Runt scanned the scrolls, realizing immediately that they were clerical prayers. He brought them over to the cleric.
"These are indeed divine spells. They shall certainly aid us in our quest."
The dwarf and the others waited patiently for the goblin and the bard to conclude their search of the library. They found no further scrolls or books, and Runt called off the search, disappointment apparent in his watery eyes.
"I was hoping perhaps to find an entire spell book!" he whispered to Deft. The fighter smiled and patted his shoulder.
"Sorry, Runt. You're looking in the right place. It's just that this place has probably been looted scores of times in the past."
"Nobody bothered looting the library before," Twix said, "or they'd have found that scroll. But I guess today's our lucky day, or at least Sir Ganth's."
The dwarf opened the door to the left of the one they'd entered through, which opened into a long garden.
No roof blocked the sun's rays from this part of the monastery, where the atmosphere seemed somehow peaceful and quiet. Around the perimeter of the restful spot, placed in an orderly fashion, stood nine large birch trees.
The ground below was covered by a thick cushion of grass and flowers. In the center lay a pool, and at its south end, a fountain splashed into a shallow bowl. From a spout in the bowl, the water flowed back to the long pool. The water was crystal-clear, and looked cool and refreshing. The stones lining the sides and bottom of the pool were a glistening white, and reflections of the birch leaves danced in the shimmering surface.
Ganth turned to the western wall, directly to the right of the door through which they'd entered. The goblin had told him there was a secret door here, that led to the inner rooms of the monastery. The dwarf studied the wall, and soon located the pressure point. He touched it, and a stone door swung silently open. Beyond lay a hallway that stretched off into darkness, with a closed door twenty paces down on the northern wall. Behind this door sat the guards, consisting of six goblins and six hobgoblins. Beyond the guardroom, a set of stone stairs led down into the cellars and the hobgoblin lair.
The dwarf pointed to the door. "There is the entrance to the guard room. Runt, are you ready to put your plan into action?"
"I am," the magic-user nodded, his face set in firm resolution.
"Give us a few minutes to get out of sight," Ganth said.
The others went back to the dining hall, and opened the door that led off the eastern wall. They entered the square room beyond, and shut the door behind them.
A shattered oven and much broken pottery lay strewn about the room. In the southeast corner lay a large pile of garbage. Two giant rats stood atop the pile, lifting their noses and sniffing as the party entered the room. They quickly turned and ran behind the pile of trash, disappearing from sight.
"Ugh!" Bloom cried. "Rats! Disgusting! Did you see the size of them? They were bigger than a cat!"
"Quiet," Deft urged. The woman shuddered in disgust, and put her hand to her sword.
They stood clustered around the closed door, and soon, they heard a loud voice shouting in the Goblin tongue, accompanied by the sound of many booted feet running past the door. They waited for a minute longer before opening the door and hurrying back into the garden. Runt stood grinning at them.
"Success! I told them the monastery was being invaded by soldiers from Fort Gaston!"
"Good job, Runt," the cleric said. "But let us continue on before they return!"
The group entered the guardroom. Twelve plain, wooden bunks lay against the walls, and in the center of the room sat a table and two benches. The table was strewn with copper coins and a pair of crudely fashioned bone dice.
They hurried to the end of the room, where a wooden door stood closed. Ganth opened it. They stood in a small chamber with a set of stairs descending to their left.
They hurried down the stairs, which descended for a hundred feet before ending in a ten foot wide passageway that ran north and south. Lit torches sat in sconces at regular intervals on the stairs and the tunnel it led into.
Ganth pointed to the northern passage, which turned west ten feet past the stairway. "Cullen's cell lies that way, but we shall go there after we rescue Gareth. Get into marching order. Twix and I in the first rank, Deft in the second, and Bloom and Runt in the rear."
They assembled themselves in the proper order, and Ganth led them down the southern tunnel. After twenty paces, it split to the east and the west. They turned west. The tunnel led for ninety paces before ending at a junction of passageways. Forty paces away, on the southern wall, another corridor opened up.
Ganth pointed, and whispered. "That hallway leads directly into the forge."
As they stood listening, they heard the sounds of hammering, and a loud voice shouting in a strange language.
"That'll most likely be the bugbear," Deft said.
They discussed a quick plan of attack. Bloom moved up to the corridor that led to the forge and peeked into the hallway. She came quickly back.
