But that was also why she—Priestess—was the first to notice. “The sand… It’s moving…?”
Just small vibrations at first. Little ripples in the sand. Then it emerged: a dorsal fin like a spire.
There was a tangible thump as the creatures surfaced in a cloud of dust, massive fish that made her think of impossibly large capes.
At first she saw one, then more. Two. Three. One after another the great things launched into the sky, pectoral fins working, their tails trailing sprays of sand. A vast school, numerous enough to make her dizzy, emerged from the ground, nearly covering the sky, before they dove back under the sand again. The great geysers of sand they kicked up veritably rained down on the party.
“A school of sand mantas on the move…!” someone finally exclaimed in wonder. Was it Dwarf Shaman, or perhaps Lizard Priest, or even Female Merchant? But these were the last words spoken for some time, the adventurers gone mute with amazement at the overwhelming scene. It was the sort of thing one might be lucky to see just once in a lifetime—even an elf’s lifetime.
“Bah… And what are we supposed to do? Jump on those sky-horses and bounce away?” They weren’t, High Elf Archer muttered disconsolately, the black-clad hunters of the fairy tales. “And speaking of fairy tales, some of them mention an endless snake that seems to have actually existed way, way in the past.”
“And what of it?” Lizard Priest asked with great interest, but High Elf Archer only shrugged. “The elf who encountered it back in the day is still waiting for it to pass by again.” She delivered this declaration with a completely straight face, but after a short while she could no longer hide the shaking of her shoulders, and soon after that, laughter came bursting out of her. “Hah! Man, I just couldn’t help myself there!” she cried, her voice like a tinkling bell, her joy reaching from the bottom of her heart up to the blue sky far away. She tossed herself back like a child at play, stretching out her arms and legs, heedless of the sand. “This is why I can’t get enough of adventures.”
Somebody laughed at that. It spread like a ripple, swiftly overtaking the entire party. Maybe there was nothing to do but laugh, or maybe they were all just overawed.
But none of this meant they had given up. They had no horses, no supplies, and no time, but they also had no choice except to wait for the sand mantas to pass. And once they had, the party would then have an idea which direction to begin wandering over the sand.
And despite all this, somehow—somehow—none of them felt despair, not even Female Merchant. Goblin Slayer murmured “Yes,” but perhaps none of them noticed that it wasn’t even necessary to say anymore that this was an adventure. And if this was an adventure, then the dice of Fate and Chance were still rolling. However the pips came out, for good or ill, it would be dramatic.
It was Female Merchant who finally saw the numbers on the dice. “A ship…,” she said softly, pressing her way through the sand to the edge of the roof.
Priestess scrambled after her, wrapping an arm around her thin waist to support her. “A ship…?” she echoed, following Female Merchant’s gaze. Then she blinked. There was, indeed, a ship. It sliced across the sands, great white sails full of the hot desert wind. Ship after ship, an entire fleet, triangular sails billowing—they seemed to be following the sand mantas. It was almost enough to make one forget one was standing in the middle of a desert—and then it seemed perhaps it was only an apparition.
“Well, perhaps we might hope to be rescued as victims of the storm,” Lizard Priest said casually. Goblin Slayer nodded and held up his sword of a strange length. “Shout as loud as you can. And anyone with something reflective, wave it around.”
“Oh, r-right!” Priestess said, raising her sounding staff.
“Perhaps this, then…!” Female Merchant added, drawing the rapier from her hip. With a clear ring of metal, there emerged a weapon seemingly forged from ruby, with a quicksilver sheen. It caught the sunlight and flashed, and this seemed finally to get the attention of the ships. The rudder of the leading vessel shifted heavily to one side, pointing the ship toward the abandoned village.
“Old sea dogs—or desert dogs, should I say? Hope they aren’t trouble, at any rate.” Even this foreboding murmur, though, sounded cheerful in Dwarf Shaman’s mouth.
“Eh, if they are, we’ll just steal the ship out from under them,” High Elf Archer replied.
