Warning: The following story contains explicit violence, explicit sex, unfair racial stereotyping of goblins and ogres, bald-faced lies and innuendo, treachery, lazy misappropriation of pagan gods and goddesses, unsafe rooftop stunts, ego-driven consumption of alcohol, mass immolations, impalings, irreverence, arson, assault on religious workers, sentient-on-sentient devourings, divinely sanctioned sexual promiscuity, conscription, passive-aggressive posturing, adults playing with their food, undemocratic government, oral sex, adultery, destruction of private property, coarse language, questionable speech patterns, nudity, unwitting insults, completely incidental anal sex, looting of corpses, human-on-goblin violence, copious spattering of blood, numerous fantasy tropes, a lesbian temple orgy, self-important nobles, workplace accidents, negotiations in bad faith, falls from a fatal height, weaponized bedding, dine-and-dashing, breaking and entering, stalking, surveillance, frenemies and the sorcerous abuse of a dragon...
...though not all in the first chapter, of course.
*
Davos chose to die in front of the Temple of Aphrodite. It seemed like the best possible place.
Five minutes before that, he'd never entertained such a thought. He still expected that the soldiers manning the city's high walls could hold until dawn. For much of the night, he stood in the streets below while real soldiers up above defended the city with bows and spears. Davos hoped that his duties as a conscript would amount to only a sleepless night followed by a long day of clearing carts, wagons and other barricades from the city's streets.
Like all the other sailors and dockworkers conscripted from the waterfront, the young man wore little in the way of arms or armor. His black ponytail hung from beneath an ill-fitting leather helmet. He had his cutlass and an old crossbow that one of the regular soldiers shoved into his hands. Beyond that, all he had for his protection was his loose blue shirt and tan sailor's pants.
Some, like Davos, came along willingly. Others required coarse persuasion. A mere handful of regular soldiers waited along with them, scattered among and behind the conscripts to maintain order and ensure no one ran. Davos wondered if those soldiers had been chosen because they had the influence to secure a safer assignment, or because they were too unreliable to put on the front line.
"Do you know how to use that cutlass, Westerner?" asked the man-at-arms beside him. Baleth, if Davos remembered correctly. Davos's fellow conscripts mostly wielded cheap spears and axes better suited to craftwork than fighting; Davos at least had his weapon from the ship's stores.
He wondered how many of his comrades even knew how to use their weapons. He wondered how many had ever been in real battles. He wondered how many would stand their ground and how many would run. Clearly Baleth wondered the same thing.
"I've been in a few fights," Davos nodded. His plain-spoken accent sounded casual and even a bit lazy compared to the crisp enunciation of words in Loewen.
"Do you hail from a warship?"
"I've only served on merchant ships," Davos shook his head.
"How does that pay?"
"The pay is lousy," Davos grinned in spite of himself. "Meals are small and usually cold, living space is cramped and you're usually sore just from holding yourself upright and steady all day long, but you get to see the world, at least. It got me out of Murried."
Baleth frowned. "That's why you took to sea? You just wanted to travel?"
"Well," Davos shrugged, "it might've had to do with the girl my parents decided I had to marry."
"Hunh. Ugly one?"
"No, kind of pretty, actually," Davos said. "Her family had much more money than mine. It's not as if she was a bad catch."
Baleth's eyebrow rose. "Then why didn't you stay and marry her?"
Again, Davos shrugged. "Didn't love her."
A terrible roar split the night and fire swept across the top of the city wall. Flames consumed archers and men-at-arms crowded on the battlements, fully engulfing some and leaving others crawling away or even leaping off the platform. Davos saw the source of the flame for only a moment. It was larger than most ships he'd seen, with broad wings and a black sheen to its scales that partly reflected the flames. He saw its glowing green eyes as it passed overhead. He felt the hot wind of the air pushed forward and down as it flew past. Between the noise and the rush of wind, it seemed as if the whole world shook.
He may have heard laughter, too, carried through the night on those wings, but he wasn't sure. There were soon other things to worry about.
Survivors on the walls tried to rally, but the effort soon turned to cries of pain and panic. Dozens of smaller, humanoid black shapes came leaping over the side onto the walls. Blades flashed. More screams split the night. Too few men remained on the walls to hold back the goblins, who appeared to hardly need ladders or ropes to scale the walls from the other side.
