T. Lain - The Savage Caves

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.

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 both 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.