The first goblin died before anyone realised the campaign had begun. They'd been marching for just gone two days. Newly polished splintmail strapped to their chests and shoulders, helmets with annoyingly long nose-guards, boots too new to appreciate the sup and squelch of the mud.

  If it weren't for Sludge they'd have been on the wrong end of the tally table.

  The goblin burst from the fern line with a rusted cleaver raised high and a mouth full of breath it never got to spend. Sludge stepped into it—not fast, not slow—just there, axe coming up from low to high in a short, economical arc. The goblin’s momentum carried it the rest of the way. It split from gusset to crown, from knave to chaps, wet and final, and collapsed in two halves that hadn’t yet accepted they were done.

  The Barston mob skidded to a halt behind Sludge. Someone whistled. Someone else gagged.

  “Shit and piss,” said Mera. “Save some for the rest of us, Axe.”

  They'd taken to calling it that. Sludge felt utterly indifferent to it, though the cold pang in its gut craved otherwise.

  Lord… King… God. The words fizzled from its gut like a bad belch. A chill spine ran from the stem of its lumberjack spine, articulated through coursing currents folded between thickened, gelatinous sludge and half-used sinew. The vessel was a lumberjack through and through; spent knees and a cobbled back—but the cool, amorphous fluid had other designs and intentions for it. It kept it both strong and supple; pumped up like some inflated lizard defending its nest; eggshells cracked and split in gorge.

  It fought. Of course it fought. It could do no more or less. Not yet, at least. The Cold Prince smiled inwardly.

  Sludge did not look back. It wiped the axe on the goblin’s hide, scraping green-black gore from the blade with the same care a man might use on resin, then took another step forward into the brush.

  That was the signal, though no one said so.

  They followed.

  The southern march was a place where the land forgot what it was meant to be. Old Lord Halbrecht had likely treated it like a poor landlord treats an overgrown orchard—nevermind the problematic tenants. Trees grew crooked and low, their branches snarling together like hands clutching at nothing. The ground dipped and rose without rhythm, soft in places, treacherous in others, sucking at boots and refusing to let go. Fog clung where it pleased. Sound carried badly. Smells lingered too long. A bit shit, really.

  Regardless—perfect country for goblins.

  The second attack came from above.

  Stones clattered down from the slope to their right, not thrown so much as released, bouncing and skipping with ugly purpose. One caught the crooked-nose boy on the shoulder and spun him around, dropping him hard. Goblins followed, scrabbling and shrieking, short blades flashing. They did this weird thing where they would warble and shriek with all the piss and vinegar they could muster, then clench their jaws in resolute silence once they had a target in sight. Odd creatures, goblins.

  The mob broke instinctively—half stepping back, half surging forward. Sludge did neither. It angled left, shoulder into the slope, axe held tight to its body. A goblin leapt for its head. Sludge stepped through it and took the legs out from under it with a backhand swing that barely broke pace. It's shin and ankle snapped like cheap timber and stood sunken in the ground where it had been planted.

  The fighting was close now. Too close for clean thought.

  Mera was there, knife out, face set and pale, slashing low and fast. The butcher swung his cleaver with both hands, grunting with each impact, eyes squeezed shut like he was bracing against rain. He'd tried his damnedest to emulate the swing of Sludge’s axe, but could never quite find the same purchase.

  The old trapper moved differently—as was his way—quick, sideways steps, spear darting in and out, never committing too much, but never missing his stride. A bushwhacker through and through.

  Sludge planted itself halfway up the slope and stayed there.

  Goblins came at it and died. Some got past. Most didn’t. The mob clustered around Sludge without ever deciding to, blades flashing over its shoulders, boots finding purchase where its feet had already broken the ground. All in all, they'd become a fine tuned slaughtering machine; primed for the killing floor. Farmers, butchers, and whores had the measure of things given just a few simple ingredients. A father's revenge, an eldritch hellspawn—boredom. Powerful things, they were.

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  When the goblins fled, it was sudden. One moment they were there, shrieking and hacking, the next they were gone—slipping back into brush and burrow-holes, dragging their wounded, abandoning their dead. They could smell the loss. It hung in the air like a fart.

  No one chased.

  The Barston folk stood panting, staring at each other, waiting for something else to happen.

  Sludge took another step forward. Then another.

  They went with it.

  By midday, the land began to smell wrong.

  “Heard the fuckers grind bone before the seed. We use hogs… these devils use kids.”

  Not deep rot, or blood. Something far older. Earth that had been turned too often. Roots gnawed down to stubs. Bone fragments mixed into the soil like careless gravel. Had these goblins been… farming? The trapper spat and muttered that they were close now.

  The tunnel mouth was crude—no stonework, just a slanted hole reinforced with scavenged timber and the occasional strip of hammered tin. Goblin runes scratched into the wood marked it as claimed, warded, watched.

