"You fools!" Gloria raged as she stormed into the clearing.
The goblins still hung from the trees, thankfully, exactly where she had put them. Where she had listened to a pack of angry, ignorant hicks, and taken their words as obvious truths. Her rage was directed as much at herself as it was the mob - the delegate might be a complete prick, but he was still a diplomat from the Kingdom of the Depths. They might be savages, but a diplomatic delegation would still demand wine and gifts as "hospitality" - they wouldn't pillage like a common warband! She'd let herself be baited by her emotions again, and act against the enemy in front of her rather than look for the truth.
The truth the she now held in her hands.
She unfurled the pack in front of the mayor, the one who had told her of these goblins' "crimes". Crude swords too large for a goblin's hands, helmets craft in the image of a certain savage god, and most damning of all - a cracked shield bearing the insignia of Bloodmarked Bard's band. All pieces reclaimed from the ruined village, the one these fools had told her had been burned and raided by goblins, who could never have used them.
"What part of this looks like the work of goblins to you!?" She shouted furiously at the mayor.
"What?" He answered confused, "Those are obviously arms from a greenskin. What's the problem?"
"The problem," She hissed, "Is that a goblin can barely hold a knife, let alone a two-handed sword like this! Sendak is the orcish God of Vengeance, and the Bloodmarked Bard is camped ten miles from the border! A child could have pieced together what happen, if only you'd looked!"
"Look, ma'am..." The mayor answered, at least having the decency to look abashed, "We're not warriors like you, or nobles to recognize all those weird symbols. We're just honest subjects of the Empire here. When goblins come to our town, and we see that the last village they visited burned, what else are we going to think?"
Gloria ground her teeth. He was right, damn his eyes. Most peasants barely even knew what goblins or orcs looked like, let alone their arms and armor. It wasn't his place to know these kinds of things - it was hers, and she had fucked it all up by charging at the first target to enter her sight.
Just like the Bloodmarked Bard had planned, most likely. The Goblin delegation hadn't been moving particularly quickly, or in secret - if his band had been paying any attention at all, they would have seen it. And with the relationship between the Empire and the Deep Kingdom falling to pieces, it was a fair guess that the goblins would be blamed if they were within a day's ride of a burning village. The Bard had a reputation for being a clever bastard; if he saw the opportunity to get free loot and slaves while turning two of his enemies against each other, he would take it in a heartbeat.
But looking at the lynch mob shuffling uneasily around her, this wasn't the time to dwell on her mistakes - this was the time to make things right.
She loosened the noose around the diplomat's neck, and helped him down from his perch. It was a minor miracle that none of them had slipped while she spent the day in the ruins of Ulm - their tiny little legs didn't seem able to stand in such a delicate position for so long. But given that goblins barely weighed as much as a child, and she'd heard that they were all trained as scouts and assassins, maybe it was more natural than she assumed.
"My deepest apologies for your mistreatment at the hands of these villagers, Your Excellence," She said with genuine remorse, "And for my own role in this farce. I was grievously mistaken to believe their words over the honor of the Kingdom of the Depths, and I beg your forgiveness for the cruelty with which you and your friends were treated. I will, of course, pay anything you request in reparations - please do not punish this Empire for folly that was purely my own."
She knew his demands would be steep, but she had little doubt that she could fulfill them. She'd gained plenty of plunder from the orcs, as well as the occasional reward from the Empire and villages that she'd saved. She had little use for such wealth; spending it here to avoid a needless war was an extremely good reason to make use of it, even if it galled her a bit to think that this greedy little piglet was going to benefit.
"That will not be necessary," Sithnen hissed at her, "The Empire has made its true intentions towards our people known. All we asked was that our ancestral farmlands around the mountain be respected as ours once more, that we could once again grow our own foods instead of watch our gold drain away into the hands of fat human merchants - and instead, we find ourselves confused with savages and raiders while the Empire's own champion assaults us and claims the right to execute us! We were fools to think that the Empire could be negotiated with - it clear that force is the only way language you people will listen to, as barbaric today as you were five centuries ago. This is war, Gloria, and it comes at your hands - just as I warned you it would."
