I considered that too, but then they might accidentally stab each other, which wouldn’t be good

Doesn’t matter how tall the goblins are when they have 20 foot pikes. Horses do not like charging at a pike wall. As long as they can keep a semblance of order – which would be easier with multiple goblins per pike, since you’d now have 40-80 goblins standing there per 20 pikes, instead of just 20 humans – it is easily possible to stop a charge.

Horses also generally don’t enjoy trampling on things. It’s way too easy for them to break legs or trip or otherwise hurt themselves. They will do it if a rider forces them to, but will tend to try and step on solid ground whenever possible otherwise. Goblins would have no more danger of being trampled than humans would have, in the same situation.

You’d also have to think, even if Rags is there alone, there’s probably scouts still watching. If they attack her, the whole tribe is probably going to come back. And yes, the humans might win if that happened, but how many humans would die in the process?

And they know Tremborag will probably be coming soonish, following Rags. A partially destroyed city from Rags’ tribe would just be easy pickings for Tremborag.

It really wouldn’t be worth provoking them if they are freely letting the women go.

Ah, to see such a comment on a reread of the story.

Crash and burn, indeed. Maybe in another 10 million words from where it’s currently at!

he didn’t want to have to fight for influence with the others Hobs.
Others->other

Just a heads up: A while back I mentioned Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series, which Pirate then confirmed having read and enjoyed. For anyone not likewise familiar: “The Wheel of Time” ran to fourteen volumes (none small) plus a prequel and “encyclopedia” filling millennia of backstory. An ACTUAL series encyclopedia would have been far more practical, to help readers keep track of literally HUNDREDS of fully three-dimensional characters (i.e. possessing their OWN rich backstories, goals and motives, as well as speaking parts more elaborate than “Yes/No/, Protagonist”) who are often integral to several whole chapters before wholly VANISHING for three volumes when the scene shifts again.

It took TWENTY-FOUR YEARS to publish that series (and a second author, since the original authors production dropped dramatically when he became terminally ill while writing volume ten, then stopped completely when he DIED not long after publishing volume eleven.) At this point I barely even notice, only partly because other works have now accustomed me to it: It is also the way the ACTUAL word works. Someone who only knew Earth from TV could be excused for believing that only a few score of >7 billion humans actually DO anything, while the rest just sit around in stasis waiting until the important ones have need of them. That is not, however, the case, hence the classic historians debate over whether extraordinary events forcibly transform ordinary people INTO extraordinary ones, or extraordinary people bend history to their will. Whether it is ironic or inevitable that Innworld reflect that debate not only within its own world but in its very narrative structure likely depends on the particular readers perspective.

Either way though, no writer brings in a cast of thousands just to find out how many balls the author can keep aloft before dropping them all: It provides verisimilitude by creating a world POPULATED by a wide variety of people with equally varied experiences, not just a handful of monolithic heroes and villains. Done well, it can almost become redundant, because even when everyone in a scene is a major character the reader has already been reminded many times that there are ALWAYS lots of anonymous minor characters doing things offscreen. Ideally, Snoopy always ties it all together in the end–even when it is unclear exactly HOW all the links work. That usually involves the cast of thousands as intermediaries though, else the whole thing devolves into a Seinfeld episode, where the same half dozen people keep running into each other in a city of 20 million, and even when they leave the country, because the writers are incapable of thinking up another character beyond the guest star du jour. Tradeoffs require choosing ones poison, but the bottom line always remains the bottom line:

Are you getting your moneys worth…?

Only you can ultimately answer that question, but since you can get it FREE with only a three- or four-day delay… .

Yes too many side stories and not nearly enough basic story line. Over a year but only a few months in story line.