Friday, 19 October 2018
Prolog
O adventurer,
what tragedy that you should die.
Scant space there is on a tombstone.
O adventurer, your name I do not know,
but though you have not left it to us,
O adventurer, if you call me friend—
O my friend,
what tragedy that you should die.
Chapter 01
“It went that way!”
A voice, clear
as a bell,
could be heard
even over the
blizzard that
engulfed the battlefield.
It came from
a young woman
with sparkling blue
eyes and beautiful,
honey-colored waves of hair tied in two pigtails. She
was an adventurer, but
the
nobility she displayed
would not have
been out of
place at some
lavish
party.
Her face, which she might have covered in makeup at
some point in her
life, now ran
with anxious sweat
despite the surrounding
snow. A cuirass
protected her generous chest, while leather armor
cradled a waist so slim she
didn’t need a corset.
A silver sword
glinted in her
hand, a valuable
family heirloom. It was
made of aluminum, light and sharp, forged by a
lightning-hammer against a
red gem.
Thrust,
thrust, block. She
would repeat the
motions she’d learned,
again
and again, and the enemy would have no hope of getting
near her.
Beside her, a female warrior dove into the fray,
speaking roughly but with
an undercurrent of affection.
“I know! Just make sure you don’t slip and fall on the
ice!”
“Gosh! I’m not that much of a klutz!”
That remained to be seen. The female warrior wore only
thin armor, and
pointed ears peeked out from beneath hair the color of
leaves in autumn.
The half-elf brandished her thin sword; it flashed as
she moved with steps
like a dancer.
The other girl,
Noble Fencer, had
chased off one
enemy, and
she wouldn’t miss the opening the foe’s fear afforded
them.
“ORARARARAG?!”
“GAROARARA?!”
First one, then
two, of the
ugly little creatures
died, dirty blood
spewing
from their chests, viscera exposed to the open air.
In the whole world, there was probably not a single
person who wouldn’t
recognize
these monsters. Non-Prayers
with dark green
skin, crooked teeth,
and the intelligence of cruel children. The weakest
monster to walk the land:
goblins.
They were visible
here and there
through the blizzard,
growling or
dribbling
drool. They wore
nothing but animal
pelts over their
bare skin; it
wasn’t clear whether this was because the cold didn’t
bother them or because
they didn’t know
any better way
to warm themselves.
For weapons they
carried
only stone axes
or clubs, along
with some crude
spears made from
shafts of bone.
Yet even so, they made no move to run from the
adventurers. The goblins
felt nothing but hostility, hatred, and lust for them.
“They’re so pathetic,
it’s almost funny,”
Noble Fencer said
with a cute
little snort.
“Heh-heh! Nice work, girls!”
A voice came
from somewhere, sounding
easy, unperturbed by the
whipping snow.
The bright, almost innocent tone of it drew a frown
from the half-elf.
“We’re not here to chat! Get to work!”
“Sure thing.”
With no sign
or sound for
warning, a dagger
appeared, sinking into
the
space between a goblin’s ribs.
A backstab, straight through to the heart. The
creature’s eyes went wide,
and it dropped dead.
The corpse shifted from a little kick from behind; it
fell forward, revealing
a
diminutive rhea scout.
He braced himself
against the body
and pulled out
the dagger he had buried in it.
But however stupid
goblins may be,
even they wouldn’t
overlook an
opportunity like that.
“Hrgh?!”
“GORBBB!!”
“GROOOB!!”
The
monsters closed in,
relying on their
numbers for strength,
waving
their clubs. Giving a great yell, the rhea scout jumped
backward.
“Don’t be getting
distracted on the battlefield,
now!” A small but sturdy
figure pushed past the scout to protect him. The dwarf
wore a monk’s habit
and had the look of a boulder. His weapon of choice was
a war hammer. The
block of metal
smashed mercilessly into
a goblin’s skull,
sending brains
flying everywhere, releasing the creature’s nasty
little soul to the afterlife.
“Well, I’m very sorry, Lord Monk!”
“Think
nothing of it,”
the dwarf replied
evenly, brushing an
eyeball off
his hammer. “Hey,
spell casters. We’ve
still got one
or two in
the distance
there.”
“Of course. I can see them perfectly well.”
The response came from a middle-aged wizard dressed in
the plainest of
pure white robes. The human had an incongruous smile on
his face while he
stroked his own
forehead as if
to imply his
abundant wisdom. A hand
emerged from his robe, quickly forming a sign, while he
brandished his staff
with an expert gesture.
“My dear noble girl, perhaps you could lend me a hand?”
“You’ve got it!”
Noble Fencer puffed
out her chest
and nodded. On her
lovely
finger was a
ring that shone
with a jewel,
and she and
the wizard
spoke words of true power together.
“Sagitta…quelta…raedius! Strike home, arrow!”
“Tonitrus…oriens…iacta!
Rise and fall, thunder!”
The words overwhelmed the very logic of the world, and
the twin spells
assaulted
the goblins: the
wizard’s Magic Missile
sent several supernatural
arrows
flying, while Noble
Fencer’s Lightning spell
thundered down on
them, turning snow to steam.
Afterward, the only goblins that remained were filled
with holes or fried
to a crisp.
The ground had
been laid bare
by the attack,
but the snow
continued
to come down
without mercy. It
would only be
a matter of
time
before the earth was covered again.
“Well, I guess
that’s it,” the
half-elf warrior said,
shaking the blood
off
her blade and sheathing it.
Rhea Scout whistled. “Aren’t you in a good mood.”
“Can’t say I’m
very happy about
you letting your
guard down,” Dwarf
Monk said reproachfully, but the wizard broke in, “Oh,
spells cure all ills. It
turned out all right in the end.”
The party, having successfully survived a random
encounter with a group
of goblins, once again patted themselves on the back
for their battle prowess.
They had cooperated well, and no one had been hurt.
True, they had resorted
to some spells, but still, a flawless victory.
The adventurers’ eyes burned with a passion that
resembled both hope and
ambition at once. Behind them was the northern village
and all its defenseless
residents,
who lived under
the threat of
monsters. Ahead of
them was the
mountain,
dangerous and severe
but majestically white
and snowcapped
nonetheless.
Somewhere on its
slopes was the
entrance to an
underground
cave.
It didn’t matter if they had to fight goblins. In fact,
all the more reason to
go. If goblin slaying wasn’t adventuring, what was?
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Noble Fencer said boldly, her
golden hair whipping
in the wind. She turned to her fellows and announced,
“I have a plan!”
Chapter 02
Dear Goblin Slayer,
I hope this letter finds you well. The season of snow
sprites has come, and the cold with
it. An adventurer’s
health is his
most important resource
at this time
of the year.
Please
take care not to get sick.
As for me, I’m surprised but happy to say that after
our last encounter, I have had no
dreams of goblins, and in fact, things have been quite
peaceful. It’s all thanks to you and
your friends. I send you my heartfelt gratitude. I
should like to have written sooner and am
embarrassed that I cannot even plead busyness to excuse
the belatedness of this letter.
Nor do I feel it’s quite appropriate for me to
immediately trouble you again—so I must
ask your forgiveness, for that is exactly what I intend
to do. It so happens that there is a
quest I would like to ask you to take on.
It’s a common enough story: a certain young noblewoman
fled her parents’ house to
become an adventurer. She took on a quest, after which
all communication from her ceased
—a sad, but also not uncommon, outcome. That one of her
parents visited the Guild to offer
a quest to find the girl isn’t special, either.
The one thing
I wish to
note is that
the quest the
girl had undertaken
was a goblin-
slaying one.
I’m sure you see where this is going.
The search quest
her parents filed
specifies that “the
most reliable, high-ranked
adventurers”
should apply. But
of course, hardly
anyone in the
advanced ranks takes
on
goblin-slaying quests. When the Guild consulted me on
the matter, I could think of no one
besides you.
Knowing
you, I’m sure
you’re quite busy
(I heard about
what went on
at the harvest
festival),
but if you
should have a
few spare moments,
I would ask
that you use
them to
extend help to an unfortunate young woman.
I pray for your good health and safety.
Yours,
“It’s from Sword
Maiden. She says
she’s praying for
you… Human letters
are so passionate.”
An elf’s cheerful
voice sounded brightly
on the winter
road.
The road stretched on and on across the windswept
plain. The only things
that could be seen were dead trees and snow-covered
shrubs all the way out
to the horizon. The sky had been painted a dull gray by
great, broad strokes
of cloud; there was nothing of interest to look at
anywhere.
In this drab world, the elf’s lively, happy voice stood
out. Her thin form
was cloaked in hunter’s garb. A bow was slung across
her back, and her long
ears twitched playfully.
High Elf Archer’s
catlike curiosity was
by no means
limited to
adventures.
She gave the
letter in her
hand a jaunty
fold, gripped it
in her
long fingers, and passed it back behind her.
“I haven’t seen many letters. Are they all like this?”
she asked.
“Hmm…”
The human girl she passed the letter to gave an
ambiguous smile, looking
a bit shy. Even as she took the piece of paper, she
seemed hesitant to read it.
Her willowy body
was covered in
mail, over which
hung clerical
garments, and in her hand, she held a sounding staff:
she was a priestess. That
was it—this missive had the whiff of a love letter. It
would be wrong to say
she didn’t wonder about it, but she also didn’t quite
feel comfortable reading
someone else’s mail. If someone did it to her, she
would find it very difficult
to come back from.
