The next seven days passed in a blur. Varrarg was used to life moving...slowly. Oh, there were always games and the occasional crisis, but usually things happened slowly. Quietly. Subtly. The giants had been an exception to that, as were the orcs and now the humans. But the first two had been sudden changes, which then settled into a new period of, well, slowness. Not a good slowness, but with the giants there was nothing to do, with the orcs they just had to do what they were told and try to stay out of the way. The humans were more...troublesome. Not in a violent way, but their actions were firing everyone up. Yes, the other family elders, but not just them, Merrik desperately wanted to join them and had taken the news of the meeting as an opportunity to get his way.

Of course, he couldn’t speak their language, nor could most. Only five on the human side and four on their side could and two on the human side were officers and so would be missing. It would make discussion hard. So Merrik had decided to throw himself into learning their language and teaching them the true tongue. He hadn’t made much progress in a mere seven days. But he had managed to get the oldest of the would-have-been Nonoses onboard, and then started getting a few humans who could decipher the symbols they wrote on various things to come start teaching them and the other children how to do that.

And she didn’t have any just complaint. The children were raised together and taught together and could invite others to teach, that was well within their rights. The only things that couldn’t be shared were family rites, history and secrets and work rites, history and secrets and those were only taught when they reached their majority (and almost always aligned, it was the rare goblin who would teach their secrets to someone who was not a relative). Until then, they were meant to try everything and learn what they were good at, so they could be of use to the clan. Of course, some idealists also thought it was meant to tie the clan together by having them grow up with each other. That didn’t work, in her view, nothing bred rivalry more tightly than growing up with someone. But it was tradition.

They also wanted to learn human magic, but it didn’t seem to be working, thank the Ancestors. The last thing she needed was a bunch of kids running around with magic. Though, she wouldn’t have minded more, or any, goblin spellcasters. There were rumors that one of the ancestors had been one, but there were none now. Then they tried to learn about the human religion, especially once they learned that it included one day with (almost) no working, but rather religious stuff. That was...a bigger problem, as many of the older goblins did not care for it.

She doubted they’d be able to significantly participate in either the human faith, or their magic, or their army...but if she tried to block them, she’d be making trouble for herself with them. If she didn’t, she’d have trouble with the other elders. But that was just what was happening inside the clan. The bigger issue was what was happening with the humans. They’d long since finished their ditch and earthen walls, though they had also (after ‘requesting permission’ used their magics to haul masses of dirt to the top of the goblins’ home and begun the work of constructing a ‘watchtower,’ though they reportedly were holding off bringing any wood to the top until they could more easily shape it, then there was a great deal of debate about whether they could make a ‘crane’ to pull things to the top, or not, with some issue about ropes which she didn’t entirely understand.

But regardless, they were cutting down trees with great enthusiasm all along their future ‘road’ and pulling them within the walls, and then, strangely chopping off the branches and burying them, and then had one of their mages light them on fire. Humans were quite bizarre creatures. Though, also somewhat terrifying. Watching forty men go out into those terrifying woods and return carrying a live tree, plucked from the ground by their magic and might and replant it in their absurd outdoor farm was...intimidating. She didn’t understand why they bothered, but apparently the tree gave some fruit they wanted. Which was at least an explanation for why they weren’t chopping it down the way they did so many other trees. Most of the wood they hadn’t buried and set on fire, that was being worked, was being shaped into some sort of wheel and they now had two people magically creating pieces for it, or more weapons or ammunition.

One was the man who’d killed the rat for the feast she’d thrown announcing the upcoming meeting with the humans and emphasizing the need for goblins to stick together (after the human who’d ‘purified’ the meal left, she wasn’t sure about that, to be honest, but they’d watched and it was the same things the humans were doing over their own food, so it wasn’t likely to be harmful). Whatever strange experiment they were doing had worked and so they’d requested to kill all the rats going forward, which she had agreed to easily enough (after an unfortunate misunderstanding where she’d thought they were asking to kill all her rats right now as opposed to simply being the people who killed rats when it was decided that was needed).

