Reis stands at the open doorway and stares slack-jawed at the festivities on the other side. He can feel the reverberation of the drums in his chest, and hundreds of Goblins are celebrating in a massive crowd. Interspersed throughout are fires being used for cooking.
Many have massive pots above them, or some manner of beast being spit-roasted. It looks as though each fire is being seen to by at least one dedicated cook, and many seem to have more. Some are sitting by their fires and eating themselves, as lines of Goblins fill their plates. Others, who he can only assume are not yet done cooking, are standing protectively around their foods and whacking any wandering hands with whatever cooking utensils they have handy.
After he finishes gaping, Reis makes his way over to one of the cooking fires with a shorter line. A young-looking Goblin was walking down the line handing out large leaves on which people were piling the food. He stopped in front of the human a moment looking puzzled, but quickly shrugged and handed him a leaf of his own. It occurs to Reis that this act may be the warmest welcome that a human has received in a Goblin tribe in living memory.
If the Goblin in charge of ladling the food is surprised to see a human in his line he doesn’t show it, and when Reis mutters what he hopes is a thank you, picked up from the Goblin in front of him, the cook laughs merrily and claps him on the shoulder. He finds a quiet corner to sit in and eat rather than getting into the throng of Goblins. They’ve been nothing but kind, but still he feels like an outsider, and the language barrier is not making things easier on that front.
He watches the Goblins laughing with one another and engaging in competitions from the edge of the large clearing they were in, noticing that there were also a number of animals in the mix. Some of them next to a trainer or tamer of some kind, some carrying on independent of any supervision, some were as small as the birds sitting on a Goblin’s shoulder or flitting around the crowd, swooping at the younger Goblin’s food, and some were monstrous, larger than the wolf that had cornered him in the forest.
Large, loud drums placed at regular intervals throughout the crowd, who gave them a wide berth for the sake of their hearing, with smaller drums around them. Some manner of stringed instruments were being plucked by a number of musicians, and the amount of impromptu instruments carried and played by members of the crowd seemed to be increasing by the minute.
Reis looked on in fascination as the party and the music both seemed to keep rising in intensity. He was so absorbed in the sight that he almost didn’t notice when the Hobgoblin who had spoken to him before, the one in the battered armor, came and sat next to him.
With a better handle on his faculties, and no longer fearing for his life, Reis was able to look at the armor with a more critical eye, he suspected that the iron was not so rough as it looked, he also had a suspicion that it was enchanted.
“The entertainment starts soon,” The Hob broke the silence, and was met with a puzzled look by Reis.
“This isn’t the entertainment?” The Hob laughed, and Reis winced when he was smacked playfully on the back. He didn’t think that the Hob was trying to hurt him, but that he didn’t know his own strength.
“This is just..,” he trailed off for a moment, trying to find the word, “opening,”
“How much more lively could it get?” The Hob set his hand on Reis’ shoulder, and pointed to a section of the crowd where people were starting to make space, leaving a large circle of unoccupied space.
“It starts there,”
“What does?”
“First, friendly bout, with strong warriors. Then, most probably, some will settle blood feuds. Then the young warriors will try to show off. Last, the scamperlings will flail about to try to prove themselves and catch the eye of a guide,”
As he finished speaking, possibly the largest Hobgoblin that Reis had ever seen stepped into the circle, a massive studded club strapped to his back. He was followed into the space by another Hobgoblin, this one not quite so hulking, but riding atop one of the large wolves that Reis had encountered, though this one half again as large as the one that he had encountered.
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The two began circling each other, and a Goblin with a staff stepped forward, slamming the butt of their staff into the ground, creating a translucent barrier between the warriors and the crowd, and signaling a start to the match.
The moment the butt of the staff hit the ground, waves of energy began pealing out from the warriors. The sheer intensity of it drove many in the crowd nearest to the battle backwards, only a few of the more scarred and hardy of the Goblins seeming unaffected. Reis could feel the intent even from his distant location. Each swing of the combatant’s weapons also seemed to be empowered by different magics, though he could neither feel or identify any particular spells being cast.
In the past Reis had run quite a successful farm on the mainland, and brushed shoulders with plenty of adventurer types looking to buy some magical crops for this regent or that ritual, but he hadn’t ever seen anything close to the showing of power on display in front of him. When he’d been talking to the Goblins before about the sect of martials moving into the settlement, he’d been worried for the Goblins, now he couldn’t help but feel that any warriors they might try to send against the tribe would be hopelessly outmatched.
He knew of great spell-casters, specialized exclusively on being able to send out waves of devastating spells for long periods of time, who’s mana reserves would look paltry to the output of the two melee warriors who battled before him now.
Despite its high intensity, the battle did not last long, the warrior with the studded club emerging as the victor. The wolf rider lay unconscious on the ground, and the wolf stood defensively over his body, though the hulking Hob had made no move for his opponent once he lost consciousness. With his weapon strapped once more to his back, he walked into the crowd, which parted as he passed like wheat before a farmer.
True to the predictions of the Hob that had spoken to him, whom he had learned was called Trekuta, the next few fights were much bloodier, even if the combatants were less powerful. From his distant perch it was quite difficult to tell, he thought at least two of them had ended with fatalities, though in most, a victor was declared well before it ever got to that point.
As the night wound on the fights got less and less intense, until it was mostly children facing one another to prove their mettle and, according to Trekuta, try to impress one of the warriors enough to take them under their wing, but this was not a hard and fast rule, every few bouts true warriors would take to the stage and spar against one another, though there were no more battles in which the fighters seemed to be actively trying to maim or kill one another.
Trekuta had told him that the first hour after the first battle, which had been between the chieftain and the leader of the ‘Warband’, those who had deep grudges, many running for years or in some cases even decades, were scheduled to settle their grievances, and that those battles were the only ones in which it was allowed to kill your foe. Most victors of these matches still chose to spare the losers. When he’d asked him what the occasion for the festival was, Trekuta had told him it was, ‘To have survived another year,’ and hinted heavily that his tribe was far from the only one to celebrate the event.
As the night was nearing its end a young Goblin ran to where Reis and Trekuta sat, and began speaking their foreign tongue to him. Trekuta leaned towards him and spoke.
“He is challenging you to a duel,” Mathias looked around aghast and stammered,
“Well- I- uh- I lost my weapon in the forest when I was attacked,”
“Mhhh” Trekuta nodded solemnly, and translated the words to the boy. After a moment his morose expression turned into a grin that made Reis very wary.
“I forgot to say,” Trekuta began, smacking his forehead and rummaging through the large pack he had been carrying, “Is why I came. Not right to leave a warrior without his weapon, so we gather it for you. Ah here,” He pulled a rope tied in a monkey fist around an iron ball weighing three pounds out from the bag, and Reis immediately recognized it as the implement that he had long used for self defense, as Trekuta laughed, and spoke in his native tongue to the boy, translating the latest development to be met with whooping and laughter from the boy.
“Trekuta! I wouldn’t want to harm a child and besides- '' Before he could continue the complaint Trekuta’s hand was on Reis’s back, pushing him to his feet.
“Is okay. It’s rare child in this village that isn’t sturdier than you, and even if I’m wrong,” He took a moment, not having thought as far ahead as if he was wrong, but a reason came to him quickly enough, and he shrugged, “Is good lesson,”
For who Reis wondered as he was corralled into one of the spaces that had become an impromptu ring.