"Ra-chetti the Hobgoblin" by Erik Jensen

Ra-chetti was the leader of his squad, which was part of the hobgoblin tribe called Night's Eyes. He was smaller than most hobgoblins and of slighter build. He had been taught the ways of magic as well as the ways of steel, however, and his sharp mind and firm grasp of the power games in the tribe had soon elevated him to the highest status he could achieve being so small.

His latest mission had been one of necessity. He had needed the money badly, and then had agreed to drive a small orc tribe out of the hills near Yontai. Yontarians usually didn't hire hobgoblin mercenaries, considering them a menace to society, but the orcs had proved too elusive to deal with for the regular army. Ra-chetti had had little trouble driving the orcs out. His squad ambushed a hunting party, killing 6 orcs and badly injuring 9. The orcs had moved on to another cave, further away from the Yontarian capital. The job had been below Ra-chetti's usual standards, but it had kept his squad fed.

The money he had earned was all but spent. The squad had needed supplies, and he had rented a smithy for a day so his warriors could repair their equipment. Unlike many squad leaders, Ra-chetti had never stooped to common highway robbery. He was, however, seriously considering that possibility. The Night's Eyes tribe was currently hard pressed. They had been driven away from their territory north of Waterwall by the Valorians. They had been thrown out of the Mortras Mountains by dwarves. Now the Yontarians were threatening to chase the tribe out of the dry wilderness area they lived in now. They could only flee into the desert from there, but no tribe could survive the Great Sand Sea for an extended period.

The Night's Eye would flee no more. Ra-chetti knew that there was nowhere to go. The humans would pay dearly, especially because of the advantageous terrain for hit-and-run tactics, but that would mean little to their leaders who just wanted the hobgoblins out of their vicinity. Robbing humans, though they were easy prey, would only speed that process up further.

The squad currently camped in a deserted house in Yontai, laying low while Ra-chetti considered his next move. The squads acted independently of their tribes under most circumstances, but in this case Ra-chetti felt obliged to search for some sort of solution. Some of the more warlike squad leaders argued that the hobgoblins should demonstrate their superiority and scare the humans. Of course, asking a military leader for a solution to a problem would most likely result in an answer that involved fighting. Ra-chetti therefore took it upon himself to find a different solution. If there were humans who hired hobgoblins, there might also be humans who could see the use of some sort of agreement with a hobgoblin tribe.

The Yontarians were very hostile towards hobgoblins, especially so in the past few years. Marcanor could be a solution, but it would require the tribe to travel through Yontar or the Great Sand Sea to get there. Both were more or less out of the question. To the north was Valoria, but they had chased the hobgoblins away. Ra-chetti had only been an infant back then, so he did not know what their reasons were. He knew that hobgoblin tribes had originally inhabited the area that was now Valoria, but they had been pushed out as the far more numerous humans came down from the north.

Ra-chetti decided that he needed to talk to the Valorians. His squad would be moving north anyway, and a trip to Rivergate would not be that far off their course.

The squad left at the crack of dawn. The guards at the gates were more than happy to get the hobgoblins out of their city. The squad marched quickly, staying away from the roads. As was common to hobgoblins, they preferred to remain undetected. You can never know when being cautious will save your life, and when you travel in unfriendly territory attracting attention might provoke some local lord to attack. Even though the hobgoblins would most likely emerge victorious from such a conflict, only the foolish took chances like that.

Three days later, the squad found themselves near Rivergate. Ra-chetti entered alone, knowing that the Steel Hawks that guarded the gates would be counting hobgoblins. If they counted more than three, he might find himself the subject of a very efficient search, and he had no way of knowing if there were others in the city.

He had had some time to plan who he wanted to talk to. He knew little about the social structure of Valorians, but he did know a great deal about Steel Hawks and Silver Eagles. Basically they were to be treated with extreme caution, and any act of provocation might result in very swift and very efficient retribution. He had seen through some of the myths that his tribe had cloaked their knowledge of Valorians. The hobgoblins had been without chances against the heavy cavalry, and the sheer number of humans would have spelled certain doom if they had chosen to stay and fight. In different terrain, the Valorians might have found the hobgoblins a worthier opponent.

Having little to loose, Ra-chetti stopped to talk to one of the guards at the gate. He used the common tongue, in an attempt to be polite, a term most hobgoblins did not even know.

"You there! I want to talk with you." The guard looked at the hobgoblin, and then at his sergeant. The sergeant nodded, and the rest of the guards upped their vigilance. This could be a trap. The guard looked at Ra-chetti.

"How can I help you, then?" He tried his best to be nice, although he did not trust the hobgoblin one bit.

"I want to know who to talk to. I want to negotiate." Ra-chetti felt a little unsure of himself, but his face showed nothing. His piercing red eyes stared at the guard.

"Negotiate what in particular?" the guard asked, helpfully.

