The Savage Caves

18

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.

Regdar squinted into the darkness and saw something moving just at the edge of Lidda’s lanternlight.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Lidda said, backing away a little, “but it ain’t Naull.”

The goblin barked at her, and Lidda turned on him sharply, then backed even farther away from the bars.

Jozan asked, “What did he say?”

“It’s a spider,” the halfling replied.

As if in reply, the thing behind the bars drew itself slowly into the pool of light from Lidda’s lantern. It was the same dull, pale beige color as the spiders they’d encountered before, but bigger—much bigger. Regdar felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. The creature pulled itself out of the darkness as if it was crawling from the womb, revealing two chitinous, segmented legs, then two more, then two more, and two more. Its body was bulbous, an irregular oval shape covered in coarse fur. The front of it was a mass of irregularly spaced jet black eyes. Its mouth was small, with fangs smaller than its cousins. It was impossible for Regdar to tell which of the four of them the creature was looking at—it might have been looking at all of them at once.

“It’s the mother,” Lidda said.

Jozan gave her a curious look, then his eyes widened as some idea seemed to dawn on him all at once.

“A queen,” he said. “It’s a hive queen, like a queen bee or a queen ant. The spiders we’ve fought must be workers… drones.”

“They hold the queen prisoner,” Lidda said, “and use her to control the spiders.”

“Extraordinary,” Jozan whispered.

Regdar felt his jaw tighten and said, “Should I kill it?”

Jozan was about to answer when they all heard the footsteps echo around them. Regdar was the first to react, pressing against the cave wall and using the back of his right hand to shove the goblin along with him.

He was gratified to see Jozan and Lidda follow his lead and press their backs against the opposite wall. Lidda drew the hood of her lantern down, dimming the light.

The footsteps grew closer and closer.

Naull was struggling just to breathe. Rezrex was holding her around the waist and squeezing. It was still hard for her to see where he was carrying her, dragging her feet behind them. Blind, the hobgoblin moved slowly, hesitantly, shouting orders in its own primitive language as it went. Sounds echoed all around her, and she couldn’t tell where they were coming from or what they were. All that mixed with the pungent, horrid odor of the hobgoblin, making Naull’s head spin, so she had to fight every second just to stay conscious.

She felt a hand on her—rough and forceful—and heard another voice. She opened her eyes and turned her head, silently cursing at the pain—and at the hobgoblin. There was another of the big humanoids that Naull could see, and she was sure she could hear a third hobgoblin approaching from behind them. They spoke to each other in urgent tones—like soldiers—that reminded her of Regdar.

“Regdar,” she tried to scream but managed only a pained squeak, “Regdar… help me…”

“Regdar?” Rezrex growled.

The hobgoblin grunted an order at one of his lieutenants, and Naull felt a strong hand wrap around first one wrist then the other. Rezrex let go of her waist, and she fell from his grip, only to be pulled back by the other hobgoblin. She could see Rezrex facing her, one hand clamped over his still blazing eyes. The hobgoblin that held her twisted one of her arms painfully behind her and blew hot, rancid breath on her neck.

“Regdar?” Rezrex said again. “I kill that man.”

“No,” Naull said, squinting at him, trying not to throw up.

She tried to bring to mind a spell but couldn’t. She’d cast as many spells as she could in one day. She wasn’t sure what happened to her staff and couldn’t get to her crossbow with her hands held behind her. She was at the hobgoblin’s mercy, and for the first time since walking out of Larktiss Dathiendt’s tower, she wanted to go home.

“You his female?” Rezrex asked, his face twisted in pain and anger.

Naull said nothing.

“Not anymore,” the hobgoblin sneered, and the one holding her wrists began to laugh.

The sound made Naull’s skin crawl.

Rezrex stepped back, saying something to the third hobgoblin. That one stepped forward and drew his arm back, his big hand clenched into a fist. As the hobgoblin’s knuckles rushed toward her face, Naull had just enough time to think, That’s going to hurt, before finding out how right she was.

She could feel blood gush from her nose, her eyes closed tightly all on their own, and she was out.

Regdar could see by the dim silhouette in the sparse light of Lidda’s lantern that it was a goblin. The humanoid ran into the cave and slid to a halt, turning and putting up its hands in a way that indicated to Regdar that the goblin had seen one, some, or all of them.

Without pause, Regdar kicked at the goblin’s feet just as Lidda opened the hood of her lantern, filling the little cave with light.

