“Grief,” said the old trapper—though Sludge had no frame of reference for what grief meant or was, or had ever felt its icy knife deep in its belly—“makes men do terrible things. Monstrous things.”

  The eyes of the rabble were fixated on his words, crackling out over the firelight. Some Barston folk had brought salt pork and dried venison with them, chewing on it like children chewing candies at a mummers show.

  “I've seen this fella break a green bastard in two with his bare hands—split it down to its fluids before my very eyes.”

  He glanced over at Sludge and smiled.

  “That's a father's love, that is. Grief, rage. Spit and piss. All of it.”

  The fire cracked and spat, as if agreeing.

  Sludge sat on a stump at the edge of the light, axe resting across its thighs. The lumberjack’s hands were swollen and nicked, knuckles crusted with old blood and pitch. It picked absently at a splinter lodged beneath one nail, watching the people watch it.

  They smelled like fear and smoke and salt pork.

  It was… distracting.

  “So,” said a man with a bent nose and a spear that had once been a fence post. “What do we do now?”

  Sludge looked up slowly.

  Faces leaned in. Expectant. Hungry in a different way than goblins.

  “We walk,” Sludge said.

  That seemed to satisfy them.

  They left before sunrise.

  No banners. No songs. Just boots on wet earth and breath fogging the air. Not as a mob—mobs broke too easily—but not as an army either. Twenty-three souls all told. Farmers. A butcher. Two boys who shouldn’t have been there and a woman who absolutely should. Three torches. One mule. Twenty-three souls from Barston, wrapped in wool and bad decisions. The old trapper walked near the back, quiet as rot, letting the story grow legs without him pushing it.

  Sludge took point.

  Sludge always took point.

  The first goblins came shrieking out of a hedgerow just before noon.

  Six of them. Maybe seven. Hard to tell when they moved like that—too fast, too twitchy, blades clutched in the white-grime of their goblin flesh. A scouting party—lean, green, clever in the way rats were clever. They sprang from the hedgerows screaming, blades flashing, eyes alight with the joy of violence.

  Someone behind Sludge yelped.

  Sludge did not.

  The axe rose and fell.

  It looked like strength. That’s what they told themselves later.

  The first goblin split from shoulder to hip, the blow so heavy it buried the axe head deep in the thing’s body and drove it into the mud. There was a brief, horrible resistance—then the creature came apart like overripe fruit. Sludge wrenched it free with a grunt, spraying dark blood across his chest.

  The second lunged.

  Sludge stepped into it.

  From the side, it looked like a tackle. Just a big man barreling forward, shoulder-first. The goblin vanished beneath him with a wet crunch, and when Sludge straightened, wiping his beard with the back of his hand, there was only a smear left in the grass.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Gods,” someone whispered, letting the word hang out as if there were any still about to save them.

  The third goblin stabbed Sludge in the thigh.

  The blade went in.

  Sludge looked down at it, expression puzzled, like a man noticing a thorn.

  Sludge twisted.

  The goblin screamed as the knife wrenched sideways, its arm pulled off balance, bones popping loud enough to hear. Sludge headbutted it once—hard—and the goblin dropped bonelessly to the ground.

  Later, the butcher would swear the skull sounded hollow when it broke.

  The rest fled. No one chased them. The Barston folk could have almost felt bad for them. Poor, green bastards.

  They stood there breathing hard, staring at Sludge as it calmly tugged the knife free of its leg and tossed it aside.

  Blood ran down it's lumberjack trousers. None of it seemed urgent.

  “You—” someone started.

  “We walk,” Sludge repeated, cutting off the rest.

  They walked.

  The first goblin nest was a shallow thing, more burrow than fort. Reeking. Low tunnels dug into a rise of earth choked with thorns and old bones. Goblin holes were ugly abodes—tunnels gnawed into earth and rot, lined with filth, bones, and the unmistakable stink of old boots. Sludge huddled in first, lumberjack shoulders compressing, body flowing where bone should have been.

