And so, stepping around the gory remnants of their battle, they entered the cavern, which proved to be a natural cave with swooping turns, some narrow channels, and a few large chambers replete with shimmering stone curtains, stalagmites, and stalactites. Using the pale illumination emanating from the head of Gretchan’s staff, they could see clearly enough to identify obstacles and to pick a path through the winding tunnels. Water trickled in places, sometimes spilling through gaps in the walls, sometimes seeping down from sandy beds or trickling through gaps in the floor.
After passing the slain horax at the cave mouth, they didn’t encounter any more of the creatures nor any indications the bugs had taken up permanent residence in that cave. The slope of the ground tended to gradually carry them downward, which was the opposite of what they wanted, so the dwarves kept their eyes open for any promising options. After several hours, Brandon located a chimney-a narrow shaft where water had eroded a vertical passage through the rock. Bracing themselves against the steep sides, the two dwarves were able to climb several dozen feet, emerging into a cavern larger than any they had previously encountered. Reaching down, Brand assisted the priestess onto the level floor, and they took stock of their new surroundings.
It, too, was a natural cave, high ceilinged and, in that stretch at least, quite dry. With Gretchan’s staff still glowing, the pair started along the wide cavern, only to stop almost at once when they reached a pile of square rocks, bricklike boulders scattered all over.
Brandon studied the walls and the strewn stones. “This was a wall, here,” he said, pointing to the chisel marks and dried mortar where the stones had been anchored to the cave walls. He examined the blocks, recognizing the sharp edges, the regular size. In some places stones had been carefully carved to match tightly to the irregularly shaped cavern wall. “It was built by good masons, dwarves no doubt.” He swiped at the barren wall and looked at some of the dried mortar. “They put it up a long time ago, but it was knocked down fairly recently. See, there’s no dust collected on the faces of the rocks where they lay on the floor.”
“Who would build a wall here?” asked Gretchan. “And why?”
“Well, my ancestors did it, most likely,” Brandon speculated. “There were lots of these kind of plugs down here in the old days. Because of the horax, Kayolin dwarves invested a lot of energy into blocking any possible places where they could make their way into the kingdom. Horax don’t do any digging themselves-at least, not through solid rock or sturdy stone walls. So it was probably built to keep them at bay.”
“Well, who would knock it down, then?” the priestess wondered, coming up with the next logical question. “Not the horax?”
Brandon had been thinking about that same mystery. He studied the loose stones carefully before answering. “No, I don’t think so. Look: they’ve been struck with hammers and picks,” he said, identifying some of the scrapes and dents. “Tools applied with a lot of force. I’d say dwarves knocked it down, though I have no idea why.”
“Well, let’s see where it leads,” Gretchan said, tilting her staff forward.
They continued on for a hundred or more paces, working their way steadily upward. Abruptly the priestess stopped, standing still, listening or searching for something.
“What’s that smell?” was the first thing she said.
Brandon sniffed then winced; he hadn’t noticed the odor before then, but it was a not-unfamiliar mixture of filth, refuse, and unwashed bodies, a miasma that might be encountered in the underbelly of just about any dwarven community.
“I’d say gully dwarves,” he guessed.
“Well, that can only be a good sign, then,” Gretchan said with a chuckle. “It means we’re getting out of horax territory and closer to Garnet Thax.”
“I guess you’re right. It seems to be stronger in this direction, up ahead. Should we go have a look?”
“Sure.”
They continued on and soon approached a large, airy cavern, where the stench of gully dwarves seemed to come into sharper-or stinkier-focus. But as they entered, they both felt a more oppressive, sinister presence as well. Three distinct tunnels connected to that cavern. In the center was a deep, clear pool of water, while a number of niches and alcoves around the walls contained dirty mats, well-gnawed bones, and, in one, a ragged, stuffed doll.
“Look-they lived in those little holes,” Gretchan guessed, pointing.
“And here’s a fire pit,” Brandon observed, kneeling to look at a small pile of ashes in a depression beside the pool.
