Sailing Ether Tides

Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance

Naked Lunch: Ch: 3

Larry hurtled out of the bushes, covered in scratches, his clothes torn and muddy but otherwise intact. The glare of frustrated rage on his face became a menacing, eager grin as she skidded to a stop beside his brothers. Perry tossed the gasping, wheezing lad a scabbarded broadsword and grinned.

“Mountain gobs, they’ve got endurance.” He gasped to Harry.

“Catch your breath.” Was all the youngest Ward had time to say before a swarm of gangly, child sized, ravenous idiots came boiling out of the underbrush.

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Grulach had come up lucky-lucky… He found a lone and unarmed human wandering in the woods, just down from their nifty new lair. They had a few sheep bones and hides strewn about the cave, but this human’s scalp would really tie the whole cavern together!

Thoughts of interior decorating were foremost on his mind, since they’d stumbled on those tasty sheep, right after stumbling out of their old mountain lair.

That started him thinking about meat… He still had a squishy chunk of kidney stashed under a rock that was just ripening to where he liked it.

Grulach let out a silent, tasty belch to make more room in his belly for meat, as he reached out a ragged clawed hand for the human’s mop of unruly hair…

While he was thinking on the old meat, the new meat tried to scamper away, with that scalp he had his eye on too!

The wily meat leapt into motion, as they do… and dashed through the weeds with the diminutive monster in hot pursuit.

The stinging, burning lashes of fire that crisscrossed Grulach’s naked body flailed at his tenders most of all; drawing a mighty battlecry from the clan’s top hunter. He heard his meat brothers crashing through the woods, coming to chase his prey in the grand tradition of their clan.

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Duchess Tawny watched the inn empty, as the remaining guests and warriors hit the road on any mount they could find, including a few shaky and highly inconsistent attempts at mastering the strange ‘bikes’ the Wards loved so. The eager few who chanced those two wheeled devices for the first time, found them tricksey and unreliable under novice riders, like an untrained horse.

She smiled as her husband’s sworn warriors streamed out of the keep, breaking off into two platoons and vanishing on horseback, into the trails they knew so well.

Her own ducklings marched out, afoot and armored in the count’s own colors of deep chocolate brown and bright, golden bronze.

Their banner waved bravely in the sun, a cerulean blue field bearing a cheeky yellow ‘rubber duckie’ with a bright orange bill boldly emblazoned in colorful silk, the work of their lady’s own hand. The main force of fifteen marched down the main street of town, while two teams of six split off down side streets to carry the warning and evacuate the vulnerable.

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Barry’s hastily thrown javelin skewered the lead gobbo through his belly, folding the wretch in half on the ground, as six more vaulted from the brush, wielding tree branch clubs, stone headed axes and pointed sticks. Their bare, jiggly cocks and balls waved in the wind, as they leapt into battle wildly eager for blood and flesh.

Perry teed off on the second one with his warclub, catching the eager little guy right across the teeth. Four pounds of bronze studded ironwood with a solid copper bar running through the core of the weapon, erased the goblins head above the jawline…

He was no great looker before, but nothing was not an improvement in his appearance. The way his heels drummed on the turf was pretty alarming, and went on for a while, but Perry was busy burying his bronze knobbed club in the belly of another little wretch.

While he was folding in half nicely, Perry ripped his warclub free in a vicious slash that brutally disemboweled the creature with the jagged bronze knobs along its length.

The club flashed down on the back of its skull, ending his dreams of stewpots full of human meat.

The horrid little monsters’ genitals were absurdly large for such small scrawny beings, almost grotesquely so.

When Harry kicked one in the bits, his lightly armored boot pulped the tender organs, sending the thing into a mad, berserker rage.

With redoubled fury he leapt; bloody, battered crotch leading the way, lunging his grisly, ruined tackle at the lad’s face.

The murderous dickwaving only ended when he brought a hatchet down on the shrieking, clawing ball of fury, spilling his brains onto the soil.

Harry’s attacker’s wailing shrieks cut off quickly, but the sound sent the rest madly leaping to the attack with even more deranged fury and bloodlust. Worse yet, they began to get… aroused.

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The only girl found herself very popular among the rapacious little cannibal creeps, they were constantly trying to slip past the boys and get at her and Flash, who had blood on his hooves and scattering of wrecked goblins around him, where he was watching Lindsey’s back…

She watched her own front with that spear she’d ‘borrowed’, and was not going to be giving back!

