Goblin Slayer, Vol. 15

“What? You can keep those lumpy donkeys even on your grassy fields?” Priestess asked.

“…It’s called a camel,” Baturu said.

The girls’ conversation was almost as noisy as the clacking of the wagon wheels.

It had started when— Well, what
had
started it? Priestess had talked to Baturu, had kept bringing the conversation back to her, while Baturu gave curt responses. This had gone easily enough as they left town and got out into the open field. It was too soon to say Baturu had opened up to Priestess, but already she was no longer driving her away.

Gradually, oh so gradually, approaching someone’s heart—that was Priestess’s way. Something she had learned from her training at the Temple of the Earth Mother.

Or maybe more accurately, it’s just the way she is
, High Elf Archer thought idly from her place beside Lizard Priest on the driver’s bench.

Humans matured so quickly. You looked away for a second, and suddenly they had grown up. In High Elf Archer’s eyes, at least, the little girl who used to cower before goblin hunts was gone. Whether or not she herself realized it, she had become a proper adventurer.

“…They provide hair and even milk. And they’re essential for carrying things.”

On top of Priestess’s natural personability, there was the unmistakable fact that Baturu was looking for a way to feel a bit better. She was out in the field, under the open sky, yet she was trapped beneath a cover, squeezing down so she could fit. To be unable to feel the wind against her skin must have been intolerable for a centaur.

Above all, who wouldn’t be happy to have someone inquire sweetly and innocently about their home? Spotting the opportunity and smoothly beginning a conversation—that was one of Priestess’s strengths.

She probably just thinks she’s “trying her best.”

“Carrying things…?”

A sudden, startling whisper could be heard amid the rattling of the wagon. It came from Goblin Slayer, who was sitting on a corner of the luggage rack now that he had traded guard duty with High Elf Archer. It was hard to even tell if he was awake or asleep under that helmet.

Baturu had almost forgotten about the suit of armor; the way the voice emerged from it so abruptly sent a shiver through her ears and tail.

“That thing has humps. It can’t be easy to pile items on it,” Goblin Slayer said.

“I-it’s not that hard…” Baturu couldn’t hide the initial scratch in her voice despite the noise of the vehicle. “You simply wrap a
tereg
, a cotton cloth, between the humps and pass a
shata
, a structural frame, through it. It forms an excellent and stable place for goods.”

“In between the humps?” Goblin Slayer grunted softly. “It only has one hump, does it not?”

“No, two,” Baturu replied. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Hmm…” Goblin Slayer fell into silent thought for a moment, then said quickly, “How do you handle them?”

“We use a
morin khuur
. It has a calming effect on camels.”

“
Morin khuur
.”

“It’s a musical instrument. Exactly what kind…” Baturu moved her hands in the air, sketching out the shape of the instrument, but her ears sat back on her head. “…I can’t quite describe.”

“I see,” Goblin Slayer said, and then he went quiet again. Baturu watched him suspiciously, unsure whether the conversation was over.

Ah
, Priestess thought, a giggle escaping her. She could easily picture the camel they kept on the farm. If Dwarf Shaman was playing possum (did they even have possums in this part of the world?), he must have noticed it, too—and if that was why he was keeping quiet…

“And how do you use a camel’s milk and hair?” Priestess, suspecting she was supposed to make the next move, asked Baturu.

“Well… When you think of camels, you think of
airag
.”

“Um… Which means…?”

“It’s an alcohol made from milk. But on its own, it’s very sour, so we add sugar and distill it as well.”

Priestess offered a genuinely impressed “ahhh.” She wondered if Lizard Priest could hear them from the driver’s seat. He would no doubt find the subject very interesting.

It wasn’t clear what Baturu made of Priestess’s reaction, but she chuckled. “So you know about distilling. I wasn’t sure you had the technology here.”

Yes, Priestess knew—although she didn’t say so. She knew
about
it, but she didn’t actually know how it was done. In her mind, it was akin to alchemy. She was sure a cleric of the God of Knowledge, or perhaps of Wine, would know all about it. Or maybe a follower of the sadistic god like the
húsfreya
up north… But they didn’t have one of those around.

Anyway…

“It’s really amazing that you’re able to do that out on the plain,” she said.

“Well, it does require some tools,” Baturu replied.

