Forging A Demon Empire

Chapter 19

For days we had been fighting night and day killing nothing but goblins. If it wasn’t for Caremila marking the ones that were on our side with a simple banner it would be hard to tell these bastards apart.  They all looked and smelt the same. The voice had been calling out to me for days it would stop suddenly and then continue. Was this some corruption, the land itself or maybe it was my own delusions?

I spat on the ground wiping my sword. ‘Awful creatures.’

Surveying the battlefield, Sharx and his father’s men were lost in willful glee. It was as if we hadn’t been fighting for our very lives caught in another sloppy ambush. The men were about to their limit of this and so was I as I sheathed my sword.

My eyes focused on the new captives that had surrendered. If they could be called that once these goblins lowered their weapons after their leader died and bent their heads. Their acceptance into what could only be considered a horde was instant.

“Now then,” as I looked to the men. “One more clan left and then this business is over.”

The men nodded their agreement giving their distaste as the goblins gathered weapons from the battlefield.

Caremila was in deep discussion with their leader, the words she said to him was lost to me except a chosen few.

“We should move now great goblin Clan Leader take what’s yours before those that oppose you strike,” Caremila said as her hands stroked the air.

The Goblin leader beamed. His words echoed from the staff as it glowed. “Go, we take tribe leader out and restore true clan leader!”

The goblins lost in their stupor came out to of it as his voice cackled in laugh and in goblin tongue. In their menace, they cheered in a cackling voice.

***

Shalaka Tonk was the name that smeared the yellow banners on our approach. We ran upon them still stuck in their hovels hardly hidden in the forest. Fear laced their eyes enough to even make me believe that these monsters might be human. Goblins held their arrows to heart and my men put their faith in steel but before the attack begun the leader rose coming out to meet us alone. He was not a shaman but dressed in a warrior’s garments. His spear was lifted towards the leader before landing on me. He spoke many words in his goblin tongue as his spear thrusted in my direction. The surrounding goblins listened responding in a chorus of a bad sound.

“What is he saying!” I shouted towards Caremila.

Her face looked stunned before the words fell from her mouth: “He wants to challenge you to a fight the winner determines the fate of the clan.”

“Me?”

Her face remained perplexed. “Yes, because he thinks that you’re the strongest person here.”

“Would this mean the end and we will get what we are owed?”

“Yes,” the goblin shaman responded.

Sharx his son eyes met mine, it was filled with the look of disgust but the maddening laughter from the goblins nearby said otherwise. They wanted this; they wanted to witness this fight.

I stepped forward as one of my men called my name.

“Its fine,” I responded more to myself.

I drew my sword and waited taking a stance. The goblin did the same almost a mockery of mine however unlike all the goblins I had slayed to this point. This one did not laugh nor did it sway foolishly about are charge head on to its death. I took in the scars that marked it and the trophies it kept laced around its body. This was not one to die easy from its stance its eyes, its aura this goblin was strong.

The goblin came close saying the only words it could form with sense in its mouth. “Human strong, human dead. I kill human.”