Dancing with the Goblins (10)
Out of nowhere, my ear started itching like a motherfucker.
"Ugh, fuck, my ear itches. Who's talking shit about me?"
Raccoon was spouting nonsense.
"Word is the goblins are coming to get you. Scared?"
"Didn't we agree to quit talking out of our asses?"
A full day had passed since the fight with the goblins without a single thing happening, and the tension had slackened a little. Putting together a scout party after that first battle had done its share to feed the optimistic mood. They'd swept the area and found nothing amiss, so everyone had vaguely decided there probably weren't many goblins after all.
That brief peace didn't last.
Patrasche came hurrying back from the scouts and made straight for me.
"Bad news. Goblins showed up."
"How far?"
"About twenty minutes out, I'd say."
"How many?"
At the question, Patrasche's face went rigid before he answered.
"Looked to be ten of 'em. At least."
Nothing ever went the easy way. Thirteen to a squad meant the fight was still well in our favor, but the problem was that the soldiers' skill left a lot to be desired. The territory had never had many monsters to begin with, and the domain was peaceful through and through, so there was no helping it.
It was a good thing they'd brought longswords instead of spears, seeing as we'd be fighting in the forest. The catch was that a sword demanded more skill than a spear ever did. The one mercy was that the lord had seen fit to put shields in some of the soldiers' hands. Last fight we hadn't really needed them, so I'd sent the shield-bearers to strike from the rear. This time was different. We had to hold a line together.
That was when JK, the senior-most of the soldiers, came over.
"Squad leader, what do you think of fighting braced between these trees?"
It did look like a solid spot. The trunks stood just far enough apart for about five people to line up between them. Five tanks could plant themselves in those gaps, and the rest of the squad could hit the goblins from behind.
"Good. We'll do it that way."
To make certain the fight happened right here, I decided to send out bait. The lure fell to Kale, our archer. Nip at them from a distance with arrows, get them good and provoked, and the goblins would have no choice but to bite.
"I'll head out, then."
Kale set off in the direction the patrolman had given us.
A few minutes passed, and then a sound I'd grown not merely used to, but sick of, came drifting through the trees.
"Kek! Kek! Kyaaaak—!!!"
"Ready!!!"
The five with shields lined up shoulder to shoulder. Someone swallowed hard — one of the soldiers, by the sound of it. I knew exactly how it felt to face a monster for the first time, so I could sympathize.
"Don't scare yourselves too bad. Long as you've got a shield, those bastards can't do shit."
Maybe the words helped. The soldier forced a smile, and the other seven adventurers started fanning out to take the rear. Kale came tearing back like a horse with its tail on fire and ducked behind the shields in a flash.
"Hahh— hahh— They're almost here."
True to his word, it couldn't have been a minute before goblins started filling our line of sight. Kale thrust his bow through a gap in the shields, hauled the string back, and loosed.
"Kyaaaaak—!!!"
"Nice."
The arrow buried itself in a goblin's right eye, and the thing started thrashing on the ground. It was out of the front rank for certain. A good start.
Fallen comrade or not, the goblins kept coming and reached the shields in an instant. They could only see six of us, so they must have figured it'd be an easy win. Heavy impacts rolled across the shields.
"Kh—!!"
Patrasche and I were used to blows like that. The soldiers weren't. They weren't shield-users to begin with — had any of them ever properly fought a monster? All I wanted was to praise them for not bolting in terror before the fight even started, and for holding that first strike.
"Hold on just a little longer!"
He'd slipped up in the last battle, but somewhere along the way Patrasche had picked up the composure to steady the men. We were holding, somehow, but the line looked ready to give. One soldier's arms and legs were shaking so badly it was impossible to miss, and the goblins didn't miss it either.
"Aaagh!!!"
Several of them hammered that single point, and he couldn't take it. He went down with his shield.
"Fuck!!! Patrasche!!!! Kick him back and plug the hole!!"
There was no other way. I sent Patrasche, right beside me, into the gap, which meant I had to do the work of two. A buckler isn't a large shield. I had to block clubs in a frantic blur, and if I hadn't bought those leather gauntlets not long ago, I'd have been well and truly fucked — left goblin on the shield, right goblin on the gauntlet. Wrecking them stung, but it beat having my gut punched full of holes.
