The wretch jumped in fright, then instantly curled into a ball and stared, cringing, at a red rock.
Xia Ya quickened his pace, and soon they had rounded the rock; at last the wretch got a clear look at the goblins.
To judge by their looks, these fellows hardly lived up to the fearsome reputation they had on the Wildfire Plain. In fact, at first glance the goblins were faintly ridiculous.
Their whole bodies were covered in green skin, like frogs in a pond after a summer rain; pointed, jutting donkey ears; broad, thick noses like carrots skewered onto their faces; no hair and no beard on any of them; huge heads on bodies thin past all proportion — at least, judging by their height of barely a hundred and thirty centimeters, the ratio of that big head to that body was plainly all wrong. The little things cowered behind the rocks, mouths full of short, sharp, rotten teeth, fixing Xia Ya and the wretch with a strange, uncanny stare.
What especially struck the wretch as odd was that the goblins' arms were very long — hanging down, they reached well past their knees.
At first sight it was hard to feel any fear of these creatures — first, they looked scrawny and small; second, they looked poor and filthy.
Yes, these goblins were more beggarly than beggars. Of the several lurking behind the rock, only one wore anything like a whole garment, and that was just a torn burlap sack with three holes cut in it, so his head and both arms could poke out.
And one fellow carried a weapon: the hind-leg bone of some large animal, with a sharp stone lashed to the tip to make it more deadly. The same fellow had nailed a mess of odds and ends together into a set of "armor."
Good heavens, what kind of armor was that! Look at what it was made of: two scraps of broken copper, a heap of tree bark, a few chunks of rotten wood, plus something like a rope net.
"These things are goblins?" the wretch said after watching a while, sounding doubtful.
"Yes," Xia Ya nodded.
"But they don't look nearly as scary as the stories say." The wretch was thoroughly puzzled.
Xia Ya smiled. "There are strong goblins and weak ones. The ones you're looking at are wanderers with no tribe. The real danger is the goblin tribes. Don't let a single goblin fool you — weak and timid as it is, if you ran into a few hundred of the things, and they hadn't eaten in days... then you'd learn just how nasty they are."
True enough — after Xia Ya said it, the wretch realized that these creatures' eyes were very much like a pack of wild dogs scratching a living in the wild: a bit cowering, a bit timid, but with a measure of savagery and hostility hidden in them too.
Xia Ya paid no mind to the filthy creatures trailing him and kept striding onward. Only when they followed a little too close did he stop, pick up a stone, and, bellowing threats, hurl it at them — and every time, the goblins scattered every which way.
By the time the sky had darkened a little, the wretch noticed that the goblin wanderers behind them were gone.
Out on the wasteland they found a huge skeleton, probably belonging to some large animal, though whether wild ox or pack horse or something else, the wretch couldn't tell.
The great white skeleton lay sprawled across the ground, its pairs of ribs arranged in neat symmetry, and what was astonishing was that not a scrap of hide or flesh remained on the whole frame... plainly this was no work of natural decay: someone had stripped the hide and meat away entirely, and scraped it that clean.
When they got closer, the wretch saw the bones were covered in a dense mass of tooth marks.
"Goblins," Xia Ya said. "Only goblins would do this — scrape the meat that clean." He pulled up a bone at random and weighed it in his hand. "Looks like it died less than ten days ago. The bone's still hard; the moisture hasn't drained out yet."
"Why do I get the feeling you know an awful lot about these things?" The wretch gave Xia Ya a suspicious look.
Xia Ya didn't answer that question. Instead he took out the pelt of that bloodthirsty mad wolf and draped it over the beast's skeleton — which made a natural little tent.
"We sleep here tonight," Xia Ya decided.
Dinner was roast wolf meat — there was still some left of that bloodthirsty mad wolf. The meat was sour and tough and hard to chew, but the wretch bore it bravely.
Because there was no attention to spare for complaining about how bad the wolf meat was. All evening the wretch sat by the campfire gnawing on it, yet could plainly feel how many pairs of eyes out in the wasteland around them were secretly fixed on him — covetous eyes, hungry eyes, vicious eyes, timid eyes.
