Chapter 22: Operation Rescue

The massive curtain wall which surrounded the city of Astyanax was as close to square as the crown’s engineers could make it. Thus, despite the amorphous and ever-changing cityscape within, the outermost architecture of the city remained fixed. It had only four gates, one in the center of each wall, facing towards one of the cardinal directions. The nobles’ carriage had been ambushed along the road which led directly from the South gate, so the party of adventurers followed the same route. After less than an hour’s march, the three companions were met with the unmistakable signs of the ambush described in the quest book.

“Fuck me,” Lexi muttered under her breath upon seeing the utter carnage. Gretel simply replied with a low whistle, while Samantha maintained her wall of stoic silence.

It appeared as if the goblins had been laying in wait to specifically target carriages, as the trio saw that the wheels had been sabotaged with cunningly wrought iron barbs attached to what appeared to be crossbow bolts. When fired at the sides of the wheels, the barbed iron rods became entangled in the spokes and axles, inevitably bringing the carriage to a halt. That done, the goblins had obviously attacked the guards with simple melee weapons, as the corpses of the four guards and the lord all showed obvious signs of having been slain by edged weapons.

One guard had the broken shaft of a spear still protruding from his gut, blood and entrails spilling out of the gaping wound into a viscous pile of gore beneath him. Another appeared to have been hamstrung before having had his throat slit by some jagged edged blade. The third lay face down in the mud, the back of his head caved in from the blow of a heavy blade — something like a cleaver, Lexi guessed. And, the last guard had been unfortunate enough to have been been gutted by a slashing strike to his lower abdomen, but to have survived the blow just long enough to have crawled a dozen paces from where he had stood, leaving a gory trail of his own torn and bleeding intestines behind him.

Worst of all, though, was the noble lord’s fate. Unarmed, he had made easy sport for the cruel pack of goblins. Lexi assumed that the lord had likely been held up inside the carriage, with the doors bolted, while the goblins executed his guards. By the time they had pried open the door — which now hung limply from a single twisted and broken hinge — there had been no one left to protect him or his family from the vile creatures. His death appeared to have been deliberately slow and torturous.

His corpse hung from a nearby tree, his arms fixed above his head, impaled through both wrists by a single spear which had been thrust deep into the wood. He had been stripped, likely with the blades of the goblins’ knives, based on the numerous small cuts which marked the places where his fine velvet clothes had apparently been brutally cut from his body. They had castrated the poor man, leaving his severed cock and balls lying in a pool of bloody muck beneath him. His feet had also been severed, and lay in the same gory heap. No other obviously fatal wounds marked his body, which led Lexi to surmise that he had simply been left to bleed out painfully from these horrible wounds while his wife and children were carried off by his killers.

In addition to the brutalized and savaged human members of the caravan, the small child-sized figures of two goblins also lay amid the wreckage. Their green bodies, having been pierced and torn by the guards’ weapons, now soaked the ground red with their own blood. While Lexi and Gretel were both somewhat desensitized to the scene, after having lived through a similar attack only one day ago, Samantha was completely aghast. Lexi had naively expected the monk’s mental and emotional fortitude to mirror her seemingly limitless physical strength, and was taken completely off guard when the mighty warrior fell to her hands and knees, vomiting into the dirt between her clenched fists.

“Gah!” Lexi cried, narrowly dodging a splash of Samantha’s stomach contents.

Gretel rolled her eyes dramatically at the paladin, mouthing the words be nice as she knelt down to comfort the monk. “There now,” the mage said softly, brushing Samantha’s white bangs from her forehead, where they had stuck due to the light sheen of sweat now covering it as the huge girl panted and heaved.

“I am sorry,” Samantha said, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrapped fist. “I ... have never seen anything so... horrible before.”

“It’s fine,” Lexi said placatingly. “The first time I saw anything like this, I was pretty freaked out too. You’d have to be fucked in the head not to be affected, right?”

Gretel nodded in agreement, patting Samantha on the pack and rubbing her thickly muscled arms with soft strokes.

“It is j-just that I thought I would be able to handle this,” Samantha said, her voice trembling. “I have spent my entire life in preparation for battle, but it seems that no amount of sparring can truly prepare one for the horrors wrought by the greenskins.” She tried, but failed, to look directly at the mutilated corpse of the lord which hung from the carriage’s side. “Such vile abominations are beyond anything I ever dreamed. I knew that the greenskins were the epitome of evil and depravity, but this... this is worse than any nightmare vision.”

I’m supposed to be the fucking leader here, Lexi thought to herself. Guess it’s to to put up or shut up.

“Listen,” the paladin said with a forced air of authority. “We’re a team, Samantha. Me and Gretel are here with you, so don’t feel bad about having a normal human reaction so something as fucking vile as this shit. Just remember, the whole reason we’re here at all right now is to go and murder those green fuckers — hopefully before they have a chance to do this to the woman and her kids that they snatched.”