Regdar wasn’t sure where it was heading, but he had no time to watch. The krenshar’s head appeared over the edge of the pit, and it snarled at him, gobbets of bloody goblin flesh still hanging from its razor-sharp fangs.
Regdar had encountered krenshars before. He knew they had a trick they did to scare their prey stiff. Regdar had seen it work on half a dozen experienced soldiers.
He brought his sword down hard but intentionally slow. The thing had only its front two claws on the step, but it was still able to dodge to the left easily enough. Because Regdar hadn’t really been trying to hit it, he was able to get his greatsword back up and in front of his body so that when the krenshar lunged at him, its teeth clanged harmlessly against the flat of his blade. He tried to twist the sword and cut the monster’s mouth, but it was quicker than him and managed to get free of it.
The krenshar hopped the rest of the way up out of the pit, and Regdar drew his sword next to his left shoulder—and that’s when the thing peeled back its face, revealing bright red muscle, throbbing veins, and horrid, infected black gums. The scream that issued from the thing rattled Regdar’s eardrums, and the fighter found the whole thing unsettling. He was supposed to freeze with fear, but he didn’t, and he made the krenshar painfully aware of that fact by slashing at it.
The greatsword bit deeply, dragging a deep cut through the matted fur on the monster’s chest. Blood poured from the wound, and the timbre of the scream changed enough so that Regdar knew he’d hurt it.
As the krenshar’s scream faded and the monster backed off a step, Regdar heard the big hobgoblin barking orders at its goblin warriors.
The krenshar lunged at Regdar, swiping at him with one claw. Regdar slid his foot back, and the claws raked across his jambeau. Regdar let his right wrist go limp so that when the krenshar bit at him, the tip of the sword poked it in the top of its head. The beast was fast enough to drop its head and slide out from under the attack. Regdar made note of the fact that it slid to the left.
The krenshar glanced up at the platform, and Regdar did too. He saw Naull disappear into the tunnel, grabbing the torch as she went. There was a strange sound—stone grinding on stone—that seemed to vibrate up from below. The krenshar noticed it too, and it looked into the pit.
Regdar took that opportunity to kick the creature in the face. It saw the attack coming and dodged to the left—directly into the strong, fast, downward hack of Regdar’s greatsword.
The heavy blade split the krenshar’s head in two down the middle. Blood sprayed over Regdar and poured onto the smooth stone and over the edge of the pit. He couldn’t help following the flow of blood with his eyes, and when he looked down into the pit he saw a second krenshar.
The big hobgoblin was screaming and taking out its frustrations on the goblin who was still being shaken back and forth in its grip. The goblin seemed somehow used to the treatment.
“Death to you, Man!” the hobgoblin screamed. “Death to you!”
The krenshar in the pit screamed in chorus with the hobgoblin, and that seemed to cheer the humanoid up.
“Kill two, Man?” the hobgoblin howled. “I don’t think so!”
“What’s your name?” Regdar called across the pit as the second krenshar started to make its way up the still unconscious hobgoblin.
The humanoid tipped its head at him and dropped the goblin it had been shaking. The goblin scuttled backward, rejoining the group of goblins and spiders that seemed to be waiting for orders.
The hobgoblin turned to them and growled. The goblins and spiders listened attentively, then all looked at the goblin who had been shaken around. The goblin stood, and Regdar got the feeling it was trying hard not to look at him. It gathered the other four goblins and three of the huge spiders around it, and they started running away, passing through slits in the flowstone wall and into pitch blackness.
The hobgoblin laughed, glanced at the krenshar, and said, “Rezrex. Lord Rezrex.”
“Rezrex,” Regdar said, also glancing at the approaching krenshar. “I’m Regdar, and I can kill as many as you’ve got.”
15
If Naull had stopped running and thought about what she was doing, where she was, and where she was going, she might have gone mad. That being the case, she just kept running.
She had a goblin torch in her right hand and her staff in her left hand. The light was bright enough so that if she kept her eyes on the uneven stone floor she could run, though not terribly fast. The tunnel was narrow, and the torch lit the whole thing: walls, ceiling, and floor.
She had gone maybe forty-five or fifty feet down the tunnel when she heard a low, grinding, almost crumbling sound echoing up from the rock beneath her feet. The vibration that accompanied it made butterflies dance in her stomach, but again, she didn’t stop to try to find out what it was.
The tunnel made a gradual turn to her right, so she wasn’t able to see the goblin she was running after—running after, not chasing. She was hoping that after rescuing it from the hobgoblin’s bloody fighting pit the goblin might help them find their way out of the caves. The rapid staccato rhythm of the little humanoid’s footsteps echoed clearly ahead of her, though, and having come down this tunnel already, she knew she had a decent chance of catching up to it. If she couldn’t see the goblin by the time they came out into the larger cave, she doubted she’d ever find it again. Her plan, in that case, would be to go back and hope that Regdar was either close behind her or still alive somewhere back in the goblin community.
She almost lost her footing but managed a more or less controlled slide when the passage sloped steeply downward. She was running again when it leveled off, then it began to slope down again, though this time much more gradually. This helped her to pick up speed. She knew how small the goblin was and could hear by its footsteps that it was running in a flurry of short, fast strides. Naull opened up her own stride, hoping her much longer legs would help her to catch up.
Finally she saw the goblin ahead of her, the stone club gripped in its right hand. It was breathing heavily from the run and was having some trouble making it up a fairly easy slope in the tunnel. Naull, not sure what she would say or do when she did catch up with the goblin, slowed her pace and hung back just enough to keep the humanoid in sight.
The goblin clambered up the spidersilk ladder that led back toward the cages. Naull let it get to the top before she tossed her torch to the floor, tucked her staff through one of her pouch straps, grabbed the ladder, and followed the goblin up.
The torches still burning in the larger cave gave off only a dim, flickering light, but it was enough for Naull to see where she was going. The goblin ran straight for the first cage, maybe thirty feet from where the side-passage emptied out into the larger cave. The goblins inside all cowered back away from the goblin that had come rushing out of the darkness at them, but by the time Naull came out into the area around the cages, she could see them recognize their comrade. They pressed against the stone cage and started clawing at the spidersilk holding the thing shut.
Naull ran for the farther cage—the first one she and Regdar had seen—drawing a crossbow bolt as she did. The caged goblins drew away from her, practically crawling over each other to get as far away from her as possible. Naull tried not to look at them. She didn’t like the feeling of anyone being so afraid of her. The little wretches, obviously starved and dying, beaten and desperate, were too sad to look at.
She started to work at the spidersilk with the sharp iron tip of the crossbow bolt when her attention was drawn back to the other cage by some sort of commotion.