by Eric Ugland
“Because we are lost,” sniped Amber.
“Okay, but we’re not getting more lost.”
“Big difference.”
“Can you get more lost?” Skeld asked, leaning back against a tooth.
“I think you can in Europe,” I said.
“Is that one of the hells?”
“Depends who you ask.”
“You can’t be more lost,” Ragnar said. “Doesn’t work that way. You are either lost or not.”
“I think there are degrees,” Skeld said. “Sometimes I’m really lost, other times, I’m just a little lost.”
“Nope,” Ragnar replied, crossing his arms. “Lost is lost. If you’re a little lost, you’re still lost.”
“Is this really the most productive use of our time?” Tarryn asked.
“We’re stuck in the mouth of a monster waiting out a blizzard,” I said, “what the fuck would you have us do?”
Silence for a moment.
Then a new layer of misery began — something started leaking from the throat of the creature above us.
“I might prefer the blizzard,” Amber said.
“This is fine,” I said.
Something more solid landed on the melted snow and grass with a sick wet thwop. It laid there for a moment, then started crawling. The damn thing had worms…
“Blizzard it is,” I said.
Chapter Eleven
By the time Amber and I cut our way through the corpse to get to the outside world, the blizzard had largely died down, turning into something more along the lines of overzealous flurries. Now we could see that we were near an escarpment soaring up and disappearing into the grey clouds above.
The creature’s corpse was little more than a mound of snow from the outside. There was over a foot on the ground. The thick, sloppy snow of not-quite-winter. It felt heavy and cold on my feet. And I knew it was going to make things difficult for the smaller members of the party. Something I realized as Ragnar scurried up my body to stand on my shoulder. I didn’t have the massive pack I wore when we traipsed across the big lake, WarWaters, so Ragnar didn’t have his preferred perch. So he settled for plopping on my shoulder.
“Onward, steed,” he hollered.
I really considered grabbing him by the head and throwing him into the snow. Instead, I hauled Meikeljan out of the snow and put him on my other shoulder.
“Earmuffs,” I said.
Skeld laughed, and Ragnar muttered something before hopping off.
Meikeljan, however, seemed too tired to care. He straight up leaned against my ear.
“Which way?” I asked Amber.
She looked from one direction to the other, but the wall of stone was nearly identical either way. And there wasn’t enough light to figure out where the sun might be.
“Who’s got our compass?” I asked.
Everyone looked at someone else.
“Okay, raise your hand if you thought someone else was bringing the compass?” I asked.
All the hands went up.
“Great.”
While I was digging in my pocket for the magic rock that would give me the direction of the nearest Corrupted ursus, I felt Meikeljan get to his feet and move around a little on my shoulder.
An insanely bright light shot from Meikeljan’s general area, searing an arrow into the snow. It pointed towards one direction along the rock wall.
Meikeljan sat back down.
“The goddess recommends that direction,” he said. “I suppose I brought the compass.”
I shrugged. Which caused Meikeljan to fall, and I had to catch him and reset him before we trudged on.
Looking at the rocks we passed, I wished I’d had the sense to get Lee on the journey. At least he would ramble on about the geology of the area, telling me how the rocks got there, how they formed into these mountains. I wanted to ask him about the formation of our valley, if he might have an idea on how it had come to be. It seemed so perfectly circular, I just couldn’t see how it’d been formed naturally. There were more trees where we were, smaller though, already bending under the snow.
As the sky started to get truly dark, Amber stopped and waved us down and to the side. Everyone darted over to the escarpment and knelt at the base, trusting the nearly black rock to hide us.
Wait here, Amber signaled before darting off.
She slipped into the shadows easily, disappearing amongst the tiny trees. I figured the twin tails tipped in white would give the kitsune-girl away, and yet, somehow she was perfectly camouflaged.
Just when it was starting to get pretty damn cold kneeling in the mushy snow, Amber returned.
“Cave up ahead,” she said.
“Empty?” I asked.
“So far,” she said. “I didn’t go deep, though. Seems like a good place to sleep for the night, and maybe we can get a better idea of where we are tomorrow.”
“No sign of Wulf?”
“Not in the cave.”
“Nothing during our walk either?”
“No.”
“Well shit.”
“So are we going to the cave?”
“Sure.”
She nodded, and briskly walked towards the spot of black I could now make out on the cliff wall in front of us.
It wasn’t a posh cave, that’s for sure. There weren’t neat things about the place, no secret door at the back of a hidden grove of giant crystallized trees. It was just a semi-flat tunnel that seemed to go on and on. We made a fire at one end, and rolled some rocks into place providing a vague block for the the end that went deeper into the mountain. Then we did a little campfire cooking. Meats seared on super-heated rocks, seasoned with salt carried in pouches, and with a potato cooked in ash. It was definitely rustic, but also absolutely delicious, and just the thing to to take the edge off a long day slogging through the wilderness.
