Elena and I, along with four other men clad in crimson armor, hurried down the stairs to meet a panicking innkeeper and her daughter, who were cowering and hugging each other while her two sons ran around the inn, desperately closing the windows.
"Elena with me! You two barricade the place! You two guard the front door!" I shouted my commands while brandishing my silver shortsword from its scabbard.
As my voice died down, replaced by the sound of heavy armored footsteps and creaking furniture being dragged into place, I turned toward Elena and simply asked her for advice. According to John's story, she had fought goblins before, so it wouldn't hurt to ask.
"They normally rely on numbers to overwhelm the enemy, without any meaningful tactics," she answered in a clear, steady voice. Then she turned toward the door. "Permission to scout outside and gather other survivors?" she asked, her eyes fueled by determination.
"Negative, unless you take someone with you," I replied.
"Fair enough. Could I take one of the door guardian?" she asked again.
"Yes, but be quick," I answered with a nod.
She nodded back and quickly ran to one of the men guarding the front door. They exchanged a few words and then rushed outside, leaving only a single guardian at the door.
Then the inhuman squeaks, screams, and roars rang throughout the main road of the village as they ran through it in a hurry, screaming at the top of their lungs that the inn was a safe zone.
It didn't take long for them to come back… well, at least one of them came back.
Elena ran back toward us in a hurry, followed by a man in a blacksmith's apron, his wife, and his little daughter. Their group was clearly missing the man who had gone out with her.
"What happened?" I asked, worried.
"It's not a normal goblin raid. They're tactical, clearly led by either a hobgoblin or a bugbear," she said, her eyes turning toward the closing front door as the blacksmith and his family ran for cover.
"All the other villagers are slain. They got Greg. Ambushed by ten of them. He slew eight," she said begrudgingly, lamenting the death of her comrade.
"With a tactician on their side, what will they likely do next?" I asked again. A veteran monster hunter's insight was needed if I wanted us to win and survive.
"It's better to think of them as opposing human tacticians now. If you were them, what would you do?" she asked back, pushing her crimson kite shield against the front door alongside her comrade as goblins began trying to force it open.
I fell silent for a couple of seconds, my brain scraping together details from real-time strategy games I had watched and played. If I were invading a village and the enemy retreated into a fortified wooden building, what would I do?
"Would they burn us alive?" I asked, horror creeping into my expression.
"Of course not! They prefer eating raw human meat!" she shouted back as she jabbed her weapon of choice for this fight, a large battle rapier wielded in one hand, into a gap in the door. When she pulled it back, a taint of crimson blood dripped from the blade.
I thought again. The grim answer came quickly. Encirclement through numbers.
"Women, except Elena, and children, cower behind the counter! Every man, find a weapon and guard the windows!" I shouted. The blacksmith broke from his daughter's embrace and joined the fight as another window guardian.
Within a minute, every fortified window began clanging under smashing rocks. Goblins tried to force their way in, only to have hands chopped off by meat cleavers, heads split by shortswords, or faces smashed by cast-iron frying pans.
But the situation wasn't improving. It was deteriorating. The men were starting to tire, yet the goblin numbers poured in like a flood of deformed green-skinned children with yellowish eyes and oversized pointy ears.
Then the balance of power truly shifted.
As a gigantic iron greataxe smashed through the front door and straight into the face of Elena's comrade who had been helping her hold it shut. The door burst open under the thunderous push. Elena could no longer resist the force alone and was driven back, though she somehow remained standing.
Behind the now-open doorway stood a hulking, big-bellied green-skinned humanoid monster with a long nose and oversized ears. A hobgoblin. It wielded an iron greataxe stained red with blood and wore only a leather-and-fur loincloth.
It yanked its axe blade free from the door and smashed it into Elena's shield. Her body shook from the force as the shield cracked and shattered, though her armored left arm held firm. When it struck again, she gracefully blocked the blow with her rapier's handguard and countered with a thrust, narrowly missing.
Seizing the moment, another goblin tried to slip between Elena and the hobgoblin into the inn. She response by smash the pointed bottom of her worn kite shield down onto its head, pulping its brain, then discarded the shield entirely as she pulled a stiletto dagger from her thigh and dual-wielded it with her battle rapier, piercing the skulls of any goblin that tried to squeeze through the doorway.
The image made me question something.
Is she even human?
Yet despite her skill, the overall situation worsened. Window guards were being injured, sliced, cut, beaten.
Then one fell. The blacksmith, pierced through the eye by a bone spear.
As his family screamed in terror, a gap opened.
I had no choice but to take the front myself with my "cleary just for ceremonial purpose silver heirloom shortsword".
As goblins climbed through the window, I charged in and pierced one through the head. Killing something felt deeply unsettling, yet protecting the innocent filled me with grim resolve.
I killed two more goblins at that window before blocking it with a smashed piece of chair. My body was already tiring. Fighting was far more exhausting than media ever portrayed, especially for a modern dude soul in soft-handed noble like me.
The battle continued to deteriorate. A goblin had climbed to the second floor and now stood on the stairway with a shortbow, likely looted from a hunter the innkeeper had mentioned earlier.
How did I not think of that? Maybe I was too focused on directing the melee to see the bigger picture.
I composed myself in a split second and shouted with all my might.
"Goblin! Bow! Stairway!"
The warning reached Elena, who was currently fighting three enemies at once. She swept her leg, kicking the two goblins behind her aside, then hurled her dagger. It struck the goblin on the stairway square in the forehead. The body twitched briefly before going still, while her rapier never stopped dueling the hobgoblin.
At that point, I was convinced she had some sort of inhuman superpower.
Still, even her skill couldn't reverse the tide. Goblins began appearing on the second floor as attacks intensified everywhere. Bodies were thrown against windows, walls, and doors until everything began to break, and our men were pushed beyond exhaustion.
*Shick!*
A bone spear pierced my left flank. A shockwave of pain tore through my body as I collapsed.
A goblin climbed into the inn and began walking toward the women and children behind the counter, its eyes fixed on killing.
I gathered every scrap of willpower left and slashed my shortsword through its Achilles tendon. It collapsed, and I crawled forward through blood and exhaustion to finish it with a slash to the throat.
I looked back at the women and children and forced a warm smile onto my face, my voice barely holding.
"Don't fear. We… survive."
I was dying, and it didn't calm them at all. They cowered in terror.
My vision blurred. Consciousness starting to fade.
----
Then the miracle happened.
"URAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
The thunderous shouts of countless men echoed through the village. Knights bearing the bear crest of House Ursun, along with a horde of axe-wielding, papakha-wearing angry men, flooded the scene. They somehow overwhelmed the literal goblin horde through sheer numbers, hacking them down mercilessly.
"Took them long enough" I thought as darkness closed in.
The last thing I heard was a young woman's frantic voice, thick with a clear and distinct Russian accent.
"Physician!!! Save my darling!!!"
"So Arina is finally here, huh?" I thought, then I lost consciousness completely.