Chapter 26 - Gorn in Sixty Seconds

I tried everything I could think of to get loose, even gnawing on the chain. Goblin teeth were tough, but not chomp-through-iron tough.

Even with the imperative of escape looming over me, there was nothing I’d be able to do if I couldn’t get free.

The sun dropped well and truly behind the horizon, opening Raphina’s eye over the camp. I heard rustling in the brush and froze. The nocturnal predators of Lanclova were many, and I wasn’t safe at the top of a fenced bluff.

The rustling grew louder. Could it be one of those photo-sensitive lizards had followed me? Maybe the night haunt the rutters had frightened off had come back for his stolen snack. I clenched up.

A goblin tumbled out of the brush, he came to a sitting position, slightly dazed, stared at me, and then pointed and opened his mouth to shout. A pair of thick hands reached out of the brush behind him and clapped over his mouth.

The hands were thick and knobby, with large, furry knuckles. The hobgoblin they belonged to was also thick and knobby. Whereas Chuck and his Wranglers were lean and wiry, this one was built for power. His fur was darker, too. Closer to navy blue than the electric blue of the rest of the tribe. He had a hide cowl wrapped around his face, and a pair of flint cleavers tucked into a corded belt. He was level 5, which was higher level than the wranglers.

“Quiet!” he hissed. “You tryin’ to rouse the porkbellies?”

The smaller goblin got the message and when the hobgoblin removed his hands, the smaller one clamped his own in their place. With a glance at the hide tents, the hobgoblin dropped to the ground and low-crawled to my tree. Past him, I could see the moonlight glinting off two other sets of eyes in the bush.

Since I hadn’t acquired any new tribe members, I had to assume these were the four survivors I’d flown over.

“You still wiv’ us, king?” asked the hobgoblin, who must have been my very first scrapper. He sounded like he spoke around a mouth full of gravel. The scrapper motioned for one of the other goblins, who crept out of the bush holding my missing prosthetic above his head.

I nodded and held the chains out of the way as the scrapper slipped the socket over my stump and started to lace up the clamps. A regular prince charming, this one. The metal clinked slightly as I shifted. “Can you get me out of these?”

“Inna pinch.” The scrapper licked his lips and carefully began to pull the chain loops. But the sound of metal grinding against metal was too noisy.

“Stop!” I whispered, looking at the hide tents for any sign of movement. I heard something shift inside one of them, and the scrapper ducked low. The movement stopped, and he issued a low growl. “Even if we do get these off, they’ll come after us in the morning. And they’re faster.”

“Bad news, that.” The scrapper cracked his knuckles quietly. “I could take one of ‘em if I got the jump. But four’s aft o’ too many,” he said. “We need somethin’ to even them odds up. Got any more o’ your contraptions like what popped in our heads?”

I thought. A few of the rock slingers would have evened the odds a little. Or some of the bomb fruits. But there was no way the four of them would be able to craft slingers without first crafting a set of tools, and that would take too long—hours to navigate through dangerous terrain and retrieve bomb fruit just to most likely blow themselves up on the return trip when they stumbled over a root in the dark. Projectiles or other distance weapons would be ideal. But the javaline didn’t carry bows or crossbows that we could steal, and their spears were much too heavy for myself or the other small goblins. Shame we didn’t have the slingers, because there were plenty of small, smooth stones on the banks of the hot springs.

One of the other goblins wrinkled his nose and waved his hands in front of it, sniffing.

The scrapper noticed and shushed them. “Rutters like to camp wiv the springs ‘cause they’re the only things wot stink more’n they do.”

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“That’d be the sulfur,” I said. “Smells like rotten eggs where the—”

I stopped. Sulfur. I looked at the softly-glowing coals of the dying rutter fire. Charcoal.

Hmm…

I had no idea if the chemical reactions of this world bore any resemblance to that of Earth in my home universe. It stood to reason the periodic table would have differences in a world where magic and rule-enforcing omniscient Systems existed. But chemistry had never been my forte anyway. I hoped a little Goblin Tech Tree grease would smooth over the gaps.

