by Emma Hamm
It hurt her heart to think that she was too late for these men. He was right though. Even if she managed to untie them before the goblins came to take them, it wasn’t likely they would be walking out of here on their own.
“Tell me everything you can remember. I will do what I can.” She said quietly, then listened carefully as he described every step of their journey. The other men were nodding off by the time he had finished and Jane knew it was unlikely they would get much more time.
Already the goblins were speaking louder, whoops echoing down the tunnel.
“Now get further into this cave girl. Follow behind them like you’re one of them and then disappear into the crowd.” It seemed the man was trying to save her even though he was the one that was tied up.
He winced, his bearded face creasing as he shifted. “Go on. Give us the honor of dying as heros. And whatever happens, you stay hidden.”
It was clear he wanted this, that the others also wanted this as well. The only thing Jane could do for these men was give them a final push of courage.
She bit her lip hard. “I don’t want to be the reason you die.”
“Don’t make us die for nothing, beauty.” He replied quietly.
There was just enough time for her to nod before she started to see the shadows stretch across the wall. Flashlight clutched in her hands, she clicked it off and managed to press her back to a stone that would hide her from their view.
She tasted salt water against her tongue as tears hit against her lips. These men deserved someone to mourn them. Their families would never know that it was not a swift death. That instead they had been worked to the bone, starved, and then murdered in front of hundreds of beasts. They deserved to have someone cry for them.
The men started shouting. The one she had taken the gag from swearing at the creatures that manhandled them. The others managed to shout through the wads of cloth in their mouths.
She counted to ten as the footsteps started moving away from her, heart thundering in her chest. The flashlight in her hands shook as she slowly turned to find that none of the lights had remained. It would have been smarter for her to anchor herself where she could have seen them if one had lingered. There was no reason for them to stay but these goblins were smarter than any human gave them credit for.
The click of the flashlight seemed too loud even to her ears. But as she shone it through the cave, there was no one lingering in the shadows.
Relief made her knees weak. It appeared that it was not her who was going to be dying today.
It didn’t take much to follow in the tracks of the goblins. She slid through the crowd until she stood at the back. She didn’t know what it was that pulled her to a stop at the opening of the cave. It felt as though there was a string at the very center of her being tugging her to turn and look back.
What she saw behind her made her want to run all the more.
It was Ruric standing at the head of the crowd. The human men before him on their knees staring out at the crowd with fear in their eyes. The goblins were jeering at them, calling out in their strange language and clacking sharp teeth at them.
In his hands she could see a wicked blade. Serrated on one edge, blinking sharp on the other, she knew this was a weapon designed to kill.
He seemed so apathetic as he looked at the men. What little expression she was used to seeing on his face was gone. This was the warlord. The warrior his people knew and who she did not. He was imposing and powerful standing next to the council men.
A cold shiver trailed down the length of her spine as she realized why he was standing there. Ruric was not just a council member nor was he simply holding that blade. Today he played the role of executioner. That was why he had wanted her to stay in the cave. That was why he had been so forceful with her. He had not wanted her to see what he was about to do.
Looking bored, he scanned over the crowd with those pitch black eyes. Once again she thought them soulless, black wells of nothing that held very little in their gaze. At least until those eyes caught upon her.
Rage once more flickered across the broad lines of his face. His biceps twitched as he took one step forward. He could not know it was her, there was no way he could see that far in such dim light. She was covered. She was in dark fabric. Jane had to remind herself that she had done everything she could to ensure no one would know who she was.
Until she caught the flicker of gold at her breast. Looking down, she realized that the long rope of her braid had slid free of the blanket and was gleaming in the dim light as it had a tendency to.
He knew.
She looked up, half afraid to see him stalking through the crowd like some great beast attacking its prey. But he remained upon the raised stones with the other goblins. He was barely holding himself in check. She knew him well enough in this short amount of time to recognize that.
He cast one last glance back towards her, dark eyes completely unreadable. And as the cave fell silent, she realized he was warning her to leave. That blade raised above his head, the light catching along the line of it.
Jane did not stay to see what he did with that weapon. She knew very well what was about to happen. These creatures were barbarians and nothing else. Murder was never meant to be done for sport, nor did she want to see what happened afterwards. These men deserved more than her tears, they deserved more than her heart ache.
They deserved someone to make their deaths worthwhile.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SHE SHOULD HAVE gone back to the cave. She should have been a good little human pet and made herself scarce. The goblins were going to be bloodthirsty after such a show and it was foolish to be going deeper into danger. But Jane had never professed to be smart, especially when she knew there were others that needed help.
This was the reason why she was wandering through the deepest tunnels she had ever seen with nothing but a flashlight as a weapon. Every now and then she would stop, recite the directions the man had said to her once more and hope that both of them had remembered correctly.
