by Logan Jacobs
I was so eager, I almost missed the line of magic along the ground and the walls of the tunnel, but I managed to stop just short of it. It had to be some kind of alarm or defensive enchantment, but the specifics didn’t really matter. I disabled it with a wave of my hand and continued on a little more carefully. Gradually, the tunnel began to slope up, and as I neared the end, it opened into a wide cavern.
From the mouth of my tunnel, I could see at least a dozen others leading off from the cavern, offering plenty of escape routes for the bandits, should they need them. Floating balls of mage fire drifted around the cavern and illuminated it in a sort of perpetual twilight. What really drew my attention, though, was the mound in the center of the cavern.
It was like a briar patch had suddenly sprung up underground. The whole thing was almost the same size as our guild hall in the city, just layer upon layer of thorns as far as I could tell. The whole thing shimmered with magic.
I threw a glance over my shoulder, and I could just see the pinprick of light from Emeline’s mage fire down in the tunnel. Part of me wanted to go ahead on my own, just to have a better look around the enormous thornbush before I brought the rest of the guild, but I knew they’d want to come along, and there was no one in the cavern to see us. The Shrikes must all be inside. I figured it was still pretty early in the morning, three or four o’clock, maybe. Perhaps we’d catch all the bandits sleeping.
I turned and walked swiftly back down the tunnel, then pulled down the hood of the invisibility cloak.
“There’s no one up there,” I told them. “Not outside, anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘not outside?’” Lavinia asked. “We’re still underground, aren’t we?”
“They’ve built some sort of...” I struggled to put a name to the structure I’d seen. “They’re all in their hideout in the cavern up there.”
“Well then what are we waiting for?” Dehn demanded. “Let’s go bash some skulls!”
“Ugh,” Maruk groaned. “He’s like a teeny tiny Sulla.”
“Hey! I am the tallest in my family!” Dehn shot back. “My height is considered above average by halfling standards.”
“Save your energy for the fight, there, warlord,” Lavinia said. She turned to me. “They’re in their hideout?”
“It’s surrounded by magic, but well, you’d better come get a look at it yourselves,” I replied, and I waved the rest of the group after me as I started back up the slope. I hoped that the magic I’d seen was at least in part an illusion and that the Shrikes hadn’t actually constructed their entire base out of thorns, as that would certainly make infiltrating it more challenging.
As the others crouched with me at the edge of the tunnel, I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking that.
“Sorry, Aerin, it looks like there was a mistranslation somewhere,” Lavinia snarked. “Your city of gold is actually a gigantic nest of briars. That’ll be fun to dig through.”
“It’s worse than that,” Maruk said. “It was called the Dreaded Fen, wasn’t it? It’s not a fen. Not even close. Honestly, does no one appreciate linguistic integrity anymore?”
“Do you think it’s haunted?” Emeline whispered. The panthera woman’s voice was tinged with awe. “The stories all say Dredfen is haunted.”
“It’s haunted by bandits, at least,” Lena pointed out.
“Yeah, the bandits are in there, so why are we still out here sitting on our asses?” Dehn asked. I supposed with armor like his, getting pricked a few times on a mission wasn’t chief among the halfling’s concerns.
“We need to be careful,” I warned. “When we get close, I’ll dismantle whatever enchantment they have set up here, but they might notice when I do, so we’d better be ready.”
“I’m ready!” Dehn insisted.
“I got that,” I replied. “Everyone else good?”
The others nodded.
“Alright then, let’s go.”
The briar patch was about thirty yards away from the mouth of our tunnel, but for the few seconds it took us to cross that distance, I kept my gaze locked on the entrance, certain that someone would appear and see us and sound the alarm, but we got up to the edges of the thorny structure without incident. Up close, I realized that referring to the thing as a briar patch was something of a misnomer. Each vine was as thick around as my arm, each thorn as long as my hand, and the whole thing was at least two stories tall.
