Goblin Slayer, Vol. 14

Priestess’s eyes briefly went wide, but then she managed, “Oh, yes!” and nodded. “This way, please!” It took her a second; she’d been trying to figure out how she could carry the pot herself or at least help.

She led her friend over to a great communal washbasin set up against the outside wall, which they politely borrowed. They carried it clatteringly back to where Priestess had set up her equipment…

“All right, and…there!”

“Okay, here goes!” said Padfoot Waitress, and then she poured the boiling contents of the stewpot into the washbasin. The murky, gray liquid was lye, made with ash. It smelled, but not like cooking; the girls looked at each other and giggled. “Life is tough for you adventurers. You do this every time you go off somewhere?” Padfoot Waitress asked. Then she added under her breath, “I sure couldn’t handle it.”

The padfoot looked at the items scattered around the cloth. A grappling hook and pitons, devices that could be strapped to one’s shoes to prevent slipping on snowy paths, and many other things one rarely encountered in daily life. She leaned forward, taking a good look; she seemed just like a child eagerly exploring the wares of a shop.

Priestess (dimly aware of Padfoot Waitress’s tail wagging in her peripheral vision) nodded. “I’m worried about bugs. The longer you leave things sitting, the more work they need when you take them out.”

“Yeah, fleas are so gross.”

“I’m concerned about lice, too.”

The girls shared a firm nod. Better to put in the effort to clean the items than to take along any unwanted little stowaways. Nobody wanted to be bitten by bugs—but that went double for young ladies at a certain time in their lives.

Thus it was only natural that their conversation should turn in that direction. “Nobles put dark stuff under their eyes, right?” Padfoot Waitress asked, gesturing with a padded paw.

“That’s right,” Priestess said.

“What’s it called again? Eyebrow black? Eye shadow? I hear that
face-whitening powder mixed with rouge and pulverized malachite keeps bugs away, too.”

“That sounds expensive…”

“Better believe it. I probably couldn’t afford that stuff if I worked my whole life.”

The cosmetics in question were immaterial to the padfoot girl and her cleric friend. They might be taken with the idea of the stuff, but they would never get their hands on it. Anyway, it wouldn’t be very amenable to sweaty kitchen work, and a bit of adventuring would surely take it right off.

Then again, I’ve heard padfoots don’t sweat very much
, Priestess thought. Still, any cosmetics would probably run with all the steam in the kitchen. The two of them smiled at each other as if to say,
Oh well
.

“Okay, I’d better be getting back,” Padfoot Waitress said.

“Sure thing… And thank you!” Priestess pressed a silver coin she’d had ready into the fuzzy paw that waved at her. Preparing lye took time and effort as well, and it was only fair to compensate the woman for that.

Priestess watched her friend head back to work, then breathed. “Okay!”

She pulled off her boots and socks and rolled up the hem of her robe, then tied up her sleeves, eager to get started. Then she took the winter clothes and tossed them into the barrel of lye. Finally, she hopped into the barrel with her bare feet and started stomping on the laundry.

“Mmmm…” The steaming lye was pleasantly warm, salving her weary toes.

But oops—she didn’t have time to stand there. She started working her feet up and down,
sploosh, sploosh
. “Hup! And hup…”

Maybe I should have offered to do everyone else’s equipment while I was at it.

Hmm, should she have? She wasn’t even sure the other members of her party had winter outfits stashed away. As experienced adventurers, they probably knew how to handle themselves when it came to things like that.

I should ask Goblin Slayer.

Priestess nodded to herself even as she worked her feet; then she glanced up at a window on the second floor of the Guild: High Elf Archer’s room, which constantly looked as if a tornado had gone through it. She wasn’t sure if any winter preparations were happening in that disaster zone, but…
I should crash the place and find out
, she thought. Then she nodded again, bravely, full of determination, a sense of mission, and a grim resolution. Whereupon…

“Oh, ugh…”

“You can’t get careless just because the new adventurers aren’t watching.
Sigh…
I thought we were done getting so dirty now that we’ve left the sewers, but I guess not.”

