Slowly Jig walked over to retrieve his sword. The human was still trying to rip the tabard off his helmet when Jig stabbed him.
He wiped his sword as he waited for Smudge to cool. Apparently all that flapping had been enough to wake Smudge up. The poor spider struggled to climb down off the human. The meandering path of smoldering spider footprints on the tabard was proof of Smudge’s dizziness.
Jig stared at the dead human, trying to understand his reaction. You’d think he’d never seen a fire-spider before. Smudge wasn’t even the biggest specimen Jig had encountered, being only a little larger than Jig’s hand.
Humans were weird.
More shouts made Jig jump. He might have killed one human, but there were plenty more running about, and Jig didn’t have enough fire-spiders to fight them all. He cocked his head and twitched his good ear. The other ear had been torn in a fight with another goblin, long ago. Still, a single goblin ear let him hear better than any two-eared human.
From the sound of it, the humans were getting closer.
Jig plucked Smudge from the human and stroked the spider’s still-warm thorax before returning him to his hood.
‘‘I knew Shadowstar would bring us victory,’’ Relka said. Blood dripped down her cheek. Her fang had broken the skin when she fell.
‘‘Right,’’ said Jig. ‘‘Maybe next time Shadowstar can kill the human, and I’ll stay in the lair where it’s warm.’’
Grell appeared to be uninjured, judging by the volume of her cursing as she yanked her remaining cane from the ice. Jig grabbed the human’s sword and gave it to her as a substitute. The tip sank deep into the earth, so Jig went back to retrieve the scabbard.
Grell took another step, resting her weight on the sheathed sword. With a grunt of approval, she hobbled over to the human and whacked him with her remaining cane.
‘‘Blasted humans,’’ she said. ‘‘Don’t they know the dragon’s dead? Treasure’s all gone.’’
‘‘What were you doing so far from the lair?’’ Relka asked.
Jig was more interested in knowing how Grell had made it so far. Grell was the oldest goblin in the lair, with the possible exception of Golaka the chef. But where Golaka had gotten stronger and meaner with age, Grell got smaller and wrinklier, like fruit left out in the sun. Sometimes Jig thought the only thing keeping her going was sheer stubbornness.
Grell began walking toward the lair, wheezing and grunting with each step. ‘‘There are too many humans for them to be adventurers. Adventurers are like tunnel cats. A few of them might be able to live and hunt together, but if you add more, they all start biting and clawing and hissing at one another.’’
Relka cocked her head. ‘‘They’re not exactly the same, though. When you eat tunnel cats you spend half the time picking fur out of your meal. You don’t have that trouble with adventurers. Except dwarves.’’
Grell jabbed her cane at the human Jig had killed. ‘‘There could be a hundred of them. Far too many for us to fight. And a few of the warriors are saying they saw elves.’’
‘‘That’s why you wanted to stop the drumming.’’ Goblins didn’t have formalized signals for battle. So long as the drums kept beating, the goblins kept fighting. If the drummers died or ran away, that was the signal for everyone else to do the same.
Jig perked his ears. He only heard one drum now, off to the other side of the lair.
‘‘I sent Trok out to shut that one up.’’ Grell scowled. ‘‘Probably should have been more specific about
how
to shut him up.’’
Jig’s skin twitched with every shout and scream. He reached for Grell’s elbow to hurry her along, but a rheumy glare made him back down.
‘‘Maybe they’re hunting,’’ Relka suggested. ‘‘For food, I mean. There hasn’t been as much to eat since the snow came. Humans have to eat too.’’
‘‘Humans don’t eat goblins,’’ Jig said. His stomach clenched at the thought of the things they did eat. Dried fruit and porridge and bread. What little meat they ate had all the flavor cooked out of it. Jig had been a prisoner of human adventurers for only a few days, but it had taken close to a month for his stomach to recover.
The last drum fell silent. After a lingering scream, so did the drummer. Shouts echoed up and down the mountain as the goblins began to retreat.
Jig squeezed through a clump of pine trees and waited, holding the branches out of Grell’s way. He could see the lair from here. How bad would it be to let the branches slap Grell to the ground so he could scamper to safety? Smudge was already getting restless in his hood. The cloak was relatively fireproof, but the wisps of Jig’s hair weren’t.
A trio of limping goblins scurried into the lair up ahead. A fourth followed, hopping on one foot. His other leg bled from the thigh, leaving a bright blue path in the muddy snow.
