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Goblin Chapter 136: Not the Hunt I expected
🕑 Added 2025-08-09 21:07:43 +0000 UTCThe wind on the open plain, gritty with sleet and smelling of wild country, keened as it swept across the boundless waste.
Beneath that fine white mesh of snow, the distant edge of the Jade Forest arched like the spine of a crouching behemoth, casting a shadow that made the heart tighten.
A silent column was pushing toward the horizon.
Box wagons filled the convoy’s center. Out ahead on either side, a dozen free riders streaked like loosed arrows, bodies rising and falling with the jolts as they raced over the gently rolling ground.
They weren’t in neat ranks; they held a loose but responsive spread, alert to every quarter—eyes and spearpoint of the column. Through cloths masking the lower half of their faces, their sharp gazes swept the road ahead, the flanks, and any shadow that might hide a threat.
Behind came the heavy broad-wheeled freight wagons, piled with bulging burlap sacks, oak barrels, and oilskin-wrapped stores, everything cinched tight with thick ropes. The draft beasts blew heavy white breath; their steps were labored, but they clung to the deliberately measured pace.
The air felt frozen solid.
Only the dull grind of wheels on frozen earth, the crisp clop of hooves, the shriek of the wind, and the beasts’ harsh breathing wove together into the convoy’s droning march.
Inside the wagons, adventurers sat with eyes closed, regulating their breath.
Leaving town meant saying goodbye to safety.
They had to be ready, mind and body, to fight at any moment.
A piercing, slightly metallic cry dropped from far above, breaking the heaviness on the ground at once.
Canvas flaps lifted in unison as people looked up.
In the low, gray sky pressed down by clouds, a lithe black speck was circling with poised, powerful grace. Now and then sunlight lanced through a gap and spilled over it, flashing off its body in brief metallic glints.
A griffin.
Following the griffin’s line, Gauss looked down; the Jade Forest’s edge swelled in his view.
That cry was the signal: their destination was close.
A flat stretch at the forest’s fringe was chosen for a temporary camp.
The heavy wagons and logistics hands could not follow the fighters into the dangerous depths of the Jade Forest. They would slow the force and need protecting besides. Better to remain here and serve as the expedition’s support base.
The wagons were drawn up around the perimeter as makeshift fortifications. Inside the ring, tents sprang up in short order.
Gauss and Alia climbed down to stretch.
He tilted his head toward the trees not far off, surprised to see a stubborn green pressing through despite the sifted snow, as if the forest were wrestling with the weather to produce those layered bands of color.
But the temperature drop was real; the ground lay carpeted with leaves—the woods were withering.
“Can Echo fly in snowfall?” Gauss asked, looking at the raven perched on the guard of Alia’s forearm.
Echo was the name Alia had given the raven she’d recently bonded—because, as it was first learning human words, it loved to repeat what others said.
“It can.” Alia nodded, idly smoothing its glossy feathers. “We’re relying on it for intel this time.” As if it knew they were talking about it, the raven lifted its head, proud.
After a short rest, Eberhard gathered everyone taking part in the Winter Hunt. The specifics had been covered the day before, so there was no long speech.
The point was simply to hand each captain a map marked with that squad’s patrol sector.
The hundred-odd hunters were divided into roughly thirty squads—some larger, some as lean as Gauss’s two-person unit—averaging about four per team.
Gauss and Alia were Team 23.
As captain, Gauss stepped up to wait. When his turn came, Eberhard’s red eyes lingered on him with curious interest for a moment before he took a map from the table and passed it over.
“You’re Gauss?”
“Yes, Guildmaster.”
Gauss was a little surprised to hear his own name, but remembering there was a list, he kept his reaction down.
“Good,” Eberhard said with a faint smile and that low voice of his. “Be careful. If you run into something you can’t handle, fire a signal flare. I’ll come as fast as I can.”
“Understood,” said Gauss. That had been one of yesterday’s main points, too.
After the brief exchange, Gauss brought the map back to Alia.
On the way, he felt more than a few eyes on him.
Eberhard had practically just passed maps to the other captains; only Gauss had gotten a few quiet words. People noticed.
A lot of them were thinking the same thing: did the Guildmaster favor that adventurer with a taste for killing goblins?
“Do you know the Guildmaster?” Alia asked, voicing the obvious question.
Gauss shook his head, just as puzzled.
Before the Hunt he’d never had contact with Eberhard at all—no chance to, really. Word was that for the past two years the Guildmaster had been absorbed in personal cultivation, leaving administration to Vice-Guildmaster Sheryl and the scribe, and only showing himself for major operations like this.
Even so, Gauss had no idea why the man had singled him out.
Had Sheryl mentioned him? Or had the “Goblin Slayer” nickname really reached that far up?
No use puzzling it out.
“Let’s look at the map.”
He beckoned Alia over and spread it open.
The exact route had been kept under wraps back in town; they’d only been given team numbers. Not until they were outside the walls were they told the plan.
“That’s pretty deep,” Gauss said, tracing their assignment with a finger.
He’d gone into the Jade Forest before, but this sector was several times farther than he’d ever ventured.
If not for marching under the Winter Hunt banner, he would never have dared.
Still, that made it an opportunity—the deeper the forest, the more monsters, and the greater the variety.
They would rest tonight. At first light, the Hunt would begin.
At the first monster mustering point, Eberhard and several Black Iron adventurers would drive straight at the heart and kill the army’s leader—an ogre shaman. Gauss and the other Bronzes would be clearing the scattered or entrenched forces on the fringes.
Gauss and Alia’s two-person team had a sizeable fan-shaped sector.
If they had strength left after clearing it, they could swing over to support a neighbor.
Not for free, of course—extra kills still counted toward personal tallies. More work, more pay. A nudge toward initiative.
The rules were clear, though: no poaching targets already under assault—unless you found them first, or the other team asked for help.
With that in mind, Gauss and Alia ducked into their assigned tent to rest up.
The week-long hunt was about to begin.
The next day, deeper in the woods—
Gauss, Alia, and the gray wolf Ulfen threaded through the trees.
“This isn’t what I pictured the Winter Hunt would be,” Gauss said, taking in the hush.
Apart from the two of them and the wolf, the forest was quiet—no different from an ordinary commission.
He’d thought he might see Eberhard and the Black Irons in action, but the main front didn’t need lowly Bronzes underfoot.
Just as quartermasters would only drag on the fighters, so would they drag on the core strike force.
The swarming, all-hands battle he’d imagined—adventurers surging into a massed enemy—hadn’t appeared.
“You get used to it,” Alia said with a small smile.
Gauss might be the captain, but this was her second Winter Hunt; she was the more seasoned here and it showed. “Our objective today is a small detachment led by a half-ogre. First we find their exact position.”
Curious as he was about the main fight, Gauss had to focus on the enemy ahead.
“Echo’s back.”
Alia suddenly looked up.
Before the words were out, a dark shape dropped from the canopy and settled neatly on her bracer.
“Grah-grah!” croaked Echo, the raven.
Alia immediately invoked Speak with Animals and began to converse with it.
Woman and bird traded short bursts back and forth beneath the trees.
Comments
SquiddlyWinks
Oh shit what an opening! Cormac McCarthy vibes
