Goblin Slayer - Volume 1 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - The Mountain Fortress Burns

After a feast that had lasted three days and three nights, the goblins were most satisfied. 

The remains of their prey littered the floor of what had once been an opulent hall, now defiled with excrement and stench and corpses. 

Before, they had made only one scrawny catch, but now they had four fresh prey. Four women, no less. Humans, of course, but also an elf and a rhea. The goblins were naturally elated about this, and their celebration was altogether without restraint—as if goblins ever showed restraint. 

The girls were wildly outnumbered by the goblins, encircled, then completely surrounded by them… What happened next hardly bears repeating. 

But these were not run-of-the-mill country girls. 

The exposed bodies, clothes brutally torn away, were each different, but all showed the effects of long training. Their skin was sunbaked, with scars that spoke of old wounds, and each time they were played with, hardened muscles were visible through a layer of supple fat. 

And in the corner of the room, thrust aside like so much garbage, was a pile of stolen armor and helmets, swords, and shields. 

These women were adventurers of the eighth rank, Steel—or rather, had been. 

Now, not one of them was breathing. 

How did this happen? 

That was the last thought to go through the mind of the noble daughter who had been the party’s leader. 

Had they been so wrong to take on this adventure, gripped by righteous indignation upon hearing about a village girl’s kidnapping and wanting to set her free? 

It wasn’t precisely pride that had led to their destruction. They had snuck in at noon, hoping to catch the goblins as they slept. 

The mountain fortress had been built of ancient trees by the elves, and it was a place unknown to the adventurers, a maze through which they had no guide. So they never let down their guard. 

They prepared as well as they could in the small village, knowing full well many goblins awaited them. They simply knew they had to rescue the girl. 

These were not fresh-faced beginners; they had been on a number of adventures and had a good deal of training and skill. In front, their armored leader held her weapon at the ready, and a rhea ranger watched the area like a hawk. Guarding their rear, an elven wizard was prepared with her spells, and a human monk prayed for miracles. 

They had kept in formation, stayed alert, and checked every inch of ground. They had made no mistakes. 

The cold, hard truth was they’d simply had bad luck. 

First, the fortress—as was common in such structures—was full of booby traps. The traps the elves had once set to fend off goblins now, ironically, served to keep the goblins safe. 

The exhaustion of their Ranger from searching out the elaborate, sensitive, and deadly traps played a large role in what happened. They had reached the inner sanctum of the fortress, and at the very end, Ranger missed a warning device. 

“Everyone, form up!” 

As an alarm echoed wildly, the party jumped to their places at their leader’s command. Wizard stood in the center, with their leader, Knight, and Ranger and Monk at three points around her. It was no substitute for a good, solid wall between them and the enemy, but it was a strong formation. 

But the goblins that surrounded them were so, so many. 

Call it, if you will, the tyranny of the majority. 

Ranger’s archery skill was a divine gift, but even she couldn’t hold out when there were more enemies than she had arrows. 

Wizard used four of her arts, five—a great number—but eventually, her strength gave out. 

Monk kept up her prayers for miracles and protection until she could pray no more, and she had nothing left. 

Their leader fought on, her blade covered in blood, but as she tired, the goblins overpowered her, and then the hunt was over. 

All those bodies—yet the fight could not have lasted a full hour. 

And there among the heaps of arrow-pierced, sword-maimed, spell-burned corpses, a celebration began. 

“Hr…hrrr…” The elf’s voice was strained with fear. 

“St-stay back… Stay back…!” The rhea’s face was hopeless. Monk prayed soundlessly, and their leader was biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. 

The goblins licked their lips as they stared down at their prey, who were huddling together and hugging themselves. 

The party’s third and final piece of bad luck was that their enemies were goblins. 

Normally, goblin captives are either eaten or forced to become breeding vessels, and some are occasionally left alone, saved for a rainy day. 

But this time was different. 

These adventurers had killed many of their brothers, and no one was in the mood to give them an easy end. 

Goblins lived by the law of survival, willing to sacrifice as many of their number as it took to win. So they did not grieve the deaths of their comrades. But anger and hatred at those deaths ran deep. 