The future flashed before Gloria's eyes - of goblins swarming up through forgotten mines and barricaded mountains to stab at the heart of the capital. Of the petty lords caught unawares after their own private feuds, their exhausted armies suddenly beset by a new foe bent on slaughter. Of the last strength of the Empire dying at the hands of furious goblins, and orcs waiting to sweep up the remains in the name of their own grudges.
...It would be the death of humanity. Those who escaped the continent might survive, but what it meant to be human would die, as her people abandoned their millennia-old culture to adopt the history and traditions of whomever was willing to offer them succor.
Not that she'd be around for it. If she somehow didn't fall in some heroic last stand, she'd be hunted down as a criminal by the greenskins - and no one would be stupid enough to offer someone as infamous as her refuge.
That future wasn't set in stone, of course. The greenskins under the mountain weren't as civilized as the Empire; their king depended on volunteers for their army, rather than taking what they needed. The promise of cheap grain would draw a lot of volunteers to his banner, but goblins were weak vermin - it wouldn't be enough for a surprise strike on the capital. It would just be enough to take down a weakened army - if anything, it might be a blessing to help encourage the petty lords from fighting with each other.
But if this piglet went back with a story about how their diplomat was attacked by peasants, and nearly murdered by Gloria Bloodsword... That would be different. The goblins had long held a persecution complex after their defeat at the hands of the Empire, and this would play right into that. Instead of simple self-interest, this becomes a war about their value as a species - every goblin not making arms and armor would swarm to their banner.
...If humanity was to survive, there was only one path forward.
Swish, flick went her blade. The head of the goblin to her right rolled at her feet.
"Have you lost your mind, Bloodsword!?" The piglet shrieked, "You are attacking a diplomatic delegation that you yourself just exonerated! Did I not just tell you what this means!?"
"You told me that we were at war," She said, forcing herself to sound disinterested, "Which would mean that you are now a goblin in hostile lands. The Empire only extended diplomatic privileges to you five centuries past as part of the peace treaty that you have no broken - we don't recognize envoys from the savage lands. Your existence here, therefore, is a separate crime - one that I am applying proper judgment to."
"You've gone mad!" The piglet continued to rant, as my blade cut down one squirming piglet after another, "The King under the Mountain shall not forgive this, Bloodsword! He'll catch you, and he'll torture you for every innocent your blade has taken!"
The crowd around us looked queasy as well. It was one thing when this was a righteous feast of vengeance... But killing people that they'd just proclaimed innocent had taken all of the spirit out of them. That was fine, however. She'd accept the blame for this, just as she always had. This was for humanity's future; the consequences to her were unimportant next to that.
Soon enough, only one piglet remained.
"Please..." It begged in front of her, "Not like this... I don't want to die under the open sky..."
Her blade made one last cut, and the goblin emissary died in front of her. As well as their last hope of peace between the Empire and the Deep Kingdom.
"...We'll tell everyone that the goblins died protecting Ulm from an orc raid," She told the silent crowd, "They properly declared their neutrality, but Bloodmarked Bard attacked them anyway. In the end, they made a heroic stand defending human children in the village elder's home, and paid for it with their lives."
Looking at the guilty faces around her, it was obvious that the real story would leak by morning... But it didn't matter. Nobody in the Empire would believe a greenskin defended humans to begin with, and nobody who knew the piglet would believe that it stood and fought rather than flee.
The real point was that it wouldn't be able to go around giving speeches about how cruelly it was mistreated by those mean old humans, inspiring more piglets to take up daggers. If a few piglets believed the official story and felt uncomfortable joining an army to attack those that their "heroes" sacrificed themselves to protect, that was just an added benefit.
Maybe this would help avoid the worst-case scenario. Maybe. If nothing else, it was hard to see how this could make things worse - and it let her kill someone that she really wanted to kill.
