Chapter 9: They Can’t Make Me
Confused, Simon closed the door and rebarred it, then he sat down against it, mace in hand. He only meant to rest his eyes a bit until whatever had tried to get in before, tried again. When he opened his eyes again it was to the sound of morning birdsong, sunbeams shooting through the dusty room from the cracks in the shutters.
He got up and stretched, feeling stiff and wishing he’d spent the night on the itchy straw mattress rather than the floor, but there was nothing for it now. He grabbed the stale end of the loaf of bread and slowly gnawed through it as he opened the door to look outside. Everything was exactly where he’d left it. It was a beautiful morning in a picturesque landscape. You’d never know that there’d been something evil about stalking him and trying to slit his throat while he slept. Simon wandered slowly around the small cabin, looking at the footprints that were left behind in the dust. They were like tiny human footprints with long claws, which could mean only one thing - goblins.
He finished his lackluster breakfast and grabbed the only remaining food that didn’t need to be cooked: a sad and bruised apple, then he belted on his sword, picked up the crossbow, and went for a walk. He couldn’t see the individual tracks in the grass, but this early the dew was still heavy on everything and he could see how a small group of goblins had trampled a path through the tall grass into the woods. At least he hoped it was a small group. He had no real way of judging that, but he was only confident in his ability to deal with three or four at a time - any more than that and he’d have to go back to the cabin to get armor.
The path led to the edge of the nearby woods and then disappeared into the underbrush. Once inside the forest the grass became sparse and patchy and the under-canopy area was dominated by brambles and a thick layer of wet leaves. Simon didn’t know exactly where they went from here, but they seemed like lazy, disgusting creatures to him, so odds were good they’d taken the shortest path back to their lair. With that in mind he kept going straight, scanning the horizon from left to right for signs of an ambush.
He found nothing, and even though he searched carefully for ten minutes there wasn’t a trace of them. He stopped on top of a hill to rest, very cognizant of the fact that he needed to turn around soon or risk getting lost himself. While he sat there Simon picked up a few pebbles and started tossing them one at a time on a nearby boulder jutting out of the far side of the hill. The first two missed, but the third and fourth bounced off it with a satisfying plink that echoed among the trees. It was only when he tossed the fifth that something strange happened. It bounced off the lichen covered face closest to Simon, but when it bounced back it made another plink, followed by another, and then a third. Each of the noises got more distant and echoey like his pebble had gone down a well or something, so he got up to investigate.
On the other side of the hill he found a natural cave leading into the hill. Simon had no light, so he couldn’t go inside to investigate, but the smell told him all he needed to know. After fighting the little bastards on the goblin floor a couple times he would recognize that sulfurous stink anywhere. He considered waiting around and shooting the first one to poke its head out of the hole as a warning to the others, but eventually decided against it for two reasons. The first was that he didn’t actually know if all of the goblins had returned to the cave and the last thing he wanted to do was find himself surrounded when another hunting party came back. The second was more concerning though; shooting one in the head would be the equivalent of kicking a hornet's nest, when everyone knew that leaving it alone was always the right idea. If he had a stick of dynamite or a fireball spell he could blow the entrance shut, but as it was, one or two dead goblins wouldn’t change anything.
At least he knew where they were now, he thought, backing away slowly. That was a small victory, he decided, as he left the forest the way he came. If the goblins got to be really troublesome then he could take care of them, but for now that was more trouble than it was worth. Now all he needed to do was take care of his other little problem and light a fire, to cook those sausages, and it was going to be a great day.
Simon spent hours with the chunk of flint and a steel dagger, but he couldn’t catch any of the logs on fire. Eventually he decided that it wasn’t actually flint at all and it went outside to rub the sticks together. That didn’t work either though. He never even got a hint of smoke, and only rubbed his hands raw for his trouble. In the end he was forced to eat the apple, then the cheese, and finally the apple core because he was still hungry and there was nothing else to eat. He wished he had YouTube here so he could watch a few videos on making a fire. He was sure that if someone explained it to him properly it would be easy.
At one point Simon even got so desperate that he asked the mirror, “Do you know how I use flint and steel to start a fire?”