“GARUUURU.” 

“GAUA.” 

The goblins were delighted to find wine among the provisions they had taken from the women. Their drunken, small, mean minds invented one awful game after another to play with their prisoners. And the village was just down the mountain—an easy place to get more toys if they ran through what they had here. 

The poor captured village girl had hardly served ten goblins before she could bear no more. They had used her up long ago. 

There was no hope. 

Knight, her clothes torn, a goblin holding her down, gave a howling scream. 

“You bastards! You want to humiliate someone? Start with me!” 

She was the daughter of a noble household. She had become a knight-errant in the service of the Supreme God, responsible for administering law and justice. She had contemplated every evil fate that might befall her and was ready for them. 

But she was not prepared to sacrifice her friends. 

First, Ranger was used for target practice before her eyes. The leader begged the goblins for her companion’s life. Because Monk had attempted to bite off her own tongue when the goblins torturously killed her, they shoved her comrade’s entrails into her mouth. When Wizard was burned alive, Knight’s heart broke into a thousand pieces, and her soul failed her. 

It was only after three days and three nights that the goblins at last granted the leader’s wish. 

What happened to her during those three days until her body, so mangled it barely looked human, was thrown into the river is not fit to be written. 

The body of the adventurer that washed down to them, and the cackling laughter that echoed through the valley, left the villagers at the mountain’s foot racked with fear. 

But there are exceptions to every rule. 

For example, one goblin on guard duty was holding a crude spear and patrolling the wall in the night air. 

He, and he alone, was not laughing. 

Obviously, it was not that he felt any kind of sympathy for the degraded women. He was simply upset that he had been left out of the celebration. 

He had been on guard duty, watching the village, when the adventurers attacked, so he had not participated in the hunt. And (he was informed) he who does not hunt has no right to share the spoils. 

He had no response to that argument, and so he had quietly withdrawn back to the wall. 

The guard shivered at his post, freezing in the wind that blew down the mountain. Was it possible to draw a shorter straw? 

They had spared him one burned finger. He would have at least liked a piece of the rhea. He chewed longingly on the finger, wishing for something more, and as he did, he began to breathe more and more heavily. 

It didn’t occur to him that if he had been in the fight with the adventurers instead of on guard duty, he might have died. Every goblin believes every other goblin will be out in front, while he himself fights from a comfortable spot in the back. 

Still, the deaths of their brothers make them angry, and that makes them hard to handle… 

“GUI…” 

Never mind watching the village. Was a guard against encroaching enemies even necessary? This fortress had been built long ago by the elves (not that the goblins cared). When they left, it stood forgotten and deserted until the goblins moved in. All goblins want from a nest is that it be sturdy, safe, and offer good hunting. So they took over the fort, with all the traps, tricks, and walls its builders had left behind. 

With all that, this fortress didn’t need a guard. The goblin stuck on guard duty was deeply displeased. 

So when he noticed them, he was actually thrilled. 

“GRRRRR?” 

Adventurers. Two of them. 

One was a warrior in dirty leather armor and a steel helmet, making no attempt to hide himself as he strode calmly among the trees. A small shield was fastened to his arm. On his shoulder was a quiver, in his hand a bow, and at his hip a sword. 

He looked like a weakling. Why should they worry about him? The guard goblin was focused on the person walking next to the warrior. It was a gorgeous girl in priestess vestments who stood awkwardly, clutching her staff and looking distinctly ill at ease. 

The guard licked his lips. Neither of them was very meaty, but at least this prey he could get in on. 

He made his ugliest face and, spittle dangling from his mouth, went back inside to alert the others. This was as per orders—but he should never have taken his eyes off the adventurers. 

The warrior fitted an arrow into his bow and drew the string as far as he could. A rag soaked in Medea’s Oil was wrapped around the arrowhead. Priestess struck a flint onto it. 

“GAAU!” 

“GOURR!” 

The goblins the guard had summoned shuffled out onto the walls and began clamoring and pointing at the adventurers. But it was too late. 

