The Savage Caves

Prologue

The huge enchanted mace smashed into the side of the little goblin’s head hard enough to send teeth riding a spray of blood through the quivering shreds of its ruined cheek. The goblin’s name was Rvnj, and he fell to the cave floor in a wet heap.

Tzrg held his breath, eyes glued to the enormous hobgoblin who had just killed Rvnj for sneezing. The enormous hobgoblin had an equally enormous name: Rezrex. It was a name that was hard for goblins to say, just like it was hard for goblins to resist him.

Rezrex opened his wide mouth and laughed silently. His chest rose and fell in shuddering spasms. Tzrg and the other goblins could only watch in stunned, terrified silence. This went on for a long time, and all the while Tzrg forced himself not to make eye contact with any of his fellow goblins. He knew they were looking at him, waiting for him to do something, hoping he would put an end to this mission, which they all knew was a bad idea. Some of them were maybe even hoping he would do something about Rezrex—kill him or something. Of course, such a thing was impossible.

Rezrex was in charge because Rezrex decided to be in charge, and if anyone had anything to say about it, they would join Rvnj in a bleeding heap on a cave ledge, just like Rvnj joined Fkfk, Mrwk, and Nfjt who had been killed by Rezrex in the few days after the hobgoblin had first arrived in the caves of the Stonedeep Tribe.

When Rezrex stopped laughing he narrowed his bulging eyes and sneered, holding one long, thick finger in front of his lips and hefting the mace. The weapon was the most beautiful thing Tzrg had ever seen, and he had trouble keeping his eyes off it. It was made of half a dozen different shiny metals Tzrg didn’t recognize. It didn’t glow or burst into flames or conjure ghosts or anything, but it looked like it must be magical, so all the goblins just assumed it was. Rezrex seemed fine with that assumption.

Tzrg joined the other goblins in nodding their understanding and promise to Rezrex—they’d be quieter for the rest of the mission. Rezrex must have believed them, since he didn’t kill anyone else, just waved them up into the dark shaft that twisted farther and farther away from Stonedeep territory. The shaft was taking them straight up to the home of the Cavemouth Tribe.

The goblins, strung together on ropes made from hive spider silk, had followed Rezrex a long, long way up the shaft. The hobgoblin came to a stop well over eighteen feet below the Border Sink, which marked a sort of no-goblin’s-land between the Stonedeep and Cavemouth tribes. Rezrex turned and caught Tzrg’s eye. He waved and pointed up, then flashed three fingers. Tzrg knew that if he pretended he didn’t understand, which was his first impulse, Rezrex would kill him and try one of the other goblins. He made himself not sigh and stepped quietly up toward the hobgoblin, grabbing two goblins he knew to be good dark-fighters as he passed them. They approached Rezrex, and the hobgoblin swung aside, waving them on into the darkness ahead.

As they passed, Tzrg couldn’t help but be amazed at the size of the hobgoblin. Rezrex was impressive, indeed. Twice as tall as the tallest goblin Tzrg had ever seen, Rezrex outweighed any goblin by more like three times. His arms—all muscle crisscrossed with bulging veins under his rough, hairy skin—were as big around as Tzrg’s waist. His skin was darker than Tzrg’s, who was the same dull orange as the rest of his tribe. Rezrex looked more red than yellow, with dark reddish-brown fur along his forearms, chest, and jaw line. His face wasn’t quite as flat as Tzrg’s, his nose thinner and more defined, his ears still pointed but smaller. Tzrg had heard that hobgoblins looked like a cross between a goblin and a human, but since Tzrg had never seen a human, he couldn’t be sure if that was true or not.

Rezrex’s clothes weren’t too much better than Tzrg’s, mostly animal hides and leathers mixed with stolen or found items. Rezrex wore pieces of what must have been armor. The idea of that fascinated Tzrg. The hobgoblin could be hit and not get wounded.

But it was the hobgoblin’s eyes that Tzrg found most unsettling. They were smaller than any goblin’s but shone with an evil intelligence that scared Tzrg as much as the mace did.

Rezrex scowled at Tzrg, who realized he’d been staring at the hobgoblin. Tzrg hurried off before his face was smashed in. The two goblins he’d brought with him, Nlnz and Frsj, were smart enough not to look at Rezrex. They just moved past him as quickly and as quietly as possible.

