The Savage Caves

13

There was something about the sounds that came echoing down the narrow tunnel that made Regdar stop, turn around, and walk out into the larger cave. The goblins were quiet, then they cheered, there was the shifting of rough cloth and the swish of bare feet on stone, the clicking of scuttling spiders, and underneath it, something big that was growling and moving on sharp claws.

Regdar, sensing Naull following close behind him, came out into an enormous cave. The colors washed past him in flowing white, gray, and brown. There were spears of stalactites hanging from the ceiling like enormous chandeliers. The floor had been made smooth and worn even smoother. He was standing on a natural platform twenty feet above the cave floor. Beyond the edge of the platform was a pit, as deep as the platform was high, but with one intermediary ledge like an inner ring or step that formed a simple but effective natural amphitheater.

On the floor of the pit was a creature Regdar had seen only once before and hoped never to see again. It was a hideous, man-eating beast called a krenshar. It growled and scraped its claws on the smooth stone floor of the pit, which was ringed by a crowd of maybe seventy goblins.

A ladder made of spidersilk ran from the edge of the platform to the outer edge of the pit, stretching diagonally like a crude staircase. At the foot of the web ladder, on the step above the floor of the krenshar pit, were the two goblin jailers and their prisoner.

“Regdar…” Naull whispered.

He could tell she was going to warn him off, but there was nothing she could say. Throwing someone—even a goblin—into a pit, defenseless, against a krenshar was just wrong.

Regdar charged down the spidersilk ladder, greatsword swinging behind him. The jailer to the left of the would-be krenshar victim turned. Its eyes widened and its mouth opened. The goblin brought its arm back, a crude stone club clenched in its hand.

Regdar spilled the goblin’s entrails before it had time to scream.

A dead silence came over the cavern, and all heads turned to look up at Regdar. Mouths fell open, and there was a wave of gasps.

Regdar smiled and looked across the bizarre scene. On the other side of the pit sat a burly humanoid, much bigger than the goblins around him. It stood slowly and sneered at Regdar.

Hobgoblin, Regdar thought. I hate hobgoblins.

Behind the hobgoblin was another, but this one had a less impressive collection of trophies slung along its patchwork armor. Regdar noted a handful of the big brown spiders with the Xs on their backs scattered among the goblins.

“Regdar,” Naull called from up on the platform behind him, “what are we doing?”

The goblins panicked and ran in two big groups. Almost directly to Regdar’s right, behind the prisoner and the surviving jailer, thirty goblins scrambled to their feet and practically crawled over each other to get away. They’d been sitting in a space between the pit and a sheer drop-off in the cave floor. By the light of torches stuck here and there in cracks in the walls and floor, Regdar could see a pile of large stones that had been fashioned into a crude stairway running down the drop-off. The thirty goblins made for the stone steps, some of the them slipping and falling—their comrades ran them right over.

The second group was half the size. They squeezed through narrow gaps in a stone wall across the pit from where Regdar was standing. The rock wall looked like a waterfall frozen in place.

The goblin prisoner, its hands tied behind its back, took advantage of the tribe’s panic and pushed the surviving jailer-goblin hard with its shoulder and the side of its face. The jailer—a bit bigger than the rest of the goblins—tried to keep its balance by widening its stance. Unfortunately for the jailer, it was standing right at the edge of the pit. Its foot slipped over the edge, and the jailer tumbled fifteen feet into the krenshar pit.

Regdar stepped back and was just about to pull the prisoner into the narrow cave they’d come from when Naull, screaming, came flying through the air. Regdar realized she had been trying to jump on the jailer-goblin just as the prisoner pushed it into the pit.

Naull came to a hard, sliding stop on the step and slid off the edge. Regdar could see the fingers of both of Naull’s hands, white and trembling as she held for dear life onto the sharp edge. He grabbed at the prisoner again, but the goblin spun on him and flinched away. The big hobgoblin roared twice in such a way that made Regdar think it was saying something to the two dozen or so goblins that hadn’t run away.