“Quite a crowd,” Goblin Slayer muttered into his helmet as he loosed the arrow. 

The bolt lodged in the wooden walls, and flames licked up toward the goblins, who began screaming. 

A second burning shaft came flying. In the blink of an eye, there was fire everywhere. 

“GAUAUAAAA?!” 

One creature attempting to escape lost his footing in his panic and slipped, sending himself and two of his companions falling from the wall to the ground far below. The guard was among them, but Goblin Slayer neither knew nor cared. 

“Three.” 

He counted calmly and let loose another arrow. 

Fire, of course, was the great enemy of the elves. Had the forest people still been in that fortress, it would never have been so easy to attack with a simple burning rag. 

But the elves, who would have offered supplications to the spirits to quench any flames, were no longer there. Any ward they might have erected against conflagration was long since gone. 

The fortress in front of the adventurers was large and solid, but it was still just wood. 

“That’s enough fire arrows. Get ready.” 

“Oh, r-right!” 

As Goblin Slayer drew his bow once more, Priestess stood with her sounding staff at the ready, prepared to begin the soul-effacing prayer to the goddess. 

Covering her, Goblin Slayer put a bolt between the eyes of a goblin trying to flee the gorge. The monster tumbled backward into the burning fortress he had been so desperate to escape. 

“Fool. That’s four.” 

The next instant, there was a dull clang as a rock bounced off his helmet. 

“Oh no! Are you all right?!” Priestess exclaimed. 

“Don’t panic,” he replied with a shake of his head, annoyed that she had broken her concentration by shouting. 

He clicked his tongue, then spotted a goblin in the gorge holding a rope. 

A sling could be a powerful weapon. It might be just a bit of rope that flung a stone, but the projectile could travel with deadly speed and force. And it was almost impossible to run out of ammunition—a feature Goblin Slayer liked very much. 

But anyway, even if the goblins had gotten ahold of a sling… 

“It might matter in a cave. But not at this distance.” 

Outside of melee combat in confined quarters, the goblins’ physical strength became irrelevant. They lacked the coordination for ranged attacks. The rock that had bounced off his helmet just now was probably a lucky hit. 

Still, things might have been different if the two of them had been overconfident beginners. And Goblin Slayer was nothing if not thorough. 

He launched an arrow in the slinger’s direction, piercing him through the throat. Against the brilliant flames, the lack of night vision made no difference. 

“Five… They’ll be coming soon.” 

Just as he predicted, a crowd of goblins appeared in the entranceway, trying to flee the burning fortress. They carried their wine and their prey and their loot, and they shoved one another in their efforts to get out the door. 

As they had run for their lives through the fortress, which they had grown rather fond of living in, it seemed their terror had turned to rage. Their hideous faces glowed with the lust to kill Goblin Slayer and Priestess. A great many evil plans ran through their heads. When they got out of the building, should they kill the two adventurers? Rape them? 

Every goblin had a weapon in hand, and all of them were bent on Priestess standing just outside the entrance… 

“O Earth Mother, abounding in mercy, by the power of the land, grant safety to we who are weak.” 

And suddenly the goblins found themselves slamming their heads against an invisible wall and rolling back into the fortress. A wall of holy power blocking the entrance and preventing the goblins’ escape. The Earth Mother, abounding in mercy, had shielded her devout follower with the miracle of Protection. 

“GORRR?!” 

“GARRR?!” 

The goblins grew increasingly panicked as they realized they’d been trapped. They screeched and cried as they beat their clubs and their fists against the invisible barrier and found nothing could break it. Smoke and flames slowly obscured the goblins, until they vanished from sight. 

“I’d heard you’d been given a new miracle,” Goblin Slayer said, casually shooting an arrow into a goblin trying to escape the area. “Six. It made our job much easier.” 

“But…to use Protection like this…,” Priestess said. Her voice was hoarse, and it wasn’t from breathing the smoke that rose from the once-living goblins. 

She had been at the Temple the past several days in order to learn new miracles. Protection was one of two she had been given. 

