Emerging from the keep, I saw it was twilight. Darkness would be upon us soon. Slade ran to the gate, shoved the doors closed, and struggled to slide a huge wooden beam across them. Max pointed at some mechanism on the doors, and they finally secured the bar to lock them.
The kazooy horn blasted again. It was much louder out here and coming from the south of our fort. I could only imagine hordes of goblins marching to that call.
The palisade was only a story tall. If I could climb any of the buildings inside the compound, I’d have a clear view of the surrounding landscape.
The smithy was only one story tall and had anvils and all manner of clutter that would be easy to climb. I broke into a run. As I approached, yellow flashes appeared on the clutter showing the easiest path to the top. Using the glowing trail, I barely slowed, practically running up the side of the structure to its roof.
From my vantage point, I could see over the south palisade wall into the wild country of the mountainous foothills. A horde of goblins scampered in the wilderness a few hundred yards away, coming directly toward us.
“Goblins!” I yelled. “Lots of freaking goblins.”
Squinting, I scanned the mass which was trotting steadily towards the fort.
Goblin Warband:
Goblin, Raider x42 – Level 1
Goblin, Scout x12 – Level 2
Goblin, Archer x 16 – Level 2
Goblin, Tough x8 – Level 3
Goblin, Leader x2 – Level 3
Goblin, Shaman – Level 4
Goblin, Captain – Level 5
Swiftscale x14 – Level 1
Swiftscale Charger x2 – Level 3
“How many?” Max yelled back as he faded into invisibility.
“About eighty of them.” I shouted, doing some quick math in my head, “Half of them are level 1, a lot of level two’s and three’s, with a level 5 leading them. Their combined levels are over a hundred. There is no way we are winning this fight.”
“We’ve got a fort this time!” Slade yelled back.
“A fort isn’t going to do the fighting for us,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
Looking over at the keep, I saw that it had slit windows on its upper floors. Perfect for firing arrows at the enemy while providing maximum cover. I was a little miffed that the palisade had no walkway around the top. It was really no more than a log wall.
I thought about the four of us trying to defend from the keep. Even with Max sneak attacking and Emma healing, there was no way we could hold off all these monsters.
“We should go!” I yelled back to Slade, who was now trying to scramble up the side of the smithy and join me.
When he neared the top, I gave him a hand and helped pull him up. He was freaking heavy. I sort of figured since he was over six feet tall and had a wide chest with beefy arms. But lordy, did he almost give me a hernia as I pulled him into me.
“Too late to make an escape,” Slade said. He pointed to the Northwest behind us. A scattered pack of goblin scouts had already swept around the far side of the fort. If we tried to run, they’d be waiting to ambush us on the road leading north.
“Can you go invisible?” Slade asked.
“Nope, this is considered urban,” I said. “I can only stealth in the wilderness.”
“Okay,” Slade said, looking around our compound. “Maybe you should take cover inside the castle?”
I nodded, “Okay. And what are you going to do?”
He smiled at me. It was a smile designed to make girls swoon like he was smiling just for me. “I’m going to negotiate with the goblins.”
Spell broken. The thought of Slade trying to parley with a horde of goblins wasn’t exactly comforting. At best, he’d probably send them into a murderous rage with them swarming over our fort.
“Umm, Slade,” I said, trying to find the words to talk him out of this.
“I got this.” He said. “We need you shooting arrows if it gets to that. And that castle is your best spot.”
I figured I would end up in the keep one way or another. But the thought of leaving Slade to do all the talking? That terrified me.
“Maybe I should help out with the parley?”
“Parley?” he scratched his jaw.
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“The negotiations.” I corrected.
He seemed torn, then said, “Okay, but two conditions.”
Irritation burned like a brush fire through me. Who was he to demand with conditions?
“If things go poorly, you make for the castle fast,” he said.
“Okay.”
“And you don’t talk to the goblins directly.”
“You’re kidding,” I said hotly.
He continued before I could add any more, “Not at all. Dudes got no respect for another dude letting his girl boss him around in front of others. These guys seem pretty rough, and we haven't seen any women goblins. I don’t think they’ll respect a king that lets his woman speak for him.”
My initial reaction was to give him a piece of my mind. Of all the primitive macho takes on this issue, I couldn’t believe someone like Slade even went to college. How does a Neanderthal even get through the review? But I realized he mentioned playing his king role. From that, I knew he was going to try and bluff them. Maybe a show of force by a muscleheaded knuckle-dragger would be the best approach.
“Fine,” I said. I agreed but knew I'd speak up if things got weird. Perhaps even with arrows if they got really bad.
As the masses approached, two goblins rode forward. Both were on large Scaleswifts. The first one, I assumed, was the captain, who wore a motley of armored pieces, all rusty and ill-kept. The other wore tattered robes and held a staff across the lizard mount’s back.
I squinted, and text flashed by, revealing it was the captain and the shaman. I took it as a good sign. They meant to talk with us first, so the slaying of us would be delayed for at least a few minutes.
“Hail riders of the goblin horde. I, King Slade, Slade the Slayer, Slade the Mighty, address you in the name of all human lands,” he called out.