“Aw, can’t say as I mind much, y’know?”

Priestess heard three somewhat exasperated but ultimately lively voices. She glanced over and, indeed, saw three of her friends. A boy and a girl dressed in ordinary day clothes, accompanied by someone with a pair of bouncing white ears. They each carried an armload of blood- and mud-stained equipment.

“Another successful day?” Priestess called, smiling, partly teasing but partly sincerely appreciative.

“You know it. I let Masher do the talking…or mashing or whatever!” the boy said, swinging an invisible club. Priestess was well aware that the young man had perfected the art of using both the club and the sword at once.
He’s really come a long way
, she thought—but then she chuckled at herself. She wasn’t going to let herself get so caught up in being the More Experienced Colleague that she started to act condescending.

“Sorry about this,” Priestess said, glancing down at her feet in embarrassment. “I’ll be done in a few minutes…” Then she picked up the pace of her stomping.

The girl wearing the sigil of the Supreme God jabbed her friend—who’d gotten a little distracted by Priestess’s bare feet—with her elbow and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. We’re only running late because
somebody
was dragging his feet. We can wait our turn.”

“Hoo-ee, those are winter clothes. Goin’ back to the mountains,
are ye?” the white-furred rabbit-girl asked, peering at Priestess’s laundry. It seemed they’d only just been there. Once again, Priestess found herself—without really meaning to—watching the harefolk girl’s ears bob up and down.

“The mountains?” Priestess asked. The harefolk girl leaned forward: ears, back, behind, and the round, poofy tail situated right on top of it. “Beyond them, actually.”

“Hoo-ee… Nother long trip. Me, I’ve never been out that far,” the girl said easily; it sounded like she didn’t know much more about the north than Priestess did. So much for Priestess’s (admittedly already slim) hope that the harefolk might be able to give her some information about what to expect. “I heard it was real scary round those parts—I’ve been told to stay away or the roughnecks might get me.”

“R-roughnecks? You mean, like, bad people?”

“I tried to get ’em to tell me, but they’d just go on about gettin’ robbed. Point is, well, I guess you oughtta keep your distance.”

Apparently, these were strong people of some kind. Priestess blinked, still stuck on the unfamiliar word. It seemed the harefolk had heard this from her grandfather. So had this been a long time ago? But then again, harefolk generations seemed to pass awfully swiftly, so…?

“Damn, you’re so lucky. I wanna go somewhere like that,” the young man said, gazing up into the blue sky. “I’d love to hit up, you know, like, Neverwinter on the north of the Sword Coast or whatever…”

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere quite that famous…” Priestess smiled a little at the names, all-but-forgotten realms spoken of in fairy tales. She didn’t think they were exactly unexplored lands, even if she’d heard of them only in stories.

“Yeah, but didn’t that dark elf ranger do his adventuring up north?” the boy asked.

“Dummy, that’s just one of the sagas,” the cleric girl said with a sniff. “You very, very rarely encounter a good dark elf.”

“I guess not…,” Priestess said. She’d encountered dark elves herself
at the harvest festival, in the desert, and indirectly in connection with the offertory wine.
Maybe I just don’t know that many elves
, she thought. She was getting closer and closer to High Elf Archer, but she didn’t know much about the young scout woman.

A good dark elf. The incredible ranger with the two-handed style was just a legend—again, a fairy tale. Yes: It was precisely because he was a fairy-tale character that he was able to go to the places he did. Her, though, she wasn’t going anywhere like that—at least, she didn’t think so. Maybe she just didn’t know it.

“If
we
went anywhere near Icewind Dale, the only thing that would happen is we’d be hit with Horror and die,” the cleric girl said, her ruthlessly realistic assessment of the situation crushing the boy’s innocent hopes.

“Yeah, but if ye’re going at the nation’s own behest… Well, that’s practically a Gold-level adventure, ain’t it?” the harefolk girl said.

The sharp edge of
that
reality brought Priestess to a screeching halt. The water splashed as she froze in mid-stomp on the laundry.