He could even hear, quite clearly, gulping sounds drifting in from the dark wasteland — gulp, gulp. Mixed in were a rasping crunch or two of teeth grinding, and every one of those sounds made the wretch's hair stand on end.
"They... they're spying on us." The wretch wanted to warn this bumpkin who looked so carefree — his alertness seemed pitifully bad.
"I know," said Xia Ya, lying on the bones with his hands behind his head, eyes shut, enjoying the warmth of the fire. "One on the left, two on the right, one in front, one behind, and more stirring farther off..."
At that he rolled over to face the wretch.
"Relax, they won't touch us for now. Goblins are a timid lot. They're herd-courage creatures — they only work up their nerve once their numbers reach a certain point.
The goblin standard is this: to deal with two human warriors, you need more than twenty goblin warriors for an overwhelming victory. And goblin brains generally aren't very bright; the way they size things up is absurdly simple: if you've got a weapon you're a warrior, if you haven't you're a commoner.
Lucky for us, you're wearing leather armor and I'm carrying an axe, so these fellows have taken us for human warriors. Which means they're sure to wait until they've got more than twenty before they attack."
"No way," said the wretch, unconvinced. "If dealing with two human warriors takes that long, then why do I hear about so many caravans getting attacked by goblins?"
"That's rumor," Xia Ya said scornfully.
"On the Wildfire Plain, rumors are always the most popular thing going. The truth is, goblins aren't as frightening as you imagine... they're a nuisance, all right, but at least not as frightening as the tales make out. Most of those stories about how terrible goblins are were invented by humans.
In particular, from what I know, a lot of the scary legends about the Wildfire Plain were deliberately manufactured by the big merchant companies. That way everyone dreads the dangers of the Wildfire Plain, nobody dares take this trade route, and only they have the nerve to organize caravans and trade!
Hmph..."
"But... I heard these goblins catch people and eat them, grind their bones to powder, weave their hides into blankets, and render the fat into oil..." The wretch's teeth were chattering.
"That part may well be true. To them, we humans are an alien race. And don't we treat cattle and sheep the same way? Nothing strange about it."
Xia Ya yawned.
"But the truth is, goblins very rarely attack human parties with armed men in them. Plenty of humans do die at goblin hands on the Wildfire Plain, but most of them are small caravans — people with more nerve than sense, counting on luck, dreaming of a fortune, risking everything to haul goods across the Plain. Those caravans can't afford to hire mercenaries, so when they run into goblins, naturally they're the ones who end up paying for it."
"But you said goblins need all that time just to attack two people..."
"I said 'warriors,' you idiot," Xia Ya said, shaking his head. "Goblins are plenty bold about attacking human commoners. But right now, to them, we're human warriors! Understand? We're armed, so they've taken us for one of those adventurer or mercenary bands. The goblins on the Wildfire Plain have taken their lumps from human adventurers before, so they've learned caution. If we weren't carrying weapons, they'd have swarmed us long ago!"
"But..."
"Relax. We're only at the edge of goblin territory here; there's no big goblin tribe nearby, so it'll be a long wait before they can scrape together twenty goblin warriors to deal with us. Those wanderer goblins won't dare provoke us. Sleep easy... I know a good deal more about this place than you do, trust me. No matter what, I'm not going to gamble with my own life." Xia Ya rolled over.
"..." The wretch lay there a while. The dreadful sounds the cold wind carried across the wasteland still frightened her, and after holding out for a time she couldn't help herself: "Can I... can I move a little closer to you? It's... mm, it's still a bit cold here."
Xia Ya said nothing. The wretch waited a moment, then finally edged over on her own and lay down close against Xia Ya's side. The bumpkin still smelled of earth and sweat, but that warm, solid feeling somehow set her heart at ease.
Of course, more important still was his perverse taste in beauty — which meant the wretch didn't have to worry that this bumpkin would try anything on her.