Chapter 15 - Fruits Away

<1 goblin taskmaster has been added to your tribe>

More night-time predation, and I’d lost two goblins this time instead of one. Either the creature had been hungrier, or it had brought a friend. Either way, I couldn’t have night-time attrition eating a third of my population growth. We needed better sleeping quarters.

The problem was, we also needed hunters out looking for food in great enough numbers to sustain the tribe, we needed bodies on the wall project, and we needed Sally’s team making crossbows for the tribe. Not only that, but I still had to impress Rufus on his return in a few days.

At the morning Taskmaster pow-wow, Buzz and Sally were accompanied by a third goblin. One of the new arrivals was an additional taskmaster, which would let me further delegate work in the tribe. I decided to call him Neil.

“Are you the non-talkative type?” I asked.

“Nah,” said Neil, and didn’t elaborate further.

I looked at him for a minute, waiting to see if he’d say anything else, but he just stuck his finger in his nose and rooted around.

“So… what do you like to do?”

My newest taskmaster tilted his head. “Like?”

“Yeah. Sally’s got her testing and production, Buzz enjoys construction projects. If there’s something you think you’ll be good at, I can put you in charge of it. So what do you like?”

Neil thought for a minute. “Hunting,” he said. Then considered for a moment. “Explosions.”

I grinned. “Ordinarily, that would be worrying. But, boy, is it your lucky day,” I said. “Wait for me on the north side while I get the others sorted.”

Rather than making more crossbow parts, I demonstrated to Sally’s team to start mixing mud with dry grass and forming it into bricks to dry. Making actual hardened structures required a great deal of resources we simply didn’t have, and the majority of our lumber was going to the fence and reinforcing shelters.

Today, I gave each member of the 12-strong hunting party members a crossbow. I had Neil get all the goblins down the north slope, in hopes to keep as many crossbows as we could intact. Then I grabbed my own supplies that I’d prepared, as well as the stone-sloth skin.

Two of the goblins still managed to break their bows, so I passed each of them a wicker basket. Each one was lined with moss and grass to make the inside as soft as possible.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You’re on bomb fruit detail. Each of you go get 10 fruits from the pits Sally dug and keep those baskets far enough away that you won’t blow up the rest of us—or each other—if they go off. Understand?”

If the goblins were upset about being assigned explosive ordnance detail with the unstable fermented fruits, they gave no indication. They took the baskets and dashed off at top speed, squawking and making explosion noises as they went. One of them tripped and nearly lost the basket as he rolled but raised it over his head triumphantly when he came to a stop. The rest of the hunting party cheered him on.

We were all going to die.

When they returned (thankfully moving much more cautiously), I had them maintain a safe distance while I took the hunting party back to the clearing near the clay deposit. Ideally, we weren’t going to have to fight the sloths. I took the hide, and then motioned over to the nearest goblin.

“You want the front or the back?”

The goblin looked at the stone-sloth hide, and I swear his fur turned a paler shade of blue. He shook his head vehemently, but I proffered the skin, and with a reluctant look, he draped it over himself.

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I had each of the goblins take a bomb-fruit and carefully place it on the ground about 10 meters apart. Then, I had them stand far enough apart that they should be out of the blast zone. Finally, I gave Neil instructions on what I wanted, took my own wicker basket, and crawled under the sloth skin with my unfortunate partner.

It was hot and muggy under the hide. My visibility was limited to the two holes where their eyes had been. The thing itself was heavy, too, with the clay the former owner had used to armor itself. Maybe if it came down to it, that armor might protect us. Yeah, right.

Slowly, we crept forward toward the clearing until the two stone-sloths came into view. Papa-sloth must have been out hunting or foraging, because I didn’t see any sign of him. We shifted the heavy hide forward, inching toward the clay deposit near the river. I kept my eyes on mama sloth, making sure she didn’t get any ideas. She spotted us, and eyed us warily, but didn’t charge. I guess she must have mistook us for a very ugly member of her own species. We passed the closest point to them, then started to move away toward the clay deposit.