I held my breath as I reached my hand out and disabled the enchantment, but as the shimmer of magic faded away, I was disappointed to discover that the thorns were no illusion. It must have been a different kind of protective spell. The Shrikes really had constructed their base out of a tangle of thorns. I bit back a sigh.
“I guess they never have to worry about pushy door-to-door salespeople,” I muttered.
“What?” Lena asked.
“Nothing, nevermind,” I replied. “Everybody get ready, we’re going in.”
The entrance itself was fairly low to the ground, enough that Maruk, Lavinia, and I would have to duck. I decided I would go first so that I could keep an eye out for any other enchantments and magical defenses.
“Maruk, I want you to come in second, after me,” I whispered so as not to be overheard by the bandits who were no doubt inside. “They’re not going to go down without a fight, and we’ll need you to provide cover.”
The orc eyed the small entrance skeptically, but nodded.
“Dehn, Lavinia, and Emeline after Maruk, then Lena and Aerin,” I finished. When the group confirmed their understanding of my instructions with nods, I turned back to the entrance and ducked inside.
The entrance was basically another tunnel, except this one’s walls and ceiling were covered in thorns. They scratched my arms and snagged at my clothing as I passed, but I was relieved to find that a small antechamber opened up after about ten feet or so.
There was no one in the antechamber, and a normal wooden door separated it from the rooms beyond. I checked for enchantments as Maruk forced his shoulders through the tunnel behind me, but aside from some old protective runes that had been partially rubbed away and were no longer effective, there was nothing, not even a lock on the door. That seemed strange, after how cagey the elves had been in Ovrista, I’d expected heavy security. Maybe those lobster-monsters had always been enough to deter or kill potential intruders. We’d only defeated them because of my magic, after all, and mages like me were supposed to be extinct.
The little room quickly became cramped as Dehn, Lavinia, Emeline, Lena, and Aerin filed in as well. We were all perfectly silent, and from the other side of the door, I could hear people speaking. It sounded like they were playing a game, something with dice. There was a clatter as the dice rolled against a table, and then one of the players groaned while his friend cackled.
“And I win again,” said a cheerful voice. “Best fifteen out of twenty seven, Manas?”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Seoc,” Manas muttered.
I exchanged a last look with the others and then opened the door. The next room was some sort of lounge area, clearly, and there was a pair of hobgoblins seated around the simple wooden table in the center. They were dressed more or less like the elves that Dehn, Aerin, and I had fought outside the black market had been, which was to say, in simple, practical clothing, not armor, though they each had on silver bracelets, and their pointed ears glittered with gemstone earrings. They were both quite a bit larger than the elves, though not quite as tall or muscular as Maruk, and their skin had a distinct, purple-gray tinge. Swirling tattoos in a darker purple ink decorated the left sides of their bodies, from their cheeks down their necks and arms to the tips of their clawed fingers.
Each of the hobgoblins had a cup and a pair of dice in front of them, and one had been in the process of handing some coins to the other. He still had his hand outstretched as he stared at us.
The other recovered from his shock first, and he laughed slightly before he tucked his friend’s money into hi
s pocket and scratched the back of his neck.
“Startled us there, you did,” he said, and elbowed his friend. “Didn’t they, Manas?”
Manas blinked and laughed uneasily. “Uh, yeah, we don’t usually get guests down here.”
For a moment, I felt a flicker of dread. Were we somehow in the wrong place? But no, there’d been that mark on the wall, just like on the heist notes.
“You’re the Shrikes,” I said slowly.
“Oh, yeah, we sure are,” the first hobgoblin, Seoc said. His tone was perfectly casual, as though I’d asked him if he was going to be home for dinner, but he must have been able to tell we were a guild, and we obviously weren’t here for tea.
“We had a run in with some of your friends,” I went on, suspicious. I tried to remember one of the elves’ names. “I think his name was Calum.”
“Oh, Calum!” Manas said. “How was he?”
I could feel the others taut as wires behind me, just as wary about this exchange as I was.
“He’s dead,” I replied. “He attacked me and my friends.”
