Goblin Slayer, Vol. 7

by Kumo Kagyu

  “Drink.”

  “Uh, r-right, thanks…”

  “No,” Goblin Slayer said, shaking his head. “You helped us.”

  Priestess held the waterskin in both hands, bringing it to her lips with just a hint of embarrassment. She had the slightest, shiest smile on her face. She wasn’t so tense now, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

  They had gotten over one hurdle. One thing at a time.

  She drank noisily, two mouthfuls, three. Then she let out a satisfied breath and put the stopper back in the waterskin.

  “Thank you very much,” she said, handing it back; he took it silently and returned it to his pouch.

  Goblin Slayer used his hatchet to pull one of the bobbing corpses closer, taking the sword from its belt. He put the blade into his own scabbard, put the hatchet in the goblin’s belt instead, and then kicked it away again.

  “The voice has stopped,” he murmured.

  High Elf Archer’s ears flicked. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I wasn’t sure one way or the other on the way down, but now I feel like I don’t hear it anymore.”

  “We were too late.”

  High Elf Archer, catching his meaning, frowned. She quickly checked the state of her bowstring, retied it, then made sure she had some arrows as she got to her feet. “…That’s no excuse to dawdle, is it?”

  “Indeed, even so,” Lizard Priest agreed, giving his Swordclaw a flourish. “We have come here for battle, and our foe quails before us. We have no reason not to press our advantage.”

  He held out a bumpy, scaled hand to Priestess.

  “I’m all right,” she said with a brief smile then hefted herself to her feet, supporting herself with her staff. “Oh, the torch…”

  “…Mm,” Goblin Slayer said, finally turning his head slowly from side to side. “I’ll let you handle it.”

  Priestess secretly let out a sigh to see him once again striding boldly at the head of their line. But shortly thereafter, registering that she had been left in charge of their light, she nodded resolutely.

  “Hold this for a moment, please,” she said, passing the torch to Dwarf Shaman. Then she took a lantern out of her luggage and transferred the flame to it.

  “Well, aren’t you well prepared!”

  “A lantern is a must on an adventure,” she replied, puffing out her chest with just a hint of pride.

  The Adventurer’s Toolkit was a package that didn’t always come in as handy as it looked like it would, but this time it was proving its worth. She closed the shutter to avoid letting out more light than was necessary then tossed the torch in the river with a little “Yah!” There was a hiss and some white smoke, and then the torch was no more.

  “…Okay, let’s go.”

  The rest of the party nodded, and then they followed after Goblin Slayer, taking care to make as little noise as possible.

  Thankfully, the sound of the river helped to cover them.

  Goblin Slayer spoke softly to High Elf Archer in the murk. “How is it in front?”

  “They’re there.” She dropped her hips like a hare about to run, but she kept moving quickly forward. “There seems to be some kind of…big millstone or mortar? Along with five…maybe six of them, enjoying themselves.”

  “No spells,” Goblin Slayer said, shifting his sword in his right hand. “We’ll take care of them.”

  “But…” Lizard Priest licked his nose with his tongue. “How do you mean to attack?”

  “Silence again?” High Elf Archer offered, adding to herself I’d be okay with that as she drew an arrow.

  Goblin Slayer glanced at Priestess, whose face was bloodless, and shook his head. “We will do something else.”

  “I’m f-fine…!”

  “I do not want to use the same tactic twice in a row,” he said, reaching into his bag. “Do we have any glue?”

  “Right ’ere. Bunches of it. Hang on a second,” Dwarf Shaman said, digging into his own bag of catalysts. At length, he nodded and produced several small, sealed bottles.

  “Good,” Goblin Slayer said immediately. “Everyone, give me your socks.”

  Priestess pressed a hand to her thigh, suddenly red-faced; High Elf Archer just looked confused. “What do you want with those?” she asked.

  “I will use them.”

  Lizard Priest nodded somberly. “Do you want mine as well?”

  “If you have any.”

