You can hit very fast at the sides with a goblin axe, But it is not a one hit kill. When trying to hit with a fast weapon, such as: The goblin axe, The roman sword, The viking sword, Try to hit at the sides.
Now this is assuming the player you are attacking has a large weapon.

A good tactic for quick weapons is, to charge in at the side facing the direction you started charging at. If your enemy jumps out of the way just step back for a few moments and try again.

Large weapons are slower but dish out more damage to the enemy. For large weapons such as The dwarven work hammer or dwarven work axe.

A good tactic for large weapons to jump around the enemy always facing him. Its very important that you do this especially with the dwarven work hammer, as the hammer can only make downward strikes. Also you can glitch the game into having you repeatedly jumpstrike.

So jump around with large weapons and be sneaky with little weapons.

Hope this helps.