“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked.
He nodded slowly and let out a long sigh.
We sat together and watched the sunrise, and soon Nika emerged from the house with two steaming plates of food.
“For my brave underdark raiders,” she said as she handed them to us.
Nika had made us two heaping plates of scrambled eggs with cheese. Then she handed us two cups of coffee before she sat down on the porch next to me.
“Thanks Nika,” I said as I dug in.
Sawsaw may have said something to that effect, but his mouth was so stuffed with food that I couldn’t make out his words at all.
“My pleasure,” she said, and then she kissed us both on the cheek.
When we had finished eating, I brought all my gear out to the porch and applied camo coloring to my face. As I worked, Sawsaw watched with growing intrigue and pointed at himself.
“Sawsaw,” he said hopefully.
“You’ve already got awesome camo skin,” I told him. “What do you need this for?”
“Sawsaw do!” he demanded like a baby Hulk.
“Listen buddy,” I said. I knew I needed to stand my ground and be firm with the powerful tyke, or he wouldn’t respect me. “I’m not going to put up with your tantrums, especially not on the morning of your first mission.”
“It’s a quest, dear,” Nika corrected me as she emerged from the house with another little pack.
“Momma …” Sawsaw said with a whine and then pointed at me.
“Listen to your father, sweetheart,” she told him in a singsong voice. “Look, I’ve made you your own molle pack.”
Sawsaw forgot about the camo stick in about a millionth of a second and sprang over to inspect his new prize.
“Ooohhh, Sawsaw,” he whispered in awe as he stroked the green fabric.
“Do you like it?” Nika asked.
Rather than answer, Sawsaw leapt into her arms and planted kisses on both of her cheeks until she was giggling.
I inspected the pack and was impressed with Nika’s craftsmanship yet again. The little molle pack looked just like mine, and it even had a water pouch attached to it. The straps were wide and padded with moss, and Nika had even embroidered the letters US on the back to match my own.
“How did you make this?” I asked as I pointed at the water pouch attached to the small pack.
“I made it with the alligator’s bladder,” Nika said proudly. “It will only last a few weeks, but I think it looks cute on the pack! Sawsaw, try it on!”
Sawsaw hefted the pack, and though it seemed mostly empty, he still made grunting sounds as he shouldered it onto his back. When Nika giggled I realized that Sawsaw was impersonating me.
“Do I really sound like that?” I asked them both.
Nika nodded enthusiastically as she laughed, and Sawsaw offered me a grin.
“Holy shit, dadda,” he said, and then he took it off with more exaggerated grunts.
“Alright, alright, funny guy, let’s see what you’ve got in there.”
Sawsaw giggled, put the pack down on the porch, reached his little arm in, and pulled out the hatchet and dagger that I had given him. Once he took his weapons out, I leaned over the opening of the pack and pulled the rest of the contents out. His mother had also added jerky wrapped in a big leaf, a piece of cheese, some hard-boiled eggs in a small woven box, my pocket knife, a small leather tarp, and a blanket.
“Looks like a good start,” I told him, and he happily stuffed it all back in.
Once we were ready we stood before Nika for inspection, and she clasped her hands against her bosom and regarded us with a smitten grin.
“My handsome heroes,” she mused after she kissed us both.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” I assured her.
“I can’t wait to see the treasure,” she said, and I chuckled. At least she wasn’t worried for our safety.
“Sawsaw!” our son told her with a wave and started off down the hill.
We both watched our little soldier march away, and I gave Nika another hug and kiss.
“See you soon,” I promised.
“Have fun!” she called after us. “Don’t forget to bring home a new wife!”
I caught up with Sawsaw and reminded him that we were taking Charlie to the cave entrance. The horse would get us there faster, but more importantly, he could pull our loot in the cart and get us home quicker if there was any trouble.
Sawsaw had picked up on how to steer the horse and work the reins quickly, and he smiled with pride when I let him drive.