Merrik was more fascinated by the practice of their warriors. They couldn’t all practice at once, but each group practiced marching, moving in formations and several men were practicing with strange metal horns, though they only played very short tunes, unlike the more elaborate ones they played on other instruments as part of their evening meals and celebrations, which took place immediately after they gathered and lowered their strange banners and put them away. Their training was very strange and different from the sparring done by the orcs, or the elaborate posturing the Nonoses had engaged in when they had claimed they were becoming warriors. No one moved anywhere alone and the only individual practice was practice with their short spears and that only very simple repeat drill of a single stabbing attack.

They had sent out hunting parties as well every day and a few days ago had gone after a ‘bear’ some sort of forest monster. They’d returned, with several people still injured when it turned out not to be a ‘bear’ but some sort of strange monster they were unfamiliar with. They kept calling it a combination of an owl and a bear. But since neither of those words meant anything to her, she’d taken a look when they’d dragged it back into camp and been...even more concerned about Merrik joining their ranks, even if their wounds were magically healed.

She felt less bad as she watched men going back and forth to the cave, retrieving mountains of rotting meat and dung which were added to their fields and the strange separate place their urine ran to. If Merrik wanted to do that, more power to the boy, she doubted her stomach was strong enough for it these days, she had a hard enough time with the goblin and rat manure they used on the rats and mushrooms. But he was more interested in the strange, mostly wooden, one wheeled containers which they used to move the stuff through the forest. Apparently he thought it a lot better than either the earthenware pots, or the carved stone pulls that they used for transportation in the walls (though he of course was not foolish enough to believe it superior to the many slides and drops their ancestors had engineered.

Admittedly, despite the disgusting lair it apparently lived in, the meat had been tasty. Much of it had gone to the Notchears in trade for their salt to preserve the rest and they’d thrown a much fancier feast than hers, agreeing that goblins needed to stick together. Just behind them, not her. They were a lot less pushy than she’d expected, probably because when they pushed too hard, people muttered that the only reason that they even had a chance was because she’d given them a gift of the magical communication.

The humans weren’t as thrifty as she would have liked, but that had its own advantages, though they asked for aid in tanning the bear’s fur to keep it soft, that proved beyond the goblin tanners, but they had the supplies that the humans needed and so they exchanged knowledge for supplies. The tanners were excited about it, but personally, the giant rats were so dirty she thought there was little benefit to keeping their fur on the hide. More usefully however was their minimal interest in the bones of the bear, or indeed, most of the other animals they killed. They spoke of bone soup as a last resort, but had no interest in the bones as building or carving materials, which meant they were perfectly willing to pass them over in exchange for nothing more than the ash from the smith’s fires. A good deal for everyone, in the long run, even if they were oversupplied with everything at the moment, as the orcs hadn’t bothered to loot more than their weapons and altar stone. Games broke, so did musical instruments and decorations and all the other niceties of life which were better made of bone than clay.

She was not the only one politicking, nor were the goblins the only ones doing so. As soon as the announcement was made, the humans began speaking at great length about it. With some annoyance, she managed to convince Kirrik Oneeye, as a neutral party who understood, to go down and listen to what was being being said. It was more of the sort of nonsense that the Colonel had spoken. Mostly, but a few things were being said clearly, in a way which made his strange speech snap into place a bit more. None of those strange references to ‘perfect celestial beings’ whatever such things were, if they were even possible.

No, the point that was made was that the goal of whatever they did had to be to align people’s selfishness, greed and fear (they also mentioned pride, but she ignored that) with the goals of their society. The obvious way to do that was give people something to defend. The Colonel had already started them down that path with his reference to homesteads, but there was a major fracture within the humans. One group wanted to stay and build something here, but the other, lead, to her annoyance and disappointment, by Trip, wanted to leave and go try to find other humans. There was a lot of strange human lust and faith questions bound up in it, but that seemed to be the big fault line.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She was uncertain who would win, but perhaps they could shape the victory. The humans leaving would...not be good, even if it would remove their threat...perhaps she was over-focused on the last year. She’d made it her entire life without any outside threat impinging within the walls, until this last year. But it had happened twice in that year—three times, if you counted the humans. They needed to be stronger, to be able to defend themselves and...fuck, was Merrik right?

Well, even if someone had to do it, that didn’t mean it had to be her grandson!

