Anyway, it was better to go down fighting.
Artus was soon asleep, the stress and strain of the day dragging him down to oblivion.
A sharp jab in the back woke the explorer, how much later he could not tell. He rolled to the side, grabbing for his bow and an arrow. Holding the bow sideways, he glanced around the camp. Moonlight filtering through the canopy revealed a terrifying scene.
Judar lay face-down a few feet away. Over the motionless guide stood two squat goblins. Artus loosed the arrow, hitting one of the intruders square in the chest. It went down with a grunt, its wide mouth moving wordlessly. Two more goblins crashed from the bushes, nasty-looking spears held menacingly forward. The rustle in the vegetation to his back told Artus that others had circled around to surround him.
Kneeling as he was, the explorer could look the manlike creatures straight in the eyes. Their faces were round and flattened. Broad foreheads sloped down to dull eyes the yellow of rotten eggs. Noses that seemed uniformly squashed wandered out to their high cheekbones, toward their pointed ears. Their skin was strangely mottled with reds and oranges. Artus had seen goblins before, but never any as wild as these. They wore only torn breechcloths and a few scattered scraps of leather armor.
The rest of the arrows lay far away from the explorer, certainly too far to reach before a goblin spear took him in the back. Artus slid his grip toward one end of the longbow. It had served as a club against the dinosaurs readily enough. The goblins' skulls would prove easier to break, too…
He had tensed his legs, ready to lunge, when another goblin entered the clearing. This one was fully a foot taller than the others, with a well-tended breastplate of dinosaur hide covering his torso. He snorted when he saw the dead goblin warrior, then pointed at Artus.
The shuffle of bare feet alerted Artus to the attack. He spun around. Two goblins rushed toward him, ready to grapple him barehanded. It took but one swing of the bow to send them sprawling. A clear path to the jungle suddenly lay before him.
Maybe I'll get out of this alive, he thought hopefully.
That hope died quickly. A solid blow to the back of the head knocked Artus to the ground. Darkness rolled over his mind, shutting out the night in waves.
'He no challenge for Batiri,' the armored goblin said scornfully. He kicked Artus in the side.
The explorer spoke fluent enough Goblin to understand this coarse dialect. 'Batiri!' he gasped. Artus's thoughts spun like a raft caught in a maelstrom. Oh gods, his mind screamed, the cannibals who captured Theron!
Then another wave of darkness crashed down upon his thoughts, dragging Artus down to unconsciousness.
Artus awoke in a circular hole in the ground, rain dripping on his face through the bamboo-and-frond roof covering the dank prison. His head throbbed, and his face was wet from the rain and sticky with blood. When he tried to sit up, pain arced through his head like lightning in a stormy sky.
With a groan, he collapsed back onto the dirty straw pallet. Gingerly he touched the top of his head. Three sizeable lumps formed an uneven circle on his scalp. That would account for the blood and the pain, he decided. I got one lump when they attacked, but where did the other two come from?
Vaguely Artus recalled being moved from the site of the ambush to wherever he was now. The Batiri had tied his hands and feet, then strung a pole through the ropes. They carried him this way, just as Artus had seen big game hunters transport their trophies. Each time he awoke, a goblin clubbed him back to unconsciousness. He grimaced. That would account for the other two goose eggs.
'Well?' came a familiar voice from across the squalid room. 'You don't plan to just lie there, do you? Be a good soldier and get moving.'
Artus stared in amazement, his jaw slack. There, on a broad stump that served as the jail's only chair, sat Pontifax-or at least his ghost. The old mage was pale, and Artus could see right through him to the earthen wall. His bushy eyebrows were raised in slight amusement over eyes that still shone like phantom sapphires. His mouth was turned up in a smile.
'I–I don't believe this,' Artus muttered. He put his hand to his forehead. 'They must have hit me harder than I thought.'
'Good!' the spirit exclaimed. 'It's about time you started being a little more skeptical. Look where you've got yourself by trusting people without making them prove their mettle.' Pontifax glanced around and shook his head. 'Well, better take the gorgon by the horns and get yourself out of this, my boy. The sun is setting, and the goblins are getting restless.'
Artus closed his eyes tightly. 'This isn't happening,' he said, then repeated it two or three times, mantralike. Sure enough, when he looked again, the specter was nowhere to be seen. He chalked the hallucination up to the welts on his head, a lack of food, and the dire straits in which he now found himself.
Slowly he got to his feet, then waited for the dizziness to subside. Weak light crept into the room through the thatched roof, along with the rain. The circular prison was ten or twelve paces across in the center, with walls about fifteen feet high. No door. No ladder up to the ground.
He wondered for a moment where Judar was. Theron Silvermace had made it clear two fates were possible at the hands of the cannibalistic Batiri-becoming a sacrifice to the thing they worshiped or landing a spot on their menu. Since he was still alive, Artus assumed the goblins intended to sacrifice him. That Judar was nowhere to be seen meant another fate had likely befallen him. Artus forced that thought from his mind and scanned the room again.
The prison seemed more than roomy enough for its meager contents-a straw pallet, the up-ended log, and a few discarded wooden plates. His dagger and his bow had been taken. Since the goblins had burrowed it into the ground, the prison proved cool, if somewhat damp. Water ran down the walls in rivulets, turning the floor into a mire. Artus was a bit surprised the walls hadn't collapsed, considering how much it rained in Chult. A closer examination revealed the source of the prison's stability-a fine net of tree roots held together by bamboo poles.
Exhilaration damped the throbbing in Artus's skull and calmed the hunger raging in his stomach. A plan had presented itself, prompted by the goblins' ingenuity.
The discarded wooden plates were easy to break, cracked as they were from dampness and misuse. One of the fist-sized pieces was sharp enough for Artus's needs. With it, he set about cutting a foothold into the wall, shearing away the roots. It proved more difficult to sever the bamboo supports, but the earth had made them softer than the canes Judar had cut near the altispinax swamp. With a minimum of noise, masked in part by the falling rain, Artus cut two more footholds higher up.
Mud began to seep from the gaps almost immediately, making the climb treacherous. Twice, Artus's feet slipped from the footholds. He landed on his back in the mire, frozen with dread, waiting for a goblin guard to push back the roof to see what had caused the commotion. But the Batiri proved oblivious to Artus's activities. He was soon at the top of the wall, peering cautiously through a hole in the roof.
The prison was situated at the edge of the Batiri camp. Three huge trees towered over the hole, the source of the roots used in the walls. Nearby, a dark line of plants and vines encroached upon the area cleared for the village. That was his path to freedom.
In the other direction lay the village itself, a collection of haphazardly placed huts. Totems of dark wood jutted up before each building. The man-sized poles were intended to keep away evil spirits, Artus decided. He'd seen similar totems in orcish settlements in Thar and kobold warrens in Ashanath. The sun still struggled to break through the pallid storm clouds overhead, and patches of wan light dotted the clearing. The goblins were waiting for the sun to give up the fight and retreat for the evening. Goblins hated sunlight. It made them weak and nauseous.
Artus could see only two Batiri, and they were quite close.
'Leave be, Balt,' one of the warriors snorted. He sat at the base of a massive tree, not ten feet from the prison. A spear leaned against the trunk, well out of the goblin's reach. 'Prisoner no get away. I club on head again if he try to run.'
The Batiri with the dinosaur-hide breastplate loomed over the guard, fury dancing across his features. His grimace revealed a small pair of fangs. 'I club you,' he snarled. 'You march or you go to Grumog.'
The guard was slow to his feet, but he heeded Balt's warning. Taking up the spear, he marched toward the
