Goblin Hero (10 page)

Had he laughed, had he even smiled, Veka would have punched him in the face. For once, he didn’t appear to be mocking her.

He studied the cave entrance carefully. “You really think we’ll find something in there to help us?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Veka shot back. She picked up her battered covers. The leather covering had torn completely loose on one, flapping from one corner and revealing dented, tarnished copper. The other wasn’t in much better shape. She stuffed them both into her pocket with her spellbook and dropped to one knee.

Slash leaned his spear against the rock and put one foot on her outstretched thigh. Keeping his hands pressed to the rock, he placed his other foot on her shoulder and jumped. Veka fell flat into the snow and mud, but Slash had managed to grab the edge of the cave. He pulled himself up and whispered, “Pass me my spear.”

Veka wiped mud from her face and grabbed his spear. “You did that on purpose,” she hissed.

“Of course I did. Now give me my spear!”

Only the fact that she needed his help to get to the cave stopped her from throwing it. She handed the weapon to him, and he wrapped both hands around the end, beneath the spearhead.

Veka passed her staff up, then grabbed the other end of the spear. Her feet scraped against the rock as she searched for traction. She heard Slash grunt, and the spear slipped slightly. At least if he let go, the spearhead would probably take a good slice out of his hands.

The vines tickled her wrists as she struggled to climb, digging her boots into every crack and irregularity she could find. Dirt stung her eyes, and already her hands were beginning to cramp, but she said nothing. A Hero didn’t complain about such things, even when her muscles were burning and she was hungry enough to eat hobgoblin cooking.

After what seemed like an eternity, her fingers found the edge of the cave. Slash grabbed her other wrist, bracing her. She tried to swing one foot up to the ledge, but she couldn’t stretch high enough. She tried again.

On her third attempt, Slash snorted with disgust and reached down to grab her ankle with his other hand. She half climbed, half rolled her body up into the cave and lay there gasping for breath.

“That was pitiful, even for a goblin,” Slash commented.

Forget hobgoblin cooking. What Veka really wanted were some of Golaka’s special spiced hobgoblin ribs, with lots of gravy.

Ignoring Slash’s mocking grin, she grabbed her staff and set off down the tunnel. The dim light from outside soon faded to total blackness. Normally the dark didn’t bother her. She had lived her life in the goblin tunnels and moved around comfortably by sound, smell, and touch alone. But as she listened to the breeze whistling past the cave mouth behind them, she found herself wishing they could risk lighting a lantern.

She kept to the left of the tunnel, one hand following the rough stone. Her staff she kept extended in front of her. As the sound of the wind faded, even her breathing began to sound loud.

Her heart pounded. The journey through darkness . . . could she have reached The Descent so soon? According to Josca, the Hero first endured The Trials, a series of tests through which she would prove her worth and gain the power she needed to triumph. The Descent was the fifth chapter, in which the Hero explored the darkness and prepared for the final confrontation.

Her toe hit something hard, and she fell, landing on what felt like a metal boulder. Her staff clattered to the ground next to her.

“What was that?” Slash asked. He sounded anxious.

Veka’s hands explored smooth, cold metal until it gave way to dry flesh. “A body. An ogre, from the size of it.” She frowned. The skin felt . . . crunchy, and was almost as cold as the armor. The ogre had been dead for some time. Long enough it wouldn’t be safe to eat, she thought regretfully.

The armor had a few dents and dings, but it was still intact. She couldn’t find any holes or wounds in the ogre’s exposed flesh, either.

“How did it die?” Slash asked.

Veka hissed with pain as she sliced her fingers on the sword still clutched in the ogre’s hand. She shoved her bleeding fingers into her mouth. “How should I know?” she said, her voice muffled. “Maybe he killed himself so he wouldn’t have to listen to stupid questions.”

She found a second sword in his other hand. Several knives were strapped to his belt and thigh. “He’s got enough weapons to fight half the creatures in this mountain,” she added.

“Probably looted them from Straum’s lair.”

Among the dragon’s other eccentricities, Straum had been a bit of a collector, saving trophies from the various failed Heroes who tried to slay him over the years. Weapons of all conceivable design had lined his walls, along with the armor, lanterns, jewelry, even the chamber pots of the men and women he had slain.

Most of those valuables had disappeared soon after Straum’s death. Centuries’ worth of weapons were looted in mere days as ogres, goblins, and hobgoblins poured into the cavern. This new influx of weaponry caused a brief escalation of conflicts, decreasing the goblin population by about a quarter. Veka wasn’t sure how many hobgoblins had died. Not enough, at any rate.

In many cases it was the looters themselves who died, learning too late that a sword that had done nothing but gather dust for centuries tended to break at the most inopportune times.

She could hear Slash crouching on the other side of the body. “Feels like he was burned.”

Before Veka could begin to guess what might have killed the ogre, she realized she could just make out the shape of Slash moving around. In the distance, a dim green aura filled the tunnel. She tapped Slash with her staff to get his attention, then pointed to the light.

“We must be getting close,” he said.

Veka watched a little longer before answering. “No. That’s coming to us.” Now she could hear the buzzing of wings, slightly lower in pitch than the pixie they had seen in the woods. “I only hear one. If we’re fast enough, we should be able to kill it before it can use its magic.” Or if not, hopefully the pixie would go after Slash first. She would have time to hit it from behind, and she might even get to see a new spell.

The light brightened as the pixie neared. The tunnel curved a bit up ahead. Soon the pixie would come into sight. “Get ready,” she whispered.

“I’m . . .” Slash’s voice trailed off, and he stared at her hand. Even in this dim light, she could see that his face had gone pale.

