Goblin Slayer, Vol. 4

by Kumo Kagyu

  “Elves just stay shut up in their forests, ignoring everything and everyone—and they’re misers, to boot!”

  “I’ll show you the truth about elves!”

  High Elf Archer hissed like a cat and threw herself at the dog-faced soldier. The table fell over with a crash, wine cups went flying, dishes were overturned. The drunks who had gathered in the tavern gave way at the familiar scene and started taking bets.

  “My money’s on the elf.” “No, the padfoot.” “But elves are so fragile.” “Yeah, but padfoots are so stupid…”

  “…What a troublemaker.” Oof, that hurt. Dwarf Shaman shrugged at his uncle, who was rubbing his head and groaning.

  “Rather unusual, for an elf.”

  “…Would you mind if your companion was someone like her?”

  “Hrm, well. I don’t suppose the high muckety-mucks of elfdom would pick someone so rash…”

  As he muttered, Dwarf Shaman reached out for a plate. He grabbed a handful of dried beans, notwithstanding the wine splashed on them, popped them into his mouth, and crunched noisily.

  Beside him, his uncle heaved a sigh. “They’ve already made their choice,” he said. “And they picked her.”

  “Say what?”

  “Look at the personal description.”

  His uncle pulled a rumpled piece of paper from his bag and passed it over. Dwarf Shaman opened it with fingers both thick and nimble, then held it up and looked through it at the fight.

  “Ahh… That anvil…?”

  If the haughty elves had chosen her, there was no reason to doubt her skills.

  The elves resented the dwarves, but at the same time, they hated more than anything that the dwarves resented them.

  But that’s a little girl, or I’m a pebble.

  She was shouting insults at the dog-muzzled soldier, the two of them pulling each other’s hair and fur. The elves didn’t exactly consider age unimportant, but he wondered if she was even a hundred years old.

  “Still…” Give or take ten years—or a hundred—this was the elf who was to be his traveling companion. “…I think we’d break something trying to pull her out of that fight.”

  As he stroked his beard and considered what to do, Dwarf Shaman’s eyes were drawn to the tavern door.

  A huge shadow loomed there.

  It was tremendous. Big as a boulder. Its broad movements were large, as were its jaws.

  Now, where were those clothes from? Ah, yes. The heavily forested south.

  The lizardman took one look at the brouhaha and rolled his eyes in his head. He entered the tavern with a shuffling gait and headed to the counter, oblivious to the looks of those around him. He did not try to sit in a chair, perhaps because of his huge size, or perhaps because of the tail that dragged on the floor.

  “Many pardons, but I wish to wait for someone. As I do not know when they will arrive, I could be waiting for some time.”

  His voice was craggy as a stone. It was impressive that the long tongue within his jaws could maneuver around the common language so readily.

  “Uh, sure,” the tavern owner said with an awkward nod.

  The lizard replied, “Splendid,” with a nod of his own. “I await a dwarf and an elf. If any of your adventurers here fit that description, perhaps you could alert me.”

  Overhearing this, Dwarf Shaman glanced at his uncle, who said calmly, “I did hear a lizardman would be lending us his strength.” It sounded as if he himself couldn’t quite believe it.

  “How now, dear uncle? Don’t know his face?”

  “Even if they gave me a description, I couldn’t tell one lizardman from another.”

  “I suppose not.”

  The lizardmen, who proclaimed themselves descended from the fearsome nagas who had crawled out of the sea, were the most powerful warriors to be found in all the world.

  They were opponents to make the blood run cold. They killed their enemies, massacred them, ate their hearts. Some disdained them as barbarians, and there were in fact—so it was said—some who had allied themselves with the forces of Chaos.

  Regardless, this one was presumably on the side of Order.

  But even so…

  “Ahh, and a meal, if you would be so kind.” The lizard priest held up a scaly finger. He remained standing at the counter; perhaps his tail got in the way when he tried to sit down. When his eyes spun and his jaws opened, his comment seemed lighthearted. “Regrettably, I carry no money, so I would repay you through labor—washing dishes or chopping firewood. You do not mind?”