"Bet you wish you'd married the girl now," Baleth grunted, and then called out loudly, "Hold ground! Sergeant Carstwick!" he yelled across the line to his right. It wasn't that broad a line; the city streets were no more than ten yards across. "Sergeant Carstwick, are we--Sergeant? Where are you--?"
Davos didn't need to look. He knew the fat sergeant was already running as fast as his chubby legs could carry him, and that others ran with him.
"Baleth!" Davos yelled. A sea of dark shapes and the green flames of goblin fire flooded the other end of the street. Goblin slingers hurled their fire in every direction, burning houses and shops as well as setting parts of the barricade alight. The charge came in almost the same breath.
He loosed a bolt from his crossbow. His target stepped aside just in time, as did the goblin behind him, but the third one back took the shot in the gut and collapsed. Davos only struck home because the number of targets made it hard to miss. The fires made it easy enough to see the mass of charcoal black skin, mismatched armor and hungry yellow eyes.
Others should have taken advantage of the enemy's crowded positioning to put more of them down, but too many fled. Davos didn't even look to see how lonely he was. He didn't dare.
"For the king!" Baleth yelled. "For your homes! For glory!" He stood tall to hurl his spear. Whether or not it hit anything, Davos didn't see; he focused on reloading his crossbow. When he looked up, Baleth flew backward from the barricade with three arrows and a pair of spears in him.
Davos had just enough time to shoot the first goblin to leap atop the barricade before his crossbow was no longer appropriate to the fight. The goblin's eyes bulged and its mouth full of broken, jagged teeth fell open. Davos found the sight too unsettling to consider whether its reaction was one of pain or anger. It fell to the cobblestone street beside him, dead from the bolt in its chest.
Many other goblins took its place as Davos drew his cutlass and snatched up his shield. He swung his blade, parried, slashed and dodged. He battered opponents with his shield as often as he used it to block their attacks. Soon, he had no time to look up from the melee.
Other men stood their ground along with Davos. How he stayed alive through those five minutes was beyond him, though much of the credit surely belonged to those others who refused to flee. Boasting was not in his nature; even when faced with a trio of opponents, one hammering away at his shield, another trying to get through his parrying cutlass, and the third between them looking for an opening, Davos presumed that everyone else around him had it worse.
Davos knew he was proficient. He didn't doubt his abilities. Yet he never would have predicted he'd be the last man standing out of the whole line.
More goblins streamed from the broken gate at the walls to the city and ran right past him, leaving their brethren to dispatch this last human soldier. Sooner or later, he realized, one or more would pause to pitch in. Three-on-one was impossible enough; four or more opponents would be far more than Davos could handle.
The one on his left swung further out to the side, drawing out Davos's shield. The goblin on the right lunged, forcing Davos to parry. He knew, even as his sword came up, that he was open to the center opponent now. No time to think.
Lunging in with his sword out low, the goblin, too, was exposed. Davos stepped forward to meet his middle foe, bringing his foot down hard on the goblin's knee. The step saved him from being skewered by his opponents to the sides.
Yellow eyes winced shut on the middle goblin's round, vicious face as his knee buckled. Davos brought the edge of his shield and the basket hilt of his cutlass together on either side of the enemy's head. The goblin made a quick, painful noise and collapsed.
Davos spun around, giving ground quickly, now backing toward the oncoming hordes rather than away. He had nowhere else to go. His opponents followed him, ready to exploit, but Davos did the unexpected again. He squatted down low, sweeping out with his shield to clip one across the knee. The slashing blade of the goblin to his other side passed over Davos's head. He retaliated with a slash of his own, cutting deeply into the goblin's abdomen to leave him falling in a screaming heap on the street.
The remaining foe backed off. Davos had his first chance to see how much of the city was already in flames, and how little of the guard or the army remained, and how freely the goblins looted. He realized there was nothing left of the line he fought to maintain.
He heard that terrible roar again, and the screams of burning and dying people that accompanied it.
The final goblin opponent grabbed at the small horn hanging from a leather string around his neck and blew for aid. Other goblins looked up from their looting or their burning to hiss at him, to hoot and howl and yell for his blood.
The army had been overwhelmed. Resistance crumbled. Goblins streamed into the city. Davos had only to decide whether to hide—from goblins who could see in the dark, and could hear and smell much better than any human—or to pick a place to make his final stand.