  §

  The goblin had finished his work and was in high spirits. He’d not often been drunk, but he had the feeling that this was what it felt like.

  Stolen alcohol all too rarely made it to him—the bottles had always been drunk dry long before they reached this far down. He had some doubts about whether the boys upstairs were portioning the goods out fairly, but that was goblins for you. They never thought about their other comrades, who would come after them, but each took a little extra for himself, and before you knew it, it was all gone.

  But this magnanimous underground goblin would forgive them.

  Not because he knew he would have done the same thing if he were on one of the higher floors—nothing so reasonable. He was content to be enraged at the thoughtless bastards up above, quite irrespective of the fact that he would have behaved just like them.

  No, the reason he felt so lenient was because working on the lowest floor had its own benefits.

  With a casual gesture, the goblin adjusted the decoration hanging from a chain around his neck. Then he sat heavily in a circle of his fellows and reached for the food at the center.

  He popped a finger off the rotting arm and tossed it into his mouth. He chewed then took a breath.

  Working down here is the worst, he said, trying to sound good even as he complained.

  There was a chorus of agreement from the others, then somebody tore off a leg from the meal.

  Somebody else, unable to let this pass, raised a fuss and tried to take the leg, until it was finally torn in two, and the aggrieved party had some for himself.

  As they chewed their meat, the goblins whined that the higher-ups didn’t understand.

  One of them plucked a lovely amber-colored eyeball from the meal, commented, They sure as hell don’t, then swallowed it.

  The goblins’ complaints got louder and louder, but of course, the work they were asked to do was not all that demanding. It was simply the way of goblins to be convinced that others had it easier than they did.

  After a lazy meal, the goblins hefted themselves to their feet. They collectively agreed that a rhea didn’t make as good a meal as an elf, and an elf wasn’t as tasty as a human.

  Now their stomachs were good and full, and it seemed to them that there was nothing else to do but have a little nap until more work needed to be done.

  The goblin gave a great yawn, when—

  “—?”

  Well, now.

  What was this rolling up to his feet? An extinguished torch?

  What the hell? The goblin looked stupidly at it.

  “?!”

  A second later, something heavy and wet struck him in the face. He tried to cry out, but another one hit him, this time in the mouth.

  He reached up to peel it off, but his hand stuck to it, and he couldn’t get free.

  “GROBB!!”

  “GRB! GBBOROB!!”

  As he tumbled to the ground, the other goblins pointed and laughed at him. They had similarly ridiculed the goblins who’d come plummeting from the staircase earlier that day.

  “GBOROB?!”

  This time, the things smacked the laughing goblins. Two more of them were clawing at their faces, writhing in pain. Three in total.

  The other two finally realized that this was not the time for mirth and drew their stolen swords.

  One of them put something that looked like an alarm whistle to his lips—

  “One.”

  —and promptly found his throat pierced by a dagger that came flying from the dark. Blood gushed from the wound with a sound not unlike a whistle.r />
  “GOBBRB?!”

  Cutting through the sound came an adventurer in grimy armor, rushing at them from downriver. In his right hand was a sword. In his left, a shield. The goblin’s eyes were wide. Adventurer! Hate! This was him!

  “GBRO! GGBORROB!!”

  He forgot all thought of either calling his comrades or helping them but, instead, shuffled in to fight. His sword was a well-honed thing he’d just recently stolen from an adventurer. It was no rusty knife.

  “Hmph.”

  Goblin Slayer, however, caught the blow easily on his shield. Beat it back, in fact. He caught the monster’s overeager swing, which lodged in his shield; he backed up then made a sweep.

  “GOBBR?!”

  The goblin lost his footing and fell heavily then got unsteadily back to his feet.

  Immediately after that, he was aware of a thump. And then the goblin stopped breathing, without ever knowing why.

  He would never have imagined it was because a bud-tipped arrow had lodged itself in the back of his head anyway.

  He tumbled forward, his lifeless eyes no longer perceiving what was happening to his companions.