Anyway, this wasn’t the place for an intellectual pissing contest. And Priestess really was genuinely impressed.

“Then there’s hair,” Baturu said. She seemed to be in better spirits now, her cheeks flushing and the words coming more and more readily. “Camel hair. It’s very good stuff, soft and thick. We make thread from it and use it for weaving.”

“It sounds so different from sheep’s wool,” Priestess offered.

“It’s completely different,” Baturu said. She didn’t seem to realize the expression that had been on her face until that moment, but she suddenly appeared to think she had talked too much. “Completely different,” she repeated, looking away pointedly.

For crying out loud
, High Elf Archer thought. She found the entire scene amusing, fun, and endlessly exciting. She grabbed a leaf that came fluttering by on the wind and put it to her lips, blowing through it to create a rich sound that carried up to the sky.

“You’re quite good at that,” Lizard Priest commented.

High Elf Archer opened her mouth just enough to say, “Eh, y’know,” her long ears flicking, looking like leaves themselves.

She grinned like a cat at the way Lizard Priest rolled his eyes merrily beside her, then bit down on the leaf. Swinging her leg, which hung lazily from the driver’s bench, there under the blue sky she played a melody that seemed beyond anything that should be able to come from a simple leaf. It grabbed the attention of everyone under the cover—Baturu and all the adventurers—as well as every living thing in the wide field outside. In the hands of a high elf, it seemed, even a grass flute could produce the music of heaven. It was calm, peaceful, and warm; all the Four-Cornered World seemed to bless her and her music then.

It was one of those rare moments, like floating on the surface of water, that seemed as if it would go on forever. Even elves, with their nigh-immortal life spans, did not meet many moments like this.

Time itself might be without end, but the time we can spend with those we love is limited. Thus, the only thing that could bring an end to this scene would be the arrival at their destination…

“Ohhh, for—!”

…or if something happened that she certainly did not wish.

Frowning mightily and releasing her leaf back to the wind, High Elf Archer stood up on the driver’s bench. The first to react was Goblin Slayer, who had been sitting silently listening to her play. He clasped the sword at his hip, sat up, and asked sharply: “Goblins?”

“Sadly,” High Elf Archer cried, casting aside any high elf–ish elegance, “you’re right!”

§

“If we had to have a random encounter, I wish it could’ve been a dragon!” High Elf Archer exclaimed.

“Yes, it might indeed be quite interesting to be annihilated by one!” Lizard Priest said.

High Elf Archer managed to climb up on top of the wagon cover while she was complaining; Lizard Priest snapped the reins and laughed.

The wagon bounced down the road, going…well, not like the wind, exactly. And they could definitely see enemies around. They were only goblins, though, and couldn’t possibly catch a wagon on foot.

“GROOORGB!!”

“GBOG! GRORGB!!”

“GRBBB!!”

If they’d stolen the secret of riding, however, that was different.

The goblins rode clinging to the backs of their wolves—really, wargs—slowly but surely closing the gap. Did they somehow communicate with the fell canines, or did they simply hold the reins and hope for the best? That might forever remain a mystery, but
goblins
was still a dangerous word nevertheless.

Dwarf Shaman glared back out from under the wagon cover, though the frown on his face didn’t stop him from sipping his fire wine. “Maybe your whistling drew ’em here,” he said.

“Yeah, sure. Or maybe they were attracted by the smell of a delicious dwarf!” (She then added sotto voce that perhaps goblins didn’t mind parasites—her half whisper cut through the air like a shot.)

“GRGB?!”

The goblin tumbled from the lead warg, slamming into the ground, everything above his neck blown away. From the way the animals behind split left and right, leaping over his body, maybe the goblins really did have control of their mounts. Then again, even the now-riderless warg continued straight ahead, unperturbed by the loss of its rider.

“WARRG?!”

High Elf Archer’s second volley finished it off. She drew more bud-tipped arrows from her quiver. “I wish these riders were a little stupider…”

“How many are there?” Goblin Slayer asked from inside the wagon, gazing out over the field.

“Maybe ten of them, from what I can see. But I think there might be more in the distance!” came the answer from up top.

Goblin Slayer grunted softly. He hated open spaces. Confined areas were so much easier.

“Um, here you go…!” Priestess said, fetching his short bow and a quiver from the baggage. She didn’t know how to shoot—she’d learned slinging, but it would be difficult from a moving vehicle. Instead, she busied herself making sure Goblin Slayer was armed.