“N-n-no…” Her voice was shaking. “I really d-don’t…think so… I don’t think…”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t been aware of the idea. In fact, she had been aware of it and had been trying very hard not to think about it. She, at least, didn’t fit the description. She was doing the best she could as a member of her party, but she still had a long way to go with her strength and abilities.

Priestess took a deep breath to calm herself, then silently began working the clothes again. Her friends, however, weren’t about to let her get away that easily.

“You’re Sapphire, though, aren’t you?”

“She sure is!”

“Urgh…” All she could do was stare intently at the ground. She knew the boy and girl were smirking at her, but grumbling about it wouldn’t gain her anything.

“Oh, that reminds me!” The harefolk girl, off on her own planet as
usual, clapped her furry hands. “As long as you’re headin’ that way, miss, you think I could ask you to do a little job for me?”

“A job…?” Priestess looked at her even as she continued working the clothes underfoot.

“Uh-huh!” The white ears bobbed again. “I wrote a letter. I’d like to get it, and a bit of cargo, over to the mountains.”

“A letter? Okay. But… What’s this about cargo?” Priestess didn’t necessarily object—in fact, she was perfectly happy to take the job—but what was this about? She cocked her head, and Harefolk Hunter chuckled, almost with embarrassment, before riffling through her belongings. And why did the girl and boy with her look so happy?

“Here! This is it!” the hunter exclaimed, proudly displaying the item she’d finally come up with: a troll fang.

§

“…So you’ll be going away again, then.”

“Yes, sir.” Goblin Slayer nodded ambivalently. “I believe it will be quite a distance.”

“I see,” was all the owner of the farm, seated across from him, said; then he nodded—more firmly and confidently than Goblin Slayer—and let out a breath.

They were in the dining room of the farm’s main house. It was a little too early to use the word
evening
, but it felt a bit late for
afternoon
. When Goblin Slayer had gotten back from town, he’d found the owner of the farm before his friend. He was sitting in a chair, evidently resting after having done his work in the fields.

Goblin Slayer had pulled out a chair for himself as well, but when he sat down, the other man greeted him with only, “You’re back?” That was the attitude he always took with Goblin Slayer, but that was exactly why Goblin Slayer was a little concerned by it. He wasn’t sure what to say. Or rather, what the owner was trying to say.

Ultimately, still not sure himself, Goblin Slayer had told the owner about the new quest. And the result…

“Well, it’s not my job to tell you what to do.”

…had been those few simple words. Goblin Slayer grunted behind the visor of his helmet, not quite sure how to take them.

The owner glanced at him, although he probably didn’t register Goblin Slayer’s discomfort. “It’s your work. And when a man starts a job, it’s irresponsible to object.”

“I see… You think so, sir?”

“I sure do,” the farm owner said quietly, nodding. “It’s up to you to take care of it and do the best you can with it.”

“…Yes, sir.”

“But make sure you tell the girl what you’re up to.”

“I intend to.”

“Thought so.” The owner smiled faintly, then got slowly to his feet. As a yeoman, an independent farmer, his legs were still strong, and his step was still sprightly. Nonetheless, the shadow of old age seemed to hover around him; he looked tired somehow.

He departed the dining area, going somewhere else in the house and leaving Goblin Slayer by himself. Goblin Slayer, who had never once fully understood all the emotions accumulated within himself.

Think. That was all he could do.

The girl…

She would probably be bringing the cows back to the barn about now. And taking care of the camel, perhaps. Whatever she was doing, he should go and talk to her. Very few things got better for being put off.

Goblin Slayer’s chair clattered as he stood. As he left the house, he could hear the canary chirping behind him. He shut the door, blocking out the sound, then took a breath.

The world was a gruesome red-black, the color of deep twilight. It was already getting quite cold. When he exhaled, the breath fogged as it escaped through the slats of his visor.

Ah…

A year already. A year since he had gotten that young woman caught up in a goblin hunt. How much had he really moved forward in that time?

He followed the white fog of his breath with his eyes as it drifted into the sky shimmering against the darkening blue. Flying above, higher than the clouds but lower than the stars, was a single sparrowhawk.

