Regdar stopped, listening, and the sounds didn’t get any farther away.
“The tunnel must end up here somewhere,” he whispered to Naull, who moved in close to him. “I think we—”
“Wait,” she whispered, moving closer still. “I couldn’t hear you.”
She tilted her head and bent closer to Regdar. He leaned in and almost pressed his lips to her ear. He had the brief but uncomfortable notion that he should kiss her, but he pushed that aside. They were in danger, and there were more important things to think about than that, however good it made him feel.
13
There was something about the sounds that came echoing down the narrow tunnel that made Regdar stop, turn around, and walk out into the larger cave. The goblins were quiet, then they cheered, there was the shifting of rough cloth and the swish of bare feet on stone, the clicking of scuttling spiders, and underneath it, something big that was growling and moving on sharp claws.
Regdar, sensing Naull following close behind him, came out into an enormous cave. The colors washed past him in flowing white, gray, and brown. There were spears of stalactites hanging from the ceiling like enormous chandeliers. The floor had been made smooth and worn even smoother. He was standing on a natural platform twenty feet above the cave floor. Beyond the edge of the platform was a pit, as deep as the platform was high, but with one intermediary ledge like an inner ring or step that formed a simple but effective natural amphitheater.
On the floor of the pit was a creature Regdar had seen only once before and hoped never to see again. It was a hideous, man-eating beast called a krenshar. It growled and scraped its claws on the smooth stone floor of the pit, which was ringed by a crowd of maybe seventy goblins.
A ladder made of spidersilk ran from the edge of the platform to the outer edge of the pit, stretching diagonally like a crude staircase. At the foot of the web ladder, on the step above the floor of the krenshar pit, were the two goblin jailers and their prisoner.
“Regdar…” Naull whispered.
He could tell she was going to warn him off, but there was nothing she could say. Throwing someone—even a goblin—into a pit, defenseless, against a krenshar was just wrong.
Regdar charged down the spidersilk ladder, greatsword swinging behind him. The jailer to the left of the would-be krenshar victim turned. Its eyes widened and its mouth opened. The goblin brought its arm back, a crude stone club clenched in its hand.
Regdar spilled the goblin’s entrails before it had time to scream.
A dead silence came over the cavern, and all heads turned to look up at Regdar. Mouths fell open, and there was a wave of gasps.
Regdar smiled and looked across the bizarre scene. On the other side of the pit sat a burly humanoid, much bigger than the goblins around him. It stood slowly and sneered at Regdar.
Hobgoblin, Regdar thought. I hate hobgoblins.
Behind the hobgoblin was another, but this one had a less impressive collection of trophies slung along its patchwork armor. Regdar noted a handful of the big brown spiders with the Xs on their backs scattered among the goblins.
“Regdar,” Naull called from up on the platform behind him, “what are we doing?”
The goblins panicked and ran in two big groups. Almost directly to Regdar’s right, behind the prisoner and the surviving jailer, thirty goblins scrambled to their feet and practically crawled over each other to get away. They’d been sitting in a space between the pit and a sheer drop-off in the cave floor. By the light of torches stuck here and there in cracks in the walls and floor, Regdar could see a pile of large stones that had been fashioned into a crude stairway running down the drop-off. The thirty goblins made for the stone steps, some of the them slipping and falling—their comrades ran them right over.
The second group was half the size. They squeezed through narrow gaps in a stone wall across the pit from where Regdar was standing. The rock wall looked like a waterfall frozen in place.
The goblin prisoner, its hands tied behind its back, took advantage of the tribe’s panic and pushed the surviving jailer-goblin hard with its shoulder and the side of its face. The jailer—a bit bigger than the rest of the goblins—tried to keep its balance by widening its stance. Unfortunately for the jailer, it was standing right at the edge of the pit. Its foot slipped over the edge, and the jailer tumbled fifteen feet into the krenshar pit.
Regdar stepped back and was just about to pull the prisoner into the narrow cave they’d come from when Naull, screaming, came flying through the air. Regdar realized she had been trying to jump on the jailer-goblin just as the prisoner pushed it into the pit.
Naull came to a hard, sliding stop on the step and slid off the edge. Regdar could see the fingers of both of Naull’s hands, white and trembling as she held for dear life onto the sharp edge. He grabbed at the prisoner again, but the goblin spun on him and flinched away. The big hobgoblin roared twice in such a way that made Regdar think it was saying something to the two dozen or so goblins that hadn’t run away.
In the pit, the krenshar charged the goblin jailer. The creature’s razor-sharp claws shrieked across the smooth stone floor as it went. The goblin drew its dagger and screamed what might have been a challenge, a prayer, or just the incoherent cry of a goblin who knew it was about to die. It did step forward, though, and slashed its dagger down at the krenshar’s head.
The smaller of the two hobgoblins charged around the perimeter of the krenshar pit, making its way toward Regdar with heavy, stomping feet. It was swinging a morningstar. The brutal weapon’s two big steel balls, which were clustered with jagged spikes, whirled at the ends of heavy chains that hung from a leather-wrapped handle. The hobgoblin was almost exactly the same size as Regdar, who was ready for a decent fight. As the hobgoblin came around it sent two goblins tumbling into the krenshar pit and two more scrambling out of its way. It was only then that Regdar noticed the goblins cowering between the cave wall on his left and the edge of the krenshar pit.
The hobgoblin was moving slowly enough that Regdar could take the time to gently slice through the spidersilk holding the prisoner’s hands behind its back. Behind the goblin he could see Naull’s fingertips still clinging to the edge of the pit—then he turned back to see the hobgoblin coming at him fast and hard.
He had almost come to a snap decision about whether he would save Naull first or meet the hobgoblin’s charge head on when a spider slammed into him. Its needlelike legs pinged off his armor, and the horrid sideways jaws clacked at him. It was all he could do to keep his left arm between the spider and his exposed face. The thing seemed to be trying to bite him in the eyes. Regdar could hear another one coming toward him from behind and up on the platform.
The bigger hobgoblin still stood at the other side of the pit, screaming a string of incoherent growls. By the sound of it, Regdar could tell the humanoid was angry—and getting angrier. In the pit there was the screech of claws on stone, then an ugly ripping noise and a pained, desperate wail—a goblin’s wail.
The spider was crawling over Regdar’s arm. He was twisting at the elbow and shoulder, trying to keep it off his face. Finally, he was able to get his huge greatsword inside and flicked a wedge out of the underside of the spider’s brittle body. It quivered, convulsed, and its eight segmented legs curled up under its bleeding body, trapping Regdar’s left arm with them. When the other spider leaped off the platform at him, Regdar used the dead spider on his arm like a shield and managed to avoid the thing’s bite.