The inn was packed, standing room only around the bar, so the effect of the gnoll incursion was immediate and terrifying. Screams filled the room as people scrambled up from their seats and charged in a frightened mass for the back exit through the kitchen. This immediately created a dangerous bottleneck, with everyone trying to push through the narrow kitchen doorway at once. Glass shattered, tables and chairs were knocked aside, and people fell and were trampled in the chaos.
The barkeep and the few patrons who were armed grabbed their axes, cudgels, and swords and engaged the gnolls, and things got bloody very fast.
Edgin and Forge jumped up at the same time. Their eyes met, and Edgin nodded at their table. Forge said, “Right,” and together they tipped the heavy wood table onto its side, putting their bodies between it and the back wall for some cover. Sifting through the broken dishes and cutlery now littering the floor, Edgin came up with a blunt knife.
“Are you serious?” Forge asked when he saw what Edgin was brandishing.
“Best I got,” Edgin said tersely. Well, that wasn’t actually true. He glanced around, looking for Holga in the chaos, but she’d disappeared.
A gnoll slammed its hairy, muscled body into their table, and he didn’t have time to think about her anymore. Teeth gnashed the wood as the creature tried to scramble over the barrier to get to them. Edgin stabbed at the gnoll with his supper knife, aiming for an eye. He missed, only just managing not to lose a finger in the process.
Forge drew an impressively long dagger from his boot, and that gave Edgin an idea.
“I’ll pin—you stab,” he shouted, and without waiting for agreement, he drove his shoulder into the table, putting all his weight into it. The wood groaned, and the blow knocked the gnoll off-balance just enough for Edgin to shove the table down on top of it, pinning it with his weight.
The gnoll snarled and pushed back, claws scrabbling along the wood, trying to free itself. Edgin pressed down harder, but the creature was clearly stronger than him. It was only a matter of time before the gnoll threw him off.
“Forge!” He winced as the table bucked, banging his chin hard enough to make him see stars. “This is the stab part!” A sharp pain shot through his knee as the table banged against it. “Stabbing would be good now!”
Forge finally maneuvered his way through the frantic crowd so he stood behind where the gnoll’s head poked out from beneath the table. Bracing his foot against the edge, Forge drove his dagger into the creature’s eye. There was a high-pitched squeal as the gnoll jerked, its body convulsing.
When it had stopped thrashing, Edgin slid off the table and stood up, looking around. Things were grim. At least four of the townspeople had been killed, and several others lay moaning on the floor, clearly injured. He counted eight gnolls in the raiding party. Including theirs, only three of them had been killed.
One of them had had its head split in half by an axe blade.
Following the blood trail, Edgin spied Holga with another gnoll cornered by the fire. Face twisted in a snarl, blood dribbling from a cut on her forehead, Holga reared back and planted her foot in the middle of the thing’s chest, sending it flying into the fire. The smell of burning hair and seared gnoll flesh filled the room, making Edgin gag.
“Not that this hasn’t been fun, but we should probably be getting out of this death trap,” Forge observed. Though winded from the stabbing, he appeared calm enough. “Front door maybe?”
Edgin nodded in agreement. The remaining gnolls were looting the bodies of the patrons they’d killed and grabbing whatever other valuables they could find. At the speed they were moving, it didn’t look like they intended to be here long either. Smash and grab, take the loot to their lair. That was what this looked like.
Then Edgin remembered that his and Forge’s coin had been scattered all over the table, and he’d left his lute on the stage.
He whirled around and, sure enough, two gnolls were sweeping over the floor like ugly, scraggly brooms, collecting their discarded coin. One of them had Edgin’s lute slung over its shoulder.
“Hey!” Edgin scrambled to get to the creature who’d taken his stuff, but another gnoll got in his way and tackled him to the floor. “Drop that lute! We cheated for that coin fair and square!”
The gnoll squealed and rolled, trying to get on top of Edgin. Edgin’s knife flew out of his hands, but Edgin held on, and they rolled across the floor, tripping several people along the way, until they slammed into the back wall. Edgin, unfortunately, ended up on the bottom, and had to use both hands to hold back the gnoll’s snapping teeth. Its breath was hot and rancid on his face, and Edgin’s heart hammered wildly as he looked around frantically for another weapon.
