Even the humans seemed strange to Pocket who was used to the ruddy, thick-limbed clansmen of Albain. The men from Middangeard were fair of hair and black of countenance, their mail shirts and long axes well-used. The merchants and sea-captains from Kymbru were lean of body and cunning of eye, haggling in their strange lilting language. The Sasanan warriors all strode with arrogant confidence, their long hair and short beards a sandy brown.

“Mortal men are varied as wildflowers,” Sir Corc had told him. “And their lives are as short. But do not mistake, they are neither fragile nor weak.” Pocket had never considered humans to be weak, but he said nothing and took in the sights as they made their way through the harbor and into the city proper.

The streets lacked the colorful bustle of the docks, but were nonetheless filled with more comings and goings than the busiest feast days at the castle. Beggars and urchins haunted grimy doorways, staying out of the byways where oxcarts loaded with the harvest plodded forward, urged on by rustics with switches. Shops and stalls of all kinds faced the choked streets, their vendors hawking all manner of food and sundries with as much fierceness as they used to keep the gangs of thieving orphans at a safe distance. And everywhere were the goblins.

Black Pool was home to the largest population of goblins in all of Airlann. Not even in Toad Holm, where many of them had returned to live in the more civilized culture of their gnomish cousins, could so many be found. Pocket had never laid eyes on one outside the embroidered hordes on the tapestries in the Great Hall, but that first day he saw hundreds of their grey-skinned, bulbous nosed faces. Some pushed carts loaded with tinker wares while others patrolled the streets in the uniform of the city guard. They drank in the taverns and poled skiffs in the rivers, as common a presence as the humans that made up the second largest community in the city.

So it should not have been surprising that it was a goblin that broke him out of his morose reflection.

“I wouldn’t.” The voice came from behind.

Pocket jumped slightly and turned. This particular goblin was quite fat, a prodigious gut hanging over the front of his patchwork breeches from which a fish tail poked out of one pocket.

A frightfully large cudgel rested on his shoulder, festooned with ribbons of many very faded colors.

“Would not what?” Pocket managed.

“Jump in,” the fat goblin replied. He faked a shiver, causing the gold ring in his ear to jiggle. “The Poddle is dreadful cold this time of year. And on this island it’s always this time of year.”

“Then this is the Poddle.” Pocket was relieved.

The goblin looked confused. “What is?”

“The river.”

“What about it?”

“It’s the Poddle.”