The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale - From RoyalRoadl.com by ClearMadness

Rolling the Dice 1

The loud creaking of the wagon's wheels was somewhat muted by the frequent thud of footsteps on the dusty ground of the road. The only other sounds to be heard were the wind through the trees and the restless rustling of leaves.

Blacknail the hobgoblin looked up from where he'd been absentmindedly inspecting a set of tracks next to the road, near a thick clump of coned reeds. The footprints had caught his interest but they had turned out to be from nothing more than wolves. The forests of the North contained many things much more dangerous than wild dogs.

A dozen men and women were walking alongside a wagon that had been piled high with goods. Their clothing was mostly tough looking leather and every one of them was armed. This wasn't surprising, since they were bandits who had just robbed a caravan and were now taking their spoils back to their base.

"What's the hobgoblin doing over there?" a nearby blonde man nervously asked the scarred woman walking next to him.

"He's plotting to kill us in painful and humiliating ways," the woman replied sarcastically. "Why are you bloody asking me? Why do you even care? He probably just smelled a rabbit or something."

The outlaws had gotten some great loot. Blacknail knew this because he'd been happily looting the merchant caravan beside them. The bandits were his comrades and they all served under Herad the Black Snake.

Not all the humans liked him, though. Some of them were jealous of his good looks and superior murder skills. Happily, a few demonstrations of those same skills had silenced the hobgoblin's most vocal critics. They'd been very impressed.

Recently, Herad had ordered all her minions to charge tolls instead of outright robbing people, but the bandits' last target had been trying to sneak through her territory without paying. That meant they had to be made an example of, and so the hobgoblin had gotten to murder them and take their stuff. That was Blacknail's favourite part of being an outlaw.

As soon as most the merchants were dead the hobgoblin had immediately sniffed out all the best loot and taken it for himself. After some hissing and snarling to scare away the other bandits, five wheels of cheese, a pretty red cloak, two roast ducks, and bag of shiny stones were all his.

He couldn't wait to get home and show Saeter. The old ranger had been the one who had trained him and taken him in when he'd been just a little goblin.

The man was one of the scouts with the mission. Blacknail was the other one. They were there to help track down their target and to keep watch on the forest. Most of Herad's scouts were friendly towards the hobgoblin, and greatly respected his master Saeter. The old ranger was the best scout in Herad's band.

"Nothing-ss, just wolf prints," Blacknail replied happily.

"Ah, there's probably nothing to worry about then," Wyre the scout said.

"Dunno, forest doggies aren't that dangerous but there-ss are a bunch of people watching us from the trees behind-ss me," the hobgoblin told him.

"What? How do you know?" the man asked as he jerked in alarm.

"I smell-ss their trail all along the road. They were just on-ss it but they ran off in that direction when we got close," Blacknail explained.

The hobgoblin's master Saeter would have been able to detect the watchers by observing the flight of birds, or something. Blacknail didn't need to do that because most humans smelled like a pile of shit on legs. They were hard to miss.

Wyre frowned thoughtfully and took a few seconds to process this.

"How many of them are there and what can you tell me about them?" he asked.