“Do you not know how to wink?” I whispered in response.
“No,” he said softly.
The tunnel twisted and turned but, thankfully, didn’t branch off at any point. Eventually, Nadi slowed, and then held up her hand, signaling us all to stop. She gestured for us to stay put while she crept forward silently and disappeared around a bend up ahead. A few minutes later, she came back, making less than a whisper of sound. She was good.
She motioned for us to walk back down the tunnel a ways, which we did, albeit not quite as quietly. Whiska belching didn’t help matters, nor did Borg loudly pulverizing a rock by accidentally stepping on it. Once we had moved far enough to satisfy her, she leaned in, motioning for us all to do the same.
“Tunnel goblins up ahead,” she whispered. “A lot of them, from the sounds of it.”
“How far?” I asked.
“Hard to say—sound travels strangely down here, and I didn’t want to risk getting too far down the passageway without you. They’re close, though.”
“What’s the plan?” asked Rummy.
“I would say we go in fast and hard behind the brightest spell Whiska has, but tunnel goblins weren’t the only thing I heard,” replied Nadi. She looked back over her shoulder before turning back to us. “I heard something else—another voice, much deeper and more guttural.”
I raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. I’d taken a moment during our last rest to ensure that it remained immaculate and artfully formed; good grooming is important even in the face of imminent death. “Minotaur?”
Nadi shrugged. “I’ve never heard one talk before. If I was a betting woman, though…”
“Five gold!” shouted Whiska. Nadi frantically shushed her. Voice lower, but with undiminished enthusiasm, she continued. “No, no—ten gold! Twenty!”
“Quiet!” Nadi silently screamed (by which I mean she mouthed the word with animated vigor). “What in the name of Tenelor’s Mourning Ballad are you talking about?”
“I love Tenelor’s Mourning Ballad!” I replied. “It was one of the first songs I learned. The best part about it is how you can vary the key every time you—”
“Not now, Heloise,” said Nadi, pointedly but not unkindly. She turned back to Whiska. “Now then…what?”
“You wanted to bet. I’m betting you. I want to bet you so much gold that it’ll be pouring out of my powerful hindquarters.”
“Now there’s an image that might scare away a minotaur,” said Rummy amiably, “and a half-dwarf, half-halfling.”
“It was a figure of speech!” replied an exasperated Nadi.
“Oh.” Whiska’s face fell for a moment before brightening again. “Well, at least we’re getting closer to the gold, right? If we’re close to the minotaur, we must be getting close to the dragon.” Her eyes glinted and she cackled as she rubbed her hands together, blue tendrils of energy crackling gently across her fingertips.
I looked at Nadi and said, in elvish (which, admittedly, was not my strongest language, albeit better than my orcish), “The one who appears as if to be made from the sexy times of two giant rats and smells in the manner of a horse’s fragrant after-meal leavings may punch-face friendly friends when close to all of the shiny stuff you can use to buy ham.”
“Ham?” repeated Nadi, also in elvish (obviously), and slightly bewildered.
I nodded, reasonably confident that I’d used the right word. “Ham.”
Nadi’s brow furrowed as she parsed what I thought had been a reasonably coherent statement. “Wait—do you mean lurcschus or lurcschut?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Lurcschus means things.”
I frowned. “What did I say?”
“Lurcschut.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ham.”
“I didn’t mean to say ‘ham.’ I definitely meant ‘things.’”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You got everything else, though, right?”
Nadi half shrugged and half nodded. “More or less. I think.” She looked at Whiska, who was, inexplicably, still cackling. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”
“So,” said Rummy, sticking his face in between us. “I think it would probably be better to share the details of your brilliant plan in the common tongue.”
“Right,” said Nadi. “I think we need to assume the minotaur is in there, along with a significant number of tunnel goblins—which means we need to go in more carefully.”
“Why?” said Whiska. “That’s stupid. You had it right the first time—we go in hard and fast.”
“It’s not like orcish lovemaking,” I replied. “We need to be cautious and feel things out slowly because we don’t know what’s going on or what we’re doing and if we’re not careful we’re going to be in a real mess.” I paused. “Like human lovemaking.”
“I agree,” said Nadi.
“How do you know how humans make love?” asked Rummy.
Nadi blushed. “I meant about the approach.”
“Oh.” Rummy looked at me. “I was hoping there was a story there.”
“We should…divide our forces,” said Borg. “Nadi and I…go first. Distract them. While…they fight us…Heloise and Rummy…work around…the edges.” He took a breath—this was a lot of talking for him. “Whiska comes…in last. She…hits hard while…attention is elsewhere.”
Nadi chewed her lower lip, then nodded. “It’s a good plan. Good thinking, Borg. Any objections?”
Nods all around, except from Whiska, who shrugged. “I still think I should just fling a fireball in there.”
“You may still get that chance, so keep it ready,” replied Nadi.
“That’s like telling a flaccidon to hang loose,” scoffed Whiska. (Flaccidons are small lizards that spend most of their days sprawling limply in the sunlight.)
“All right, then.” Nadi drew her sword and pointed it down the hallway. “Let’s do this.”
You’d be surprised how many tunnel goblins even a rock giant who’s not that good of a fighter can take down with a single swing of a club. (It’s seven, incidentally.) With Borg and Nadi leading the way, we blitzed our way into the cavern, scattering tunnel goblins left and right. Nadi scythed her way through a half dozen in short order, and even Rummy and I managed to cut down a significant quantity. (Two, incidentally, is a significant quantity in my book.)
It wasn’t the tunnel goblins that presented the problem, however—it was the two ogres and the exceedingly large minotaur that also occupied the cavern, and none of the three looked all that happy to see us (though who can tell with ogres; they always look like they just sat on a pinecone). Fortunately, Whiska, following hard on our heels, was more than ready to unleash magical destruction, bombarding the trio with a massive fireball the moment she entered the room.
Based on the way they started rolling around on the ground and screaming, the fire caused the ogres some pretty serious pain. Funny thing about minotaurs, though, and something that none of us had known before we walked into the room that day: they’re immune to fire. Hitting one with a fireball is pretty much the same as tossing a fluffy kitten who really loves to lick people onto its back. So, it wasn’t the most effective opening salvo.