Everyone’s got an episode of a TV show that was always on whenever they were channel surfing. For me, it was a certain episode of Star-Trek where the captain got stranded on the planet with the weird, diamond-eyed lizard. Now, I know what you’re going to say, he’s an astronaut, of course he’s a Trekkie nerd. But the truth is, I was always more of a Battlestar guy. I’ve barely even watched Trek. Except for that one episode, which seemed to always be on, and has lived rent-free in my head for 15 years.

If it was the same episode for you, then you probably already figured out where this was going.

I motioned the goblins closer. “We’re going to need a few things,” I said. I looked at the first goblin. “By the springs there should be some yellow, stinky mineral. I need powder from it. Can you scrape some off and bring it to me?”

The goblin pulled her knife and lifted it overhead, keeping one hand over her mouth to stifle her own excitement. She vanished back into the brush.

I pointed to the dying fire. “I need some of the charred wood from that fire. Make sure you don’t grab anything glowing!”

The second goblin nodded enthusiastically and dropped to a low-crawl, serpentining his way into the rutter camp. I looked at the remaining small one. “Sorry to do this to you. But I need some of the javaline scat from their latrines.”

I pointed, and the goblin wilted, looking at me with an expression of pure betrayal. But he stomped off into the forest. It wasn’t hard to tell where the latrine was. It was the only thing smelling worse than the sulfur.

“Wot of me, king?” asked the scrapper.

“The rutters had hollow poles holding up their cookpot. I need those poles.”

The scrapper looked at me skeptically until I explained to him what they were going to do with them. Then the hobgoblin grinned. “Oy, sounds like a proppa’ lark.” He turned as if to leave, then hesitated. “This name fing, boss. I fink I want one.”

The first name that came to mind, looking at his muscled frame, was, of course, Armstrong. But I’d already named one of the goblins Neil. Ah, so what? I feel like the first man to walk on the moon deserved a two-fer. Besides, the goblins all had single names anyway. Like Cher, or Zendaya.

“Armstrong,” I whispered.

Armstrong flexed his ample biceps and grinned. Arms like that would have been right at home on the rowing team. I watched as he dropped to his belly and snaked into the camp. The tubes had been stowed with the rest of the cookware on the far side of the clearing after the camp keeper had cleaned them. He went slow, taking his time and staying as quiet as possible. He was oddly stealthy for a goblin. I pulled up his info in my tribe as I watched.

Hobgoblin - This advanced goblin is capable of speaking and reaching level 5.

Nocturnal - These bad-boys like to stay up late and get into trouble. Their eyes are tuned for low-light. The downside is that they sleep until mid-day.

Scrappy - These hard-knuckled bruisers love a good fight—especially if the other guy doesn’t know he’s in one. Scrappers have a bonus to surprise attacks.

Sneakers - These light-footed goblins are capable of getting in and out of tight spots without detection. They have a bonus when using camouflage.

Track-em - These goblins excel at following trails left by other creatures.

I’d been expecting a machinist or an engineer when I’d heard the term scrapper. But this guy was basically the goblin equivalent of a special forces commando. Of the two, this was exactly what I needed. Thanks, System.

The goblin with the scat returned first, carrying the pungent droppings on a flat rock. Then came the goblin with the charcoal, and lastly the one with the sulfur. Now, I didn’t know the finer details or ratios of making black powder. Rocket fuel? Sure. But I was never a gun person, and never even considered joining the Army. But I knew its basic components. The only one I wasn’t completely clear on was salt peter. But I remembered that they used to get it from bat guano in the civil war (thanks Mr. Clarkson’s 10th grade field trip for history that I never thought I’d use). I figured the rutter scat was probably foul enough to explode on its own, so it might have some of that third ingredient or something almost as good. Fertilizer had phosphates in them, and fertilizer had been used for bombs in the past.

In true goblin fashion, my newest tribe members used sticks to mix the concoction into a big, smelly mess. By the time Armstrong returned with the tubes, we had a weird, greasy putty that looked like vomit and smelled like pure death.

I had them break it up and feed it into one end of the tubes, and then take rocks and pebbles and feed them down the other end and tamp them down with sticks. Goblins, being what they are, got immediately over-excited, and one missed the mouth of his tube entirely. The rock pinged off the iron exterior, and we all froze as the metal rang like a tuning fork. Armstrong lanced out and grabbed it, stopping the ringing. But the damage was done.

The rutters began to stir.