Vol 5, Chapter 11

◆ Ordinary Goblin's POV, outskirts of the Goblin Forest. ◆

Sharp ears rose above the thick grass. The wind masked sounds, the rustle of leaves muffled footsteps, but it carried scents.

He sniffed, drawing in the wind. His long nose caught the stench of iron coming from a group of pale-skinned beings moving along the road.

The goblin lifted his head to look at the prey. The pale-skins walked openly, holding long, round, iron clubs. The goblin stared at them with large eyes and began counting on his crooked, dirty fingers. One... Two... Three... And another... and another.

He ran out of fingers. The goblin looked away from the group and at his fist.
Many! Far too many for the two of them. He needed to report to the chief.

He searched sharply for his fellow tribesman hiding on the other side of the road. There! The fool stood up straight and was drawing a short bow.
Idiot! There are far more than two enemies!

The pale-skin immediately spotted the goblin and pointed a stick at him.

A thunderous boom struck the goblin scout's sensitive ears, making him drop his wicker shield. His vision doubled, and a ringing like a shaman's gong filled his head, but he still saw his fellow tribesman, now headless, fall backward.

Time to run.

With a sharp squeal, the goblin fled. Behind him came shouts and more thunderous cracks that made his ears throb in agony. Steel wasps buzzed angrily, zipping past his scrawny body, shredding leaves, chopping down bushes, snapping branches—destroying everything in their path. One slammed into a tree, sending sharp splinters into his unprotected skin.

Howling in terror and pain, the goblin threw away his spear and fled on all fours, weaving between trees. A root caught his foot, and he tumbled into a small ravine. Silence. Shaking blood from his ears, he limped toward the camp, not daring to return for his spear.

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◆ Captain Kurt's POV, outskirts of the Goblin Forest. ◆

"Got away, the dog." Kurt spat on the ground and added, "I hate summer. Can't see the pointy-eared freaks through all this greenery."

"They've been showing up more and more lately, Captain."

"Noticed that myself. Drag that freak out!" he ordered, resting his musket on the ground and starting to reload.

The squad rushed into the field and pulled out the headless body. A bow and crooked arrows dropped into the road dust. The bone tips were thickly smeared with green goo.

"Poisoned," Kurt stated after examining the trophies.

The goblin itself was nothing special, just another pointy-eared pest. But what to do with the body? Ideally, burn it, but there was no time. Hanging it in a tree like they did with bandits was pointless. A bandit might think twice at the sight of a corpse, but goblins would just see a green apple hanging by a string. Food.

Kurt picked up the arrows and stabbed them into the body one by one. Maybe that would give the creatures indigestion. At least, he hoped so.

"Move out. Or we won't make it to the village before sunset."

The company marched on, the captain absently stroking his musket while scanning the roadside.

"What's on your mind, Sir Kurt?" asked Bubble, puffing out his chest plate with a silver medal riveted to it. Polished to a shine, it blazed in the sunlight.

"That you should think about getting a long-sleeved mail shirt." The captain poked his friend's arm where it wasn't protected by the cuirass. "The shaman of this tribe knows how to brew poison."

"He's probably not that strong," Bubble waved dismissively.

"But neither are we warriors," Kurt reminded him.

The former farmer grimaced; coming back down to earth was unpleasant.

"Can't you think of something nicer? Like the annual hunt coming up, when there'll be a lot fewer green-skins."

"I wouldn't count on it," Kurt replied skeptically.

"Why? It's tradition."

The captain didn't argue. Maybe this time the goblins really would retreat deeper into the Duchy's lands instead of toward them. After all, in their retreat, the knights had destroyed everything they could. Many villages burned to the ground and were abandoned; many residents fled... but some stayed and, despite everything, began rebuilding their homes, as their ancestors had done for centuries.

