The Three Roads to Anvil - Part 2

This entry doesn’t surprise me that much.

It’s hardly uncommon for great warriors to get along with other great warriors, just as sly noblemen get along with other sly noblemen, so I could see the two getting along.

Both were living legends; both were warriors without match and both were outspoken about the High King and Taigstun’s actions.

Goblins-bane was infamous among other nobles for his curt and brutally honest words he’d share.

That said, I’m doubtful that someone as curt as Goblins-bane would say such callous things about the High King, even in the company of other like-minded noblemen.

Is this another fictitious creation of Lord Long-night to make it seem like he wasn’t the only one with such thoughts?

After all, the best way to tell a lie is to add an element of truth to it.

…Does that mean that Lord Long-night had some secret motive for writing his journal entries in this manner?

Did he want people to think badly of the High King and Taigstun, or is there some other reason behind this?

That said, there are elements to each of these journal entries that I do definitely believe are true, but I cannot stop myself from scanning over every single sentence, every single word, trying to deduce what is and isn’t the truth.

For one thing, I already know that what he wrote about the skirmish in a Goblin town has some embellishment in it, and all I can say for certain is that they won the battle and managed to make it to the city of Anvil.

The rest…I’m not so sure.

Date:20th of Gol (The 5th Month of the Year 204 of the 2nd Age)

Today, I and the members of my detachment have won our third battle in the Gold Crusade, one that will not be remembered by our people, nor recorded in our histories, for it is a mere skirmish with little significance in a much grander conflict.

Still, because of our victory, the low morale from the hard march is now all but gone, and I told the men that they could break open some of the best casks of ale to celebrate. Ancestors, I hope it’s enough to keep their spirits high for the rest of the march to Anvil.

Despite the relaxed air in camp, I feel strangely on edge.

Not angry, nor concerned, but anxious.

I worry that I might be overthinking things, or that perhaps my old mind has finally been ailed by some disease, and yet I can’t push these thoughts from my mind.

Soon after we had departed, our scouts returned and reported that there was a small goblin town ahead of us with a garrison of roughly six thousand of the bastards.

I and the other lords organised our ranks: phalanx and house guards in the vanguard with the knights behind them, men at arms and the Slayers behind them and the cavalry on the flanks. Then, we marched to the town’s limits and, as soon as we saw the town, we charged.

It had no walls, gates, towers or traps, so it was easy enough for us to push into the town.

The Goblins grabbed what flimsy weapons they could and tried to resist us, but we forced them back further into the town.

In the town’s centre, they tried to resist us, and many Goblins emerged from their huts, tents and houses to assail us from all sides, but their flanking attacks proved useless.

Our ram riders cut them down on the flanks and the phalanx continued to massacre the ones in the front, our archers shot theirs; soon, the Goblins broke and tried to flee. I and the rest of the cavalry pursued them, and we didn’t let a single one escape.

I wasn’t going to let them warn any other camps, warbands or towns ahead of us of the approaching army.

With the goblins dead, we ordered the men to gather their corpses in the tunnel we had come from to be left to rot which didn’t take long. Then, I had our medics gather our wounded in some of the bigger Goblin tents for the time being and had other soldiers gather our dead brothers in the centre of town, so that their names could be recorded and that they were given the respect that they deserve.

As the men were doing that, I, Sir Euwan and several of my house guards were walking around when I noticed something odd at one of the storehouses.

I crouched down to the ground and noticed that there were clearly defined wheel tracks leading from the storehouse and the tracks were heading down the tunnel towards Anvil.

“My lord?”

“Sir Euwan, could you go and check the other storehouses for supplies or food?”

I pushed it the doors open and found that the storehouse barely had any food in it; just a small pile of rotten food and meat with flies hovering over it.

“Surely, not to resupply our reserves, my-”

“Of course not.” I narrowed my eyes and closed the doors. “I want to see if these goblins would’ve starved to death within the next few days or not. And could you see if there are any tracks like these near them?”

While confused, Sir Euwan nodded and took half of my guards with him.

“Where did we pile up the dead Goblins?” I asked my remaining men.

“About a hundred metres into the tunnel to our rear, my lord.”

“Show me.”

The guards lead me to the pile of Goblin corpses, and they were already beginning to smell far worse than anything I had ever smelt before.

My guards covered their mouths and noses and recoiled in horror, but my mind was focused on something else.

At first, I didn’t get what it was that caught my attention and bothered me in the goblin town, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

Then, it hit me as I looked upon their dead.

The goblins were very thin and scrawny looking beasts, almost as if they were malnourished, just like the ones we had fought the day before and when we took back Stone Shard.

I hadn’t realised why this was so wrong to me until just now and it was because the last time I had seen a goblin was when I was last at Strangúld, many, many years ago, and I remember them looking different to how these ones before me did.

They were more muscular and well built; even the thinnest of them were twice as wide as the corpses before me.

“My lord!” Sir Euwan called to me, running up to my side, the guards right behind him.

“What did you find?”

“All of the storehouses in the town were practically empty, my lord, just like the one you investigated.”

I nodded and then turned back to the dead goblins before me.

