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Yaz
Night arrived, and the world plunged into darkness. Firelight reflected off the canopy of needled branches overhead and the massive, cinnamon-coloured trunks of the redwood trees that surrounded the gully. In another setting, it would be beautiful. But drums and chanting and the screech of goblin voices filled the air.
Yaz quietly made his way around the edge of the gully, picking his way between ferns and deadwood, searching for signs of Arwin and the nymphs. He kept a wary eye out for patrols and guards. And it was well that he did. When the pregnant woman was hauled out and began giving birth to baby gobs, it attracted the attention of poorly-disciplined guards just ahead of him.
They drifted away from their posts to the edge of the gully, where they could watch, yakking and hooting and no doubt eager to join their fellows.
Yaz hated the idea of leaving the woman to her horrid fate, but realistically there was little he could hope to do by charging in there alone. He made good use of the distraction she presented by disposing of nearly a dozen green thugs around the gully rim as he circled it. He picked up a well-nicked, rusty dirk from an early victim and snuck up behind the others, cutting throats or sliding the blade into an ear or heart. Though he’d once been a knight, not a rogue, he could do the job when he had to. He moved as quickly as he dared, frustrated and tense because he knew time could be short.
Then something caused him to slow.
In one corner of the gully, firelight seemed forbidden to enter, struggling to penetrate darkness deeper than the night, something unnatural.
Creeping closer, the air became more humid, the sounds of celebration muted, and Yaz’s eyes adjusted.
The space was filled with a fat, leafy oak tree, something that shouldn’t have grown in this evergreen forest. The bark was dark-iron gray. Little purple explosions of bioluminescent ferns poked up from around some of the gnarled roots. A patch of glowing, blue fungus infested one side of the tree and vines with bunches of pink flowers akin to wisteria draped from some of the overhanging branches.
Yaz had never seen anything like it. It looked beautiful but otherworldly. If this tree had anything to do with the goblins, it had to be dangerous. Instinctively steering clear, he cut across this end of the gully, which seemed safe enough because the goblins looked like they were avoiding the dark tree, too. He climbed up the other side of the gully and moved away from the dark tree, casting a worried glance over his shoulder as he went.
Hobgoblins hauled a male prisoner out of a cell and led him to the cooking fire. For a moment, Yaz panicked, thinking it must be Arwin, until he heard Arwin’s protests from below, where they’d dragged the other man from.
The prisoner was chained to a pole and hung to roast while still alive. His screams encouraged goblin jeers. Those closest licked their lips and drooled in anticipation. The human wasn’t the only thing cooking; a variety of beasts and pots of dead things, mushrooms, and wild vegetables hung over multiple fires. Feeding this greedy mob would take more than one human. But everyone has their favourite meat.
Yaz slew the nearest green goblins on watch. Reaching a point above the prison, he cautiously climbed down the side of the steep gully, working his way between the ferns while trying to stay hidden by their foliage.
He put his foot down, and it sank without purchase into empty air.
Surprising himself, he lost his grip and fell past a well-camouflaged window that he hadn’t noticed. He landed hard on the ground outside the prison door, right between two startled hobgoblin guards.
One shouted in alarm, speaking in goblin tongue, a language Yaz had learned a millennium ago. “Enemy!”
The sounds of celebration shifted as nearby goblins and hobgoblins heard the cry and caught sight of Yaz.
Feeling like a complete klutz and cursing himself for his incompetence, Yaz got to his feet and brandished his stolen dirk, keeping the monsters away.
The goblins seemed fascinated rather than alarmed at the entrance of an undead into their midst. Well, there was only one of him.
“Yaz!” Arwin shouted from the nearby prison gate, only a couple of steps behind Yaz. He clung to the bars, hope on his face.
Yaz cast a hurried glance back in his friend’s direction. With a snap of the wrist, he sent the knife at the gate. “Here!” The weapon bounced off one of the bars and fell at Arwin’s feet.
Arwin snatched the knife up and brought it inside the prison before a guard could get to it.
One of the hobs growled at the sight, then turned on Yaz. He had a rusty longsword and stabbed with it.