“But… But it has gotten very cold, hasn’t it?”
So instead, she
resolved to change
the subject of the conversation,
by
force if necessary.
The farther north they got, the heavier the clouds in
the sky became, until
sunlight
couldn’t penetrate them.
The wind was
growing bitter, and
sometimes it brought something white with it.
It was winter. That was made obvious enough by the snow
that had started
to pile up along the road.
“I’m chilly,” Priestess said. “Maybe it’s my own fault.
Mail isn’t going to
help me keep warm…”
“This is why
metal products are
no good!” High
Elf Archer gave a
triumphant
chuckle and stuck
out her little
chest, her ears
bobbing up and
down proudly. It was true: her hunter’s cloak had
nothing metal on it.
“Pipe
down,” a dwarf
spell caster said.
“Frankly, I’m amazed
you’re
comfortable in clothing so thin.”
“What’s that I hear? Are elves tougher than you
thought?”
“Tough and slow
to catch colds
are different things,
lassie,” the dwarf
said, stroking his beard, provoking an angry “What?!”
from the red-faced elf.
Their
friendly argument was
just as boisterous
as ever. Priestess
smiled.
“Some things never change!”
“Mm,” a massive
lizardman nodded from
beside her. “I
envy them the
energy to make such a commotion.” The blood of his
ancestors, the fearsome
nagas,
flowed in his
veins—and he was
from the southern
tribe. Lizard
Priest’s scaly body shivered in the freezing cold of
the snow.
Priestess found this hard to watch and looked up at him
with worry. “Are
you okay?”
“It’s a question
of my ancestors,
who were equally
vulnerable to cold.
I
could be facing extinction.” Lizard Priest rolled his
huge eyes and his tongue
flicked out of
his mouth. He
continued in a
joking tone, “Milord
Goblin
Slayer
seems calm enough.
You’ve had a
good deal of
experience of this,
I
suppose.”
“…No.”
Lizard
Priest had spoken
to a human
warrior who led
the column. He
wore grimy leather
armor and a
cheap-looking steel helmet.
A sword of a
strange length was at his hip, and a small, round
shield was tied to his arm.
Even a novice adventurer would probably have had better
equipment.
Goblin Slayer: that was what people called this
adventurer, a man of the
third rank, Silver.
The only thing
that was different
from usual was
the crudely wrought
arrows he held in each hand.
“I first learned
my trade on
a snowy mountain.”
He worked on the
arrowheads as he walked, not looking back at his
companions.
“Oh-ho,”
Lizard Priest said
admiringly. “Not a kind of
practice I could
imitate.” His tail swished.
Goblin Slayer didn’t slacken his pace as he said, “I
wouldn’t want to do it
again.”
As ever, there
was no hesitation
in his stride;
he walked boldly,
with an
almost nonchalant violence.
“Um, Goblin Slayer,
sir!” Priestess came
rushing up to
him with little
steps like a small bird, clutching her staff in both
hands. “Thank you, um, for
this.”
Apologizing for making
him interrupt his
work, she passed
the letter
back to him.
It was a
good opportunity, since
High Elf Archer
and Dwarf
Shaman were still occupied with arguing.
“You understand the gist of the quest?” He held the
arrows in one hand,
blithely
taking the letter
with the other
and folding it
up. Priestess caught
a
brief glimpse inside his item pouch as he put the
letter away. As usual, it was
stuffed with all manner of seemingly random things. But
for him, there was
an order to it, an organization, and he no doubt
considered everything in there
to be necessary.
Maybe I should try to organize my items a little more
carefully, too…
Priestess made a mental note to ask him about it and
nodded. “Um… We
need to rescue the woman, right? From the goblins.”
“That’s
right.” Goblin Slayer
nodded. “In other
words, it’s a
goblin-
slaying quest.”
And that, more
or less, was
all there was
to it. Shortly
after the harvest
festival in the frontier town, a letter had arrived
from the water town. It was
from the archbishop of the Supreme God there—known as
Sword Maiden—
and just as before, it addressed Goblin Slayer by name.
This
eccentric adventurer would
certainly not turn
down any work
involving goblins. And so Priestess, who had brought
word to them from the
temple,
along with High
Elf Archer, Dwarf
Shaman, and Lizard
Priest,
headed north with Goblin Slayer.
It was early
afternoon, and they
would soon arrive
at the little
village at
the foot of the snowy mountain.
“I hope the girl’s all right…”
“Yeah. I hate
to think about
it…” High Elf
Archer, apparently having
tired of arguing, waved her hand as if to shoo away the
awful idea. Her tone
was light, but
her drooping ears
spoke for the
sadness she felt.
“Honestly, I
doubt any goblin hostage is safe.”
“Well… Uh…”
Priestess and High Elf Archer gave each other stiff
smiles, and it was clear
what they were remembering.
“If she’s alive, we’ll rescue her. If she’s dead, we’ll
bring back part of the
corpse, or her personal effects.”
Such horrors, of course, were by no means the special
province of goblins.
Be it goblins or be it a dragon, no adventurer was safe
in the clutches of any
monster. So Goblin
Slayer’s response was
perfectly natural. He
spoke in a
quiet,
detached—almost
mechanical—voice.
“Regardless, we’ll kill
the
goblins. That is the quest.”
“…There’s
got to be
a nicer way
to say all
that,” High Elf
Archer said
with understandable annoyance, but Goblin Slayer didn’t
appear to notice.
“What can we do?” Priestess said with a little shrug
and a helpless smile.
Lizard Priest broke in with fortuitous timing, not that
he was necessarily
trying to make things easier on the girls.
“I wonder what
reason goblins would
have for attacking
a village in the
middle of winter.”
His huge body
shivered, almost theatrically,
as if to
emphasize the cold. “Would it not be more pleasant for
them to stay quietly
in their caves?”
“Well, Scaly, it’s just like with bears, isn’t it?”
Dwarf Shaman answered,
stroking
his white beard.
He unstoppered the
flask at his
hip, taking a swig
and then holding it out to Lizard Priest. “Here. Warm
up your insides a bit.”
“Ah! You have my gratitude.” The priest opened his huge
jaws and took a
gulp, then replaced the stopper and handed the flask
back to Dwarf Shaman.
The dwarf gave the container a shake, listening to the
slosh to judge how
much was left, then put it back at his hip. “Y’need
plenty of food and drink
and sweets stored up to make it through the winter.”
“Oh? Then it
seems like autumn
would be a
better time to
attack a
village.” High Elf Archer spun her finger in a circle
in the air and, with all the
confidence
of the ranger
she was, said,
“That’s what bears
and other
hibernating animals do.”
“But even bears sneak out once in a while in the
winter,” Dwarf Shaman
said. “What about that?”
“Sometimes they don’t have a choice, like if they can’t
find a good cave
to sleep in, or if the harvest was poor in the fall.”
No one knew more than elves when it came to hunting and
trapping. So
much so that even the argumentative dwarf could only
mutter, “I suppose that
makes sense,” and nod.
The conversation caused Priestess to put a finger to
her lips thoughtfully
and mutter, “Hmm.” She felt like she had all the pieces
in her head. Now she
only had to put them together…
“Oh!” she exclaimed when the insight struck her.
“What’s up?” High Elf Archer asked.
“Maybe,” Priestess answered, “it’s exactly because the
harvest festival is
just over.”
Yes, that has to be it.
Even as she spoke, she grew more and more sure.
“The harvest is over,” she went on, “so the storehouses
in the villages and
towns are full. And the goblins—”
“—want it all for themselves,” Lizard Priest said,
finishing her thought.
“Right,” Priestess said with a small nod.
“I see. So even goblins are capable of the occasional
logical decision.”
“More likely they’re just trying to cause the most
possible trouble,” Dwarf
Shaman said, tugging at his beard.
“No,”
Goblin Slayer said,
shaking his head.
“Goblins are stupid,
but
they’re not fools.”
“You sound pretty sure about that,” High Elf Archer said.
“I am,” Goblin Slayer said, nodding this time. “Goblins
think of nothing
but stealing, but they do apply their intelligence to
their theft.”
He took a
close look at
the arrows he
had been working
with, then put
them into a
quiver at his
hip. He appeared
satisfied with the
work he had
done as they walked. “I’ve experienced it.”
“I see…,” Priestess said with some admiration.
High Elf Archer threw in her own hmm, but it wasn’t his words she was
interested in. What had drawn her attention were the
bow and arrows—which
she normally considered her own specialty.
“…So, Orcbolg, what were you doing with those arrows?”
“Preparing them.”
“Oh, really?” She reached out with a motion so smooth
it could barely be
sensed and took one of the arrows out of the quiver.
“Be careful.” That Goblin Slayer stopped with a warning
and didn’t scold
the elf showed
he was used
to her curiosity.
He did, however,
sound
somewhat annoyed.
High Elf Archer
sniffed in acknowledgment and
inspected the arrow.
It
was a perfectly normal cheap bolt. The quality was not
remotely comparable
to an elvish arrow. The head had a murky sparkle in the
winter sun. High Elf
Archer tapped it lightly with her finger.
“Doesn’t seem like it’s poisoned or anything…”
“Not today.”
“Aw, be nice!” The elf frowned at the brusque words but
made a sound of
interest as she
turned the arrow
around. “The arrowhead
isn’t fastened
securely. It’s gonna fall off, you know.”
