The pair of goblins posed dumbstruck in the dim light of our lanterns. They were gaunt creatures, perpetually filthy and withered, hides covered in old scars. Ears long like those of bats. Lipless mouths like holes cut into tight-stretched faces, teeth sharp, yellowed, and unpleasantly crooked. Eyes disproportionately large for the faces, adapted to the limited underground lights, and nostrils but thin slants poked in a stumpy hill of a nose. At the same time monstrous and also uncannily humanoid, like orphaned children in the dungeon.

These two weren’t juveniles, though. They were fairly old.

You could roughly guess a goblin’s age by its size. By the age of four or five years, they already reached the average height of human females between five and six feet—although their perpetually hunched posture made them seem deceptively smaller.

Five years was old for a goblin. Only rarely did they live past ten.

Another indirect sign of age was their equipment. Goblins weren’t capable craftsmen. They did know a thing or two about the use of fire and hammer, but work like smelting, or employing molds and templates, was beyond them. They could produce nothing new in their own fashion. They obtained their weapons and armors by looting their victims and remodeled the gear to suit their own monstrous sensibilities.

The pair in front of us had strapped on bits of metal and leather to shield their scrawny bodies. Oversized leather vambraces and greaves rolled around otherwise naked limbs, light vests to protect the vitals. They even had rusted sallets on their heads. The equipment wasn’t in the dwarves’ style, so they had to belong to missing adventurers.

These goblins were not only mature, they had seen success.

One was armed with a chipped hatchet, whereas the other one toted a barbed spear with a broken handle, and the shattered half of an old targe. The party composition of attacker and defender showed these creatures weren’t altogether mindless. A force to be reckoned.

In short, there was the training our hero had been looking for.

I gestured at the soldiers to stand back, before turning back to Ray.

“For now, show us the fruits of your hard works.”

The champion of the free peoples looked anything but prepared for battle. And here I’d told him to be ready for anything. Where were the man’s ears.

“Seriously!?” he cried.

“I’ll step in, if it looks bad,” I promised him. “But if you cannot handle two goblins, then I believe you’d better give up on your hero’s journey here.”

“Sometimes, I wonder if you just hate me!”

The pair of monsters had eyed our crew with great doubt, concerned about the difference in numbers. But offer them a bait and they will never not take it.

Seeing the rest of us withdraw, their simple minds could only assume we were frightened by them. Goblins didn’t comprehend more elaborate reasons. They fixed their bulging eyes on Ray at once, the lamb estranged from the rest of the flock, and came forward with a noise that rang like a gleeful cackle.

Ray hurried to draw his longsword and assumed a rigid stance. A sword very unlike those used by the imperial soldiers; wider, heavier, crafted of the dark-toned malicite.

The proof of a hero—Kingmarker.

A sword that had, until recently, rested embedded in stone somewhere in southern Astria, possible only for someone with the gods’ backing to draw. Legitimate kings weren’t very fond of the naming sense, which seemed to suggest the holder of the sword had a heavenly right to usurp them. But the sword was named thus only because many of the past heroes had indeed gone on to rule as kings of their own countries later in life, back when becoming a ruler had been a great deal easier than today.

Ray, however, showed few kingly qualities then.

“It’s two against one here!” the young man wailed. “Don’t you think that’s a bit much for my first real fight?”

“Stay calm,” I told him. “You must be in control of your feelings at all times.”

“Easy for you to say! They’re coming!”

The monsters scrambled at the young man with a ravenous hunger in their eyes—but abruptly stopped a few steps away, outside the reach of his sword, hissing and snarling.

Predictable behavior. Goblins were cautious things—cowardly things—and wouldn’t blindly throw themselves at an armed foe. They’d hoped to scare Ray to run, so they could stab him safely in the back, but it didn’t work out.

But if both sides were only half-cowardly, it meant the fight would never end. The goblins and the hero kept knocking each other’s weapons, both trying to intimidate the opponent with equally poor results.

“What do I do, what do I do?” Ray inquired me.

“I told you to be calm. Do you still remember Ser Bourbaint’s lessons? Do you remember all that excruciating training you did last summer? Those long days of sweating in the sun? Running around the dusty, beaten track till you could hardly stand? The sermons about blood and tears, and soldier’s pride?”