How long ago had it been since his heart had last raced to the stories of that great sage? He couldn’t quite remember now whether he’d heard them from his sister or sung by a bard. So many of the stories he’d heard and imagined again and again in his youth were ancient, patchy.

He’d been to the elf village. Visited the capital. Delved the Dungeon of the Dead. Braved the eastern desert. And now he was going to go beyond the mountains to the north. He’d always wanted to. Always assumed he never would. Always, from his youth. He’d understood even then that he would live out his whole life in that tiny speck of a village. Had he even once imagined that things might turn out like this? He wasn’t—

“Huh? When’d you get back?” His old friend came walking toward him, her smile obscured by her own fogging breath. “Welcome home!” she said with an energy that belied how tired she must have felt after doing her day’s work.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’m back.”

The two of them weren’t quick to return to the main house. Instead, they stood for a moment in silence, their shadows stretching out in the red light of dusk, and then they started walking.

They were heading for the fence that surrounded the farm. Cow Girl leaned on it, as she’d done once long before, in a place that was not here. It had seemed so easy to hop over when she was small, yet somehow as an adult, she found she couldn’t do it.

“I wonder why,” she said.

“I don’t know.” Goblin Slayer shook his head. He really didn’t know. When he was a child, he’d assumed adults could do anything, and yet…

What
can
I do?

Just looking at the sun as it sank beyond the horizon on the far side of the square put the thought in his head. The fact that just a few months before, he’d been headed beyond that horizon seemed impossible…

No. The sun sets in the west.

The exact opposite of the direction he’d gone. Behind his visor, he very nearly smiled at his own stupidity. It gave him the push he needed to speak.

“I’ll be traveling far away again.”

“On an adventure?”

“That’s how it seems to me.” He nodded—she was almost looking up into his visor—and then he peered once more toward the horizon. The very edge of the Four-Cornered World. He’d once gone to a tower that had nearly allowed him to touch it. But so what? It wasn’t as if doing so would have unveiled to him all the secrets of the world.

And anyway, that hadn’t been
his
adventure. This one would be. Even if he still felt a substantial internal resistance to calling it so.

“It’ll be beyond the mountains to the north,” he said.

“Hmm!” His old friend kicked the air. Then, suddenly, she turned to him, and her red hair in the dying sunlight made her appear to be wreathed in flames. Her eyes, shining like jewels, focused keenly on him through his visor. How many times had he looked her right in the eye like this? Even though he thought he lacked the courage.

“Are you waiting for me to give you permission to go again?”

“…”

She certainly wasted no time. And when had she started doing that? He felt as if she’d been that way since they were young… And certainly since they had been reunited. It was she who understood him, better than anyone else, better than he understood himself. He could hide nothing from her, nor did he wish to.

“Yes,” he said with a nod. The honest answer. He’d tried to look big once already and had regretted it. Once was enough. “I know I’m pathetic.”

“I guess so…”

She refused to deny it, but she smiled a little uneasily and repeated, “I guess so. Pathetic, and troublesome, and maybe not very cool-looking.”

“…”

“But… Mm. I like that, I think. I like you.”

He had to inhale deeply to get himself breathing again. “Is that…so?”

“It sure is.” His old friend gave a gentle kick—the way she began so many of her movements—and hopped down from the fence. She landed lightly next to him and placed her hand over his own gloved one. He turned his helmet and found her looking at him from so close that he was afraid he might bump into her with his visor.

“
See you real soon.
Is that good enough?”

“…”

Her eyes were so close. Her breath seemed like it might float past his visor and into his helmet. Her cheeks were red.

“Yes… I think so.”

“Good!”

The sun in the sky was sinking past twilight, but the smile on her face was as bright as the dawn as she nodded at him. “Don’t forget a souvenir, okay? I’ll be looking forward to finding out what you bring me. But, uh, no animals this time, all right?”

“A souvenir?”

“I guess we’d better eat dinner first, huh? Ha-ha, gotta do things in the right order.”

She was already trotting toward the main house, pulling him along. Wanting to be sure he kept up with her, Goblin Slayer took the first of many steps forward.