At length, the ship arrived beside the village in a cloud of sand, turning broadside as it came to a stop before them. Perhaps it was some kind of fishing boat. It wasn’t that large—or at least, not in comparison with the sand mantas. The deck seemed to have room enough for about ten people, and upon it stood an old man with a harpoon in his hand.
“Drifters, are you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Goblin Slayer replied with a reserved nod. “We’re”—and there was a beat—“adventurers. We are in distress. Would it be possible to ride on your ship?”
He sounded nonchalant, and the other man likewise spoke quiet and low.
“Do as you please,” said the elderly captain—a Myrmidon, his mandibles clacking as he spoke.
§
The wind as they experienced it upon the deck of the ship was different again from the breeze that blew through the desert; it was a sharp, good air. It was not due solely to the speed of the ship, but also to the Myrmidon, who had given them water and washrags. Just running a cold, wet cloth over her face was enough to provoke an exclamation of relief from Priestess. And to think, they had only been in this parched land a few days.
“Appreciate it, Master Myrmidon. Real help you’re bein’,” Dwarf Shaman said, but the captain met him with more nonchalance and more clacking.
“It’s fine by me. My type don’t need much by way of water.”
Then the captain arranged his ships in an ever-shifting formation, surrounding one of the sand mantas that had been on the fringes of the school. Quite suddenly cut off from its compatriots, the giant fish was speared with one harpoon after another thrown by the Myrmidons. They could not throw as well as humans, of course, but they made up for this weakness with sheer numbers. Put crassly, if you threw a hundred harpoons at a target, one of them was bound to hit.
One harpoon, though, was hardly enough to take the life of a massive creature that lived at once in earth and sky. Perhaps it wasn’t even enough to wound it; if the harpoon had a rope attached to it, it would only drag the ship along. But the Myrmidons grabbed the rope in their claws, spread the wings on their backs, and shimmied down to the manta.
Now the Myrmidons were in their element. They slammed harpoon after harpoon into the manta’s back, then switched to hatchets, hacking away at it. They didn’t have time to actually whittle down its health, but struck into crevices in its shell, making pinpoint slashes at its gills and fins. It wasn’t long before the manta gave a mourning cry and tilted to one side, drifting lazily down through the air. Finally, it hit the ground with a great crash, spraying sand everywhere.
“If you get ’em on the ground, even the big ones die,” the Myrmidon captain explained. “’S just how it works.”
“A magnificent display,” Lizard Priest said, rolling his eyes in his head, to which the captain replied with a clack of his mandibles, “This is how we make our living. Happens to be their mating season just about now. They form these huge schools to go find females.”
It made fishing a simple matter.
With that, the Myrmidon captain turned his antennae into the wind, promptly raising his hand toward the others on the ship. In the blink of a compound eye, the sailors had adjusted the sails and turned the rudder. To Priestess it seemed like pure magic, but Female Merchant appeared to feel differently. Her face was a mélange of anxiety, concern, and excitement as she stared fixedly at the ships and the sand mantas.
“Everything all right?” Priestess asked, and Female Merchant waved a hand as if to dismiss the question. “Oh, uh, f-fine. I was just thinking it’s all sort of…incredible.”
“You over there,” the Myrmidon captain called to Female Merchant. “You look like a merchant. I might could be had to do a little trade.”
“…I would be most grateful,” Female Merchant replied, looking at the deck and flushing a little upon realizing he had read her so easily.
I’m surprised, Priestess thought. She had always heard Myrmidons were colder, less-engaged creatures. But even these brief interactions didn’t seem so. I guess you never know for sure until you meet them. Priestess diligently corrected this presupposition—perhaps it didn’t go far enough to be called a bias—within herself.
Assumptions were not helpful, not when it came to the desert, or to Myrmidons, or to adventures. This much, at least, she had learned to her great distress on her very first quest.