How many fights had he been in over the centuries? How many people had tried to kill him? How many had he ended in return? Yaz reflexively turned into the thrust, grabbed the hobgoblin’s wrist, where he jabbed his pointed thumb into a nerve and disarmed him, then stole the sword, leaving the guard open-mouthed with surprise.
A small goblin ran at Yaz from behind, screeching.
Yaz spun and beheaded it with a practiced slash. The body fell flat while the head bounced on the ground and came to rest at the feet of the horde that was now forming a ring around the skeleton.
Arwin must have seen the danger. “Yaz, get out of here! Run!”
“What about you?”
“Forget me! Save yourself!”
Yaz tsked at his predicament. When the guard who’d lost the sword tried to reclaim it, he casually stabbed the monster in the gut, then the throat, then slashed the second guard across the face, permanently blinding him. The whole time, he kept his attention on the mob in front of the prison. A few goblins were no challenge for him. An entire tribe, on the other hand…
Dozens of red eyes watched, and sharp teeth gleamed. There was no dismay at the deaths of the others. The goblins shouted and cheered at this new source of amusement. Green goblins may live in tribes, but they are not true social creatures the way humans are. They don’t care about each other, only what they can eat, mate with, or kill. Association with other greens is a matter of convenience, not friendship or community. A skeleton dropping into their midst and giving battle was a chance for sport.
Not all joined in, however. Some continued to do their best to impregnate the poor woman on the ground.
Two goblins charged.
In a blur of movement, Yaz cut them down with two slices of steel. He kicked the corpses into position a meter and a half in front of himself. This would give him room to move while giving the still-living goblins something to trip over to reach him.
Killing five goblins so swiftly, two of them hobs, seemed to put a measure of respect into the others. They could all just swamp him, of course, and there’d be nothing he could do but kill a few before going down and getting himself trapped. Then he’d spend however many years chained up in their tunnels, if they didn’t just bash his skull into shards for fun.
But whether they feared dying in that rush or knew that it would spoil the fun for the others, the mob kept their distance, only jeering and throwing insults his way. He was surrounded.
Now what?
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
*
Arwin
Armed and with the guards dead, Arwin frantically tried to escape. But while the door had no lock, only a simple latch, the mechanism was out of reach to the side of the door. Only someone outside could let him out.
He stabbed at the door itself, trying to work the knife into the dried rope holding the wood together. Unfortunately, they were even tougher than the wood itself. The sight of his friend sparked guilt.
Yaz was cornered.
Though he’d been overjoyed to see the skeleton, he didn’t want the man throwing his long life away. “Seriously, Yaz, make a break for it. You can’t take them all on!”
Yaz growled, glaring a the amused goblins around him. “Then find a way out of there, and we’ll both go. I’m not leaving you.”
Arwin ran his hands over the door, madly looking for a weak spot. Frustrated at the lack of one, he turned to the rest of the shallow cave they were using as a prison. He stabbed and kicked at the walls, trying to dig through. It seemed fruitless until he reached the back wall. Kicking here felt different than the side walls. It was…softer?
He attacked the wall. A smile broke out on his lips as hard-packed dirt and gravel fell away. The goblins had been tunnelling into the earth to build their encampment. Was there another tunnel on the other side of this dirt?
The knife blade stabbed through up to the hilt.
Yes! He attacked harder, digging away and slamming his shoulder at the wall. A tiny hole opened up, revealing darkness. He worked at it, widening it, ignoring the sounds of fighting behind him. He had to escape before Yaz fell.
The hole grew wide enough to stick his head through. He did but saw nothing, only sensing a large, empty space. Another minute and the hole was wide enough to crawl into.
Sounds of fighting and cheering and booing sounded behind him, nearly stealing his attention.
Forcing himself to ignore the uproar, he squirmed through and fell on his head. Picking himself up, he was able to stand hunched over in a passageway. A faint yellow glow flickered a couple of dozen meters down the tunnel. Swiftly, he scuttled towards it.
