The Savage Caves

17

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.

“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.”