girls they brought in, I told them their lives were worth fighting for. I told them it would get easier with time...but the women who'd been made victims never stopping coming in. The days rolled around like that spinning wheel. I never though I'd ever go out to fight again, without terror that threw me down…but it was over a year, before the night when thieves broke into the temple looking for gold or food. They were kids really, skinny and hungry-desperate. But they had knives, and I've met with kids in the capital's slums who killed their parents and raped their sisters. Even the goblins are better than that.

"One of them covered my mouth, from behind–I would have screamed. Thirteen months of fighting to get my own life back vanished, that moment. I was so terrified, I can hardly think what I thought…I just knew I had to stay still, fall down, let them do whatever they wanted and break me again–or smash a chamberpot over that poor boy's head and punch the broken handle through his throat. Then hit his friend, until I heard his neck crack, then the guard who came, I'm so glad I didn't kill him…they locked me up after that, but I crawled through a drain and ran. I remembered, I could punch off goblin heads with my hands–and there were so many girls they would take, unless I brought them back. I had to be strong. What they did to me was a sick, sick horror…but fear is a stupid, stupid lie. I might have stayed in that temple, and let them rape me every night. Let them rape all the girls they wanted, forever! NO, NO, NO! NO MORE FEAR!"

Jo Tresckow imagined that the Slayer had been a very open, passionate teenager, twelve years ago. Sometimes the old-young woman's heart burst out. Two metallic sobs echoed round the helmet, before she regained her grip of steel on her grief.

"That was all I could do. You don't know how sorry I am...I could never save your sister. After all I've done, I'm a broken lie…but we saved those girls. today. That's something."

The young wizard adjusted his glasses. He had his sister's red hair, and his sister's stony smarter-than-you expression. But the twin points of light in his eyes were Jo Tresckow, with twelve lonely years to burn and fester.

"You can't save all the women the goblins take, Miss Slayer. All we can do is wipe the monsters out. Something came to me in a dream, four years ago–in two more years, with the requisite funds…a virus. A disease, born from vermilion fever, white smallpox and a dash of magic, that could infect every one of the Praying Races within months. With perhaps a week of coughing and fever, before it settles in the blood. Then it will spread to every goblin–they cannot survive without preying on humans–and every goblin will drown in its blood within days. If five in a hundred survive, they will starve in their caves, helpless to raid or breed–and I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh for my sister's sake! Then I will make a virus for the orcs, then exterminate link by link up the chain, until all dragons and demons are dead. It may take generations, before humans can truly begin to live–but when we have put away the monsters, what will we do with the world? What would you do, Miss Slayer? What do you think of that?"

The Slayer was still for long enough, even Jo was afraid. Meditating? Or deciding the fate of the dunghill world under her feet?

"…it seems a good dream."

"Bitte? Everyone else called me mad! A mutation, a single mistake could wipe humanity out. Though I scarcely hold them better than goblins, for letting my sister die. Do you truly think...?"

"…I think…it's the sort of idea your sister, Ilsa, would have had. And I think it's a dream as big as…Harry's." The helmet dropped forward. Jo saw the tears fall from the visor, but her voice was–smiling? "That was your last goblin hunt. Lock yourself in a lab and work; I'll give you all the money you need. But not another word about wiping humanity out, do you hear?"

"Certainly, I won't mention–" The Slayer turned to look on Tresckow, who suddenly swallowed his tongue, "–jawohl, no more."

"No more monsters, no more quests…oh, Harry would be sad." The tears still rolled down the Slayer's cold breastplate, "He should have known, we should have known…there are other quests, and real heroes. And real magic, in our hearts, our heads and our love. Oh, Harry. Ilsa. I couldn't save you, but when the sun goes down, I will remember...and now, so will the world."

-0-

Eighteen months later, the white pox was born. Six months after that, the last goblin was dead. Most of the captive women waded through goblin blood and pus to the daylight and rescued themselves. The starving single goblins who crept into villages generally had their heads smashed in with rolling pins. Mankind's well-know predication for torture and brutality could have reasonably been stoked to unheard of heights on the last of of the vermin, except that goblins had always been too pathetic to slay with any satisfaction.

The Praying Races were too busy being slaughtered by orcs and trolls to exactly string out the bunting, but every mother of a daughter blessed the Tresckow name. A certain armoured hunter of goblins might have expressed some quiet satisfaction, had he not been run down by a dungcart about a year after stabbing Ilsa Tresckow. No one knew what had become of his companions, or had reason to care.

Joachim Tresckow, the Plague Lord of Mitteland, was called a mad wizard and a threat to humanity. Some adventurers even set out to kill him, until the government put him on a salary. He answered discreet enquiries about a plague for the elves, just in case they got too uppity, with a mysterious smile. He destroyed only the worst of those from the academy who had laughed at his sister's death, but all of the many wizards who sought work with his research group had to kneel at her grave.

The Slayer had spoken of retiring to teach martial arts to orphans–but then the news came of a cruel and power-crazed Lich king rising to power in the southern mountains. The Plague Lord's heirs would indeed see the death of dragons, one day–but germ warfare would never disturb the undead.

He Lei, the Slayer's father, had told her of the Mystic Shield technique. A martial artist's spirit could turn deadly magic aside. After months of learning and relearning, the Fighter went South, with a white robe, bare hands, and a bare, steady face. For the friends she had lost, for the friends who went with her–for every single innocent she could still save. She had always been a saviour, not a slayer, because she had suffered but she had fought.