The Savage Caves

14

Jozan tried not to take satisfaction in the way it felt to crack a goblin’s skull with his bloody mace. He wasn’t fighting for the thrill of it—he wasn’t even fighting to kill—but he had to defend Lidda, the goblin females, and himself.

His eyes had become used to the dim light of Lidda’s lantern, and he was thankful that the halfling had stopped bouncing around. The light was steady enough that he wasn’t mistaking shadows for goblins and vice versa. He couldn’t see the little thief, and she wasn’t speaking, but the light was behind him and to his right.

The goblin he’d just hit fell to one knee and put a hand to its head, dropping the sharpened rock it had been using as a weapon. Another of its comrades came up to jab at Jozan with a javelin, but the priest stepped back, and the wounded goblin rolled over on its side at the same time. The wounded goblin rolled onto the javelin-wielder’s feet, nearly tripping it. The javelin, instead of stabbing Jozan, tipped upward. The priest took advantage of that and stepped in to swat the weapon out of the goblin’s hand. There was a loud snap! and Jozan was pretty sure he’d broken one of the goblin’s fingers in the process.

In response, the humanoid growled and gnashed its teeth like a mad dog. It stepped on its unconscious comrade and leaped at Jozan, apparently meaning to take down the priest with its bare hands.

Jozan closed his eyes, steeling himself against the inevitable impact. He’d overextended his mace knocking the javelin away and knew he couldn’t get it back in front of him in time to backhand the diving goblin.

The impact never came. Instead, a gurgling whimper sounded in front of him. Jozan opened his eyes to see the goblin, blood dribbling from its slack-jawed mouth, slowly crumple to the floor on top of its fallen friend.

Lidda stood behind the goblin, blood oozing down the blade of her short sword.

There were at least three goblin warriors that Jozan could see behind her. They seemed as surprised to see the halfling as Jozan had been. The priest hadn’t seen or heard her slip behind the goblin, though it explained why the lanternlight was so steady. She’d left it on the cave floor and slipped into the darkness.

The goblins turned and ran. Lidda started to turn to follow them, but Jozan managed to grab her shoulder. She stopped, turned her face to him, and winked.

Jozan sighed and said, “I was trying not to kill—”

There was a rapid series of feral grunts behind him, and Jozan turned to see the female goblins approaching them slowly, as if each step was painful for them. They stopped a good ten feet from the priest and the halfling, eyeing them and sniffing the cool, dank air.

Lidda stepped next to him and started growling and grumbling at them in their odd language. The females seemed hesitant to speak with her. Some in the back even picked up stones and tried to look threatening. Jozan, still sore between his legs, backed up a step.

Lidda sheathed her sword and showed her empty palms, grunting the whole time. Jozan followed suit, hanging his mace on his back and keeping both hands visible to the suspicious females. One of them stepped forward another couple steps and let loose a nonsensical stream of growling gibberish that Lidda listened to intently.

“I think they’re telling us how to get out of here,” Lidda finally whispered to Jozan.

“How?” the priest asked.

“She said we have to climb the water,” replied Lidda.

“Climb the water?” Jozan asked. “What does that mean?”

Lidda barked at the goblin, who barked back and pointed into the darkness, roughly in the direction the warriors had fled.

“Not climb,” Lidda said, more to herself than to Jozan. “Descend? Mpktm bkn… descend foreigner. Mpktm gdv … descend water. I think it’s more like: ‘You should descend the water’… or ‘climb down the water’… right?”

“You’re asking me?”

It was her most potent spell, though as spells go it was a simple one. Still, she had to concentrate hard to cast it. The intonation change from the second to the third quatrain was tricky and had to be accompanied by a Chienji Style left ring finger up-twist into the Awaiting Position while holding a pinch of red-colored sand between the thumb and little finger of her right hand, a pinch of yellow sand between the thumb and little finger of her left hand, and a pinch of blue sand between her right and left pointing fingers.

When the goblin they’d come to rescue brushed past her, Naull almost blew the spell. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it scurry up the spidersilk ladder. It was obviously heading back up to the platform and the narrow tunnel beyond.

The big hobgoblin continued to bark orders at its cowardly charges. The humanoid turned, grabbing a goblin from behind and shouting into its face. Naull remained focused on her spell, though part of her mind wondered how bad the hobgoblin’s breath must smell at that range.

She spoke the last syllable of the incantation and flipped both hands out and open, ejecting the sand into the air in front of her. The goblins who had been cowering along the wall were moving toward them, some with obvious evil intent glimmering in their otherwise dull eyes.

The burst of colored light that sprayed out from her fingertips made Naull blink. She was happy to see that she’d aimed the effect properly, missing Regdar. The blaze of flashing colored light swept over the approaching goblins, who had made the mistake of clustering together. The hobgoblin that was close to killing Regdar stood in the whirling cone of magic as well.

Naull felt like whooping with delight when every one of the goblins who’d been enmeshed in the light crumpled to the cave floor in twitching heaps. When the hobgoblin, serrated dagger raised for its killing blow, tumbled off the edge and into the pit, she almost burst into tears.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, forgetting herself.

The colored lights had already faded. The echoes of her single word bounced through the huge cavern, hissing through a sudden, complete, stunned silence.

Regdar watched the hobgoblin fall into the pit with a mixture of disappointment, relief, embarrassment, and envy. He would have liked to have killed the son of a bitch himself but wasn’t sure he’d have been able to, though the goblins would only think him weaker for having been saved by a woman. He couldn’t help wishing he could drop that many foes at once.

He moved half a step from the edge of the pit and scanned the cave. The hobgoblin hadn’t so much fallen into the pit as slid. The big humanoid was leaned up against the smooth rock wall, propped up on the bloody corpse of one of the goblins that had already fallen victim to the krenshar.

