Goblin Slayer - Volume 10 - Chapter 3.2

Pause – Of Running Through The Shadows Of The Capital

When a fixer tells you, “It’s just in and out. Easy run,” you should be careful. What he means is it’s a rush job, dicey, dangerous, probably tied up with money. 

Besides, if it was safe and simple, they wouldn’t be paying our prices. 

The young rogue remembered the way his friend had grinned at him; then he got a firm hold on the grappling hook line and placed his feet against the wall. Truthfully, even for money, this wasn’t the sort of place he wanted to be breaking into. 

“Are—are you all right…? I’m not too heavy?” 

“No, you’re fine.” 

The voice came from someone on his back, a sweet sound that tickled his ear. This was hardly the sort of situation to make his heart race, though. He frowned, aware of the lightness and softness of his “buddy,” the mage who had her arms wrapped around his neck. 

God, these elves…! 

The rogue was young enough to feel a certain embarrassment—scruples, one might say—at having his buddy, a young woman about his age, clinging to him. There were other things he should be focusing on: namely, mentally comparing the rough map provided by the “researcher” with what he had observed of the area during the day. 

When they reached the window he had in mind, he drummed on the slim arm around his neck with his fingers. “You’re up.” 

“Okay, leave it to me,” she said, then stretched out one arm over his shoulder, touching the window frame with something in her fingertips. Produced from a bag at her hip, it was a grub that looked like a cross between a centipede and a slug. She whispered a few words to it—a request—and the creature promptly began to squirm, digging into the plaster. Such feeble building materials were no match for a Rock Eater larva. 

People might put armor plating over their windows; they might use elaborate locks or put protective magic spells on the glass—but they never thought to protect the window frame. The rogue removed the frame wholesale and slipped into the room. It was someone’s study—or perhaps office. There were bookshelves, a desk, a half-empty bottle of alcohol accompanied by a cup of fine make. There was a fur carpet so thick his feet sank into it; he couldn’t get used to the footing no matter how he tried. 

He set down the window frame, careful not to make any noise, and the mage slid off his back. Simultaneously, in a single flowing motion, he unhooked the repeating crossbow hanging from a belt across his chest and brought it up into a firing position. He made sure the chamber was loaded, then found a position that would cover his buddy’s blind spot. 

They had this part down to a routine by now. They’d been together quite a while. 

“I’ll just have a look around,” she said. “If I see anything interesting, I’ll help myself to it. And I’ll leave them a little loot.” 

“That’s the plan.” 

“Won’t take me long.” 

People only looked for what had been stolen after a break-in. They never looked to see if they had more possessions than they’d had before. 

Runners didn’t just take the nastiest, smelliest jobs available. Sometimes they charged in; other times, the meat of the mission was simply getting out. Sometimes kidnapping, sometimes insertion. Diversion was a specialty, as were protection and pursuit, escape, and on occasion, even rescue. 

People paid money for someone to do these things. And so they ran. The run was everything. They got their money, and sometimes they played the heroes, sometimes the villains. Few of them specifically hated the Adventurers Guild or the government or the gods—but the first step to being a runner was accepting that you yourself were simply the fingernail of something much bigger. 

You get that into your head, or you die , the young rogue thought, as he passed the time by whistling the humorous song that had lately been making the rounds in the water town. 

A hero who only kills goblins? Now, that is funny! 

Plenty of runners had met their dooms by getting too interested, fighting back no matter who they were fighting against. This run was the same way. There was the guy who had gotten the “loot” for them. The guy who had done all the “research” ahead of time, and plenty of others besides. Probably even a guy who would clean up after it was all over, somebody killing time right now just like he was. What they were handling was just a piece of a piece, the slightest fragment of what the run really encompassed. What that was, they would never know. 

And above it all, there was somebody seeking to profit from all this. 

The two of them might just be a diversion—or bait. You knew that when you took the job. Of course, whether you did what you were told after you took it was another matter. Johnsons who used runners up and threw them out purely for their own profit didn’t live long. 

We’re small, we know that , the message was. But don’t you dare spit on us. You got that? 

That was his own position on the way he lived, or so he imagined. 

I guess that guy, at least, isn’t the type to just trick you and then pretend to apologize later. 

He saw the face of his friend the fixer in his mind’s eye. He might bring dangerous runs, but he wouldn’t betray the rogue. Here he was again, on a job whose johnson he knew nothing about, but he could at least rest assured that the person checked out. He had that much faith in his fixer. Of course he did. They were a team. 

The girl’s voice broke into his reverie. “…All right, all done.” 

“Mm, good,” he said with a nod. “Let’s get out of—” 

He pulled the trigger on the crossbow at the same instant the door came bursting open. 

If the arrows flew like rain, they went bouncing away as if off an umbrella. “Deflect Missile?!” the mage shouted. 

“ Gygax! ” the rogue cursed. “This is no tunnel!” He groaned as he ejected the empty cartridge and groped about on his belt for a replacement. The forbidden Magic Eye buried in his eyeball perceived a towering figure in the darkness. 

A troll! 

Ever since the Demon Lord’s army had been broken, remnants of the forces of Chaos had begun to proliferate here in the world of shadows. Dark elves, wights, vampires, none of them remotely welcome. But the least welcome of all was the massive creature now charging toward him, shrugging off crossbow bolts like it didn’t even feel them. And the Deflect Missile charm around his neck didn’t make him any better…! 