The cave was partially hidden by a fallen pine. A heavy gate had once blocked the way, but that gate had disappeared a few months back. The hobgoblins had stolen it to build a bigger cage for their trained tunnel cats.
The pine tree didn’t block anyone out, but it did hide the lair from casual view. The only drawbacks were the brown needles that tangled into your hair, and the sticky sap that covered your clothes, not to mention the overpowering pine smell. The smell had faded with time, but the tree seemed to have an endless supply of brittle needles with which to torment innocent goblins.
Two more warriors disappeared into the lair before Jig and his companions reached the tree. Jig played with one fang and tried not to let his impatience show as Grell hunched to step inside. Her joints popped, and she wheezed with every step.
Jig could hear the humans shouting as they closed in. Grell was right. There were an awful lot of humans out there.
Trok ran past, knocking Jig into the snow as he tried to get into the lair. He didn’t make it. As he squeezed past Grell, she dropped her cane and twisted her claws into Trok’s ear. With her other hand, she shook her borrowed sword until the scabbard fell free. ‘‘Relka, do you know any good recipes for goblin ear?’’
‘‘Four,’’ Relka said. ‘‘Do you want something spicy?’’
‘‘Spicy food puts me in the privy all night.’’ Grell gave up trying to draw the sword. She clubbed Trok’s foot with the partly sheathed weapon. ‘‘Of course, I could put him on privy duty as part of his punishment.’’
Trok was a big goblin. He wore several layers of fur to make himself look even bigger, despite the fact that all of those furs made him sweat something awful. Trok’s glistening face twisted into a sneer.
Grell pinched her claws deeper into his ear, drawing spots of blood. Trok yelped and backed down. He rubbed his ear as he waited for Grell to pass beneath the pine tree.
Neither Jig nor Relka received the same courtesy.
The obsidian walls of the tunnel muted the sounds of battle somewhat as Jig finally scurried into the darkness of the mountain. His eyes struggled to adjust. The warmer air had already painted a film of mist onto his spectacles. But no goblin who survived through childhood relied on vision alone. Jig could hear Grell grumbling and stomping her feet for warmth up ahead. A quick sniff assured him that Trok wasn’t waiting nearby to take his annoyance out on Jig.
Grell’s cane and sword tapped the rock as she moved on. From the sound of it, she was limping even worse than usual. The cold had been hard on her, and she had asked Jig and Braf for healing almost every night for the past month. Jig and Braf were the only two goblins ‘‘gifted’’ with Shadowstar’s healing magic. That gift meant they both spent much of their time healing everything from cold-dead toes to rock serpent bites to that nasty case of ear-mold Trok had gotten a few months back.
The last glimmers of sunlight faded behind them, replaced by the comforting yellow-green glow of muck lanterns burning in the distance. Jig splashed through puddles of half-melted snow as he followed Relka and Grell through the main tunnel toward the rounded entryway into the temple of Tymalous Shadowstar.
Glass tiles on the ceiling portrayed the pale god looking down at the goblins. As always, Jig’s gaze went to the eyes. Sparkling light burned in the center of those black sockets. No matter where you stood, those eyes always seemed to be watching you.
Once, Jig had painted a blindfold over Shadowstar’s face. The god had not been pleased.
The temple was the first cave anyone saw after entering the mountainside. Looking back, Jig probably should have put it somewhere a bit more out of the way. Mud and slush covered the floor where goblin warriors had stomped their boots and brushed themselves off as they passed through. Other warriors stood dripping by the small altar in the corner, where poor Braf struggled to heal them as quickly as he could.
Relka touched her necklace. ‘‘Make way for Jig Dragonslayer!’’
Grell coughed.
‘‘And Grell,’’ Relka added hastily.
The announcement of Jig’s arrival didn’t have the effect Relka was hoping for. Instead of spreading out to make room for Jig, the goblins split into two smaller swarms, one of which immediately surrounded Jig, the same as they had done with Braf.
‘‘Why should Jig Dragonslayer provide the healing power of Shadowstar to nonbelievers?’’ Relka demanded. She wrapped both hands around her bone-and-knife pendant. ‘‘How many of you have donned the symbol of—Ouch.’’ She stuck her finger in her mouth. Apparently the knife blades on her necklace were still sharp.
