Xia Ya searched this goblin tribe from end to end. Counting old and young alike, there were a hundred and sixty-four goblin corpses in all. To Xia Ya's experienced hunter's eye, every one of them had been killed by a single blow. The goblins had clearly fought back, but they had never managed to mount any effective resistance.
They had tried to run, too, but judging by the hoofprints ringing the tribe on every side, the ones who attacked them had possessed mobility far beyond a goblin's. There had been no way out for them at all.
Plenty of goblins had been shot dead right on the earthen wall as they were scrambling over it to flee.
Xia Ya pulled an arrow out of one of the corpses and weighed it in his hand.
An armor-piercing arrow?
His eyes lit up. The spine of this kind of arrow was made of metal, and the shaft was on the heavy side; it was built specifically to punch through an enemy's armor. In Wildfire Town, only the mercenary corps with real strength used arrows like these, and even they only broke out a small number of them now and then, when they ran into a tough enemy.
And here... the people who attacked this place actually used arrows this costly to shoot lowly goblins??
Sharp weapons, a savage and merciless slaughter, riders swift as the wind, killing technique that took a life with a single blow...
And wiping out more than a hundred goblins in one sweep without leaving a single survivor — even on the Wildfire Plain, methods like that were rare. Probably only a few of the notoriously savage black tribes out on the Wildfire Plain would do such a thing.
But... even those black tribes wouldn't waste the effort to come out here and slaughter goblins. Goblins were poor as a pack of beggars; robbing them offered not the slightest profit — unless you happened to have a taste for the various suspicious dried meats the goblins cured in the sun.
After walking one circuit around the tribe's perimeter, Xia Ya came to a stop, closed his eyes, and thought for a while. The hoofprints, the bloodstains, the footprints and the corpses left on the ground all looked like a chaotic mess, but in Xia Ya's mind a faint thread was sorting itself out at flying speed.
Those hoofprints, together with the way the goblin corpses were distributed, down even to the direction they had fallen, at once jogged a few memories that had blurred with time.
It seems... back when I was sneaking looks at the old guy's yellowed books, there were some descriptions like this.
Xia Ya opened his eyes. At that moment the bumpkin's face was grim. He walked one more circuit around the tribe, and in his heart he had pieced together a roughly clear picture.
(More than twenty men, thirty at the very most, all of them cavalry, with archers among them, and skilled archers at that. They split into three parties. One party blocked the way out at the tribe's gate and smashed the gate open to kill their way in, forcing the goblins to jump the walls and scatter. The other two were mounted squads, which took the chance to swing around both sides along the earthen wall and drive the fleeing goblins, shooting some of them down with arrows, then riding them down to finish off whatever slipped the net. These men had excellent weapons, and their martial skill plainly surpassed ordinary mercenaries.
And their horsemanship was very good too!
You could tell as much from the way they galloped their horses over that earthen wall, which was not exactly low.)
Fewer than thirty men wiped out more than a hundred goblins, took zero casualties of their own, and didn't let a single goblin get away. Fighting skill drilled to that level — probably even the most famous black gangs on the Wildfire Plain couldn't pull it off. Those gangs were vicious enough, but they likely didn't have this kind of lightning-strike, savage, fast-and-fierce technique.)
The more he thought, the more Xia Ya felt a suffocating sense of oppression. Only after a few hard, deep breaths did he just barely push that vague unease back down.
"W-well? How is it?"
Seeing Xia Ya walk back, the wretch looked as though she could no longer stand steady. Her face was ghost-pale, cold sweat was even beading on her forehead, and she hurriedly questioned Xia Ya.
"How is it? They're all dead." Xia Ya hoisted his axe onto his shoulder and noticed the strange look on the wretch's face. "Huh? Why's your face so white?"
"Uh... my wound hurts a bit."
"Then why are your legs shaking?"
"Mm... it's a little cold."
Xia Ya looked the wretch over quite seriously, then suddenly grinned, strode over, reached out one big hand, and pressed it hard onto the wretch's head, ruffling her hair into a mess. He laughed out loud. "Scared? Hahahaha, don't worry. With me here, you're fine. You're my suosuo — nobody's going to touch a single finger of yours."
Seeing the bumpkin laugh with that utterly carefree look on his face, the wretch was annoyed at first, but then Xia Ya's laughter got to her. Warmth welled up in her heart despite herself, and she let Xia Ya's big hand wreck her hair.