The wide, leaf shaped bronze blade was wickedly sharp, whether slashing, cutting or hewing.

Stabbing was a fool’s move with little turds like these, they clutched at spears and swords even after they died; making them a clinging nightmare for those using more conventional spear methods.

Instead she used the wide, hefty blade to carve bloody streaks in them, before smashing them down with the iron ball mounted on the reverse end of her formidable weapon.

The boys slowly closed around her in a loose ring forming up in the classic ‘protect the girl’ formation that was a goblin fighting standard.

They would risk anything, no matter how foolhardy, for a chance to rush the pretty girl in the center of the fight; despite her blood drenched spear and eager, hungry eyes.

They kept the net loose enough to tempt the deranged little shits into foolish acts, but snug enough that only crippled, dead, or dying gobbs got through.

Occasionally Lindsey would give a sharp whistle to Flash, who would open the formation enough to draw a rush of the filthy buggers from the woods, where more lingered, trying to gather their courage.

She met them with her flashing spear, as Barry and the boys closed in behind her, turning their defensive formation into a brief, aggressive push into the enemy, with an irresistible lure at the point.

On Harry’s signal they would reform, pulling back from the fresh, red ruins laid out on the long abandoned pasture, far from anything.

A pack of twenty gobbs huddled behind a low, stone wall that had crumbled over the ages, providing scant protection from the javelins that would fly from the humans occasionally.

The weapons would strike hard, whether in goblin flesh, against trees, or the stone wall. Invariably, when an enterprising gobbo picked up a spent weapon, or wrenched one from a fallen ally’s belly, the spear was shattered, ending in a splintered mess.

Harry grabbed another Wardco Adventureworks product, the One Hit Kill’em, No throw Backs Pilum™ and hurled it into a gobb who’d climbed a tree to throw rocks and sticks at them. He fell down onto a friend of his, ending his dreams too.

Larry’s broadsword finished both with a single thrust, before clashing with a long, stone tipped spear.

He whipped his blade in a deft circle around the longer weapon, confusing the spear-gobb for a moment with the flashy, distracting display.

When the goblin crafted rawhide and sinew lashings parted and the shard of jagged flint that tipped his stick fell away, it was already too late.

He staggered back missing his right forearm and half of his face, before his spearpoint hit the ground.

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On Goblin physiology, anatomy and sociology

By Lady Trelawney Helene Belen-Kinnis

Excerpts from the field notes of an Adventurer

…It is often jested in crude fireside talks among those who know; that goblins have two hearts. The common joke being that they have one for their bodies and one for their… genitals, but not enough blood or brains to run either.

This is almost accurate. The humble gobblin does, in fact, have two hearts. It also possesses a secondary blood supply, loaded with sexual hormones and potent energies, all stored up and magically sealed until rutting season, in the creature’s genitals.

Only the presence of a female in estrus can release these potent reproductive reserves in their native planes.

In their natural environment, the scarcity of goblin females controls their population; since duels between males are invariably fatal, often to all the participants and can utterly wipe out the breeding population of these highly aggressive, sentient beings, before creating the next generation.

When goblins appear on this world, females are never present, resulting in dangerous levels of engorgement and violent, sociopathic behaviors that somehow lead to functional tribes of deranged, cannibalistic monsters. The brief flashes of sentience they display are invariably directed towards eating, or violently molesting any living being they encounter.

Cunning and vicious, they become suicidally aggressive if one of their number suffers genital trauma, this can trigger a breeding frenzy.

With at least forty of the horrid creatures dead or downed on the once tranquil meadow, the enemy seemed to be considering their options.

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They were starting to calm down and act like little terrors, rather than frenzied fools, slowly forming up into small groups behind spear and long stick armed gobbos, with flint knives and ragged claws waiting to pounce on any opening.

Stones and sharp sticks began to rain down on the human kids, doing no damage, but covering for the increasingly organized little mobs’ withdrawal, when they tested the kid’s defenses with short lived, screaming feints at their formation.

More than a few of the probing attacks pulled back bloody, as hurled javelins and thrown darts dismayed the enemy, without supplying them with weapons.

Twenty of the turds were lurking behind the stone walls that lined the road, too… out of range and waiting for them to break for the town, just a few miles away. They were clearly hoping to pounce on the kids as they passed through the jumbled stone gate and a few piles of fallen masonry or keep them penned in until the goblins could swarm the exhausted defenders.

