A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 46: Battle With The Goblins - Part 12

The bear shook it off and the Goblin went tumbling through the air, landing hard with its back against a tall pine tree and falling to the floor, temporarily stunned.

Before the bear could finish it off though, the other two Goblins from the southeast broke through the trees in their way and went leaping through the air onto its exposed back, both landing their spears in at nearly the same time.

Still, that wasn't enough to slow the bear. It shook them both off in anger and they both went tumbling through the air.

Seeing this fight from a distance, Beam slowed. His heartbeat increased once more, as he sensed an opportunity. 'They're focused on the bear… I should be able to finish one off in the chaos.'

He was torn. Torn between letting the opportunity slip from his grasp and torn between deviating from the plan that he knew gave him the best chance of victory overall. He didn't want to make a mistake. He didn't have enough time to think, though, as with each passing second, his window of opportunity was narrowing.

Dominus felt a twinge of excitement as he saw Beam turn. "Is he going to dive into that..?"

Beam tutted, his worse instincts getting the better of him, not wanting to miss out on his chance, he went dashing back in again, circling through the trees, his knife in hand, looking for his opportunity.

The bear was on her back legs, swatting at the Goblins as they ran around her. Foam collected at her mouth as her desperate attempts exhausted her more and more. Rather than securing revenge for her child, it looked like she too would soon succumb to the same menace.

When the Goblins lunged onto her back now, she had a harder time shaking them off, for the other three would attack her again from the front, wounding her even more rapidly.

The closer Beam got, the tighter the Goblin's formation began to look. With the bear slowing, his opportunities to catch a Goblin off guard neared zero. The balance of power from two Goblins to four appeared significant.

A few more stabs to her side and the bear fell for the first time, only just barely managing to get to her feet again, but the end was already near.

The Goblins seized the opportunity, growing gleeful the weaker and weaker their enemy got and the more their weapons were stained with red. They seemed to have forgotten about their fallen comrade entirely as they focused all their efforts on dealing with the bear.

A loud and pitiful cry and the mother bear collapsed in a cloud of dust, dead.

With that, Beam had missed his chance to make anything of the fight and now he was a mere ten paces away as the Goblins celebrated their kill, tearing chunks of flesh from the animal with their razor-sharp teeth, jumping all over it. Thoroughly desecrating the corpse.

"What was that?" Dominus murmured in surprise. To the outside observer, it looked like mere indecisiveness, but Dominus could have sworn he sensed something beyond that. The way Beam had prowled forward, Dominus was sure he'd see the opportunity to engage. The twitching of his wrist and the knife it held, they all pointed towards an understanding, an intent to move forward.

He'd seen the Goblins' weakness, he'd even imagined it, his body had responded to that. Yet he sat rooted in place. "Hm…" Dominus continued to watch with a hand held to his chin.

As a unit of four, Beam – as inexperienced as he was – could see no weaknesses. His only chance now was to bait them to the mountain river.

But could he even manage it? The Goblins had managed to outrun a bear, after all. 'No, that's not right.' Beam corrected himself. They hadn't managed to outrun the bear, it was plain as day that they were the slower creature. But somehow, with their erratic movements and their shorter size, they'd been able to evade the attacks as they came.

After reassuring himself thus, Beam decided that he could probably still outrun them, if only barely. If the Goblin's talents lay in evasion – due to their small size – that would not help them in their pursuit of him, as long as he could stay ahead of them.

He sucked in a deep breath and prepared himself. "Hey, assholes," he said with a shaky voice as he stepped out from behind his cover.