‘‘Everyone back to the lair,’’ Grell snapped. ‘‘You think those humans are going to stop once they reach the entrance? Go on.’’
Slowly the crowd dispersed through the three tunnels on the far side of the temple. All three merged a bit farther on. No doubt there would be further injuries to heal once the goblins reached that junction and fought to go first.
Grell grabbed one goblin as he turned to leave. A bloody gash crossed his scalp. ‘‘You don’t have pine needles in your hair. How did you manage to get yourself injured without leaving the tunnels?’’
‘‘Bat.’’
‘‘A bat did that to you?’’
‘‘No.’’ He pointed to another goblin. ‘‘Ruk was trying to hit the bat with his sword, and—’’
‘‘I would have got him, too,’’ interrupted Ruk. ‘‘But then he flew away.’’
Grell rubbed her forehead. ‘‘Ruk, go up the tunnel and wait by the entrance. Humans don’t see well in the dark. They’ll be disoriented. Stay there and kill anything that comes in. Anything that’s not a goblin, that is.’’
She smacked him with a cane for good measure.
Ruk left, grinning and jabbing imaginary humans with his sword. Jig watched him go. ‘‘Do you really think he’ll be able to slow down the humans?’’
‘‘Nope,’’ said Grell. ‘‘But any idiot who’d slice his own partner is one I won’t miss. When he screams, we’ll know they’ve entered the mountain.’’
Despite the imminent attack from the humans, Jig found himself relaxing as he followed Grell deeper into the dark tunnels. The closer he got to home, the more the smell of muck smoke and Golaka’s fried honey-mushrooms overpowered the scent of pine. His boots clopped against the hard stone. He ran one hand over the reddish brown wall, smiling at the familiar rippled feel of the obsidian. The warm air drifting from deep within the mountain helped drive the worst of the numbness from his fingers. Of course, that air also carried the faint smell of hobgoblin cooking, but at least it was warm.
A group of armed goblin warriors crowded near the entrance of the cavern, joking and boasting about what they would do to the humans. These were the same goblins who had shoved past Jig and Grell in their eagerness to flee back to the lair. But now that they were here, every last one shouted tales of triumph and victory, trying to top the rest.
Jig had seen it before. The worst part was that every goblin started to believe what the others were saying. Before long they would be charging back out of the mountain to prove themselves.
Grell solved the problem by jabbing the closest warriors with a cane. ‘‘You three go wait in the temple. Ambush anyone who comes in.’’
Relka shoved past Jig, clearing a path through the remaining warriors. She raised her voice, so her words echoed through the tunnels. ‘‘The high priest of Tymalous Shadowstar has returned!’’
From the direction of the hobgoblin lair, a faint voice shouted back, ‘‘Shut up, you stupid rat eaters!’’
‘‘Stupid hobgoblins,’’ Relka muttered. ‘‘Why aren’t they out there fighting the humans too?’’
‘‘Because I sent Braf to ask them for help when the humans first arrived,’’ Grell said.
Relka shook her head. ‘‘I don’t understand.’’ ‘‘The fool went and told them the truth about how many humans and elves we were fighting. The hobgoblin chief told him. . . .’’ Grell shook her head. ‘‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Braf’s not flexible enough to do it, at any rate.’’
Jig hunched his shoulders and followed them into the deep cavern the goblins claimed as their home. Inside, goblins scampered about like rats with their tails on fire. A group off to the right traded wagers as to how many goblins would die in the fighting. Others squabbled over the belongings of the dead and the almost-dead. Jig’s attention went to a skinny goblin girl near the edge of the cavern. She kept her head bowed as she moved, carefully refilling the muck pits and lighting those that had gone out.
A few years ago, that had been Jig’s job. The caustic muck could blister skin, the fumes made the whole cavern spin, and woe unto the careless goblin who let a spark land in his muck pot. Still, as smelly and humiliating as muck duty had been, at least it hadn’t involved running out into the snow in the middle of a battle. Or fighting dragons and pixies and ogres. Or trying to avoid Relka and her band of fanatics.
Jig wondered if the muckworker would be willing to trade.
Several of Relka’s friends were already crowding around Jig. Like Relka, they wore makeshift necklaces to show their devotion to Tymalous Shadowstar. Most were goblins who had been healed by Jig or Braf in the past. Given how the rest of the lair reacted to their endless praise of Jig and Shadowstar, they tended to need healing fairly often.