The puppies yipped happily and chased us down the path along the river, but they stopped at the edge of the property when I gave them the order.
“Sawsaw!” my son commanded the dogs when they started to whimper.
“He’s right,” I yelled back at the puppies. “You go back and stand guard over Nika and the house. Go on, be good dogs.”
They cocked their heads at me but then registered the command. The female shot off back toward the house, and the other barked and chased after its sibling.
When we reached the entrance, I tied off Charlie in the shade of a big oak and put down a half dozen apples for him to munch on while he waited for our return. I didn’t know how long we would be down there, but I figured that the horse could wait for several hours if need be.
But I wasn’t worried as much for the horse as I was for Sawsaw.
“Alright, Little Dude.” I dropped to one knee and adjusted his little pack. I knew he was a strong boy, but he was still less than a month old, and I tried to remind myself that his kind were born in those dark halls beneath the surface world. “You do what I say and keep yourself hidden, alright?”
“Sawsaw,” he said and nodded enthusiastically.
“Alright, follow my lead and remember the triplines that I told you about.”
We moved into the tunnel slowly and listened for activity in the darkness beyond. Then I clicked on my flashlight and shined it on the first tripline to show Sawsaw. Once we were past my traps, we moved a little faster. At the pitfall, I stopped to show Sawsaw and explain to him how it would work. He listened intently, and I could see his little mental gears moving. After a moment, the concept must have clicked because his eyes lit up, and he let out a devious little laugh.
“Holy shit!” he said as he spun his arms to mimic someone falling. Then he slapped his hands together, stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and pretended he was a dead kobold.
“That’s right,” I said. “Someone steps on that moss, and it’s holy shit before they are dead.”
“Dadda,” he said approvingly.
As we ventured deeper into the underdark, Sawsaw marveled at all the strange sights. He sniffed at the mushrooms, listened to the deep water in the walls, and licked the humming crystals when we came to them.
We traveled through to the chamber with the hot spring, and I smiled at the memory of the first time I had made love to Nika. Then I guided my son through the many tunnels and caverns that led to the underground lake, and on toward the halls of crystal where I first saved Nika from the kobolds.
“This is how I met your mother,” I told Sawsaw as I gestured to the corpses. “We killed these kobolds together.”
“Holy shit,” he whispered and kicked one of the corpses. They were far from the point where they stunk, and their bones had been half picked clean by the many denizens of the underdark.
I called him over and showed him how to read the map.
“See this?” I said and pointed at the small x that read kobold fight. “That’s where we are. If we follow this tunnel here, it will bring us through this chamber with the giant mushrooms. See? And then we find the underground river and follow that until we reach this abandoned gold mine.”
I trailed my finger along the rail and then planted it on the big X.
“And that, little dude, is where the treasure lies.”
“Treasure,” he whispered, and I put the map
away.
“Alright, soldier, which way do we go?” I asked my son.
He scrunched up his nose, turned in circles, and then pointed at the correct tunnel.
“Good job,” I told him. “I’m going to teach you how to be point man. Do you want to learn?”
“Dadda!” he said as he nodded.
I pointed to his eyes, pointed to me, and then began to make my way down the tunnel. I stayed close to the left wall so that I could use my spear without worrying about hitting the rock. Every few paces, I stopped to listen and peer around each corner. When I did so, I used the Army hand gestures to signal Sawsaw to stop walking. After fifteen minutes of setting the example, I figured he probably had a good idea of what to do, so I gestured for him to come stand next to me.
“The trick is to see them before they see you,” I whispered to him as we glanced around the corner. “They can see my flashlight though. How is your vision? Can you see in the dark?”
“Sawsaw,” he nodded as he pointed at his eyes.
“Okay,” I replied as I patted him on the head. “I’m going to aim the flashlight down a bit so I can see you, and you are going to take over point position. Let me know if you see someone and hide if you have to. I don’t want you getting hurt. Got it?”