Two green goblins sat in front of a heavy, iron-bound wooden door, with a torch set in an iron ring on the wall. The portal looked completely unlike the goblin architecture that Arwin had seen thus far. Perhaps they’d brought it from a settlement they’d sacked. Both of the monsters looked bored and put out at being stuck in here while the fun was happening outside. They were a third Arwin’s size, but they still had sharp teeth, claws, and strange gloves on their hands with metal spikes on them, like a deadlier version of brass knuckles, ones that could impale rather than bruise.
Giving them warning would be foolish. While he did not enjoy the prospect of killing, even with goblins, Arwin knew he had no choice if he was to survive and have any hope of saving Yaz, let alone the nymphs. So he charged out of the dark, savagely kicking one monster in the skull while slashing and then stabbing the second. After the second died, he turned back on the first before it could regain its senses and jabbed the blade in the goblin’s neck.
The blade hit spine, and the metal snapped.
He cursed. Must have weakened it while digging through the wall. Dropping the useless handle, he turned his attention to the door. Much to his surprise, it was not locked. He snorted and shook his head. Goblins. All that security wasted by not checking the integrity of a wall in their prison or locking the very important door.
Silently opening the door, he peered inside. Only darkness. Taking the torch in one hand, he passed through the opening.
A small treasury gleamed back at him. The dusty room was two paces wide and three long. The walls were fieldstone and lined with shelving made of stolen shelves and fence boards. There were boxes and buckets of various coins, a wine barrel, and a pile of steel weapons on the floor at the back. He dove at the latter. Searching through them, a half-moon axe that seemed higher quality than the rest caught his eye. Giving it a trial swing, he smacked the edge into a shelf and watched the thick board shatter as if he’d had the strength of an ogre. He looked at the weapon, dumbfounded. Was it enchanted?
With nothing else of interest, even the money, he left the treasury and went the other way down the tunnel. Hunched over, it was uncomfortable. He came to a crossing and turned left. That was the direction the nymphs had been taken. Hopefully, he’d find them and a way out of here that way.
Stalking through the tunnels, the torch his only light, his whole body was tense. He could be discovered at any moment. He gritted his teeth at every turn, hoping that all the residents were outside in the gully and that he wasn’t getting himself lost in here.
A rustle echoed.
He stopped. His imagination? Listening, he heard nothing more. He turned a corner.
A crimson-eyed hobgoblin stood there. It backed up a step in surprise. Then it snarled and charged, a spiked club in its hands.
*
Yaz
A hobgoblin burst forward, encouraged by cheers. He raised a woodcutter’s axe overhead and aimed at Yaz’s head.
The hobgoblin was as tall as Yaz and much heavier. It wouldn’t do to match blades with him. The relationship between force and mass meant that it would push the skeleton away easily enough, maybe destroy his sword. Yaz feinted right, then stepped left. The axe came down where he no longer was. Chopping with the sword, Yaz crushed the hobgoblin’s wrist, then drove the point into the surprised creature’s throat.
The hobgoblin collapsed, blood spurting around the blade.
Yaz felt the sword slipping from his grip before he could extract it. Letting go, he shoved the soon-to-be-corpse into an open space on the ground and grabbed the axe from the ground where it had fallen.
Goblins howled with cruel laughter at the fate of their comrade.
Testing the axe, he found the head was loose and the wooden handle old. It was a poor weapon and wouldn’t last long. Should he try to get the sword from the dead hobgoblin?
A roar momentarily quieted the crowd, turning heads. Then a big cheer went up.
A very large hobgoblin pushed through the masses, knocking others aside like nothing. He was armoured in studded leather and carried a hefty two-handed claymore in one fist. It had been kept in much better condition than most of the weapons hereabouts. This was a warrior who had won many fights. The hobgoblin stopped at the edge of the ring and looked down at Yaz, for he was a little taller. A malicious grin spread over his ugly features.
Yaz looked down at his flimsy axe. Then he looked at the claymore and armour. Not good.
The hobgoblin casually circled past the corpses at Yaz’s feet. He easily weaved his heavy claymore through the air, the metal catching the light of the bonfire and nearby torches.
The crowd chanted, “Jyug! Jyug! Jyug!”