“TOOOOORREOORRRRRR!!!!” 

But even here, the rogue was not alone. 

“ Umbra…lupus…libero! Be free, dark wolf!” The incantation, jingling like a bell, unbound the beast and went flying from the mage’s shadow, on the attack. The fangs, woven from magic, tore into the monster, rending flesh. The rogue didn’t miss his moment. 

“Let’s get out of here!” 

“Right!” 

No hesitation. He was just a touch gratified by the trust she showed in him as she rushed over and grabbed on to him. He hefted her willowy body and jumped out the window into the night. 

He felt himself floating. Then falling. He heard her muffled shout. He wished for his grappling hook. A necessary expense. He could invoice for it later. 

Thump. The impact ran through his whole body, absorbed by his magically augmented limbs. Another little forbidden enhancement. Sacrificing some of his Essence had been worth it. 

He heard her voice in his ear. “…! I’m sorry; they got me!” 

“It’s all right!” Even as he answered, he kicked off the ground into a run. Something huge came crashing down where he had been an instant before. 

“OOOOOLE!!!!” The troll, which had succeeded in tearing apart their shadow-beast, came after them, howling. No wonder nobody liked these guys. 

But, again, the rogue was still not alone. A fact for which he was very, very thankful. 

“C’mon, kid, pick up the pace!” 

“Your timing couldn’t be better!” 

A hansom cab—two wheels, one horse—clattered up to the mansion’s front gate. Another team member of his was in the driver’s seat. “Bit of trouble?” he asked. 

“A runner if we’re lucky, a runner if we’re not. Take her for me.” 

“Eek!” His buddy gave a girlish scream (she was a girl, after all) as he flung her into the carriage. Then, the moment the young rogue had a hand on the driver’s bench, the carriage set off at top speed. 

There were, of course, two other people in the passenger compartment—or more precisely, one person and one animal. 

“……There, good, got it. I blew off the Deflect Missile amulet.” 

“And I’ve got the guards on a wild-goose chase with an illusion! We should have plenty of time!” 

One was a cleric girl, a follower of the God of Knowledge, “jacked in” via meditation, and the other was another mage’s familiar. 

He didn’t know why a servant of the gods would sink to being a rogue. When asked, the cleric always just laughed and said, “Lest darkness fall.” Maybe that was really it, then. He also didn’t know why the other mage, unlike his buddy, only showed their familiar. What he knew was that whether or not he could see the spell caster, he could count on the spells that were mediated through the familiar. So none of them had a reason not to trust her (they thought it was a her). 

Hell, you didn’t need a fancy title to be part of a team. Cleric or mage or whatever. It was a good party, the rogue was convinced. 

“Time to fly!” the driver shouted. “ Go now, kelpie, it’s time to get busy! Earth to river and sea to sky, turn all a-tizzy! ” When he called out to the sprites, the kelpie pulling the carriage neighed and picked up speed. It was heading straight for one of the canals that crisscrossed this place, the water town. They were the best escape routes of all. 

“Just gotta do my job, then…” 

The fixer did the investigation and set up the run. The cleric of the God of Knowledge, and the mage with her familiar, provided support. The sprite-user driver got them in and, more importantly, out. 

Up at the front, that left his buddy—and him, just a rogue. There were plenty of others if they needed a new one. He remembered his fixer friend laughing as he said, “Only thing that’ll be any different is the personality.” The rogue was fine with that. The highest praise was to stand out from the rest of the pile for competence. Right? 

Off in the darkness, his forbidden Magic Eye could see the troll charging after them, the breath coming hot from his nostrils. The rogue kept one hand on the driver’s bench, taking aim with his crossbow with the other. Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap. With a series of high-pitched twangs, the crossbow sent a hail of arrows at the monster. 

It was still a troll. It wasn’t going to die from a few pinpricks. There was that huge, leering face. 

“See you in hell.” 

But pinpricks weren’t all he had: In his left hand, he was already holding the simple cylinder he had produced from his belt, already pulling the trigger. From beyond the flash of flintlock and the white puff of gunpowder, there was a splatter of blood. The massive body, now missing its head, clawed at the air like a drowning creature, then fell backward, out of sight. 

There, perfect. No witnesses. The rogue grinned to himself, replaced the crossbow at his belt, and breathed a big sigh. Guys who judged their own performance based on how many enemies they had brought down and how much ammo they had used didn’t understand. His one-use cylinder was a trump card that could punch through armor from close distance, and he had been right to use it. 

Clearing the highest hurdles brings the highest reward. 

He thought of the arrows he’d used and the rope he’d left behind in much the same way. Considering they had saved his life, they were cheap at the price. And all things did have a price. That was how the world worked. He hoped he could convince the others to split the reward only after expenses had been deducted, but… 

That’s fixer work, trying to pry more money out of people after things have already started. 

There was a gentle tapping sound on the carriage. He looked back to see the mage girl smiling through the glass behind the driver’s bench. 

The rogue smiled, too. She had her fist pressed to the window, and he pressed his to the other side. 

“Nice work.” 

“You too.” 

Their voices were carried away by splashes of water as they all ran through the shadows of the capital. 

For these nameless shadows, it was just another night, just another run.