The Rover

by Mel Odom

  “Brant. Cobner. Lago. All of them.”

  The little librarian stared through the gap. He’d been so tired and had his mind so full of imponderabilities about what his next move was going to be that he hadn’t really been paying attention to Sonne or their arrival back at the blocked area. He supposed he might have had a vague thought about why Cobner hadn’t been hammering away at the massive stone block, but that had quickly gone by the wayside.

  Although the experience had been dreadfully frightening, seeing Shengharck had been a remarkable event in his life. After all, how many other Librarians—even first and second level ones and grandmagisters—could say they’d seen a dragon?

  Now he stared into the darkened chamber where they’d left their friends only a few hours ago and realized that the campfire no longer burned. It was still dark in the chamber, as well as cold. Brant would have kept the campfire going if everything had been all right, and there had been plenty of wood.

  Slowly, Wick crawled through the space, his senses alive and his mind fixed on the latest conundrum facing them. Brant wouldn’t have willingly left them. Maybe the master thief didn’t feel so beholden to Wick, but the little librarian felt certain the man wouldn’t have left Sonne without knowing her fate. So what had happened?

  Sonne walked around the area with her lantern held high. The yellow light skated across the pick-scarred walls and chased the shadows away. She knelt by the fire and put her hand in the ashes. “It’s still warm,” she said. “They haven’t been gone long.”

  “Brant wouldn’t have left you,” Wick stated.

  “No,” Sonne replied. The lantern light played over the hard planes on her face. “Something happened.”

  Wick scoured the stone floor. Enough dirt had fallen onto the cavern floor that impressions of footwear could be seen, but it was a jumbled mess. A dark stain covered the rock in front of him. He leaned down and played the lantern beam over it.

  “That’s blood,” Sonne said from behind him.

  Wick’s lantern light glinted dully against the drying stain.

  “Not enough to kill someone,” Sonne added, “but it was a terrible wound all the same.”

  A faint, smudged impression above the bloodstain caught Wick’s eye. He focused on it, turning the lantern so that the greatest amount of light shone on it. The impression of five ugly toes glared up from the loose soil.

  “What did you find?” Sonne asked, moving over to see.

  “A footprint,” Wick answered worriedly. “A bare footprint.” Goblinkin don’t wear shoes.

  Sonne’s face paled as she surveyed the telltale print. “Goblins took them.”

  They moved outward. Now that they had found the first goblinkin footprint, the others became easier to find. Dozens littered the floor.

  “Come on,” Sonne said tensely. “There’s only one way they could have gone out of this mine shaft.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Wick asked.

  Sonne whirled on the little librarian. “Do? What am I going to do?”

  The way that the young girl re-asked the question Wick had just asked her was a clear indication to the little dweller as to how much trouble he was in for asking it in the first place. It’s bad enough when someone repeats an answer you’ve given him or her. But when they repeat the question you asked so that you’ll more completely understand how stupid or foolish you’ve shown yourself to be, it’s really bad.

  When Wick didn’t answer right away, Sonne said, “I’m going after them.”

  “If there were enough goblinkin to take Brant and Cobner and the others,” Wick pointed out, “what real good are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll just get ourselves killed or captured.”

  “So you think we should just make our escape and leave them to their own devices?”

  Wick really didn’t like the way the option sounded when she said it. “That would be the wisest thing we could do.”

  “No, it isn’t!” the young girl exploded. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll get any kind of warm welcome from those dweller communities in Blackgate Cove. If goblinkin slavers have raided them for years, they probably don’t take well to strangers. We’d be better off with Brant there to talk for us. He knows how to talk to everyone to smooth things over and make things work out.”

  Wick couldn’t fault her logic. Still it chafed at him that she was asking him to do what she wanted him to do now, but had forbidden it when the goblinkin had arrived in the outer chamber with the dwellers in chains. “There’s only the two of us. Hardly a rescue squad.”