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‘Goblin tactics were stupid, but when you have the numbers…’ Krulguth the mountain troll reflected calmly, as his band of two hundred morons slowly got their crap together.

He had a nice view from his roost in a high sequoia tree, looking down on the battle with disappointment. The girl would be highly entertaining, if he could snatch her away before his minions defiled her too thoroughly; that would take timing. Her horse looked tasty too, he hadn‘t had horse in so long… a slow, hungry rumble ran through his guts, as another four of his pawns fell.

Even if the humans escaped, they would eat well tonight… but he wanted that girl and her horse. The need of it made his ears ring, almost like faint, ringing bells.

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Faint, chiming bells sang out from the hills and woodlands that hid Foresthome, still miles away. Bells that seemed to sing a warlike melody of sweetly jingling bloodlust and martial fury.

Harry’s sharp, piercing whistle cut the sky, as if calling out for aid from those softly singing bells.

“All right, let’s dig in, we have backup.” Perry called, while flinging a javelin at something that moved in a redwood tree, near the edge of the battle. He grinned in satisfaction at the bestial shriek and the sound of a body falling very far to the ground.

Lindsey stabbed a stumbling, bloodied goblin low in the guts, before flinging him aside as though she were wielding a manure fork in the stable, pitching him and his slippery, entangling entrails into his friends.

The iron ball of her spear smashed into the engorged tackle of another murder munchkin, setting off another frenzied, aroused attack, just as those sweet, chiming bells descended on the gate guard gobbos in a whirling, flashing storm of shining blades and musical notes.

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The sounds of hooves and voices raised in cries of war shook the ‘formation’ of wretched creatures, as they closed in from three directions… Three directions not already occupied by the stubborn meat that still refused to lie down and take it!

As one being, they tried to disengage, when cowardice and what few glimmers of intelligence they possessed came to an agreement; just as that awful shivering cry split the air, again.

Wild eyed and once more in it to win it, the flagging gobbos got their second wind and swept back in as a single mass, swarming over the abandoned field at the kids.

Harry and Perry pulled cords from apple sized balls of clay in their hands and threw them at the massed gobbs, falling sadly short as they bounced to a stop a few yards in front of the leaders.

Two WardCo AdventureWorks Habanero Hotfoot™ flare grenades sizzled and sputtered for a scant second, before a cloud of choking smoke erupted from a whistling jet of brilliant red flame.

The spicy smoke and bright flare of the grenades as they discharged their noxious fumes among the foes disoriented and discouraged, without being toxic to friendlies...

A moment after the reddish brown smoke and a steady hissing red flame erupted from the little orbs, it engulfed the naked wretches in stinging, itching, chili pepper smoke.

When a band of the count’s armsmen leapt the low pasture wall into the cloud, they staggered back out a moment later. Their rasping, wheezing coughs said they weren’t out of the fight, but would need a minute to recover.

At the gate, Their tall red haired fury of a mother was reaping the gobbs with ferocious cries and fashing steel, while the Adventure irregulars from the inn were still riding, and in some cases running, up the road.

Backed up to an overgrown thicket of hawthorn and pressed by nearly seventy five desperate, enraged and tumescent goblins, Harry made a snap decision.

“Perry and Larry, take the front, Barry, right side, Flash and Lindsey, in the middle, no complaints. We’re breaking out. They’ll swarm us if we don’t.”

With their mother and the Adventurers on the road side, the count’s men south and north, they were the weak wall of the box, and already exhausted, bloody and running low on tricks.

“Form up and give it everything you have, Flash stay close. Lindsey, stay closer.” Harry’s voice crackled with decisive authority, denying the possibility of disobedience.

When his team formed up, Harry sighed softly. “Why is the horse in the middle?”

“He’s just a baby and I have a spear.” She answered succinctly. “Let’s move before they finish throwing up on each other and choking.”

The kids were just squaring up for their desperate rush through the press of miniature marauders when something attacked the count’s warband, who were just recovering from their smoke bomb misadventure.

A long limbed, gangly, mockery of the humanoid form leapt from the trees, bashing one of the light armored warriors aside and raking its claws across the breastplate of another in a blinding fast assault.

“Troll!” Shouted the leader of the count’s men, as they fell back with their wounded, toward their whinnying and fretful mounts.

