The clouds threatened rain the day Stump was going to die.
He stood before the matrons, eyes lowered to the ground beneath their crooked thrones. Smoke curled off the helmet cradled under his arm. He had hoped to offer it to them to sway his sentence favourably, but they refused.
Stump was, as far as goblinkind was concerned, only slightly luckier than the human whose head once fit the roasted metal in his grasp. He was skewered. Done. Banishment was a certainty, execution a possibility. Even if he was spared a beheading or fire-beetle burial or the time honoured tradition of having all four limbs pulled in opposite directions to see which would sever first, the wilderness would claim him, or he would be lost forever in the Shadowlands.
Either way, his days in the tribe were over.
"Tell us what happened, young one," urged the white matron.
She sat next to the black matron at the head of the others. Their thrones were the grandest of all—two gnarled tree trunks ripped from the earth and petrified in their half decayed state.
All six of them glared down at Stump with varying degrees of scorn. The shapes they sat on threw dancing shadows along the walls of the firelit cave. Behind him the murmurs of the crowd quieted. He felt their eyes at his back. They wanted to hear his story, to hear his sentence given. No doubt they wanted blood.
Because a third of the tribe was dead and Stump would be blamed.
"Uh…" he began, heat flooding his cheeks. His throat tightened.
He had all afternoon to ask himself that question and still hadn't come up with an answer. It went wrong, he wanted to say. Tits up. But why it went wrong was another question entirely. It was the first raid he'd ever led, sure, but it had been set up perfectly. Everything was going smoothly until…
Stump swallowed his fear and began to explain.
 

