by T. H. Lain
The two goblins on each side of him grunted as well, and grabbed for the ropes that tied them to the fallen goblin and that kept him from falling to his death. They both had to take at least a step closer to the edge. The goblin on the left grimaced, and Tzrg could see the muscles in his arms bulge so that veins traced meandering paths under his dull orange skin. The goblin on the right took another step closer to the edge, obviously not as strong as his tribemate.
One of Rezrex’s hobgoblin cronies stepped forward, grinning, and was going to push the weaker goblin over the edge. Rezrex put out a hand to stop his henchman. They exchanged words in their complex language, and Rezrex reached to the hobgoblin’s side. He wrapped his hand around the pommel of the hobgoblin’s sword and drew the rusted steel weapon from its scabbard.
The shrill sound echoed, startling the struggling, weaker goblin just enough to send him over the edge. He swung a bit farther out, and while he was still in the air, swinging down and back in on a collision course with Glnk, Rezrex brought the sword down in a hard chop that severed the web between the falling goblin and the one next to him, who was still on his feet at the top of the drop-off. There was a loud, collective gasp from all the goblins, Cavemouth and Stonedeep alike, when Rezrex brought the sword across and out to his right.
The blade bit through the web rope that secured the already dangling chief to his falling friend. The goblin screamed on the way down. His scream was joined by a dozen or more others, mostly from the Stonedeep females. When he hit the cave floor blood splashed onto the first row of Stonedeep goblins, sending them pushing backward into their tribemates. Tzrg, standing closer to the back, only barely felt the wave push into him as the crowd withdrew from the bloody sight.
Glnk, still dangling off the edge of the drop-off, shouted a name Tzrg presumed belonged to the bloody mess at the bottom of the cliff.
Rezrex reached down and grabbed the rope. He pulled up, leaning back a little, and dragged Glnk back onto the top of the cliff.
“Will you bring your females?” Rezrex demanded of the dazed, angry, grief-stricken goblin.
Glnk didn’t answer at first, so Rezrex rolled his bodyguard’s sword through his fingers and set the point under the still shaken goblin’s chin.
“Females,” the hobgoblin repeated, his brows turning down over his nose, his eyes burning in the torchlight.
The goblin met Rezrex’s cold stare and said, “No.”
Tzrg recognized the word. It was a hobgoblin word that Rezrex used a lot.
“No,” the hobgoblin snorted, pulling Glnk to his feet. “You know what a ksr is, Glnk?”
***
There were noises behind them-at least Jozan thought the noises were behind them. In the confines of the cave, however deep underground they were, every little sound bounced off unseen walls and seemed to come from every direction at once.
It was hard to see any details as they ran. There were signs of goblin habitation all around them, but he didn’t pause long enough to soak it in. They made tools from wood they obviously collected from the surface, as well as the stone and parts of dead spiders they had all around them in the caves.
The stalagmites thinned out considerably, and it was easier to run. Jozan was surprised at his own speed. The cool air rushed past his ears. Lidda was a blur next to him.
“Are they chasing us?” she asked, her voice blowing past him like wind.
Jozan stumbled trying to stop, but only managed to slow down a little. He was running downhill and hadn’t even realized it. They’d been going deeper for a while, blindly fleeing the spiders that might not even be chasing them after all. His face flushed, and he would have felt foolish if he wasn’t so busy feeling like such a coward.
“Stop,” he said, as much to himself as to Lidda.
He finally skidded to a halt. The halfling was already standing still, waiting for him. Her lantern swung at her side, but the light seemed dimmer.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He was panting like a dog, and she was barely breathing at all. He resisted the temptation to remind her that he was wearing armor, and that “Jozie?” she asked, eyes wide. “You all right?”
He cleared his throat, wiping his forehead with a metal-gauntleted hand.
“I’m fine,” he said. “We have to stop, though. We’re going deeper.”
“I know,” she said, “but the spiders…”
“The spiders might not even be following us,” Jozan said, turning to peer into the darkness from which they’d come. He slid the mace off his back and held it ready in case the spiders were coming. “We should find a way back up, and… what did you call me?”
The halfling didn’t answer. He turned to look at her and saw her carefully filling her lamp from a flask of oil. The light grew slowly brighter.
“Lidda,” he said, “did you hear me?”
She looked up at him and said, “What, now?”
“What did you call me just then?”
“What?”
“I’m not Regdar,” the priest said. “I’m not to be trifled with, child.”
Lidda’s eyes narrowed, and she looked at him as if she wasn’t sure what language he was speaking.
“Sorry,” she said, as insincerely as Jozan had ever heard anyone say anything.
He turned and looked back into the darkness behind them again. Still no spiders.
“They kept the spiders like cattle or something,” she said. “Another tribe of goblins came and did something bad-I’m not sure what-that made the spiders turn on them.”
Jozan turned back to her and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“The old goblin, Kink,” she said with a shrug. “He tried to tell me what was going on, but I didn’t catch all of it. He said his son went after them but never came back.”
Jozan sighed and reached up to take off his helm. If he had taken it off a second before, he might have been knocked out when the rock hit him in the head.
