Филип Этанс: The Savage Caves

“That was Naull,” Lidda said, concern creasing her grimy face.

Jozan wanted to tell her that she couldn’t be sure, that it might be a goblin, or anyone else but Naull, but he couldn’t.

He climbed up and got to his feet. Lidda skipped past him, then stopped a couple yards away, in the center of the big cave.

“Can you tell which way it was coming from?” the priest asked.

The halfling had her head cocked to one side, obviously listening, and she held up a finger.

Jozan had to work hard to remain silent, but he managed it.

“I think…” the halfling finally whispered. “I think…”

She glanced at the mouth of another side-passage on the other side of the cave, then back down the wider main tunnel.

“Naull?” she called into the darkness.

Jozan heard footsteps approaching, but with the echoes he couldn’t tell how many, how big, or even what was approaching. Either way, Naull didn’t answer. He hefted his mace and set his feet apart —and a goblin brushed right past him, yelping, obviously as surprised to see the priest as the priest was to see it.

Tzrg was so used to being scared that when he practically ran into the human, he wasn’t as terrified as he would normally have been, he was just sort of startled. For a moment, the goblin thought it was the same huge, armored human who had killed Rezrex’s pet ksr , but as Tzrg slid to a stop he saw the human’s mace, remembered that the other one had a really big sword, and knew that this was a different human.

Tzrg had never seen a human in his life, now there were two in one day. He couldn’t imagine that they were friends of the Cavemouth Tribe but if not, why would they be down there?

Maybe Rezrex had some old enemies. Tzrg had no trouble believing that.

The human brought his mace down toward Tzrg, who put his own sword up in front of his forehead to parry the blow. The mace banged into his sword with enough force to bend the rusty old blade almost in half. Tzrg’s arm followed the blow down and spun around out of control, almost hard enough to dislocate his shoulder.

Tzrg stepped back, holding in a scream so that Pwmk—one of his few remaining sergeants—and the less capable warriors Pvpj, Lkrt, and Kspf wouldn’t see him further humiliate himself.

The fact that Pwmk was with him, chasing down the freed Cavemouth prisoners, was a small consolation. Pwmk could fight and usually didn’t run away unless he got hurt. The other three, especially Lkrt, were undisciplined cowards-goblins after Tzrg’s own heart.

It didn’t surprise Tzrg to see Lkrt running right past the human, continuing on his way in the wake of the fleeing prisoners, but he was surprised to see the female. She looked like a human, but was much shorter—goblin sized—but ugly: smooth and kind of pink, with weird hair and tiny, unsettlingly alert eyes. She had a lantern, and Tzrg cursed his rash inattention at not having noticed that they were running into light past where they usually maintained torches.

Pwmk and Pvpj ran up to the female, obviously making to grab her, expecting no resistance. Tzrg hoped this little human was as timid as a goblin female. One of the hive spiders was on the floor in back of them, another on the wall behind them and to their left, and the third scuttled up next to Kspf, who was, as usual, taking up the rear.

The armored human said something in their impossibly complex, sing-songy tongue and swung his mace at Tzrg again. This time, Tzrg ducked and stabbed at the human from under his guard.

If his sword wasn’t bent in half, it might have had a chance of scratching the man’s armor, but instead it slid across the human’s steel-encased thigh with a painfully shrill screech of metal on metal.

From between the human’s legs, Tzrg could see the female kick Pvpj in the danglies—hard enough to drop him. Pwmk stabbed at her with his javelin, but Tzrg didn’t see if he managed to run her through or not. The armored human swiped across with the heavy mace in a backhanded attack Tzrg never saw coming. The giant weapon punched into his chest, driving the air from the goblin’s lungs. Tzrg tried to take a breath, but couldn’t. He took two steps backward, wondering what was causing all the flashing lights, then he blinked and felt as if the world was spinning around and around. He heard a high-pitched scream, thought it might be him screaming, then fell face first to the hard, cold stone floor of the cave, all the while hoping he would be dead soon.

Regdar heard a woman scream, “Ow!” but in the confines of the narrow side-passage it sounded more like: “ Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow …

When that was followed by “You son of a bitch !” he knew it was Lidda, and he ran faster.

The tunnel ended all at once, and he came out into a wider space with a much higher ceiling—one well out of the edge of his torchlight. In front of him was a flat stone wall, and Regdar barely managed to skip to a stop—his wounded right leg protesting the maneuver with jolts of wicked pain—in time to keep from crashing into it.

Something about the wall seemed familiar, and all at once he remembered passing the steep depression in the side of the cave, not long after he and Naull had come out of the waterfalls and before they found the caged goblins.

Regdar looked up and saw Jozan standing on the edge of the drop-off above him. He heard the sounds of someone fighting, but couldn’t see Lidda. Jozan, who didn’t see Regdar, moved away from the edge with a purpose to his stride. Regdar could hear his loud, clanging footsteps recede at a run, then a goblin grunted and more sounds of battle echoed in the cave.

Regdar found a convenient toe-hold in the wall and, still holding his greatsword in his right hand, boosted up enough to grab the edge with his left hand.

He heard Lidda grunting and growling like a goblin, and there was the unmistakable tap-tap-tap of one or more of the spiders echoing through the cave as well. Regdar lifted himself up with a grunt and rolled over the edge, brushing past the fallen form of a goblin that was laying on its back, wheezing, its eyes rolled up into its skull.

Lidda was standing over another fallen goblin, this one rolling on the cave floor with its hands clutched between its legs. She’d taken a nasty cut on her right shoulder, and the blood on the tip of the javelin of the goblin facing her made the source of the wound obvious. She was batting the javelin away with her short sword, but this goblin had a fierce, almost confident look in its eyes, and Regdar was worried for the halfling.

Jozan, meanwhile, was making fast work of another goblin on the other side of the cave, at the far edge of Lidda’s lanternlight. That goblin looked more concerned with escape than fighting back, and Jozan took it down fast enough.

Regdar ran toward Lidda, purposely not saying anything for fear he would startle her into letting her guard down. She parried another jab from the goblin’s javelin, then another goblin, with a spider on each side of it, moved up toward her.

Regdar kept running and blew past Lidda close enough that her long braid whipped against his armor. The goblin who had cut her looked up only a second before Regdar ran it right over. The fighter stumbled as he trampled the goblin. He heard bones crack, and knew they were the goblin’s bones. To keep from injuring himself he had to fall into a roll.

The goblin who had been coming up behind squealed and jumped away, almost tripping over its friend that was still more concerned with the pain between its legs.

Regdar rolled onto his back and threw out his left arm to stop himself.

“ Regdar !” Lidda squealed, obviously happy enough, or surprised enough, to use his real name.