 
Goblins were not the sort to dabble in patience. They had laid in wait for over an hour. In goblin time that was days—weeks, even.
Stump's feet were getting tired and his disguise was starting to itch. He had plastered himself with twigs and leaves and found a sizeable rock to hide behind up the hill from the road their prey would turn down.
Or so he hoped.
The others were probably even more restless. Twig-Breaker, on his belly, was barely visible in the grass down the hill. Nailtooth had flattened himself against a tree so thoroughly he had all but become one with the bark. Gorm was somewhere nearby, but where exactly Stump couldn't say.
Across the road he spotted the beady yellow eyes of Toe-Crusher and Boot-In-The-Ass, both sharing the same pile of leaves. Hogsbreath was perched in the branches high above while Pig-Shit-Thrower, Mad-Wolf, and This-Spear-Is-Going-Down-Your-Throat occupied the tree line.
Then there was Thrung. Don't do anything stupid, Stump thought as he struggled to identify the younger goblin's frame from the bush he squatted in. Stump may have been the matrons' choice to lead the raid, but the rest of the tribe stood behind Thrung.
He was everything a goblin should be—mean, nasty, ugly. He was strong and fast and had a better ear-to-head ratio than Stump did, and although he was only four years old the matrons had been considering granting him a warname.
And Stump was, well, Stump, the shortest of goblinkind. He had a voice that sounded like it came out of his nose instead of his throat, he didn't enjoy getting into scraps with the other goblins, and when the bloodlust came on it only served to make him queasy.
It was Thrung's time to lead a raid, he'd heard the others say. It was Thrung's time for glory. Thrung's time to hear the Words From the Sky and receive his first level and class, and his Ingilish warname.
Rigged, they whispered behind Stump's back. Unworthy. Coward.
The words stung worse than the barbs of dungwort vines, but he refused to show it. Bullying was just how it was for goblins. Even more so for Stump.
Even more so since the matrons voted him as leader of the raid.
"You're crafty, young one," they had told him. "You know the ways of the tall men. Their secrets."
But he didn't. Not really. He read their books because the stories they told made him happy, but beyond that he was as perplexed by the tall men as any other goblin.
Either way, he had to accept or be branded a coward by the entire tribe, and aside from the dreaded Mark of Grumul, cowardice was the worst label a goblin could have.
"You're going to show them," Yeza had assured him before first light. "It's just some fat tall men and their gold."This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Stump shook his head. "But it's not what I'm good at. I don't know how to…" he leaned in close and whispered the following words to lend them less power, "…how to fight."
Her fist grazed his shoulder. "You're better at it than me," she said, and gave him that snarl that always made him blush.
He gently massaged the point of impact and smiled meekly. "Thanks."
It wasn't true, of course, but he was just glad to have her on his side.
The call came from above, pulling Stump back to the present. Hogsbreath mimicked the caw of a crow from his perch in the trees and held up six fingers.
Six tall men. It was more than the four that had been scouted originally, but it wasn't unreasonable. Six they could handle, but they needed the element of surprise.
Stump peeked over his rock and glanced at the sky above the trees. Although the sun had barely begun to crest its midday arc, the gentle blue of day filtered into the bruised purple of perpetual twilight in the west. The Shadowlands were beautiful from a distance, but that was part of their allure.
From that direction was where the wagon came.
Wait… wagon?
It turned laboriously down the road, wheels creaking over broken ground. Two sat at the reins, one guiding the horses, his bare arms as thick as tree trunks. The other wore hideous layers of red and gold and had long yellow hair. The four in back were in various states of armour. All of them were armed. Small sacks and barrels crowded the space between them, and at their feet was a shape, lumpy and shifting.
What is that? Stump squinted, trying to tell the movements apart from the rocking of the wagon, and saw a head slip out from under a blanket. It was a man, black hair and brown skin. And he was gagged.
An armoured boot forced his head back under.
Hogsbreath was wrong. The goblin had returned over an hour ago with news of four tall men and two horses, only one of them armed. There was no vehicle in his tale. Stump searched his mind for an approach, an order, a retreat, anything.
He caught the eyes of his tribesmen. They were watching him, waiting for his move. He had to do something, to say something, but…
A red glow pulled Stump's attention back to the wagon. Near the blanketed man was a book, a stone stamped onto its cover. It flared, and he thought he could hear… humming…
Thrung shrieked, bursting out of his bushy disguise. Twigs flew off his shoulders.
"Attack!" he squealed, spear levelled.
Like a murmur of mimicaws the other goblins darted out of the underbrush. One by one a holler announced their presence. There was Boot-In-The-Ass, leaping over Toe-Crusher in his frothing bid for glory. Hogsbreath scampered down the tree. Nailtooth somersaulted into view. This-Spear-Is-Going-Down-Your-Throat looked to be on the verge of living up to his warname.
"Not yet!" Stump's cry barely pierced the pre-combat din.
Goblins always followed the brave, the strong, the stupid. They followed glory. And Thrung was their leader now.
The wave of bloodlust crashed over Stump. His heart fluttered, pounding in his ears and behind his eyes. The corners of his vision blurred. He wanted to move, to run, to jump, to fight.
He wanted to vomit.
Just like a knight, just like a knight, just like a knight, he thought, closing his eyes and pressing a hand to his belly to quell the unease. He pictured his favourite storybooks, saw the sketches of valiant soldiers and heard the whinnying of their steeds. Just like a knight.
With renewed vigour he opened his eyes again. He drew his sword (a poorly carved stone hammer), readied his steed (tiny goblin feet), and started forward.
"Wait—" his toe snagged a root, sending him tumbling over his head. The hammer left his grasp. Down he barrelled, biting dirt and grass. He landed in the road, sprawled on his back. The world upside down was a tangle of flying projectiles and a wooden wagon creaking with combat.
Stump pushed himself to his feet, retrieved his weapon from the bramble, and made to join his tribe.
He didn't make it far.
His head twisted at the sound. A flash, brighter than the sun. A snap. A howling ring of dust kicked Stump off his feet. Fire. Sky. Ground. Teeth clattered on impact and bits of stone and splintered wood peppered his back.
After some time—he couldn't be sure how long—he picked himself up and shook the ringing out of his ears. The bloodlust never stuck around for long. It had already given way to the bloodhangover, a series of dull head throbs, irregular heart beats, and the sobering regret about what one might've said or whom one might've killed while under the lust.
When he looked back at the wagon it was no longer a vehicle but a loosely packed pyre.
He waded over to it in a daze, gingerly sidestepping goblin bodies. There was the mangled frame of Gorm. Mad-Wolf was there, too. Hogsbreath had been charred to a husk. The closer he moved to the smouldering wreck the less he recognized. There was an arm coated in dust. Pig-Shit-Thrower?
They're all dead, Stump thought. All gone.
The wood shifted and coughed a flock of embers. A hand pushed through, knocking a plank away. Armoured fingers dug into the ground and dragged itself forward. An arm emerged, followed by a helmet and full suit of armour. It managed to escape the collapsing pile before rolling onto its back.
Stump shuffled closer, pausing a few feet away. When the figure didn't move, he inched forward. Armoured from head to toe, it looked like one of the drawings from his books had leapt off the page and died in the fire. One half was badly burned, the other still gleaming.
"A knight." The words escaped with Stump's breath.
He fetched a charred stick and poked it for signs of life. A clang sent him leaping backwards and baring his teeth, but his snarl faded when he realized the figure hadn't moved—a small metal piece had broken off the breastplate.
Stump shifted close enough to snatch it between his toes. He hopped away again, transferred it to his fingers, and held it up to the light. The metal was long and slim, and the etched Ingilish words lit up like sunlight breaking through the waves.
 

THE IRON FLEECE
“From Thread to Thread We Defend”
Gold
Shepherd's Hall
- Garron of Grimsgate, 16th lvl Knight -
 

Fine etchings of swords and shields criss-crossed over blue and green stripes, reminiscent of the banners and coats brandished by the knights he'd read about.
Stump pocketed the insignia and stood in the road for some time, wrestling with what to do. To the west the prospect of the Shadowlands was an enticing way to go. He could exile himself and escape punishment. It was where the wagon had come from. Where Garron the knight lived. Is that where Grimsgate is?
But Stump was no knight, and the Shadowlands frightened him more than his tribe. Horror stories from his childhood crept up from the deepest pits of his mind—the ghosts of goblins with the Mark of Grumul, and hags who drank the blood of anyone foolish enough to wander about their eldritch realm.
"Coward," echoed through his skull. Strangely it had the voice of Thrung.
Stump looked back in the direction of his tribe and the fury of the matrons.
Somewhere thunder rolled.