~GOBLIN RUN~

Extract

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The Goblin Run takes place every Midsummer's Morn. From far and wide, from the villages and the towns, and even from this city on a hill itself, come the eligible maidens, the girls who have lately come of age and are as yet not pledged.

We all seek the same thing.

A husband.

By the time we arrive, the prospective husbands - the eligible bachelors - have already been in the city a week, carousing and laughing and playing the fool. By Midsummer's Morn they are all drunk and dirty and ready to debauch.

And they are all safely locked away in the cathedral.

So if a maiden wants to find herself a husband this bright summer morning, she is obliged to go and get him.

A simple task, you might think.

Standing on the quayside at dawn, a girl can see the cathedral in front of her, only a thousand paces away at the crown of the hill. She can see the upright, unyielding, round-tipped spire, thrusting boldly upwards to pierce the crack of dawn, and no doubt she contemplates that metaphor as she prepares for the journey ahead.

A simple journey, only a thousand paces, through the streets of the city on the hill, from the quayside to the cathedral. It should be easy.

The streets are emptied for the day. No drover's cart, nor market stall, nor street urchin, will stand in her way. The roads are all obsessively cleaned, the cobbles scrubbed until they gleam. No mud or straw will slip or trip her, no drayhorse road-apple will stain the hem of her shift. Nothing and nobody stands between her and her prize.

In the Goblin Run, a girl's barriers are all behind her.

So all she has to do is walk, from the dock to the cathedral, and claim her right of marriage.

But she had better not walk.

She had better pick up her hem, free her legs, and run.

Just as fast as she can.

The main street is the shortest route, climbing broad and straight all the way up the hill to the summit, to the Square of All Gods and the cathedral a thousand paces away.

Every year, most girls go that way.

And most of them fail.

The shortest routes are not always the best, you see.

The climb is deceptive. It is not very steep, but it is continuous, unrelenting. If you try to hurry, your feet become like lead weights. And all the time you can hear the goblins baying and yipping at your back. You can look back and see them scurrying along in pursuit.

In pursuit of you.

Goblins are not especially quick. But they can run for a long time without tiring.

They can do something else for a long time without tiring, a fact of which you are only too aware as your strength fades.

Are they starting to gain on you? You waste effort on trying to measure their pace, as if knowing will help, and you spend more time looking behind than in front. And then you suddenly realise you are panting, from trepidation more than fatigue, but the harder you breathe the more out of breath you become, and the more out of breath you become the harder it gets to keep moving.

Fear of failure drags at your feet.

And you can't get enough air.

Your resolve weakens.

It is too hard to keep moving, to run from an opponent clearly possessed of more stamina than you, and it starts to seem like it might be easier just to surrender to the inevitable.

And now you accept that it is inevitable, that you are certainly going to be caught, you start wondering whether you should surrender now, before you are completely exhausted, so you have some energy in reserve for... for what is to come. And just like that you move from considering the if to planning the how, to concentrating on finding a quiet place to get it done discreetly when the time comes.

You are no longer putting all your effort into keeping ahead of them.

And then they catch you.