Chapter 7: Isekai Life & Night Counter-Ambush

Despite the smell of burning goblin flesh, Voss and I were both so exhausted that we fell asleep almost immediately, leaving Yua on guard duty. I don’t know what had caused her to wake up when she did, but she seemed the most rested out of all of us, and even her wounds weren’t as bad as they first appeared for some reason. I guess her race bleeds a lot?

Since my tent was occupied, I took Calliope’s, and I have to admit she was right about something- it is quite relaxing to fall asleep on a pillow that smells like your lover. I drifted off almost immediately, and slept peacefully this time.

I woke to find it was already late morning. Voss and Calliope were both awake and striking camp, while Yua napped in the wagon seat. I did find I was rested and alert enough to be able to focus on my spellbook. I re-memorized Sleep, of course, and then found myself with a bit of a problem. I wanted to memorize Burning Hands twice, but I wasn’t entirely sure how one would go about “memorizing something twice” in a practical sense. Instead, I tried to memorize it for twice as long as I needed to, and hoped that worked.

When she saw that I was done studying my spellbook, Calliope approached me. “Voss informed me of the plan. Are you sure you want to take on a whole goblin tribe?”

“I know it sounds weird, but I think there’s a pretty good chance these goblins are responsible for the mass disappearances,” I replied, then shrugged. “Even if they’re not, they’re going around capturing slaves. Those people deserve to be freed, or avenged.”

“Yeah, okay,” Calliope hesitated, hewing her lip, then decided to continue on regardless of her anxiety, “It’s just ... We can’t possibly save everyone we come across, you know. We’ll be solving petty disputes and hunting monsters until we’re old and grey and the chance to take back your throne is long behind us.”

She had a point, I had to admit. “I understand. Believe me, we’re not just going to go frivolously solving problems for people. But favours from the powerful, treasure, magic items, even gratitude and reputation are all things that we’re going to need, in time,” I explained, “While I appreciate you are worried about us losing focus, don’t. Katriana and I are more motivated than anyone to see this through.”

Calliope paused and considered what I had said, then shrugged. “Well, I just hope we haven’t bitten off more than the four of us can chew. Have you considered whether we’re gong to push straight through, or will we camp?”

“Eh?” I was genuinely surprised, I hadn’t really considered that we would make it to Rhymer’s Cross today.

“We lost half a day yesterday to the weather, and half a day today for you to catch up on your rest,” she explained, “We don’t have an exact idea of how far down this road Rhymer’s Cross is, only that it’s ‘about’ halfway between Birchen and Pendleton, and that trip is ‘about’ the same as Osgoode Gate to Pendleton, seven days.” She then crossed her arms protectively before continuing. “We might be able to push into the night and reach Rhymer’s Cross, but we don’t have a precise idea of where it is. But if we make camp for tonight, we’re doing so in what we know is occupied territory, and another ambush by goblins is likely.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” I answered thoughtfully. “What if we were to flip the script?

“What does that mean?” she replied.

“We know we’re going to be ambushed,” I said thoughtfully, “At least, we probably are. So what if we ambushed the ambushers? We set up traps, or something like that, and we prepare for a fight. Only two people sleep at a time, maybe even have two camps within sight of one another, so they either split their forces or open themselves up for attack from behind.”

“That splits our forces, too,” Calliope pointed out, “But maybe there’s something that can be done. We’ll need time to prepare, though, so we may as well travel while we have daylight.”

We did so. While Calliope and I rode together and discussed our plan for the night, Voss scouted ahead by about fifty meters, and Yua came up from behind with the cart.

Eventually, we came to a bridge that crossed a shallow but wide river, and Calliope nodded. “This will have to be it,” she said with a sense of finality. So, we started making our camp and engaged our plan.

First of all, we’d be camping on the actual road. The hard-packed dirt road would make for uncomfortable sleeping, so instead we partially unloaded the wagon, so that two people could sleep on a hard, flat surface as opposed to the hard, bumpy one. Then, we had Voss go and collect branches, dozens of them, while Calliope, Yua and I started the fire and rubbed down the horses.

We set the wagon across the entrance to the bridge. This gave us a “wall” of sorts that gave us something to set our back to. Then, we had Voss stake the two sides of the camp on either side of the road, creating a rough triangle, which our camp sat inside, with an open tip facing the way we came. While not all of the “stakes” were entirely sound- some had signs of rot- they were sharpened and presented the appearance of defences, and were spaced close enough together that they shouldn’t be able to overwhelm us.

Finally, we played two bundles of wood soaked in lantern oil on either side of the opening, which we could easily set alight with mine and Calliope’s Burning Hands.

So, our basic idea was to pair up mage-fighter, with the fighter “holding the line” with mage support until the other pair were awake, and then if necessary, we would rotate our situation so that Yua was in the prime spot, and Voss could fall back and provide ranged support with his shortbow.

We communicated this as best we could to Yua, even having a “dress rehearsal”, where we led her through the plan a couple times until she seemed to understand what we were getting at. It wasn’t a perfect plan, I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a great plan, but it was what we had.