And there was the monster. It put one front claw tentatively on the fallen hobgoblin, who Regdar realized was still breathing. When the precariously hanging hobgoblin didn’t slide off the wall, the krenshar started to climb.

“Female saved you good, Man,” the hobgoblin on the other side of the pit called.

Startled by the fact that the brute spoke Common, Regdar looked up, though he was still keenly aware of the approaching krenshar.

“Ksr…” the hobgoblin called, “…krenshar you call, yes? Krenshar not hide by wall, Man. Krenshar bite face off!”

The hobgoblin was still holding a goblin by its tattered tunic. It didn’t seem to care that most of its warriors had run away, a whole phalanx of them had been dropped into what might have been a coma for all Regdar knew, and one of his own kind was acting as a ladder for a wild, vicious predator.

The krenshar was almost on him, so Regdar turned his attention away from the foolish hobgoblin. Movement up and to his left caught his eye, though, and he glanced up in time to see the former prisoner dashing across the rock platform obviously on its way to the tunnel.

Naull, who was still radiating well-deserved self-satisfaction looked up at the fleeing goblin as well.

Regdar, gluing his eyes to the krenshar, said, “Follow him. He might know the way out.”

She glanced at him, then back up at the platform. Regdar could hear the prisoner’s footsteps receding.

“Go,” he said, and she started for the web ladder.

The krenshar got one foot over the edge of the pit, but Regdar wanted to wait until he could get a clear hack at the monster’s head.

He spared a quick glance at Naull and was happy to see her on her way up the spidersilk ladder—then he saw the goblin.

Her spell must have missed one, and it was coming at her with its wicked little javelin out on front of it. Regdar shouted her name but probably didn’t have to. Before the goblin could stab her with its javelin, she swung her staff down fast and hard, hitting the goblin on its shoulder. There was a resounding crack! and the goblin shrieked. Naull whipped her staff around, spinning it in close to her side as she swayed on the big spiderweb. The goblin took one more look at her then turned and ran.

Regdar wasn’t sure where it was heading, but he had no time to watch. The krenshar’s head appeared over the edge of the pit, and it snarled at him, gobbets of bloody goblin flesh still hanging from its razor-sharp fangs.

Regdar had encountered krenshars before. He knew they had a trick they did to scare their prey stiff. Regdar had seen it work on half a dozen experienced soldiers.

He brought his sword down hard but intentionally slow. The thing had only its front two claws on the step, but it was still able to dodge to the left easily enough. Because Regdar hadn’t really been trying to hit it, he was able to get his greatsword back up and in front of his body so that when the krenshar lunged at him, its teeth clanged harmlessly against the flat of his blade. He tried to twist the sword and cut the monster’s mouth, but it was quicker than him and managed to get free of it.

The krenshar hopped the rest of the way up out of the pit, and Regdar drew his sword next to his left shoulder—and that’s when the thing peeled back its face, revealing bright red muscle, throbbing veins, and horrid, infected black gums. The scream that issued from the thing rattled Regdar’s eardrums, and the fighter found the whole thing unsettling. He was supposed to freeze with fear, but he didn’t, and he made the krenshar painfully aware of that fact by slashing at it.

The greatsword bit deeply, dragging a deep cut through the matted fur on the monster’s chest. Blood poured from the wound, and the timbre of the scream changed enough so that Regdar knew he’d hurt it.

As the krenshar’s scream faded and the monster backed off a step, Regdar heard the big hobgoblin barking orders at its goblin warriors.

The krenshar lunged at Regdar, swiping at him with one claw. Regdar slid his foot back, and the claws raked across his jambeau. Regdar let his right wrist go limp so that when the krenshar bit at him, the tip of the sword poked it in the top of its head. The beast was fast enough to drop its head and slide out from under the attack. Regdar made note of the fact that it slid to the left.

The krenshar glanced up at the platform, and Regdar did too. He saw Naull disappear into the tunnel, grabbing the torch as she went. There was a strange sound—stone grinding on stone—that seemed to vibrate up from below. The krenshar noticed it too, and it looked into the pit.

Regdar took that opportunity to kick the creature in the face. It saw the attack coming and dodged to the left—directly into the strong, fast, downward hack of Regdar’s greatsword.

The heavy blade split the krenshar’s head in two down the middle. Blood sprayed over Regdar and poured onto the smooth stone and over the edge of the pit. He couldn’t help following the flow of blood with his eyes, and when he looked down into the pit he saw a second krenshar.

The big hobgoblin was screaming and taking out its frustrations on the goblin who was still being shaken back and forth in its grip. The goblin seemed somehow used to the treatment.

“Death to you, Man!” the hobgoblin screamed. “Death to you!”

The krenshar in the pit screamed in chorus with the hobgoblin, and that seemed to cheer the humanoid up.

“Kill two, Man?” the hobgoblin howled. “I don’t think so!”

“What’s your name?” Regdar called across the pit as the second krenshar started to make its way up the still unconscious hobgoblin.

The humanoid tipped its head at him and dropped the goblin it had been shaking. The goblin scuttled backward, rejoining the group of goblins and spiders that seemed to be waiting for orders.

The hobgoblin turned to them and growled. The goblins and spiders listened attentively, then all looked at the goblin who had been shaken around. The goblin stood, and Regdar got the feeling it was trying hard not to look at him. It gathered the other four goblins and three of the huge spiders around it, and they started running away, passing through slits in the flowstone wall and into pitch blackness.

The hobgoblin laughed, glanced at the krenshar, and said, “Rezrex. Lord Rezrex.”

“Rezrex,” Regdar said, also glancing at the approaching krenshar. “I’m Regdar, and I can kill as many as you’ve got.”