Филип Этанс - The Savage Caves

There was a loud hiss and everything went black, but that was the least of Regdar’s worries. He could feel himself being pulled underwater even as he was whipped to the side. His nose filled with water, and his eyes burned. He clamped his mouth shut and struggled to hold his breath while the fast-moving water had its way with him. His sword was ripped from his hand, and he hit rock—maybe a rock wall—and he was falling.

He could feel his face come out into air, and he drew in a quick gasp, managing to clamp his mouth shut again when water splashed into his face. He bounced off something hard—another rock—and it hurt, but he knew nothing was broken. The air was forced out of his lungs, though, and it was painful, desperate seconds before he came out of the water again long enough to draw in a breath.

There was a splash that whipped his head to one side, and the sound might have been loud enough to deafen him, if his ears hadn’t filled with water. He was submerged and sinking, but he wasn’t being beaten against rocks anymore. Regdar could feel the water shove him down and backward, then he came to rest on the bottom.

Wrapped in thirty pounds or more of steel armor, he sank like a stone wrapped in thirty pounds or more of steel armor. His feet were on the bottom, a hard stone surface that Regdar was happy to note was less slippery than he’d expect the bottom of a pond to be. He opened his eyes in the frigid water but could see nothing at all. He pushed against the bottom with both feet, confident that he could at least get his face above water long enough to breathe, maybe even to call out for Naull.

The top of his head hit stone only a foot or less above him, and he might have knocked himself out but for the sturdy helm he still wore. The strap around his chin had secured it through what Regdar realized was worse than a one-way trip down a waterfall. The stone above his head kept him submerged, though. His lungs were beginning to ache. He tried again, holding his hands up above him, but felt the smooth stone before he even bothered trying to kick off the floor again. He was completely blind, and he was drowning.

It took Jozan a few moments to realize that the webs were full of goblins. The fine, sticky strands stretched from stalactite to stalagmite and to one uneven, curved wall of the huge cave up into the darkness past the reach of Lidda’s lantern light. Studded throughout the chaotic mass of grayish white webbing were bundles of almost pure white, shaped in the outline of the squat little humanoids. Some seemed to be missing limbs, a few were missing heads. Others were hanging upside down or at odd angles. Most were packed into the web in uncomfortable, even unnatural positions, with arms forced at odd angles, legs broken and smashed up against backs.

Lidda stopped at the edge of the mass of webs and, gazing along its length, stepped backward until her back came to rest on Jozan’s thigh.

“Let’s go,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the cool air that was growing ever closer with a strong stench of decay. “Let’s just—”

The priest put a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped speaking.

They stood there looking at the webs for the space of a few heartbeats, then Jozan said, “They’re all dead. None of them are moving.”

“Thank the Nurturing Matriarch for that, at least,” Lidda said.

Jozan offered similar thanks, silently, to Pelor, then said, “This could be Fairbye in a week… a month… maybe a year, if these spiders—”

“Then we won’t go back to Fairbye,” Lidda cut in. “What are we talking about this for, Jozan? There must be dozens of goblins stuck in there. There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of those spiders or more.”

Jozan’s heart sank. As always, at least to Jozan’s mind, the right thing to do was evident. They needed to continue. They needed to eradicate these spiders before they ranged any farther on the surface, before they established a pantry like this in the village.

But Lidda was right. There would have to be more of the spiders than the two of them could possibly kill. Regdar and Naull were gone—who knew where. They might be dead, at the bottom of a deep shaft if they were lucky, in a web like the goblins if they weren’t. He and Lidda were lost. They’d thought they were going back to the bottom of the shaft but must have gone deeper into the labyrinthine cave. Regdar and Naull could be alive, like them, but lost. There might be miles of caves. They might never find each other, might never find their way out.

Jozan began to whisper, “Pelor grant me the wisdom—”

Lidda had to reach up way over her head to clamp a cold hand over his mouth, but she managed it. He looked down at her, and she held a finger to her lips, her sword dangling upside down in that hand. Her eyes darted away, in the direction of the web, and Jozan could have sworn one of her ears actually twitched like a dog’s.

He nodded once, and she took her hand away, then brought her sword back up and slid the lantern off the loop at her belt. She set the light down on the cave floor and seemed to almost sink into the side of a stalagmite. It was all Jozan could do to keep track of her slow, deliberate movement as she crept ever closer to the web.

Not sure what to do, he stood next to the lantern and waited.

The sound of that pained, desperate wail washed over him. It was the voice Lidda had mistaken for Regdar’s, and it was coming from the web.

Jozan closed his eyes and tried to center himself, hoping to wrap himself in the reassuring presence of Pelor, but he could feel his hands shaking. He hated that sound.

There was a grunt that broke through the low wail, stopping it cold and sending echoes of the two sounds passing each other from cave wall to cave wall. There was a growl that Jozan thought might be Lidda, then another growl, then two rumbling grunts. It sounded like voices—muffled, heard from far away through intervening walls.

Jozan scooped up the lantern and dared to whisper, “Lidda?”

There were two more grunts, then Lidda called back, “Jozan, up here.”

The priest held the lantern high in front of him and did his best to follow the sound of the halfling’s voice. In the time it took for him to find her, standing in front of a wall of webbing, there were at least three more of the grunting couplets, and Jozan realized that Lidda was speaking to someone.

The halfling barked out two harsh, nonsensical growls, then turned to Jozan as he slipped past a stalagmite to stand next to her. A tear traced a curving path down one of the halfling’s dirty cheeks. Her eyes were red, and her face was quivering.

“Jozan,” she said, “you have to help him.”

She turned away, and Jozan followed her gaze to the wall of webs. Stuck there, hanging nearly upside down, its right arm twisted behind its back at such an extreme angle that its shoulder joint, obviously dislocated, bulged under its pale yellow skin, was a goblin—and it was alive.

“His name is—” Lidda barked out a harsh grunt that sounded like it might have begun and ended with a “k” sound.

Jozan studied the goblin. Its—his—skin was wrinkled, and there were splotches of orange and muddy brown showing through its tissue paper surface. Age spots, Jozan assumed. The goblin looked up at him with one bulging, cloudy eye. His other eye was swollen closed, a gray bruise flowering around it.

Lidda pronounced the goblin’s name again, more slowly, and Jozan repeated, “Kink.”

“He is chief of the Cavemouth Tribe,” Lidda said.

“You speak their language?” Jozan asked her, still looking at the pitiful old goblin. “You never told us that.”

“Can you help him?” she asked, ignoring his question.