“That helps,” he said, giving the bowstring a quick tug to check the fit, then nocking an arrow into the bow and pulling it back. It made a noisy, unpleasant
creak
, nothing like the musical twanging of High Elf Archer’s shots.

His arrow flew over the field in a low arc, piercing the foreleg of one of the wargs with a
thock
.

“WGGR?!”

The creature yelped and threw its rider. At this speed, knowing how to land safely from a fall wouldn’t help much—and goblins didn’t know how to do that in the first place. The monster landed headfirst, bounced a few times, and stopped moving, dead.

“That’s one, for starters.”

“Hey, not a bad shot,” High Elf Archer commented, peeking into the wagon (upside down). “I didn’t know you could use a bow.”

“Not as well as you.”

“Well, naturally!”

The elf was bursting with confidence. She disappeared back above the wagon, her braid bouncing behind her like a tail. Priestess looked up, but there wasn’t so much as a dimple in the wagon cover; her much older friend hardly even seemed to be there. Such was the athleticism of the high elves—humans couldn’t hope to match them.

“Hey, help me down,” Baturu now said. She was crouched in the cramped luggage area, trying to find a way to stand up.

“Help you down?” Priestess repeated, starting to her feet. “You want to fight?!”

“Of course I do!”

As if in answer to Baturu’s shout (though of course not really), a
hand spear came whooshing at the wagon—although it was a crude product and a poor throw, not even managing to lodge in the wood.

“GROOGB! GORRRBBG!”

“WARGGW!!”

A pack horse harnessed to a wagon couldn’t hope to match the pace of a warg. The goblins, convinced that they had made up the gap by their own skill, cheered and threw spears at the wagon. Most of them barely reached the vehicle, and those that did mostly bounced off it. But a spare few tore through the cover, their rough-hewn tips savaging the cargo.

Still…

Never overconfident, never letting her guard down, Priestess took a deep breath and assessed the situation calmly. “Even if they catch us, we should be able to handle them!”

“They’d never beat us, but I’d hate to let them think they’ve got us on the run!” Baturu said. Her attitude was as sharp and true as a blade.

Priestess cast an uncertain glance around the inside of the wagon. Goblin Slayer was mumbling, “Two…three,” as he killed goblins, driving back the party’s pursuers. High Elf Archer was about the same business. Lizard Priest was working the reins, urging the horse to go ever faster.

It was Dwarf Shaman whose eyes she finally met. He was enough of an old hand to know that the spell caster had nothing to do at this moment. Instead, he looked at Priestess and Baturu as if to ask whether they had something interesting for him. “Really think you can do it?” he asked.

“A toothless dog does not howl,” Baturu replied with the sharpness of someone who thought she’d been insulted. In Priestess’s eyes, her small body (well, the small
human
part of her body) seemed to be pulsing with life. A fireball just before it flew, embers glowing in the hearth: For some reason, that’s what Priestess saw.

Dwarf Shaman ran a hand through his white beard, then called to his party leader, who was busy firing arrows out from under the cover of the wagon. “I think it’s time to let the young lady show us what she can do.”

“Hrm…” Goblin Slayer grunted softly, meanwhile unleashing yet another volley. It couldn’t be easy to mentally calculate where both a moving wagon and moving wargs would be relative to each other a few seconds in the future: The little arrow pierced a warg’s foot without ever slowing it down.

Goblin Slayer sighed. “How does it look to you?”

“I doubt there are many who can match a centaur on the open plain!” Lizard Priest replied in a howl from the driver’s seat, where he held the party’s fate literally in his hands. It must have nettled him not to be able to be part of the fight himself, yet still the thrill of battle coursed through his veins. He showed himself to be a very rational lizardman, however, for despite his excitement, he resisted treating the wagon like a chariot. “They do say one must test a horse to know its quality…”

“Very well,” Goblin Slayer said. At that moment, he had no idea whether it was the right choice or not. And it was pointless to know you had made the right choice only later. He nodded. “I’ll cover you.”

“Excellent!” Baturu exclaimed and drew her katana, leaping atop the luggage rack.

Priestess hurried over, preparing to help tighten the clasps of her armor, which she had loosened. “I’ll help you…!”

“My thanks!”