She shot a glance at Goblin Slayer, though it wasn’t clear what he took it to mean. The cheap-looking metal helmet quietly turned to the captain. “…Do you know anything about the goblins?”
Oh gosh. This again. Priestess felt a smile tug at the edges of her lips at his sheer hopelessness.
“Goblins?” the Myrmidon captain said, dipping his head in what appeared to be thought, his antennae bobbing gently. “Used to fight them and fight them pretty often back in the day, but I don’t suppose you’d be interested in those stories.”
“What?” High Elf Archer, her ears flicking almost like the captain’s antennae, was immediately intrigued. “Don’t tell me… Did you used to be an adventurer?”
“Something of the sort.” The Myrmidon captain waived the subject away as if it was all too much trouble. Or wait… Could it be, Priestess wondered, that he was embarrassed? “Frankly, it all depends a bit on how much you all know—about this country, I mean.”
“Well, I know diplomatic relations soured after the new king came to the throne…,” Priestess said, putting a finger to her lips and trying to remember.
Female Merchant picked up the subject. “…And I’ve heard there have been suspicious movements on the border.”
“You’re not wrong, but you’re not right, either,” the Myrmidon captain said as he slowly took a seat. He looked dignified and self-possessed as he did so, bespeaking many years of real experience. His carapace, visible in glimpses under his robes, was streaked with a panoply of small scars. “The king hasn’t changed. The old king died, that much is true. But it’s the prime minister who runs this country now.”
“As a tyrant?” Female Merchant asked. The Myrmidon captain shrugged, producing a clicking sound from his carapace. “There’s still a princess around. Doubt she can stop him, though.”
“And what, then?” Lizard Priest asked with a slow motion of his head. Lizardmen were consummate warriors. Chances were he knew the answer before he asked the question. “Those bandits we battled, who looked akin to soldiers. Were they instead…?”
“Soldiers disguised to look like bandits, most likely,” the captain responded. Goblin Slayer gave a low grunt. He didn’t bother to hide his intense displeasure—as if he ever did.
Priestess understood how he felt, though. This was a fact that hardly bore contemplating.
“You’re suggesting the soldiers may have been working with the goblins?”
If those had been simple thieves or mountain bandits, it would not have been unusual for their territory to encroach on that of the goblins. But for the armed forces of the state itself to engage in such Bushwacker-esque behavior within spitting distance of goblins… Yet, it seemed the only conclusion. The goblin horde had equipment, the resources to keep wargs, and the ability to ride them. Under ordinary circumstances, no horde so large and elaborate could have survived for long within spitting distance of a national army.
The Myrmidon captain didn’t respond. Instead, he clacked his mandibles. “No one knows for sure if the king died of assassination or just illness. One thing’s certain: That prime minister is a clever man.”
He probably means…whatever he puts his mind to. Priestess felt a rush of vertigo and suddenly felt unsteady on her feet. Humans…obeying goblins? If it were some cultist or knight-servant of the gods of Chaos, she might yet understand—but the prime minister of an entire country? What kind of plans could possibly motivate such a wretched act? Priestess hugged herself, feeling a chill despite the oppressive sun.
“Don’t act so shocked. There have been humans who obeyed monsters from time immemorial.” Hrmph. The Myrmidon expelled air from his spiracles, his antennae bobbing. “It’s a mad story all around… For example, have you heard of a weapon that launches a stone using fire powder?”
“You mean the ones that look like cylinders, big and small?” Dwarf Shaman said as if this made sense to him, but Priestess had never heard of such a thing; she exchanged a puzzled look with High Elf Archer.
“You mean flintlock rifles,” Female Merchant said. Priestess could only echo, “Flint lock?”
“I’ve heard of them,” Goblin Slayer said softly. “But from what I can tell, they don’t suit my purposes. I don’t need them.”
“Well, these people did,” the captain said. “These weapons can pierce through armor. Get enough of them together, and you can sweep an enemy unit off the field. An army equipped with them could rule the day.” Or at least, the captain added, it seemed that someone, at some point in this nation’s history, had plotted to do such.