And indeed, it
was just as
High Elf Archer
said. Perhaps because
of
Goblin
Slayer’s fiddling with
it, the tip
of the cheap
arrow was no
longer
fixed in place. Even if he managed to hit his target,
the arrowhead might well
break off, and it would almost certainly come down at
the wrong angle.
“Orcbolg,
you are hopeless.”
High Elf Archer
gave a broad
shrug and a
shake of her head, adding, “Sheesh,” for effect.
She decided to
ignore the dwarf
behind her, who
said, “You’re showing
your age.”
“Here, give me that quiver. I’ll fix them for you.”
She held out her hand, but Goblin Slayer just looked at
it. Then he said,
“No,” and shook his head. “They’re fine.”
High Elf Archer stared at him blankly. “How’s that?”
“Because we don’t yet know where the goblins are
sleeping this time.”
“And that’s connected to these arrows how?”
It makes no sense!
When there was something High Elf Archer didn’t agree
with, she could
be awfully prickly about it.
They had known each other for nearly a year now. Goblin
Slayer sighed.
“When the arrow hits, the shaft breaks off, leaving
only the head.”
“So?”
“The head will
be poisonous.” He
held out his
hand. High Elf
Archer
grunted and politely
returned the arrow.
Goblin Slayer put
it gently back
in
the quiver. “So long as they don’t take it out, but
simply go back to their hole,
their flesh will begin to rot, and the sickness will
spread.”
And goblins had no knowledge of medicine—at least for
now.
A cramped, dirty
nest. Wounds that
wouldn’t heal. Rot.
A wasting
disease. That meant…
“It probably won’t kill them all, but it will be a
major blow.”
“As usual, Orcbolg,
your plan makes
no sense to
me,” High Elf
Archer
muttered, her face drawn. Beside her, Priestess looked
up to the heavens as if
in distress.
Gods. O gods.
He doesn’t mean
ill…well, except to
goblins. But please,
forgive him.
It was much too late for her to be shocked at anything
he said or did, but
still, she felt compelled to offer the occasional
prayer.
Goblin
Slayer, moving at
a quick clip,
looked at her.
“Are you that
surprised?”
“…Er, well, uh…” Priestess couldn’t quite decide where
to look. “I mean,
this being you, Goblin Slayer, sir…”
“Is that so?” he said quietly, evoking a laugh from
Lizard Priest.
“Do not let it bother you. It is certainly most like
milord Goblin Slayer.”
“True, it’s not like we had any illusions about how
Beard-cutter thinks.”
Dwarf Shaman took the flask from his hip and took a
swig of wine to ward
off the cold. Fire wine could practically burn; it was
enough to put the smell
of alcohol in the air.
High Elf Archer
choked quietly, pinching
her nose with
one hand and
waving away the
smell with the
other. Dwarf Shaman
wiped some droplets
from his beard.
“We’ve still got no answer to our original concern,” he
said.
“Original concern?” Goblin Slayer asked. “Which one is
that?”
“There’s no way the girl is unharmed.”
“You mean the chances that the kidnapped girl is still
alive.”
“Right.” He looked
at Goblin Slayer
and wiped more
vigorously at his
beard. “They’re apt to eat her, aren’t they? Otherwise
they only have another
mouth to feed. They’ve no reason to let her live
through the winter.”
“Winter is long,” Goblin Slayer said, nodding. He spoke
coldly. “They’ll
want something to pass the time.”
Not much later,
they noticed a
single column of
smoke rising from
the
village at the base of the mountain.
§
“Orcbolg…!”
High Elf Archer was the first to speak, her ears
twitching.
Down the road, not far away, some smoke was rising.
Perhaps it was from
a cook fire? No.
“Goblins?”
“A village. Fire. Smoke. The smell of burning. Noise,
screams… It seems
likely!”
“So it’s goblins.”
Goblin Slayer nodded in response, and without a
moment’s hesitation he
took the little bow off his back. Moving quickly now,
he tugged on the string
with a practiced hand, then nocked an arrow and drew.
No one had
to give the
order: the entire
party followed after
him
immediately.
The goblins attacking
the village were
hell-bent on thievery;
they hadn’t even posted any sentries and didn’t yet
know of the approaching
adventurers.
How would the party punish the goblins for foolishly
giving them such an
advantage?
“Goblin
Slayer, sir,” Priestess
said seriously, despite
her hard breathing
and a face drawn with nervousness, “should I prepare my
miracles…?”
“Do it.”
“Right!”
Priestess had been an adventurer for a year already.
True, all she had done
was slay goblins, but the density of her adventures was
far greater than most
novices.
That was why
she didn’t have
to ask which
miracle to prepare
but
only whether she ought to get ready. She had, after
all, known Goblin Slayer
longer than any of the other party members.
“O Earth Mother,
abounding in mercy,
by the power
of the land
grant
safety to we who are weak.”
She held her
sounding staff to her chest
and prayed imploringly
to her
goddess. It was an activity intense enough to shave
away part of her soul. A
true miracle, one which allowed her consciousness to
touch that of the gods
in heaven.
A faint but pure light came down from the sky,
embracing Goblin Slayer
and Lizard Priest.
This was the miracle Protection,
which had saved Goblin
Slayer and the others in more than one moment of
crisis.
Lizard
Priest ran, kicking
off the ground,
narrowing his eyes
as the
phosphorescence surrounded him.
“Hmm! Your Earth
Mother is indeed
capable of miracles.
If she were a
naga, perhaps I would convert to her worship. Now,
then…”
He had already finished his prayer to his terrible
forebears, the nagas, and
a fang polished like a blade was in his hand. Lizard
Priest had agility enough
to charge the foe at any moment. Now he looked
suspiciously at the village
and called out, “Milord Goblin Slayer, shall we attack
the goblins or protect
the villagers?”
He answered calmly, “Both, of course.”
High Elf Archer let out an admiring exhalation. She
looked every inch the
tracker as she ran along, bow in hand.
Even as he
assessed the situation
himself, Goblin Slayer
said to Lizard
Priest, “How does it look to you?”
“…Not very good, I fear.” The lizard was a veteran
warrior priest, and his
judgment carried the ring of authority. “I don’t hear
the clanging of swords.
That means the battle is over; they’re focused on
stealing now.”
“If they think
they’ve won, that
will make them
vulnerable. We don’t
know their strength, but…”
But that was normal for this party. Goblin Slayer
didn’t hesitate.
“We go in from the front.”
“Dragontooth Warriors?”
“No. I’ll explain
why later.” Then
Goblin Slayer picked
up his pace.
Priestess had her hands full trying to keep up, while
Dwarf Shaman stuck out
his chin, running along as fast as he could.
Goblin Slayer was not one to deceive. If he said he
would explain, then he
would. That was
why none of
the party members
objected. Anyway, there
wasn’t time to
argue. Their party
didn’t have a
leader as such,
but when it
came to fighting goblins, who else were they going to
follow?
“Don’t use potions. But don’t hold back with your
spells.”
“You’ve got it!” The answer came from their spell
caster, Dwarf Shaman.
“I s’pose it’s up to me which spells I use?” As he
dashed along as fast as his
little legs would carry him, the dwarf was already
reaching into his bag and
rifling through his catalysts.
Even if there
were a great
many enemies, the
chances of one
who could
use magic were slim—and not just because they were
dealing with goblins. It
was simply the
way of the
world. The fact
that three of
their five party
members were spell casters was a sign of how blessed
they were.
“Yes, I’ll leave it to you.” Goblin Slayer nodded, then
glanced at High Elf
Archer. “Find high ground and see what’s going on.
You’ll be our support.”
“Sounds good.” She gave a smile of satisfaction like a
happy cat. With an
elegant motion, she prepared her huge bow and set an
arrow.
Everything was ready. Keeping his eyes forward as they
advanced, Goblin
Slayer said, “First, one.”
An arrow flew soundlessly through the air, burying
itself in the base of the
skull of a goblin who stood lolling at the entrance to
the village.
“ORAAG?!”
The brain-dead goblin pitched forward, but it wasn’t
clear whether any of
his companions noticed.
“N-nooo!! Help—help me!! Sis! Big siiiiis!!”
For at that moment, they were busy dragging a girl out
of a barrel where
she’d been hiding. She screamed and kicked, but they
had her by the hair; the
goblins didn’t seem to have grasped the situation yet.
At the same instant that the first goblin fell dead,
bud-tipped arrows began
to fall like rain, sprouting from eyes and necks.
“Hey, Orcbolg! No fair starting early!” High Elf
Archer, her lips pursed,
offered
almost as many
complaints as she
did arrows. Once
she had shot
down the goblins, she jumped, from barrel, to pillar,
to roof. It was a feat that
could only have
been possible for
an elf, born
and raised in
the trees, an
incredible display of acrobatics.
“What? Huh…?” The village girl stared in disbelief.
As Goblin Slayer ran up, he said briefly, “We’re
adventurers.”
The girl was still young—she could hardly have been
older than ten. Her
clothes were plain but made of fur; she had clearly
been well cared for. When
she saw the silver tag that hung around Goblin Slayer’s
neck, her eyes welled
up with tears.
Silver. That meant
an adventurer of the third
rank. An adventurer’s rank
represented his abilities, as well as how much social
good he had done. It was
the most important form of identification on the
frontier.
Goblin Slayer wasn’t distracted for a second; he looked
around, speaking
quickly. “Where are the goblins? How many are there?
What happened to the
other villagers?”