"There's a thirty foot passageway that leads into the forge," she said. "A hob is standing at the entryway, with his back to us. Want me to sneak up on him and stick him?"
"Let me take the shot," Twix said. If I can drop him, that's one less hob to worry about. How many did the goblin say there were?"
"Eight hobs and one bugbear," said the dwarf. "All right, Twix, go to it. Everyone get ready."
The bard turned to Deft. "You take a shot too."
The fighter nodded. They nocked arrows to their bows and leaned out into the corridor. Taking their time to aim, they both loosed their arrows on the count of three. Deft's flew wide, but Twix's stabbed deep into the hob's neck. The body crumpled to the ground. They could see into the room now, and there was another hob standing in the middle of the chamber directly within their line of sight. They nodded to each other and both fired again. Deft missed, but Twix hit his mark. The hob howled in pain, but his screams were drowned out by the sounds of hammering and the roar of the flames. He whirled around towards the door, his eyes bulging out of his head in surprise as he noticed the intruders.
The archers fired a third volley. Deft missed again, and cursed vehemently, but the bard's arrow stabbed into the hob's skull and dropped him.
"Move!" Ganth ordered, and the group hustled down the hallway, stopping near the entrance to forge. At any second, someone would notice the downed hobs.
They peered through the entrance, taking quick stock of the situation inside the forge. Four huge furnaces burned along the west wall of the large chamber. The air was sooty and smoky, and smelled like coal and hot metal. The fires were heating various pieces of metal, which were being forged into weapons. Working in the forge were eight hobgoblins, one bugbear, and a dirty dwarf, imprisoned by a ball and chain attached to his ankle.
"Gareth!" Ganth said quietly. "I'm coming, nephew."
The bugbear overseer carried a large club. The creature looked like a seven foot tall, hairy goblin with reddish-brown fur, and greenish-white eyes with red pupils. The overseer bellowed and cursed at his workers. Four hobs were tending the fires, with two more hobs carrying ingots of iron over to the forges. All of the hobs had short swords at their belts. Gareth stood hammering at a sword blade at the southernmost fire. He was close to three of the hobs. The bugbear stood between the second and third fire.
All this they saw in a few seconds, then they attacked. Deft fired at the bugbear. Twix fired at the hob nearest Gareth, both arrows striking him in the neck and dropping him. Bloom quaffed a Potion of Invisibility and promptly disappeared from sight. Ganth stood ready to charge, waiting until the magic-user cast his spell.
The goblin held forth the scroll of spells the old ladies had given him, and he chanted the words on one of the pages. He pointed his finger at the clump of three hobs in the northwest corner of the room. A ball of cobwebs flew from his finger and exploded in the midst of the hobs, enveloping them and the bugbear.
Gareth, looking up and seeing his uncle with some other warriors, turned and hurled his forge hammer at the bugbear with all the strength he could muster. It hit the monster in the shoulder, but the bugbear seemed to shrug it off. Bloom, invisible, moved to engage on of the hobs near Gareth. She stabbed with all her might at the hob's heart, but the thing's leather vest was too strong for her sword to penetrate. The magic of the potion ended, since she had made an attack, and the hob was more than a little surprised to see the redhead suddenly appear in front of him.
Quartz picked up another hammer and smashed at the hob nearest him. He caught the thing in the shoulder with his heavy hammer and was satisfied to hear bones crunch.
Twix fired at the bugbear, one of his arrows taking it in the leg. The monster howled in pain, and struggled to pull himself out of the webs. He was at the very edge of the area of the spell, and the bard knew he would be able to pull himself free of the webs in the next few seconds.
Ganth charged to engage the other hob standing near his nephew, and the hob pulled out his sword and met the dwarf's attack. Their weapons clanged together as they met together in fierce battle. Deft, out of arrows, unsheathed Cinder, ignited it, and raced to help Ganth with his foe.
Bloom turned her attention to the bugbear, who had gotten free of the webs. Twix shot two more arrows at the beast, hoping to take him down quickly. One of his arrows thunked into the monster's gut, but he still stood. The distraction gave Bloom the second she needed to stab her sword deep into the bugbear's gut. The creature bellowed in pain and doubled over, then slid backwards off Bloom's sword and crashed to the floor. The thief cheered and raised her bloody sword. Around her, Deft, Ganth and Gareth were fighting the last two hobs. She moved to help Gareth, hoping to be able to stick her sword into the hob's back, since it was engaged with the dwarf and had his back to her.