It bounded into the throng of gobbs, bowling some over and stepping on others, as it rushed for the five kids and the horse.

The Adventurers at the gate redoubled their efforts to root out the gobbos hiding among the stones, who were flinging rocks and attacking with wild fury from their concealed nooks, while the wild dervish of bells and steel swept onto the field followed by the Sparrowhawks hot on her heels, whooping their warcries.

Their giant, heavy fighter, Rootedbear swept his enormous club through the swarm, battering the diminutive dickweeds aside, as he pounded down the turf behind the fast moving, red haired storm that was Shai.

Runningtree and Blackoak used spears to dissuade the survivors in the wake of those two terrors, while Windwillow and Larksong stayed close, launching arrows and hurling short, heavy, wickedly barbed javelins at the foes, from behind their massive bulwark.

Evard, the only duchy native in their troupe, wielded two short axes with devastating efficiency at the tail of their group, cleaning up any stragglers, keeping things neat and tidy.

They followed Shai’s swathe of severed limbs, bleeding and dead gobbos straight for the troll, who seemed to be trying to rally his troops for an attack on the tight knot of kids.

The tribals and their red demon swordswoman scattered the gobs, when they hit the crowd; while Shai used her momentum to push straight through, directly at the huge, long limbed creature lurking among the smaller filth.

She swam through the crowd, like a dangerous predator among lesser creatures, they scurried and fled when they could and fought like cornered rats when they couldn’t.

She left first one of her swords, then another in fallen goblins. The shorter blade, wedged in a collapsed gobbo’s spine; the longer, entangled in a skewered little runt who’d gripped her hilt, even while he died, forcing her to abandon the weapon.

“Tangle up the gobbs, brothers an sisters, I hae the troll…” She shouted over the melee, holding the empty guard of a snapped off sword as her only weapon.

With a sudden, hissing rush, a long, curved tongue of flame leapt from her empty hilt, blasting the local area with the heat of a blazing forge, or the fiery sun, itself…

The Sun Sword, enchanted weapon, sword class. Spiritual enchantment. Rarity, unique. Rank, Copper. Elemental affinities: Fire, Air, Light.

Effect, Blazing Sword: Wielder may call forth a blade of intense heat and fire for a high mana cost per second. Blade is partially substantial and capable of striking immaterial entities and objects.

*Warning* Wielder receives no special protections against heat, flame or fire effects, including those of this weapon. *Warning*

*Ookla, Ariel, Ride!*

The goblins screamed in renewed terror at the raging inferno in the woman’s hand, while she stalked the troll through his terrified minions.

A troupe of the count’s own light cavalry finally pelted onto the field, as the Adventurers rooted out the last resistance at the gate, turning the tide.

The horsemen’s tight formation swept around and brushed by the tight knot of kids, taking a large number of tiny, screaming cannibals along for the ride.

Two of the knights leapt from the saddle and joined the kids bolstering them with two fresh, fully armored combatants.

“Auntie Herlick, sir Bannock?” Harry cheered merrily at the two warriors. “Thanks for the assist!”

“Small talk later, Let’s link up with the Sparrowhawks.” Herlick grumbled, the bluff, earthy woman was a veteran and seldom chatty on the job. Tall sir Bannock stalked the battlefield in silence, their sword flickering like moonlight on a pond; deceptive, quick and keen.

At the center of it all, Shai prowled around a wide, open space, hemmed in by battling allies and foes, as her prey sought escape. The summer grasses crisped and smoldered around her and the blazing lash of flame she held.

Her feet moved constantly, forming intricate little dance steps, as she moved through the scattered corpses and mangled remains. Always in motion, she surged forward at unpredictable moments, while slipping to the side to evade, when she wanted to steal his momentum.

She never retreated, never hesitated, never rushed, just a steady, workmanlike effort, her flaming brand blinding and terrifying the creature before it even touched his flesh.

In a desperate ploy, it scooped two terrified gobbos up in its claws and hurled the screaming pricks at her.

Her flaming blade lashed out as she sprinted at the fleeing beast, slashing one of his flying minions in half.

#

All thoughts of girls and horseflesh were forgotten as the flaming, demonic terror pursued Krulguth, through his minions and away from the girl and the horses.

Her terrible blade screamed at his senses and loosened his bowels, just from sight of the awful thing. He flung a pair of his warriors at her and turned to make his escape, when pain erupted in his leg.