There was a loud clang, and he saw Lidda’s eyes widen in surprise. He blinked a couple times, and his head hurt. There was a strange sound echoing through the cave, a loud, shrill, ululating sound that only made his head hurt more. He turned, ignoring a series of loud grumbling grunts from the halfling behind him.
The shadows moved, and as Jozan’s head cleared, he brought his mace up. There was a group of squat little humanoids-goblins, but different somehow-and they were making the strange noise. One of them threw a rock, but it flew wide of its intended target, which was Jozan’s head.
Lidda brushed past him. As she did, the light from her lantern fell on the goblins, and Jozan realized they were female. Dressed in tatters of cast-off clothing, some of them clutching squirming yellow infants to their breasts, they hopped up and down, brandishing rocks and making that strange noise.
“Oh, for Pelor’s sake,” Jozan murmured.
Lidda held her hands in front of her, showing her empty palms to the crowd of female goblins. They scuttled back to avoid her even as she grunted at them in what Jozan had come to recognize as their primitive language.
“Tell them we mean them no harm,” he said.
Another rock launched out of the crowd at him, and he batted it away with his mace just in time to avoid it smashing his face in.
“And tell them to stop throwing rocks at me!”
Lidda was trying to say something to them, but Jozan could tell by the way they kept up their high-pitched chant and bent to pick up more rocks that they weren’t listening.
11
Regdar and Naull managed to find a dry torch and light it before the effects of the light spell wore off. Drying everything out, though, was a lost cause, and Regdar grimly accepted the fact that he was going to be wet and cold for a long time. He certainly wasn’t about to take off his armor. Regdar found no small consolation, though, in the fact that they seemed to have managed to keep hold of everything they fell into the water with-or, at least, everything that fell in with them.
They bo
th looked up at the waterfall, which disappeared into the darkness above. Its source was far above the reach of Regdar’s feeble torchlight, but he could see enough to realize that they would have to find a different way out. Even if Naull could climb as well as he could, they would have to work against falling water the whole way. The fact that they had gotten hopelessly turned around in the first fall was enough for Regdar to admit to himself that even if they could manage the climb, they would still be lost.
He turned to face the only other way out of the chamber: a dark mouth that emptied into a high-ceilinged cave, the floor of which sloped a bit downward. They’d be going deeper, but they’d be going somewhere. On his left, another, smaller waterfall, splashed into a second pool.
“Do you think there’s any way Jozan and Lidda could find us?” Naull asked, her voice ricocheting from the rough stone walls. “Maybe there’s only this one way down.”
Regdar shrugged, turning away, and didn’t tell her what he really thought.
“We should find another way out,” he said. “Once we’re back on the surface, we can find the pit we climbed down. Jozan and Lidda might be waiting for us there.”
“You think they’d leave without us?”
“I hope so,” he said.
She gave him an odd look, and he turned away again.
“We should go,” he said. “It looks like there’s only one way-”
Naull hissed at him and touched him on the arm. Her head was cocked to one side, and her face had drained of what little color the cold water had left her. Regdar put a hand on the hilt of his sword but didn’t draw it. He listened, but all he heard at first was the echoing rush and spatter of the waterfalls. Naull pulled gently on his arm and turned to face him. Regdar bent slightly at the waist, bringing his ear close to her upturned face. He felt his skin tingle when her breath touched the side of his neck.
“I hear voices,” she whispered, then glanced at the dark cave mouth.
Regdar straightened and took a few slow, silent steps toward the cave mouth. He bent a little closer and finally heard what Naull had described as voices. To Regdar they sounded more like grunts. He was put in the mind of pigs but couldn’t imagine they’d run across any pigs the gods knew how deep underground.
Naull stepped up next to him, standing very close. He could feel her anxiety but had no idea how to reassure her. If there was something grunting down that tunnel, they were going to have to run into it sooner or later. It was their only way out.
He bent down to whisper in her ear and could see her tense as he came in close.
“We have to see what it is,” he said. “Stay close behind me.”
Standing, he drew his sword as slowly and as quietly as he could, not waiting for an answer from Naull. Regdar felt better with his sword in his hand. Holding the torch out in front of him, he slid up to the ragged stone wall to his right. He reached back to motion Naull to follow his lead, and the young mage complied. They started moving slowly, as quietly as they could under the less-than-favorable circumstances, and found that the floor sloped rather less severely at the edge. There were a few stalagmites to hang on to as they went, and as slowly as they walked they both managed to get onto level ground without slipping.
The tunnel was about twenty-five feet wide where it emptied into the chamber. The ceiling was still too far over their heads to see. To Regdar it seemed as if they were traveling in a bubble of dull orange torchlight, with nothing around them on all sides but utter blackness. He found it unsettling, but the presence of the young mage was somehow comforting. She was certainly more nervous than he was-he could see her hands shaking and the tight-set line of her jaw-but at least he wasn’t alone. Though he rarely sought refuge in idle chatter, he wished he could speak to her, but with the grunting and snorting sounds echoing ever more loudly-ever more closely-in front of them, he kept his mouth shut.