Tzrg knew why Rezrex had sent them forward. The hobgoblin must have heard something. Ahead of them the shaft narrowed to maybe seven feet in diameter and slanted at an angle that made climbing a whole lot easier. Considering that the Border Sink—a small crystal pool on a sharp-sided ledge fed by a cold waterfall from the surface—was just above them, it was surprisingly dry. The uneven floor turned up on each side to form natural shelves that ran along the length of the tunnel at about a goblin’s height. The walls were smooth, layered with flowstone that made them slippery in spots. There were no sharp edges.

The shadows atop the shelves were deep—a good place to hide and set up an ambush. Tzrg, having never been this far from Stonedeep caves, didn’t know if there were side passages leading out from the tops of the shelves. If there were, it would really be a perfect ambush point—you could throw a couple of javelins, and if things didn’t go your way, you could get the hell out of there.

Tzrg tightened his grip on his javelin and pressed on, his ears twitching forward so he could hear better, his nose drawing in whatever stray scents might help, his eyes wide to see as deep into the shadows as he could. The three of them knew how to climb without making too much noise. Water was dripping somewhere far above, and a nice juicy cave beetle scuttled along its way above his head. Tzrg resisted the temptation to eat it. The crunch of the bug’s shell in his mouth might give them away.

Tzrg felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Frsj, who pointed to the shelf on the right side of the tunnel and nodded three times. Frsj had good eyes and an even better nose. Tzrg looked in the direction Frsj had pointed.

There was a sound like a female whispering, and Tzrg felt a breeze brush past his right arm. Another sound, a dull thump, followed quickly, and Tzrg turned to see a javelin protruding from Frsj’s chest. Frsj was looking down at it with a confused expression. He didn’t seem to be in any pain. He just hung from the rope he had tied around his waist at one end, and to Tzrg and Nlnz at the other.

Tzrg screamed two words: “Bwlnk gbnf—an order to attack—and ran deeper into the tunnel as two more javelins swished past to clatter down the shaft behind him.

Nlnz followed close, almost tripping Tzrg just as they both saw the goblins hiding on the shelf. There were three of them, pressed into the shallow space on the side of the tunnel. They were hefting javelins, and without bothering to take the time to aim, Tzrg tossed his own javelin at the middle ambusher.

Tzrg’s javelin went wide of its mark but sank into the shoulder of the goblin next to Tzrg’s target. The enemy goblin squealed in pain and reached up to curl his fingers around the shaft of the javelin still sticking out of his shoulder. Nlnz’s javelin clattered off the cave wall behind the middle goblin, who seemed confused and offended at being the obvious target of choice. It was nothing personal, of course, it was just that if you aim for the middle of three and miss, you might hit one of the other two. It was an old goblin tactic that had succeeded for Tzrg this time.

The first goblin in line lifted another javelin, and Tzrg jumped at him. It wasn’t something Tzrg was normally apt to do, but these were desperate times. Compared to the folly of the whole mission, jumping at an armed opponent who had the twin advantages of the high ground and familiar territory wasn’t so foolish.

Tzrg wished he’d remembered to pull his dagger before he landed on the middle goblin. Instead, they started wrestling. Tzrg was lucky at least to the extent that the middle goblin didn’t know how to wrestle either. They were all elbows and grunting. The added weight of Frsj on the end of his rope didn’t help Tzrg.

The goblin on the right pulled the javelin out of his shoulder with a wet pop!, and a high-pitched wail. Nlnz followed Tzrg’s lead and jumped up onto the shelf as well. With javelin in hand, Nlnz managed to slip off the side of his opponent’s guard, avoiding the ambusher’s stab at him with the sharp javelin. Nlnz sank his own sharpened stick into the ambusher’s throat. There was a gurgling sound, and the goblin died just as Tzrg managed to get his dagger free.

Tzrg pushed back against his opponent’s face in order to get his arm in between them and stab the middle goblin. That saved Tzrg’s life—the wounded ambusher jabbed between Tzrg and the middle goblin, obviously aiming at Tzrg. Instead, the already bloody javelin that once belonged to Tzrg found its mark in the side of Nlnz’s face. It dug a deep, nasty, ragged furrow in Nlnz’s dull yellow skin, and blood burst out of the wound. Nlnz made a deep, sick sound as he died.