Skeld offered to take second watch. A huge smarmy smile wrapped around Ragnar’s face, like he’d won the lottery because he got to sleep through the night.
I looked at the entrance to the cave, and then I looked over at the other side, where it just led further into the mountain.
“Not sure one on watch is enough tonight,” I said. “I’ll take two watches, but that still leaves four spots.”
There were some quick arguments between Skeld and Ragnar before Ragnar agreed to two watches as well.
“I can take last watch,” Amber said. “I’m best in mornings.”
“I’ll take last watch as well,” Ragnar said.
“No,” I replied, “you’re worst at mornings. You take first watch with Skeld. Skeld will take first and second. I’ll do second and third, Amber will do third.”
Ragnar squinted at me, and even though I hadn’t unlocked a psychic skill, I got that he was pissed. I needed to have a talk with him about Amber, it was just never a good time.
Those of us sleeping snuggled into our bedrolls. Even with the fire, I’m pretty sure everyone wished we’d taken thicker blankets. Or had some magic dome we could sleep in that would provide us with safety and warmth. Alas, the only real magic we had was my beefy arms. And it was with that comforting thought, and a wry smile at how foolish I was, that I fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Morning came like a boot to the head. Wherein I mean, Ragnar kicked me awake. Not hard, not like he was punting my face in, but he definitely dug his toe into the general region of my kidneys.
“I’m up,” I said, quickly pushing to a seated position and got all the damn hair out of my face. One thing those fantasy novels never really delved into was how the barbarians with long hair dealt with having long hair. I was constantly losing chunks of it to acid, or fire, or poor swordsmanship, and even when it was perfect and long, it constantly got into my face. And sometimes I felt like I wound up eating more beard than food.
Ragnar had already dropped into his bedroll, but I knew it was a now-or-wait-forever sort of a thing to talk to him. So I grabbed the foot of his blanket and pulled th
e lutra over to me until he was looking at my face.
“You had an issue with my sleeping position?” he asked.
“I get that you have an affection for Amber,” I said, deciding that awkward honesty was the best policy here. “But I’m not sure she’s in the position to be looking for a relationship.”
“What in the abyss are you blathering about?”
“You need to chill with Amber.”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“My little brother from another mother,” Skeld said from his position sitting and facing the outside world, spear leaning against his leg. “We all see what you’re doing, and we all cringe.”
“You don’t cringe.”
“There’s cringing,” I said.
“I cringe,” Skeld said.
“Also me,” Meikeljan added.
“You go to sleep,” I said.
“Sleeping,” Meikeljan said.
“But the littlest guy is right,” I said, “you’re too, uh, eager.”
Skeld nodded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I mean you do,” I said. “You don’t need to say anything to this, hells, you don’t need to change the way you’re acting. But I thought maybe you’d like to know that we all see it.”
“Which means she sees it,” Skeld said.
And then realization dawned on Ragnar’s face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ragnar said again. He ripped his blankets out of my hand, tromped about ten feet away, and curled up in a little pile of sulk next to the rock wall.
I shook my head, got to my feet, and did a little stretching. Then I walked over to Skeld.
“That didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped.”
“Never does,” Skeld replied.
“You see anything out here?”
“Crickets. Bats.”
“Quiet.”
“Too quiet.”
“Why’d you go and say that?”
“Because it is too quiet. Crickets stopped. Something’s out there.”
“Any crickets inside the caves?”
“They stopped too.”
“So something is inside here.”
Skeld nodded.
“Well this should be an interesting night. If and when the thing exposes itself,” I paused to stifle my laugh, “get Tarryn up first. I’ll hold the back until we know which is the bigger enemy.”
“Probably the thing that isn’t in here yet.”
“I didn’t mean in size.”
He gave me a smile, letting me know he knew what I meant.
“Yeah, well, have fun with your quiet crickets.”
“Have fun staring at a wall.”
I looked at the spot I’d be guarding. It was definitely the less interesting of the two. At least Skeld could look at stars and moons. I just got, well, shadows on a wall.
Too bad I forgot to bring my Plato.
I sat there, watching the shadows dance on the wall, hoping to have some profound thought. Instead, thoughts turned to home again. Home home, not Coggeshall. I was thinking about winter back there, about going out into the snow, trudging through said snow, to grab a tree. The only time the girl and I did the whole tree thing, she’d wanted the biggest goddamn tree I’d ever seen. We put the Griswolds to shame. I had a big ol’ truck I’d borrowed from a club prospect named Last Wednesday, one of those real big trucks. Long bed, double cab and stuff. And that tree was hanging over the front, the back, and the sides. It was huge. (That’s what she said.) Big tree. And it was perfect, the most amazing tree ever. It didn’t fit in the house, so we set it up in the back yard, and I rented a cherry-picker to put the lights on. It was a fantastic and magical Christmas.
Shut up. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
When I wiped my tears away, I caught just a hint of movement down the tunnel.
Quickly I shifted into darkvision, and peeked down the hall, doing my best to look like I hadn’t noticed a damn thing. But whatever had moved wasn’t in motion any longer.
