* * * * *
The first Oswald heard of their visitors were the footsteps.
He lay huddled amongst his companions, gazing fearfully at the wall of blackness beyond. Behind them, the warriors still stood silent, their torches guttering in the sodden air.
‘It doesn’t look like they’re coming,’ Cadwallader had just said, breaking the oppressive silence.
‘They will come,’ Grimbert replied quietly.
As he spoke, there came a slithering sound from the darkness. A lizard-like scuttling, a padding of naked feet: a chittering, hissing of venomous voices.
Slowly, as Oswald peered wide-eyed into the darkness, forms began to take shape before him, tiny figures advancing out of the black. Although he had seen goblins before, that had been in the darkness of midnight. Here, torchlight flickered eerily, glinting here and there from the scaled skin of the goblins as they paused at the edge of the circle of light.
Shadowing its eyes, one of them, who wore a goat-skull headdress, stepped forward.
‘Is all ready?’ it croaked in a voice that Oswald recognised as that of Puck the goblin king.
‘It is ready,’ said Grimbert tranquilly.
‘You bring the sacrifices?’ The goblin king’s voice shivered through Oswald’s mind.
‘Not just any sacrifices, eh, Grimbert?’ Caradawg laughed in a voice too loud for that of a calm man. ‘Take a good look at them!’
‘We have captured Thane Oswald and his scurrilous companions,’ Grimbert said.
The goblin king’s face seemed to twist with suspicion as he darted a glance at the fettered prisoners. Abruptly, he tittered.
‘Very well! very well!’ he laughed. ‘And very fitting. Now send your men back. Their torches hurt my eyes.’
‘But what of us?’ Caradawg demanded. He moved closer to Grimbert. ‘We need light as well!’
‘One torch we can bear,’ rasped the goblin king. ‘Anymore… No. Send them back.’
The light grew faint as the guards moved uncertainly back down the passage, leaving Caradawg himself holding a torch. Oswald and his companions were left in almost complete darkness.
‘Goblins - take the prisoners!’ Puck directed.
Dark figures scuttled over to the companions. Oswald shuddered as he felt hands as cold and clammy as a frog on his skin. They hoisted him on their shoulders. Twisting his head to left and right, he caught a glimpse of the others also being carried forward by the little creatures.
Grimbert and Caradawg followed nervously behind them, the single torch flickering feebly in the cold darkness of the cavern.