Yaz eyed his new opponent. Apparently, this particular creature was important enough to warrant some kind of name, something most goblins never bothered with. ‘Hey you’ or descriptives like ‘big nose’ or ‘wart face’ are more common. Tells you a lot about a species when they don’t even care enough about each other to have names. Like how short-lived they are that they don’t bother. There was something tragic in that, even though they were monsters.
Jyug suddenly reached down and grabbed a regular goblin at the edge of the ring by the head and threw the startled creature at Yaz.
Yaz dodged, then had to move fast to escape the incoming downswing of the hobgoblin’s claymore. He leapt over one of the corpses, smacked the back of the axe down on the thrown goblin’s head, cracking it, and backed up towards the prison door to keep out of reach of the hobgoblin.
Jyug was in no hurry. He continued to grin and milk the enthusiasm of the cheering crowd, taking lazy pokes at the skeleton.
Yaz let him have his fun. There was no hurry. He was a magical construct and didn’t get tired, no matter how many enemies he fought: one of the benefits of being undead. Yaz had also noticed that Arwin was no longer in the prison. He needed to give the young man time to escape. And the longer he entertained the goblins like this, the longer he kept them from swarming him, which he would have no defence against.
It seemed like the hobgoblin in front of him didn’t have much of an imagination when it came to entertaining the crowd. He howled soon enough and came at Yaz hard, swinging the claymore back and forth, intent on decapitating his foe.
Yaz waited without flinching. As the meter-and-a-half length of steel cut the air, he dropped to his knees below it and chopped at the hob’s right knee. The blow broke off the head of the axe and did little damage to the monster’s armour.
But it caused the hobgoblin to back up a step.
Yaz picked up a knife dropped by an earlier enemy and drove it twice into the hob’s testicles.
The crowd winced in sympathy at the hob’s scream.
The hob instinctively dropped his weapon and reached for the horrid wounds. He screamed.
Casually standing, Yaz cut the monster’s throat, turning the scream into a short-lived gurgle before death claimed the hob.
The mood of the crowd turned ugly. It seemed they’d had enough fun. Now, dozens of goblins took a step forward and brandished their weapons, ready to end the fight.
A cry brought them to a halt before they could tear Yaz apart.
The goblins looked over their shoulders. Grins returned, and the crowd split in twain to admit a newcomer.
The biggest goblin of them all had appeared: a chieftain, muscled and taller than an orc. He wore steel half-plate and wooden greaves. He came to a stop at the edge of the mob and studied the skeleton. There was no sense that this one was as stupid or foolish as the others. This one was a veteran fighter—and smart.
A pretty, human woman demurely walked up behind the chieftain, wearing only green rags that barely covered her breasts and loins. Her bare feet had blackened soles from going without shoes, and her knees were smudged as if she spent a lot of time on her knees in the dirt. An iron collar had been snugly fitted around her neck. She submissively and sensuously draped herself against the chieftain, pressing her curves into his side and putting an arm around his lower back in the manner of a lover. Her head only reached his chest. From the way her eyes looked up and lingered over the chieftain’s ugly features, it was plain to see that this woman was wholly willing in her slavery. No shaman was manipulating her with magic.
One less person to save, Yaz figured. He’d seen people like that before and tried to rescue them from their captors, only to discover that they quite preferred the villain they served to a so-called freer existence.
Then came a truly unpleasant surprise.
The chieftain pushed the sex slave aside and drew his blade. Unlike the mob, he carried a remarkable weapon, a double-curved, one-handed sword beautifully crafted in an unmistakably elven style. A dark orange jewel twinkled in the crossguard, and an orange haze wafted from the steel. It was certainly a magical sword, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the hand of an experienced adventurer or elven soldier. That haze might paralyze, poison, corrupt, shock, or any number of things. And the blade itself was probably honed to a razor’s edge, unlike the nearly blunt knife in Yaz’s hand.
Yaz frowned. Where had the monster gotten a weapon like that? That was the kind of thing that would probably go through his enchanted bones like a hot knife through a water slime. His grip tightened on the knife.