“Er, um, I—that is, I don’t… I don’t know…” Terror and
regret drained
the color from the girl’s face, and she shook her head.
“But—everyone—they
all assembled in the village square… My older sister,
she said… She said to
hide…”
“I don’t like
it,” Goblin Slayer
spat, readying a
new arrow from
his
quiver. “I don’t like any of it.”
His whisper contained
a wealth of
emotions. Priestess gave
him a
searching
glance, but it
didn’t stop her
from kneeling in
front of the
young
girl.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ll help your sister,
I’m sure of it.”
“Really?”
“Really!”
Priestess pounded herself
on her little
chest and gave
a smile
like a blooming
flower. She patted
the shivering girl
gently on the
head,
looking
into her eyes
as she showed
her the symbol
of the Earth
Mother.
“See? I serve the goddess. And—”
Yes, and.
Priestess shook her head. The girl followed her gaze as
she looked up. The
grimy armor. The cheap-looking helmet. A human warrior.
“And Goblin Slayer would never lose to a goblin.”
Goblin
Slayer glanced at
the girl and
Priestess, then glowered
at the
village, where the sounds of thieving could be heard.
“The enemy still hasn’t noticed us. Let’s do it.”
“Wait—there
is danger.” Lizard
Priest somberly offered
his view of the
situation.
“Goblins or not,
the enemy seems
to be organized.
We must not
presume too much.”
“Their
willingness to attack
in broad daylight
suggests there may be
advanced types of goblins with them,” Goblin Slayer
said.
So perhaps they should not let any information get back
to the nest.
After a moment, Goblin Slayer took the arrows, meant to
kill slowly, and
returned them to his back. In exchange, he drew the familiar
sword with its
strange length.
“I don’t want to risk any of them escaping, but it will
be difficult to keep
them bottled up in the square.”
“In that case,
let me handle
the town square—take
’em all out
with
magic.” Dwarf Shaman pounded his belly like a drum.
“Hmm,” Goblin Slayer murmured, rolling the goblin
corpse onto its back
with his foot.
A crude pelt.
For a weapon,
a hatchet it
must have stolen
from
somewhere. Its color was good; it showed no sign of
starving.
“It depends on the numbers.” Goblin Slayer grabbed the
hatchet from the
goblin’s
hand, fixing it
at his hip.
He looked up
and saw High
Elf Archer
waving from the rooftops. Her long ears were twitching;
she must have been
trying to read the situation by the sound.
“Five or six
of them in
the square!” she
called out in
a clear, carrying
voice, and Goblin Slayer nodded.
“How many are
there in the
village as a
whole? Even just
that you can
see.”
“There are lots
of shadows, so
it’s hard to
count. But I’d
say not more
than twenty.”
“So this is just an advance unit,” Goblin Slayer said
and quickly began to
formulate a strategy.
Assume there were fewer than twenty goblins, including
the three they’d
killed
earlier. There were
six in the
square. That meant
fewer than fourteen
around the perimeter, engaged in looting. It was only a
guess, but it probably
wasn’t far off.
In the face
of large enemy
numbers, splitting your
own force was the
stupidest thing you could do, but the situation was
what it was.
“We split up. Square and perimeter.”
“In that case, I shall head to the square with master
spell caster,” Lizard
Priest offered.
“All right.” Goblin Slayer nodded.
High Elf Archer,
who had heard
the conversation from
her place on the
rooftop, spoke without taking her eyes or ears off the
village. “I guess I’ll run
support for you, dwarf!”
“Sounds good, Long-Ears!” Dwarf Shaman took a swig from
his flask and
wiped his mouth on his gauntlet, then he pounded Lizard
Priest’s belly like a
drum. “Right then, Scaly! Shall we go?”
As he left, Lizard Priest thumped Goblin Slayer on the
shoulder with one
powerful hand. “I wish you success in battle, milord
Goblin Slayer.”
“……”
Goblin
Slayer said nothing
but finally nodded
and began to
move. His
stride was nonchalant, but his footsteps made no sound.
He was approaching
the side of the house, where Priestess was with the
little girl they had saved.
“…Is the girl all right?”
“Yes. I think
she’s a little
less frightened now…”
Priestess gave an
optimistic smile. Across from her, the girl was curled
up on the ground, fast
asleep.
Adventurers had come,
and she had
told them about
her sister—
perhaps she needed a break from consciousness after all
that.
“What should we do…?”
“We have no more time to worry about her.”
“Oh…” But before
she could say
anything more, a
rough, gloved hand
picked the girl up. Goblin Slayer deposited her in the
nearby barrel. Then he
pulled a blanket from his bag and laid it over her. She
wasn’t exactly safe, but
this was the spot her older sister had chosen. Perhaps
it would help her relax.
Where were the Earth Mother and the Supreme God that
they would not
answer the prayers of a little girl?
“…This will have to do,” Goblin Slayer muttered.
“Right,” Priestess said with a little nod. Her right
hand held her sounding
staff, but the left wandered through the air, until she
placed it hesitatingly on
Goblin Slayer’s back. “I’m sure…it’s fine.”
“…Yes.”
Goblin Slayer nodded.
Then he strengthened
his grip on his
sword,
raised his shield,
and looked ahead.
The village was
burning, and
there were goblins to slay. “Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir!” Priestess answered without hesitation while
gripping her staff
with both hands. She would not object to anything he
asked her to do. After
all, he was the person who had saved her life.
She was all
too aware that
her abilities were
not yet great,
that she was
still woefully inexperienced. But even so—
“Don’t worry. I’ll watch your back!”
Thus, the battle began.
§
Goblin Slayer and Priestess slid like shadows along a
snowy path lined with
log houses. The
sun, peeking intermittently through
the clouds, had
already
begun to sink, and soon it would be twilight. The
goblins’ hour. This village
didn’t have much time left.
Priestess gulped air as she ran. “I’ve never fought…in
a village before…”
“There
aren’t nearly as
many obstacles as
in a cave.
Watch the shadows
and watch out for attacks from above.” Even as he
spoke, Goblin Slayer lifted
his sword and flung it. It flew through the air,
piercing the chest of a goblin
who had scrambled up onto a rooftop.
“ORAAG?!”
The creature screamed and tumbled to the ground. Goblin
Slayer pulled a
hatchet from his belt. A flick of his wrist brought it
down harder than a one-
handed sword. He buried it in the skull of the goblin
writhing on the ground.
“GAAROROROOOOOOORG?!”
It gave a long, choked death knell. Goblin Slayer
seemed pleased by the
sound. Not bad.
“That makes four.”
“Since there are six in the square, that means less
than ten left, doesn’t it?”
Priestess
squeezed her eyes
shut, offering a
prayer to the
Earth Mother
that the tiny demon might not lose his way on the road
to the afterlife.
All mortal beings
died once and
once only; in
this, everyone was
the
same. Death was the kindest and most equal thing in
this world.
“Yes. And we don’t have much time to search.” Goblin
Slayer jogged up
to an intersection, then moved close to Priestess as if
asking her to watch his
back. To be suddenly so close to him—her heart began to
race, even though
she knew this was entirely platonic.
“They’ll have noticed the scream. They’ll be coming
soon. Get ready.”
“Oh, r-right!”
Priestess
nodded, gripped her
sounding staff firmly,
and brought her
hands together at her chest.
Perhaps it was all the running and the nervousness that
accounted for her
elevated
heart rate and
her strangely hot
face. There was
no time for
idle
thoughts now, she told herself.
“Watch your feet. If you slip on the snow, you’ll die.
And watch out for
poisoned blades.”
“Right.
Um…” Priestess looked
at him questioningly. Cover.
Overhead.
Her feet and
poisoned weapons. “So
what you really
mean is… Just
watch
out for everything, like usual.”
“Mm,” Goblin Slayer grunted.
She felt him nod rather than saw it, and it brought a
smile to her face.
“That’s not much in the way of guidance.”
“Sorry.”
“Gosh. You… You
really are hopeless,
aren’t you?” She
giggled, but it
was mostly in hopes of masking how scared she was.
This was only one of many times when she and Goblin
Slayer had fought
together, just the two of them. But it was, perhaps,
the first time she had been
in the front with him like this.
Their party included five people now. Goblin Slayer was
their only front-
line specialist, but Lizard Priest was a fighter as
well. A rearguard specialist
like herself had very few chances to experience the
full brunt of combat. She
had to admit
that every once
in a while,
she had grown
impatient being
protected by everyone else, but still…
It doesn’t matter. I have to make sure to do my job.
And anyway, she appreciated that everyone looked out
for her.
She gripped her staff even tighter; she saw forms
moving, obscured by the
drifting snow.
“Looks like they’re here…”
“Make small movements with your weapon. All I need is a
distraction. I
can strike the finishing blow.”
“Yes, sir…!”
And then there was no more time for conversation.
The
goblins, seeing that
their opponents numbered
only two, and
one of
them a woman, assaulted the intersection from all four
directions at once.
“GAAORRR!!”
“GROOB!!”
“Five…!”
Goblin Slayer said,
striking the first
goblin to attack
with his
hatchet as easily as if he were chopping firewood.
“GOROB?!”
The monster fell
to the ground,
the hatchet still
buried in his
forehead.
Without slowing down, Goblin Slayer turned his shield
on the creature to the
left. The sharpened,
polished edge doubled
as a weapon,
and it evoked
a
strangled cry from the second goblin when it split his
head open.