I was grinding down body and gear alike to hold the line when the strike team finally crashed in. A clean axe blow split a goblin's skull in half. A longsword punched through another's heart, burst out the far side, and slammed into a shield.
"Kyaruk, kyaruk, kyarrruk!!!"
The goblins thrashed and raged to the very end, but they were no match for us. However berserk they went, they didn't have eyes in the backs of their heads. The soldiers' faces, though, weren't pretty after seeing monsters more vicious than anything they'd known.
Raccoon cut down the last goblin, flicked the blood off his weapon, and spoke.
"Whew. That was rough."
"Aigo, couldn't you have gotten here a little sooner?"
"This was as soon as it gets."
I traded jabs with Raccoon while checking the wounded soldier.
"Nngh..."
"Arm looks broke to me."
Of all things, it seemed to be his right arm. A casualty made my head throb. I had no idea how many more fights lay ahead, and I'd wanted to avoid losing strength if I could — but with people unused to combat in the mix, someone getting hurt was inevitable.
When I checked in with the other squads, every one of them had fought goblins too.
"Nngh... Still. Let's call it something that we cut their numbers down."
We'd survived with green soldiers in tow, hadn't we? Keep fighting our way forward like this, and we'd take the Goblin Lord down too. Everyone thought so, and the squad's faces were bright. Raccoon, of course, had to needle us.
"Heh heh. Goblin Lord's kind of a scrub, isn't he? Weaker than I thought."
Adventurers and soldiers chimed in and laughed up a storm. We swaggered on into the heart of the forest, straight toward the black maw gaping open to take us.
How many times had it been now?
"Son of a—! Fuck!"
As if to spit on our prediction that their numbers would have thinned, the goblins kept coming without end. Sometimes they hit in small packs and we won easily enough. Other times, like now, we ran into ten or more.
"Squad leader, how many we killed already?"
"No idea. I gave up counting."
I was too busy blocking goblin clubs to spare a moment for a tally. If I'd been counting, I'd already be lying on the cold ground.
The fighting, coming every hour or two, didn't let up until the sun went down. Everyone's stamina was shot, and people had taken wounds large and small. About a fifth of the subjugation force was in no shape to keep fighting. The lucky part, if you could call it that, was that no one had died yet.
Three of our own were hurt — a broken arm, a broken leg, lacerations where a goblin had shredded someone. The soldier who'd taken the claws was in considerable pain.
While we cleared a place to camp and got a fire going, no one spoke. Morale was down, and we didn't even have the strength to open our mouths. Once the preparations for sleeping rough were finished, the squad leaders gathered.
"You're alive, Goat."
"Yeah. You look... all right yourself."
Rarely for her, Eline looked tired. Fighting battle after battle while keeping her people alive seemed to weigh even on her, strong fairy that she was.
An adventurer with a large gash across his right cheek — goblin claws, by the look of it — broke the silence.
"Seems to me we were way too fucking complacent."
Sylvia, a Silver Plate with dull red hair, answered sharp as a knife.
"Alex, you looking to argue over who's right and who's wrong?"
"Wipe that shitty look off your face and hear me out, Sylvia. I'm not trying to blame anybody."
Alex went on.
"This isn't going to work the way it is, so we need a new plan. That's all."
When he stopped, every eye turned to Eline. She was the strongest of them and gave off a quiet charisma, so it was only natural. The problem was that the woman herself didn't look like she had a single thought in her head.
"Hmm... I wouldn't know. Goat, what do you figure we should do?"
Being called on out of nowhere startled me a little, but I said what I'd been thinking.
"Starting tomorrow, we ought to pick up the force's pace and run the search parties wider."
Alex shot back, skeptical.
"Based on what?"
"Even if it means taking a little risk, we need to pin down exactly where the goblins are. From here on we shouldn't be fighting our way through them. We should be going around them. That's how we find the stronghold as fast as we can. Otherwise we wither and die first."
The other squad leaders nodded. The losses from the fighting so far must have been why.
"All right. We'll do it. Guess there was a reason they put a Bronze Plate in charge of a squad."
Eline slipped in a discreet thumbs-up to close it out, and the squad leaders dispersed. We posted a watch, and the moment heads hit the ground, everyone was asleep. We'd all been wandering dreamland for a good long while when Raccoon's shout dragged every last one of us awake.
"Fuck!!!!! Ambush!!!!! Goblins — everybody up!!!!!!!"