They marched at a faster pace the next day, and despite the improvements he’d made to his pack, Tryle found it difficult to keep up. Overnight, the terrain had changed from flat forest trails to seemingly endless chains of smaller hills. Up and down they went, their pack straps cutting into their shoulders, arms held out in front of them for balance.
To make matters worse, around noontime a light drizzle of rain fell through the trees, and while Tryle’s pack stayed dry from his DIY waterproofing, finding safe footing on the muddy trail became a treacherous task.
After nearly twisting his ankle turning on a particularly windy switchback trail, Tryle decided then and there to ditch his extra-heavy breaching gear the next chance he got. The only problem was doing it when nobody was looking; they didn’t stop for lunch, and bathroom breaks were taken in groups (goblins were culturally famous for communal defecation on trips like these).
Luckily, Tryle didn’t need to solve this problem. By late afternoon, the skies cleared. The rain dried up under the dull rays of the lowering red sun. They came to the top of a grassy hillock and Jrunta called for them to rest. The weary goblins cursed under their breaths and massaged their aching backs. A few flopped onto their backs, chests heaving.
But then Jrunta, after consulting with Yorin over his roughly drawn maps, declared:
“Okay, grubs — I think we’ve made it.”
Just like that, they all perked up. Spirits rose instantly like a cork in water. It hardly seemed real. After nearly two days of traveling, they had finally arrived at the borders of the Woodlands?
A semicircle of trees grew around the crown of the hilltop, leaving a space facing away from the direction they’d come. On either side, valleys dipped between other round hill peaks, like the spines of a dinosaur. The goblins gathered around the gap, exclamations of wonder and excitement sweeping through them.
At the rear of all the jostling bodies, Tryle stood on a rock to see what they were looking at, and the sight took his breath away.
Laid out like a tapestry before him, a long slope of woods flattened onto a lush, green field that stretched as far as the eye could see. Roads crisscrossed its verdant surface in thin tanned stripes. Most prominent of all was the giant river snaking around the borders of the fields like a glossy band of blue, satin cloth.
So this is what the world outside the Woodlands looks like, thought Tryle.
About a quarter of a mile from the base of their hill was a squat building. From its top puffed faint jets of smoke out a chimney. The granny’s cottage.
Jrunta ordered most of the raiding party to stay on the hill while he led a scouting party down the hill to stake out the cottage. His second-in-command — a burly, taciturn goblin named Graddle — took charge of those staying behind to make camp.
Tryle moved to join them, but Jrunta crooked a finger at him. “Not you, Bodkin. You’re coming with us.”
Tryle pointed at himself in bewilderment. “Me? Why?”
Jrunta held up a cylindrical, segmented metal contraption with a circle of glass on one end. “You know how to work this thing, don’t you? We need to gather as much information as we can on the landscape. And this human invention allows us to see things from afar, doesn’t it? This far-away glass.”
Tryle wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “I mean…sort of. It’s called a modular spyglass.”
“Never mind the name. Do you know how to work it or not?”
Tryle briefly considered saying he didn’t. He would very much have liked to stop walking for the day with goblins he didn’t like. And at that very moment, other members of the scouting party were giving him dirty looks. But he was not a good liar.
“Yeah, I can use it.”
“Good.” Jrunta slipped a double-sided hatchet through his belt loop and barked: “Yorin, get the other Scouts! Cheevy and Bolbo, too! I don’t care if Bolbo wants to nap — let’s move it out!”
--
Abandoning the neat, single-file march of the last two days, Tryle and the rest of the goblins slipped and slid down in a disorganized spread. Fortunately, the trees obscured their descent. Otherwise, a casual passersby might have seen ten goblins practically rolling down the steep, rocky hillside like green tumbleweed.
At the bottom, they took cover behind a low rock wall at the tree line. The broken-up slag — remnants of some long-ago avalanche — wasn’t very tall, but then again, neither were the goblins.
Out in the middle of the wide meadow stood the modest-looking cottage. Its walls were made of dark cobblestone, and its roof was layered in curved, peach-colored shingles taking on the scalloped texture of a clam shell. A flock of sheep milled around a rectangle of short fencing enclosing the front door.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Jrunta and Yorin took turns peeking over the rock wall, handing the spyglass to Tryle whenever they wanted to adjust the focus or magnification. The rest of the goblins were dispersed in a scattered line, crouching low. A few kept their hands on the hilts of their knives, scanning the fields warily.
The Scouts drew diagrams on slats of bark, noting places of cover and variations in the terrain, which in the meadow were few and far between.
Jrunta put down the spyglass, eyeing the cottage skeptically. “I’m inclined to rush the thing in full daylight. Don’t look too tough to me.”
“Never said it was.” Yorin wrinkled his nose. “But those sheep might be an issue.”
“Why’s that? I see the corner of a barn poking out the back. Not too visible from this angle, they should be put away come nighttime.”
“It’s not the sheep I’m worried about. It’s the sheepdog that might be guarding ‘em.”
“Do you see a sheepdog anywhere, Yorin?”
Yorin took the spyglass and raised it to his eyes. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. What kinda sheepherder doesn’t have a dog?”