One misstep down here and she could be lost in a labyrinth of blackness forever.
The flashlight continued to flicker on and off. Every time it snapped out of existence she thought that it was the end. She didn’t know how old it was. She had no idea how long the battery would last on something like this. But she did know that this was better than sitting in a cave waiting for her to captor to come back and try to reason with her.
She had seen all she needed to see. Ruric had gotten underneath her skin. It was her own fault really. Jane was the kind of woman that needed to take care of something. First it had been her father, then it had been her siblings.
It was understandable that her feelings got a little mixed up.
She had foolishly put him up on a pedestal. He wasn’t human! But the memories of soft touches and warm embraces reminded her that he was something more than that. He was a man she had found herself falling in love with. Three months wasn’t enough to decide on that. It was her own fault her heart was breaking.
She was reacting harshly and trying to force herself to feel a way she did not. Jane simply did not understand. He had dressed her with care, held her gently when she had broken down, shared with her a hidden cave that was sacred to him. He had given her his body, heart, and soul. She had given him the same.
It wasn’t fair that in this lifetime they were meant to be enemies.
She picked her way through the tunnels carefully and eventually she was relieved to see the last marker that the man had mentioned. There was an archway carved here with a few names written into the stone. This was where the men were working. He had said they were left on their own to work in that area. They were chained to the walls and moved only when they could not work the tunnels any further.
The sound of clinking reached her ears. As familiar as it was dreaded, she marched around a corner and shone her light upon the men working there. They also had a few
of the blue globes set just out of their reach.
But what she saw there was not what she had expected. They were already freeing themselves. The familiar metallic clanks had been resonating from shackles being cracked open.
She pushed the blanket off of her and stared at the men. Jane had come here thinking that she would save them only to find that they were managing on their own.
“Lass?”
The familiar voice made her close her eyes for a moment, swaying where she stood. Opening them slowly, she tried to see through the tears that had welled in her eyes.
Further into the tunnel she saw a man straighten. Tall and broad shouldered with a familiar red beard, it was a face she never thought she would see again.
“Simon.” She whispered, licking her lips against the sudden dryness in her throat.
She didn’t know when she moved. But within moments Jane was in his arms. She pressed her face against his neck, uncaring that he smelled or that he was slick with sweat.
He was alive. She had not even dared to hope that he had been survived.
“You were dead. I saw you die.” She whispered against him.
“No Lass,” his deep timber made her shiver, holding him harder against her. “It would take more than a goblin to kill me. What are you doing down here?”
“My name is Jane.” She leaned back to sniff loudly and wipe at her nose. His arms remained around her. “How did you recognize me? I don’t look anything like I did…”
He cut her off with a well missed chuckle. “Lass we all knew you were a woman. We just didn’t want to hurt that pride of yours. You worked along with the best of us.”
When his palm pressed against her cheek, Jane couldn’t help but turn into it. This was the man she had once thought her future could lie with. This was the man she had thought died beside her, who had protected her when he could.
It was odd to have hesitation now. His touch held no enjoyment, instead it merely left an uneasy feeling in her gut. She had been so set on the idea of him, so certain that Simon would have been her happy ending if she had ever been given one.
Now she was wondering more about what his touch would feel like if there was the danger of claws on her skin.
Pulling away from him at the thought, she smoothed a hand down the odd goblin clothing and looked around them. “You’re escaping?”
Simon nodded with a grin. “Aye. The goblins are busy with their show, and we’ll be ready for them.”
“How?”
“They usually leave one or two guards with us, but this time it was just the one.” He hooked a finger over his shoulder. “He’s in the back there. Wasn’t too hard to grab the keys off of him then.”
Jane didn’t look. She couldn’t. Simon’s track record with goblins did not escape her. She hoped whoever had been guarding these men was now resting peacefully. Her heart clenched hard.
He reached for her once more with a heavy against her shoulder. “It’s far past time that we remind these creatures we are not slaves. Come with us, lass. We’ll return to our homes victorious.”
“I ain’t going nowhere with her.” One of the men said, spitting onto the ground as he swung his axe over his shoulder.
Jane didn’t want to go anywhere with that man either. Still his words made her turn towards him. “Excuse me?”
“You waltz in here lookin’ like one of them and you expect us to just… what? Trust ya?”
“I am one of your own kind.” She said. “I want to leave as much as you.”
“Naw.” He shook his head. “This is one of them tricks they keep playing. I ain’t risking my neck just cause a pretty skirt says pretty words.”
This time it was Simon that spoke. His strong voice seeming to echo. “This woman worked with us in the mines. She has reason to hate them just as much as we do. If she says she’ll help, she will.”
She was horrified at the words that came out of his mouth. In her haste to see others of her kind, she had forgotten the hatred of man. Of course they would want justice. It was unfortunate that most of them considered justice to be dripping in blood. This was not her place anymore. She could not help humans harm goblins.
