ALL NOVEL Chapter 19 - Compound Penalty
Chapter 19 - Compound Penalty
The cost of the night-haunt’s attack was much more than just the multiple goblins it had killed in its rampage. It had also prevented the birth of at minimum 4 more, and as many as 12.
In a cold sort of calculus, it might have been better to let the monster take 1 or 2 goblins if it meant the strange goblin reproduction cycle continued uninterrupted. I’d hoped to have more than 50 goblins at the start of the next day. Now, we were even further from that goal than we had been yesterday.
And to top it all off, a goblin who hasn’t slept is a pretty useless goblin, it turns out. I was no exception. The tribe’s lethargy resulted in almost no work being completed, other than processing the night-haunt and laying its meat among the smoldering coals. Neil claimed the skull, which he’d taken as his new mask. But no hunting party went out, no wood was chopped, and Sally’s team barely formed a handful of adobe bricks.
I didn’t blame them. It was like a veneer of grey film had been pulled across my eyes and leaden weights attached at ankles and wrists. My head hurt like I’d gone on a three-day bender. I barely mustered the strength to pull open the door of the kiln and remove the trays of fired ceramic parts.
About a dozen more notifications flooded past too fast for me to read them. It was the single largest influx of new goblin technology that I’d seen, and I could barely even read half of it. The ripple of the rest of the tribe internalizing the new technology was like a slow breeze rippling across the surface of a still pond, but forcing them to think in this state seemed to cause tangible physical discomfort as many of them clutched their heads and moaned like a horde of living dead. Having only seen these goblins in a state of either frenetic energy or deep slumber, this malaise was almost hard to bear.
The fact was, I was very attached to my goblins. Expendable as this world may have conditioned them to be, they were diligent, creative, energetic, and possessed of a strange sort of optimism. Every task was a new adventure, every new technology a world of possibilities.
I hated the night haunts for stealing that from them. But there was no denying that the day was ultimately a wash. At least we had food in our bellies from the night haunt itself. Maybe the others that I’d seen circling would be wary of approaching after the last one they sent didn’t return.
The evening lethargy came swiftly and suddenly as soon as the sun passed behind the moon for the daily eclipse. We barely had time to pull the shelters together before the entire tribe passed out.
* * *
I woke up to the morning sun peeking over the horizon. We’d slept at least 75% of the previous day, but no attacks during the night. Maybe the carcass of the night haunt had been enough to deter any other would-be visitors looking to make a snack of goblins. Maybe they’d tried their luck at another village.
Buzz didn’t even come to the morning staff meeting. He just took his crew and set them to task with renewed vigor. A few of his goblins went around to the shelters, retrofitting roofs with sharpened poles to discourage night-time visitors from above. The majority of his workers immediately started making as many bricks as they could. Buzz had expressed interest in the ones we made for the kiln, and he was smart enough to realize the scale of production we’d need for actual construction with the things—but that raised a problem. The pond was our primary drinking water supply. But it was rain-supplied. It couldn’t also be our primary source of water for forming earthen bricks. There was also limited space atop the bluff to lay out the drying mud.
Sally, surprisingly enough, had already come up with a solution. Apparently, she’d been teaching herself to draw. She grasped the possibilities of the ceramic ball bearings immediately in multiple applications—the most practical of which was a goblin-powered freight lift.
Granted, goblin engineering sketches aren’t exactly easy to parse—their linework is akin to their bushcraft in that it simply goes wherever it wants. But a log hanging over the edge of the cliff with a larger ring around it and a load slung opposite several stick-figure goblins wasn’t exactly difficult to divine the purpose of. If we had heavy lift capabilities, we could form and dry the bricks down at the river where there was more space and more material, and then bring them up to the village.
“Nice work, Sally. Add some grease to the moving parts, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.” I called Buzz over. “Buzz, go ahead and move the brick-making operation to the river. We’ll have a way to bring them up soon."
My chief engineer beamed and ran off. I’ve said it before, but these creatures aren’t dumb. Sally especially was starting to show a propensity for anticipating problems and implementing solutions.
Neil had fit most of his hunters’ spears with the new ceramic tips from the first batch in the kiln. As an experiment, he drove the end one through the stone-sloth’s hide. It stuck into it, rather than simply deflecting off as the stone spearpoints had. He nodded his appreciation.
“Got one thing before you go,” I said.
I had some of the goblins bring over the beak and mandible of the night haunt we’d killed the night before, and they lifted it on a pole atop the largest of our wooden shelters. I got a hoist up on the edge of the roof with a sheaf of bark under my arm and whistled for attention.
The goblins stopped what they were doing for a moment and gathered around, pointing up at the totem and clacking their jaws in a reasonable approximation of the night haunt’s beak snapping.
I held the bark over my head and raised my voice. “This is a symbol of defiance and resistance! We will not surrender to creatures of the night, no matter how hideous or hungry. No one is hungrier than a goblin! Let any monster who looks upon this cower in fear!”
The goblins cheered. Now, admittedly, I’m not much of an artist. I’d drawn a simple, circular frowny face with goblin ears and angry eyes. I looped it around the skull pole.
Interesting. I would need to build more totems. I looked over at Neil. “Jab that carcass again.”
Neil pulled back, leapt with a war-cry, and thrust his spear again. This time, it went entirely through the outer-most layer of the carcass hide. I grunted. Even the hook hand didn’t seem to slow him down. The totem really did work.
Neil pulled it out and examined the tip with a critical eye. “Good stuff, boss.”
“Be safe!” I called, as the hunters took a running leap off the side of the bluff. “Or, well. Never mind.”
As for me, I had another project. The goblins mostly gave me space as I worked on things by myself. They’d come to realize that when I got to tinkering, it translated to a significant leap forward for them. Or I thought as I looked down at my prosthetics, for me. Though, I didn’t know what progress or technology level any of the other goblins tribes in the region had made on their own. For all I knew, each one had a rival king that had taken their tribe to metallurgy and steam-power already and we could soon be facing goblins with firearms or dirt bikes or what have you. I had seen smoke rising from one or two bluffs in the distance, so at least a couple of them had discovered the secrets of fire-making. Were other goblin kings common? I had to think not, since Rufus had commented how we were almost a mythical creature in this world. But there was a chance I wouldn’t be unique.
Well, if he thought we were mythical before, wait until he saw what I was cooking up now. I took the lightest, most flexible poles in the stockpile and the sturdiest cord. I began sketching out a design, and then shaping the poles. I also collected the rest of the stone-sloth claws, and some of the bones from the night haunt, as well as its hide. The wings were a fleshy membrane that had cured quickly, and it was both light and durable. But we lost two more goblins out in the world while I worked. I didn’t know if they belonged to Buzz or Neil.
I don’t know if the hide was worth all the goblins the night haunt had killed, but I was going to do my best to make sure it didn’t go to waste. The stone-sloth claws I had marked immediately for their light weight and steep front curve leading into a shallow back curve. I stole a few of Sally’s engineers to help with the droll work of securing them to the wooden frame. Then, we stretched the thin night haunt hide over both claws and frame and used ceramic needles to sew it in place.
By the time the hunters returned, we had a reasonable frame and the sloth bones created the perfect rigid structure for the top of my new device. But it still needed work. The next few days would be quite interesting, indeed.