Chapter Thirty-Nine - Looking for Trouble and Finding it

I was expecting trouble already, and on arriving at the sheriff’s office, I found all the trouble I could want, and a good heaping more on top of that.

The office wasn’t anything to write home about. A dingy little building, tucked in between a shoemaker’s and a millinery shop, it was just a little ways around the town square. Not so important or prestigious that it was in the centre square, but necessary enough that it wasn’t far off.

The paint on the front was peeling and one of the windows was boarded up. That wasn’t anything new, it had looked the same when I’d last been around near-on two seasons ago.

What had me thinking I’d found more than my share of trouble were the folk around the office.

To one side, a group of plain humans standing in something that could almost be called a formation, if someone was past tipsy and had bad eyes. About a dozen men in brown coats, tassels around their necks and grey britches tucked into boats that were probably meant to be shiny. The Dreggar Guard. Usually they stuck around any human settlement. I supposed that Daggerwren counted as one.

They didn’t look all that impressive though. Their uniforms were crumpled and stained and ill-fitting. A militia, then? Or some rejects from the main force?

There were more folk waiting around. I recognized a couple of bounty hunters sitting by the curb. A pair of businessmen were nearby, chatting to each other while some half-dozen guards stood behind them and eyed anyone thinking of running off with their fancy little golden pocketwatches.

Mostly, the guards were staring at the last group around. The strangest lot on the street.

They were some two dozen thugs. Men in loose clothes, some of them with knives, others with revolvers and sawed-off guns tucked away. None of them looked like they’d seen a bar of soap since the last full moon.

The local gang? But I recognized a few colours with the lot of them, and while they were definitely one group, it wasn’t a cohesive one. They were shooting each other looks. The sort of looks that made their way around just before a brawl broke out. So, more than one of the local gangs?

Then there was the sheriff and his deputies. All two of them.

They were gathered around a table, with a map held on it by a knife in one corner and a revolver on the end opposite that.

I eyed Clin who stared blankly back, then started off towards the sheriff until I came to a stop before his table. It wasn’t normal for there to be a table right outside like this. “Hey,” I said.

The man looked up to me with troubled eyes. Someone who was caught knee-deep in a sinkhole and who’d felt something slither past. “I’m busy,” he said.

“I see that,” I replied.

He eyed be up and down, then sighed. “Bounty hunter?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Wait with the others. We’ll be going over everything in a minute.”

“Going over what, exactly?” I asked. “I’m not here from the guild.”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, if you’re not here to help, then please get on with your day.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. No need for any of that. I just wanted to report some things.”

“If someone stole your sweetroll, today’s not the day to come bitchin’ at me about it.”

I scoffed. “Goblins. I encountered a good number of them on the way over here. Thought I might share that around.”

The sheriff nodded. “Fine. Stay here for a bit. Can you point them out on the map?”

I looked down and took in the map. Just Daggerwren and the region around it, but not too much of it. I tapped the wood of the table. “If your map’s to-scale, then around here. That big basin area to the south west. This would be some time yesterday afternoon. We arrived after nightfall.”

“Shit, alright. Jeremy, one more sighting, west-southwest. Looks like it’s around Selkie’s hill.”

One of the deputies nodded and scratched something into a notepad.

“Stick around for a minute, we’ll be going over things with everyone. Good bounties to be had.”

I wasn’t interested in any bounties. At the same time, I did want to hear what was going on around here. “Alright.”

Reaching back, I grabbed Clin by the wrist and moved over to a spot not too far from the Dreggar Guard. If anyone on the street was willing to overlook Clin’s bounty, it would be them. They had ties to the army, and it wasn’t an army that was fond of the gnomes.

“Should we be staying here?” Clin muttered.

“Just wanna listen,” I said. “Keep your head down is all.”

He looked at me, then pointedly glanced towards the sheriff’s office. I followed his gaze and found a poster stapled to the front, one with Clin’s placid face on it.

I shrugged. He had a hat on, and looked a bit dirty. Not like the elf in the image so much. Same expression though, and elves did all have some pretty similar features. It was hard to tell them apart sometimes. “Try smiling?”

