He wrapped his calf, but not too tight, then unstrapped the cuisse from the front of his right thigh. The dagger wound was worse—both bigger and deeper—and Regdar used all the rest of the sack tying the wound closed. It continued to seep blood, and Regdar knew he would have to find Jozan if he had any hope of it healing properly.
Knowing he wouldn’t find Jozan—or Naull—sitting in the little niche, Regdar put the damaged armor pieces back into place, took up his torch, and stood. The pain was bearable, and, limping, Regdar set off down the narrow passage.
16
Naull looked around, unsure what to do, then looked at the goblin. The little humanoid was looking around quickly as well, but when their eyes met, he grunted at her in a way that made Naull think he was speaking to her, then he slid into the still water of the little pool next to the cage.
The sight gave Naull a chill, and she shivered in the cool subterranean air, but she got the message: hide.
She had no intention of getting wet again, and there was the narrow passage she and Regdar had passed through when they’d first discovered the cages. It was a dark, confined space, and she backed into it quickly until she was cloaked in inky darkness.
She could see five goblins—all armed—accompanied by three of the huge brown spiders. She couldn’t help thinking she recognized one of the goblins.
The party paused in front of the cages, barking guttural grunts at each other, then they continued on, chasing the freed prisoners up the wide cave. Naull waited until their footsteps were barely audible echoes before she slipped out of the darkness.
The goblin came up out of the water, shivering and looking even more wretched and desperate than before. He looked at her, obviously waiting for Naull to make the first move.
In response, the young mage held both of her hands, palm out, and said, “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
She felt ridiculous for even speaking to a goblin whom she knew didn’t understand the Common Tongue, but she didn’t know what else to do. Strangely enough, the goblin tilted his head at her, almost seeming to understand. The gesture must have been just universal enough to assuage his fears.
Naull held her hand in front of her and tried to make the shape of Regdar in the air.
“The big guy,” she said. “My friend? The big human guy with the giant sword?”
She pointed down the cave in the direction of the goblin community, the fighting pit, and Regdar. The goblin glanced back in the direction she indicated then grunted at her in a questioning manner.
Naull stepped forward, trotting past him pumping her arms to indicate that they should run. She felt like a fool, but again, the goblin seemed to get the message. He let loose a long string of grunts, waving his arms in front of him in some odd pantomime that Naull couldn’t figure out at all.
“Come on,” she said, moving into the darkness.
The goblin grabbed the torch that was stuck in the wall next to the pool, and when Naull started running down the middle of the descending cave floor, he followed alongside her with grim determination.
They might have gone forty yards—passing two more little pools and the pitch-black entrance to a side-passage that made Naull feel strangely uneasy—when the goblin stopped.
The cave narrowed dramatically to less than ten feet, and as they passed through, a huge, hairy, gray-skinned arm reached out from behind a curve in the rock wall and smashed into the goblin’s chest. Naull skidded to a halt, almost losing her footing, just as the big hobgoblin stepped out in front of her, a remarkably well-crafted mace in one hand and her goblin companion in the other. He smiled at her in a way that made Naull want to scream.
“I don’t think they climbed down there,” Lidda said, standing at the edge of a sheer ten-foot drop on one side of the enormous cave. “Naull isn’t really a climber, and Redguy seems to take a more direct approach.”
Jozan sighed, peering into the darkness beyond the edge of Lidda’s lanternlight. There was a narrow opening to what looked like some sort of side-passage at the bottom of the depression. Regdar and Naull could easily have fit through, but Jozan thought Lidda was probably correct in her assumption that “Jump!” Lidda stage-whispered.
Jozan surprised himself by actually jumping off the edge. He hit the stone floor hard but managed a roll that surprised him more than the fact that he jumped. He scrambled to his feet, unhurt.
He had heard the sudden cacophony of echoing footsteps increasing in volume and intensity. It was obvious that whatever was coming was coming toward them. Jozan knew that his first reaction wouldn’t have been to jump off the edge and hide while whatever it was ran past. He felt embarrassed and more than a little angry.
“Lidda,” he hissed, looking up.
The halfling was hanging by her fingertips from the sharp edge of the drop-off. The distance between her feet and the floor was easily as tall as Jozan, if not a few inches taller.
Lidda turned her head enough to see him and winked. “I didn’t mean all the way…” she whispered.
Jozan opened his mouth to chastise her when the footsteps, mixed with guttural grunts and barks the priest recognized as goblin speech, moved past them.
Lidda bent her arms, lifting herself up just enough to peek over the edge, and Jozan moved as quickly and as quietly as he could to press his back against the wall. He could see Lidda’s head turn from the direction they had been headed, back to the direction of the waterfalls. She was obviously following a group of running goblins.
When the sound started to fade again into muddier echoes, Lidda looked down and said, “They looked scared.”
Jozan scanned the wall for any kind of hand- or toe-hold and found one he thought would help him boost himself up to the edge. His mind raced through the many things he wanted to yell at Lidda for.
“Two-to-one says Riptare’s down that way,” the halfling said, looking off in the direction the running goblins had come from.
The longer Regdar walked and the faster he pushed himself, the more his right leg actually loosened up. He heard and saw no sign of Naull or the goblin until he came up under the sinkhole that they’d climbed down from the cages.
A torch was laying on the floor, its flame reduced to a trace of orange glowing around the black stub. The thing had left a trail of scorched rock, and it looked to Regdar as if the torch had rolled from its original position. When he realized where the thing had rolled to, he hissed a sharp curse.
The torch had rolled into the spidersilk ladder. All that was left of the ladder was a length of the creamy white rope hanging a good two feet out of Regdar’s reach. The floor below it was littered with ash. The light from Regdar’s torch barely reached the rim of the sinkhole.
He scanned around him, but there was no way to climb it—not fast, and not in armor.
That’s when he heard the scream.
“Naull,” he said aloud, then cursed the burned ladder again.
He was sure it was the young mage who’d screamed, but the only choice he had was to go deeper down the narrow passage and hope it came out someplace he might recognize—someplace close to Naull.
Jozan was just pushing himself over the edge of the drop-off when the shrill scream echoed through the air around him. Startled, he almost lost his grip and fell back down into the depression.
“That was Naull,” Lidda said, concern creasing her grimy face.
Jozan wanted to tell her that she couldn’t be sure, that it might be a goblin, or anyone else but Naull, but he couldn’t.
He climbed up and got to his feet. Lidda skipped past him, then stopped a couple yards away, in the center of the big cave.