Bear and the Goblin of Castle Hartland

Chapter Seven: The Goblin Nest

Bear held his sword before him to weigh himself down.

He descended a submerged shaft, a long vertical hole in the bottom of the marsh. The glowing light in the handle of Wormslayer revealed that the walls were made of stone laid in distant days. Bear was descending a sunken well.

He peered ahead, tried to discern the depth of the shaft by Wormslayer's light, but the light penetrated no great depth through this dark water.

He glanced back up the shaft: motes swirled in the gloom.

Down, down, down he went.

Again he glanced back up the shaft. In the gloom beyond the swirling motes, he saw the slithering shadow. A serpent had followed him into the sunken well!

The shadow manifested into a gaping maw. Bear blew bubbles as he screamed. The serpent launched; but Bear kicked off the wall, twisted about in the shaft, and felt the rush of water as the jaws went snapping past him. Bear screamed again, blew more bubbles. The black serpent thrashed as it tried to curl its snapping jaws back around towards him; but the shaft was too narrow for a quick turn, and it smashed its head into the stones. Bear then thrust the sword through the serpent's head, pinning it to the stones. It thrashed, twitched, then died.

When Bear jerked the sword from its head, his lungs were aching: his breath was almost entirely spent! Yet he feared that another serpent would meet him if he turned back—he saw himself swim right into its maw—and so thrust his faith into the deep. He swept through the cloud of blood and disturbed silt, his sword held Wormslayer forward. The glowing gemstone in the hilt lit his way.

At the bottom he followed an opening into a dark tunnel, which had been bored through the rocks. Here Bear thought he would die, for while he made all haste, the tunnel went on and on. His lungs were now screaming.

He frowned. Bubbles streamed from his mouth. He wondered, briefly, whether his bones would lie here until the earth cracks open at the end of all things. He cursed the instinct that had led him here to die.

Yet Bear was not afraid. His regret was that the goblin mother should live; and that more in Castle Hartland should be killed this night and the next.

Suddenly the tunnel tilted upwards. Bear saw the surface of a pool! He scrambled for it, then burst from the water with a mighty gasp, and threw out an arm to anchor himself, the sword chiming on the old stones.

He had made it.

Bear sighed, then smiled for gratitude.

The goblin mother woke from her slumber.

She slept on the far side of the dark hall, on a bed of rags, which were the deteriorating clothes of her dead son's many victims. A fissure in the roof cast a streak of sunlight over the nest. Cracked pillars supported the roof, though one had collapsed and lay now half-buried by the avalanche of dirt that had spilled into the hall thereafter. Once this had been a place of power, the temple of some forgotten faerie lord.

The goblin mother howled at the sapien clinging to the side of her pool. She rushed at him, bounding on all fours.

Bear climbed out of the water, made his stand against the fell hag, and swung the ancient sword. Yet she was not so easily defeated. She bore tremendous strength, and Bear's dive through the sunken well had weakened him. Still he swung with force enough to cleave a man in two. The goblin's mother, however, caught the blade in her claws, tugged it from Bear's grip, and tossed it to join the debris strewn through the hall.

She lashed at Bear. Bear kicked her in the thigh, and back she staggered. She tumbled over the debris, then twisted onto all fours and scrambled into the shadows.