He glared.

“That works too.”

I had the impression that Clin would have said some very polite, yet barbed things at me, were it not for the sheriff standing a little taller and clearing his throat. He tugged at his collar and then cleared his throat again. “Everyone, please.”

Folks hushed up a mite.

“As you likely all know, we have ourselves a goblin problem. In the past, we’d get some budget from the town, maybe ask for a bit of help from local businesses--” He nodded to the business folk. “And we’d hire some bounty hunters. That would be that. This time, it’s different.”

I expecting some interruption, but the atmosphere was tense and no one said anything stupid.

“We have sightings of goblins here, here, and here.” He tapped the map on three places. The east, northwest, and west of Daggerwren. “Each band is large. Very large. We’ve sent out some bounty hunters to see the numbers, and those that’ve returned tell of groups of a hundred or more. Now, I don’t trust these numbers overly much. Old Clive was one hunter, and he can hardly count his fingers and toes and keep the numbers straight.”

A small chuckle from a few of the folk around us lightened the mood a bit.

“Still, when he says there’s more goblins and goblin mechs than he’s ever seen, I can trust that much. Big bands aren’t unheard of. But there’s three of them at once, and from our reckoning, they’re heading this way.”

That got people murmuring, and I might’ve dropped a few choice words under my breath too.

The sheriff raised a hand. “We figure we have some three hundred goblins here. Two of the bands have just over a hundred or so members each, and the third out east is a mite smaller. That’s concerning on its own. All three bands have mechs. Four or five each.”

One of the bounty hunters lifted his mask and spat on the road. “I’m not putting myself on the line against that many mechs, even goblin mechs,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

I licked my lips before speaking up. “You won’t make it far,” I said. “Got ambushed on the way over here. Nearly didn’t make it.”

“Ma’am,” the sheriff said. “You saw a band to the southwest, right?”

“Yeah, some dozen in all,” I said.

“You couldn’t take care of twelve of them?” the bounty hunter said.

I shot him a look. “A dozen goblins, and two mechs. One was a goblin mech, armed with some gnomish cannons. The other was a gnomish mech. A utility model, not too old, and it was carrying gnomish ammunition and gnomish guns.”

“That’s a strong accusation to make,” one of the business folk said.

“I ain’t accusing no one of no thing,” I said. “Just stating facts.”

“You ran away from two mechs and still got a good enough look at their guns to know?” the bounty hunter asked.

I turned my glare back onto him. “Ran away? One of them chipped my mech’s paint, so I took the two of them out.”

The sheriff cleared his throat. “Enough of that, please. We need to cooperate here. This evening the Sandpiercer will be arriving in town. It should have a group from the militia with it. We’ll be encouraging those folk that can afford it to leave town for the next couple of days.”

“Ya ‘ntend t’ fight?” one of the thugs asked. I could barely understand him past his accent.

“We can’t fit everyone on the train, and the goblins will be coming around sooner or later,” the sheriff said. “As much as I enjoy resting on my laurels, I won’t have any to rest on if a band of goblins march into town and set it ablaze.”

“We’ll be doin’ our share too,” the thug said. “‘This is our town, ya know?!”

The others around him cheered.

“Yes, well,” the sheriff continued. “If we’re going to fight, then we’ll need something of a plan. Who’s in?”

The businessmen were the first to say they would assist. I suspected something was up. They’d want to keep their shops afloat, sure, but I’d bet a copper penny that they’d be making a profit somehow.

The Dreggar Guard had one of their members step up, a man with more tassels and a nicer coat than that others. He was missing an arm, and looked scarred to hell and back. “We’ll be doing our duty,” he said with a snap to his voice.

The bounty hunters were harder to convince, but the guild had put out a bounty on goblin heads that was open. A little strange, but nothing too unlikely.

While the others chatted and talked, I tapped Clin’s shoulder, then nodded to the street. “Come on, we’re going.”

“Not going to stay to help?” he asked.

“No. This ain’t any problem of ours. Besides, we still need to grab a bite.”

***