The little creatures looked even more ragged than the goblins they’d seen before. What clothes they wore were rarely more than strips of torn cloth. Most if not all of them were wounded in some way—at least the odd scrape or gray-orange bruise—and none of them were armed.
Regdar assumed that they either hadn’t heard his torch go out or didn’t care. They were all looking away. He motioned Naull to look, and she slid up next to him close enough that he could feel her trembling.
Beyond the first cage was one more, and Regdar thought he could see just the edge of a third. A second torch burned even farther down, and Regdar thought there might be another pool along the right-hand wall just past the farther cages. In the second cage was another group of goblins. Regdar couldn’t make out details, but something about the way they clustered to the far end of the cage made him think that they were in no better shape either physically or mentally than the goblins in the cage closer to him.
“More spiders,” Naull whispered.
Regdar followed her gaze to the space between the two cages, where two of the huge spiders were wandering across the uneven floor. They disappeared from sight to the left. Regdar was about to ask Naull if she thought it was possible that the spiders were keeping the goblins captive—maybe as retribution for killing them and using their bodies to make bowls and tools—when the caged goblins murmured, grunted, and cowered even lower in their cages.
Regdar heard more of the guttural grunts and realized that they had been hearing voices after all, just voices speaking the primitive language of the subterranean humanoids.
“What’s going on?” Naull asked.
“The jailer’s coming,” Regdar guessed, eyes glued to the cages.
Regdar hoped that he’d see a human approach the cages. He hoped it was anyone he might be able to talk to. Regdar didn’t really care why the goblins were in cages. His limited experience of them had been generally negative, and he’d never heard a kind word spoken of the nasty little creatures. Regdar hoped that whoever was holding them would be good enough to show them the way out, but his more rational side knew that the chance of that was remote at best. The chances were better that whoever—or whatever—was holding the goblins prisoner would be even worse.
His answer came soon enough, when shadows flickered across the stone floor and the sound of shuffling footsteps echoed through the cave. Regdar crossed the fingers of his left hand, feebly hoping to see anything but a goblin.
The jailer was another goblin and one that looked no more civilized than its prisoners. This one was armed, though, and brought one of its friends with it.
The jailer barked out unintelligible commands at the caged goblins, and its comrade stepped up to slice open some of the spidersilk with a rusty old dagger. The spider that had been skittering about the top of the cage turned and crawled down toward the now open cage with some determination. Two of the armed goblins went into the cage and dragged one of the prisoners out.
This goblin looked particularly abused, but there was something about the set of its shoulders and the way it made the jailers work to move it, that was almost impressive to Regdar. Its fellow goblins cowered only lower still. When the jailers turned their charge in Regdar’s direction, the fighter was sure he saw a look of stern disappointment, even contempt, on the stiff prisoner’s face.
The jailers dragged the goblin away, and the spider set immediately to work repairing the webs holding the cage closed. None of the goblin prisoners made a move to escape.
Regdar turned to Naull and said, “We’re following them.”
12
The rock spanked off the cave floor and shot up under Jozan’s scale mail kilt, hitting him in the groin hard enough to double him over. He managed to remain on his feet, but he had to close his eyes and work to keep from throwing up. It crossed his mind that if he asked nicely, Pelor might take him into the next life right away.
“Hey!” Lidda cried, then grunted loudly at the goblin women in their primitive tongue.
Jozan heard three more rocks hit the floor near him, and he straightened up, blinking, only able to hope that he wouldn’t get hit again. Lidda grabbed his arm and pulled hard enough to make him stumble.
“We should just leave,” she said, her voice pitched even higher than normally and her face red in the lanternlight.
A stone bounced off her shoulder and she shouted, “Ow! What’s it gonna take?”
Jozan turned and was finally able to take a deep breath. A stone bounced off his armored back, and he scowled. It was his turn to pull Lidda away from the growing crowd of feral goblin women.
“An eye?” she yelled at them even as she followed Jozan into the darkness. “Will that make you happy… when someone loses an eye?”
“Let’s just go, child,” Jozan hissed through clenched jaws. “They aren’t what we’re here for anyway, and they obviously don’t want our—”
Jozan and Lidda leaped to either side when a short goblin javelin whizzed between them. The weapon clattered to a halt on the stone floor behind Jozan. Lidda, who was sitting on the cave floor, drew her sword and sprang to her feet.
Turning his attention to the source of the javelin, Jozan squinted into the darkness ahead. He tightened his grip on his mace and tried to think of a spell that might help them, but nothing he’d prayed for that morning would have been of immediate assistance.
A goblin stepped out of the darkness, then another right on the heels of the first. They both drew back their arms to hurl javelins. Ahead of him and to his left, Jozan saw a particularly fat, squat stalagmite—one that might provide cover from the javelins but that would also take him farther away from Lidda and the light of her lantern.
The goblins threw their javelins, and Jozan made up his mind. He ran toward the stalagmite, ducking a javelin on his way, and came to a skin-scraping halt behind it just as a second javelin clattered across the ground next to him.
“Watch it!” Lidda shouted, her voice an ear-piercing squeal.
He saw her making for similar cover, and when she passed behind a stalagmite, Jozan was thrust into almost total darkness. There was a pool of orange light ahead of him. He peeked over the top of the stalagmite and saw that one of the goblins—Jozan counted eight of them in all—was carrying a torch. They also seemed to have no shortage of javelins.
Jozan began to consider the odds against them when his face was pushed into the top of the stalagmite by a blow to the back of his head. He didn’t hit hard, and neither did the rock—he doubted there’d be a dent in his helm—but it stung, reminding him that there was a threat from the rear as well.
The stone that hit him in the head bounced off and struck one of the advancing goblin warriors in the chest just hard enough to get its attention.
Jozan heard the telltale smack of stone on skin, then a deep, guttural grunt that couldn’t have been Lidda. A goblin warrior charged him, and he stepped from behind the stalagmite with his mace at his side and back enough to put some momentum into a blow. Just as he was beginning to bring his arm forward to block the goblin’s bent, rusted short sword, another rock flew past his head so closely he could hear it whistling through the air. The rock hit the charging goblin square in the face, and the little warrior dropped to the floor in a spinning flurry of arms and legs.
Jozan tried to get out of the fallen goblin’s way but got tripped up in the thing’s legs and went down hard, bouncing off the smooth, hard edge of the stalagmite that had been his cover.
He fell onto his back and saw more stones—at least four or five of them—shoot through the air over him. All but one bounced off a grunting goblin warrior and were followed by that ululating wail from the goblin females behind them.