There was some distraction caused by the strange appearance the following morning of a second giant beast that the Colonel simply...made appear, this one apparently a ‘mare’ that is a female ‘horse’ which was...another big beast to pull stuff? Then Rawlins and the other man had to make ‘harness and saddle’ for the beasts, which was apparently a bunch of connectors to allow them to haul stuff, or carry people.

That helped them pull the felled trees around, towards the massive hole near the river that the one with the strange facial jewelry had made and where their ‘mill’ was going to go. Besides the massive hole they’d made for the ‘pond,’ and channel they’d dug down a square area, then spent a full day smashing heavy things into the ground, before bringing in massive amounts of sand, spreading it everywhere, then smaller stones, then the larger stones they’d salvaged from the cavern and finally they were spreading sand over the stones again, filling the gaps. There was no actual building yet, but besides their flat area they had their giant wheel mostly made and they had dozens of cleared logs ‘drying’ as they lay near magical fires. They’d also assisted with the work in the lower caverns, as they kept ten men down there at all times, but thanks to their strange, always burning, never smoking torch, and some sort of magical warnings, they only kept two actually watching. The rest were eager to help put things to rights and tend the mushrooms. Which was good, as besides the losses to the Breaklegs, the losses to her worker families had been significant. Indeed, the Settled Feet had shrunk to a quarter of the size they had been before the twin disasters of the monsters and the orcs had descended upon them.

The strange green woman they’d found, who looked almost like an orcish female, but with very different features, visited the town beneath several times and each time gathered a group of the soldiers, dancing with one or two, which almost started a fight, every time, until an officer stopped them.

The hunting and gathering parties went out frequently, though only one group at a time. The only thing of interest to her besides the strange sun-loving plants they were gathering to try to grow were the recent return of a hunting party with a number of small, pink squealing beasts, that looked almost like too-large baby Giant Rats, but had been proclaimed to be ‘piglets’ as apparently the hunters had been confronted by its angry parents and killed them, while the green lady showed them something. She’d also shown them the ‘piglets’ though there’d been some concern among the humans about her expectation that they’d kill and eat them all.

At any rate, they now had a pen for them. And besides all that, the soldiers had started working together on building their own huts. But these were clearly intended to be larger than the ones atop the walls and it sounded like they were planning to build one for each and every soldier, which was an absurd extravagance. Admittedly, there was a great deal of open space within the walls of the Settled Feet these days, but that was due to casualties. Usually, and soon, they would be full again...unless they spilled out of the walls. They’d always limited their numbers in the past, but perhaps…

She cut off the thought, as sharply as she cut off the thoughts that hearing howling from the woods had given a young Varrarg. Besides internal politicking, her only real success had been convincing the Colonel to also prioritize a gate for the exit to the Deep Dark. They clearly needed all the stone they could get and that from the original excavations within the walls had either been thrown away, or used for the huts atop the walls and neither helped the humans. But they had wood in abundance. It wasn’t as good as rock, as it didn’t look natural, but if two ‘gates’ were installed, then they’d have warning of any approach and the ability to shut out any threat long enough to run, or muster to fight. She’d gotten the idea when she asked about the moveable walls that were being made around each end of the giant hole they’d made near their ‘mill’. Those were going to be gates to allow water in and out. She’d been so proud of the idea, but hadn’t been certain how to move the gates, as those were intended to rise into the air, which in this case would send them into the stone ceiling only for Thomas to look at her like she was an idiot and explain the concept of ‘hinges’ to her…

That had been embarrassing. There was no reason for her to know that, there were no ‘doors’ within the walls. Though the tanners had a large boulder they rolled into place to block off their tanning cave, but again, no hinges. The door wasn’t complete, but it was done enough to be jammed into place and watched by a handful of men who volunteered because they did not want to participate in politics.

Ironically, that gave them a great deal of privacy as every goblin adult was topside. For the goblins, historically privacy was achieved by going to one of the huts above, or finding an area without goblins, or trusting in the rat leather hangings which would muffle sound and block sight...which reminded her of the other things she’d used in her politicking. Cabot Forbes had brought two strange pieces of paper to her. One had meant nothing, besides its base content, which was something about rat leather, but the second, when she touched it, the information shifted from just a simple list of ingredients to a full set of instructions for rat stew.