“What kind of human granny is tending sheep in the first place?” grumbled Jrunta, glancing down the line. “Cheevy, get over here!”
Cheevy sidled up beside them, and Tryle instinctively leaned away from his musky odor. Cheevy had a shaggy mess of salt-and-pepper hair and three symmetrical warts on the bridge of his nose. He was also one of the few goblins who still practiced traditional mud-bathing instead of washing himself with creek water, claiming it was good for the skin. Now that he thought about it, Tryle was slightly insulted that some goober like him was more accepted in the village than he was.
“How’s the target looking?” asked Jrunta.
Cheevy idly picked his nose and shrugged. “Nothin’ special. Could probably stack three or four o’ us to get over the roof, no ladder required for just a goblin.”
“That a consensus between you and Bolbo? Or do we have a Grappler’s disagreement?”
“Bolbo’s takin’ a kip over by the block there, Chief.”
“I can see that, Cheevy. That’s why I brought you here as well, to lend your expertise.”
“At the root of it, we agreed upon first look that we could pull up whatever treasure’s in there if we decide to go through the ceiling. Dunno how heavy it might be. So for some moneybags, the ladder we’ve been luggin’ around might be handy.”
“Aren’t you glad rucking it all the way here wasn’t in vain? Good work, Cheevy — dismissed.”
Jrunta squinted through the spyglass again and grimaced. “Bodkin, it’s going blurry again.”
Tryle hurriedly worked the dials on the scope. “If you don’t let your fingers roll the knobs, the scope will work at a constant distance.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just fix it, Bodkin.”
Yorin suddenly tapped Jrunta on the shoulder. “Chief, look!”
The door to the cottage had swung open, and out walked the human granny. Tryle wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting based off the picture from Skorl the wannabe sketch artist, but it wasn’t this.
At first glance, she looked like any old human: wrinkled skin, a leathery mouth, flyaway white hair tossing restlessly in the wind whipping over the field. She wore a cornflower-blue dress and a white, full-front apron tied around her waist. She walked with the slow, easy gait of the elderly, her hands clasped behind her bowed back.
Hands that held a giant, double-edged axe. Its blade glinted wickedly sharp in the sunlight.
All the goblins except for the sleeping Bolbo gawked at the granny as she strode leisurely off a ways to a broad tract of willow trees growing by the river. When she came to them, she set down the axe and planted her hands on her hips.
At this point, Tryle had taken up the spyglass from where Jrunta had left it on the ground.
Through the scope, he watched as the granny sized up the trees for a minute, rolling up her billowy sleeves to reveal thick, knotted arms more suited to those of a lumberjack’s than some random granny. With practiced ease, she hefted the axe and swung it a wide, horizontal arc, cutting straight through five of the trees at once.
The top halves toppled over in a shower of falling poles, but the granny kept swishing away, chopping multiple trees down with each strike. Pretty soon, all that was left was a scattered grid of disembodied trunks. She pulled the trailing branches out of the water and bundled them up on the side of the river. She put the axe on top of the stack.
Then, she walked over to one of the stumps, gripped it by the sides with her veined, brawny hands, and ripped it straight out the earth, sending clods of dirt flying into the air. Tryle’s mouth dropped open as he watched the granny toss the stump, roots and all, next to the pile of willow branches. She didn’t stop there, uprooting every one of the stumps until the entire copse of willow trees had been reduced to plots of bare, overturned earth.
Tryle rubbed his eyes hard before looking back through the spyglass. It wasn’t clear at this distance, but the granny seemed to be talking to something in the water. After a few minutes, she picked up the axe and walked back to her cottage.
After the door shut, a pregnant silence hung over the hiding goblins. The line collapsed as they all gathered around Jrunta and the others, their voices high in protest and disbelief.
“Chief, did you see that? She uprooted those trees with her bare hands.”
“A monster granny, that one. How do we know she’s not an ogre in disguise?”
Jrunta didn’t answer, his head bent deep in thought.
When the incredulous comments had dwindled down, Tryle cleared his throat nervously. “Yeah, just how much gold are we talking about here?”
At this, Jrunta looked up and shot Yorin an accusatory glance.
“She did none of that when I saw her,” said Yorin indignantly. “She had a cane, for cryin’ out loud. A porter carried her things inside the cottage, furniture and all.”
“Did she also use that cane to beat a bear to death?” said Tryle sarcastically.
“Or a wild boar,” said Cheevy shakily, his face pale underneath his warts. “One o’ those big ones with ivory tusks.”
Jrunta held up a hand for quiet, knuckling his forehead irritably. “So…this changes things.”
“What are you saying?” said Yorin. “That we turn back? That the raid’s off?”
“I’m saying nothin’ of the sort. You’re right about one thing — I can smell gold traces all the way from here. Silver, too. That treasure is ours for the taking. But a day raid is out of the question.”
“And a night raid is?” said Yorin.
“With the right equipment, anything is possible,” said Jrunta. His ruddy complexion was flushed with conviction. “It’s time to put the raid spoils of the past to good use. If we do this right, the ox woman will never know we were there.”