Friends in a Foreign Land

“The goblin fort is a few days south of Wildemill,” Oringo told them. “You’re going in the complete wrong direction.”

“Of course we are,” Arden said before turning to his group. “Ten minute break, then we double time back to town and start over.”

Everyone started getting drinks of water and such when Hazel spoke up. “Oringo, if you know where the goblins live why haven’t y’all just gone and take care of them?”

Again Oringo looked confused but before he could answer Nolan stepped into the conversation. “Likely far too many of the goblins there, right Oringo?”

“Yes. Our best estimates are that the fort has a larger population than Wildemill now. Mostly lower caste, farmers and such. But their warrior caste is easily 150 if not more. Or at least that was the last count we got before our scout was killed.

A few minutes longer and Nolan motioned for everyone to get moving. “Good hunting Oringo,” he said as they headed back south.

“To you as well,” Oringo answered with a chuckle.

Since they were no longer trying to be quiet, the party retraced their steps to the town in less than twenty minutes and were around to the south side shortly after that. Once again standing at the edge of the forest, this time to the south of town near where they first approached a couple days before, Arlo was given his instructions and started to hunt. Not five minutes passed before he hit up on a trail and the party had to run to keep sight of the wolf.

They had gone maybe a quarter mile into the woods in a southeasterly direction when Arlo let out a yelp. As soon as he did, Arden grabbed Willow and Nolan grabbed Hazel, both motioning for them to stop and get low. Sure enough, not a minute later five goblins had surrounded Arlo and were attempting to subdue him. Seeing what they were up against Nolan quickly whispered orders.

“Hazel, hit them with an AOE if you have it while we close in and then switch to something that won’t hurt us. Willow, circle around and come up from behind Arlo and see if you can cut the snare that caught him so he can get away. Arden, as soon as Hazel’s AOE lands we charge in.

Willow immediately started to flank the goblins. She could hear the goblins taunting her companion as they poked at him with spears and swords and discussed how good he would taste. Hazel cast a spell and three of the goblins staggered and then fell, obviously asleep. Arden and Nolan charged the two goblins still awake, their shouts distracting them enough that Arlo was able to bite one of them.

Nolan headed toward that one and drew his knife across the goblin’s throat while Arden ran up to the other who had the presence of mind to raise his sword. Having just picked up a mace and shield a couple days prior, Arden’s lack of training was quite evident as the goblin managed to land several slashing cuts on Arden’s arms and legs. Growing frustrated with how poorly he was doing, Arden put the mace and shield back into his inventory and just charged the creature. This allowed the goblin to stab him in the thigh but Arden got his hands on the goblin and proceeded to pummel the small creature. By the time Arden stopped, the rest of the goblins had been killed and his family were standing about fifteen feet away from him staring at him. Looking down at himself and seeing the blood… his blood and the goblin’s, Arden started to feel self-conscious for a moment. He cast a [Healing Touch] spell on himself followed by a quick [Clean]. Then he stepped back from the goblin he’d just beaten to death and looked at his daughters and best friend and in a voice resigned to their judgment, spoke, “Say whatever it is you gotta say.”

The seconds ticked by with none of the three saying anything until finally, Hazel, the older of the two daughters looked at Willow, “And this is why I always told you to never piss off daddy.” This got both girls laughing as they turned and walked off.

Nolan just shook his head and said, “You have years of martial arts training and when things got real you just ignored all of it? Seriously?”

“First off, I did several really nice blocks at the start when he still had his sword. But…” Arden just shrugged, “the situation pissed me off. I really gotta learn how to fight with this mace and shield.”

“Do you? Maybe they aren’t the weapons you need.”

Arden turned and started walking to where his daughters and Arlo were waiting. “I’m better with a bo staff, but that’s hard to wield while handling a shield. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to need the shield in order to tank for the group.”

“Maybe we should get you some short spears. Something like the assegai the Zulu used.”

Nodding, Arden replied, “I like that idea. Let’s see if anyone in town has a spear I can purchase. Though, I do think knowing how to handle a mace will come in handy when we get to armored or thick hided enemies.”

“One thing at a time, my friend.” Nolan said patting Arden on the shoulder.

As he approached the girls they were arguing about something.

“That’s gross!” Willow fussed.

“That’s the point!” retorted Hazel.

Cutting in, Arden asked, “What’s the topic?”

“Hazel wants to cut the heads off the goblins and mount them on poles near the town.”

“Learning warfare from Vlad the Impaler are we?” Arden said with a grin to Hazel.

“I think it’ll make them think twice about attacking.”

“What do you think Nolan?”

“Might anger them; bring down more on us than we can handle right now. I like the idea but I think we should level up some more. Get our battle plans down first. Then piss them off.” Looking back to Hazel he added, “You can take the heads but keep them in your pack until we say it’s time to start setting them up.

“Sweet!” Hazel said with a mischievous grin.

