Chapter 16 - Revenge of the Sloth
The cheers turned to shouts of alarm as the goblins realized they’d chased their quarry back through their own minefield. Rather than slowing down and carefully picking their way out of it, they panicked and scattered in all directions at break-neck speed—miraculously not triggering a second accidental explosion. Neil came over to help me to my feet as things calmed down.
“Did we win?” I asked groggily.
Neil grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around. The first thing I noticed was the fine mist of blue fur drifting in the light. Well, those would be goblins 39 and 40. Or what was left of them. The second thing I noticed was the two halves of the matriarch, separated by about ten meters.
“Oh.”
The third thing I noticed was the claw and wrist of the patriarch, which was the heavy thing that had landed near me. The thing must have been reaching to slice me with those long claws
“We did win!” I shouted.
The goblins all started cheering again, fallen comrades mourned and moved on from just as quickly.
Neil came to stand beside me. “Wot’s next, boss?”
To business, then. I brought the hunting party carefully around the minefield and into the clearing. Our wicker basket had been crushed, but there was no sign of the larger stone-sloth, which meant we had free access to the clay. I had each of the goblins start weaving something to carry it with, while I looked over the clearing.
On the east side, there was a crag in a large boulder where I was pretty sure the sloth-bears had been nesting. When I peeked inside, that was confirmed. There were also bones. Goblin bones. I spotted at least one shattered skull, and several small, humanoid limbs. As soon as I saw that, I felt a lot less bad for killing the two adults just to get at some clay.
The cub was there, huddled against the back wall for safety. It was, to me, about the size of a medium dog would have been to me as a human. Of course, I knew it would grow to several times the size and weight of my goblin body. Still, it didn’t seem right, leaving it here. Chances are, it would die without its parents.
Neil came up beside me and peered in the crag. “Good eating,” he said.
“Barely any meat on it,” I said. “We got that whole sloth in the minefield to munch on. Let’s take this one back with us.
Neil gave me a skeptical look but was quick to turn around and delegate the task of retrieving the infant. Two goblins managed to hoist it between them, and the thing was too stunned by its circumstances to really do anything about them.
Clay, cub, and carcass in tow, we headed back to the village. I hated to take materials away from the wall project, but I borrowed enough poles to create a simple pen for the cub. If nothing else, maybe whatever predator had been infiltrating the village would go for the isolated animal, instead.
Neil was leading the way, but he stopped suddenly in the trail and held up his fist. He looked back. “Make scarce, boys!” he whispered.
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The hunting party was a frenzy of activity as we took cover off the path, in the thickets, behind trees, and behind roots. I watched as Neil worked the crank on his bow to set a stone in place and peered at the path.
A four-legged figure pushed through the unbroken thicket onto our trail. It had a pig-like lower body, but a stocky, wide upper body and a battered iron helmet covering its face. It had a spear in its right hand with an iron spearhead.
Metallurgy, I thought to myself. The Javeline had a source of iron in the forest somewhere. I wondered how they were collecting it and refining it into a usable form. System, what level is it?
<8>
Well that wasn’t so bad. Lower level than the stone-sloth, actually.
The rutter stamped at the ground, and then reached down to brush its hairy fingers over our tracks before straightening. It tightened its hands on the haft of the spear, looking around at the surrounding forest. It let out a low, reverberating whistle that seemed to bounce through the trees and almost made the leaves vibrate. Two more of its kind joined it from the forest. One of them was massive, broadly built with a barrel chest and thick arms. A mane of black hair and a bristly, braided beard draped across his shoulders.
<16 and 12>
I didn’t have to ask which of the new pair were higher leveled. System, can you super-impose levels above individuals?
Floating numbers appeared above the heads of all three rutters. A cumulative of 36 levels against a group of 14 level 1 goblins. I didn’t have to be a tactical genius to understand these odds. The javeline exchanged words, though it sounded more like the low rumbling of a landslide to my goblin ears. Then, they moved off along our trail, back in the direction we’d come from. They heard the bomb fruits, I realized. They were investigating. And thanks to the robust method of goblin pathfinding, they knew a tribe was also in the area. Well, they’d find the battlefield and see what was left of the stone-sloths, too.
I hoped we’d be able to find a diplomatic solution with the creatures. But it didn’t look like that was in the cards.
Something snapped further along the trail, and the rutters dug in their hooves and set off at a gallop toward the noise, spears raised. They were surprisingly fast on those little legs. Much faster than any goblin not being propelled by the blast of a bomb fruit. If it came down to it, they would run us down in the woods before we could make it back to the safety of the tribe.
We waited in our hiding spots until long after the Javeline left—longer than I would have. But, when I made to rise, I felt a small fist against the back of my skull, pushing me back to the ground. I looked over at Neil, who was still watching the direction the javeline had moved off in. Neil kept my head down until he decided it was safe to move. As he was now the taskmaster of my hunters. I decided to trust his judgment.
The return to the village was a much more somber affair after our encounter with the rutters. We’d avoided them, this time. But what would happen if we weren’t so lucky the next time? Would they be interested in treating with a goblin king? Or would they slaughter the entire tribe out of principle? Or sport? I didn’t know anything about them, and we were better off not learning firsthand, for now. We needed time and more goblins. We needed better fortifications. We needed a leg up. We needed something better than stone at the end of our spears. And I had an inkling on how to get it.
Sally had set a few dozen raw adobe bricks to dry in the sun, and I’d need them tomorrow, along with a lot of wood.
I thought for a moment.
System, can you track available resources like bricks and wood?
Numbers for bricks works fine. Hmm. Can we do kilograms for wood and bone and other resources?
What’s a choom?
Lovely, let’s go with that.
Raw bricks: 54 Bone: 12 chooms Timber: 24 chooms Finished poles: 22 Scat: 15 chooms Water: 4,201 chooms> Convenient. On Earth I’d needed a manually updated inventory spreadsheet to keep track of inventory. Here, the system could handle tracking all that for me. Oops, thanks System.