“Sir Euwan, you’ve served at Strangúld with me, correct?”

“My lord?”

I shot him a look and he quickly nodded.

“Didn’t the goblins that we fought back then seem healthier, to you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Physically, they looked stronger than this, right?”

Sir Euwan inspected the goblins before us, then nodded. “I seem to remember them looking more well fed, my lord.”

I smiled and patted him on the back. “I’m glad to hear that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. Did you find tracks at the other storehouses as well?”

“We did, my lord. All of them lead to the tunnel to Anvil.”

I frowned and folded my arms.

“They emptied this town and took the supplies deeper into the tunnels,” I whispered.

“Perhaps they were raided by another warband?” Sir Euwan suggested. “Or perhaps they were low on food to begin with and so many left with the best of it for another camp with more food? Would goblins even be smart enough to do something like that, though?”

“They appear to have been smart enough to take the supplies from the storehouses with them when they left, so I don’t know if it’s that farfetched of an idea. I also don’t believe that this town was low on food; I think it’s more likely that they took it with them.”

“What makes you so certain, my lord?”

“Think about it. This town has enough pens for hundreds of livestock and enough storehouses to hold months’ worth of food and all of them are empty, aside from the rottenest and most disgusting of food that they left behind. In the military campaigns that I’ve read about from the surface and our own history, it wasn’t uncommon for armies to take all of the supplies and food from towns that they’ve taken or are ready to abandon, to prepare them for a better campaign or to take away resources from their enemies. It’s highly unlikely, but is it possible that the goblins have implemented such tactics as well?”

Sir Euwan pondered for a moment, and then said, “Maybe the goblins bred too much and abandoned this town?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say, my lord, that this town had enough food, tents and houses to hold twenty thousand goblins, but the goblins ended up breeding thirty thousand this year instead, putting their food situation in jeopardy. Perhaps the goblins decided to leave the weakest of the town’s members behind, taking all of their supplies and leaving them to die, either by our hands or from starvation. Then, once they’re all dead, the other goblins would move back into the town.”

I smiled at him and said, “Would they be smart enough to do that?”

Sir Euwan let out a small laugh and said, “Perhaps. Perhaps not, my lord.” Sir Euwan then turned to me and said, “I cannot help but feel like we’re overthinking this. Also, my lord.” Sir Euwan leaned closer to me and whispered. “Perhaps it’s best to discuss this in private and away from the men.”

I turned around and saw that the men near us, both my personal guards and soldiers from the main force, were looking our way, their expressions were dark and filled with worry.

I smiled at them and then loudly proclaimed, “I guess that early victory drink I took has been fucking with my mind!”

Sir Euwan chuckled and said, “I did tell you, my lord, not to start on the casks of ale before we’d made camp.”

“Well, perhaps I’d be willing to let all the men enjoy such fine ale with me if they got our camp set up within the next two hours.”

“You heard your lord! Go forth, set up camp, and prepare to get pissed on the finest of brews!”

The men roared back and eagerly went about their duties.

“Thank you, Sir Euwan,” I whispered, and he then departed from my side with a nod.

I finished organising the men across the camp for the day and then told the other lords that we should open our best ale for the troops to drink their fill on, and then I returned to my tent and began writing.

Honestly, I had hoped that writing down everything that had happened today would help me process everything and, instead, it has made me even more concerned that there is something more troubling going on.

Our knowledge of the goblins only extends to what records remain from before the Dread Dawn and the limited amount of information we’ve gathered about them from their attacks on our cities.

We know little about their hierarchy, except for that they follow war chieftains who lead their warbands, and we know little about their society, or if they even have anything resembling a society.

They have camps, towns and our old cities, but do they have anything else like we do?

Lords?

Champions?

A king, even?

Perhaps what is more worrying to me is that the goblins might have become much smarter since the last time that I’ve fought them.

Ha!

Maybe they’ve even got a leader capable of intelligent thoughts, or a tactician who knows how to out manoeuvre an army?

No, there’s no way.

How would they ever learn war tactics without fighting in a war?

Maybe from the Dread Dawn when they first took cities from us, but that would mean there are goblins alive today that are more than a thousand years old.

We don’t even know if goblins live that long but, given their eagerness to fight, kill one another and die, I doubt there are any that could be that old, even if they could live that long.

The dumb bastards would’ve killed each other long before then.

Ancestors forgive me for thinking of something so stupid.

After all, had the goblins possessed such a leader, they’d have broken through Strangúld a dozen times over by now and be on the way to taking another city from us.

It would seem that my body has reached its limit for the night.

I should get some sleep, but, hmm, I wonder.

What would a goblin with a good sense of strategy and tactics do?

At the very least, goblins know how to launch surprise attacks and ambushes against us, but they’ve never managed anything better than that.

I know what I would do, but that’s with dwarven men, not their kind.

Ah, I shouldn’t think of such things.

It’s late; I need rest and, come the morrow, I’m sure I’ll think of this as nothing more than a delusion of my drained mind.

With my Ancestors blessings, I hope I’ll have a better rest tonight than I have the previous few nights.