Chapter 68: I summon you!

Andrew and Bleda found a small mushroom circle not far from where they had camped during the night.

Bleda made a sign for Andrew to stop, then pointed in the middle of the circle.

"Ok, this is a natural meeting spot," the Mongol said, as he sat outside of the circle. "The one in the middle is always protected. Why don't you take the spot before someone else can?"

Andrew nodded.

He didn't understand how Bleda knew all these things, but he was ready to trust him.

When Bleda began to do some throat singing, the first mist began to roll out from the right edge of the clearing. Then the smell of rotten eggs filled the clearing.

Andrew just hoped that Bleda was not mistaken and that the creatures were going to respect the mushroom circle.

When the final creature made a stop before the mushroom circle, Bleda stopped singing.

"What are you doing in here, trespassers?" A goblin growled.

Bleda just smiled at him.

"We are no trespassers. The forest belongs to us, just like it belongs to you all," Bleda began, not wanting to take any chances. "We wish to make a trade route which will cut through the forest. What is your price for leaving the travelers be?"

The shamans and elders huddled together, speaking in a language which Bleda could not understand.

Just as he was about to start singing again, to prompt them to decide faster, a goblin shaman made a step forward.

"If you wish for merchants to travel through our forest, then we have to this to ask of you: give us food, so that we won't hunt them! Give us jobs, so that we could visit Oak's Rest!"

Bleda looked at Andrew, who was already taking crate after crate from Nikola's bottomless bag.

"We can give you the food right away," Bleda told them, as he took a single crate and lifted it.

Now was the turning point, he thought to himself. If the creatures attacked him despite the mushroom circle, then he was certain that they would not hold to their word.

He placed the crate before one of the goblin elders, walking back with no rush so that he could show the creatures that he was not afraid of them.

One of them raised his hand. Andrew saw it and nodded in the goblin's direction.

"We would like to manage the inns at the stops!" The goblin said, as he smiled at Andrew. "So, we can get money from the merchants!"

Andrew blinked. This goblin spoke too well to be a goblin. And yet, it looked just like one.

With a beer belly, green skin and hair, not to mention that he had claws on his hands.

"Yes! The bigger brother's deliveries are nice, but they are not enough!" Another goblin said.

Andrew and Bleda exchanged a look.

Were these goblins fed by their goblins?

"We can arrange it," Andrew said, without really promising anything. After all, if he promised, then he would need to uphold his word.

"We also want full citizenship!" Another goblin shaman said. "Our children deserve to grow up in schools, just like the human ones!"

Andrew noted that as well.

"And," the lone female goblin in the group began, as she dapped her eyes with a handkerchief. "We don't want for you to kill our brothers and sisters anymore!"

"We weren't looking for trouble," Andrew began, for he knew that Bleda would not mince his words. "Your brother attacked us first. We are sorry for your loss."

The goblins began to take the food, but the female goblin didn't make any moves to help herself to the produce.

She just stood up and turned around. Ready to leave.

"Wait! Lady goblin, please, we need a guide!" Andrew said, for he needed to make it up to the goblin somehow.

He didn't have any other thoughts in his mind but to hire her.

"A guide?" the goblin asked. She furrowed her brows. "I hope you get lost in the forest and end up as ghost food! You don't care about us! You just see us as free labor! And all of you!" She made a pause, looking at the gathered shamans and elders. "Don't care about one of your own either!"

"Man, Grog was not all there anyway," a shaman who was trying to decide between peaches and nectarines said. "And if his death brought us this bounty, then all the better!"

"I curse you!" The female goblin yelled at her brethren. "I curse you, because you didn't protect him! You did nothing when those awful adventurers took him to mine that old and crumbling mine! Starving him all the while!"

"Wait!" Andrew said, not really wanting to believe what he was hearing, but not wanting to doubt the goblin's words. "How often does it happen? To have one of your own kidnapped for mining work?"

The lady turned around to look at him as well.

"Don't think that I don't know who made you and your little family rich! You have goblin blood on your hands! Same as the adventurers!"

She stormed off, turning into black mist soon after.

Andrew stood there, his eyes wide.

People were kidnapping goblins?

"Our goblins were volunteers," the siren murmured.

A shaman nodded at him.

"We know, they told us," he said, as he finally took two peaches from the crates and began to eat. "But tell that to Drusilla. She is just as touched in the head as her brother, Grog. But she can do magic, that one. Nothing to be done about it all. We just need to purify her curse. Do you have anything else to say?"

Andrew looked at Bleda, who was glaring in the direction the female goblin had gone off to.

"If she can do such powerful magic," the Mongol said, his brain coming up with 1001 ideas. "Then can she also craft runes?"

The goblin shaman nodded.

"Good," Bleda said. "She can save the lives of more than one baby that way."

Andrew blinked. They had tried to get a runesmith to make the rune, but all of them said it was impossible.

"Bleda?" Andrew asked.

"Trust me," Bleda told him, as he began to march in the direction in which the lady had disappeared. "Stay in the circle! I won't be long!"

Andrew stood there, in the mushroom circle. Surrounded by goblins, Bogarts and god knew what else.

His voice his only weapon.

Not knowing that the goblins, after months of starvation, were going to fight tooth and claw to protect him.

For he was giving them much needed help.