Into the Cave

The cave smelled of wet stone and old smoke. Respin had known worse places — most of them were in his memory now — but the goblin hideout's particular blend of damp and close air and something faintly animal was not one he'd grow fond of.

Right before noon, still outside, he had stopped long enough to pick up the scroll case. It had been lying at the ambush site since Day 2, open and emptied-out, but a scroll case was still a scroll case, and leaving useful things on the ground was a habit he'd stopped indulging a long time ago.

Then they went in.

The cave had a bridge. Below the bridge, a water room — the source of the gurgling sound that had followed them for the last stretch of trail. There were other things worth noting: a trap at the far end, by all signs deliberate; a dog pit somewhere to the east; a platform that gave a clear line of sight to the northwest. Respin took it all in and filed it away. He'd learned to read a room before a room could read him.

They went for Enik first.

Enik was a goblin — Cragma tribe, as it turned out. He was also, initially, possessed of more bravado than his situation warranted. Respin threw his handaxe.

He didn't miss the rope.

Enik, trussed with five feet of cord and considerably less bravado than he'd started with, told them what he knew. King Grol had given the order to ambush Gundrin — Gundrin, who was a dwarf, which was a detail Respin hadn't had confirmed before. And King Grol had been told to do it by someone who went by the name of the Black Spider, a name that arrived with the particular weight of a name you'd hear again before long. The dwarf was alive. He was being held at Cragma Castle, north or northeast, Enik said. Very far.

Respin noted this.

He noted Clarg too — mean, Enik implied, the way that things that are bigger than goblins are often mean. Clarg had a large dog named Ripper, and Respin did not make the mistake of thinking that was a coincidence of naming. A water trap went off somewhere in the cave — a goblin, triggering it deliberately or carelessly, it was hard to know which and maybe didn't matter. Helluva threw three ration packs at some wolves. There were a great many goblins.

And then, up on the platform, from that advantageous line of sight to the northwest — there was a figure. An oldish human man, being held by a goblin named Ymmick.

Sildar Hallwinter. Alive.

There are moments in a soldier's life when the arithmetic changes suddenly — when a number you'd been carrying as a loss turns out to be provisional. Respin did not let himself think about it too long. There were still goblins. There was still whatever Clarg was, and Ripper, and a castle a very long way to the north.

But Sildar Hallwinter was alive.

It would do, for the moment, to hold onto that.