"A place to be for my tribe." The guard looked puzzled. He had never heard anything like this. He had never thought about hobgoblins as beings that needed a place to stay.

Ra-chetti was eventually pointed towards the official who dealt with fugitives. They had a long, exhaustive talk. Valoria usually embraced fugitives, but Ra-chetti and the official both knew, and agreed, that hobgoblins hardly would fit into human society. In the end, the official asked Ra-chetti to wait until the next day and then come back. After all, the wild elves had not fit in at all, and they had been given New Forest to live in. Maybe a solution could be found to the hobgoblin problem.

Ra-chetti was a little suspicious. He did not understand why the Valorians would be so interested in helping. Of course, getting hobgoblins to stop plundering and causing random mayhem would be in the interest of humans, but no hobgoblin dared cause trouble in Valoria. It actually seemed the human was genuinely interested in helping, as a principle in itself. He had expected that the tribe would need to set a number of squads available to the Valorians in return.

At least he had found out why the Valorians originally had driven the hobgoblins out. His tribe had attacked a village and taken a number of slaves. His own tribe would have retaliated even harsher against slavers, and he could at least appreciate the Valorian motives in that case. It must have happened before his tribe came to fear the humans. Ra-chetti went back to his squad to await the dawn.

He woke in the night to the warning signal. To the untrained ear, it sounded like some animal in the night, but to him it was no animal. The call identified the lookout, and thus where he was, and that he had spotted about fifty unknown persons. Ra-chetti immediately got up and went to see what was the trouble. He slid through the dark of the night with no.14 at his side. The people that had caused the alarm were heading for the Waterwall River at some distance from the city. The Waterwall is a very wild river that can only be crossed on a large scale in two places. One is near the Mortras Mountains where Ironmaw Castle loomed over the only ford, the other is the enormous bridge in Rivergate. What could these people want down at the river? Ra-chetti sneaked closer, nothing but a shadow among shadows. His own eyes penetrated the darkness under the sky far better than any human could hope to achieve. He could not discern colours this way, but black and white served him fine. He found out that the people were Yontarian raiders. Some Yontarian tribes did not recognize the Triumvirate. They felt their leaders were too lenient with the Valorians, and some tried on occasion to make raids into Valorian territory. Though they seldom met with any substantial success, they did help to destabilize the situation between the two countries.

Ra-chetti immediately recognized the opportunity. He sent no.14 back to get the squad ready for combat. If he could send these raiders back before they set foot on Valorian soil, the Valorians would be forced to view his request positively.

The hobgoblins made short work of the puny humans. The squad fought in its own element; it was slightly hilly, there were plenty of bushes, and it was dark. Every shadow seemed to hide a hobgoblin, armed with a deadly crossbow. Hobgoblins would suddenly stand in the open, luring a few men to attack. Those men would never see the dawn, dying at the hands of almost a dozen hobgoblins, who quickly overpowered the onrushing enemy and faded back into the shadows. Poisoned darts would put the enemy's leaders out of the game, steel nets would trap the most capable enemies, making them easy targets for a quick jab with a sword or swing from an axe. Caltrops seemed to be strewn at every possible escape route. The humans could not tell one hobgoblin from another, and it often seemed like magic to them, when a hobgoblin that was almost manoeuvred into a bad position suddenly shot a bolt from a nearby bush, silently removing himself from sight. Ra-chetti used his magic only once that night, enchanting a bolt to be able to penetrate all organic material. He killed five enemies with that bolt.

When the dawn finally came, all the would-be raiders lay dead on the ground. Five hobgoblins had been wounded and no.16 had been killed. The humans had pretty much been running in circles under constant harassment from blowgun darts, crossbow bolts, spears and daggers. Only when the hobgoblins were sure they could take the enemy out easily did they attack in close combat. Their swords had easily cleaved the light armours of the humans.

Ra-chetti gathered his squad around him. He formally promoted the hobgoblins below the fallen no.16, and they buried the fallen with the heads of the enemies he had killed by his feet and his axe on his chest. They stuck his hand-and-a-half sword in the ground above his head. The bodies of the dead humans were counted, plundered and thrown into the river. They had killed 52 enemies that night. It had been a good fight. Pride ran through them, the taste of victory sweet. But none tasted it more sweetly than Ra-chetti, who would be known as the saviour of his tribe as long as there were anyone left to tell the tale.

The Valorians granted the North Moor to the hobgoblins on the condition that they did not raid outside of their own territories. More tribes came to live in the North Moor and Ra-chetti lead the negotiations when all tribal elders met to join forces against the Lithwarian fortification in the middle of the North Moor. Under his leadership, the hobgoblins drove the Lithwarians out, and Ra-chetti fell gloriously on the final day of that battle, releasing his magic in a final burst that killed himself, the commander of the fort and several of his elite guard.