The Savage Caves

6

“Small humanoids,” Regdar said, standing slowly from where he’d been crouching and examining the ground. “Goblins, maybe… or halflings.”

Lidda snored loudly, a response that elicited a giggle from Naull and a scowl from Jozan. Regdar blushed, glancing at Naull as Jozan began to stalk back to the campsite, no doubt to rouse the halfling, who had been sleeping for at least an hour after the others had risen with the dawn. As Jozan passed Regdar, he stopped, looking down.

“Regdar,” the priest said, “are you wounded?”

The big fighter looked down at his boot. It was crusted with blood that had been drying around the makeshift bandage he’d tied while the others slept.

“It’s fine,” he said.

Jozan sighed impatiently and squatted next to Regdar. “Was this a spider that bit you?” he asked. Not waiting for an answer, the priest added, “Take your boot off.”

Regdar opened his mouth to tell the priest again that he was fine but ended up taking off his boot.

“For Pelor’s sake, Regdar…” Jozan grumbled.

“Those spiders could be poisonous,” Naull said, squinting at the wound from over Jozan’s shoulder.

Regdar felt foolish and avoided looking at Naull.

“She’s right,” Jozan said, poking at the wound with one finger. “Still, I don’t see any sign of poisoning or infection.”

“Very well, then,” Regdar said. “I’m fine, and we haven’t even begun to explore the—”

He stopped when a rush of warmth enveloped his leg and the throbbing pain that he’d grown accustomed to was suddenly gone. Jozan was kneeling, with his head bowed, whispering something Regdar couldn’t hear. A dim golden light radiated from his hands, then faded just as Regdar realized what was happening. Jozan had called upon the power of Pelor to heal him.

The priest stood, nodded once at Regdar, then walked back toward their campsite. Naull was still looking at his leg.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“Fine,” Regdar answered. He looked down at his leg and saw not the slightest trace of a wound.

The captured goblins stood in the center of the deep pit, keeping close together. Tzrg sat squeezed together with a line of his fellow Stonedeep goblins. Rezrex and his hobgoblins sat on the higher ledge above them, swilling the bitter fungus beer and laughing heartily at the goblins in the pit.

Tzrg wasn’t laughing. He knew what was going to happen to the captured goblins. They had done terrible things to the Cavemouth Tribe at Rezrex’s command, and things were just getting worse.

Rezrex growled, “Brjdn ksr!”

Tzrg cringed and wanted to close his eyes but didn’t. He heard stone grind on stone and instinctively looked down. He sat on a ledge five feet below the floor level. Another fifteen feet below that ledge was the floor of the pit. Almost directly under where Tzrg was sitting was the entrance to a little side passage that emptied out onto the uneven floor of the pit. It was from this side passage that the grinding noise, then the monster, came.

The two captured goblins saw it right away, and though they were scared at first, Tzrg could see them force themselves to face the creature. They looked at it as if they didn’t know what it was, which didn’t surprise Tzrg. He’d only seen two of them himself.

The Cavemouth goblins were unarmed, which wasn’t fair. They bent their knees as if waiting to jump at the ksr, and clenched their fists, then opened their hands again and bent their fingers into claws. They bared their fangs and growled at the beast.

The creature stepped forward slowly, its powerful muscles sublimely evident under its thin, shimmering coat of gray-and-brown mottled fur. It was big but not enormous. It was a little longer than a goblin was tall, with a bushy tail as long as its body. The creature’s tail whipped around behind it as it advanced. A shaggy mane of dark gray fur ruffled up over its shoulders, bristling as it hunched down, stalking forward.

A cheer went up from the hobgoblins that was mimicked by the bulk of the Stonedeep goblins. Tzrg cheered with them, if reluctantly, and hoped it would be over soon, so he could find some dark corner of the cave and just get drunk or something. The ksr growled at the crowd, and that scared most of the goblins into silence. The distraction also gave the two Cavemouth goblins time to whisper to each other and flash a couple quick signs. They split up, trying to circle the beast, so that it could only see one of them at a time. Tzrg was impressed by how smart that was. These were smart goblins. They might live as long as two or three minutes.

One of the goblins was stepping back away from the creature while the other was moving just a little closer. They both continued to separate. They were scanning the floor of the pit, presumably for loose stones or anything they might use as a weapon. All the stalagmites had been broken off and carted away a long time before, and Rezrex had the whole thing swept out before every “fight.” That’s what Rezrex liked to call this: pnl… a fight. Tzrg had helped sweep the pit out himself and hadn’t dared leave anything in there for the Cavemouth goblins. Their fate was sealed.

The monster looked from one goblin to the other before seeming to decide on one—the smaller of the two. It lunged forward, and the smaller goblin jumped back, losing his balance and falling on his seat. The goblin scrambled backward, apparently not realizing that the creature had stopped. The second goblin leaped at the ksr and was committed to the attack before he realized the thing wasn’t still going after his friend.

The monster turned on the attacking goblin, and Tzrg winced at what happened next. The fur, even the skin, peeled back from the ksr’s face, revealing glistening pink muscle and shining yellow-white bone. It’s fang-studded jaws came open, and it let out a shrieking wail that rattled Tzrg’s eardrums. He put his hands to his ears—as did the rest of the Stonedeep goblins—but he could still hear the scream. He couldn’t hear Rezrex’s shout of triumph and excitement, though, so that was one good thing. The huge hobgoblin was having the time of his life.