  “GOBB… GRB?!”

  “GROBBR?!”

  The other goblins, having finally peeled the sticky globs away from their faces and mouths, could hardly speak.

  An instant later, Lizard Priest’s Swordclaw cleaved torso from legs, and Goblin Slayer pierced a throat.

  Dispatching five goblins had taken only ten or twenty seconds. That was experience for you.

  “Three… And four, and five.” Goblin Slayer counted up the corpses then turned back to the darkness. “That was an impressive hit.”

  “I’ve been practicing.” Priestess pattered out of the dark, holding her sounding staff. A shy expression came over her face at Goblin Slayer’s simple praise. Yes, the creature had been distracted by the torch, but she had hit him fair and square, the result of her own hard work.

  She picked up the prepared sock the goblin had torn off its face and thrown aside. “…Ugh. I guess I can’t use this anymore…,” she said disappointedly. There was blood and drool and snot all over it. She could put it through the wash three times and still not want to wear it again.

  “Put rocks in our socks, cover them with glue, and then throw them at the goblins?” High Elf Archer, who had also supplied her footwear for the cause, was retrieving her arrow from one of the corpses. “I swear, you have the imagination of a mischievous little boy.”

  “But it worked,” Goblin Slayer said shortly, turning toward the half-eaten body.

  It was such a mass of gore that it was impossible even to tell what gender it had been, until he picked up a blue-colored status tag from the mess. It was a man.

  “Wonder if he had a family,” Dwarf Shaman said, glancing over and taking the bloodstained chip of sapphire. “Or a party… Doubt he was solo.”

  “Most likely,” Goblin Slayer said, turning his head and casting his eye over the tools the goblins had used for their “work.”

  High Elf Archer poked at one of them with a what’s this look, before she realized what she was seeing and jumped back. “Eek?!”

  It was a millstone—or more accurately, a press. Turning a round handle caused the device to move, applying pressure to whatever was inside it. It was the sort of thing that might be used to get oil from olives, or juice from grapes. So what had the goblins been pressing with it?

  The answer was immediately apparent.

  “Ergh… Ah…!” Priestess made little gasping sounds and nearly dropped her staff.

  In the crevices of the machine could be seen slim hands and feet, still twitching with the last vestiges of life. They belonged to a young woman whose glassy eyes were staring skyward, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

  This made frightfully clear what the goblins had been attempting to press, and how. As a mode of torture, it was crude. As a means of execution, it was beyond sadistic.

  No.

  Priestess quickly grasped what it all signified.

  The pile of battered female armor in the corner.

  The polished short sword Goblin Slayer had collected from the goblin.

  The sapphire level tag that had been hanging from the neck of one of the corpses.

  The muscles in the arm that now hung limp.

  All of it showed that the young woman had been an adventurer.

  And led to one inescapable conclusion: the goblins had been doing this simply for fun.

  “…”

  It was a nauseating scene, but although pale, Priestess gulped the bitter fluid back down.

  Maybe—unfortunately—she had gotten used to this sort of thing. Maybe it was just something she had to get used to. She didn’t know.

  As she crouched, praying to the Earth Mother, a thick, sticky liquid plopped against the ground, spoiling her white boots.

  The blackish-red substance the goblins had been squeezing out with their device dribbled into a gutter along the floor and, from there, into the river.

  “Hmm,” Lizard Priest said, rolling his eyes. “If they are putting this into the river, mightn’t it be some kind of poison?”

  “It very well may.” Goblin Slayer crouched and scooped up a small sample of the sticky stuff, rubbing it between his fingers. Though it was only a tiny drop in the massive river, it was probably enough to be fatal to an individual. “It’s like they were thinking ‘you’ve all been drinking, living, and bathing with water full of the blood and excrement of your fellows.’”

  “Hrr—ghh…” High Elf Archer immediately retched. Priestess was quick to offer her the waterskin, but she replied, “No thanks.”