In the pit, the krenshar charged the goblin jailer. The creature’s razor-sharp claws shrieked across the smooth stone floor as it went. The goblin drew its dagger and screamed what might have been a challenge, a prayer, or just the incoherent cry of a goblin who knew it was about to die. It did step forward, though, and slashed its dagger down at the krenshar’s head.

The smaller of the two hobgoblins charged around the perimeter of the krenshar pit, making its way toward Regdar with heavy, stomping feet. It was swinging a morningstar. The brutal weapon’s two big steel balls, which were clustered with jagged spikes, whirled at the ends of heavy chains that hung from a leather-wrapped handle. The hobgoblin was almost exactly the same size as Regdar, who was ready for a decent fight. As the hobgoblin came around it sent two goblins tumbling into the krenshar pit and two more scrambling out of its way. It was only then that Regdar noticed the goblins cowering between the cave wall on his left and the edge of the krenshar pit.

The hobgoblin was moving slowly enough that Regdar could take the time to gently slice through the spidersilk holding the prisoner’s hands behind its back. Behind the goblin he could see Naull’s fingertips still clinging to the edge of the pit—then he turned back to see the hobgoblin coming at him fast and hard.

He had almost come to a snap decision about whether he would save Naull first or meet the hobgoblin’s charge head on when a spider slammed into him. Its needlelike legs pinged off his armor, and the horrid sideways jaws clacked at him. It was all he could do to keep his left arm between the spider and his exposed face. The thing seemed to be trying to bite him in the eyes. Regdar could hear another one coming toward him from behind and up on the platform.

The bigger hobgoblin still stood at the other side of the pit, screaming a string of incoherent growls. By the sound of it, Regdar could tell the humanoid was angry—and getting angrier. In the pit there was the screech of claws on stone, then an ugly ripping noise and a pained, desperate wail—a goblin’s wail.

The spider was crawling over Regdar’s arm. He was twisting at the elbow and shoulder, trying to keep it off his face. Finally, he was able to get his huge greatsword inside and flicked a wedge out of the underside of the spider’s brittle body. It quivered, convulsed, and its eight segmented legs curled up under its bleeding body, trapping Regdar’s left arm with them. When the other spider leaped off the platform at him, Regdar used the dead spider on his arm like a shield and managed to avoid the thing’s bite.

The block drew Regdar half a step sideways, and when he glanced down to make sure he wasn’t too close to the edge, he saw the goblin prisoner, crouching low beneath him. The goblin snatched the stone club from the dead jailer.

The spider rolled off the dead one still stuck to Regdar’s arm and came to rest on its feet, right next to the now-armed prisoner. There was a loud growl almost in Regdar’s face, and he looked up just barely fast enough to see the hobgoblin almost upon him.

Regdar stepped backward and brought the dead spider up. The hobgoblin’s morningstar smashed into it hard enough to rip it free of Regdar’s arm and send it sailing up onto the stone platform above.

Regdar felt a hand on his ankle. He didn’t risk a glance down, but was sure it was Naull. She pulled herself up and over the edge of the pit. Regdar could hear the krenshar’s jaws snapping just below her. She whispered a curse and thanked the god of magic for her life.

The hobgoblin growled in Regdar’s face and recovered quickly. Regdar ducked a backhand swing and brought his sword up to jab at the hobgoblin’s midsection. The humanoid skipped back, letting its morningstar spin behind its head while it changed its grip on the weapon from one hand to the other. Regdar stepped in with a slash across the hobgoblin’s chest that cut through its animal hide and bone armor, but not quite deeply enough to draw blood.

The goblin prisoner had to roll out of the way and hop up onto the space between the pit and the platform. The spider followed it, and Regdar caught just a glimpse of a splash of spider guts as the goblin prisoner broke through the spider’s shell. Regdar could hear a third spider clattering up from behind him and hoped the ex-prisoner would take care of that one as quickly as it did the last.

The hobgoblin brought its morningstar down over its head with its left hand, and Regdar could see what it was trying to do. Its right hand was balled into a fist the size of a sledgehammer, and it was hoping Regdar would dodge the morningstar and move directly into the punch. Instead, Regdar dodged to the left and held his sword up over his head. The heavy steel balls wrapped the chain around Regdar’s blade, and there was a second where the surprised hobgoblin stood there and watched it happen.