“Holga! Little help here!”
“Busy!” she shouted back.
Wonderful. He was going to get his throat ripped out by a gnoll on the worst night of music and the best night of cards he’d ever had. He started to yell for Forge, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man wrestling with another gnoll, who was trying to rip his dagger out of his hands.
Fine, he’d do it himself.
Edgin planted his forearm in the gnoll’s throat. The thing choked, tongue lolling grossly from the side of its mouth. With his other hand, Edgin felt around the floor and came up with a mostly intact serving plate. He smashed the gnoll in the face with it as hard as he could. The creature shrieked and recoiled, allowing Edgin to shove it off and scramble to his feet.
A high-pitched, keening cry pierced his eardrums. Edgin cursed and slapped his hands over his ears. A gnoll standing near the door had made the horrible sound, and the rest of its cohorts looked up, dropping everything—and everyone—and charging for the door in a rush.
Edgin ran after them. Holga met him at the door, just in time to see the group of creatures running off into the night toward the edge of town. They’d gotten as much loot as they could and were in full retreat. Smash, grab, and go.
Behind him, Forge cursed like a drunken sailor. “They got every bit of my coin—our coin,” he amended when Edgin shot him a look.
And Edgin’s lute. It may not have been his best night performing, but that didn’t mean he was ready to give up his lute to a bunch of flea-bitten, overgrown hyenas. Edgin looked around at the ruined tavern, the bodies on the floor. Some of them were people he’d drunk with or waved to on the streets, even if he didn’t know all their names. At the edge of the stage, the halfling bard was cradling a broken wrist and gathering up the shattered remains of her own beautiful lute, tears streaming down her face.
Edgin gritted his teeth and looked at Holga. She read his expression perfectly, because she nodded once, wiping a streak of blood from her face. “Let’s get ’em,” she growled.
Edgin tried to scrape together a plan as he, Holga, and Forge pelted through the forest, following by torchlight the tracks and blood trails and scattered bits of loot left behind by the escaping gnolls.
It was all well and good to shout Let’s get ’em and run off into the night like a band of avenging idiots, but they needed a strategy here, because it was dark, they were still outnumbered by the gnolls, and if they chased them all the way back to their lair, there might be even more of the creatures waiting for them, besides whatever other dangers lurked in this forest. Edgin didn’t know if they had the numbers for that kind of fight, even counting Holga as two or three people.
He’d also lost his supper knife, so he didn’t even have a ready weapon. At least Holga still had her axe. He hoped Forge had kept hold of his dagger.
“All right, let’s slow down,” Edgin said as they plunged deeper into the forest, Forge struggling to get his footing among the mossy rocks and underbrush. The torchlight was uneven but still bright enough that it effectively announced their presence to anyone nearby. Edgin leaned against a tree to catch his breath and waited for Holga and Forge to join him.
“Going to lose them if we stop,” Holga said.
She was right. They could hear the squeals and shrieks of the gnoll raiding party getting fainter in the distance.
“We’re not stopping long,” Edgin said, “but we need a plan. We can’t just charge right into their lair.”
“An ambush, then?” Forge asked. He gestured to himself. “I may not look like it, but I can move stealthily when I want to. It comes in handy in my line of work.”
“As a merchant?” Holga said, her eyes narrowed.
Forge looked hurt. “You know, I wasn’t lying about that part. I do sell a diverse and valuable product line.” He shrugged. “Most of the time the product just isn’t mine.”
“Ethics aside,” Edgin said, “you seemed pretty decent with that dagger of yours earlier.”
“Oh, this?” Forge drew the blade out of his boot. He’d wiped the gnoll blood off of it at some point. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? It isn’t mine either, but thank you.”
Holga sighed. “Can we go now?”
“We’re going,” Edgin said, “but back off with the torchlight once we get close to their lair. They might have scouts or sentries. We go in quiet, execute an ambush if it’s feasible, take back our loot, and celebrate afterwards.”
“Agreed,” Forge said, and Holga offered a grunt of acknowledgment.
They moved quickly through the forest, keeping as quiet as possible, with Holga bringing up the rear and doing her best to conceal the torchlight. Luckily the moon was full enough to provide them some additional light. A cold breeze blew across the back of Edgin’s neck, ruffling his hair.