  “I suppose, then, that we should consider this a form of curse,” Lizard Priest said.

  “So you think so, too?” Goblin Slayer breathed. “That…thing…”

  “Mokele Mubenbe, you mean?”

  “Yes, that.” Goblin Slayer nodded. “This must mean that the one who captured it was some kind of spell caster.”

  “And a goblin…” Priestess shivered.

  A dark cave. Collapsed women. And a goblin shaman jabbering upon his throne.

  All of it matched up with memories burned into her mind. She gripped her staff tighter.

  “…shaman?”

  “Whoever it is, he’s nothing to sneeze at,” Dwarf Shaman muttered, regarding Goblin Slayer and Lizard Priest. “I’m surprised you’re both so calm…”

  “It is not the way of my people to keep a captive alive for our pleasure, but killing is our vocation.” Lizard Priest shook his head slowly from side to side, almost contemplatively. “It is considered proper custom to split open the guts of a superlative warrior and eat their heart.”

  “Me, I think it’ll be a couple of days before I want meat again,” Dwarf Shaman groaned.

  “That’s dwarves for you,” High Elf Archer said with a brave laugh.

  Goblin Slayer looked at Dwarf Shaman and nodded. Then he walked over to Priestess with his typical bold stride and looked down at her.

  “Goblin Slayer, sir, uh…”

  “We will stop here,” he said slowly. “When she has been buried, we will rest.”

  §

  They ultimately decided to give the crushed, smashed corpse of the adventurer a burial at sea.

  They wrapped the body in a cloth to hide its wounds then set it afloat in the canal leading to the river.

  “O Earth Mother, abounding in mercy, please, by your revered hand, guide the soul of one who has left this world.”

  Priestess’s prayer saw the woman’s soul to heaven, and Lizard Priest’s invocation ensured that she could rejoin the cycle of life.

  They didn’t expect any patrols to come looking down here at the bottom of the tower (goblins being lazy as they were), so the party found the cleanest spot they could, spread out some blankets, and went to sleep.

  Sleep… They would be lucky to get a few hours at most. It might not really restore much of their strength. What was
important, though, was that their spell casters would regain the spiritual energy they had expended.

  “……” Goblin Slayer leaned against the wall of the torture room, hugging the sword he’d taken. He didn’t want to light a fire, partly because of the elven wards on this place, but mostly because he didn’t want the smoke to alert anyone to their presence. Instead, the party took what rest they could gathered around the lantern, its shutters closed to keep the light at a minimum.

  Lizard Priest sat in the lotus posture, his hands formed into mudras and his eyes closed, as if meditating. Dwarf Shaman had taken a few good swigs of wine then flopped over, rested his head on his hands, and was soon snoring lustily.

  Then there was Priestess, her small blanket-clad body huddled in a corner. Even from this distance, her face looked bloodless and pale.

  “…Why aren’t you asleep?” a voice asked him suddenly.

  “I am resting,” Goblin Slayer replied casually.

  It was High Elf Archer, back from her shift on guard duty, standing in front of him and looking irritated.

  Goblin Slayer lifted his helmet slowly, looking up at her. “With one eye open.”

  “Hey, I can’t see how many eyes you’ve got in there,” she replied in annoyance. She put her hands on her hips and snorted, her long ears twitching, then sat down heavily next to him. It was such a natural movement; she didn’t look to Goblin Slayer for any kind of permission.

  “She didn’t look very happy, huh?” High Elf Archer loosened the string on her bow then industriously started retying it.

  “I imagine,” Goblin Slayer said from beside her. “If we only consider our actions, we are exactly like the goblins.”

  He was referring strictly to having given the bodies of their companions over to the river.

  They had been too late—whether it was by minutes, hours, or days. Otherwise, perhaps one or two of the captured adventurers might still have been alive.

  Never, at no time, could this have turned out like what had happened at that temple, with those nuns.

  “They perished, and we threw them in the river. It’s the same,” Goblin Slayer concluded curtly.