  “We won’t know,” Sonne argued, “until we see what it is we’re facing. Stay or go, halfer. The decision is yours.” With that, she turned to go.

  Wick hesitated only a moment. He didn’t like the idea of Brant and the others in the hands of goblinkin slavers, but he didn’t know what they were going to do about it. But he did know that no matter how afraid he was, he couldn’t let the girl go alone. “Sonne,” he called.

  She turned to look at him, unshed tears glinting in her eyes. “What?”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Good.” Sonne wiped her face and continued forward.

  Wick glanced around, moving the lantern to and fro, studying the ground. Then he noticed an odd assortment of stones collected into a half-moon shape. His mind wrestled with that puzzle, then he remembered how Tseralyn had played with the nearby stones while she’d visited with Brant earlier. Was this her work? And if it was, why had she done it?

  Before he had time to ferret out an answer, Sonne was already striding down the mine shaft. Wick abandoned the puzzle and hurried after her, dreadfully certain they were chasing their doom.

  Much to Wick’s surprise, they reached the main chamber of Mine Shaft Number Six without any further mishap. Several times footprints Sonne followed so diligently with her lantern faded out across patches of bare stone floor, but they had only to walk a little further on to find them again.

  The little librarian’s mind raced, fed by the fear that filled him. We’re walking around in a dragon’s lair that’s filled with goblinkin slavers! The thought kept hammering away at him. Every now and then his knees almost buckled.

  He lifted his lantern high as he and Sonne searched the main chamber floor. Along the way, he’d found a few more small rock piles placed in the same half-moon shape. As he recalled, those had been resting places where Brant had called for a break, or the pace had been slow enough that the markers—for that was what Wick was certain they were—could be laid. But markers for whom? That question made Wick uneasy. How had the goblinkin slavers found Brant and the others so easily?

  “The tracks are confusing,” Sonne whispered in hoarse frustration. “I don’t know if the goblinkin took Brant and the others into the third tunnel or if they went outside with them.”

  Wick nodded, figuring it was best to speak as infrequently as possible while Sonne was in the emotional state she was in. The main chamber of Mineshaft Number Six was filled with footprints of goblins. Those prints were so easily seen now by lantern light. The torches they’d carried in had flickered a lot, and they hadn’t been looking too much for goblinkin footprints. They’d already known the goblinkin walked through the passageways.

  “Did they get caught by goblinkin coming out of the passageway through the mountains?” Sonne asked. “Or goblinkin going into the passageway?”

  “I don’t know,” Wick answered. At first, he’d been afraid that they would overtake and encounter the goblinkin slaving party they’d seen at the underground lake, but that hadn’t happened. Evidently the goblin slavers had made good time through the passageway.

  “It doesn’t make sense that they would take Brant and the others through the passageway, does it?” Sonne asked. “Shengharck would charge them for bringing slaves through, and they’d only have to turn around and take them back out to sell them in Hanged Elf’s Point.”

  Wick refrained
from stating the possibility that Brant and the others might have been captured solely for torturing. He preferred to believe the goblinkin in the mountains were greedy enough to get every gold piece they could. “We could check outside for them,” the little librarian pointed out. “If we climb up the mountain, we should be able to look across the foothills and spot them.”

  Sonne glanced at the third tunnel. “And if we’re wrong?”

  “Then we’ll come back here and search again,” Wick said. “Sometimes you have to be willing to do the wrong thing in order to learn the right thing to do. Standing here, looking at footprints that we already know we can’t make sense of isn’t going to help us. Or the others.”

  Sonne nodded. Without another word, she headed for the main entrance to Mine Shaft Number Six.

  Wick followed her, blinking his eyes against the harsh brilliance of the sun after being in the cave for so long again. He’d hardly taken two steps outside when he heard brush rustle behind him. Panic set in, making him turn quickly, a hand going up in front of his face when he thought of the giant spider he’d seen in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows. There were no guarantees the monstrous arachnids only hunted within the forest. Too late, he remembered the long knife at his side.