  Dwarf Shaman suddenly laughed. He took a drink of wine, pounded his belly, and gave a great, thick laugh. He laughed until the lizard priest turned his long neck to look in a most uncanny manner, and then the dwarf took a gulp of wine.

  “Hey, Scaly!” he called to Lizard Priest. He let out a cough, then wiped the wine from his beard with one hand. “You see that long-eared girl fighting over there? Get her by the scruff of her neck and bring her over here, would you?”

  Dwarf Shaman laughed easily, pointing to the elf, who was flailing atop the padfoot, oblivious to the goings-on around her. Presently, the padfoot had her by the hair and was rolling her into a new position. Hands and feet and nails were everywhere. Her elven dignity was gone. She was just a child in a fight.

  “You do that, and I’ll treat you to all the wine and meat you like.”

  “Oh-ho!” Lizard Priest’s tail gave the ground a powerful slap. The owner frowned; so did Dwarf Shaman’s uncle. “Very well, so I shall. Consider me grateful. Ah, virtue does beget virtue.”

  Immediately Lizard Priest, tail and all, jumped into the fray with a speed that belied his size. Beside Dwarf Shaman, grinning widely at the anarchy in the tavern, his uncle groaned. He seemed to have a stomachache. Even a mouthful of wine didn’t appear to do him any good.

  At length, the man who had been a shield breaker in the dwarven army for more than ten years said, “…If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be getting back to my unit.” He left a handful of gold coins on the table and jumped unsteadily down from a chair built for human height.

  He could not decide whether it was wise to leave the fate of his race in the hands of this party—including his nephew.

  Oh, the commands of the gods…

  As he tottered away from the tavern, the old shield breaker’s head was filled with the sound of rolling dice.

  §

  “…Whaddayawant?”

  Her hair was everywhere, her clothes were dirty, her cheeks were a bit swollen, and she had her back turned to him with an expression of disgust. Dwarf Shaman allowed himself a gleeful smile at this first sound out of the high elf’s mouth.

  “Who, me? I thought we might talk about work.” He smirked and rubbed his thick hands together, fsh-fsh-fsh.

  If she would at least sit facing me like an adult, I would feel like she was listening to me.

  Fights must have been as common as bread and butter at this tavern, because the atmosphere had already relaxed again, the chatter and banter returning to life.

  The badly bruised padfoot was in a corner seat, looking unhappy and tearing into a chunk of meat. With the fight having burned itself out, the erstwhile gamblers soon settled back down.

  “Hm. In that case, there is something of considerable importance which I must first ask you.”

  The restored order of the tavern was partly thanks to the swift intervention of the lizardman, who now used a cask of wine in place of a chair. It had been quite a sight to see him take the elf and the padfoot each by the scruff of the neck and wrench them apart, but it was also an outcome no one had placed a bet on. So only the bookmaker made any profit, and the rhea went around the bar cheerfully waving his wine.

  “And what’s that, Scaly?”

  Lizard Priest gave an “Mmm” and an immensely somber nod. “Could we perhaps consider our spending on food to be separate from the reward for this quest?”

  “But of course,” Dwarf Shaman said with a tug of his beard
and a smile. “We’ll send my honored uncle the tab.”

  “Most appreciated,” Lizard Priest said, then opened his jaws wide and sunk them into a hunk of bone-in meat on the table.

  High Elf Archer watched them, still puffing out her cheeks a bit. “So,” she muttered, “what’s this work? Not that I haven’t heard the basics.”

  “Ah, yes, about that.” Dwarf Shaman nodded, picked up a cup, and drained it. Then he used the empty vessel to shove aside some plates and make a space for himself. “You know about the battle that’s going on over at the Capital with the Demon Lord or whoever it is?”

  It was a rhetorical question. He drew a scroll from his bag and opened it on the table. It had been drawn with dyes on bark. The abstract yet precise picture marked it as an elven map. It depicted an ancient-looking building, smack in the middle of a wasteland.