The goblins glanced at each other from their mounts, exchanging a look. I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or something more sinister. The shaman spoke Goblinese to the captain in a low voice, trying to hide his words from us. I squinted, which seemed weird, but could now hear exactly what they said.
“The big humie, calls himself king, ruler of these lands.”
The captain seemed unimpressed. “The humie king is here? We would gain much honor if we were to slay him.”
“True,” the shaman whispered, “But he brings the Blight with him. I think he means to trap us on both sides.”
Slade whispered, “Can you hear what they are saying?”
I nodded, “Yeah, it's hard, but they're talking about how you brought blight with you.”
The captain seemed irritated but told the shaman, “Ask why he had brought the Blight to our lands. We have raided few humie settlements.”
The shaman called to us in English, “King Slayer, my captain asks, why do you bring Blight to our lands?”
Slade scratched his jaw, and I grabbed one of his thick biceps before he could reply. He asked me, “What do you think they mean by blight?”
“I don’t know, maybe the glitch?” I whispered. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it was what they were talking about. “There were cubes all around it. It killed the goblins that got too close. We need to know what he means by trapping them with it on each side. I speak Goblin. Look kingly while I, your faithful servant, speak for you, just like their wizard.”
Slade nodded slowly but stopped scratching. He puffed up his chest and put a fist on each hip. I was relieved that he had bought my rationale, and I could now manage this conversation without worrying about Slade swallowing a foot or two.
“Brave warriors,” I called back in Goblin. “My king asks, what is this blight you speak of?”
The shaman repeated my words to the captain and then said, “They pretend not to know of the Blight. Beware, the smaller Humie speaks our tongue.”
“Lies.” The captain snarled. “They mean to destroy us. All of us. Humies will not rest until they have swept all of our kind into the ground. We should rush in and kill them all.”
The shaman suggested caution, “We were not sent for the Humies. It’s the Blight the king wishes to know of. If the Humies will not confess to bringing it, perhaps we convince them to leave it and see it for ourselves.”
“And if they take the Blight with them?” the Captain asked.
“The Humies have stone walls. It's hard to say how many soft skins lie within their built-up caves. But out in the open, they would be easier prey, even with their Blight.”
“If they keep their words and leave the Blight behind, we will not have blood to taste.” The captain said.
The shaman nodded, “Nor will the King feast on yours. His instructions were clear: no distractions, seek out this Blight in the stone building and destroy it.”
“Very well,” the captain sighed.
The shaman yelled up in broken English, “There is a Blight, a foul unnatural presence in your stone hut. Leave your walls, leave your huts, and leave the Blight for us. If you accept these terms, we shall not ride after you. We only seek the Blight, to destroy it and return to nature. If you truly did not bring this abomination, leave it, and we will purge it.”
I told Slade, “They whispered that if they don’t find the blight they are looking for, they will hunt us down. We’ll be sitting ducks to a mob this size.”
“Yeah,” Slade whispered as he looked down at the milling goblins, “There are a lot of them.”
“I’m going to agree then? We leave this place and let the goblins have it?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Slade said, “Let them have it, let's bail.”
I yelled back, hoping my Goblin sounded better than their English, “Our King, Slade the Mighty, agrees to your terms. We discovered the blight beneath the large stone building. We leave it for you to do with as you please.”
“No!” Emma screamed. “We can’t leave that to them. We need to understand it better.”
I looked back to the courtyards, gesturing with my hands for Emma to keep quiet. She ignored me.
“Our job is to find glitches,” she yelled.
I hissed back at her, “We find bugs so the dev team can fix them. This mob outside is a diegetic fix. It flows with the game’s narrative.”
“No, I don’t believe that,” Emma yelled. “We spoke to the glitch in my dreams.”
Wha? What? Emma dropping sudden bombs on us was getting tiresome. Doing it in a situation like this didn’t just irritate me. It made me want to wring her tiny neck.
“It is agreed,” the shaman hollered at us. We give you some time to gather your things and go.”
“Victoria!” Emma pleaded, “We can't do this.”
Slade was already bouncing down the clutter leading up to the smithy roof. He told her, “It’s done. We can’t stay.”
I followed Slade, bright yellow spots highlighting to show me exactly where to step. It was like walking down a set of stairs.
On the ground now, Slade walked up to Emma and grabbed her. He flung her over his shoulder with almost no effort. She wailed and struggled but wasn’t going anywhere. Max was visible at the gates. He’d already gathered up our four horses.
Slade mounted his horse with Emma still over his shoulder. Once he was atop his horse, he swung her, still struggling, and placed her in front of him. She continued struggling, but there was no way she was getting an arm as thick as her thigh from around her waist. On one hand, I was a little irate that Slade’s solution was to go full caveman. But staying here would only get us killed. He did the right thing, just in the wrong way.
Max was able to get the bar off the gates but was huffing as he pulled to open the gate. I ran over to lend a hand, and together, we managed to get it open enough that we could ride out.
Mounting our horses, I took a last look back at the fort, and we were off. Riding back out into the wilderness through the goblin scouts hiding along the road, but without walls to help protect us.
My fingers were crossed that the goblin scouts would not attack.