Despite the danger, a flood of excitement had him clenching and unclenching his fists as they moved, the blood pumping in his ears. They finally broke into a narrow clearing that slashed through the forest to see a tumble of rocks and a yawning cave entrance marking the gnolls’ hideout.
Gnoll squeals and shouts echoed eerily from deep within the cave as Edgin approached. There was no guard at the entrance, but that didn’t make him feel any better. It just meant they needed to expect other defenses.
“Watch the ground for any sign of traps,” he whispered over his shoulder. Holga and Forge gave a nod, and they ducked inside the dark cave.
The passage sloped downward sharply at first, so much so that Edgin braced himself with his hands on the ground and half crawled into the tunnel. The air quickly became stale, and it reeked of gnoll waste. Edgin’s boots squelched in something soft and rank. He didn’t look down to see what it was. He knew.
Luckily, the passage leveled out after a few more feet, and they could all stand upright again. Edgin stayed in front, with Forge behind him and Holga in the rear with the light. The cries of the gnolls were growing louder, but the sounds were also more diffuse, as if the main group had split at some point. Sure enough, the passage curved and then forked, and they had a choice to make.
“Harder to ambush two groups,” Forge commented, echoing Edgin’s thoughts. “Maybe we should have brought some of the more heavily armed villagers with us.”
Edgin shook his head. “More people just ruin the element of surprise, which I still think we can use.” He gestured to the passage that angled off to the left. “The two of you stay here and watch that tunnel to make sure none of them come out. If they do, douse the torch, back off, and hide.”
“What are you going to do?” Holga demanded, scowling at him.
“I’m going down the other tunnel to see if I can get an idea of how many we’re dealing with. Most of the noise is coming from there anyway,” he said. When Holga’s frown only deepened, he added, “I’m not going to try to be a hero, believe me.” Those days were far behind him. “If there are too many of them, I’ll come right back.”
He dearly hoped he wouldn’t have to. They’d stolen a lot of coin from him—and a little bit from Forge—that he couldn’t afford to spare, and he wanted his lute back. Hopefully, it was still in one piece.
Leaving Forge and a scowling Holga behind, Edgin crept down the right-hand passage. The torchlight illuminated the space a few yards ahead of him, but even that meager light was quickly gone, and soon he was just feeling his way in the dark. He pushed away a jolt of fear and claustrophobia. Surely, there’d be light once he got close enough to where the gnolls were living—torches, or at least fires for warmth and cooking. Until then, he kept one hand on the wall to his left, fingers trailing over cold, slimy stone. He suppressed a shudder.
Finally, after what seemed like an age of creeping through the dark, a faint, flickering light appeared ahead of him, enough to allow Edgin to see that the passage was widening. The sounds of the gnolls were growing louder too. Edgin slowed his steps and crouched low to the ground, sneaking up to the mouth of the tunnel to peer into the room beyond.
His stomach dropped. It appeared he was looking into the gnoll equivalent of a dining hall, and the room was packed. A quick count showed over a dozen gnolls in this room alone. They were gathered around what could loosely be described as a table. Really it was just a pile of flat stones pushed together, and on this they’d dumped the loot from the tavern: piles of coin, jewelry they’d stolen off people’s bodies, and some good-quality weapons and tools.
And in the center of it all was his lute, sitting abandoned and unwanted by the gnolls in favor of the other shiny objects they’d picked up.
Edgin’s heart sank. He was going to have to leave it. There was no way they could take on a dozen gnolls, especially when they didn’t know how many were down the other passage. It had been a foolish impulse to come here. He needed to get out before the gnolls saw or heard him.
Moving carefully, his heart in his throat, Edgin began backing down the tunnel in the direction he’d come. He tried to stick to the same path he’d taken to get to this point, but the darkness enveloped him again like a suffocating cloak, and he was on edge enough that he didn’t pay attention to where he was putting his feet. His toe caught painfully on the edge of a large rock, and he stumbled, hands flailing. He regained his balance, but when he braced his feet, his right foot sank a few inches into the cave floor, and he heard a soft click, like some sort of mechanism activating.
Oh Hells…
He tried to run, but as soon as he put his weight on his right foot, a section of the cave floor gave way beneath him, and he was suddenly falling into the dark.