Seoc clicked his tongue and threw a glance to Manas. “Always knew that boy was going to get himself into some serious trouble one of these days.”
“He was an impulsive one, our Calum,” Manas replied with a sage nod.
“Well, we appreciate you coming all the way down here to tell us,” Seoc said as he stood. “We’ll be sure to pass the message along. Would you like some tea?”
It was my turn to stare. Why we weren’t all fighting, I had no idea. Dehn seemed to be of a similar mind.
“Tea?” he blustered.
“Tea?” Maruk asked. “Do you have something with mint?”
“Maruk!” Lavinia hissed.
“What? They’re being so civil,” Maruk whispered back.
“We have mint with blueberry, is that alright?” Seoc asked.
“Mint with blueberry would be lovely, thank you,” Maruk answered.
“Mint with blueberry for everyone, then?” Seoc waved his hand, palm up, as an invitation to submit other requests, but when no one else responded, he gave a little nod. “Right, then, I’ll get some water boiling.” He strode across the room to where a little fire burned and set a kettle over the flames.
“They’re bandits!” Dehn insisted, furious. He rounded on the other hobgoblin, who was still seated. “You’re bandits!”
“Well, I mean, that’s true,” Manas said with a shrug. “But personally, I don’t like to define myself solely by my profession, you know? I do a lot more than rob travelers and all that, don’t I, Seoc?”
“You’re very good at losing at dice,” Seoc replied with a grin thrown over his shoulder. Then he glanced over at all of us still standing in the doorway. “Would you like honey? It’s fresh.”
“I’d love some,” Maruk said.
“Sorry,” I said as I held up my hands. “You’re not going to try to kill us?”
Seoc frowned. “Well, that seems a bit rash.”
“A bit rash,” Manas agreed. “You’ve only just got here.”
I looked back at Aerin. If they were lying or otherwise being deceitful, she would be able to tell from their auras.
The healer read the silent question on my face, and she lifted her shoulders in a confused shrug that I took to mean she was as puzzled as I was by our reception, but the hobgoblins were being sincere about not intending to harm us. At least for the moment.
Okay, then. This was about the furthest possible outcome from what I’d expected when I opened the door, but I was willing to work with it. All the better if we could manage without the bloodshed, after all. Stopping the bandits didn’t have to mean killing them. We could just convince them to give up on the heist. Maybe they’d even work with us to find the others. I wasn’t sure I believed all of that, but I was willing to give it a shot.
“We came across another group of bandits,” I said, “the Fire Birds. We found their copy of the plans for the heist in Ovrista and had it decoded. We know you Shrikes are involved, too.” I remembered what Calum had said, about someone called Inry. That must be their leader. “We’d like to speak to Inry.”
Seoc paused as he was filling up wooden cups with tea and looked over at Manas.
Manas looked back at him.
“Well, go on,” Seoc prompted. “Our friends here want to speak to Inry.”
Manas looked reluctant to do so, but he picked himself up out of his chair and started for one of the doors that led off from the room. I tensed as he moved and clenched my hand into a fist, prepared to counter some sort of surprise attack, but he just slipped through the door.
Seoc’s smile was perfectly friendly as he set all of the cups onto a tray and brought them over.
“You all must be worn out, why don’t you have a seat, make yourselves comfortable?” He gestured with a nod to the chairs and the couch that surrounded the little table where he and Manas had had their game. “Inry’ll be right out.”
Even knowing that the hobgoblins were being sincere, I wasn’t going to let my guard down that much. All it would take was one wrong word for a fight to break out.
“We’re fine,” I said firmly as Maruk moved to take Seoc up on his offer. “Thank you.”
“Suit yourselves,” our host replied as we each took a cup of tea. He whistled a tune as he brought the tray back over to the little kitchen corner of the room.
Maruk breathed in deeply as he held the steaming cup up to his nose, but before he could take a drink, Lavinia elbowed him in the ribs.
“It might be poison,” she warned under her breath.
