Филип Этанс: The Savage Caves

He was about to chide her for that when something fell on his head. Sharp, pointed things scratched at his face, and he realized it was one of the spiders. He grabbed it with his left hand and saw the thing’s hideous mouth only inches from his face—then the tip of a steel blade even closer. He threw his head back to avoid being skewered in the eye and threw the spider off him.

“Careful,” he growled when he scrambled to his feet and saw Lidda stepping on the spider’s back, trying to pull her sword out of the thing’s twitching body.

“You’re welcome, Ratmor,” she said with a smile, and her blade came free.

Ignoring her, Regdar turned to the last standing goblin. He had to run several fast steps to catch up to the fleeing humanoid, but when he did, Regdar grabbed the goblin by its loose, ragged shirt, and smashed its face into the cave wall. Blood and teeth marked the impact, and the goblin went limp.

“Regdar,” Jozan said from behind him, “where’s Naull?”

If Naull didn’t need the contents of her pouches so badly, she might have tried to wriggle free of the straps to get away. The huge hobgoblin was holding her up off the floor, its strong hand wrapped around one of the wide leather straps. She felt like a doll being dragged along by a spoiled, careless child. The goblin she was beginning to think of as a friend was in no better shape. The hobgoblin’s other hand was closed around the goblin’s arm tight enough that Naull could see the goblin’s hand going pale.

Her voice scratchy and hoarse from the scream, Naull said, “Let me go…”

The hobgoblin laughed—an evil, unpleasant sound—and said, “Rezrex give orders, female.”

The thing barked a string of grunts at the goblin, who seemed to understand. The smaller humanoid snarled and turned to look at the floor, where its stone club was slowly rolling away.

“You speak…” Naull said, huffing as she was swung back and forth and her legs scraped on the floor, “…Common. You speak Common.”

Rezrex was striding confidently back in the direction from which Naull and her new friend had come. Strange noises continued to echo around her, and even if she wasn’t disoriented from being half-dragged, half-carried, she wouldn’t have been able to sort out the sounds. She imagined she heard voices—Lidda, Jozan, even Regdar—but chalked it up to wishful thinking.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, referring to her own capture at first but realizing quickly enough that she didn’t understand any of what was happening.

The hobgoblin was obviously in control of the goblins who lived deeper in the caves, below the waterfalls. And the goblins—or the hobgoblins—were in control of the spiders. There was another tribe that lived closer to the surface, and they had been captured by the hobgoblin’s tribe.

“Are you sending the spiders to attack the herds?” she asked.

The hobgoblin stopped and lifted her up to regard her coolly. Naull got her feet under her and stood, taking some of the weight off the strap that was biting into her shoulder. The hobgoblin lifted her an inch off the ground in response—Naull wasn’t that heavy after all—and scowled into her face.

“Herds?” Rezrex asked. “Spiders above gone wild. Rezrex not care what they do. Rezrex bring tribes together.”

“Let me go,” she said.

The hobgoblin coughed out a laugh, spraying her with vile-smelling spittle that caused her to gag.

There was some commotion, and Naull saw a hand wrap itself around the hilt of the hobgoblin’s jagged-edged dagger. The weapon was hanging from the hobgoblin’s belt, next to the dangling mace. At first, Naull thought she was dead, then she realized that the hand was too small to be Rezrex’s.

The goblin drew the heavy dagger from the hobgoblin’s sheath and in the process dragged it across the big humanoid’s waist, opening a nasty cut.

The hobgoblin roared and tossed Naull to the side. She fell, her arms flapping wildly at her side, and hit the floor hard. Her teeth smashed together painfully, and she hoped she hadn’t broken any of them. She was sure she’d have a bruise on her backside for weeks to come—if she lived that long.

As she crab-walked away from the hobgoblin, she watched Rezrex smash the goblin into the floor hard enough to knock the dagger from his hand. The weapon clattered away in the opposite direction, and Naull cursed her misfortune.

At the same time the goblin lost its hold on the dagger, though, Rezrex lost his hold on the goblin. The smaller humanoid leaped to its feet, obviously in pain but desperate to get out of the hobgoblin’s reach.

Rezrex grabbed for his mace as Naull dug into one of her pouches. The hobgoblin took a hard swipe at the goblin, who managed to roll out of the way. Naull began to speak the words of her spell as quietly as she could. The goblin tried to make for the dagger, but Rezrex cut him off with a downward thrust of the mace that cracked the stone floor between the goblin and the dagger.

Naull’s fingers came out of her pouch with a dead firefly pinched between them, and Rezrex obviously heard her chanting.

The hobgoblin spun around and yelled, “Silence, witch!”

He held his mace above his head and stepped toward her. Fear almost made her fumble the last few syllables of the spell, but she finished it and slapped her hand across the beast’s face.

Bright yellow light blazed from the hobgoblin’s face, and Naull pumped her fist once and breathed, “Yes!”

The hobgoblin clasped his free hand over his face, and Naull could see the magic light shine between his huge, gnarled fingers.

Rezrex roared and stepped back, almost stepping on the goblin’s hand. The goblin, who was reaching for the dagger, decided against another attempt. Without sparing Naull a glance, the goblin got to his feet and ran.

Naull couldn’t stop herself from yelling, “Hey!” at the goblin’s receding back.

Rezrex, still growling, blind, responded to her voice, turning on her. Naull got to her feet, but the hobgoblin came at her. He swiped blindly with his mace and came within an inch of smashing Naull’s skull.

She yelped, and the hobgoblin took his hands away from his face. Light blazed out from the hobgoblin’s eyes, and Naull, her own eyes having grown accustomed to the dim lighting, found herself cringing away from the blinding magical luminescence.

Rezrex grabbed at her, and she tried to bat his arm away with her own hand. All that succeeded in doing was giving Rezrex a better indication of where she was. His hand closed around her waist with a crushing, bruising force.

She had to close her eyes—the light from Rezrex’s eyes was so bright—but she could feel the hobgoblin dragging her up the cave.

“Goblins will come together as one under Rezrex,” the blinded hobgoblin bellowed. “I start clearing out humans next!”

“I recognize this one,” Regdar said, standing over the first goblin Jozan had taken down.

Regdar was certain it was the goblin who had been shaken around by Rezrex, then sent away with—Regdar looked at the scattered bodies—exactly this group of goblins and spiders.

Jozan, who was finishing off the last of the three spiders, looked up and asked, “Is he their leader?”

Regdar shook his head, looking down at the unconscious goblin as Jozan and Lidda came to stand next to him. “Their leader is a hobgoblin—much bigger, meaner—named Rezrex.”

“You’re wounded,” the priest said.

“I know,” Lidda answered, “and it hurts like a son of a—”

“I was talking to Regdar,” Jozan answered.

The coldness in his voice made Regdar turn around. The priest stood behind him, facing the halfling, who was looking up at him with that expression Regdar had seen on a hundred faces—just before a tavern brawl broke out.