  It crouched down, peered inside, ever curious. Ever hungry for the sweet, sweet meat.

  It was dark.

  Good.

  “I’ll flush ‘em,” the lumberjack said, voice muffled by beard and shadow.

  Before anyone could argue, it crawled in.

  From outside, it sounded like a bad dream.

  Shouting. Goblin shrieks. The wet thud of steel meeting meat. At one point, something screamed for a long, long time, then very suddenly stopped.

  The ground shuddered once, like someone dropping a heavy sack.

  Then Sludge backed out, shoulders scraping earth, chest heaving.

  The lumberjack fleshbag was red to the elbows. Sludge inside was still jet black and roiling, drunk on the sweetmeats it had slurped in the onslaught. They were delicious, and with every goblin brain munched and every goblin liver supped up clean, it could feel a growing semblance of sense. Did Sludge have a purpose? Was it bubbled into existence to be the harbinger of the greenlings ruin? Was it the guest of honour at their last, great, feast?

  When Sludge emerged, it was heavier. Thicker.

  Something inside it clicked with familiarity.

  [Skill Improved: Amorphous Compression (Rank 2) Passive Effect: Resistance to Piercing Damage Increased]

  “They won’t bother Barston again,” said the old trapper from the side of the goblin hole.

  No one volunteered to check.

  They burned the nest.

  By the second one, the townsfolk had stopped pretending this was a militia.

  They called it a hunt.

  By the third, they called it him. The Lumberjack—he who hunts goblins.

  “Let him go first,” someone muttered as the trees thickened and the air grew foul. “Best not crowd him.”

  Sludge did not object.

  At the larger warren—this one with stakes and crude walls—the goblins tried to stand their ground. Poor bastards. It would have almost been cute, if it weren't for the inevitable horror that would peel back before them.

  Shields up. Spears braced. A proper line. Cute.

  Horrible. Sludge charged regardless.

  To the watching eyes, it looked like madness: one huge, grief-mad lumberjack barreling into a wall of green bodies, axe swinging in broad, murderous arcs.

  They did not see how the goblins slipped under its blows and never came back out.

  They did not see how bodies vanished beneath its lumberjack bulk when it stumbled forward, only that he rose again, slick with blood, breathing harder than before.

  They did not question why blades seemed to stick still when they struck the lumberjack, or why he never bled quite as much as a simple lumberjack should.

  They told themselves it was adrenaline. They told themselves it was fury. They told themselves not to look too close. Look away, in fact. Gods, was that it's spleen?

  When it was over, Sludge stood amid the wreckage, hands on knees, sucking air through its teeth like a tired man after honest work. Sludge was an honest man, after all.

  The old trapper came up beside it. The prickles in its flesh didn't seem to prickle when the old trapper approached him of late.

  “You alright, son?”

  Sludge considered.

  Inside the lumberjack’s chest, something heavy settled. Not full. Not satisfied.

  But steadier.

  “Yes,” Sludge said.

  Then, after a moment: “No.” Sludge dropped it's head.

  The old man nodded, like he’d expected nothing else.

  [Quest Update: Goblins slain (29/?)

  Reward Pending]

  “It's alright, son,” said the old trapper—gripping it's lumberjack shoulder, grimacing slightly as it felt an out-of-place squelch.

  Behind them, the folk of Barston began dragging bodies into piles, already talking about where to go next. They'd built massive pyres from the goblins ramshackle ramparts. Shields, spears, even a small bulwark of bone and polished stone. None of it had done them any good. Several generations of goblin folk wiped out in an afternoon. Some good graft, they'd supposed.

  Someone said, “There’ll be more.”

  Sludge straightened, axe resting on its shoulder.

  “Good,” it said, seeming slightly more lumberjack than sludge for once.

  And the people, seeing only a blood-soaked father with murder and revenge in his eyes, believed him. Boy, did they believe him.