The second creature stumbled back. Goblin Slayer didn’t
hesitate to grab
the dagger the goblin had stashed in his dirty
loincloth.
“Hrr!”
He kicked the goblin in the stomach and sent him
flying, then channeled
the
momentum into throwing
the dagger he
had stolen. It
flew straight to a
goblin who was rushing toward them with a pike. The
creature began to claw
at the dagger that had suddenly sprouted from his
throat, then collapsed.
“Six.”
He stepped on the body of the first goblin he had
killed and pulled out the
hatchet,
then promptly planted
it in the
head of the
unfortunate second
creature, who had been struggling to get up.
“Seven!”
The fight was many against only two—but one of those
two was Goblin
Slayer. He focused
on what was
in front of
him, leaving his
otherwise
vulnerable back to Priestess. There were no walls for
the monsters to attack
from; he could
see in all
four directions, and
that was all
he needed. There
was no enemy easier to overpower than goblins who had
left their territory.
“Hah! Yah!”
Priestess,
sweat beading on
her forehead, was
making small, quick
movements with her staff. They were not unlike the
dance she had learned for
the ritual she performed at the festival; she drew on
her long hours of practice
as she fought.
She wasn’t dealing
the goblins any
serious blows; she
was just keeping
them at bay. Making sure they stayed back. Giving them
something to think
about. She only
wanted to ensure
they didn’t get
too close. She
might have
been able to keep them back even farther if she made
larger swings, but that
risked one of them finding an opening, and then it
would all be over.
Besides, I’ve got Goblin Slayer behind me.
He was watching her back, and she was watching his. She
felt both relief
and a sense of duty, the two mingling in a strange
excitement.
“Ah…!”
Suddenly, she felt
Goblin Slayer begin
to move to
the right.
Without a moment’s
hesitation, she followed
him. They turned,
as if in a
dance, so that he was now facing where she had been.
“Eight… Nine!”
Goblin
Slayer’s hatchet began
mowing down the
goblins Priestess had
held off. No matter how many times she heard it, the
girl could never quite
get used to
the sound of
a heavy blade
cutting through flesh
and bone.
Especially not when she was faced with goblins, their
eyes alight with greed
and hatred, crawling over the corpses of their
companions to get at her.
The bone-chilling terror of that first adventure still
hadn’t left her. And it
likely never would.
“Ya—ah?!”
There was a
thock as one
of the goblins
caught the end
of her sounding
staff. A moment’s struggle soon began to tell in favor
of the goblin. Even the
weak
monster could overpower
Priestess’s thin arms.
With his strength,
the
goblin could easily pull her off her feet, claw at her
throat.
Priestess
went pale; the
image of one
of her former
party members, a
female wizard who had met a gruesome end, flashed in
the back of her mind.
“O Earth Mother, abounding in mercy, grant your sacred
light to we who
are lost in
darkness!”
“GORRUURUAAAA?!?!”
But she wouldn’t
let it end
that way. She
had gained a
great deal of
experience
since then. The
Holy Light miracle
seared the goblin’s
eyes
without mercy. The creature fell back, clutching his
face, and Priestess’s staff
nearly jumped back at her.
The miracle didn’t
do any damage,
but everything had
its uses. Those
without imagination were the first to die. That was
something she had learned
from Goblin Slayer.
“Ten…!”
And Goblin Slayer, of course, was not one to miss a
goblin who had left
him an opening. The hatchet seemed to trade places with
her; it sliced clean
through the goblin’s throat. The monster spasmed and
rolled on the ground.
Its neck hung at a strange angle. Another blow. The
last one.
Goblin
Slayer produced this
pile of corpses
as naturally as
breathing.
Now, he turned expressionlessly to Priestess.
“Are you hurt?”
“N-no.”
His
question was as
direct as always.
Priestess quickly patted
herself
down to be sure. Even if she didn’t think she was
injured, it was possible she
had sustained a graze somewhere. With the goblins using
poisoned weapons,
even a small wound could be deadly.
“I—I think I’m all right.”
“I see.” Goblin Slayer nodded. He inspected the bloody
hatchet and gave
a soft cluck
of his tongue.
It wasn’t greasy,
but the blade
was beginning to
dull from cutting
through so much
bone. He tossed
it away and,
for the
second time, drew the little bow on his back.
Almost as an afterthought, he said, “Holy Light. That
was a good choice.”
“Huh…?” It took her a moment to figure out what he was
talking about. Is
he…praising me?
“Oh! Uh—um, th-thank you…?” He
really is, isn’t he?
She felt a happy warmth start in her cheeks, but before
it could spread any
further, she suppressed the smile that loomed.
“Heh-heh.”
Just that little
chuckle escaped her.
This was no
time to savor
the
compliment.
Instead, she kept
her face neutral,
gripped her staff
almost
imploringly, and offered up prayers for the dead.
Goblin Slayer wouldn’t stop
her from doing that.
“Three
earlier, seven here,
and this one
makes ten.” He
had an arrow
ready and was scanning the area.
Close inspection of the mud- and blood-soaked path
revealed a number of
bodies on the
ground. Most of
them were human,
but several were
goblins.
The villagers must have resisted. The monsters appeared
to have been killed
with hoes or similar farming tools. There were two—no,
three more—goblin
corpses.
“The final count is thirteen, then.”
Goblin Slayer went around kicking each of the bodies to
be sure they were
dead. One of the corpses dropped a dagger; he picked it
up and put it in his
belt. He wasn’t discriminating when it came to weapons.
A single stone could
kill a goblin. Even barehanded, there were ways. Still,
there were times when
a real weapon
was the decisive
factor. It was
important to collect
whenever
the opportunity arose.
“We said there were five or six in the square, as I
recall.”
“That would make
eighteen or nineteen
total, right?” Priestess
had
finished her prayers; she stood up, brushing the dust
from her knees.
Goblin
Slayer’s expression was
hidden behind his
helmet, but Priestess,
for her part, looked confused. “Not quite twenty…”
“I don’t like
the way they’re
keeping all their
hostages in one
place,
either. Nor do I like how the corpses of the villagers
who fought back appear
unmolested.”
Priestess
put a finger
thoughtfully to her
lips, then murmured,
“It’s not
very…goblin-like, is it?”
Many things had happened in caves and ruins and other
deep places that
she didn’t want to recall. But whenever and wherever
goblins overcame their
enemies, they tended to have their sport with them
right then and there. They
saw such places as their nests, so to speak. Territory
where they could relax.
And the more
someone fought back,
the more violent
and cruel the
goblins
became.
Goblins were cunning and cowardly, mean and vicious,
and above all they
were loyal to their appetites. They probably didn’t
even know what it meant
to put off
gratifying their own
desires. For them
to take hostages
on enemy
ground, and then continue looting without laying a hand
on their captives…
“Do you suppose there’s another ogre or dark elf behind
this?”
“I don’t know,” Goblin Slayer said. “It could just be
goblins.”
He spoke in
a manner very
characteristic of him;
for some reason,
Priestess
found this reassuring.
Goblin Slayer was
a little twisted,
a little
strange, a mite bizarre, and certainly stubborn. She
had often been in a great
deal of danger
during her year
with him. And
sometimes, she felt
that she
couldn’t leave him alone or that he was hopeless.
“You might be right,” she said, and her voice was very
gentle. But then…
“Huh…?”
Something
tickled her nose,
a barely detectable
odor on the
wind. A
sweet, stimulating aroma much like alcohol.
“He must be using Stupor,” she said.
“So he decided
to put the
hostages and the
goblins all to
sleep.” Goblin
Slayer
looked around, then
toward the town
square, where the
smell was
presumably coming from. Indeed: smoke was rising from
the area, too much
to have been caused by anything but magic.
“Very efficient.”
“Ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha…” A tight smile came over Priestess’s
face, and she
looked away.
Nothing more efficient than putting an entire nest to
sleep. Sure…
She thought the words but didn’t say them.
§
“Orcbolg, I thought you’d never get here!”
“Did you?”
High Elf Archer
had her little
chest puffed out;
Goblin Slayer answered
her with a
hint of annoyance.
When he and
Priestess had arrived,
the town
square was already in his party’s hands.
All the goblins’ loot had been piled up around the
hostages. The villagers
themselves,
dozens of them
gathered in the
center of the
square, were still
asleep, but as
far as Goblin
Slayer could see,
no one was
hurt. Having
confirmed this, he nodded once.
Next, he turned his attention to the goblin corpses.
“Six of ’em here for you.” Dwarf Shaman had dragged the
bodies to one
spot and was
now wiping his
hands with a
look of disgust.
“Aagh! Gods
above, but goblins do stink.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure they stink or sure they’re dead? The answer’s
yes, in any case. All
the ones my spell hit anyway. How’re you doing, Scaly?”
“Mm.” Lizard Priest,
who was still watching vigilantly
on the other side
of the square, nodded gravely. “I took three apart with
my claws and fangs.
Mistress
ranger shot three
with her bow.
Six between us.
No mistake, I
believe.”
“I see. Nineteen, then,” Goblin Slayer muttered,
reaching into the mound
of corpses. He
was checking whether
any of the
dead goblins had
been
carrying a sword.
He found one and extracted it, checking the blade, and
when he found it
was acceptable, he put it in his sheath. At last he
seemed to calm down.
“Uh, hey, Orcbolg. Where’s the girl?” High Elf Archer’s
complaint from
earlier seemed to be forgotten. When she said the girl, she could mean only
one person.
