The Goblin Warrior (Beneath Sands Book 2) by Emma Hamm (100 books to read txt) 📕

They all wanted to remember their first glance at the City.

All but Jane and goblins were clustered around each crack to see the sun set behind the metal building.

“Everyone off!”

The shouts started before the train had finished stopping. The sides of the train car busted open and people slid from inside. Some fell onto the ground, others jumped to safety.

The goblins stood up, their balance uneven as they stared at the ground that was still moving.

“Come on!” One of the boys shouted at them, waving his hat in the air. “You gotta jump! It doesn’t stop!”

Jane took in a steadying breath. She looked at Ruric and linked her arm in his. Shusar took her other arm and Illyrin stood behind the three of them.

“We’re here.” She said. The words were yanked from her mouth by the wind.

They all seemed to hesitate until Illyrin growled from behind them.

“Here.”

His strong arms linked around all of their waists and as one they lept from the train.

The people from the train made camp on the edge of the City that night. They set up tents around the area like a makeshift town. The less fortunate simply laid themselves out upon the sands and tried to sleep.

“What now?” Ruric whispered in her ear.

Jane shook her head. She hadn’t thought this far. If she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t thought they would even get this far. There were so many things that could have killed them, and yet somehow they managed to live.

Now she had to get inside the City. She had to find her siblings. She had to find the goblin boy. She had to get him out.

Ruric’s hand spread wide against her back as her knees started to go weak.

“Do you need to sit down?”

“No.” She said quietly. “I need to get in there.”

“How do we get in?”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes narrowed. Though the rest of his face was covered by cloth, she could tell that he was angry with her.

“You what?”

“I don’t know how to get into the City.”

He stepped towards her, physically pushing her backwards. Each step seemed as though she was backing away from a mountain.

“You brought us here. You don’t know how to get in?”

“Not for sure!” She stumbled as her feet sank into the sands. “It’s a random selection! Not everyone gets to go in.”

“How else do we get in?”

“We don’t. That place is locked down.”

“Every place has a second way to get into it.”

“Not this place, Ruric. There is no other way to get into the City other than that door.” She pointed towards the small rectangle that the goblins would have to duck to go through. “They designed this place like a fortress. No one gets in and no one gets out.”

Ruric stopped pushing her long enough to make eye contact with Shusar. They spoke quietly in the goblin language for a moment before the smaller goblin drifted away from the group.

Jane watched him leave with concerned eyes. “It’s not wise to split up.”

“Wise?”

She turned back towards him. “We need to stay together. You don’t know where you are here. You could get lost.”

“We will manage.” His voice was little more than a low rumble. “You lied again.”

“I did not lie.” She pushed a palm against his shoulder. Jane enjoyed the moment of satisfaction as he moved backwards a step. “I told you I could get you here. And I did.”

Ruric shook his head and moved to settle down onto the sand with Illyrin.

She stood staring at the two of them, her hands planted on her hips. Somehow the idea of doing nothing was even more frustrating than not knowing what to do.

“Well?” She said loudly, waiting for either of the goblins to look at her.

Neither of them did.

“What are we going to do?”

There was a heavy moment of silence before Ruric finally answered her.

“We are going to wait.”

“For what?” Jane couldn’t help but raise her voice into a shout.

There was a glint of light that reflected from deep within Ruric’s eyes. “For Shusar.”

She settled heavily onto the sand next to them. “Right. We’re going to wait for a goblin who has never been here to come up with some kind of miracle that will allow us to somehow get into a City that has been locked down for hundreds of years.”

The goblins didn’t flinch at her ramblings. This only served to make her even more angry.

“Right, we shouldn’t ask the other humans who have been here to see if there’s a trick to getting in. That maybe there might be some kind of bribery that we could pull. Nothing along those lines of course?”

Again, there was no response. The goblins seemed to have gone into a trance as they stared a foot in front of them at the sand that shifted ever so slowly in the wind.

Letting out a huff of breath, she pulled her cloak off of her shoulders and bunched it underneath her head.

“Fine. I’m going to sleep then. Wake me when the sun rises or Shusar somehow manages to find some kind of miracle.”

Jane squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the silence of the goblins. She hadn’t thought that quiet could be loud, yet here she was wishing that one of them would shift their weight so that her ears would stop ringing.

She had difficulty falling asleep. There were too many thoughts running through her mind and Jane wanted them all to quiet down.

They had travelled all this way and just beyond those walls were the answers to everything that they sought. Perhaps the goblin boy that had been stolen was already inside. She shuddered to think of what the people in there would do to him. She had seen what the goblins did to humans.

Somehow Jane didn’t think the response would be all that different.

Simon could be in there as well. The man who she had come to think of as something like a brother, or perhaps something more, who had betrayed her trust in the