“It smells like mint tea with blueberry,” Maruk replied, “and the first nice thing we’ve come across since we came down here. I spent the last three hours hunched over, ankle-deep in stinking water. Can’t you let me have this?”
“Everything alright?” Seoc asked.
“Great,” I replied. “Thanks for the tea.” Then, in a lower voice, I said to Maruk, “Look, just leave it. They’re being a little too nice.”
“I think we all just have an estranged relationship with cordiality and decorum,” the orc replied, “from being on the road so much. When did we all get so cynical?”
Before any of us could respond, the door opened and Manas returned, along with a tall elf. The elf looked fairly young, but his long, straight hair was perfectly silver, and I wondered if he used magic to dye it that way. He wore finer clothes than either of the hobgoblins, green mage robes with gold stitching along the hem that resembled thorns. So, I figured, that aspect of this place’s decor was probably his idea. He smiled when he saw us, just as friendly as Seoc and Manas had been.
“So, these are our guests,” he said. “I am Inry, and as you know, we are the Shrikes. What might we call you, friends?”
“My name is Gabriel,” I replied. “We’re the Shadow Foxes.”
“What a charming name.” Inry’s smile didn’t waver as he gestured to the couch and the chairs. “Won’t you sit?”
“I’d like to know more about who it is you’re working with,” I said. “The person who put this whole heist together.”
Inry’s eyebrows shot up. “Right to the point, then, very well. Unfortunately, there’s really nothing I can tell you.”
“You can tell us,” Lavinia said with a glare, “or we can figure it out after we’ve killed you.”
“There’s no need for threats,” Inry laughed as he held up his hands in a show of surrender. “I mean I really can’t tell you. I don’t know who he is.”
“What do you mean?” I stared. “You must have met him. He contacted you, didn’t he?”
“Of course, but he was always in disguise.” The silver-haired elf gave a shrug. “Ordinarily we wouldn’t take to that sort of thing, of course. We’re bandits, after all, we like to keep things simple and straightforward, but, well, he was offering quite a lot of money and seemed to know what he was talking about. You have the note from the Fire Birds, don’t you? Then you�
�ve got just as much information as I do, I’m afraid.”
I cast a glance to Aerin.
“He’s telling the truth,” she replied with a slight frown.
“Of course I am,” Inry said. “You want in on the heist, isn’t that why you’ve come? To take the Fire Birds’ place?”
“No!” Dehn growled, unable to contain himself any longer. “We came to bring the hammer of justice down on all of you lowlife, cowardly, sneaky--”
“We want to stop the heist,” I interrupted quickly. “If you back out and help us find the others who are involved, we can see that you’re rewarded.”
“What?” Aerin hissed behind me, but I had Inry’s attention.
“How much are we talking about, exactly?” he asked.
Maderel was going to give us five hundred gold if we were able to stop the heist. I tried to calculate what would amount to fair compensation for the Shrikes’ compliance without giving away so much of our reward that Aerin would never forgive me.
“One hundred gold,” I said, and Aerin gripped my wrist tight.
Inry frowned, and Seoc and Manas exchanged glances.
“Oh, as much as I’d love to help you, really, Shadow Foxes, I’m afraid that’s pocket change to what we’d be getting from this heist,” Inry replied. His frown was sympathetic. “It’s nothing personal, you know, you seem like very nice, upstanding people, but it really comes down to the numbers with us, doesn’t it boys?”
The two hobgoblins nodded.
“That it does,” Seoc said.
I threw a glance to the rest of my guild. Dehn was practically trembling with his eagerness to fight.
“Well, I hope that you know,” I answered, “it’s nothing personal, but we really can’t take no for an answer.”
That was enough of a signal for Dehn, and the halfling charged forward with a war cry, weapons brandished, at Inry.
Chapter 7
The elf raised his hand, and his mana flared up suddenly. I threw my own hand up to counter it, but Inry was adept, and his spell was half-cast by the time I was able to quell his mana. The earthen floor between us rose up like a wave on the ocean and Dehn tripped and tumbled to the ground before the three bandits.