Филип Этанс: The Savage Caves

“Nice,” the halfling said. “I wonder if Pelor will be able to get my foot out of your—”

“Naull might be dying out there somewhere,” Regdar interjected.

Jozan and Lidda both looked at him, and their faces softened simultaneously.

“This might not be the chief,” Regdar continued, gesturing at the unconscious goblin, “but I think he might be some kind of lieutenant.”

Jozan considered the goblin and said, “Can you talk to him?”

Regdar was about to tell him no, when he realized the priest was talking to Lidda.

The halfling stepped closer to the goblin and said, “Sure, if we can wake him up.”

Regdar unslung his backpack and took out his waterskin.

“Ask him where Naull is,” Jozan suggested.

Lidda and Jozan stepped back, and Regdar started to pour water over the goblin’s face.

Tzrg, certain his wretched soul had been sent to the Hell of Having Water Splashed in Your Face, sputtered and coughed, and tried to remember any kind of prayer he could use to impress Maglubiyet enough to keep the demon god of goblins from eating him alive.

He couldn’t think of one, but he did manage to catch his breath and open his eyes.

Tzrg didn’t know whether to be happy or disappointed to see that he wasn’t dead. Maglubiyet wasn’t going to eat him alive, but the three bizarre humans—two big armored males and the little female—who were standing over him might do something even worse.

He wanted more than anything to get up and run away, but he recognized one of the humans as the man who’d killed a hobgoblin, two krenshars, and a handful of hive spiders. The other male was the one who had knocked him out—damn near killed him—with a mace as long as Tzrg was tall. He looked at the female and instinctively put a hand over his crotch.

The human who had knocked him out looked at the female and spoke in their impossible-to-fathom language then turned to the other man and spoke some more. The human with the mace took a shield from his back and handed it to the other man, who took it with a smile.

The female leaned over him and cleared her throat. Tzrg winced at the sound. His chest hurt, his head hurt, and he was getting sick of being held prisoner by tall things with armor and maces. He hoped that they would decide to let the bigger human kill him. The giant sword should make fast work of a little goblin.

They didn’t kill him, though—at least not right away. The female looked down at him and said something, followed by what Tzrg was sure was the Goblin word for “name.”

She pointed at him and repeated herself, then said, “ Gbn rblmg .”

She wanted him to speak. Her accent was weird—stranger even that Rezrex’s—but she was making sense, though he still wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say.

He opened his mouth to say something—anything—but his chest hurt too much. One of the humans reached down for him, and Tzrg wished he was able to move, so he could roll out of the way, then he decided to let them kill him.

All the human did, though, was sit him up. His chest still hurt, but a lot of the pressure was gone, and he could breathe better.

The female said, “Lidda kgl .” Her name was Lidda.

It was as hard to say as Rezrex, but it was a name—at least he thought it was. She wanted to know what his name was.

“Tzrg,” he said, looking up at her and hoping that the look in his eyes would inspire them to kill him quickly.

The female smiled, and Tzrg had no idea how to take that. The other two humans didn’t seem to understand.

“Lidda bktt ,” she said. “ Bkn Lidda. Pmldl Tzrg.”

She wanted a foreigner that belonged to her, and she wanted Tzrg to get it.

The female waved her arms at her sides and wiggled her fingers in a way that made Tzrg think of spiders, then she made curvy gestures with both hands like a female—a female spider. She wanted the Cavemouth Tribe’s hive spider queen.

Tzrg couldn’t begin to guess why, but at least he knew where that was, and it wasn’t even far away. If that’s all they wanted, they could have it. Of course, if they made off with the Cavemouth Tribe’s hive spider queen, Rezrex would be angry and probably…

Tzrg decided not to think about that and started the painful process of climbing to his feet—only flinching a little when the human with the mace took his arm to help him—realizing that he would just have to go with whatever the big, mace-wielding outsiders who were closest by wanted him to do, and the humans were closer than Rezrex.

He wanted them to know he would do as they asked and that they should follow him, so he looked at the female and said, “ Bkn gnrbt. Tzrg pzvmp .”

Regdar’s skin was crawling. He wanted to run blindly down the length of the cave in search of Naull. He wanted to do just about anything but trust a goblin to bring them to her.

“You’re sure…” he said to Lidda, who was following closely behind the goblin, grunting at it.

The halfling sighed and said, “I want to find her as much as you do, Redjar. Unless you have some bright idea, we follow Tzrg.”

“Tzrg?” Jozan asked. The priest didn’t look any more confident than Regdar.

“That’s his name,” Lidda replied. “He was the chief of the Stonedeep Tribe before the hobgoblin Rezrex showed up and took over. They raided the Cavemouth Tribe, who live farther up near the surface, and kidnapped their mother or something… whatever that means. That caused some kind of problem, and they managed to capture most of the Cavemouth goblins and hold them prisoner. Rezrex wants to unite the tribes and be… I don’t know what… King of the Goblins or something?”

They walked quickly behind the scurrying goblin who kept glancing over his shoulder as if afraid that one or all three of them were going to stab him in the back. He was leading them toward the dark mouth of one of the nearby side-passages.

“You got all that from grunting at this goblin?” Regdar said, unable to believe it.

Lidda didn’t look back at him when she said, “Humans. Like it would kill you to learn a foreign language.”

Only maybe half a dozen yards down the narrow side-passage, their way was blocked by stalactites and stalagmites tied together with spidersilk and fashioned into bars. Regdar made sure he stood in the middle of the passage at the back of the party in case their goblin prisoner decided to turn tail and make a run for it.

Lidda kept up her grunting conversation with the little humanoid, and when she stopped at the bars, she turned to Regdar and Jozan and said, “I think she’s in there.”

Regdar, his greatsword in his right hand and shield in his left, shifted his feet and tried to keep his blood from boiling.

“It can’t be,” he said.

Jozan turned to him with a questioning look.

“She was ahead of me,” Regdar said. “She was free and clear. All the goblins were behind her, and the only group of them that ran up this way were this little guy and his friends. There wasn’t anyone to capture her and put her in a cage.”

Lidda opened her mouth to argue, then obviously thought against it. She turned on the goblin with an irritated scowl. When she grunted at him, the goblin’s response was a string of guttural gibberish, but his manner was groveling and apologetic.

A sound echoed from the pitch darkness behind the bars, and Regdar stepped forward.

“Naull?” he called.

The only reply was another echoing sound like a heavy weight shifting against loose stones.

“Who’s in there?” Jozan asked Lidda.

The halfling held up her lantern, hesitantly reaching between the crude stone bars. Jozan stepped closer behind her, and so did Regdar, but the big fighter made sure he was all but pressing the cowering goblin into the bars.