A few minutes later they had decapitated all the goblins and Hazel stored them in her pack. A quick round of [Clean] casts later and they were all back on the hunt.

“Dad, I have a question.” Said Willow as they headed back out. “If goblins are nocturnal shouldn’t we be hunting them at night?”

“Perhaps. But they’re more dangerous at night being that they can see and we can’t. Also, we’re hoping to catch them sleeping. If Arlo can avoid their traps, anyway.”

“Wait,” Hazel said, “Y’all can’t see in the dark?”

“You can?” Arden asked, puzzlement on his face.

“Yeah.”

“It’s because we’re half-elf,” Willow said. “And it’s not dark vision like you’re thinking, dad. It’s called night vision. It lets us see a lot better and further in low light. If there’s no light, we can’t see either.”

“That still better than your dad and I,” Nolan muttered.

Nodding, Arden added, “Yeah, I’m totally jealous.”

The rest of that day was spent hunting for goblins, trying to sneak up on them while they were hunkered down sleeping for the day. This proved harder than they expected because of the traps that the goblins nearly always seemed to have near where they were sleeping. Arlo was caught in another before he started looking for them. Hazel was caught in a goblin trap that she stumbled into as they were leaving the site of one of their fights, while their guard was down. It scared everyone but turned out to be a simple pit trap.

“Amateurish,” declared Arden while looking in the pit.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see it,” Hazel whined.

“He’s talking about the trap, Hazel, not you. A good pit trap should have spikes at the bottom,” Nolan lectured.

Willow tossed the end of a rope down to her sister as she added, “In this case, isn’t that a good thing?”

“Of course. We should fill it with poison and cover it back up, though,” Arden replied.

It took half an hour for Hazel to be able to cast her [Poison Gas] spell enough times to have an appreciable level of poison in the pit, leveling the skill in the process. And then she sat and meditated while the rest of the party re-covered the pit.

With Arlo’s help, the party was quite successful at finding the goblins. And after a few more fights they started to get better at killing them. Thankfully a few even had spears that Arden took and started using as his primary weapon. As Nolan had predicted, it worked much better than the mace.

About an hour before sunset the party was making it’s way back toward the town and found a trail that was getting some heavy use. They had Willow use her mold earth spell to dig a pit for Hazel to fill with poison gas. But they couldn’t figure out a way to hide all the dirt that Willow was moving so they finally decided to just put it in Arden’s pack to be emptied somewhere at a later date.

By the time the pit was dug, filled with poison, and covered the sun was very close to setting and both of the girls were exhausted. They headed back to Wildemill as quickly and quietly as possible.

It was dark by the time they made it back to town and the gate was already closed. Daw was the guard on duty and he was not happy about having to open the gate to let them in. But Hazel let him know they’d been hunting goblins all day and he changed his tune and appeared to even hold them in a slightly higher regard.

The party went to the shrine first where they all said a quick thanks to the gods for them surviving their first day of hunting goblins and asked for continued guidance. Then they went to Oringo’s to pick up Ewan. Arden made sure to hit everyone with a casting of the [Clean] spell before they knocked on his door.

Malusi answered the door and looked them all up and down before stepping aside so that they could enter. “Come in. We’ve already eaten dinner and were beginning to grow concerned about you. After dad told me that you went in the entire wrong direction this morning, we feared that he had sent you to your deaths.”

“Nothing so bad as that. We simply got carried away hunting and setting traps and lost track of time. We’ll try to be back earlier tomorrow,” Nolan answered.

Oringo called from another room, “How successful was your hunt? Did you get at least ten today?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Ten?” Willow questioned.

“Just kidding. Ten was the goal the parties of guards used to set when they’d go out goblin hunting. No one expects you to do that well,” Oringo said as he walked into the room with Ewan following him.

“Actually, we got quite a bit more than that,” Hazel said as she scooped up her son and hugged him.

“Really?” Asked Malusi. “From Willow’s tone it she sounded surprised.”

“Surprised you asked such a low number,” Willow explained. “We killed over twenty goblins today.”

The father and son looked to one another before looking back to the party, doubt plain in their eyes. “There is no shame,” Oringo began before Hazel cut him off.

“We’re not lying. We kept the heads of all that we killed and I can pour them out on your floor right now if you’d like.”

“Truly?” Malusi said, clearly surprised. “That is amazing. Please forgive us for not believing you. But before we lost all our guards and hunters, a party of five was considered to have a good day if they killed ten. Fifteen kills was amazing and only happened a few times,” Malusi said. “For those so new to hunting goblins to kill so many is… unexpected.”

“Those parties didn’t have Arlo leading them straight to the goblins.” Willow said while petting her dog turned direwolf.

“Maybe,” Arden said sounding unsure, “or maybe there simply weren’t that many goblins near the town back then.”

“Well, let us go get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll see if we can be so lucky twice in a row,” Nolan advised.