Agent RAT

Staring down into the fortress I saw no immediate flaws. The high wooden walls and huge ballista made a head-on assault suicide. Even if we made It through the gate the pure amount of goblins would overwhelm us easily. 

We could take a page out of their own book and go for a skirmishing fire arrow idea where we try to burn the village without entering but we have nowhere near enough bows and we would still lost even if the goblins left the village to come chase us. 

That left no choice but to try to enter the village another way. The front gate was too dangerous. 

Scanning the area yielded very little. The sharp hillsides may be traversable however not for a full army of rats. They could just stand at the bottom and kill us one by one as we reached the floor. 

We would need a way that's not predictable. Something that goblins would not be able to perform and so would not predict we would be able to. 

We would dig. 

Rats are inherently good diggers. If we were to dig holes from the top of the hill which extends under the camp we could pop out right in the centre of the camp in the middle of the night. It would be perfect. The goblins would never see us coming. 

But now came the other problem. 90 rats even with a massive surprise would be hard done by to kill 1000 - 2000 goblins. Especially with this Vrogg fucker leading them. We would need chaos and some backup. 

Chaos however could come first I already had an idea for the backup. 

As I theorised I felt a light pat on my shoulder from thassius large black clawed hand. 

"Those barrels," He pointed "What do you thinks is ins them"

I followed his finger and saw a small pile of barrels. They were unmarked but incredibly well protected. Around 20 goblins stood guard around them. 

"Something worth guarding its would seems, Keep 10 of us on watch the whole times, Ifs anything important happens come tell me"

"The rest of yous I want a tunnel going from heres down under the camps, I want it dones within 2 days at least. The hole will be our homes for the operation"

We would have to hunker down here for a while. This battle will require perfect timing and conditions for us to win. 

However, more information will be needed if this is to go down properly. 

Our reinforcements would be sorted later but now information was the number one priority. 

However, during the day, there was little we could do but dig. 

So dig we did, all throughout the first day. The hole became large enough to conceal all 90 rats and sleep us. 

Night quickly came and the once radiating light of the sun fell for a new calm glow from the moon. The stars weiving a beautiful tapestry across the night sky. 

4 rats, Myself, Sniffer and Thassius alongside one of Thassius's rats who named himself twig would descend the hill into the camp. We were to kill no one and get caught by no one. 

Using local shrubs and twigs I covered mine and the rest of my impromptu spied with the shrubbery making us blend into the mountainside as we descended. The darkness of the night and the covered armour should shadow our entrance. 

I drew seven small and slightly shit maps on some paper scraps some of the rats had picked up before leaving camp. Hopefully, in the event of our capture, these maps would make us look more like spies surveying the area rather than a full attack force. This would hopefully keep the opportunity open for the other rats to escape or continue the attack. 

Alongside my new team, thassius had picked out a spot where the light from the moon was blocked by the hillside and we began our descent. Thassius had picked the spot as the goblin on duty watching this part of the hillside took almost ten minutes to make his full rounds of which only 6 minutes were watching this part of the hillside. 

4 minutes that's all we had. We would have to go two at a time and find hiding places at the bottom to await the full team. 

Me and Sniffer would go first followed by thassius and Twig. 

We watched with intent as the goblin stopped looking at the hillside as we sprang into action. Me and Sniffer threw ourselves down the cliff. My claws dug deep into the soft clay which made up the hill. I focused purely on my own descent not even looking to see Sniffers progress.

It took just two minutes to reach the bottom of the hill where I quickly dived behind a few boxes. Sniffer followed just a minute later. 

We had made it with the guard returning just two minutes later. Clearly, he had taken slightly longer on this turnaround. 

Just 5 minutes later Thassius and Twig were climbing down as well. They too made it down with ease. 

We reunited behind the boxes to plan our next moves. Now inside the camp, it was fairly safe seeing as the goblins took quite a high amount of pride in their external defences and so guards patrolling the village were quite lacklustre. I began explaining the plan to the other three. 