“Yes, yes. I remember all too well!”

“Good. Now throw that rubbish out of your mind.”

“Excuse me!?”

He really was being too loud.

“Among the first things they teach to fledgling adventurers is this: ‘don’t play the monsters’ own game.’”

“What does that mean…?”

“Think about it yourself. The meaning is plain, is it not? There is no reason to be chivalrous and fairly match force with force. Your enemy here isn’t nobility, or a man at all. There are no rules when it comes to exterminating monsters. Anything goes.”

“Then what do I do!?” Ray hollered, trying to keep an eye on both monsters at the same time. “Like for real!”

“Good grief, at this rate, you’ll draw every goblin under the mountain to us.”

“Then please help me…”

“Do use your own head. Observe your foe. These goblins want to kill you. You’re only food in their eyes. Show them the slightest weakness, and they will not hesitate to take advantage of it. With that, you already know more about your enemy than they know about you. This is a major advantage, don’t you see?”

Ray shook his head. “Nope, not seeing it.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He really was a dense case. Did I have to spell everything for him?

“Don’t stare them in the eye,” I told him, “it frightens them. Take a broad view. Don’t show off your weapon like that, aimlessly swinging it around. They’re beasts, but they’re not stupid. If they can see how long the blade is, they’ll never willingly enter striking range.”

“They can even tell things like that? How smart are they?”

“Monsters instinctively understand many things we humans must learn through study. They can tell a lot about you based only on how you stand. But what they can’t see, they can’t even imagine. So, in plain words, I am telling you to play dirty. Be passive, feign disability. Move irregularly, always slower than you could, quickly only when you strike; strike only to kill. Even a much quicker and stronger foe can be beaten if you can make it attack when and how you want it to. Anticipate it and move ahead. That’s the gist of it.”

“You know, that’s a lot easier said than done!” Ray grumbled.

“Pay attention now. It comes.”

The hero’s guard was down, his focus in shambles. The braver of the goblins, the one with the hatchet, took its chances. The one with the wood spear hung back, not above using its partner as a meat shield, if need be. It was a little amusing how much their personalities reflected in the choice of weaponry. So very human of them.

The monster leapt up high and raised the hatched to split Ray’s skull. He didn’t even wear a helmet. His death was guaranteed. But Ray’s training had, in fact, not been for nothing. He ducked and moved away from under the swing, at the same time as he cut at the charging goblin’s flank.

It was an exemplary response, theoretically. Only, the practical application left a lot to be desired. His posture was bad and his hurried reaction too late. The moment the goblin’s bare feet touched the floor, it sprang out of the way, and he only managed a shallow cut across the lowest ribs. The creature ran its fingers over the bleeding cut and screamed accusingly at the youth, anything but out of the fight.

Ray chased it to make up for his mistake—and failed to pay attention to the second goblin, which had quietly bidden its time in the background, aiming for that very moment. The javelinist rushed forth with a shrill war cry, and Ray had to pause his offensive to parry the sharpened stick thrust at his gut. He managed this cleanly enough, but stopping there also sealed his doom.

The monsters had very purposefully pushed the man with their yelling and threatening gestures, to make him lose his composure and sight of the whole. So quickly they had taken the measure of our hero. Undoubtedly, these two were seasoned man-slayers.

In the wake of his parry, Ray was left wide open. Then the goblin with the hatchet was upon him, to deliver the coup de grâce.

“Damn—!” he grunted when he saw he couldn’t raise his guard in time.

Well, if he could recognize that much, maybe he wasn’t all hopeless.

It was about time to step in.

I now drew the dagger hidden in the sash behind my back and stepped up between the man and the goblin. You wouldn’t want to willingly get close to such a foul-smelling thing, but that was the safest place to be. I moved in close enough to pick up the thing in my arms, and placed the edge of the blade up close to the monster’s armpit. A human foe would have interrupted his strike there, seeing he would lose his arm otherwise, but goblins didn’t mind such matters. They couldn’t see two steps ahead. After committing to the swing, it would swing with its all, damn the rest. There was something a bit enviable about their simple-minded way of life.