I could see the older sloth physically relax, lowering her posture, and returning to rooting around in the dirt with her claws. We got the hide over-top of the clay, and I picked up a handful and squeezed it between my fingers. It was rich and red, with a little bit of grit and a smooth consistency. If I was lucky, the color was an indication of high oxidation and iron content, and the grit would be sillica. I started to pack the wet material into the wicker basket. My partner helped, making the work go quick. It was working!

We filled up the basket and left the clearing. The hunting party came in view, and a few of them raised their crossbows before Neil stopped them from firing. Maybe our costume was a little too good.

“Nice work,” I said to my partner under the hide, who was a little wobbly at the knees. I traded the full wicker basket for the empty one. “A few more trips and we’ll have all the clay we’ll need for the time being.”

Neil raised his goblin eyebrow, as though shocked I would willingly go back in. But when we made it back into the clearing, the bigger stone-sloth ignored us completely. We headed for the clay deposit and started loading up the second basket. Things were going well until I heard a cold, wet sniffling, and looked down to see the stone-sloth cub had gotten curious, and come over to take a sniff of the new arrival. It had poked its head entirely underneath the skin. I stared down at it, it stared up at me.

Before I could figure out what to do, my partner looked up from the wicker basket and squawked.

“No, wait!” I hissed. But it was too late. He balled up his tiny fist and planted it straight in the nose of the cub.

The cub, from curious infant to victim of goblin brutality, scrambled back, whining in a high-pitched cry that was obviously some sort of distress call.

“Go, go!” I said. “Get the basket!”

As soon as I heard the older stone-sloth’s ferocious roar, and the answering call from deeper in the woods, I knew we were hosed. We hauled the basket between the two of us as fast as my new legs could carry me. The older of the two rock-sloths had pushed the baby behind it, and its hackles were up. It growled and grunted at us and stamped the ground. Then, it lowered its head and charged.

Surprisingly the hide of the stone-sloth actually did absorb a lot of the impact. The matriarch hit center mass, which meant she actually hit the dead space between us two goblins and all three of us went down in a tangle. The hide ended up draped over the charging stone-sloth, which let my partner in crime and I make a break for it with the goods while the cub screeched at us and the older one flailed.

We put on a little extra speed. From the north, something began to crash through the brush, and I looked back to see the patriarch shredding through foliage to get to the clearing. It took one look at the situation and charged us.

“Drop it and run!” I shouted.

The other goblin didn’t need further encouragement. He let his side of the wicker basket drop, spilling clay onto the ground. A distressingly few number of seconds later, the adult stone-sloth trampled the wicker underfoot, dashing the clay in all directions. We sprinted through the trees, and this time Neil was ready. I had to watch my footing carefully, not only because of the primitive prosthetics, but also lest I step on a bomb fruit. But that let the stone-sloth close the distance. And like I’ve mentioned, despite their superficial resemblance to the slow, peaceful earth creatures, these things could really move. If I hadn’t had the sloth-claw prosthetics, it would have been on me.

Neil waited until I was clear of the field before he gave the order to shoot. Rocks began to fly past me. One or two were aimed at the charging stone-sloth, because it’s hard not to shoot at the enormous charging predator, I suppose. But most of them were aimed at the bomb fruits on the ground that we were not-quite out of range from.

One of the stones struck home, blowing up maybe five meters behind and to my right. the blast picked me up off my feet and sent me flying. Luckily, I landed on my head and bounced. My ears rang, and my vision swam. Something heavy landed beside me, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my partner.

Another explosion went off, sounding muffled and far away, then another. I heard a shriek and tried to regain my bearings. At least the system hadn’t popped up with any notifications. Scratch that, one came up.

I heard the tromp of goblin feet on the ground and saw several diminutive figures rushing past me. Sound was starting to come back, and I could hear the collective war cry of the hunters and the snap of crossbows going off. The goblins were cheering. At least, until one of them put a foot wrong.

BOOOOM