My planet is infested with Goblins

Chapter 96: The Kingdom Closing In

The war table in the royal palace of Caldris no longer resembled a map of a kingdom at peace.

Wooden markers, wax seals, pinned notes, and bundles of reports crowded every province border, while fresh messengers waited outside the council chamber for permission to enter.

Weeks earlier, most of those markers had represented scattered attacks that the court believed could be handled locally. Now entire stretches of the kingdom were covered with warnings, and the east carried the darkest markings even though it was no longer the only region demanding their attention.

Reports from the north, south, and west had accumulated so quickly that the royal scribes had begun stacking them by region simply to keep the table usable.

The king sat at the head of the chamber with his senior generals, ministers, and regional representatives gathered around him. None of them looked rested. For days they had been comparing reports that were already old by the time they reached the capital, trying to build a picture of a war that changed faster than their messengers could ride. Every conclusion they reached seemed vulnerable to being overturned by the next courier entering the palace.

A military secretary broke the latest eastern seal with trembling fingers and read the first lines twice before speaking.

"Eastwatch has fallen. The provincial capital was breached, the government district was taken, and Goblin banners were seen over the central administrative buildings."

The chamber went silent as several officials looked toward the eastern portion of the map. One of the eastern nobles leaned forward sharply and asked whether the report meant the province itself or merely the city.

The secretary explained that the city had unquestionably fallen, while most of the surrounding countryside appeared to have already been under goblin control before the siege ended.

The king’s hand tightened around the edge of the table. "Governor Rusk?"

"Captured, according to survivors," the secretary answered. "General Halvern is believed to be dead, although the report could not confirm exactly where he fell."

Several men began speaking at once, but the king raised one hand until the noise subsided.

The secretary continued, reading accounts from survivors who had escaped before the roads became completely unreliable. Goblin forces controlled bridges, villages, mills, farms, and major roads throughout Eastwatch Province. Several fortified cities still carried Caldris banners, but they had been isolated and could no longer project authority beyond their walls.

One of the generals stared at the map and slowly shook his head.

"Then the provincial government is gone. Even if some cities remain unconquered, they no longer have a governor, a field command, or control of the countryside."

The king looked toward the eastern region where Eastwatch Province had been marked in royal colors only weeks earlier. A military aide reached across the table and replaced the marker with a black token indicating territory no longer under reliable crown control.

This revelation deeply affected everyone in the room because Eastwatch Province was only one of five provinces in the eastern region, yet it had been the first barrier between the frontier and the lands deeper inside Caldris.

The king finally asked how old the information was. The secretary checked the attached dates and replied that the report had been written seventeen days before the courier reached the capital. A minister swore quietly while another adviser pointed out that Eastwatch could therefore have been under complete goblin occupation for nearly three weeks already.

The realization brought the king back to the letter he had sent earlier in the crisis, when the crown had told Eastwatch there was no cause for panic and that local forces were expected to maintain order until a clearer assessment could be made.

At the time, the capital possessed only reports of raids, disappearing villages, and scattered goblin movements. The situation had already been worse than the court understood, and now it was painfully obvious that the royal response had been written for a war that no longer existed by the time the letter arrived.

One adviser spoke carefully, aware of how easily his words could sound like criticism. "Your Majesty, Eastwatch was fighting a war weeks ahead of the information we possessed. Whatever decisions they made locally were being made against circumstances we could not see from here."

The king did not rebuke him because the truth was impossible to deny. Instead, a senior general moved closer to the map and argued that the crown should immediately raise a royal army to retake Eastwatch before the goblins could consolidate.

Several nobles supported him, insisting that allowing goblins to hold a provincial capital would encourage panic throughout the kingdom and damage confidence in the crown.

The king looked toward his chief military adviser and asked how many soldiers could be moved east within a month. The man had not yet answered when the chamber doors opened and another courier entered carrying a northern dispatch. The secretary broke the new seal while the eastern representatives watched with visible irritation at being interrupted.

The northern situation was deteriorating as well. The invaders there were not goblins, but another people entirely, using different armor, different banners, and different battlefield methods.

Several towns had already fallen or been abandoned, and a major northern stronghold was preparing for siege while local commanders demanded reinforcements before the enemy could concentrate further.

One of the nobles turned toward the general who had proposed taking troops from the north. "Would you still strip those regiments for an eastern counterattack now?"

The general’s jaw tightened, but he did not answer before another messenger was announced. The southern reports were equally alarming, describing yet another foreign force that resembled neither the goblins in the east nor the unknown northern army.

Several local garrisons had been defeated, settlements had been attacked, and southern governors were warning that their own situation could become another Eastwatch if royal support failed to arrive.

The minister of the interior looked between the growing stacks of reports. "Three invasions at once is already difficult to believe."

"Four," another adviser corrected as he pointed toward the western markings. "The west has been reporting lost roads, defeated patrols, and towns withdrawing behind walls for days."

The king slowly stood and looked across the map from east to north, then south and west.

Multiple enemies were entering Caldris from different directions, and the reports described different races, languages, weapons, and banners. Yet all of them had begun appearing within the same general period, and the coincidence was becoming impossible to ignore.

One minister finally voiced the thought that had been spreading through the room. "What if they are not separate invasions at all? What if these forces are cooperating even though they do not look like one people?"