“And what came of it?” Goblin Slayer asked, urging the captain on.
“The opposing horseman avoided the bullets by scattering as they charged, evaded them by using Deflect Missile on contact and smashed the rifle formation.”
“As well they might,” Lizard Priest stated as if it were obvious, his eyes rolling in his head. “A single weapon can never rule all on the battlefield. There are too many paths to victory.”
A sand-laden wind swept noisily across the deck. The Myrmidon captain looked up at the sky with his compound eyes. The sand formed a brownish haze against the blue. “All it means is…they have no idea what they look like to everyone else.”
§
When the sun was just past its zenith, the ship slid to a halt with a whisper of sand. In the distance, they could see something looming like a small, dark mountain. It had several tiers of rounded minarets—a castle. It was unlike any castle Priestess had ever seen, though, and she found herself so taken with the sight that she forgot to climb down off the gunwale.
“That’s the capital,” the Myrmidon captain said. “We give it a wide berth. Don’t want any trouble.” His remark seemed to bring Priestess back to reality; she straightened up and bowed her head. “Uh, um, th-thank you very much…!” She bowed repeatedly, clasping her cap to her head. This seemed to discomfit the captain, who waved a hand.
“Don’t bow and scrape. Whatever happens to you lot doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know how you plan to deal with the goblins, but if you want information, that’s where you’ll find it. Do you have any connections at all?”
“We have a safe-conduct pass and the handful of supplies we could carry…,” Female Merchant said, her finely shaped eyebrows pulling into a frown. She looked something like a disappointed child. “But everything else, we lost in the sandstorm.”
“The Red Wind of Death? That’s a force to be reckoned with. Do you have any money?”
“Yes, some. And we have our passes… Do you think they’ll really get us through the gate?”
“If they don’t, the money will. And some gold and silver will enable you to do some trading in the city.”
Virtually everything in this world had a price: goods, information, the right to enter a city. You could obtain them all if you could pay.
The wind rushing by told the story. The Myrmidon captain spoke as if comforting a small girl: “There are two deities in the desert. The God of Wind, and the Trade God. What the wind takes, the wind may yet return to you.” Then he reached into his robes, his mandibles clacking and his feelers stretching out toward the group. “Which of you is the cartographer in your party?”
“That would be me,” Lizard Priest said, raising his hand. “What of it, Captain?”
“Take this with you.” With an almost casual motion, he tossed him a roll of what appeared to be papyrus paper. Lizard Priest caught it easily out of the air and unrolled it, to discover an expertly drawn diagram. “Well, well…,” he said with a gasp. “A most magnificent map…”
“It depicts the area around here. Do with it as you like, so long as you don’t take it out of the desert.”
“Your consideration is most moving.” Lizard Priest brought his hands together in a strange gesture and bowed his head deeply.
“When Scaly’s right, he’s right,” Dwarf Shaman said from beside him. He gave his bulging item pouch a smack with his rough palm. “And we sure appreciate you sharin’ your food and water.”
“With all this, if we run into another storm, we might just make it!” High Elf Archer said.
“Prefer we not. Not all of us can live off mist and dew like elves, Long-Ears.” High Elf Archer laughed openly at this, hopping down off the ship with an acrobatic motion. Her white robes billowed as she came to rest on the ground without disturbing a single grain of sand. Dwarf Shaman, in contrast, landed with a thump, provoking another gale of laughter from the elf. She stopped laughing when she was caught in the shower of sand kicked up by Lizard Priest’s landing.
“Many pardons,” he said when he saw her standing there with her hands on her hips, but then he rolled his eyes in his head as if he was not after all too concerned. Then he stretched out his long tail toward the ship so that Priestess and Female Merchant could use it like a railing as they came down.
“Now you may both disembark.”
“Th-thank you.”
“…Pardon me.”