“Dadda,” he whispered as he nodded eagerly.
“Lead the way, soldier!”
He offered me a crisp salute and then slowly moved toward the tunnel with hatchet in hand. After about eight feet, the green-skinned boy stopped and pressed his back against the wall. Then I watched him scour the darkness for a moment before he motioned me on.
We went through the tunnels in this manner for about a half hour before we arrived at the chamber with the giant mushrooms that Nika had indicated on the map.
The view was surreal, and we both let out long breaths as we looked around the chamber.
Twenty-foot-tall white mushrooms littered the long cavern. The stems were as wide as ancient oaks, and their big white caps were dotted with green and yellow. Water trickled in a small stream, and I presumed this to be the underground river that Nika had mentioned. Stalactites hung low in the giant chamber, and as I inspected the roof for bats or other less savory creatures, I noticed thick cobwebs stretched across the dripping formations, and a shiver tiptoed down my spine. I hated spiders, and the memory of the giant snake led to horrific images of massive eight-legged monsters.
“Come on, Sawsaw,” I said, since I didn’t want to stick around and find out what had made those webs.
We found the underground river a few minutes later and followed it through the cavern to the other side. Sawsaw scampered ahead and put his back against a towering stalagmite, but he didn’t motion me on. Instead, he raised a single green finger and became invisible.
I crept to where he had been and listened. The trickle of the underground stream mixed with the faint sound of exotic bugs, but other than that I heard nothing. I couldn’t see Sawsaw’s shorts, but I could see his pack, so I knew he was standing right where he had turned invisible.
“Stay here,” I whispered to his spot before I shuffled forward to investigate.
Then I walked around the stalagmite, switched my spear to my left hand, and slowly pulled my M17 from its holster. I still heard nothing, but a peculiar scent hung in the air. It was faint at first, but grew stronger as I moved around the formation. It was a mixture of smells that I couldn’t quite place, but the scent kind of reminded me of livestock, so I knew that it belonged to some kind of animal.
And it would probably attack as soon as it saw us.
I glanced back toward where Sawsaw was supposed to be waiting, but I didn’t see his backpack. I was about to return, but something warm and wet landed on my right hand. My instincts screamed a warning, and I dove away from the stalagmite a heartbeat before a big club smashed into it.
A roar tore through the silence of the cavern, and I rolled three times before I sprang to my feet and caught a glimpse of motion.
The biggest, meanest looking creature I had ever seen was growling ten feet away from me.
The beast was covered from head to toe in matted brown fur that grew longer at the elbows and knees. Its muscular frame was well defined beneath the thick fur, and it wore a kind of leather loincloth that had survived ten years past laundry day.
A rusted forearm brace hung on its left arm, and a mean looking spike protruded from the piece of armor. In its other hand the monster carried a massive, seven-foot-long spiked club, and I imagined one hit from the thing would be able to destroy the house I had just built Nika.
The creature’s snout was like a pig’s nose, long fangs rimmed a beak-like mouth, and its yellow eyes regarded me like I was dinner. Its ears were long and pointed kind of like a goblin’s or an elf’s, but the broad forehead was highlighted by two long wispy eyebrows that were arched menacingly.
My mind raced through my mental inventory of mythical creatures, and based on Nika’s descriptions of various underdark monsters, I realized that I was staring at an eight-foot tall bugbear.
“Look what I’ve found,” the creature rumbled in a deep baritone voice. “A human has come for dinner.”
I wasn’t about to try to fight the bugbear in hand-to-hand combat, so I took aim with my M17 and shot it twice in the torso. The bullets thumped into the creature’s massive chest and left two quarter-sized holes right at where its heart should have been. I expected the bullets to drop the beast, but it charged instead.
Oh shit.
I jumped to the side as I fingered the trigger again. My third bullet hit the massive creature in the gut, but then all five hundred pounds of the monster slammed into me, and I felt my handgun slip out of my fingers.