  “A council of war was about to be called, but then they found out there was a bunch of goblins living just behind them.”

  “A goblin nest, isn’t that what it’s called?”

  “Yes, and a plenty big one, too.”

  Here. High Elf Archer looked where Dwarf Shaman was pointing and blinked. She peered at the symbol on the ancient building in the middle of the wasteland, then at the huge forest not far from it.

  “Hey—that’s my home!”

  “Mm. That would explain why you’re here…”

  Lizard Priest nibbled more meat off his bone, chewed several times, and swallowed before speaking further.

  “…Is this what you call politics?”

  “Indeed.” Dwarf Shaman nodded firmly. Well, this was a fine mess. One of their members was here to satisfy someone’s honor. He smelled trouble ahead. “My uncle may think it’s unreasonable, but we can’t let the humans sit by while our armies are the only ones to mobilize.”

  “And no rheas or padfoots?”

  High Elf Archer’s ears twitched at the mention of the beast folk. The dog-faced soldier she had been fighting with had been brought to heel by a superior officer who had come rushing in. While the officer was tugging on the long face of the soldier, she had wondered whether such treatment was an everyday occurrence, or if dog people simply, by their nature, found it difficult to go against their superiors.

  In any event, the water town was a beautiful city, but they did not feel threatened.

  “I don’t think we can expect more than some volunteers from them.”

  There were individual rheas of great bravery, but this did not extend to their clans or their administrators. At bottom, they adored peace and quiet, and they had little interest in anything that did not concern their homeland directly.

  The padfoots were padfoots; they were so diverse that it was hard to quickly unite all of them behind any one cause. When they gathered, depending on which tribe seized leadership, things could go very well or very poorly. This was true even regarding the Demon Lord’s awakening and subsequent war against all who had words on the continent. Granted, if the danger grew near enough, they would unite and rise up on their own…

  “Our other problem is, we have to get a human to join us.”

  “Ah! I know a good one.” High Elf Archer glanced up from the map. She held up her long, slim pointer finger, drawing a circle in the air. “He’s called Orcbolg. A warrior who slays goblins on the frontier.”

  “What, you mean Beard-cutter?”

  “Right. You dwarves might not know it, but right now, there’s a very popular song about him going around.”

  She didn’t actually know if the song was popular or not, but she needed a chance to look smart.

  The Goblin King has lost his head to a Critical Hit most dire!

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

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

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

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

  As she finished humming the tune, she made a proud sound and stuck out her little chest.

  “You don’t know it because you’ve literally been living under a rock. That’s dwarves for you.”

  “A fine thing for someone who stays shut up in her forest to say.”

  Dwarf Shaman gave her a dour look as she waved her ears in self-satisfaction.

  I assume that song’s only half the truth. It was always the best opinion to have about a bard’s melodies.

  “But, ahh, ahem.”

  This long-eared elf girl must be a ranger or a scout. The lizardman was a priest…a kind of warrior-monk, most likely. He himself knew magic, of course, and he also understood how to handle a weapon. But they did not have enough fighters.

  He couldn’t say for sure until he saw the man, but this was someone who’d had a song written about him. It was reasonable to assume he had a fair amount of skill.

  “…That’s good enough.”

  “The reward will be divided equally, then. Are we also agreed that we shall assume milord Goblin Slayer will join our company?”

  Lizard Priest took in the party with a roll of his eyes. Dwarf Shaman and High Elf Archer both nodded.

  At that, the lizardman said, “Then let us plan,” and touched the tip of his nose with his tongue.

  “First, this town,” Dwarf Shaman said, casting his eye over the map. “Which town did you say he was in?”

  “Well, uhh, I asked the bard, and…” High Elf Archer’s pale finger searched across the elven map. Finally it found the frontier town, and she tapped the spot with a well-manicured nail. “Maybe around here?”

  “That is not far distant. However… Even so.” Lizard Priest seemed immensely serious as he looked over the map. “We seek to foil our enemy’s plans. I believe we can assume this will provoke a reprisal.”