Regdar took that opportunity to look behind it. The goblins along the wall were watching in obviously stunned fascination. Behind the bigger, still ranting hobgoblin on the other side of the pit, a small group of goblins and a few of the spiders were rallying around a single goblin who was growling at them in that ugly language of theirs.

The big hobgoblin turned on them, and Regdar could see the fear in the eyes of all the goblins who had been rallying behind it. The sound of the big hobgoblin’s voice was like thunder rolling through the huge cave. The thing was not happy.

The hobgoblin whose morningstar was wrapped around Regdar’s sword kicked the human in the side hard enough to push the air out of his right lung. It was an odd, painful sensation, but Regdar didn’t have time to stop and consider it. Tensing his right arm and bringing all of his considerable strength to bear, he twisted his greatsword out and to the left, flipping the morningstar from the hobgoblin’s grip.

Doing so, though, turned him around, so that he had his back to the hobgoblin. Regdar was facing Naull’s back and had to dodge to one side to avoid the young mage’s staff. She jammed it back, then sliced it down, and Regdar watched it smash onto the top of a spider that was just about to bite her in the ankle. It was the spider Regdar had hoped the prisoner would kill—it was as if he’d forgotten about Naull completely. He drew in a breath, stunned and disappointed by the realization, only to be snapped back into the moment when the hobgoblin punched him in the back hard enough to rattle his teeth.

Regdar blinked and was oddly aware of the crowd of fleeing goblins pouring down the crude stone steps. Yet another spider was making its way toward him, and Regdar tried to ignore the sounds of two more goblins being ripped to pieces by the krenshar.

The hobgoblin wrapped its huge, yellow-skinned arms around Regdar’s head, and he knew the humanoid was going to try to break his neck. When the inevitable hard twisting motion came, Regdar rolled with it. His sword was too heavy with the morning-star still wrapped around it. As Regdar rolled to the side, slipping out of the hobgoblin’s grip, he twitched his sword, so the chains would begin to unwind.

The hobgoblin must have realized that Regdar wasn’t going to sit there and have his neck broken. It let go of Regdar’s head and stepped back. The hobgoblin bumped into Regdar’s back and growled in frustration, then something brushed past Regdar. It was the goblin prisoner. The little humanoid seemed to be scurrying all over the place, getting in and under Regdar and the hobgoblin as if they weren’t even there.

The goblin stood up just as it came by Regdar and reached out to grab at Naull. Regdar barked out a warning, but at the same time he heard the telltale squeak of a dagger being drawn somewhere just behind his head.

The goblin prisoner pushed Naull to the side, away from the pit, and Regdar could see the spider scurrying toward them. The prisoner brought its club down at the thing, but stopped a foot above it. The spider reacted anyway, hopping to one side. The goblin stomped down with its right foot and cracked three of the spider’s legs, so they nearly broke off. The thing tried to jump away but only dragged its useless appendages a few inches before the goblin fell on it and killed it.

Naull took the opportunity to climb up and pass behind Regdar as if unaware of the life-and-death fight he was having with the hobgoblin. As he watched her pass he turned and stood. The morningstar slid off his sword, and Regdar kicked it into the pit at the same time he batted away the hobgoblin’s long, serrated dagger.

Over the hobgoblin’s shoulder Regdar saw the bigger humanoid barking more orders. This time, the goblins who had been content to watch started to work up their nerves. The little humanoids had weapons in their hands—javelins mostly, and heavy leg bone or stone clubs—and a strangely pathetic desperation in their eyes.

Regdar dropped his sword back and tensed for a hard slash that could end the hobgoblin when he heard Naull start to shout something that sounded like just the opposite of the goblins’ guttural grunting. The words were lyrical and intricate, set in a chanting cadence that gave Regdar pause—just long enough for the hobgoblin to slash him across the hip with the big serrated dagger. It found a place between tassets and cuisse and ripped into his skin. Regdar clenched his teeth tightly together and held back a scream. Hot blood poured from the wound.