She glanced down. Blood from her cut fingers had run down her arm and begun to dry. She flexed her hand, grimacing at the sting of sliced skin.

“You’re bleeding,” Slash said. He swallowed and turned away. He appeared to be swaying.

“What is it?” Veka asked.

Ever so slowly, the hobgoblin fainted. His spear clattered against the rock.

Veka blinked. Hundreds of hobgoblin warriors, and she wound up with the one who was afraid of blood. She couldn’t wait for him to wake up so she could taunt him.

But first . . . she raised her staff and strode toward the oncoming light. From the sound of it, the pixie had picked up speed. It had probably heard Slash drop his spear.

Time to show these oversize bugs what a Hero could do.

CHAPTER 5

“This is
my
quest. I shall be the one who leads us to victory.”

—Prince Barius Wendelson, Adventurer (Deceased)

 

 

 

By the time Jig and the others made their way back to the clearing, the sky was dark. The land, on the other hand, still gave off enough light to keep them from walking into the trees. The light appeared to be trapped within the ice and snow, which had grown steadily deeper in the time they had been searching. The snow came to their ankles now, and beneath it the ice was thick enough to support their weight. Braf had fallen three times already.

Jig stared across the clearing, refusing to accept what he saw. “This is the right place. The ladder should be here.”

He glanced at his companions, hoping they might have a suggestion. Braf yanked his finger away from his nose and tried to look nonchalant. Grell passed gas, something she had done quite regularly since their fight with Sashi.

“Ogre meat disagrees with me,” she snapped. “You have a problem with that?”

Jig pulled off his spectacles and cleaned the lenses on his shirt. Given the condition of his shirt, it didn’t help much.

“If the ladder’s gone, how do we get back?” asked Braf.

Jig didn’t have the slightest idea. They were still looking to him for answers, as if he were supposed to conjure another ladder out of thin air. Or were they simply getting ready to kill him? With Walland dead, it could be argued that their little quest was at an end. Jig squinted at the sky, pretending to search for the ladder as he stepped away from the others.

“Maybe we could ask those ogres,” Braf said.

Jig tensed, one hand going for his sword before he spotted the ogres in question. They were marching through the trees on the far side of the clearing. Jig counted six, maybe seven. He had trouble distinguishing the shapes, even with the lantern the lead ogre carried.

“Don’t ogres usually use torches?” Grell asked. “I thought wood burned orange, not pink.”

The pink light coming from the lantern popped and sparked as the ogres made their way through the woods.

“They might be using muck,” Jig said. “Hobgoblins change the recipe a bit to get those blue flames.” He had always believed they did it on purpose, purely so they could have flames the color of goblin blood. But why would anyone want pink fire?

“Where are they going?” Grell asked.

Jig clenched his fists. How was he supposed to know these things?

“We should ambush them,” Braf said. “We can torture them until they show us the way out. There are three of us, and we have the element of surprise.”

Grell smacked the back of his head.

“Thanks,” muttered Jig.

Walland had acted nervous from the moment they arrived, glancing around and jumping at the slightest sound, like . . . well, like a goblin. These ogres could not have cared less who saw them, which meant they were probably controlled the same as Sashi had been. Hopefully, that meant they shared her lack of alertness as well. “We’ll follow them,” he said.

“Why?” asked Grell.

“Because I don’t know what else to do!”

Grell grunted. Braf looked disappointed.

“We can cut around the clearing. That light carries pretty far in the dark, so we should be able to keep them in sight.”

A noise in the woods made him jump. He turned, orienting his good ear toward the darkness as he peered into the trees. The branches had been creaking in the wind since he arrived, and occasionally the weight of the snow and ice would cause one to break. The first time it happened, Jig had yelped and drawn his sword. Braf had hidden behind a tree, proving himself smarter than Jig in at least this one thing. No doubt this was just another branch collapsing beneath the snow and ice.

Another crunching sound, like a footstep.

Braf was already looking for a place to hide, while Grell hobbled after him. The tightness in Jig’s stomach grew as he realized he was probably the most capable warrior in the group.

He drew his sword and pressed his back to the nearest tree. Smudge was still safe in his pouch. If he could have, Jig would have crawled in after him.

There were at least two sets of footsteps. Had it been only one, Jig might have been able to kill whoever it was without alerting the ogres. Any real battle would no doubt be loud enough to bring them running.

“Jig?”

For a moment, Jig stood frozen. Then he recognized the voice. “Veka?”

Veka crept out of the darkness, her staff rattling, and her cloak dragging through the snow. A hobgoblin trailed along behind her.

“Well met, Jig Dragonslayer!” she said.

Jig stared. “Huh?”

“A good thing I changed my mind about helping you,” Veka added, a huge grin on her face. “Beating those pixies is a job for a Hero.”

 

Pixies
. Jig had encountered only one in his adventures. The Necromancer had been one of the fairy folk, a little blue-haired man with a nasty sense of humor. It was cosmically unfair that anything so small could be so frightening. The tiny dark wizard had nearly turned Jig and his companions into animated corpses. Pure luck had kept Jig alive.

“How many pixies?” he whispered. Ogres couldn’t hear as well as goblins, but he wanted to be safe.

“A lot,” Veka said cheerfully. “They’re holed up in Straum’s lair. I killed one, then we fell back to plan our next attack.”

Grell limped toward them. “These things enslaved the ogres, but you and your hobgoblin pet killed one and got away?”

The hobgoblin growled, pointing his spear toward her. Grell smacked his hand with her cane, and the spear dropped into the snow.