"Well split up, Look for any information you can find, Sniffer you look through some of the streets and see if there's anything we need to be aware of when we attack, Twig you go check the barrels. Myself and thassius will check the large building in the centre."

My interest in the large building centred mainly around the supposed goblin general inside. I wanted to know how intimidating he was prior to the attack. While our information deemed him manageable I no longer wished to leave my fate in the information provided by that fucking scheming little shit. 

We had entered the camp from the Eastern side and the larger building stood on the north edge next to the hill. 

The camp seemed far more desolate at night compared to a camp of rats. Apart from the occasional guard, we had an easy time sneaking through the camp. I tried my best to remember anything majorly interesting we came across. For example, an armoury that we came across. A good place to burn first to prevent goblins not already wielding weapons from picking them up. 

Thassius was far more of an effective spy than I thought he would be considering his large stature. His deep black fur and armour most likely contributed to this greatly. 

After an hour of noting down and looking for anything interesting, we finally came up to the huge building. It looked to be around 3 buildings layered on top of each other each being slightly smaller than the last. The doors were large wooden slabs engraved and accented with metal rims. The wooden walls also had engravings with a clan logo seeming to be front and centre. A shield painted blue with a bit of chunk taken out of the corner. Rather uninspired if you ask me.

Thassius tested the door but found it locked from the other side. Oddly enough though these goblins seem to invite strangers into their buildings because small gaps in the walls were scattered along the walls of the building. 

Small wooden bars blocked the gaps but the bars did not stop our small eyes from peaking in. 

Picking a location I climbed up to a gap alongside Thassius and gazed through. The first floor was seemingly just one large room. A small puny wooden throne stood at the front of the room with a variety of smaller cushions on the floor. The torches still shone inside the room and some of the cushions were occupied by goblins. 

They chatted amongst themselves in their twisted language. 

" ?tog yeht wollef namuh taht tuoba dias tar yhtlif diputs eht stahW"

Nothing else interesting lay inside the room. We continued climbing up to the second floor where another window gave us a peak into a new room. 

Inside the room was a training-like area with dummies standing in various locations. In the centre of the room stood a hulking green figure. He looked nothing like a goblin but rather more like the creature who sat on the wooden throne. Large standing at a similar height to thassius. 

he wore nothing above his waist with blue ink smudged on his body creating intricate patterns. 

In his hand was a small mettle scythe-like weapon with a long chain running out from the bottom of it. In his other hand, he held a small metal stick which the chain seemed to run Into. 

He stood surrounded by the dummies seemingly concentrating hard as his eyes held shut.

Suddenly his eyes sprung open as he shifted into a dynamic mix of moves swinging the small metal scythe around. 5 slashes were delivered one to each of the dummy's necks which now had fallen over. 

The creature now stood above the 5 dummies seemingly looking proud of itself. 

So this is Vrogg the thrasher. It seems yet again the information underestimates our advisory. He would be an issue if he broke into the less skilled rats in our ranks.

Thassius would be torn apart. He's too fast for Thassiu's slow and calculated moves. It would have to be me. No other of the rats would stand a chance. I would have to face him alone. He's much more skilled than me however I would be able to pick the location of the duel. He can't afford to sit and wait in his dojo as the rest of the camp is burned and destroyed. 

Our time however was running out. We clambered up to the final floor and looked inside. A simple bedroom nothing special. seemingly Vroggs bedroom. Maybe a good place to assassinate him if that's the plan we went with. 

Sneaking back down the large building we began to retrace our steps, occasionally peaking down streets we had not been to or looking in buildings for anything important. We arrived back at the rendezvous point to find Sniffer and Twig already waiting. 

Using the same strategy we escaped the camp and scampered back to the hole. 

Sniffer had found a few buildings of interest around the camp including a heavily locked and guard building he assumed to be a treasury of some sort. 

Twig had managed to discover what the barrels were. Some sort of liquid which the goblins occasionally took away and drank. They would then stumble around a certain building before leaving off in different directions. 

Could be a useful thing to poison. 

However, my next priority was finishing preparations before my final reinforcement plot.