He leapt away, skittering over the rock wall and into the forest, a trail of steam, smoke and blood drifting behind him as he fled, on two arms and one and a half legs.

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Shai looked down at her miserable, scaly, warty trophy and smiled, even though it was still moist, shit streaked and reeked of the thing’s foul discharge.

“Aye, an ye leave me a bit o’ yer self, I’ll be having the rest, on me own time…” She snarled at the vanished creature.

A split second later, her brand of flame vanished, as she became a concerned parent, whose kids had been in peril.

Had been in peril, now it was a clean up operation.

She descended on the kids just as fiercely as she’d attacked the goblins. This time she wielded hugs and constant inquiries as to their health. Lindsey and Flash got mothered just and savagely, leaving them both even more exhausted.

Warriors were still running up to the largely pacified battlefield, from the inn down the road. The unlucky few who had not managed to secure a mount got a bit of good natured ribbing from the others, as they fell to stacking corpses.

“We’ll come collect the bodies, an bill the duchy fer it, gentlemen… tis a standing contract fer disposal.” Shai called to the laboring warriors. “We’ll hae the cleaning o’ this mess.” Her brogue was thick enough to mortar a wall, that meant she was super unhappy and had no target for her ire…

Harry and Larry went to recover her swords from the mayhem, while Perry, Barry and Lindsey confronted the shuddering, heaving woman, standing over a troll’s severed foot and glaring at it with a terrible rage in her eyes.

“Ye kids are all well…” She sighed softly. “We finish this bloodletting another day, I’ll be wi me husband when he wakes frae this trial.”

No one was certain whether she was taking to the noisome foot, or the kids and no one was brave enough to ask.

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Such battles began and ended without warning or logic, or perhaps by a logic or order of their own. This one ended with a small group of battered kids limping their tired way home; as the count’s warriors swept the woods for signs of more trouble...

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Krulguth limped back to his cavern alone… he only had a couple gobs stashed in his larder and they weren’t ripe enough yet… and his acursed leg refused to grow back, the touch of flame denying him relief from the pain of not being whole… just as the metal thorn the human boy had hurled into his belly was a constant ache, churning in his guts.

He rubbed the closed over scar and felt the javelin head and the splintered jagged shaft under his hide. That was going to be troublesome. He hadn’t seen the last of those humans… And whatever that red haired terror was

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It was a long walk back to the inn, with bloody hands and faces, shredded, filthy clothes and a profusion of cuts, scratches, minor wounds and slight injuries. Lindey had a cut on her forearm from a jagged flint spearhead. Harry sported a black eye and a bite mark on his neck, while Perry and Larry both came out largely unscathed.

Barry has a nasty gash on his thigh, where a stone headed axe grazed him.

The jagged tear in his flesh was glued closed with violet gunk and bandaged, but had broken open and was bleeding a slow trickle down his leg by the time they got home.

The exhausted boys splashed down in the public bath, leaving Barry to Shai, who needed someone to fret over; since Gary was still dead to the world with a smile of his drooling, unconscious face on the couch in the common room.

Lindsey splashed down in the private bath, soaking her aches and stress away, with flash curled up on the lawn under a flowering magnolia.

Alone in the pool, she hid in the steam by the waterfall and sobbed through a huge, snotty mess of feelings and endorphins, letting the day’s struggles drift away on the bath water.

A soft sound brought her back from her cathartic release of emotions; the sound of someone entering the pool. She peeked out from behind the waterfall and sighed when she saw it was Shai.

She emerged from hiding and smiled at her horsetess, a charming conceit that made Lindsey giggle every time.

“Good evening, lass… I hae some precious things tae wash up an tend, dinnae mind these floating treasures of mine. We kin speak, if ye would.”

Barry and his father were both floating there, face up and seeming unconscious.

“Barry be on the duskmoon. He hae lost some blood and needs sleep. Me poor Gary be… asleep, an will remain so fer some time.”

She smiled a sad, hopeful grin at the young woman in the bath with her son and husband.

“We will both watch o’er them, as is proper.”

“Uh, Mom…” Perry’s voice drifted over the hedge separating the private baths. “We missed lunch… Do we have anything?”

“Aye, I hae just about finished dinner when yer call went up.” She answered softly, though nothing could wake the two sleeping boys they were looking after. “Tis’ beans an’ franks, lad…”

The voices of her three conscious sons murmured from afar.

“Pass…”

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