They were heading to one such village to protect it from goblins. The pointy-eared runts wouldn't hesitate to finish off even a half-ruined and looted settlement if no one stood against them. But if they ran into soldiers, there was a chance that even their dull minds would realize it was better to head somewhere the army hadn't swept through in a scorched-earth wave — somewhere the villages hadn't been burned and the livestock hadn't been slaughtered. At least, that was the plan. Maybe Bubble was right, and the hunt would go as usual — after all, goblins were more of a threat to the lands now under Laslo's control.

It was enough to garrison villages and send out regular patrols to make the green-skinned vermin think twice about feasting on scraps. The only thing Kurt feared was that the goblins would simply slip past them and begin feasting, leaving new lairs everywhere. Cleaning that up would be no easy task.

The general understood this too, recruiting more and more refugees into the ranks. On the training grounds, regiments marched around the clock, and the city had grown used to sleeping through constant gunfire. The goblins had to be shown that while the region had suffered, it could still fight. Then they'd look for easier prey. That was the nature of these cowardly parasites.

But the captain kept these thoughts to himself. Let the soldiers think they only needed to hunt goblins for a couple of weeks if luck was on their side — perhaps it would be true.

"You know, I was thinking about something positive," Kurt said, changing the subject.

"Mmm?"

"Our weapons are too powerful for goblins. They're overkill for unarmored humans, so imagine goblins."

"And what do you suggest? Stabbing them with bayonets?" Bubble widened his eyes in disbelief.

"No, just use half-charges like in training. That's plenty for goblins. We'd save powder."

The soldier thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"No need, there's no shortage of powder now. Maybe just load muskets with shot, like the artillerymen do?"

"Stupid," Kurt snapped.

"Why? It's a great idea!"

"That's a cannon. This is a musket!"

"So what? Haven't you seen some guardsmen's musketoons? They shoot shot."

Kurt shook his head again.

"Still no. What if it gets stuck?"

"It won't get stuck!"

"Fine, but what size would it be? Would it even kill anyone?" The captain took the musket from his shoulder and measured the barrel with his fingers. "In a cannon, the shot is as big as our bullets!"

"We're not fighting knights, right? For goblins it's enough. Plus, imagine — one shot could kill several at once. And you can't miss!"

"When they come in small groups of a couple hundred, you won't miss anyway," Kurt scoffed. "Besides, we don't have the shot, so no point discussing it."

"That's no problem, it's easy to make. Just melt lead and drip it into water."

"And where will you get lead? You're not melting down our bullets, are you?"

"Well... if we look hard enough, I'm sure we can—"

"That's enough. No experiments in my company. Send your proposal to General Til if you think it's not nonsense."

"All right, all right, great Sir Kurt. But if he approves it, you owe me a beer."

"And if he doesn't, you'll stop polishing that medal to such a shine. My eyes already hurt from it."

"Deal!" Bubble laughed.

The sun was already dipping toward the horizon, painting everything blood-red, when they approached the village. Just a couple of months ago, it had been a relatively prosperous place of about a hundred households. Not rich — there were no rich villages in the area, but not poor either.

Thanks to the nearby forest, many people had escaped into the undergrowth, and building materials allowed them to begin repairs. But the bustle in the village now was unusual.

Many people burned fires, using parts of half-burned houses as fuel. Simple shelters were being built. The number of inhabitants hadn't just grown — it had multiplied. And almost all were either children or women. There were practically no men.

Spotting the squad, they froze and slowly backed away so as not to provoke them. Kurt picked out an old man whittling a log, clearly shaping an axe handle.

"There were fewer of you last time," the soldier began.

"That's right," the old man agreed. "They just came today, from Burchanka, they say."

Kurt turned to the soldiers.

"Find someone among them who looks sharp and bring them to me. Not by force — promise food."

"Yes, sir!"

Bubble leaned toward the captain and whispered:

"Our supplies won't last long if we feed them all."

"We'll send a messenger to headquarters. They definitely don't belong here, this many women and children is like a magnet for goblins."

