The next chapter!

“Aliens descending from Mars eating my ham sandwich. What kind of society do we live in when…SHE did it! Monkey New Zealander. Eh? From Mars I tell ya. Nobody hears it but I do…I do. Do you want to dance my friend Ellis?”

No one answered his questions. Mumbles, which was the name they had given him for obvious reasons, wore a long trench coat and carried a retractable umbrella with bent arms and holes in the canopy. Aleph had worried that his offensive smell would give away their position when they stalked the Goblin slavers. Luckily the Goblins had been poor trackers so far and did not catch his scent.

Pania had tried speaking to him for a while a couple of nights ago but gave up when it was obvious he did not hear her though he would look right into your eyes when he spoke. Instead Pania had worked on completing the carving patterns into her club. Shortly before being captured by the Goblins, Pania had finished carving out a long club out of a branch of a kauri tree. When she had been freed by the Dobro siblings, Pania had returned to her camp and retrieved her weapon. Her taiaha was a 1.5 metre long shaft which lessened in thickness and widened out to about 10 centimetres for the top third forming a sharp flat blade used to decapitate opponents. The other end was pointed like a spear and decorated with feathers. It was the surface of the spear end of the club that she was now carving.

Pania was a young Maori woman who had been freed by the raid on the Goblin slave drive by the Dobros siblings. When she approached Mumbles she had been trying to thank him for his bravery but he did not appear to understand. Pania thought back to the day before.

Pania had crouched down, her thin form hidden behind the tree. She held her taiaha in her hand but low to the ground so it wouldn’t give away their position. Beside her were
Liam and Aedan, brothers who had been chained to Dàleth and Sāmekh during captivity. They hid together under a pohutukawa tree that had been dwarfed due to the poor soil conditions in this rocky terrain. Liam shifted his dagger from hand to hand. His brother had an ax in his left hand and a leather shield in his right.

Jia-Li and Hei hid together on the opposite side of the path through the forest, hidden behind a fallen log. The two were inseparable since Jia-Li had helped Hei with his gunshot wound. The young Chinese woman held a trident tightly in her hand and prepared for the approaching enemy. Hei’s hands were sweating against the cold wood of his quarterstaff.

Yodh sat up in a tree, her bow notched with an arrow.

The party heard a bird call from down the path, which told them that Samākh and Dàleth, were approaching. They had been following the Goblin slaver party since the foursome of kidnappers had left the main gathering of Goblins a few hours ago.


It had been two weeks since the siblings had freed their parents from the Goblin slave drive. Under the command of Dàleth, the soldiers in the resistance had concentrated their efforts on hampering the Goblins plans rather than an all out assault. They realized that at the present time they would have little chance of winning against a 300 strong army.

Their missions consisted primarily of ambushes of the parties the Goblins sent out to recruit additional slaves. In the past fortnight they had engaged in battle with the slavers four times and had been victorious each time. Dàleth knew they were riling a hornet’s nest but figured that their enemy’s rage would make them more likely to make a mistake.

As the four slavers came into view Mumbles and Aleph came up the path to meet them, feigning that they were just two men out for a walk. Mumbles stumbled along. He always appeared drunk though no one had seen him drinking. As ever, he was mumbling to himself, appearing totally oblivious to reality.

“..if I ever need a tea pot I’ll know where to find it. Stupid tea pot always dribbling out on the carpet. MY carpet.”

“Is your mate drunk or just an idiot?” snarled one of the four slavers, flecks of spit flying from his mouth as he spoke. He was an obese man whose greasy folds of skin were filled with gummy filth. The bandana which stretched tightly around his arm, cutting into the blubber, was so dirty it appeared brown instead of green. He wiped a string of drool that dribbled down his chin with the back of his meaty hand.

Aleph spread his legs shoulder width apart and met the eyes of each of the four Goblins in turn. He then bent his knees, keeping his back straight and began to slap his thighs in a slow rhythm.