  Sludge didn’t slow. It walked straight up to the entrance and swung.

  The axe bit deep into the support beam. Wood cracked, fibres screaming as they tore. Sludge wrenched the blade free and struck again, then again, rhythm steady and brutal. It's lumberjack limbs remembering axe on timber in a solemn ceremony. Something squealed from inside. The trapper shouted a warning, but it was too late for that.

  The beam snapped.

  The tunnel collapsed inward with a wet, grinding sound, earth and timber folding down on themselves. Dust billowed out in a choking cloud. From within came screaming—high, panicked, clawing at the dirt.

  The mob stood in a loose line, weapons lowered, listening.

  The screaming went on for a long time.

  No one spoke. No one moved.

  Eventually, it stopped.

  They moved on.

  The first death among the Barston mob came at dusk.

  It wasn’t dramatic. No last words. A goblin darted out of a side gully and slipped a blade between ribs, then vanished before anyone could react. The boy—one of the younger ones, freckles still visible under the grime—made a surprised sound and sat down hard. They couldn't tell if he'd pissed himself before, during, or after the blade had entered flesh.

  Blood soaked through his shirt, dark and fast.

  They tried to save him. Of course they did. Hands pressed, cloth ripped, voices raised. Sludge stood over them, axe resting against its shoulder, watching the light leave the boy’s eyes with the same distant focus it gave everything else.

  When it was done, they buried him under a cairn of stones. No prayer. No marker. Just weight and pressure—hoping it'd be enough to keep him hidden under the dirt.

  Sludge did not leave until the last stone was placed. They made a crude camp just yards from where the grave lay; no fires tonight, just blades sharpened in the quiet darkness.

  That night, the goblins came probing.

  It wasn't an attack in the true sense—not really. They were still too skittish, too fearful. Shapes at the edge of the moonlight. A stone thrown. A hissed insult in a language that scraped the ear.

  Sludge stood.

  It didn’t bring itself to pace. Didn’t even feel the need to brandish its weapon. Sludge simply stood at the edge of the camp, silhouette heavy and unmoving against the low moon and the stars.

  The goblins withdrew.

  In the morning, they found tracks circling the camp, never crossing the line where Sludge had stood.

  The next days blurred together in blood and movement.

  An ambush in thick brambles where goblins dropped from the trees and were hacked down before they hit the ground. A warren half-flooded by a diverted stream, its occupants forced screaming into the open. A running fight through switchback paths where Sludge took the front and never once turned to see if anyone followed.

  They always did.

  [Quest Update: Goblins slain (33/?)

  Reward Pending]

  The butcher stopped retching after kills. It was like all the bile had pursed a stopper in his throat. No more guts to spill. He noticed one evening, sitting by the fire with his hands shaking, and stared at them like they belonged to someone else.

  Mera took to counting heads every time they stopped. Quietly. Efficiently. When the number went down, she didn’t comment. She just adjusted. The boys had taken to her in the absence of a mother; albeit one who could spin a blade on the crux of her fingers like a seamstress to a needle. She’d smile at them in the half-turn, jostle the grime of their ears when they'd trudge back from bathing in the river, save the last strips of her salt-pork when the older men had taken more than their fair share.

  The trapper spoke less and less, saving his breath for fights, his spitting reserved for moments when he was thinking too hard. His gaze would rarely leave the lumberjack—sleep by the fire, half dozing, one eye still pried open.

  Sludge noticed none of this as anything but noise. Sensation without meaning. The march continued. The work continued. Sweet, green meat was just the bonus.

  By the end of the week, they crested a low rise and saw the valley.

  Smoke rose in multiple columns, thin and constant. Crude watchtowers dotted the ridgelines. Paths crisscrossed the ground below, worn deep by traffic. This was no scattering of warrens. This was something else. Deliberate. Permanent. Weathered. Home, one would assume. Even enemies had a place to call home, right?

  “Skaggad,” said the old man as he stared out into yonder. “The grand, green capital of these scum rats.”

  Sludge stepped forward, boots sinking into the soft earth at the ridge’s edge.

  Behind it, the Barston mob gathered, weapons ready, eyes fixed ahead. Mera stood by Sludge’s side, her hands twitching by the leather loops where her daggers hung.

  And then an arrow came with a wet, slick, thud. Planted right between her eyes—the gnarled, barbed tip poking from the base of her skull, the grey mush of her brains jutting out like the sweet bulb of a mollusc in a shell.

  Green bodies streaked out from hidey-holes littered across the dried, crusty marsh. Dozens of them at first—blades glistening in the sunlight. Then hundreds of them. Shrieking and warbling like they did.

  Sludge roared, wet and black, as Mera's body flopped forward, over the edge, skidding down in a cloud of dust.