Some of the ingredients were things she hadn’t heard of, but asking Cabot about that and he was able to produce most of it and when she tried to make the recipe, it was...bizarre. Holding the paper, she knew how to do every step of it. She was a good cook, but this was not how that worked and as she held it, her hands began to move, easily shaping the various mushrooms from inside and plants from the outside into the feast pot (they only had enough metal for one and it was shared between the families).

When she finished the ‘stew’ and tasted it she was quite impressed and shared the recipe with the other cooks, which got some interest, especially when she let them try some of it and they were able to see both how good it tasted and that it could simply sit in the pot, as it was good both warm and cool. More critically for her politicking however was sharing the other recipe with the tanners. No one had any interest in ‘rat leather armor’ but the tanning method was different than that they used in the tanning cave (she knew little about it except that it must somehow have to do with severe cold, as one poor apprentice had actually frozen to death in there). They tried it on the first batch and it produced leather so soft and flexible it could be used for far more things than just barriers, containers and full blankets for bad weather.

By the time of the meeting, both the senior tanners wore elaborate cloaks and the other goblins were bidding on such for themselves. She was the only non-tanner to have one, though she wore it carefully, to expose the elaborate painted patterns on her skin. Those were worn rarely, as the same mushrooms which made the dye for them could also be eaten and so putting them on was a very showy display, usually only done on Commemoration Day, or some other major marker in a goblin’s life. Few others put their own on as well, Lornig, most obviously, but not only her rival, though for most it was clearly not about politics, it was about showing off for another goblin as various people sought to convince goblins who’d lost their partners to choose new ones.

But as almost every adult goblin began to stream to the top of the walls, Varrarg looked at the swarm. They were outnumbered by the humans, but there were dozens of them. And many, many more were still children, or sequestered while pregnant, as was tradition (usually this was only a few, as given the number of children each pregnancy resulted in and their limited space, they had to limit how many bred at any one time, but after the disaster below and the massacre of the Nonoses, anyone could breed and it got you out of having to deal with the orcs, so many had, even the orcs had allowed the pregnant women to go below and children to remain below, though more because they didn’t have any use for either than out of any sensible greed for more slaves). The only child allowed was the would-have-been Nonose, who was with her son, Merrik, to act as a translator.

The Colonel and the other officers were there, despite what he’d said. But as the last people trickled in, he spoke, quietly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I and the rest of the officers will withdraw at this point. We leave the question of what form of government and who should lead it, in your hands. Send us a messenger when you’re done. To be clear, I have spoke to all the officers, and we have agreed, we will not seek, nor will we accept, any civilian position, so long as we are officers in the military. The one thing I ask of you, as a personal favor, because changing the name of a regiment is bad luck, is that whatever we do, takes on the name, New Massachusetts. Thank you, we leave you to your business.”

He waved his hand slightly and all of the officers moved out, leaving a group of more than a hundred and fifty people waiting for someone to take charge. Varrarg smiled to herself. This was going to be...interesting. Then she froze. Did she actually want this? Even if she managed to win somehow...none of this was magic. Not based on what the Colonel had said. Which meant she wouldn’t really be in control, not so long as they were outnumbered, with no real weapons. But, they couldn’t turn on her without revealing themselves to be liars.

Was that protection, or the point? She didn’t believe them. Was she trying to prove herself right? Well...if you didn’t have strength, you had to have relationships. It was relationships which had meant she ascended to leadership of the Breakleg family and which had been on the verge of letting her bring the Nonoses into line. That could be overwhelmed by force, but now due to her connections to the humans, despite her family being reduced to two adults, everyone still treated her well and due to her gifts to the other families, even her rivals didn’t insult her…

There was no safety in anonymity, or hiding, not with humans within the walls, so she had to roll the dice that she could take the role and make it real before she annoyed them so much they turned upon her. If nothing else, the fact that they were all male meant that she only needed to manage this for a single generation, then the clan would inherit their homes, their knowledge and their weapons. Given that...really, all she had to do was keep them happy and here and the Settled Feet would be destined for safety, security and expansion. And if not, well, their beliefs and reputation made it unlikely they’d attack unless she pushed them, which meant she could try, if nothing else, she might be able to get concessions, or bribes from whichever human ended up winning...

Yes, the path forward was clear. She just had to take it.