  “Hm? We may be attacked in the middle of an adventure, you mean?”

  “Let us settle this now to avoid that possibility. Before they have a chance to consolidate their forces.”

  “Just leave it to us!” Bop. High Elf Archer made a fist and pounded her small chest with fervor. “The fate of the world hanging in the balance? That’s when adventurers do their best work!”

  “Hey, now,” Dwarf Shaman said, goggling. “You know this isn’t a game, right?”

  “Sure I do. I don’t know about you dwarves, but the elves have always used their bows to keep the world safe.”

  “Oh-ho. You don’t say.” The spell caster’s eyes widened just a little; he gave a tug on his beard and sighed. “So that anvil of a chest of yours, it’s so nothing interferes with drawing your bow?”

  “Anvil?”

  “It’s hard…and flat.”

  “Why, you—!”

  Embarrassment and anger sent blood rushing to the archer’s cheeks. There was a clatter as she stood up from her chair and planted her hands on the table as she leaned out across it.

  “That’s some nerve! This when you dwarves—uhh, um…” She hung there, her mouth working open and closed. Her ears fluttered up and down, and her fingertip traced an aimless path in the air. “R-right! Those bellies! Your stomachs would make a drum look slim!”

  “I’ll have you know we call it being solidly built! A dwarf prefers this kind of body…” Dwarf Shaman pointedly cut himself off, then glanced at the elf out of the corner of his eye. “…Whatever you elves might like.”

  High Elf Archer could hardly fail to notice his gaze on her own chest. She crossed her arms with a deliberate snort, making her displeasure clear.

  “I always knew dwarves had a warped sense of beauty!”

  “Who is it that comes to buy our metalwork? Oh, right. Elves.”

  “So what?!”

  And they were fighting. Other people in the tavern watched this age-old rivalry between the races play out in front of their eyes. But the atmospher
e soon changed. Fights and arguments were a dime a dozen.

  “Five silvers on the dwarf!” “A gold coin on the elf!” “Do it, girl!” “Spank her good, old man!”

  Lizard Priest shook his head and heaved a sigh. Then he let out a great hiss. At the overpowering sense of a reptile on the hunt, the two adventurers shut their mouths. Lizard Priest nodded.

  “Mm.”

  Good.

  §

  The carriage left the gate, cloaked by night. At this hour, anyone but adventurers would have found it safer to travel with a caravan or the like. But the three of them did not have the time, and their hand had been forced in more ways than one.

  The vehicle they were in was not a very good one, just a slightly modified cargo hauler. And the horse was just average…well, maybe a bit below average. Dwarf Shaman and Lizard Priest had the reins. High Elf Archer was watching the sky, her bow at the ready.

  Traveling by carriage meant going faster than a person could walk, but slower than a horse could run. Dwarf Shaman was not pleased with this situation. He had wanted to get the best possible ride and horse, to say nothing of the driver. But the funds he had gotten from his uncle were limited, as was their time. He had had to compromise.

  “And to top it all off, we have to go slowly. What a lot of trouble.”

  “Bear in mind that we do not have the luxury of changing horses at one of the intermediate stations.” Seated beside him on the driver’s platform, Lizard Priest replied to Dwarf Shaman’s cautious comment to himself. “And if you consider the trouble we would have if we were to rush and thereby attract unwelcome attention, this way is in fact faster.”

  “Unwelcome attention?” High Elf Archer tilted her head, flicking the tips of her ears in the direction of the coachman’s seat.

  “Bandits or brigands, I suppose.”

  “Right…”

  Her face scrunched at the reply, as if she found it very unpleasant. Dwarf Shaman caught the plain display of emotion in his peripheral vision and made a sound of annoyance.

  “We managed somehow in town, by the auspices of that lovely lady, but now we’re out in the open fields.”

  “Once away from the sanctuary of the Supreme God, it may be only a matter of time until some ill spirit sets upon us,” said Lizard Priest.