“I sent her to bring the child.”
“Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“Yes.” Goblin Slayer nodded. “I don’t think there’ll be
any issues. That’s
been my experience, at least.”
He looked once more at the villagers. He located the
person who looked
both the oldest and the best dressed and strode over to
him.
“Are you the village chief?”
“Er, well, yes.
Who are all
of you…?” He
looked at Goblin
Slayer,
suspicion multiplying the wrinkles in an already
elderly face.
Goblin Slayer answered by showing his level tag.
“We’re adventurers.”
“Adventurers… And you’re Silver-ranked…”
The village headman
blinked several times,
then understanding entered
his eyes. “Could you be the Goblin Slayer…?”
“Yes,” Goblin Slayer murmured, evoking a shout from the
headman.
“Oh-ho! I am so, so glad you came! Thank you! Thank
you…!”
The
grateful old man
took Goblin Slayer’s
hand in his own two
hands,
which
looked like gnarled
tree branches. His
hands and arms,
once built up
by farmwork, no longer had their former girth or
strength. Yet Goblin Slayer
could certainly feel the handshake as the man moved his
hand up and down.
“There are some things I want to ask you.”
“Certainly. Anything.”
“First of all, do you have an herbalist or healer in
your village? A cleric of
some kind? One capable of miracles.”
“Ahem… We rely
on visiting priests
when we need
a cleric. As for an
herbalist, well, we have one…” The headman looked
apologetic. Perhaps he
thought the adventurers
would ask for
some payment, or
at least support.
“But she’s only
a young woman.
She became our
medicine woman just
recently, when her parents died in an epidemic. She
isn’t…”
“I understand,” Goblin Slayer said immediately, as if
this were perfectly
natural.
“We’ll help care
for the wounded.
My party—” He
paused for a
second. “—has two clerics.”
“Wha…?”
“I’m sorry to
say I can’t
spare any potions.”
He tapped his
item pouch.
The little bottles inside rattled. “If what you say
about your medicine woman
is true, I doubt she’ll be of much help. We can only
offer you some miracles
and first aid.”
When Goblin Slayer asked, “Does this upset you?” the
headman shook his
head vigorously. The suspicion in his eyes had turned
first to amazement and
then to respect.
Wandering minstrels told wondrous tales of an
adventurer who rushed to
the aid of any village
that was attacked
by goblins; in
their songs, this
hero
was well-spoken and beautiful. Had there been even a
shred of truth in what
they sang?
“Ha-ha-ha! I see now why you prevented me from creating
a Dragontooth
Warrior,” Lizard Priest said, approaching the two of
them.
“Frontier people are superstitious,” Goblin Slayer
said. “Especially about
bones.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
“I was the same way, once.”
Lizard
Priest rolled his
eyes in his
head by way
of acknowledgment.
“True. Naga or no, many might believe that only a
necromancer could control
a skeleton warrior.”
Then he said,
“We must classify
the injured by the
severity of their wounds,” and with a wave of his tail,
he was off.
The
lizardmen had always
been fighters. As
a race, they
often made for
superior medics.
“I’m surprised,” High Elf Archer muttered, watching the
exchange from a
distance. She had her bow in her hands at last and was
scanning the area, but
she was trying hard to keep Goblin Slayer in the corner
of her vision.
He was seated
among the villagers
now, tending to
them with items
he
took out of
his bag. He
was bandaging wounds
with herbs that
would stop
bleeding and neutralize poison, applying pressure to
the injuries. Even here,
he seemed somehow different.
“I’m sorry, thank
you so much.”
Beside him, a
woman in robes
was
bowing her head—the medicine woman they’d spoken of,
perhaps.
High Elf Archer’s pointy ears twitched, and a catlike
smile came over her
face. “It turns out Orcbolg really can hold a
conversation, when he wants to.”
Beside her, Dwarf
Shaman stroked his
beard and nodded.
“Well, Beard-
cutter is the
most well-known of
all of us.”
Unlike his elf
companion, who
was on guard
duty, with the
fighting over, the
dwarf had next
to nothing to
do.
Not that he was unhelpful. He didn’t know first aid,
but he walked around
with many little items that served as catalysts for his
magic. One of them was
fire wine, which he described as “good for drinking and
good for healing.” It
was a powerful
spirit, which also
made it an
excellent disinfectant. He had
given a jar
of it to
the medicine woman,
who had accepted
it with profuse
thanks, to the shaman’s distinct embarrassment. The way
of the dwarves was
to remember debts
and gratitude as
well as grudges
while not sweating
the
little things.
“Goblin
Slayer, the most
beloved adventurer on
the frontier… Isn’t
that
the song that made you recruit him?”
“Well,
yeah, sure. But
it turns out
the song and
the reality don’t
have
much in common…” High Elf Archer puffed out her cheeks
in displeasure as
she thought back on the ballad she had heard.
It said he was made of the sternest stuff, that he was
taciturn and loyal. A
man without greed,
who wouldn’t spurn
even the smallest
reward. When
goblins appeared, he would go to even the most remote
and rustic places to
meet them, and his sword would slay them all. He was
held up almost as if he
were a saint or a Platinum rank.
“But when you really think about it… He does get along
really well with
that girl at the Guild.”
“They say those who don’t know the true situation are
quick to jealousy.
It’s the same everywhere.” Dwarf Shaman glanced up at
the elf with a teasing
smile. “So you really shouldn’t envy her just because
she puts to shame that
anvil you call a chest.”
He could practically hear the anger seize High Elf
Archer’s face.
“After all, unlike
a certain cleric
girl, elves take
a century or
two to
develop!”
“Oooh, I can’t believe you said that! You great wine
barrel of a—!”
“Ho-ho-ho-ho!
Among dwarves, a
nice figure is
a requirement for a
proper man!”
And they were
off and arguing,
the same as
usual—but it wasn’t
a sign
that they had let their guards down. Dwarf Shaman
hadn’t taken his hand off
his bag of catalysts, and High Elf Archer’s ears were
still moving, listening.
She heard the two approaching sets of footsteps.
One was a
child, the other
the familiar footfalls
of Priestess. High
Elf
Archer knew all this full well.
“Big Siiiiiis!”
“Oh…!”
A glow came over the face of the medicine woman, who
had been moving
among the wounded.
The little girl
came running to
her, and the
medicine
woman caught her with both hands, hugging her to her
chest. They both burst
into tears, paying no heed to the eyes around them.
Goblin Slayer watched this in silence, until at length,
he looked away. He
could no longer look because Priestess, who had gone to
get the child, had a
bright smile on her face for some reason.
“What is it?” he asked.
She
squinted a little
at the blunt
question and replied
innocently, “Heh-
heh. Oh, nothing… I was just thinking you
looked…happy.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Is that so………?”
Goblin
Slayer checked to
make sure his
helmet was still in good
condition. There was no smile on that visor.
“Well, fine. See to the treatment of the villagers. And
the funerals.”
“The funerals…” Priestess put a thin, pale finger to
her lips, thinking for
just a second. “The only funerary rites I know are those
of the Earth Mother.
Do you think it’ll be all right?”
“I doubt they’ll care. So long as it’s the ritual of a
god of order.”
“Okay.
Leave it to
me,” Priestess responded
promptly, then she
looked
around and moved off, holding her sounding staff.
“Sorry I’m late!”
“Ah, you’ve come.”
Lizard Priest, tending
to an injury
with his rough,
scaled hand, turned his head on his long neck to look
at her.
“Yes,” she said with a firm nod and began pulling
bandages and ointments
out of her
pack. “I still
have one miracle
left, so if
there are any
serious
injuries, I can use Minor Heal on them…”
“In that case,
I shall leave
this patient to
you. He seems
to have been
severely beaten, and all my artifice has done little.”
“All right!”
When she had lived at the Temple, Priestess’s job had
been the treatment
of wounded adventurers.
As she rolled
up her sleeves
and began bustling
among the injured,
she projected more
authority than her
years would
suggest.
Goblin Slayer followed her with his eyes, mulling over
a question in his
mind.
Surely this can’t be the end, but…?
“Orcbolg!”
The entire party looked up at the sharp and clear
warning from High Elf
Archer.
It must have
been watching from
the shadow of
a barrel. Now,
it had
jumped out from
the shadows and
was dashing down
the road—a single
goblin trying to make his escape.
He ran like a frightened hare; nearly slipping and
stumbling, growing ever
smaller in the distance.
But only for a moment.
“Pixies, pixies, hurry, quickly! No treats for you—I
just need tricksies!”
Dwarf
Shaman intoned the
spell Bind, and
a rope wrapped
itself around
the fleeing goblin
like a snake.
It caught him
around the legs
and sent him
crashing to the ground.
This was all the opening High Elf Archer needed. “You
thought we’d let
you get away?!”
In a motion
dramatic enough for
a painting, she
drew the
great bow off her back and jumped. From barrel, to
wall, and then into space,
she took leap after leap, aiming at her target.
“So it was
twenty…!”
That was when Goblin Slayer drew an arrow from his own
quiver. “Don’t
kill him! We want him to take the poison home and spread
it!”
High Elf Archer
reached up and
grabbed the arrow
out of the
sky in an
acrobatic
movement. An instant
later, the arrow
whistled off, looking
like a
beam of light.