Another of the slavers, a slim man with skin as black as night, broke out in laughter. “Looks like they are both idiots…this one is going to put on a show.” His face turned from laughter to uncertainty though when the rhythm was picked up by the forest around them. Uncertainty turned to fear as Aleph began his chant:

“Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!” (I die! I die! I live! I live!)

The chant was taken up by the people hidden in the forest.

“Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora! (I die! I die! I live! I live!)

The echoing in the forest made it sound like there were hundreds of people all around them and the Goblins’ fear turned to terror. One, a young man with a scar which ran from under his right eye across the bridge of his nose under his left ear, took a pistol from his belt and aimed it at Aleph. “Stop it..”, he managed to squeak out. But Aleph continued:
“Tenei te tangata puhuru huru!” (This is the hairy man!)

Soundlessly an arrow appeared through the hand of the scarred, scared boy forcing him to drop the pistol. Aleph’s chant got louder, drowning out the screams of pain from the young Goblin who held his hand, his eyes as wide as saucers.

“Nana nei i tiki mai!”( Who fetched the Sun!)

The obese man turned to flee but his route along the way he’d come was blocked by Dàleth, who was holding his sword in hand. Eyes still searching for an escape, he removed a knife from his belt.

Whakawhiti te ra! (And caused it to shine again!)

The members of the resistance were surprised when the black man pulled a set of nunchucks from a pouch at his side. Matching the stare of Aleph, he began to swing them from side to side.

“A upa ... ne! ka upa ... ne!” (One upward step! Another upward step!)

It became obvious that these Goblins were not all going to be as easy to scare as the young boy when the last Goblin, a middle-aged man with dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, unsheathed a sword seemingly unfazed by the psychological warfare.

A upane kaupane whiti te ra! (An upward step, another…the Sun shines !!!)

The young boy was another matter since as Mubbles took a stumbling step towards him liquid began to drip down his leg and puddle around his left boot. The smell of urine was strong in the air.

Hi!

The last word of the chant was left to echo in the forest for a beat. Even the animals in the forest were silent.

The Resistance attacked with a roar and it was on.

The boy tripped over his feet as he turned to flee into the forest, only to be intercepted by the Irish boys, Liam and Aedan. He was rendered incapacitated by a blow from the flat side of Aedan’s axe.

The obese man lunged at Dàleth with his knife. Dàleth blocked the blow with his sword but had to quickly parry and step away because his opponent was using his weight to power through the block.

Mumbles was sauntering forward, seemingly oblivious to the danger the four Goblins posed to him. He was humming a tuneless song, almost dancing with his tattered umbrella as his partner.

The black-skinned Goblin noticed the easy pretty and moved in for the kill. His wood and chain weapon swung from one side to the other rhythmically, gaining the necessary momentum to brain the delusional old man.

Mumbles had no reaction to this approaching threat. He smiled beneath his yellow-grey beard to a joke known only to himself.

As the Goblin fighter entered striking range, the nunchuck whipped out to split the skull of the unsuspecting old man. In a blur Pania leapt from the shadows and at the last second her taiaha blocked the wooden weapon from striking Mumbles in the head. However, the weapon glance off the club and the force of the blow was still going to smash into the old man’s shoulder.

Miraculously the old man dance stepped away from the nunchuck, avoiding injury. As the Goblin fighter turned to face Pania, his new target, Mumbles stumbled back a bit and sat himself on a log to observe the goings-on.

The feather marking the spear head of her taiaha danced by Pania’s waist, momentarily catching the eye of the black-skinned warrior. As planned this maneuver focused the Goblin’s eye on the spear head and he prepared himself to defend himself against such an attack. Seeing this, the flattened sharpened blade of Pania’s taiaha sliced through the air, her intent to decapitate this man who prayed on the helpless. At the last moment the Goblin stepped back, too late to avoid all the injury though and blood poured from a newly opened gash on his forehead, blinding his left eye.

“Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”, said her opponent, wiping the blood from his eye with the green bandana that wrapped his left arm. Quick as a strike from a viper, his nunchuck shot out a jab below the ribs, doubling her over. Before she could recover he had stepped behind her and coiled the chain around her throat. She could feel the pinch of the steel as the chain tightened, constricting her airway. Mistakenly she screamed out in pain, losing her chance to draw what may be her last breath.

As spots began to form in her field of vision, Pania noticed that Mumbles had risen to his feet and was strolling toward her, unmindful to the trouble he was in.

“Have a seat old man. I’ll deal with you next.”, hissed the Goblin.

Pania’s limbs were becoming weak and she knew that soon the chain would be the only thing keeping her off the ground.

With an uncharacteristically fluid movement the tattered umbrella cracked across the knuckles of the Goblin causing him to lose his grip and allowing Pania to sneak a breath, stealing her life momentarily from the harvesting sickle of Death.

“You will unhand her, young sir, or you will be slain like the scoundrel you appear to be.”, said Mumbles in a clear voice.

More from confusion than as a response to the threat, the Goblin released his captive. With expert precision, a flick of the wrist caused the nunchuck to smash into Pania’s knee, incapacitating her.

“Again you strike a lady. You have proven your lack of valour. I challenge you to a duel.”, said Mumbles. He entered a fighting pose with his right hand forward and his left in the air behind him, which looked ridiculous as his weapon was a broken umbrella.

“You’re a crazy old man but that won’t stop me from smashing your brain in!”

The Goblin struck out with a quick jab of his nunchuck, a move that earlier had surprised Pania with its speed. Mumbles, however, stepped back effortlessly and countered with a blow to the shoulder of his younger foe.

“Do you yield young sir? If you do I would be willing to save you from the embarrassment of death in front of this beautiful maiden”

“That’s it old man…enough talk. I’m gonna mess you up!”

He attacked Mumbles with fury. Obviously well trained in his weapon of choice the blows rained down at Mumbles from all directions. A swinging blow originating over his right shoulder was dodged and responded to with a painful smack, boxing the Goblin’s left ear. An attack originating from over his left shoulder was avoided with a step back and replied to with a blow to his right ear, stunning him. A swift attack intended to catch Mumbles under the chin was foiled by an agile maneuver and in response he was hit by a breathtaking blow to his temporarily unprotected midsection.

Pania watched in fascination as blow after blow was avoided gracefully and swiftly countered. Sweat mixed with blood that still flowed down the Goblin’s face. He paused for a moment to wipe his eyes and catch his breath. Pania used this moment to hobble over and smashed him across the back of the head with a two-handed baseball-bat-style swing, thereby ending this ridiculously unevenly matched battle.

“Wish a turkey would give me time of day. What? Day is never the time for seven.”, Mumbles said and turned to find his seat back on the log. Pania shook his head to try to clear it , thinking that perhaps she had suffered brain damage and this was a delusion of a oxygen deprived mind.

Looking behind her, Pania watched as the obese Goblin grabbed Dàleth’s shirt and threw him through the air. The back of his head smashing into a tree, Dàleth’s eyes rolled back in his head as he faded into unconsciousness. The fight was quickly taken up by Sāmekh, who was shortly joined by her daughter. Seeing both women with weapon’s drawn on him and seeing the anger in their eyes, he raised his arms in shameful surrender.

The pony-tailed man had been disarmed by Hei and Jia-Li and now he lay on his front with Jia-Li’s trident preventing him from rising.

The disarmed prisoners were instructed to carry their unconscious brethren back towards the Goblin’s camp. As they caught sight of the camp, Dàleth who, though sore-headed by the ragdoll-esque toss against the tree, addressed the obese man and his pony-tailed accomplice.

“The Goblins are not welcome here. You will leave this valley and disperse or a worse fate will befall you.”

A smirk on the pony-tailed man was responded to with a strike across the face by the back of Yodh’s hand.

In unison both conscious Goblins joined their colleagues, with blows to the lack of the head and the Resistance disappeared into the gloom of the forest.