  A heavy body crashed into the little librarian, driving him to the stony ground. Even as the breath left his lungs and his wounded backside screamed in agony from the impact, he felt relieved that whatever had attacked him wasn’t a giant spider.

  However, the grim visage of the man sitting astride him stripped away most of that happy moment. The man was human, dressed in scarred warrior’s leathers. There was no adorning insignia that identified the man or to whom he belonged. His black hair hung loose about his shoulders, falling out of place like a raven’s dropped wing as it sat cooling in summer heat. His gray eyes were like ice, cold and merciless. Pockmarks scored his cheeks and neck, mixing with the scars from blades.

  Coolly and professionally, with no evident passion at all, the man clapped a hand over Wick’s mouth and pulled a short skinning knife from the scabbard attached to his leather chest armor. The little librarian breathed through his nose frantically. The man’s legs pinned Wick’s arms to his sides against the ground.

  The warrior pressed the sharp blade against the little librarian’s throat. Wick felt the stinging bite of the knife, then the warmth of blood running from the small cut. “Move,” the man warned in a raspy voice as he glanced up toward Sonne, “and your little friend here dies first. Trust me when I say that you’ll die next.”

  Rolling his eyes, Wick was just able to see Sonne standing ahead of him. Knives filled both her hands and the lantern lay overturned and leaking oil at her feet.

  Quiet as shadows, other men dressed as the big warrior was in unadorned warrior’s leathers stood from the surrounding brush. All of them were humans. Most of them carried swords and battle-axes, but four archers among them trained their weapons on Sonne.

  Wick wanted to speak, but the big man didn’t remove his hand from the little librarian’s mouth. He lay there feeling helpless, the stone ground digging into his back.

  “Do you understand?” the big warrior asked.

  “Yes,” Sonne replied dully.

  “Drop your weapons.”

  Sonne let her knives clatter to the stone at her feet. “What do you want with us?”

  The warrior’s gray eyes narrowed. “I want to know what happened to Lady Tseralyn.”

  “I don’t know,” Sonne said.

  “You lie,” the warrior accused. “I saw the footprints around the spider’s web, and some of them belonged to this halfer.”

  Sonne’s face hardened. “If you saw the halfer’s footprints around the spider’s web in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows, then you also saw that we rescued her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” Quickly Sonne explained about the blocked passageway and how she and Wick had gone scouting ahead only to return and find their party—and Lady Tseralyn—missing.

  Evidently the big warrior believed her because he took the knife from Wick’s throat and stood up.

  Wick coughed and gagged, thinking he was going to be sick. The big warrior grabbed the little librarian by the front of his traveling cloak and pulled him to his feet.

  “My name is Dahvee,” the big warrior said, sheathing the small knife on his leather armor. “I’m captain in Tseralyn’s squad.”

  “What squad?” Sonne asked.

  “We’re mercenaries.” Dahvee signaled with his hands.

  Wick watched as three of the men melted back into the forest and three others raced up the foothills.

  “We had an engagement deep within the Forest of Fangs and Shadows,” Dahvee said. “Our group was sold out by a traitor and the goblinkin slavers had set up a trap with some of Orpho Kadar’s troops. During our withdrawal, we were separated from Lady Tseralyn.”

  Wick blinked at the man. A battle in the forest? Images came to him of the warriors fighting the goblinkin amid the thick clusters of trees and brush, with giant spiders and other fierce creatures waiting on the sidelines for the dead and wounded.

  “Where are you from?” Sonne asked.

  Dahvee shook his head. “That’s for the lady to tell you. If she decides that it’s any of your business. We’ve tracked her through the forest and to the spider’s web. Then we tracked her here.”

  “She’s been leaving you the markers,” Wick said.

  “That’s right.” Dahvee scanned the foothills, searching for the men he’d sent up there. “She knew if any of us survived that we would come for her. Just as she would have come for us once she had a way and the manpower to do it. Evidently she chose to come with you.”