The elf landed
on the ground
at the same
moment as, in the
distance, the goblin tumbled. How she had loaded,
drawn, and fired the bow
in that time, no one knew. It was truly a skill so
advanced that it looked like
magic.
“Happy now?” She returned her oaken bow to her back as
she landed.
“Yes. But…” Goblin
Slayer was almost
muttering to himself,
his gaze
fixed on the goblin in the distance. He had pulled the
shaft out of his shoulder
and cut the rope around his legs and was running off
again. He was heading
north—toward the snowy mountain from where an an icy
wind blew.
“…this is not over yet.”
That was something the whole party knew well.
The goblins had
gathered the villagers
in the square
because they had
wanted to go
looting; they gathered
their spoils in
the square, as
well. And
yet, they hadn’t
touched the women.
That meant they
had been planning
to
take them back
to their nest.
The twenty goblins
who attacked the
village
were only an
advance unit. There
were more of
them, though there
was no
knowing whether they would launch a fresh attack or
simply withdraw.
Goblin
Slayer completed his
calculations and issued
his conclusion
without reluctance:
“As soon as our spells have been replenished, we go on
the attack.”
He knelt before
the village headman
seated on the
ground, then looked
him in the
eye. The headman’s
face was drawn
at the thought
of another
battle, but Goblin Slayer only said, “I want to request
preparations for a night
attack, as well as a place to rest for a night. You
don’t mind?”
“Wh-what?
N-not at all!
If we can
do anything to
help you, just
let me
know…”
“Then tell me about the party of adventurers that came
before us. And do
you have any trackers in this village?”
“Y-yes, so we do. Just one… He’s young, but he’s here.”
“I need to
know the geography
of the mountain.
I want a
map, even a
simple one.”
The headman was
nodding eagerly, but
then he seemed
to think of
something, and an obsequious smile came over his face.
“Oh, but… When it
comes to a reward, we can’t…”
“The goblins are more important,” Goblin Slayer said
flatly. Ignoring the
stunned headman, he stared at the mountains to the
north. Somewhere behind
the veil of clouds, the sun had already sunk behind the
peaks, and the fierce
wind carried hints of night.
“As soon as everything’s ready, we will go and slay
them.”
§
Thankfully,
all things considered,
damage to the
village was minimal.
Of
course
there were those
who had been
injured or killed
fighting against the
goblins. Some houses had been torched, others
smashed—naturally. But the
adventurers
had arrived before
either the loot
or the captured
women were
carried off to the nest. So perhaps it was for the
better. Or at least, Priestess
thought so.
And yet… And
yet, she couldn’t
quite embrace this
as the best
possible
outcome, she thought, as she looked out over the
village’s cemetery.
Once they had
finished tending to
the wounded, she,
the medicine girl,
and Lizard Priest had to deal with the burials.
“O Earth Mother,
abounding in mercy,
please, by your
revered hand,
guide the souls of those who have left this world.”
Sounding staff in hand, she murmured her prayer, making
the holy sign as
each body was put into the ground and covered with
earth.
This was the
obvious thing to
do, even if
there weren’t a
risk of the
corpses becoming undead if they were left exposed. If
the living failed to say
farewell to the
dead, how could
they go on
with their lives?
These burials
were less necessary for the dead than they were for the
living.
So long as
the dead had
been among those
who had words,
their souls
would be called to the god each of them believed in.
Thus, the world would
keep turning.
“I doubt an attack will come tonight, although I can’t
be certain,” Goblin
Slayer said, after he had left the villagers to
complete the burials. “You must
be exhausted. Rest.”
As usual, his
speech brooked no
argument—and yet, Priestess
at least
understood
that this was
his way of
showing concern. Even
if she still
thought him a rather hopeless person.
No matter how often she chided him, he never learned.
Indeed, if she had
refused, he wouldn’t have listened. So she figured it
was best just to go along
with him, despite the flash of annoyance.
“Ahh… Phew.”
That was why she was currently relaxing in a warm bath.
She exhaled, the
breath seeming to come from everywhere in her body,
each muscle relaxing.
She was in a hot spring. The snowy mountain nearby had,
it seemed, once
been a volcano, and the fire sprites still heated the
water through the earth (or
something like that).
The hot spring sat beneath a roof on stilts, surrounded
by rocks as steam
drifted
gently upward. The
familiar stone icon
of the Deity
of the Basin
presided over the wash water. But it depicted two
faces, perhaps because this
was a mixed
bath open to
both men and
women. For that
reason, Priestess
had carefully wrapped herself in a towel.
As she settled into the murky water, however, her body,
so long stiffened
against the cold,
seemed to melt.
She couldn’t stop
the relaxed groan
that
escaped her.
“Mmmmm…”
High Elf Archer, it seemed, was a different matter. Her
slim body, not a
scrap of covering
on it, looked
as gossamer as
any faerie. Yet
she kept
shuffling
around the edge
of the bath,
looking like a
frightened rabbit. She
would
clench her fists,
determined, then hesitantly
dip a toe
in the water
before jumping back.
“Oooh… Ohh… Are
you sure about
this?” She looked
like a child
who
didn’t want a
bath—in fact, she
looked much like
the younger clerics
Priestess knew, and it brought a smile to her face.
“I’m telling you, it’s fine. It’s just a spring with
some hot water.”
“It’s a place
where the sprites
of water and
earth and fire
and snow all
come together. That really doesn’t bother you…?”
“Should it? I think it feels wonderful…”
“Hmmm…”
High Elf Archer’s gaze flitted between herself and
Priestess, and her ears
twitched uncertainly. After a time, she suddenly bit
her lip, and—
“Y-yaaaah!”
“Yikes!”
—all but flung
herself into the
pool, causing a
great splash that
crashed
down on Priestess.
“Pff! Pff!” High
Elf Archer, who
had gone under
up to the
top of her
head, surfaced looking like a bedraggled cat, spitting
and squeezing water out
of her hair. Finally, she looked at Priestess with an
expression of surprise and
then let out a breath.
“…Huh. This water’s warm. It’s kind of…nice.”
“Gosh!
Isn’t that what
I’ve been trying
to tell you?
…And you’re not
supposed to jump in.”
“Sorry about that. I was just too scared to do it any
other way.”
“…Hee-hee.”
“…Ha-ha-ha!”
They looked at
each other, both
of them soaked
from head to
toe, and
broke into cheerful laughter.
No matter how
high a rank
an adventurer achieves,
the anxiety of
battle
never goes away.
High Elf Archer
might have been
Silver-ranked, but she
was still young and inexperienced; and Priestess, all
the more so. They may
have been from
different races, but
emotionally they were
about the same
age.
They sat beside each other, looking up at the sky. The
stars were blacked
out by thick,
leaden clouds, and
only a shadow
of the two
moons could be
seen.
He had said once—when had it been?—that goblins came
from the green
moon.
The girls’ clothing
was piled neatly
beside the bath,
along with the
weapons and tools
they had used
in the earlier
battle. Goblin Slayer
had
warned them to be wary of a surprise attack while
bathing.
Maybe he wears that armor and that helmet even in the
bath…
The image was just too funny and set the girls giggling
again.
“I wish everyone else would’ve joined us,” Priestess
said.
“Oh, you know.
‘Mud is more
amenable to a
lizard.’ Seriously, who
washes
themselves in mud?”
I just don’t
get lizard folk.
Priestess’s smile
widened at the elf’s impersonation. “And the dwarf was
all, ‘Wine is the way
to revive your spirits!’ As for Orcbolg…”
“…Guard duty. Of course.” Priestess blinked, her
eyelashes moistened by
the steam, and hugged her knees. “I’m a little worried,
though. He won’t take
a rest…”
“Yeah, well, he’s got all that energy. Got to kill the
goblins, he says.”
“Doesn’t that…seem strange to you?”
Sure does
was a conclusion
both of them
could agree on.
It was easy
to
picture
him, keeping watch
on the snowy
plain and muttering,
“Goblins,
goblins.”
“If we left
him to his
own devices, he’d
spend his whole
life like that,”
High Elf Archer said.
“I think…you’re right.” Priestess nodded deeply in
response.
It was really
true. Goblin Slayer
had changed considerably
in the year
since she’d met him. As had she. But still…
“Well, it’s thanks
to falling in
with him that
I get to
visit the North
like
this, so I guess I don’t mind,” the elf said. She
splashed restlessly at the water
as if buying time to think. The motion stirred up the
steam. Priestess glanced
at her.
“Um… You said
you left home
because you wanted
to see what
was
beyond the forest, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
High Elf Archer
stretched out her
arms and legs,
relaxing.
Priestess shifted how she was sitting. “We say, ‘You’re
alive until you die,’
but if all you ever know is the woods, what’s the
point?”
“I can’t even imagine living for thousands of years.”
“It’s not such
a big deal.
It’s like being
a huge, old
tree. You’re just…
there.”
It wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself. High Elf Archer
traced a circle in the
air with her
pointer finger. Priestess
naturally followed the
movement with
her eyes. Even the smallest of elf gestures was
polished and refined.
“So,” Priestess said, sliding down in the water to hide
the embarrassment
of how taken
she was with
the movement. “You
left because…you got
bored? I mean, I hear that happens a lot…”
“You’re
half-right.” She paused.
“It’s true, I
felt there was
something I
had to do.”
She related how she would hunt overpopulated animals
and return them to
the earth, pick
fruit where there
was too much,
to wet her
throat, and
generally keep her eyes fixed on the cycles of nature.