Priestess didn’t recognize the armor, which came from the plain and, more, belonged to a centaur. But it was still just armor. She could figure out how to close a clasp.

She’d seen the others handling their equipment as long as she had been a part of this party; she was more than capable of helping here. She hustled from one side of Baturu to the other, and meanwhile the fight went on.

“I assume you heard that,” Goblin Slayer called over his head. “Can you work with us?”

“Make it an order, not a question!” High Elf Archer shot back.

No problem, then. Goblin Slayer drew back his bow and let loose at the nearest goblin.

“GORGB?!”

“WAGGG?!”

At the same time, a bud-tipped arrow came down and pierced the now-riderless warg through the jaw from top to bottom. The creature’s corpse went tumbling, forcing the riders behind to swerve to avoid it.

An opening.

“Ready!” Priestess called. Baturu rose to her feet. Lizard Priest registered all this from his place up front.

“Shall I reduce our speed, then?” he asked.

“Drive like the wind, Master Lizard!” Baturu cried, all but dropping backward out of the wagon and hitting the ground running. It was incredible; she lost no speed at all and was already going full tilt when her hooves met the earth.

Just one step. That was all it took for her to be a body’s length ahead of the enemy, as if charting the squares as she went.

“Ha!
Ha!
” Her laughter cut through the wind, which caught her hair and tail, causing them to billow out behind her like proud war banners. The muscles of her equine body worked visibly, tearing up the ground, carrying her along as though on an ocean of grass.

She was like a blue gale, a streak of cerulean light tearing across the green of the field. Priestess couldn’t look away from her. This wasn’t how she had seemed when she was asserting herself in the Adventurers Guild or when she had been chatting on the wagon. Then she’d seemed alive but not alive. She wasn’t where she
belonged
.

Who knew that someone could be so beautiful, born to the one purpose of running through the fields? Priestess had never known before. Even Dwarf Shaman stopped drinking his wine, and High Elf Archer let her hand slacken on her bow.

As for Goblin Slayer…who could be sure?

“GOROOGB!”

“GBBGBR! GRROGBRRG!!”

The goblins, naturally, had no appreciation of such things. In their eyes, the centaur was simply foolish prey who had jumped down right into their clutches.

A woman! A girl! Big. Highly edible. Good to
play
with. Fine equipment. What a waste.

Skin her! Break her legs. How she’ll scream! How she’ll cry! What fun it will be!

You back off—I will do it! Don’t be stupid; she’s mine. Mine. Mine. Mine! Mine!

Goblins think only about themselves. They always assume it is they who will get whatever it is they want. Thus the first goblin didn’t
think
as he charged ahead at his quarry. The second goblin, oh so smart (or so he thought himself), held back, mocking his companion for an idiot.

It saved his life.

“Hrrraaah!”

A single swipe of the sword, Baturu’s great katana kicking up a gale in the process. She was like the swordsman of elven legend, her slash a silver beam that seemed like it could cut all the grass in the four corners in a single stroke. So sharp it was almost audible, it knocked the goblin in the van off his mount.

“GROGB?!”

“WGRG?!?!”

The warg’s head went flying, and the goblin’s hideous face was cloven in two. What must the “smart” goblin have thought as he saw his companion turn into a fountain of dark blood?

Whatever he might have thought he would do next, he would never get a chance to do it.

“Yaaaaah!”

The second strike came with a step in that seemed impossible from “horseback.” From shoulder level, the sword hewed the goblin in half diagonally like a piece of firewood.

“GBBBRORGB?!?!”

“Hah! Yah!”

To the right, to the left: Blood flew in a tempest as Baturu laughed. And all the while, arrows came from the wagon, whittling down the goblins’ numbers—this battle was as good as over. Each time the centaur made her blade howl, the goblins—and their wargs—took fright. But fright afforded them no escape.

“……”

For a very long time, Priestess didn’t blink; taking in the sight, she almost forgot to breathe. Without a horse’s head in front of her to get in the way, Baturu was able to fight vastly more effectively than
a mounted human—not that Priestess, unschooled in tactics, could know how to do that. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had.

Priestess understood only this: There were a great many more able fighters than Baturu in the Four-Cornered World. Heavy Warrior with his greatsword. Spearman with his polearm. Even the
goði
of the north and his lightning-clad blade. And for sheer destructive power, there was the secret technique she had seen, just once, from Female Knight. No doubt any experienced warrior watching Baturu fight would have seen how much growing she still had to do.