“Simon, you can’t do this.”
He paused for a moment, then raised an eyebrow at her. “And why not? What good have they done for us?”
“They healed you, they feed you, they give you water to drink.” Those were her only justifications.
“And that makes it alright then? It makes it alright that they brought us here into the dark and force us to work for them because they give us food and drink?”
He had a point. Jane could only shake her head. “No it doesn’t.”
“You listen to me,” he pointed severely at her. “These creatures deserve every bit of what they get from us. We leave a mark on them and they’ll never forget it.”
“That mark does not need to be death!” Her voice had raised in anger. “Simon, you could all slip away. You could run and they would never know where to find you.”
“We think we have a good chance of beating them. Some of us might even make it to the surface and come back with help. We just have to get one man out, Jane. It’s possible.”
She was stunned. The man before her was not the one she remembered. Or perhaps he was. This was the same Simon attempting to save the people he cared about. This was the same Simon that had killed one of the goblins without flinching. Jane had thought of him as a hero. Jane had thought of Ruric as a hero. Now she wondered if there was truly such a thing.
“They do not deserve to die like that.”
He scoffed. “They are animals. We tell them how they die.”
As he turned from her, Jane felt her cheeks flush with anger. How dare he? How dare any of them? Differences meant nothing when they were all trying to survive. There were better ways to usher change into their world. Instead, everything would remain the same as blood ran in rivers around them.
“I can’t let you do this Simon.” She said forcefully. “You leave peacefully or not at all.”
“You?” He half turned towards her. His eyes glinted as the beam from her flashlight touched him. “Are ye not coming with us, Jane?”
As one of the miners skirted past the argument, she leaned forward to jerk his pickaxe out of his hand. He attempted to take it back, but was quick to back away when he saw how she brandished it. “No, I’m not.”
Simon shook his head at her. “Ah lass, maybe they are right. Perhaps you have forgotten what it means to be human.”
He nodded at something behind her. She should have known that he would attempt to trick her. He would stop at nothing to leave and she would stop at nothing to prevent harm from coming to the goblins. She whipped around with the pickaxe held high.
What she did not expect was the empty space behind her.
She knew immediately in that moment that he had bested her. Jane was not aware of the sharp strike against the back of her skull, or the moment when Simon caught her. Instead, all she would remember was darkness.
Simon slung her over his shoulder, turning back towards the other men. “I think it’s time we give them back a taste of their own medicine, don’t you boys?”
The mob of humans would be a force to be reckoned with. There were nearly forty of them in number. They were all strong men that spent much of their days breaking stone and rock. They sorely needed food and water but they were powered by rage and hatred.
The first few goblins that came upon them were caught unawares. The miners were quick to break through them and left a trampled mess behind as they passed through.
Eventually the goblins heard the sounds of fighting and reacted. They did not need the weapons that the miners carried. They fought with tooth and claw, ripped flesh from bone, and soon the caves ran slick with blood.
Simon was not a foolish man. He cared for the other miners. They might be the usual rats that ended up in the mines, but they were courageous men. Simon had come from the City long ago. He
was punished to toil in the mines because he had stepped too far and broken too many laws.
The City was nothing like the miners thought it was. Clean yes, the land of the plenty. But it was also where people discovered that laws could never be broken. Whatever the City officials wanted, they got. Laws were changed constantly, sometimes so quickly that the regular citizens didn’t have time to understand what the new ones were before they were put into effect.
It was one of these circumstances that had landed Simon in the mines. He had been fighting to get back to the City ever since. First for his revenge upon the people that had lowered him so far, and then because he had found a new species that would put him on the map once more.
He tried to be a kind man. When he liked someone, he knew to be polite. Jane seemed to like him and that was something he appreciated. He had known the moment she started talking to him that she was a woman.
No man would hand another a handkerchief because he coughed. They were more likely to pound the other man on the back and tell him to not die.
She was too kind to be in a place like this. He had been horrified when he woke up, wondering where she was and what the goblins had done to her.
He had been placed in a cave with other men and given rations for food that tasted strange. There was very little light here other than the strange globes that he refused to touch. Once they had healed his head, he was put to work.
He shifted Jane in his grasp. Her dead weight was heavy against his shoulders. He had slipped away from the others. Let them do the fighting, and he would get out alive. It was every man for himself now. He sent a prayer for the other men.
A group of goblins could be heard running down the corridor. Their strange shouts reached his ears before they arrived. He just managed to squeeze the two of them into a small crevice before they reached them.
Jane’s head hit the stone hard once. Simon winced at the treatment, but hoped she would eventually forgive him. She was brainwashed into thinking these creatures were taking care of her. Somehow he severely doubted that.