It’s enough to make your head spin. There’s always work
to do. And the
forest never stops growing. But you know what?
Here, she winked and smiled mischievously. “One time, I
saw a leaf being
carried
along by a
river. And I wondered, where
does it go?
And then I
couldn’t stop wondering.” She laughed.
She had rushed back to her home and got her bow, and
then she was off
among the trees,
quick as a
deer, chasing that
leaf. When she
next looked
around, she realized
she had left
the woods. She
jumped from rock
to rock
across the stream bed, following the leaf.
“And…what did you find?”
“Nothing interesting, I can tell you that,” she said,
squinting her eyes like
a contented cat. “A dike. One the humans had built. It
was the first time I had
ever seen one—I thought it was pretty interesting.” The
leaf, carried along by
the stream, had gotten caught in the dike.
It was hardly as though she had received some revelation.
High Elf Archer
smiled
faintly. Then she
opened her lips
ever so slightly
and whistled. She
was humming a song in her clear voice.
What is it that waits at the end of the river?
What is it that blooms where the birds do fly?
If the womb of the wind is beyond the horizon
Then where does the rainbow come down from the sky?
Far must we walk to discover the answers
But fair are the things on the way that we find
Priestess blinked, eliciting a satisfied “Heh!” from
High Elf Archer.
It was said there was no race so elegant as the elves.
High Elf Archer glanced at Priestess’s chest and
produced a sigh.
“You still get to keep developing… Lucky you.”
“Er… Wha?!” Priestess could only produce a series of
strange noises, and
her face went completely red. “Wh-what are you talking
about?! And all of a
sudden like that!”
“We’re talking about time. The passage of time. That’s
what the song was
about, and that’s what my comment was about.”
She snickered. It sounded like a bell ringing in her
throat. As she laughed,
she reached out and ran a hand through Priestess’s
soaked hair.
“I mean… Me, I still have some time, but…”
“Just some?” Priestess looked down, not resisting the
hand in her hair.
Yeah, High Elf Archer nodded. “Humans… They get old and
die after just
a hundred years or so, right?”
“Uh-huh…”
“I wonder why everyone can’t live for a long time.
Maybe it’s something
that would make sense to me if I were human.”
“…If you were born as a human, you’d just wish you were
as beautiful as
an elf,” Priestess
murmured. She didn’t
regret who she
was, but there
was
always the fascination of if, the unanswered wish.
That day, for example. She had fought side by side with
Goblin Slayer; he
had watched her back. What if she could have fought
more? What if she were
more accomplished in miracles or spells? Would she have
been more help to
him?
She had once promised that if he was in trouble, she
would help him. Had
she done that today? At this rate…
If we left him to his own devices, he’d spend his whole
life like that.
She felt as though a reckoning was coming, one that
couldn’t be avoided.
“…”
“And if you’d been born an elf, I bet you’d wish you
were human.” High
Elf Archer punctuated
her remark by
giving Priestess’s head a little
hug
before
letting her go.
Priestess thought she
could just catch
the scent of the
forest filling her nose.
Surely she was imagining it. This place was supposed to
be home only to
earth and water and fire.
But… What if she wasn’t imagining it?
The elves must be connected to the forest even when
they leave it behind…
“You’re
probably right,” Priestess
said and let
out a breath.
She felt as
though something deep in her heart, something stagnant
and stiff, had begun
to give way.
“Should we think
about getting out?”
she asked. “We
don’t have much
time to just hang around.”
“True.”
High Elf Archer
stood abruptly. “The
world just refuses
to play
nice, doesn’t it?”
§
“The
situation doesn’t look
good,” Goblin Slayer
said. He was
standing in
front of a
crackling fire in
the village tavern.
The second floor
was an inn,
which was typical of such places.
The warmth of the fire filled the log building, shadows
from the trophies
on the wall
dancing in the
firelight. The adventurers,
back from their
respective
relaxations, sat around
a large table
with cups filled
to the brim
with mead.
The
medicine woman and
her sister, along
with nearly everyone
else in
the
village, had urged
their rescuers to
lodge in their
respective homes, but
Goblin Slayer had refused.
“We will all pay for a place at the inn. Divided, we
can’t respond quickly
to whatever may happen.”
Priestess was slightly mystified by the rush of relief
she felt when he said
that.
Now the villagers surrounded the adventurers at some
remove. They were
half-expectant
and half-curious. Some
also eyed the
party’s women with
undue interest. Priestess shifted uncomfortably under
their leering gazes.
I guess it’s
a small blessing
there’s no one
who looks like
any real
trouble…
“Do you think…they don’t want us here?” she asked,
looking at the food
on the table.
Boiled
potatoes, regular potatoes,
potatoes, potatoes… Everything
on
offer was potatoes.
Priestess, of course,
by no means
expected to live
in
luxury. She was used to humble fare. And yes, it was
winter; there was snow
on the ground
and it would
be necessary to
conserve provisions. But
still—
nothing but potatoes?
“Nah,” Dwarf Shaman said with a shake of his head.
“From what I heard,
the last adventurers to come through bought up all the
supplies.”
“Everything?”
“Said they needed
it to slay
goblins, if you
can believe that.”
Dwarf
Shaman rested his chin on his hands.
“Ha-haa! I suppose…” Lizard Priest’s tail swished along
the ground as if
to say that
it wasn’t theirs
to judge. “It’s
said one must
draw out goblins
before one can slay them. A little bit of coercion, you
see. Perhaps they really
did need those supplies…?”
Hmm.
Priestess put a
finger to her
lips in thought,
her hair flowing
in a
wave as she
tilted her head
quizzically. It was
clear who to
go to with a
question like this.
“Was it necessary?”
“It depends on
the time, and
the place, and
the circumstances,” their
goblin-slaying
specialist replied flatly.
“Now and again,
you’ll encounter
wandering tribes with no nest. Pursuit can take
considerable time.”
“But time’s something
we don’t have,
right?” High Elf
Archer said,
lapping
happily at the
mead. Her cheeks
were already a
faint red; the
bath
might have had something to do with it, but it was
chiefly the alcohol. “We
don’t know what’s in the nest, and we don’t know how
many of them there
are. Plus, there’s the possibility that the other
adventurers are still alive.”
“We’re only lucky
that the villagers
weren’t taken away.
Who knows if
we could have helped them in time?”
Goblin
Slayer nodded, then
unrolled a sheet
of lambskin paper
on the
table. “We can’t
wait until the
sickness from the
arrows becomes fatal,
but
they may be somewhat weakened by now.” On the paper was
a simple map
of the route from the village to the mountain; he had
asked the local hunter to
draw it. Some scribbled notes appeared to have been
added by Goblin Slayer
himself. “According to the trapper, this is the most
likely place for a goblin
nest.”
“Yeah, but…” High Elf Archer ran a finger over the map,
measuring the
distance
between the village
and the cave.
“If no villagers
were kidnapped,
why didn’t we go in right away?”
“I believe I
know what the
previous adventurers were
planning.” The
room’s collective gaze fixed on Goblin Slayer. He took
a fried potato and put
it in his mouth. His helmet moved slightly, emanating
the sounds of chewing
and swallowing. “The medicine woman told me that the
party bought wood
along with their other supplies.”
“Wood?” Dwarf Shaman asked. “But they could just—no,
wait, don’t tell
me, I’ll get it.” He took a swig of mead, ignoring the
look the elf gave him as
he brushed several droplets off his beard.
The wise old dwarf grunted to himself, and a moment
later he snapped his
fingers and said, “Ah! I know now! It’s not firewood,
so it isn’t about filling
the nest with
smoke. They were preparing for
something. And they brought
food. Meaning…”
“Yes,” Goblin Slayer said as if it were the most
natural thing in the world.
“They meant to starve them out.”
There was an
audible crack from
the fire. For
a time, no
one talked.
Lizard
Priest picked up
a poker and
jabbed listlessly at
the firewood. There
was another noise as the wood split in two, sparks
flying.
“But then, the foe is many and they were few,” he said.
“That
tactic has its
uses,” Goblin Slayer
said dispassionately. “But
not
when you are attempting to
exterminate a large
number of enemies
on their
own land.”
Priestess
pictured the scene,
her body going
stiff. The terror
of facing
down starving goblins for days on end.
I don’t think I could bear it.
Then
Priestess thought of
the villagers. How
they had asked
for
adventurers
to stop the
goblins stealing food
from them, and
this party had
decided on a tactic that used the whole town’s
provisions.
“We cannot prepare even one sword, one potion, or one
meal’s worth of
food on our own.”
Glug. Goblin Slayer took a drink
of his mead without even
having to remove his helmet. “And adventurers without
supplies will be dead
by nightfall.”
“Orcbolg, maybe you could think about something else
for once.”
“I’m trying.”
Glug, glug. More
mead.
His four companions
watched this with
the faintest of
smiles on their
faces. They knew this party would never have been
formed if this man were
not exactly the way he was.
“And milord Goblin Slayer,” said Lizard Priest, who was
used to the role
of military adviser by now. “What strategy do you have
in mind?”
“None to speak of.” He sounded uncharacteristically
relaxed.
They had no
idea how the
nest was laid
out or how
many enemies were
there. Not knowing
if the other
adventurers were still
alive, they couldn’t
simply
destroy the nest
outright. And if
the goblins had
attacked once, they
would surely come a second and a third time.
Thus, there was only one possible strategy.
“We blitz them.”