“But where are the Aghar, then?” the cleric wondered aloud.
Brandon made no reply as he stared at several brownish stains that were pretty clearly dried blood. It had been a thriving village of gully dwarves once, but it was a dead village now. They found more of the spilled blood, including telltale trails leading back toward the way they had come, but no living Aghar. Nor, despite the signs of battle, were there any bodies there.
“The horax took them,” Brandon said grimly. Gretchan, her expression equally serious, could only nod in agreement.
They were just starting to look through the pathetic little hovels, many of them blood-spattered, all of them empty, when they heard the sinister clicking of horax mandibles.
“Did you see them?” demanded Sadie Guilder, clocking Peat over the head with her bony fist. “They were gully dwarves! Right in our shop, big as life and bold as you please!” She lowered her voice to hiss accusingly, “You let them come through the dimension door!”
“I let them?” Peat retorted, raising his arms and shielding himself as best he could. “It was your spell! You copied it; you cast it! Why didn’t you think of the danger? Where did they come from?”
“They came from Pax Tharkas, of course. And don’t you dare talk to me like that!” she spat. “I’ll turn your tongue into a lizard!”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he shot back, straightening up when he sensed that she was through hitting him, for the time being at least. “Well, I’d turn you into a shrew, but that would be redundant!”
“How dare you-”
She stopped at a loud knocking coming from the front door. Glaring at each other’s pale, disheveled faces, they immediately nodded with businesslike efficiency. Sadie adjusted her thin white hair while Peat patted down his beard and made his way over to the door. Bracing himself, he pulled it open as if he had nothing in the world to hide.
Why wasn’t he surprised to see Abercrumb standing there? Peat forced himself to adopt a confident, beaming facade.
“Abercrumb!” he declared heartily with a big smile. “What can I do for you?”
His neighbor and fellow merchant didn’t reply. Peat noticed the fellow was standing almost on his tiptoes, trying to see over the Theiwar’s shoulder as if determined to examine the interior of the shop. Peat heard Sadie come out of the back room, closing the door behind herself, so he stepped out of the way to graciously usher the Hylar into the shop.
“Sadie, look who’s come calling,” he announced-perhaps a little too cheerfully, he thought, as he drew a sharp, disapproving glance from his wife.
“What does he want?” she demanded tartly.
“Well, just stopped by to ask how business has been,” said their neighbor with a cheerful tone that matched Peat’s own. “I mean, since I’ve noticed some folks coming and going. Which is more than I can say for myself!” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Though I can’t say I like the sight of all of ’em. Those last two that came out of here-forgive me for saying so, but they looked like gully dwarves!”
Peat felt his stomach turn into knots. He groped for a clever or dismissive reply, but all he could come up with were variations on the confession he’d soon be giving to the king’s interrogators. Or, even worse, to the Master. Willim the Black didn’t mind his agents making a small profit from their shop, but Peat felt certain that the black-robed mage would take a dim view of their new, and very lucrative, side business
.
Fortunately, as usual, Sadie was thinking a little faster than he was. “Filthy scum, they were!” Sadie spit. “Don’t think we let ’em through our door! Why, I heard them slip the lock somehow-probably thought we’d left the neighborhood, as so many have around here-but when I caught them in the act, I kicked them six ways from Gods’ Day, don’t you know! You should have seen them scurrying down the street.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I did see them,” Abercrumb explained. “And they were certainly beating a hasty retreat. But, the thing is, I could have sworn that your door opened without any help from you, and that they came out of your shop on their own legs. Mind you, I don’t think Two Guilders, for a moment, would entertain those filthy wretches as customers. But, well, a fellow has to know what’s going on in his own neighborhood, doesn’t he? I mean, with the king’s proclamation and all … was it number seventy-seven or seventy-nine? You know, the one where Aghar are banned from the kingdom?”
“Of course we know the gully dwarves are banned!” Sadie declared. “You don’t think we’re familiar with the law of the land?”
“No, of course not. That is, I mean, everybody knows about the gully dwarves,” Abercrumb stammered hastily, retreating a step from the angry, old crone.