The girls held hands—and Lizard Priest’s tail—as they worked their way hesitantly down to the sandy ground. Still perhaps perturbed by the shower of sand, High Elf Archer jabbed Lizard Priest gently in the side with her elbow. “I notice I didn’t get a tail railing.”
“I was so taken by the agility and grace you displayed that I forgot to even think of it,” he said with a guffaw, and High Elf Archer puffed out her cheeks in a way most unbecoming of a high elf. It lasted for only a moment, though. By the time she was striding forth on her long legs across the sands, she was already back in good humor. “Orcbolg, hurry up!” she called, spinning and waving to him.
“Ah, elves. A cheerful people if there ever was one,” the captain commented from the deck, fondness evident in his tone.
“She’s always a help,” Goblin Slayer said, not necessarily sure what the captain was driving at. “Me, I am not capable of behaving that way.”
“You,” the captain said. Goblin Slayer stopped with his hand on the gunwale. The Myrmidon captain turned his compound eyes, the emotion and expression of which were almost impossible to read, on Goblin Slayer. “You look like a man lost.”
He sounded so certain.
“…No,” Goblin Slayer said, but for a moment he didn’t say anything further. He inhaled; considered; and finally, slowly, admitted, “Yes. I am surprised you could tell.”
“It wasn’t hard.” The Myrmidon produced a dry clicking sound. It seemed he was laughing. “I seemed to fall in with a lot of those back in the day.”
“I am their leader…,” Goblin Slayer started, but then corrected himself. “Or rather, they have recognized me as such.” Then the cheap-looking metal helmet swiveled from one side to the other. Through the slats of his visor, he saw his party and Female Merchant, standing on the sand and waiting for him.
“Hey, what’s going on with that roof? It looks like an onion! Weird!” High Elf Archer was saying.
“Theory’s simple enough, that. You pile up the stones, then add the keystone and voilà, it stands up on its own.”
“There is certainly a great breadth of knowledge among the peoples of our many lands.”
“I feel like I haven’t stopped being surprised since we got here,” Priestess commented.
“…Me too,” agreed Female Merchant.
Goblin Slayer let out a breath as he watched them. He had never imagined he might come to such a place and in such company. Perhaps until this moment, he never would have thought he was even capable of it.
“I’m afraid that other than goblin slaying, I am…not good for much,” he said, wondering privately what he might have been able to do about all that had happened up to this moment. Could he go forward? It would be a simple fact to say he was uncertain on this matter.
Without pomp or ceremony, though, the Myrmidon captain replied, “Any adventurer eventually has to take that step into completely unknown territory. Some die there. Some come close. Some survive. How much they fretted about it rarely comes into it.”
“…”
“So I guess the only thing to do is whatever you can do.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes,” the captain answered with a flick of his antennae. “That’s the size of it.”
“…I see,” Goblin Slayer said after a long moment, then exhaled again.
It was not an answer. His concerns didn’t suddenly vanish. It was simply a reaffirmation of fact. Gods—if his master were to see this, how he would laugh, how he would mock, how he would beat his charge mercilessly. His charge who had no smarts, no talents. All he had was guts—which meant all that was open to him was to act. It was everything he had.
Goblin Slayer squeezed his fingers on the gunwale, tensing his whole body before leaping to the sand. He landed with a thump, a light but powerful sound unlike that made by either Dwarf Shaman or Lizard Priest.
“May you do well, adventurer,” the Myrmidon captain murmured as he watched the group depart with his compound eyes. The sun, though past the midpoint in the sky, was still bright and hot enough to burn, but soon it would soften into the crimson of evening. That would be about when those adventurers would reach the city.
The captain waved his antennae to help distract from the fact that he had come to their aid almost without thinking about it. He had left adventure behind him long ago, but every once in a long while things like this happened: The dice were inscrutable.
Perhaps this is a tailwind from the God of Travel. Or perhaps it’s the doing of Fate or Chance…
“Well, personally…I’m perfectly happy either way.”
And with that, the Myrmidon Monk gave a loud clack of his mandibles.