Depending on their strength and status, clerics who had gone out into the world might receive new miracles as well as oracles. It appeared her faith was stronger than even she herself had realized. It pained her each time the Mother Superior praised the fruits of her adventuring… 

…But if it meant gaining a new miracle, she would endure the training in the belief that it would help her support Goblin Slayer. 

And this was what had come of it. 

Why did the Earth Mother allow me this miracle…? 

She let out a long, miserable sigh. 

“There might be a back door or an escape tunnel. Stay alert.” 

“How do you think of these things?” 

“Imagination is a weapon, too.” With those words, Goblin Slayer readied another arrow. “Those without it are the first to die.” 

“…You mean, like the people who came here earlier?” 

“That’s right.” 

The mountain fortress burned. 

With that, the village below was saved from the threat of goblins. The souls of those departed adventurers could each go into the arms of whatever god they had believed in. 

The bodies of the goblins burned. The bodies of the adventurers burned. And the body of the kidnapped girl burned as the smoke drifted into the sky. 

“We’ll have to control the blaze. When it’s burned out, we’ll need to look for any survivors and deal with them,” Goblin Slayer said, looking up at the smoke, without a trace of emotion in his voice. There was a pause. “…Acting my rank can be…difficult.” 

Priestess watched him as though seeing something heartbreaking. There was no way she could know his expression under that helmet. Or there shouldn’t have been. 

Almost unconsciously, she joined her hands, knelt down, and prayed. 

The heat and smoke covered the sky in dark clouds, and at length, a black rain began to fall. She prayed as the raindrops fell on her, as her vestments became streaked with ash. 

The only thing she wanted was salvation. 

Salvation for whom and from what she did not know. 

“The Goblin King has lost his head to a critical hit most dire!” 

The bard gave a warbling strum of his lute. 

“Blue blazing, Goblin Slayer’s steel shimmers in the fire.” 

The notes echoed around the evening street. People stopped to listen, drawn by the powerful yet melancholy tune. 

“Thus, the king’s repugnant plan comes to its fitting end, and lovely princess reaches out to her rescuer, her friend.” 

Young and old, men and women, rich and poor, people of every walk of life watched the bard. His peculiar epic would depend entirely on his own skill for its success. 

“But he is Goblin Slayer! In no place does he abide, but sworn to wander, shall not have another by his side.” 

A young girl in the front row gave a warm, wistful sigh. The bard held back the smile that pulled at his lips and continued soberly: 

“’Tis only air within her grasp the grateful maiden finds—the hero has departed, aye, with never a look behind.” 

Strum, strum, strum. 

“Thank you! Tonight this is as far as I shall carry the story of the burning of the mountain fortress from the tale of the Goblin Slayer, hero of the frontier.” 

The audience that had gathered on that street in the Capital dispersed with a murmur. The bard gave an elegant bow of thanks as coins clattered into his cap. 

A Silver-ranked adventurer who never suffered defeat as he drove out goblins all along the untamed frontier. To villagers beset by these monsters, he might as well have been of Platinum rank: a hero who appeared like the wind and left the same way. The epic the bard had fashioned about this figure from tidbits he’d chanced to overhear seemed to be well received. That was what counted. 

“Sir…?” 

Taken aback by the sudden, clear voice, the bard looked up in the midst of picking up some coins from the ground. The rest of the audience was gone, but one person stood there, face hidden by a cloak. 

“That adventurer you were singing about… Does he really exist?” 

“Of course he does. Absolutely.” The bard puffed out his chest. 

People trusted the deeds reported by the poets and minstrels. He could hardly admit he’d made up the song based on bits of accidental eavesdropping. 

And anyway, this mysterious goblin killer had made him a good deal of money. The least he could do was see to the man’s reputation. 

“He’s in a town two or three days’ travel in the direction of the western border.” 

“Is that right?” the figure breathed, and with a nod, the hood of the cloak fell back. 

Her supple body was clad in hunter’s garb. A huge bow was slung across her back. She was slender and gorgeous. 

The bard couldn’t help staring—and not just because of her beauty. 

He was struck by her long, leaf-shaped ears. 

“Orcbolg…,” she said, the sound melodious but strange. An elf adventurer.