The goblin who had begun a gutsy assault on the much larger and fiercer ksr scrambled to a halt and ended up falling on the cave floor in front of the monster, arms and legs sprawled out and his face twisted into a very un-goblinlike expression of pure horror.

The goblin looked as if he wanted to get away, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t frozen or paralyzed so much as confused with pure, unadulterated terror. The creature pounced, and the goblin wasn’t able to do much but shake and sob as the monster ripped it to bloody shreds.

Rezrex leaped to his feet, cheering, looking more pleased with himself than he was with his pet ksr. Tzrg looked down at the smaller Cavemouth goblin, who was trying in vain to climb the smooth flowstone walls of the ksr pit as the creature, blood dripping from its baggy-skinned jaws, advanced on him slowly to the cheers of the hobgoblins and goblins that echoed around the massive chamber.

Tzrg turned away, sure that eventually he would share the Cavemouth goblins’ fate.

Regdar stood next to Naull at the edge of the deep black shaft. Jozan stood on the other side of Naull, and Regdar could hear Lidda getting dressed behind them.

He looked down into the shaft and watched as four balls of what looked like torchlight gradually sank through the air, slowly turning around each other, twisting and intertwining, and all the way illuminating the irregular walls of the vertical cave.

“How deep did you say they’ll go?” Regdar asked Naull.

She didn’t look at him, just kept her eyes glued to the descending lights. “They’ll go out when they’re a hundred and ten feet away from me,” she whispered, her voice a flat monotone.

Jozan sighed and scratched at the stubble on his chin. They watched until the lights finally revealed what looked like a floor.

“Ninety feet,” Naull said.

From where they were standing it was difficult to see much detail at the bottom of the great pit, but Regdar thought there might have been at least one side passage. The floor had a steep downward slope, reversing itself in a zigzag shape that turned the shaft back under them.

Naull’s magical lights flickered once then went out, leaving the cave once more a wide void of impenetrable blackness.

“That hundred and ten feet seems unusually precise,” Jozan said. “When you stunned the spiders yesterday you told us your magic was not an exact science, now it seems that it is.”

Naull rubbed her eyes and replied, “I’ve been working with a teacher. We’ve measured this spell. The effects of the spell I cast on the spiders can vary depending on what it’s cast on, and I’ve never seen those spiders before, but the dancing lights are always the same. I was moving them at a regular pace and counting.”

“I did see a bottom,” Jozan said. “Regdar?”

Regdar exhaled slowly through his nose and took a step closer to the edge. He kicked a little stone off the edge, and that must have startled Naull. She gasped and put a hand lightly on his armored elbow. He turned to her, and she snatched her hand away.

“Be careful,” she said, turning away from him.

Regdar stood still as she moved away, then said to Jozan, “I’m not sure, but it did look like we could at least rest there.”

“Rest where?” Lidda asked from behind him.

Regdar turned, looked down at her, then turned back to the pit.

Lidda laughed.

Jozan said, “He’s quite serious, Lidda.”

The halfling stopped laughing. “I’m not sure I can approve that plan,” she said.

Before Jozan could chastise her, Naull said, “Frankly, my friends, I’m not sure I can either. I mean… I don’t think I could climb down there. I mean…”

“I can,” Regdar said.

Jozan looked down into the darkness and scratched at his chin again. “I have to admit,” he said, his quiet voice still echoing in the wide cave mouth, “I’m not much of a climber myself.”

“Are there spiders down there?” Lidda asked, rubbing eyes still puffy from her long night’s sleep.

“We tracked them here,” Jozan answered.

“But it wasn’t spiders that attacked us last night,” said Naull.

Regdar looked back at their campsite and let his eyes roam slowly over their various packs and pouches. He didn’t see any rope at all, much less a hundred feet or more of it. It would be a free-climb, something more like what a thief might learn how to do.

“Lidda can make the climb,” Regdar said. “Can’t you, Lidda.”

The halfling stopped rubbing her face and looked up at the big fighter. There was something about the look on her face that made Regdar unsure whether she was about to laugh or attack him.

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Jozan said.

Regdar nodded to Jozan, but quickly turned back to Lidda. “Well?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, peering down at the huge hole, surely unable to fathom its depths from where she was standing, “I can make any climb you can make, Redbar, but Naull and the good father can’t. So, what say we head for New Koratia… or maybe Zarreth?”

Regdar turned back to the cave and said to Jozan, “Lidda will go down first, picking out the easiest climb as she goes. She’ll let you and Naull know how to follow. I’ll go last. If we can rig up something—anything like a rope, I could tie it between myself and—”

“Or,” Lidda said, “Regular here can climb my—”

“Lidda,” Jozan interrupted.

The halfling threw up her hands and turned back to the campsite but didn’t walk away. Regdar watched her, a hand over his mouth made him, he hoped, look thoughtful. He was really trying to silence a laugh. Lidda reminded him of his days in the duke’s infantry. She was ribbing him like soldiers do, and she was good at it.

Lidda put one arm behind her back, grabbed that wrist with her other hand, and started to stretch as if in preparation for a climb.