This bumpkin... he can probably protect me...
Compared with the wretch's nerves, the goblins, seeing this tribe slaughtered empty right in front of them, showed not one shred of terror or pity.
Quite the opposite — the fellows were actually grinning ear to ear at the ruins ahead and let out a chorus of urk-urk laughter.
Goblins... truly a pack born to fight among themselves.
"They're not worried at all?" The wretch didn't understand.
"They've always been like this. What goblins love best in the world is watching their own kind come to grief — even their own tribe's, let alone some other tribe getting wiped out." That said, Xia Ya walked over, kicked over the goblin warrior who was laughing the hardest, and swung his axe through a gesture.
Mr. Consort immediately came over with his head held high and his belly pushed out, yapping a few times on borrowed authority and driving the goblin warriors onward.
At Xia Ya's order, the group did not go far. They crossed the riverbed right beside the goblin tribe and made camp on the far bank.
Xia Ya still played the coarse bumpkin, cursing and striking at the goblin warriors and dumping all the hauling and fire-building work on these "suosuo." But from a few small things about him the wretch could see that something was off. The bumpkin still laughed and cursed loudly, and yet now and then a beast-like edge would flash through his eyes. When night fell, Xia Ya sat by the river watching the dead, silent ruins of the tribe on the opposite bank; his eyes narrowed, and through those slits a gleam kept sliding past. At last he turned his head, looked at the wretch, and spoke in a very calm tone — yet the words made her heart jump!
"Hey..." Xia Ya looked at the wretch's face. "Tonight, stay alert while you sleep. We might have to jump up and run at any moment."
The wretch gave a start. Her hand shook and she dropped the water skin onto the ground.
Xia Ya smiled, but his eyes were very serious. He pointed across the river, his tone as casual as could be. "Those fellows, they may not have gone far. I can tell from the hoofprints that after they slaughtered this tribe they split into several groups and scattered. I'm very worried we'll run into them. I don't know who they are, but from the way they go about their work, meeting them would definitely not be a pleasant thing."
"Th-then we're still staying here?" Fear was plain in the wretch's voice. "Why did you make camp so early today?"
"Because this place should be the safest." Xia Ya thought for a moment, his voice full of confidence. "Those fellows just slaughtered this place. Once they've left, it's not likely they'll come back."
As he spoke, Xia Ya took his fire fork, which had a few chunks of wolf meat skewered on its tines, came over to the wretch's side, held the fork over the fire for a while, and handed it to her. "Eat. No matter what else, being able to eat your fill is a happy thing."
Then he pointed at another campfire not far away, where Mr. Consort was cursing the goblin warriors like a prison guard. Xia Ya had stopped mistreating the goblin captives and had even given them a chunk of wolf meat. But with a chunk that size divided among a dozen-plus goblins, each goblin could get two bites at most.
"Maybe we shouldn't bring these goblin captives along." The wretch thought it over. "If we went on our own, our target might be smaller and we'd be less likely to run into anyone, and even if something happened, two people could hide more easily."
Xia Ya laughed. He looked at the wretch with a mocking glint in his eye and sighed. "Whoever you are, for a type like you to come out to the Wildfire Plain and not end up dead, the gods must surely be watching over you. I'll tell you this — I'm certain those fellows are professional butchers, experts at killing. I don't know who exactly they are. Could be a top-flight bandit gang, could be a bunch of rebel deserters, or maybe a pack of mercenaries who suddenly went berserk. But either way, those fellows are old hands! If we really run into them, don't count on slipping past their eyes. An old hand can smell a scent carried on the wind with nothing but his nose. That's exactly why it's all the more necessary for me to bring these goblin captives along."
"Why?"
"Two reasons." Xia Ya chuckled, snatched up a chunk of wolf meat that was just about done, and bit into it, mumbling, "First, if we run into those butchers, these goblins can pull their attention and we might get a chance to run. Second... if we're lucky and don't run into those butchers, then when we find that dragon, these goblins can serve as a big batch of bait — and that works to your advantage."
The wretch glanced over at the "suosuo" nearby, sighed in her heart, and once again confirmed one thing: this fellow might be a bumpkin, but he was absolutely not some honest simpleton.