Ganth dropped his hob with a devastating blow to the head that split the hob's skull like a walnut. Now there was only one hob left. Bloom ran up to him and stabbed her sword deep into his back. The hob's head jerked back, and he dropped to the ground.
Deft glanced quickly around. Of the three hobs in Runt's magical web, only two were still struggling to get free. The bugbear and the other five hobs were dead.
"Keep watch!" Ganth called to Twix and Runt, who still stood in the doorway of the room. Deft hurried around the room, pulling arrows out of dead hobs and picking up those that had missed their mark. He grimly went over to the hobs in the web and fired arrows at them at close range until they were both dead. He was out of arrows, but Twix still had some, and he returned them to the halfling.
Bloom quickly poked around the room, looking for magic items or valuables, but there was nothing else in the room except for two large piles of iron bars, a pile of firewood, a pile of coal, and rack of metalworking tools consisting of tongs, hammers, anvils, and pry bars. A door in the southeastern corner of the room led into a small room furnished with a simple bed, table, and chair.
Ganth embraced his nephew in a great bear-hug, and Gareth groaned. The cleric pulled back to see his nephew was wounded in two places. He quickly pulled out a Potion of Healing from his pack and gave it to Gareth.
"Drink this. It will heal you. Then we need to get out of here."
Gareth pulled the cork out of the bottle and drank the viscous contents. "Thank you, uncle. Now you may hug me."
The two embraced for a long while. Ganth fought back tears. "I never thought I would see you again, you fool! I hope you learned your lesson!"
"I did, uncle. I swear I did."
They pulled away, and Gareth hung his head, tears streaming from his eyes. "It was awful. They told me they'd kill me if I didn't work the forges for them. Cullen…he couldn't take it. He tried to run off, but they caught him. He's dead, uncle. They killed him."
Ganth's face went grim. Even though he had never liked Cullen, thinking him a no good troublemaker, he was sorry for his nephew that his friend was dead.
"There was nothing you could have done. You are lucky yourself to be alive."
Deft walked up to them. "We should be getting out of here."
He extended his hand to Gareth. "I'm Deft Bladehaft."
"Gareth Ironhand. Pleased to meet you."
Gareth looked like a younger version of Ganth, and it was obvious they were related.
"The woman is Bloom, and over near the door we have Twix Relkin the halfling and Runt the magic-user."
Gareth bowed low. "I owe you all my life. It is a debt that I can never repay, but I will do my best. I am at your service."
"You are quite welcome," Deft smiled.
The group hurried over to the doorway.
"What now?" Twix asked. "I'm going after Bash. I could use some help, if you guys are game."
Ganth frowned. "I do not know, Twix. My quest was to rescue my nephew from these degenerates."
The rest agreed to accompany the bard, and with that, Ganth assented. He didn't want to let Gareth out of his sight until they were safely across the river.
"I suppose we will be doing Fort Gaston a favor, by wiping out the enemy's king. The hobs will not know what to do, and we can return here with a strong force and wipe out the rest of the hobs."
"Sounds good to me," Gareth said grimly. "I have a score to settle with these bastards."
"So do I," Twix said, his brown eyes glinting. "I want that hob king's head, whether it's Bash or not. The only good hob is a dead hob."
"Is anyone else injured?" Deft asked. He noticed Bloom had a slash on her arm. She saw him looking at her and grinned wryly.
"It's just a flesh wound. Don't worry about it."
"Are you sure? We've got enough healing potions and berries…"
"And we should have them for when we really need them."
The fighter shrugged. "Suit yourself."
They came up with a quick plan of attack against the king, who had two bodyguards with him at all times, according to the goblin they'd interrogated. Deft was out of arrows. Twix offered him some of his.
"Thanks, Twix, but no. You're a way better archer that I am. I'll fight with my sword.
"Should we hide these bodies?" Bloom asked.
"If we do," Runt said, "we'll have to wait half an hour for my spell to dissipate, before we can move the hobs trapped within the webs."
"We do not have the luxury of time," said the cleric. "Leave the bodies. It is only a matter of time before the hobs realize we are here.