When he almost fell over a sudden drop-off, he cursed his wandering thoughts. His foot dangled in midair for a heart-stopping moment before he drew back, pushing Naull gently away with his broad back. He swung his torch slowly in front of him.
There was a deep depression in the side of the tunnel, a good four feet deeper than Regdar was tall. The floor fell away all at once in an irregular line. Below was the dark mouth of a side-passage. Regdar bent forward a bit farther, trying to listen down the much more confined space.
He turned back to Naull, who was gazing at him expectantly, and whispered, “I don’t think the sounds are coming from there.”
He was being honest but was secretly worried that maybe he was hearing what he wanted to hear. Regdar wasn’t the slightest bit pleased with the idea of climbing down into an even smaller, tighter space.
He could see Naull trying to listen, and after a bit she nodded and whispered, “It’s straight ahead. What is it?”
Regdar shrugged. He could hear the grunting sounds much more clearly, the echoing hiss of the waterfalls behind him only barely audible.
He held his torch out to the side and walked carefully, still trying to be as quiet as he could. Naull grabbed hold of his armor and walked just as carefully behind him. Together they traced the outline of the drop-off and finally came back to the jagged stone wall.
They continued following the wall for maybe twenty or thirty feet before Naull, still holding Regdar’s tassets, whispered, “Wait.”
The fighter stopped and was about to turn around but stopped himself. Instead, he swiveled his head, so she wouldn’t let go.
“Won’t it be able to see the torch?” she asked.
It took Regdar a moment or two to sort out what she meant, but when he did, his face flushed. They were walking through pitch darkness with a lit torch. They could tiptoe all they wanted, but if whatever it was that was grunting had eyes, they’d be as obvious as a roc in a birdbath.
“Can you cast a spell to…?” Regdar wasn’t sure what he hoped a spell might do for them.
Naull shook her head and looked at him imploringly.
He had no idea what to do. They couldn’t see in the dark. They had to have the torch. If it was a lantern they might be able to shield it somehow, but a torch…
“We have no choice,” he whispered.
Naull looked like she was going to say something but didn’t.
He turned back and kept moving along the wall, Naull still in tow.
They stopped when the edge of the torchlight revealed a narrowing of the tunnel ahead of them. The grunting noises came intermittently, echoing, but clearly in front of them. To the right, the wall they’d been following curved outward and wrapped around a pool of clear water so still Regdar couldn’t tell if he was seeing stalagmites jutting up from the pool’s bottom or reflections of the stalactites hanging above it. The tunnel narrowed to less than ten feet, though the ceiling was still too high above them to see. To the left, Regdar could barely make out what might have been another side-passage. He motioned Naull forward then crossed to the other side, hugging the left wall with the torch, his sword arm away from the rock in hopes of both hiding the torchlight and giving him more room to fight.
The cave continued to widen, then the wall curved back inward, and Regdar stopped again. Across the passage and forward was another pool of still, clear water, and deeper in was the unmistakable orange glow of torchlight.
“Do you see that?” Regdar whispered.
Torches meant at least some civilization. Even if it was only goblins living there, they might convince the humanoids-one way or another-to show them the way out.
Naull nodded and replied, “Put your torch out.”
Excited, Regdar tossed his torch into the pool across the narrow tunnel.
Even as it sailed through the air, Regdar cringed and almost cursed aloud. When the flame hit the cold water with a deafening hiss followed by the torch’s resounding splash, he actually whispered, “Damn it,” and pressed his back against the stone wall.
Naull followed his lead, and both of them were keenly aware
that the grunting noises had abruptly stopped.
Sure that whatever it was knew they were there, it occurred to Regdar that he should just run in and get it-whatever “it” might be-over with, but he had to think of Naull. If he went down fighting because he’d prematurely revealed himself to an enemy, that would be one thing, but to bring Naull with him…
Before Regdar could continue wrestling with this dilemma, the grunting noises began again.
“It’s got to be goblins,” Naull whispered.
Regdar turned to her and could see the impatience in her face. She curled both hands around her staff and nodded once, sharply, toward the torchlight.
Regdar waved her back then leaned forward and to his right to peer around the cave wall.
From where he stood, Regdar could see a pool of light cast by a torch that had been set into a crack in the right-hand wall, about ten feet past the edge of the second pool-about forty feet all together from Regdar. Between the far edge of the pool and the torch was a cage constructed of broken-off stalactites held together by what looked like the same thick spidersilk as the rope ladder. A spider identical to the ones they’d fought on the surface picked its way along the dome-shaped top of the stone cage as if it was testing the spidersilk ties. Inside, cowering in the half of the cage floor closest to the wall, was a tightly pressed group of goblins.
The little creatures looked even more ragged than the goblins they’d seen before. What clothes they wore were rarely more than strips of torn cloth. Most if not all of them were wounded in some way-at least the odd scrape or gray-orange bruise-and none of them were armed.
Regdar assumed that they either hadn’t heard his torch go out or didn’t care. They were all looking away. He motioned Naull to look, and she slid up next to him close enough that he could feel her trembling.