With enough crow feathers, the Goblins managed to fletch over a thousand Bloodbriar thorn arrows in three days.
Every arrow was ugly, but straight.
Marcus gave them the most basic training: nock, draw, aim at the big straw target, loose.
Don’t shoot your mate.
After a week of shooting at grass dummies and each other’s feet, the tribe now had 30 Goblin archers who could hit a tree at twenty meters if the tree wasn’t moving too fast, and 60 Goblins with thorn spears and wooden shields who could hold a mob together for more than ten seconds.
The rest stayed on production.
The four fungus fields had sprouted another batch.
The tribe was now at around 220 Goblins and maybe 500 Snotlings.
The Snotlings Marcus didn’t arm – giving a Snotling a spear is like giving a toddler a knife.
He’ll stab himself.
He formed his first real hunting team.
He gave Gaptooth command – officially made him Hunt Boss.
He even returned his Jumpy Squig, which Gaptooth had been crying about for a month.
Gaptooth, now with an iron knife, a thorn spear, and his Squig back, strutted around with his chest out, his tail almost pointing to the sky.
He was the most killy Goblin in the tribe and he knew it.
They entered the eastern jungle.
The hunting party split as planned.
Each team was five Goblins: two with spears to block, three with bows to shoot.
The jungle floor was soft, covered in a thick mat of rotting leaves, black soil underneath, extremely fertile.
This whole valley was a giant compost heap.
The forest itself was a mixed broadleaf forest – ash trees, gnarled oaks with long leaves, and scattered stands of pine.
Most were over thirty meters tall, many were nut trees.
Nuts lay everywhere on the ground.
Every few steps, fat wood pigeons and squirrels were pecking at them.
A perfect food chain.
Nuts and berries fed squirrels and pheasants, which fed wild boars, which fed wolves and lynxes.
If you have boars, you have predators.
If you have many babies in the forest that never return, you definitely have predators.
Soon the Goblins, who were better trackers than any human because they lived with their noses to the ground, found sign.
“Boss!
Boss!
Pig prints!”
Marcus crouched.
In the mud were deep, cloven hoof prints, and torn-up ground where something had been rooting.
And droppings.
Lots of them, some still steaming.
He had read about tracking in his past life – shape, depth, distance tells you weight.
These prints were huge, deep, and many small ones around them.
A sow with piglets.
The sow’s prints were enormous – this was no Earth boar.
This was a Warhammer **Tusk Boar**, the wild ancestor of the war boars Orcs ride.
A big sow could be 1.3 meters at the shoulder and weigh half a ton, with tusks as long as a Goblin’s arm.
Marcus sent two Goblins running back to call the other teams.
A Tusk Boar sow would kill five Goblins by herself.
The system, as always, showed up to make things harder.
> **DING!
QUEST: CATCH DA PIGGIES ALIVE!**
> Ya want cavalry?
Real Orc cavalry rides boars!
Goblins ride wolves, Orcs ride boars!
Catch at least 5 piglets alive and I’ll show you how to train Boar Boyz!
> Reward: Boar Boy Training Method.
Boar Boyz!
The elite Orc cavalry!
Marcus’s heart pounded.
Even if the sow killed half his hunters, he had to get those piglets.
Heavy cavalry changes everything.
He ordered a Goblin to fetch rope from the tribe – not fine rope, but crude vine rope – and to bring everyone who could hold a spear.
He led two Goblins, following the prints up over a low ridge.
The closer they got, the more dung, some fresh.
Other teams caught up from behind, panting.
He crested the ridge and went low.
The view opened up.
It was a small plain, maybe half a mile across, cut by three small rivers that vanished into the mountains.
The water made it fertile, green grass, reeds.
On the riverbank, drinking, was the boar.
She was massive.
A huge Tusk Boar sow, black bristled, back hunched with muscle, tusks yellow and long, head as big as a barrel.
Around her, twelve piglets, each already nearly a hundred pounds, striped brown and black, squealing and splashing.
The Goblins behind Marcus saw her and their knees started knocking.
Only an Orc could look at that thing and not run.
Marcus had no intention of fighting the sow head-on.
An enraged Tusk Boar can gut an Orc.
He had a better, more Goblin-like plan.
“Dig!
Quick!
Holes!”
He pointed to the narrow game trail the boars used to come down to the water – beaten flat by years of use.
Animal instinct: when scared, they run back the way they came.
He had his Goblins dig shallow pits, not deep enough to hurt, just deep enough to trip.
And he had them lay out vine ropes in loops, tied to tree roots, covered lightly with leaves.
Pit traps and snare loops.
Over seventy ropes in total.
The Goblins even instinctively covered the pits with branches, because Goblins are naturally good at being sneaky bastards.
He had a dozen Goblins hide in the bushes on both sides of the trail, under orders: Grab piglets, don’t fight sow.
He and Gaptooth took a dozen each and circled wide, flanking the herd from both sides, staying downwind.
He smeared mud on his own arms – not very Orky, but he remembered that boars have a great sense of smell.
When they were about 50 meters away – 100 meters is fantasy for throwing a spear – Marcus stood up, snatched a thorn spear from a Goblin, and hurled it with all his Orc strength.
It whistled and THUNKED into the sow’s thick rump.
Not deep enough to kill, but enough to hurt and enrage her.
Then he roared with his whole chest.
**”WAAAAAGH!!!!”**
The other Goblins leapt up, screaming and banging shields.
The effect was instant.
The sow squealed in pure terror.
She had never seen or smelled anything like an Orc.
Her piglets panicked.
She spun and bolted straight up the game trail – right into Marcus’s traps.
The first two piglets fell into a pit, squealing.
The sow’s leg caught a snare, she stumbled, squealed louder, snapped the vine, but in that second, three more piglets were tangled in loops.
The Goblins hidden in the bushes burst out, throwing themselves onto the piglets, biting, holding, tying.
The sow, mad with pain and fear, charged through the rest of the traps, snapping ropes, and vanished into the forest, crashing through trees.
Marcus let her go.
He didn’t want to fight her.
He ran to the traps.
Five piglets hogtied, alive, kicking and squealing, each a hundred pounds of angry pork.
Two more had broken legs but were alive.
More than enough for the quest.
Gaptooth was sitting on one, grinning, his Squig trying to bite the piglet.
> **QUEST COMPLETE!
Reward: Boar Boy Training Method Unlocked!**
> Tusk Boar piglets need to be raised on fungus beer and Squig meat, kept near Orcs to absorb WAAAGH!
energy.
In 6 months they will be war boars big enough to ride.
Only Orcs can ride them.
Goblins are too small and boars will eat them.
Marcus looked at the five squealing, tusked piglets.
Six months.
In six months, he would have his first cavalry.
Real Boar Boyz.
He ordered his Goblins to carry the piglets back – which took four Goblins per piglet, cursing and being bitten the whole way – while he stood on the ridge looking at the fertile river plain.
This plain, with water and grass, was perfect for boar pens.