Tzrg sliced through the spidersilk rope that joined him to his two dead friends, then he reached out and grabbed the javelin with his left hand and stabbed the middle goblin in the ribs with the dagger he held in his right. The dagger was a little rusty and not as sharp as it once was, but it was a fine weapon, made by elves and stolen by Tzrg’s great-grandfather before Tzrg was born. It was the knife of the chief of the Stonedeep Tribe and had been carried by Tzrg’s ancestors for generations, until Rezrex came and made himself chief.

The middle goblin didn’t die at first, but he stopped fighting. Tzrg took that time to slash out to his side, cutting the wounded goblin’s throat so that a waterfall of blood washed over the shelf. The dead goblin released his grip on the javelin, and Nlnz’s limp body fell away in the other direction.

Tzrg, still holding the javelin, slid backward off the shelf and called, “Mjk nlvdv!” to warn Rezrex and the other goblins of the falling bodies.

The middle goblin came with him, landing flat on his face while Tzrg managed to land on his feet.

Tzrg slid down a few feet and sheathed his dagger. He took the javelin in both hands and drove it into the Cavemouth goblin’s back. The enemy goblin twitched once and was dead. The sight didn’t please Tzrg. There was no going back now that Cavemouth blood had been spilled. There was a war on, and it was a war that no one but Rezrex wanted. Though he had accepted the fact that he wasn’t as smart as Rezrex and so wasn’t sure he’d ever understand why Rezrex would start a war with the Cavemouth Tribe, Tzrg was curious. The idea that a different hobgoblin, an enemy of Rezrex’s, had taken over the Cavemouth Tribe had occurred to Tzrg. Then there was the idea that maybe Rezrex wanted the Stonedeep Tribe to have all the vast caves for themselves. Or maybe he was just setting the two goblin tribes against each other for fun, just to see who would win.

Working hard not to slip on the blood-slick stone, Tzrg turned back and was soon face-to-face with Rezrex. Tzrg met the hobgoblin’s gaze for just a second before looking down. Rezrex barked out something in the hobgoblin language. Tzrg didn’t understand that complex, strange tongue, and he wasn’t sure if Rezrex was scolding or congratulating him. Tzrg just kept his mouth shut.

Rezrex laughed, pulled a young goblin warrior up, and waved him into the tunnel. A few more goblins followed, then Rezrex, the last couple goblins, and Tzrg took up the rear. As they passed him, Tzrg could see the fear and confusion on the faces of the goblins. They didn’t know what Rezrex had in mind for them either, and they were afraid they were going to find out the hard way, as if they hadn’t already.

Tzrg was no better with numbers than any goblin, but he was smart enough to count to eighteen. By his count, only three Cavemouth goblins were dead, and already, thanks to Rezrex, more than three Stonedeep goblins had spilled their lives on a cave floor for the hobgoblin’s mysterious cause. Though both tribes had more than eighteen goblins, Tzrg was pretty sure that the Cavemouth Tribe was the bigger of the two.

Rezrex was sending them out to be killed, leaving fewer goblins back in the home caves to protect the females, the young, and the hive spider queen.

What was the most confusing part of the whole thing for Tzrg was the fact that the Stonedeep Tribe was as rich as Tzrg could imagine a goblin tribe being. They had a healthy, happy hive spider queen, who kept her drones obedient and plentiful. The goblins always had enough spider meat to eat, and the drones hunted and gathered cave beetles, blind fish, and other delicacies. The caves were secure, with no tunnels leading deeper and only one way up into Cavemouth territory. The Cavemouth Tribe provided a buffer against any incursions from the surface, and the Stonedeep Tribe stayed home, deep underground with their hive spiders, ate well, made little goblins, and took good care of their caves.

Tzrg, deep in thought, had let himself fall behind. When the first sounds of battle echoed around him from behind the Border Sink waterfall above, his blood ran cold. He stopped, listening to metal clang against metal, bones crack, goblins scream and die, and Rezrex shout orders in his oddly accented Goblin. The sounds echoed in the tight confines of the shaft until they made Tzrg’s ears ring. The goblin was sure he could hear the screams of females.

Tzrg took a deep breath, tightened his grip on his javelin, and joined the fray.