Chapter 3: Like Herding Cats
All of the students rushed out as soon as the carriage stopped, waving their weapons around like idiots, while Dominic and the girl in the chain mail went last, neither of them with their weapons out.
"Just stay close to me, so those idiots don't smack you accidentally. My dad is a guard as well. Well, a guard officer. The younger son of a Viscount and holder of a Baron's peerage himself." The younger girl whispered.
"Don't worry, I've got your back." Dominic whispered back with a conspiratorial wink.
The thought that a girl half his size and years his junior was going to protect him was rather amusing. But she seemed quite confident in herself.
The girl might be a Cygnia noble, but she seemed to have more common sense than the rest of these kids put together, and Dominic was beginning to wonder if this trip was officially sanctioned by anyone in charge of the Academy. If it was, then surely there should have been at least one proper guard with them.
The majority of the students began to run off into the woods, spreading out and not keeping in any sort of formation as soon as the carriage was gone, and Dominic's fears were confirmed. This was just a field trip to them, and they didn't take the goblins seriously at all.
Dominic had spent years in the mountains, often foraging for food when villages had simply run him off for being dragonkin. He was no stranger to the dangers of monsters in the wilderness, and he had spent years learning the best way to hide from danger.
Only a handful were moving together with him and the guard's daughter and keeping a proper watch for threats.
"Eyes to the right. I hear something moving," one of the men in their small group announced.