The goblin, eyes wide, mouth open, hopped up over Regdar’s sweeping leg, shifted in the air, and came down in an attempt to stomp on Regdar’s calf. Though he doubted the little humanoid could put enough weight into the stomp to break his leg, Regdar reacted quickly and rolled with the momentum of his kick. The goblin came down way off the mark, stomping only onto the unforgiving rock floor. The jolt almost knocked it over, unbalancing it enough so that it couldn’t dodge or deflect Jozan’s mace, which punched into its right side hard enough to drive air from its lungs and drop it to its left knee.

Regdar continued his roll, changing direction, and smashed the goblin with his shield. The goblin fell backward, and Jozan caught it around the waist.

As Regdar leaped to his feet, the goblin Lidda called Tzrg started to move behind him. Regdar had intended to drop his shield and grab the goblin Jozan was holding, but when he saw the other goblin trying to make a break for it, he drew up short and shot his right elbow back. Tzrg didn’t even see it coming. Regdar’s elbow smashed him into the cave wall, and Tzrg tripped, sprawling onto the floor behind the big human.

The goblin Jozan was holding shook his head once and stood, slipping out of the priest’s tenuous, surprised grip. Regdar stepped in front of the goblin and whipped his sword in a half-arc fast enough to make it whistle through the air. The newcomer skidded to a stop with the tip of Regdar’s blade less than an inch from the end of its wide, flat nose.

Lidda said something in the goblin language as Jozan brushed past behind Regdar to help Tzrg to his feet and detain him at the same time. Regdar finally had a chance to see the newcomer’s face clearly, and he recognized the goblin at once.

“This is the one we saved from the krenshar pit,” Regdar said. “Naull went after him.”

Lidda spoke to the goblin, a look of stern determination on her face. Waiting for the grunting exchange to yield anything understandable was like torture for Regdar. He stopped short of trying to imagine what might be happening—or what might have happened—to Naull. He could feel his teeth grinding.

The huge, misshapen hive spider queen rubbed its bulbous form against the stone bars. The sound made all of them look in its direction. The creature tapped its needle-pointed legs against the stone and waved its hideous, asymmetrical head from side to side.

The goblin looked at the monster spider with an oddly soft expression Regdar associated with the way some people look at their horses or their dogs.

“The spider…” Regdar started to say.

“The queen recognizes this one as a member of the Cavemouth Tribe,” Jozan said. “When they brought it down here it must have lost contact with its drones. The drones went wild…”

“And attacked the sheep,” Regdar finished for him.

“It’s what caused all this chaos in the first place,” Jozan said. “Lidda…?”

The halfling stopped her grunting speech and looked up at Jozan.

“Is this goblin from the Cavemouth Tribe?” the priest asked.

“He is,” Lidda answered. “I think he might be Kink’s son.”

Jozan drew in a breath and stood straighter, pulling the goblin Tzrg up with him. The prisoner whimpered and kept his eyes on the floor.

“He is Kink’s son,” Lidda said, her eyes searching Jozan’s face for some idea what to do next.

“Who’s son?” asked Regdar.

“Kink,” Jozan answered, pronouncing the goblin name with some difficulty. “He was the chief of the Cavemouth Tribe. He’s dead.”

Regdar watched Lidda tell the goblin that his father was dead. The goblin sagged visibly.

“I assume that makes him chief now,” Regdar said. “We saved him from the krenshar pit. If he wants to return the favor…”

“Tell him we can help him,” the priest said. “Tell him that if he can keep the spiders in the cave, away from the village and the herds, that we’ll help him regain his tribe and get rid of the hobgoblin.”

Lidda nodded and started speaking Goblin again. The prisoner looked suspicious, unsure.

“Ask him about Naull,” Regdar said. “She was following him.”

Lidda nodded and started grunting at the goblin, who answered back quickly, making gestures that Regdar found disturbing.

“Rezrex has her,” Lidda said.

Regdar felt the blood drain from his face.

“The hobgoblin?” Jozan asked, his voice quiet and heavy.

Regdar nodded.

“He said he’d help us,” Lidda said, glancing between Regdar and Jozan. “I’m not a hundred percent sure we can trust him, but we might not have much choice. He wants us to release the… the queen.”

The goblin Tzrg ventured a series of tentative grunts Lidda’s way, and whatever he said made the halfling smile.

“They both want Rezrex dead,” Lidda told them. “Tzrg wants things to go back the way they were.”

Regdar saw the two goblins exchange a look he’d seen a few times in the past. Enemies had turned into allies in more ways than one.