Chapter Two - Ambush

It took five, maybe six minutes for the first of the goblins to show up. They were scruffy little things, about as tall as a human kid, and covered in scraps that could only be called clothes if you were feeling real generous about definitions.

The leader of the bunch was a bit taller than the rest, with a bandoleer across his chest and a dinky shotgun held in both hands. Not a goblin-made gun, those tended to look a whole lot more like old blunderbusses that were held together by twine and goblin spit.

I peeked out from under the shade of my hat and counted. Eight... no, nine goblins, all of them approaching as a bunch, without even trying to disguise themselves. On seeing me laying there like a slab of meat roasting on the stone, they started to chitter and squeal.

The little shits thought they’d just found themselves a free lunch.

I tightened my grip on my revolver and shifted my leg just a little. I might need to grab my knife in a hurry once I was back on my feet.

The leader’s gun swayed this way and that, and I almost snapped a shot at him when the muzzle of his shotgun swung across me.

There were three more of them with guns. A rifle with a barrel that had an obvious kink in it, and two handguns. Single-action sorts. Those goblins had pouches that jangled with every step, probably with ammunition.

Jackpot.

If you didn’t have enough rounds to kill your enemies, just kill a few, and use their ammo to finish the job.

The goblins came closer, and soon they were only a dozen paces away.

The leader grabbed a smaller goblin by the scruff when it tried to run past and flung it back.

Not yet.

I waited until they were just a little closer.

I’d had my jacket around to hide my arm. They couldn’t see the revolver twitching in my hand as I tightened and loosened my grip in it. My rifle I’d dropped on the other side of the rock, just out of their line of sight. I could roll back there and grab it, but it would be hard to sight in on anything too close with it.

The leader cackled in goblin-ish delight.

Bastard.

I bunched my legs under me and waited.

He looked at one of the smaller goblins and growled something.

I hurled my jacket aside.

The goblins jumped in surprise, which was fine by me. With their eyes going so wide, it was easier to aim in between them.

The leader squealed, swinging his gun around.

I squeezed the trigger.

The hammer slammed into the firing pin, the magic charge at the back of the bullet in the chamber ignited, and an ethereal glow slipped out from between the barrel and cylinder. A reddish luminescence raced along the barrel and the cooling fins along its length hissed.

A beam of yellow light hovered in the air where the bullet had passed, through the air, and through the fist-sized hole in the goblin leader’s head.

The golden beam broke up as the wind picked up and whisked it away.

By then, I’d pulled the hammer back and was aiming at the next goblin, the first to react and try to bring his handgun up.

A second click, another hiss and bang. The goblin fell back, a cylindrical chunk of its throat carved away.

The other bastard with a handgun screamed and aimed at me.

I skipped to the side, and instead of firing wildly, it actually tried to adjust its aim. Too bad it was slow about it.

Another shot and it slumped down, a hole through its chest.

That was three shots out.

A roaring explosion had me flinching back. The goblin with the rifle screamed as it stared at the smoking stumps where its arms had been, the remains of its rifle hissing and sparking on the ground.

The other goblins charged.

That was the thing with goblins, they either ran at you, or away from you. It was always either-or with them.

I fired off my next three shots in a hurry. One flicked by a goblin’s side, tearing a hole in its arm before kicking up a bit of sand behind it. The other two blasted holes into the torsos of some of the bigger goblins. That left three of them. Four, counting armless.

More than enough to leave a girl dead in the sand.

One shuffled over to the leader’s body and started working at grabbing his gun.

I wanted to make it my priority, but I had two others to keep me busy.

One of them howled a bestial warcry and raised a club. I skipped back, shoved my revolver into its holster, and tugged a knife out from the small of my back while my left hand pulled another from my thigh.

They weren’t anything special. Just plain steel and handles made from some sandbore tusks. Common, but durable and sharp.

The club-wielding goblin swung a second time and almost clipped my knee. He overextended though.

I stepped in and slashed at his face. Its warcry turned into a painful sob as my knives both found purchase. I wanted to finish him off, but didn’t have the time for it. So I delivered a swift kick to his chest and sent him flying back into the sand.

The advantage with fighting goblins was that they were smaller, and usually the runts weren’t all that well fed. That kept them light and throwable.

The second goblin jumped at me and clamped its teeth around my calf. “Fuck!”

I dropped onto my knees, dislodging him, but not before it tore a chunk out of the leather of my chaps.

I punched it.

Then, because that had felt good, I punched it again.

A click had me looking up.

The goblin that had been tugging at the shotgun was standing up, gun in hand, barrel pointed my way. He tugged at the trigger, then again. Click click.

My heart froze as if a storm had swept over it.

Then I noticed the gun’s hammer left uncocked.

I stood up, kicked the biter in the face hard enough to sting my foot and moved to the edge of the stone.

My rifle was waiting for me there, partially covered in sand.

I picked it up, pulled the hammer back, and took my time aiming at the increasingly desperate goblin with the shotgun.

A red glow came out of the end of the barrel even as a magic circle formed in the air around the chamber.

When the bullet hit the goblin in the head, there wasn’t a golden beam, but a reddish-purple line that faded almost as soon as it appeared, like a comet slipping across the night sky.

The goblin’s head exploded.

I cycled the lever, sending a smoking brass shell spiraling through the air, and aimed at the biter who was still squirming.

Another boom from the rifle, another kick to my shoulder, another goblin down.

I racked the lever again, ejecting another spent casing, and aimed at the one with the club, who was still rubbing at its face.

It soon lacked a face to rub at.

The one missing its arms was still sniffling, but the blood loss was getting to it, and I didn’t have the bullets to waste. Nature would do its thing.

I looked over to the entrance of the valley. No goblins in sight. That wouldn’t last.

With the temporary lull in action, I took a moment to reload, tugging three rounds out of my hip pouch to shove into the loading gate of my rifle before slinging it over my shoulder. Did the same for my revolver, pocketing the spent shells, before I found my knives, dropped in the sand when I’d picked up my rifle. Another few moments were spent scrounging around for the pair of still-smoking rifle casings I’d left in the dust. And then I started harvesting.

Goblins didn’t always have magical cores, but there was a good chance they did. They stayed out during storms.

You could usually tell if there was a core by bringing an unspent cartridge near their chest. If it vibrated slightly there was something, if it didn’t then there was nothing, or you got unlucky and there was a core of the same alignment.

I didn’t pretend to get why it worked out that way, but that didn’t matter any.

I got four cores for my troubles. Most no bigger than the joint of my thumb, one the size of a throwing die.

The ammo came next. The rounds smelled like goblin piss and some looked bent or corroded. It hurt to discard those, but I didn’t want my gun blowing up in my hands.

Seventeen-odd rounds. Most of them 6-millimeter. That’d fit in my revolver just fine. The rest were a strange mix of 11-millimeters with various payloads, and a single unlucky thirteen. Didn’t have a clue where they’d gotten an orcish bullet from, but it didn’t matter.

The shotgun was break action, one shell in the chamber. A shredder round.

That would have ruined my day.

The leader had a little pouch with a dozen shells squeezed in. I took those too. The rest I left to the storm ravens and vultures.

It was about time I returned to Rusty and thinned out the rest of the beasts.

***