His friend nodded in agreement.

Kurt pulled a map from his satchel and started looking for the place called Burchanki, but found nothing. The map was hardly detailed — it had been drawn by hand by a talented soldier, who had copied only the essentials from the lord's map: the main roads, streams, and large villages, nothing more.

Meanwhile, the soldiers brought over a small girl.

"Couldn't think to bring me an infant instead?" Kurt swore at them.

"But she can read, Commander."

"Oh, really? Must be the headman's daughter, I bet?" the captain asked the girl.

"No, sir. I just went to church."

"Well, at least they're good for something… All right, what happened to you? Goblins?"

"No, sir, people. They took the men away for labor, along with the livestock. Burned the rest, and killed anyone who resisted. Then they sent us here."

"Straight here?" Kurt raised an eyebrow.

"Well… no. Riders escorted us for a while, but then they rode off, threatening to kill us if we went back. We walked until we came across this village."

"Hmm. Doesn't sound like bandits. What did these people look like? Any crests or banners?"

"They had nothing like that, sir. But they had good armor and swords."

"And all of you are from Burchanki, then?"

"No, sir. Not only. Also from Novoselki and Gribnoye."

"Can you read a map?" Kurt asked, and the girl nodded uncertainly. "Show me where these villages were."

She bent over the paper, trying to make sense of the drawing. The growing darkness wasn't helping her. Finally, she pointed to an empty spot on the map.

"Burchanki is somewhere here, Gribnoye is east of us, just a couple of hours away, and here's Novose—"

"Wait. Whose lands are these under now?" Kurt cut in, cursing himself for not asking earlier.

"We lived in the barony of Lord Gusto, but his castle burned down."

"So that would put these lands under Marquis Laslo's control?" Kurt concluded half-affirmatively.

"I don't know, sir, we're simple folk and don't trouble ourselves with lordly affairs." The girl shrugged.

"All right, here." The captain thoughtfully pulled a few hardtack biscuits from his satchel and handed them to her. "You can go."

She ran off, and he bent over the map again, growing darker in mood by the second.

"Thinking again? This time about something good, maybe?" Bubble asked.

"If only. Look." He pointed to the spots the girl had indicated.

"Three villages. All on enemy lands. All near the forest. All destroyed and burned."

"So what? That happens often in wartime. Deserters are the scourge of such villages, though they usually act with more restraint."

"No, these weren't deserters. Would deserters bother driving people here? They'd have raped, killed some, and sold the rest. No, these were soldiers. And they had a purpose. Think — where will the goblins go? To a fresh burn site or here, where there's such a prize — a whole pile of easy meat?"

"You're saying they burned their own villages? That's madness, they're not that crazy."

"I'll remind you they burned everything here not long ago." Kurt waved a hand at the ruins around them.

"That was different, there was logic to it."

"There's logic here too."

"Burning villages instead of just repelling the goblin attack? That's not logic, that's stupidity. If they wanted to send them our way, couldn't they just drive them with troops?"

"Goblins aren't cattle you can herd like a flock. They'd just slip through the lines and skulk around settlements, killing and snatching anything that pokes its nose out past the palisade. But if there's nothing to feed on, nothing but ashes all around…"

"I think you're overthinking it. In the end, goblins are weak. Can they really cause us much trouble?"

The question hung in the air.

Kurt scratched at his scars, recalling every skirmish with goblins in his life. A lone creature could be killed by even a peasant. Maybe two. But since goblins attacked openly only when confident in overwhelming numbers… When it came down to it, the vast majority of his soldiers were ordinary men. Easy to tire out, mediocre with weapons. And a musket with a bayonet, effectively a long spear — was hardly ideal against a short, nimble foe. While there were only a few hundred goblins in the area, they had a chance. But if their numbers reached several thousand, without artillery or a miracle they'd be crushed by sheer weight.

"Hey, Bubble. You win. Get your canister shot ready."