Number One sniffed the air. Humans. You could always smell humans. Smell their unwashed rancid stink from miles away. The question usually was whether you got to hear them first, always arguing and shouting in the raucous way. Today it was the smell. The unchecked stench of bodily functions, wafting out of their primitive little settlement. Number One shuddered.

“Right,” hissed Number Three. “There’s one bunch of humans who have houses with wheels and another bunch of humans who have houses that sit on the ground. Best I can tell, the wheelies showed up yesterday. The groundies reckon the wheelies made the dead rise. Looks like the groundies had a bad time of it last night too. Anyway, there’s lets more groundies than wheelies and they’ve got torches and pitchforks and they’re all hard at work building an Angry Mob. Let’s go watch humans fight each other!”

Number Two shook his head. “Nah. You know how it is. They’ll accidentally burn their own town down and then blame it on the first elf they see. Let’s just go. We know what we wanted to know.”

“What was that?”

“Whether the humans had zombie problems too.”

“Makes you wonder where all these zombies come from,” mused Number One. “I mean, there can’t be lots of nearly-fresh corpses permanently littering the moors. Yes, there have been lots of battles over the years and I suppose I can understand the skeletons, but the zombies? Wouldn’t they rot?”

Number Three kicked at the snow under their feet. “It’s cryogenics, that what it is. Keeps them fresh.”

“Right.” Number Two pointed randomly eastwards, away from the village. “That way then.”

“I want to buy a bow,” said Levincious suddenly.

There was a long pause.

“What?”

“I want to buy a bow.”

Unthall’s face screwed up into a blancmange of horror and disbelief. “You want to go into the human village. To buy a bow?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an elf!”

Levinicious looked himself up and down. “Last time I looked.”

“And you want to buy a bow. From humans.”

“Look, I haven’t got one. . .”

“When the best bow-makers in the WORLD are about half a day’s walk back behind us.”

“But we’re going this way. . .”

“So. You’d rather buy some grotty, ill-made human bow. You could have something made of sapient pearwood strung with the ligaments from a unicorn, but you’d rather have something made OF STRING? AND YOU CALL YOURSELF AN ELF?”

Number One looked at his own bow. “Unicorn ligaments? Ew. . .”

“Running away, remember?” hissed Levinchius under his breath.

“Because of you and the chieftain’s wife,” growled Unntha.

“Because of you and your magical accident,” grated Levinichius. He looked up brightly. “Come on, escort. This won’t take long!”

“Yay! We get to watch the humans fight!” squealed number three. He pulled a bag of oiled corn seed out of his pack and waved them at Uthaal. “Got a Burning Hands going spare?”

They walked into the village, holding their noses. The hubbub of shouting drew closer. All the humans, it seemed, had joined the mob.

“Go away!”

“Don’t want your kind here!”

“Sorcerers!”

“They eat babies!”

“Get your curse away from us!”

“This is silly.” Number One shook his head. “These wheelies, if that’s what they’re called, clearly have nothing to do with the walking dead. Look at them! They look. . . Well, they look more respectable than the rest of this rabble.” Number One cleared his throat. “I say! You! You humans! Peasanty types! Blaming them is stupid! I say! Are you listening?”

Number Two scrunched up his face. “Number One, do we need to have that conversation about you not talking to strangers again, because. . .”

That was when someone punched Number One in the face.

NEXT WEEK: BLACK PEARL? WHAT BLACK PEARL?