“Why, certainly!” Peat agreed. “And surely you’re mistaken.” He turned to Sadie with a puzzled expression. “You didn’t let those rascals into the shop, did you?” he asked innocently.
“Most certainly not!” she replied. “Why, they would have bothered the paying customers!”
“Paying customers? You had paying customers?” Abercrumb said breathlessly. “Why, yes, I thought I spotted a happy couple. A Daergar fellow, I do believe, and a lass who was, well, rather much younger, I thought.”
“Yes. The old fellow wanted a charm for … well, for personal reasons,” Sadie said with a knowing wink. “And in fact, yes, the, er, lady was quite a bit younger.”
“I should like to meet them!” Abercrumb declared, beaming. “They’re still here, aren’t they? I mean, I saw them come in, but I feel certain I didn’t see them leave again.”
“Oh, they left, all right. Right after I shooed off those Aghar. You must have been distracted by the little gullies-not that I blame you one bit. Why, they’ll steal the very belt off your waist if you’re not paying attention.”
“But I’m certain-” Abercrumb started to object, but Sadie cut him off.
“Peat, we have that stink potion brewing in the back room! Get me some newt powder … right now.” She turned to their neighbor apologetically. “I’m so sorry, but we have to finish this. If we don’t, well, there could be an accident. A very bad accident. It would make the neighborhood unpleasant for, oh, I don’t know how many years.”
Abercrumb, like most dwarves, was terribly suspicious and fearful of magic. Eyes wide, he quickly made his excuses and was out the door before Peat even knew what was happening. By the time he realized there was no stink potion brewing in the back of the shop, Sadie had him by the arm and was dragging him into their private room.
The expression on her face told him she had something very important that she wanted to discuss.
The monsters attacked with only minimal warning: the clicking sound indicated their presence for several seconds before the buglike creatures scrambled into the village from two different directions. They spilled out of the cavern from which Gretchan and Brandon had just exited, and they charged from another, smaller tunnel mouth. The two groups blocked the dwarves from reaching the third passage, the only other escape from that miserable hole in the ground where the Aghar had been hiding and, for a time, surviving.
Gretchan screamed and swung her staff, smashing it over the head of one fast-approaching horax. The monster dropped, stunned or killed, but another one scrambled over that one and snapped its mandibles around the priestess’s arm. Crying out in pain, Gretchan clutched her staff tightly before losing her balance and falling. Two more horax pounced, quivering and snapping, trying to pinch her legs in their cruel jaws.
Brandon, meanwhile, met the first two horax with crushing blows of his axe, swinging from left to right and back again, splitting their armored heads, then twisting his grip to pull his weapon free as the creatures fell dead. Two more closed in, and he swung the weapon wildly, forcing them to retreat. It was then he saw the dwarf maid fall onto her back, desperately swinging her staff to hold off the attack of two of the horrid monsters.
She knocked them aside long enough to allow her to climb to her feet and retreat. But Brandon saw another horax, looming behind the segmented bodies of its fellows. Unlike the other grayish bugs, it was a crimson red and was further distinguished by a bulging growth on the underside of its head. The monster reared back, and something shot out from that pulsing lump, like a long stream of rope, and Gretchan screamed again as she was tangled in the strands of a tough, sticky web. She dropped her staff and fought against the tangling lines, but her struggles only seemed to wrap her more tautly in the webbing. The red horax reared up and pulled, and the strands entangling the cleric tightened, pulling her inexorably toward the monster.
“Gretchan!” Brandon cried, lunging after her and chopping right through the body of a horax that blocked his path. By then the monster dragged the still-struggling priestess out of the cavern and back into the tunnel the two dwarves had used. Still more horax were creeping forward from the passageway, adding their numbers to the half dozen already swarming the ruined village. All of them closed in on the axe-wielding dwarf, their eyes glittering, segmented bodies rearing, hook-tipped forelegs waving in the air.