Several nobles objected immediately, arguing that no ordinary alliance could contain so many different races without any shared insignia or obvious chain of command. A military adviser countered that the timing bear more weight than appearance, because unrelated kingdoms did not normally launch major invasions from four directions within the same narrow span of time.

The royal chaplain, who had remained silent until then, looked toward the king before speaking. "There may be powers involved that we do not understand. Asterion has given no direct sign, nor have Kharos or Elira, but if these invasions have some divine origin, we do not yet know whose hand is behind them."

The king disliked the direction of the discussion, yet he could not dismiss it entirely. "Until a god appears on one of our battlefields, we plan against armies. If something greater reveals itself, then we adapt."

The generals accepted that because armies were at least something they understood. The chief military adviser began listing available forces, and every option created another weakness. Troops sent east could not reinforce the north.

Regiments sent north could not respond in the south. Pulling western garrisons inward would expose important roads, while committing the royal reserve heavily in one direction would leave the capital unable to answer the next emergency.

The king looked toward the eastern representative. "If we cannot retake Eastwatch immediately, can the other four provinces hold?"

"With preparation, perhaps," the man replied. "But they require more preparation than they currently possess, especially if the goblins move quickly."

The military adviser pointed toward the four remaining eastern provincial capitals and proposed a layered defense. Scattered garrisons would be concentrated behind strong walls, grain would be stockpiled, gates repaired, river crossings fortified, and provincial levies called earlier than originally planned.

Supplies that could not be defended near the threatened frontier would be moved inland rather than left for the invaders to capture.

One noble objected that such a plan sounded like abandoning large stretches of countryside before the goblins even arrived. The military adviser answered that leaving undefended grain, livestock, and wagons behind would simply feed the invasion, and that Caldris had already seen what happened when an enemy controlled the rural network around a city.

The king looked again toward Eastwatch. "What exactly do they control there now?"

The secretary began reading from the collected reports, listing roads, bridges, granaries, mills, agricultural districts, warehouses, and the provincial capital itself. With every item, the strategic meaning of the loss became clearer.

The goblins were no longer raiders operating deep inside hostile territory; they possessed a base from which they could rest troops, store supplies, repair equipment, and launch another campaign.

A newly arrived eastern report made the situation even more disturbing. Witnesses had seen increasingly large goblin columns entering Eastwatch Province after the city fell, although the estimates varied wildly.

Some claimed tens of thousands, while others insisted the number was far greater, and no one in the council trusted figures gathered from frightened civilians watching armies march past from a distance.

The king checked the date and immediately understood the greater problem. "This report is already weeks old. Whatever number is written here describes what the enemy was, not what the enemy is."

No one disagreed, because that problem had become the defining weakness of the entire eastern war. Caldris was always planning against an enemy that had already moved on to the next stage.

One adviser suggested formally abandoning Eastwatch Province for the moment and concentrating every available resource on the four provinces behind it. The king rejected the wording, explaining that being unable to retake a province immediately was not the same as announcing that the crown had surrendered it forever.

Such a declaration could cause eastern governors to act independently, nobles to evacuate, merchants to move their wealth, and civilians to flee along roads desperately needed for military movement.

The council therefore moved toward broader mobilization. Provincial reserves would be called earlier than planned, weapons production would increase, grain would be purchased and stockpiled, and horses, carts, and draft animals would be requisitioned for army use.

Messenger stations would be expanded along major roads with fresh mounts prepared at regular intervals, while threatened provinces would send duplicate reports by separate couriers whenever possible.

The measures were expensive and painfully late, which only intensified the arguments around the table.

Southern representatives complained they would receive too few soldiers, northern nobles insisted their frontier was closer to collapse, eastern officials demanded priority because they had already lost an entire province, and western delegates warned that weakening their defenses would simply create the next Eastwatch.

The king finally struck the table with his palm and forced the room back to silence.

"We no longer have the luxury of deciding whether this is one war or four. Caldris is being attacked, and every front belongs to the same kingdom. No province receives everything it wants, and no province will be stripped completely to save another."

He ordered mobilization everywhere and made clear that there would be no immediate royal counterattack on Eastwatch. The crown simply did not possess enough concentrated strength to attempt one without creating dangerous openings elsewhere.

For now, the remaining eastern provinces would have to prepare for the next goblin advance while the central government built larger forces as quickly as possible.

By the time the emergency council began dispersing, Eastwatch Province remained marked in black on the royal map, while warning tokens covered the north, south, and west.

The king stayed behind with only a handful of senior commanders and stared at the eastern marker for a long time before finally asking how many goblins were now inside the conquered province.

The chief military adviser looked toward the reports and admitted that they simply did not know. The king kept his eyes on the map and ordered the eastern governors to prepare for far more troops than the reports suggested, because uncertainty had already cost Caldris too much once.

What none of them understood was that even this new caution remained inadequate. While the royal capital debated how to reinforce four eastern provinces and several other fronts, approximately two hundred fifty thousand fresh Viridian troops had already crossed into Eastwatch Province, and another seven hundred fifty thousand were scheduled to follow.

The royal council had finally understood that the kingdom was being attacked from every direction, but it still had no idea how large the eastern invasion was becoming.

Eastwatch was no longer merely occupied by the army that had conquered it; it was being transformed into the staging ground for a force that Caldris had not yet learned to imagine.

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