Alma was finishing her sweep when she heard a scream. Flying over a section of the camp near the cages, what she saw made Richter so angry that he tasted acid in his mouth. About seventy goblins stood over eight wailing prisoners. There were two elf women, three gnomes, two males and a female, a young human woman, and a human boy. Richter’s teeth pulled back in a snarl. They were being raped.
The goblins not actively involved stood around jeering while the prisoners sobbed and begged. A ninth gnome woman lay unconscious on the ground. Her lack of awareness didn’t save her from being abused just as horribly as the others. Two goblin fighters were using her at once.
One group of goblins had decided to make a game of it. A naked and bleeding elf woman stood in a circle of them. One fighter chased her with a smile on his face and a dagger in his hand. She already bled from at least five different places, the worst of which was a ragged cut across her left breast. As she begged, the goblins only hooted louder, aroused by her pain.
The rapes were happening only a couple hundred yards from the prisoners. Now Richter understood why there weren’t more guards around the cages. A row of buildings separated the cages from the clearing that held the goblins and their abused victims. A look of stark fury came over Richter’s face. It was so intense that he started shaking and he didn’t even hear Yoshi the first two times the adept spoke.
“Richter. Lord Richter! Battle Sergeant!” Yoshi hissed.
The chaos seed looked over at the adept, “What?” he snapped quietly.
“I see the same thing that you see,” Yoshi said tapping the map. “It is horrible, but I have seen goblins do far worse. They will do far worse if we do not save the rest of these people. The truth is, what is happening to those nine may be why we are not facing thirty goblins around the cages. Their suffering will help us to save the rest.”
“Would you be so cavalier about the ‘suffering’ of those men and women… and that boy, if they were sprites?” Richter asked bitterly. What he had just seen had ignited a rage inside of him. His face felt hot, and his fingers twitched involuntarily while he imagined them wrapping around a green skinned neck.
Richter may have been hot with anger, but it was nothing compared to the cold hatred that overtook Yoshi’s face, “I have been fighting this war longer than you have been in this world! I have seen goblins skin babies alive and feed them to pigs. I have found the remains of their victims after they are tied over sear ant nests. The goblins like to do that because their captives sometimes break their own backs. The pain from the thousands of bites contracts their muscles that hard. You think I do not care? You are a fool!” Yoshi spat. “Do not speak to me of that boy’s suffering. You sound like a boy yourself! That boy is enduring something horrible, and though he does not know it, he endures it to save the lives of all the other captives. Now will you continue to whine and let those poor souls’ sacrifice be for nothing, or will you stop sniveling and fight?”
Richter and Yoshi glared at each other for several tense seconds. The chaos seed fully considered attacking the adept, so great was his anger, but Yoshi’s words rang true. It was Richter who finally looked away, ashamed. He channeled his anger and quashed his self-indulgent shame. When he had controlled himself enough to speak again, a volcano of anger still burned inside of him waiting to erupt. He promised himself that the goblins would feel the pain of their victims a thousandfold. With his eyes clear and full of hate, he spoke softly, “I apologize, Adept Yoshi. You are right. How do we help these people? How do I kill as many of these motherfuckers as possible?”
Yoshi told him how.
CHAPTER 31 – Day 141 – Kuborn 31, 15,386 EBG
There were large gaps in the wall surrounding the goblin encampment. Unsurprising, seeing as how less than half of the outer barbican had been constructed. The spaces were too large for the goblins to monitor every weak spot all the time. To make up for that, they had patrols walking around fairly frequently. If any of those groups spotted the strike team and sounded the alarm, it was game over.
The plan was relatively simple. As they had said before, there were four main objectives. One, find and take whatever had drawn the goblins to the valley, or barring that, destroy it. Two, steal the Bloodstone. Three, destroy the goblin forces. Four, rescue the captives. While the first three had greater military significance, they would all be much easier to achieve if the allied army didn’t have to worry about noncombatants. Because of that, phase one of the incursion was to get the prisoners to safety.
The one piece of good news was that the goblins were lazy. The cages holding the prisoners had been placed in one corner of the encampment. Two walls had been built, hemming the area in, but nothing had been built where the two walls met. That section faced the river. The goblins had let the sixty-foot drop onto the rocks be deterrent enough for any escaped slaves.
In all honesty, they were probably right in most cases. The cliff would most likely be enough to keep the prisoners contained, or at least to ensure the death of anyone that failed to make the climb down. Considering the fact that the cliff was mostly rock and loose scree, and that it went almost straight up, it was highly unlikely that any of the weakened and diseased prisoners could have made the climb. Richter had no idea how Liddle had done it, considering the state the hill sprite had been in when they had found him.
While the cliff might be enough to keep the prisoners in, it might as well be an “Enter Here” sign for the strike team. They all prepared to climb. The original strike team would go first, making hand-and foot-holds with their climbing claws. Richter, Sion and the other meidon sprites would follow. Yoshi took point.
The sword adept moved faster than should have been possible going straight up. The other sprites went up as well with their climbing claws out, creating holes as they went. Each time Yoshi reached up, he activated his claws and turned his hand in a clockwise motion, while moving it in a slight circle. It created small holes in the rock. It wasn’t much, but with Richter’s high Strength and the climbing boost from his gauntlets, it was no problem to follow. The meidon sprites had even less of an issue. In a few short minutes, the entire team was at the top of the cliff. Then it was time to kill.