Yet they were dealing with goblins. The weakest monsters in the Four-Cornered World.

Priestess, who had been on many goblin hunts now, would never have trumpeted her accomplishments in those endeavors. To roll up the sleeves of your crude garment and overpower some goblins was nothing to be proud of.

And yet, even so, she still found it beautiful.

“That looks like it,” Baturu said a moment later, shaking the blood from her blade and sheathing it in its scabbard.

Her breath came hard; her face was flushed, and sweat glistened on her cheeks. She didn’t even glance at the bodies littering the ground as she trotted back to the wagon. She got her legs up onto the luggage rack, trying to board the vehicle even as it continued to roll.

“I’ll help you!” Priestess said, reaching out.

“Hrm…” Baturu looked somewhat uncertain, glancing between her own large hand and Priestess’s, which was more delicate but certainly not merely pretty. Then she slowly, hesitantly clasped it, though her expression remained indeterminate. “Thanks…”

“Not at all!” Priestess said and tugged with a “hup,” though with her strength, it was hard to say how much help she actually was. Not much, perhaps—but it was important.

“…That was impressive,” Goblin Slayer noted, unconcerned with the specifics.

Priestess offered a waterskin to Baturu, who took it, again hesitantly, and began drinking. Goblin Slayer watched them as he put away his bow and arrows.

“Here, have a drink,” Priestess offered, coming over to him and offering him the canteen.

“Mm.” Goblin Slayer took it gratefully, throwing a slug of water through the slats of his visor. After a battle like that, even lukewarm water cut with wine was indescribably satisfying.

“Not that I wish to belittle your achievements…” Baturu, who must have been feeling the same way about the water, finally let out a breath, scratching her cheek shyly. “But feats of arms against goblins are nothing to crow about.”

“I agree completely,” Goblin Slayer said with utmost seriousness, his helmet bobbing up and down. One ought not to think in terms of success when it came to dealing with goblins, nor had he ever done so.

Was that simply a wandering tribe?
he thought. He stared after the bodies, which had already vanished. Should he stop the carriage, go back, and check?
No.
Time was of the essence now. He had to prioritize the investigation in the water town. That was his decision.
If there is even the slightest possibility that goblins are involved…

Of course, even Goblin Slayer realized that this was a pathological obsession—yet he also knew that, at the same time, it was something he had to keep in his heart.

“‘Oh! I’m not smart enough to be skeptical!’ he says. That’s not decency, it’s idiocy!”
he remembered his master saying as he grinned amid the blowing snow.
“The guy who realizes it might be dangerous and runs away is the smart guy—the one who decides he doesn’t care is the adventurer!”

Goblin Slayer couldn’t claim to fully understand this. Indeed, how much of what he’d been taught
could
he claim to understand? Still, he was resolved to use what few wits and little skill he did have to do what he had to do.

Do or do not. That was all there was—and that, he had learned a very long time ago.

“We’ll hurry to the water town,” Goblin Slayer said. “We should also switch driver and lookout duties.”

“You got it,” replied Dwarf Shaman, heaving his portly frame up and heading for the driver’s bench. “Hey, Scaly,” he called, tapping Lizard Priest on the shoulder; he managed to nimbly swaps places with the huge lizardman. Dwarf Shaman might have taken a little
sip of fire wine, but the God of Wine would look the other way for a drinking dwarf.

Now Dwarf Shaman said, “I’d heard rumors about the centaur troops, but that was something to see.”

“I only regret that I did not see it at all, driving as I was,” Lizard Priest said, squeezing himself under the cover of the wagon. He didn’t sound too terribly regretful, though. He curled his tail to avoid getting in Goblin Slayer’s way as he went by; then he let out a breath, swiveled his great long neck, and rolled his eyes merrily. “Would it be too upsetting if I said I hope to have a chance to see your work with the bow someday?”

“Not that I’m angry about it,” said High Elf Archer, who was lying easily atop the wagon, “but it looks like it’s gonna be goblins again this time…”

There was no sense that anything, be it spear or sword or fiery stone, was going to fall through the clear blue sky at that moment. It was mere days later that she would sigh to herself, realizing how right she had been.