They formed a barrier, a wall of armored, arachnoid bodies lined up before him, but Brandon hurled himself against that barricade like a dwarf possessed by the devil. The Bluestone Axe struck and struck again, seeking out any weaknesses in the horax carapaces, plunging into the soft flesh between the armored joints, lopping off legs, and gouging eyes.
In seconds he had dispatched three of the beasts, but two other horax materialized with snakelike speed to occupy the breach and re-create the wall of armored bodies. Cursing, all but spitting in rage and frustration, Brandon chopped at the two, cutting the heads from both of the hideous creatures. Somehow the wall blocking him formed again.
“Gretchan!” he called again, his voice cracking from the strain.
By then the priestess had vanished, borne into the darkness in the clutches of the grotesque monsters. He strained to hear a scream, some sound of distress, and his heart sank when he could discern nothing beyond the incessant clacking of the horax who seethed and reared, blocking his pursuit as if they were tactical-minded rearguard soldiers.
Outnumbered at least six to one, Brandon didn’t hesitate, didn’t even pause to consider the odds. Raising his axe over his head, the blade still dripping with the guts and ichor of horax innards, he hurled himself at the monsters in a frenzy of battle rage. But instead of plunging into the center of the formation, where he would have been swiftly overcome, he dodged to the side, swinging a roundhouse blow that cut the head and the first two body sections from a rearing horax. As that monster fell, Brandon tried to skip past.
As he did, he swung a sideways blow, his axe again biting deeply into an arachnoid body. The stricken horax fell, hissing and wriggling, but the dwarf already had moved on to his next target, bringing a hard blow down on one of the bug monsters that, unfortunately, only glanced off it hard skull, though it did cut through one of the two jutting mandibles and sent the monster recoiling in something that resembled fear.
Still the bugs rose and snapped and swayed, blocking him from pursuing Gretchan. Brandon, feeling acutely aware of each passing second, ignored the badly injured bug wriggling on the floor and took stock of the three horax that continued to block his path.
The one with the cracked mandible held back from its two fellows, rearing in the center of the tunnel mouth. The others advanced slightly, jerking forward with four legs supporting each of them, while the f
orward half of their bodies, four legs waving menacingly in the air, reared and bobbed, weaving back and forth like snakes looking for an opponent.
“You want a target?” Brandon growled, addressing the horax to his left. “How about this?”
He sprang forward, axe held high, and just as quickly bounced back. His apparent target reared farther back, rising so high that two more of its legs came off the floor. All six of the taloned limbs spread wide, ready to grab him in a lethal embrace. The other two horax, reacting in concert with their companion, struck viciously in his direction.
Only he had dodged the other way. He brought the axe down savagely on the back of one horax’s head, lopping it off at the neck. The second horax was still exposed, and the dwarf pulled his weapon around on the backswing, driving the sharp, gore-slicked blade right between the monster’s eyes. Suddenly, the odds had shifted. Only one more horax stood between him and the rescue of his cherished companion.
The remaining horax surprised him, however, by seeming to sense his intent and acting to counter him. The creature scuttled away, backing into the tunnel where Gretchan had disappeared and taking up a position at a bottleneck where the cave was only five or six feet wide. Brandon lunged toward it, swinging wildly, but the monster feinted and bobbed away like a boxer. It spun to the side, leaving the path into the tunnel relatively free, but the dwarf was quickly beginning to understand that the monsters were smarter than he had thought. Far more than instinct drove them, and he knew that he was being dared to try to charge past the remaining horax. Even if he succeeded in a mad dash, he would have left an implacable enemy following him to his rear.
So Brand raised the Bluestone Axe and attacked again, chopping from the left and the right, as if he were chopping away at the trunk of a large tree. He sliced one foreleg from the horax’s left side and two more from the right. The beast’s multifaceted eyes glittered with some angry emotion-whether fear or hatred, the dwarf couldn’t tell-but when he drove in for the last attack, swinging the axe forward and slicing through the chitinous plates of the rearing monster’s belly, the gleam in those eyes swiftly faded to the universal blackness of death.
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