The creature grabbed me by the neck and picked me up to inspect me like I was a hen at the market. His grip felt like something akin to what Superman would probably have, and I gasped for breath as I pounded on his thick arms.
My vision was quickly growing dark, so I abandoned the strategy of trying to punch his arms and frantically grabbed for my survival knife. As soon as I pulled the blade free, the monster turned my head to the side and sniffed me with a look of hunger.
“You will be good food for my cubs,” the bugbear said. His breath wafted over me as I struggled, and it smelled like a mummy’s morning breath mixed with garbage.
The creature hadn’t seen me pull out my knife, so I did the obvious, and stabbed it into his neck with all the strength I could muster.
His scream was pretty damn loud.
Blood spurted from the bugbear’s neck like water from a burst pipe, and the monster tossed me away like an ant-covered ragdoll. I landed on my pack, rolled backward to get as much space as I could between us, and then glanced around the cavern for my M17.
I didn’t see my gun, but I caught sight of Sawsaw as he shot across the room and leaped on the screaming monster’s head. My son held onto one long ear with one hand, and hacked downward with his axe into the face of the bugbear as he rode it like a bull. The bugbear somehow screamed even louder than before, and he tried to stab up with the spike on his forearm. The monster’s face was now just a pile of bleeding hamburger, and his attack missed the goblin-human boy by a mile.
“Sawsaw, run!” I croaked as I pulled myself to my feet.
The screaming bugbear reached up to try to get a hold of Sawsaw, but my clever son leapt off his head and disappeared as he shifted to camo skin.
The bugbear spun a circle, and that’s when I saw the full extent of the damage. One of its big yellow eyes was hanging out of the socket, and red blood poured down its massive chest. The creature’s dark brown fur was now auburn, and the monster looked like it might slip in the pile of blood that pooled at its feet.
I pulled out the looted dwarven battle axes from my pack as I searched again for my M17. The gun was nowhere to be seen, and I gave up my search when the bugbear turned its attention back on me.
Then it started stalking forward with murder in its one g
ood eye.
I took a deep breath and readied my axe, but then Sawsaw appeared behind the bugbear and chopped right into the beast’s left Achilles tendon. My son’s axe bit deep, and the bugbear dropped to one knee with a mewling cry.
Then Sawsaw thrusted his dagger right up the monster’s ass as I charged.
The bugbear’s howl echoed through the cavern with ear-shattering volume, but I gave a cry of my own as I swung. My strike was true, and the blade of my axe took the monster’s head clean off. The head hit the wall of the cavern like a rebounded basketball, rolled over to me, and then I stopped it with my boot as the headless corpse crashed into the cavern ground.
I lowered my weapon and tried to catch my breath as Sawsaw joyously scampered over to me. As soon as my son reached me, he grabbed the big head by the tuft of hair on top and gave a victorious war cry.
“Holy shit, dadda!” he yelled to me as he as he raised his prize high into the air.
The sight of my pint-sized son holding the giant head made me laugh, but Sawsaw turned to me with concern on his face, and I guessed he was worried I was laughing at him instead of with him.
“You did great, buddy,” I said, and his frown quickly turned upside down. Then he threw aside the massive head and jumped into my arms.
“Dadda?” he asked as he touched my neck gingerly.
“Yeah, I’m alright, buddy. Thanks for the help,” I said as I gave him a hug. “Let’s see if this guy has any loot, and then we can be on our way.”
The bugbear had two gold coins and a small sack of mushrooms on him. I pocketed the gold and was about to toss the mushrooms when Sawsaw suddenly grabbed one and ate it whole.
“Hey!” I said. “Don’t eat random mushrooms.”
“Sawsaw,” he said and pointed at the mushrooms. Then he mimed eating one, looked at his body as it became completely invisible, and said, “Holy shit.”
“The mushrooms make you more powerful?” I asked.
“Sawsaw,” he said as he became visible once more.
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