  “Why?” Sonne asked.

  “My guess would be to find out about the passageways through the Broken Forge Mountains. We hadn’t known about them. So far, we’d only been hitting the slave caravans and freeing the halfers. Lady Tseralyn probably thought if we could deny passage through the mountains to the goblinkin that we could better disrupt the slave caravans going into Hanged Elf’s Point.”

  “Shengharck probably wouldn’t like that much,” Wick said.

  “Shengharck?” Dahvee repeated.

  “The dragon who lairs in the mountain.”

  Dahvee glanced at the mountain and nodded, showing no sign of concern at all. “I thought Shengharck was a myth.”

  “No,” the little librarian replied. “We’ve seen him.”

  “Interesting,” the mercenary captain mused. “I’ve fought hundreds of men and beasts, but I’ve never fought a dragon.”

  It wouldn’t, Wick thought and barely refrained from saying, be a very prudent thing to do.

  “Why would you be interested in disrupting the slave trade?” Sonne asked.

  Dahvee eyed the young girl levelly. “Because Lady Tseralyn is.”

  A whistle echoed through the foothills.

  The mercenary captain glanced up at the surrounding mountainside. “My men haven’t found anything outside. That means that Lady Tseralyn—and your friends—are still inside the mountain somewhere.” He gestured and the mercenary troops came from the forest and joined him at the mine shaft entrance.

  “What are you going to do?” Wick asked.

  Dahvee looked at the little librarian with a blank expression. “I’m going after her.”

  “Our friends are most likely with her,” Sonne said.

  “That’s not my problem,” Dahvee replied coldly.

  “We saved Tseralyn’s life. We want to go with you,” Sonne said.

  Wick, however, was perfectly content to wait outside the mine shaft entrance and let Brant and the others join them after the mercenary troops freed them—although he didn’t care at all for the idea of sitting in the forest waiting for spiders or wolves or bats to come along and feast on him.

  “No,” Dahvee said bluntly. He crossed to the lantern Sonne had dropped and picked it up. He examined it quickly t
o make sure it was still in working order, then lit it.

  Sonne picked her knives up from the ground. “We could help you.”

  “A girl who’s not yet grown and a halfer?” The mercenary captain shook his head. “I’ve got battle-hardened troops I’m leading. That kind of help I don’t need.”

  “But we’ve already been inside the mountain,” Sonne argued. “We could guide you.”

  “By your own admission, you haven’t been down that other tunnel,” Dahvee said.

  Wick breathed a sigh of relief. He felt badly about not going after Brant and the others during the rescue attempt, but the mercenary captain was right. At least, right about him. Dahvee didn’t know how deadly Sonne could be with her blades or in a fight.

  Dahvee started forward, leading the mercenary group toward the mine shaft entrance.

  “There is something you can’t do,” Sonne challenged.

  Dahvee didn’t respond as he held the lantern up and stepped into the main chamber.

  “The dwarves wrote descriptions and names of the passageways in there,” Sonne said. “You can’t read, can you, Dahvee?”

  There was no response.

  “Wick can read,” Sonne yelled. “He’s written a book and everything.”

  Aaarrrggghhh! Wick slapped his hands over his face. Is there anyone I can keep a secret from? If he ever got back to Greydawn Moors and Grandmagister Frollo found out how much he’d accidentally let other people know—I don’t even want to think about that.

  As the mercenaries continued to enter the mine shaft’s main chamber, Dahvee stuck his head back out and looked at Wick. “Is he a wizard?” the mercenary captain asked.

  Sonne hesitated, then crossed her arms. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?” Dahvee repeated.

  “No,” Wick answered. “I’m not a wizard.”

  “Good,” Dahvee growled, “because I don’t much care for wizards.”

  Wick got the distinct impression that those Dahvee didn’t care for didn’t fare well around the mercenary captain.