So I reached out carefully with tremorsense, trying to get a feeling for whatever might be around. But that also failed to pick up anything untoward. I tried to gauge the length of the tunnel, and if the moving thing was just outside my range. That was always a possibility.
“Might have something here,” I said in Lutra, as calm and casual as I could, as if I was passing on a random thought that popped up in my head.
I heard Skeld sputter like he just woke up, but I knew it was just part of the act.
“Danger?”
“Not yet. Curiosity?”
“You want to trap it?”
“I don’t know what it is. What if it’s like a rust monster or something.”
“Rust monster?”
“That’s a thing, right?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Monster that eats metal?”
“Lots of things do that.”
“But nothing that’s called a rust monster.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well shit,” I said.
“Good name,” he said.
“Maybe we can find a monster and name it.”
“Just add that to the list of things to do.”
“Done.”
He chuckled softly.
And then we were back to relative silence, just the soft occasional crackle of the fire in the background. I went back to watching the shadows dance a bit on the walls of the cave.
On and on it went, until there was a honk and a whomp and a squeak of surprise from Skeld, which was very quickly covered up by a more masculine bark of surprise.
“Halt,” Skeld said.
I spun around, weapon out and ready to rock, only to see a giant goose with a bunch of heads.
“Hiya Fritz,” I said.
“Hi,” came the honk-talk. “Hard. To. Find. You.”
“Maybe don’t bail on us in bad weather.”
“Wind. Blow. Fritz. A. Way.”
“Oh. I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense.”
“Is. Truth.”
“Well, here we are. How did you find us?” I asked, suddenly both worried and curious.
“Cave. Glows.”
I had to squish by the horse-sized goose, with all eight heads glaring at me because I had the temerity to touch said glorious goose, and got out side. Looking up and down the cliff-side, I saw nothing, so I jogged out about a hundred or so yards, into the darkness of night.
Looking back at our little camp, it was stupidly easy to spot. We needed to figure out how to hide our campfires better.
Sighing, I took a second to look around. The stars were out in full force, and I was blown away by how many there were. It boggled my mind to see all of them, to imagine how many worlds there were out in this universe. And I wondered if magic could move people between the stars. Was there some super-high-level spell that could take me to another planet? It was disconcerting to be having all these thoughts all of a sudden. Apparently the fishing had messed me up.
I went back in the tunnel, pushing past the stupidly big goose. I stood next to the fire for a moment, letting the blissful warmth roll over me.
“We’re not good at this questing thing,” I said.
“Speak for yourself,” Skeld muttered.
“Then next time, how about you speak up when we build a fire within view of the outside world?”
“Oh,” he said, looking out the cave entrance, which necessitated peering around the big-ass goose. “Yeah, that would have been a good idea. But the goose is blocking it now.”
“The goose if Fritz.”
“I know.”
One of the heads nipped at Skeld, but Skeld darted out of the way.
“Those of us not on guard duty are trying to sleep,” Tarryn said, his grumpiness very evident when he rolled over. He gripped his blanket tightly, and then farted with enough force that the fire flared up for a minute.
; I was equal parts impressed and disgusted.
“Fritz,” I said, softer this time, “you and Skeld can fight over taking watch, I’ve slept enough. I’ll get back to the other spot and I’ll watch over the back entrance.”
And I walked off, listening to the honk-talk of the goose trying to explain something to Skeld.
Chapter Thirteen
I took my spot staring into the abyss behind our camp. I didn’t want to take any chances at getting sucked into memories again. It was time to make something happen.
I sat down on a rock and put my legs up on a wall in some sort of attempt at relaxing. I looked at the various rocks around, then picked a handful up. I tossed one down the hall. Super relaxed sort of a thing, just like I was bored. Then I threw another one. And another one. And another one.
Then, I hauled off and really threw a rock, trying to get it as far down the tunnel as I could. It clattered off the walls, ricocheting back and forth, echoing into the darkness. And it made the creature who was hiding and watching me to move enough that I could see it.
“See something,” I hollered, already moving, sprinting towards the creature.
It made an eep sort of noise, and turned to run away from me, dropping its weapon as it ran. The crude spear clattered to the stone floor. It had some speed to it, but I wasn’t a slouch in the running department since I’d put some points in agility. My feet were eating up the tunnel, and as I got closer and closer, I dove, reaching for the little dude’s feet.
I snatched the ankle. Then, together, we crashed to the ground.
I had a scaly foot in my hand with the vaguest traces of what might have been a leather shoe at some point.
A kobold.
I released his foot, and sat up.
It did the same, eyes wide open and staring at me.
“You okay?” I asked, in kobold.
It rubbed its ankle.
“Hurt,” it said.
“But you were spying on us, being sneaky.”
“Was told to watch.”
“Watch what? Us?”
The little guy nodded.
“And tunnel.”
“You know, I know your duchess.”
“No more duchess.”