So the goblin struck down. The dagger bit deep through the dull yellow-green hide, and through the stringy muscles, and into the bone. I passed on under the limb, pulled the blade along, lightly, with no force to speak of, no different from preparing pork for dinner.

Its arm destroyed, the goblin’s swing fell wide and Ray kept his face.

The creature landed, staring in disbelief at the mess of a limb, and I turned and sank the dagger in the back of its neck. With a bit of a twist and a pull, the spinal column was detached from the base of the skull and the thing fell dead.

Not utilizing the element of surprise would have been in poor form, so I moved on to the remaining foe. Distraught, it swung its spear at me, but too late. I was too close, and it couldn’t put much force into the swing. I caught the crude stick in my free left hand, leaned past it, and opened the creature’s throat close under the wide jaw, from left to right, and stepped away before I’d get any blood on my clothes. It was a menace to wash off.

Silence returned.

The monsters kicked for a bit before passing to rest. Their near-black blood pooled onto the floor, thick and viscous, quick to coagulate. It reeked like a mix of burned oil and feces. I wiped my dagger clean on the tattered loincloth of the hatchet-wielder, and returned the blade to its sheath. Then I regarded the champion, who sat on the floor, frozen with the most unflattering look on his face.

“According to the Guild’s statistics, roughly half of all registered adventurers die within a year of signing up,” I told him. “Most of them in their maiden battle. Do you see why?”

There were a hundred and one things I wanted to beat into his head, but the young man looked unhealthily pale, splattered with reeking goblin blood, anything but receptive to theory. I decided to offer him a hand instead.

“Well, I suppose congratulations are in order. You are in the fifty percent that lived.”

Ray stared at my hand for a moment and then burst into a light, spontaneous laughter. I couldn’t see what was so funny, but I suppose it was better than seeing a grown man cry.

“Are you sure you’re not the monster?” he asked and laughed.

What was that supposed to mean?

We had a short break there. Everyone took turns to pat the fledgling hero’s back, sharing encouraging words and tips, and his near-death experience was turned into a fond memory we could all reminisce with a smile afterward. Before we continued on, I saw it fit to give Ray one more lesson he could probably appreciate more.

“Look here,” I told him, and pointed at the dead monsters. “Goblins are fond of glittering things. You often find them wearing accessories stolen from their victims. Check the corpses and recover anything that looks valuable.”

One of the goblins had a golden ring shaped like a coiled snake with tiny emerald eyes. It might as well have belonged to a noble, or a prosperous merchant. Another had a silvery necklace that a woman might wear, as well as a short, ornate knife in a holster under the arm.

“In conventional war, looting is seen as criminal, but the rules are different here. Anything you pick up in a dungeon is yours to keep forever, no questions asked.”

“Wow, really?” Ray’s eyes brightened up at once.

“Yes. Dungeons are monster hives that pose a danger to everyone near them, but few would willingly risk their necks to clear them, unless there was profit to be had. You can have your loot appraised and cashed in at the nearest Guild bureau. You can sell items directly to merchants too, but there is always an element of gambling involved in that. You could get more than the market value, or you could be cheated, if you don’t know the value of what you have.”

“I see. Good to know.”

“Take their weapons too, if you can and have a need. Blacksmiths will gladly buy scrap iron and steel, if you’re in need of quick coin. If there’s nothing else, you can take the ears. The Guild pays a small bounty for every pair. But don’t bother gutting them. Not even a witch will take goblin organs, or hides.”

“Trust me,” Ray assured, “I wasn’t going to.”

“I suppose that covers the subject. We leave when you are ready.”

I turned away to go. Ray looked after me with a questioning face.

“Don’t you want a share? You’re the one who killed them.”

“No. The Imperial House pays me enough.”

Looting lowly monsters was perhaps natural for an adventurer, but not behavior fit for her highness’s lady-in-waiting. It wasn’t only myself I represented here, and I couldn’t afford to forget that.

Ray shrugged. “If you say so.”

He meticulously stripped the corpses of anything remotely valuable-looking, despite the stench of them. Then again, the man reeked bad enough himself by this point, that you could have mistaken him for a goblin in the dark.