Chapter 42 - Bog Standard

The clay at the stone-sloth den would see to our immediate needs in supplying the ifrit with ceramics. We’d already built the infrastructure to transport it, so it was just a matter of traversing our first road with a wagon, loading it up, and hauling it back to the bluff to be worked. The stone-sloth, as well, had a good deal of the stuff slathered on its hide, cracked and dried like the desert. But it wasn’t cured, it just needed some water.

In the afternoon it started to downpour. But Javier’s tailors had made us all cured hide cloaks with hoods for the expedition, so the goblins didn’t even cease working when the rains came down. The cliffords weren’t a fan of it, though. Their matted fur smelled even worse wet than it did dry, with a musty, earthy stink that put me in the mind of a cross between wet-dog and sour milk. I might need material to make them ponchos as well if I didn’t want the wagon teams to mutiny from proximity. Or we’d have to figure out how to rig up some of the grazing animals to haul freight.

With the time it took to clean and process the stone-sloth and remove the clay on its back for transport, we lost most of the light. So I didn’t bother to have the portable bluff broken down. We took the rest of the day clearing out the area, and then roasted sloth meat for dinner. Eileen’s overflight reached us as we were getting the fires going, and several of the goblins rushed to the armory to be the one to get the signal rocket. I watched the small rocket climb skyward and burst apart. One rocket meant proceeding as planned. Two meant send additional backup. Three meant the goblins got over-excited.

Chuck took his wranglers back to make a report of our victory, after expressing disappointment that he had missed both the battle with the stone-sloth and the haranguing of the javeline maulers. But hunting something much higher level with just your bog-standard, garden-variety goblin had been the entire point.

All in all, it had been a promising day. The goblins sat around the fires, watching the dinner roast as they banged sticks on rocks and chanted in a tuneless, sing-song approximation of music. I’d tried teaching them some Queen, some Beastie Boys, and even some Taylor Swift, but the tribe was in desperate need of an autotune. Still, morale was up, and the goblins were fat and happy when they climbed up onto the mobile bluff. I was hoisted and thrown to the middle of the lattice and given the place of honor at the bottom of the sleeping mound, despite my protestations.

This was the first time since coming to Rava that I went to sleep feeling that life was good, again.

* * *

<3 goblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

<2 goblin scrappers have been added to your tribe.>

<1 goblin taskmasters have been added to your tribe.>

Damn! 24 new goblins overnight, and a quarter of them were variants. That was, by far, the single best night of spawning the tribe had experienced. Winning battles was good for the mysterious goblin libido, apparently. The mound I woke up in was noticeably bigger than the mound I’d gone to sleep in, as evidenced by the weight squeezing me against the lattice structure.

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One of the new taskmasters was even with us on the expedition, so I named him Hadfield (since Chris was technically taken). He pulled me out of the pile himself, extricating me from the late risers.

“Mornin’, boss,” he said.

“Morning. Welcome to the tribe. What’s your poison?”

Hadfield tugged at his cheek hair. “Campin’, explorin’.”

“Boy, are you in the right place,” I said.

He grinned at me. “The System provides! Why don’t you relax while I get this beast movin’?”

Providence had put Hadfield on the road to the bog. So, he’d be the boss of the first remote outstation. The System provides, he’d said.

System, do you give me goblins based on what my tribe’s needs are?

Lucky. Right. So lucky my rocket blew up on the launch pad. Soooooo lucky!

That was a sobering thought. And System was right. If I was the only one pulled through, then Dave and Sandra really were dead. I had held out hope that the two had somehow also made the jump, and I might find them waiting on another bluff with tribes of their own. That was part of the reason I’d rushed to try and reach the other villages. Now? This was a bit much to think about before breakfast.

System, are there others in Rava from my world?

No answer.

At least having been at the bottom of the pile, this time I didn’t have to clean bird poop out of my fur, for which I was quite grateful. More birds had made poor life choices by making nests on the lattice and filling them with eggs. We had to clear the nests anyway in order to break down the temporary bluff. Win-win, really. We were back breaking new trail by mid-morning. A full day of travel would put us a stone’s throw from the iron bog

One of the wagons broke off, hauling back some of the clay for refining at Village Apollo. The rest continued on, bumping and careening down the fresh road as fast as the pathfinders could cut and clear it. The cliffords pulled at their harnesses like they had a grudge against the things—which it was quite possible they did. They barely tolerated riders. One of the wagons that carried adobe bricks carried mostly gravel by the end of the day, so we used it on the road.

By the time the sun started to drop in the sky, we were getting close enough to the bog to smell the stagnant water and a metallic tang. The book on peat bogs had said the iron was a result of ‘humours in the water’, which I had to assume actually meant some sort of bacteria in the water that released iron as a byproduct of its natural processes. It would collect as nodules on the underside of peat patches, so goblins would have to wade into the bog to get it.

I called a halt while it was still light enough to get the portable bluff up into the canopy. Hadfield took charge, running around in a hat he’d improvised from wetlands ferns until he could get a skull mask. The frenetic energy of the taskmasters got the shelter up in record time, and with only two goblins tangled in the lattice.

I’d lost 8 goblins to attrition elsewhere in the tribe, bringing me back down to 140 members total. The high roll had put me ahead, but I had a feeling we’d lose that and more in the bog striving toward our most important goals yet.

I surveyed the convoy of 13 wagons. Some would take that number as a bad omen. Hell, just look at Apollo 13. That mission had been cursed. Not as cursed as mine, I suppose. But still. Just to be safe, I had the goblins hack apart one of the wagons leaving us with only 12. Most of these would be scavenged for parts anyway. We wouldn’t need all 12 to carry iron back. In fact, we were going to build the furnaces here.

I gathered up the handful of hobgoblins we had with us as the non-variants began to ascend the rope ladders to the portable bluffs. They were mostly scrappers, but a couple wranglers to handle the cliffords. Since the hobbies stayed up late, they were immune to the lethargic effects of dinner, and still alert—if on edge. It wasn’t hard to puzzle out why.

“Look,” I said. “I know it’s tough being away from the village overnight. Tomorrow we’ll start building the permanent tower, and then we’ll have a home away from home. This close to the bog, we don’t really know what’s waiting for us. So stay vigilant. I’m depending on you.”

The scrappers puffed out their chests, proud despite their unease. The wranglers dug their fingers into the fur of the cliffords for comfort. They glanced up at the lattice.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be fine.” Just keep an eye out for the cliffords.