The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island

by Jeffery Russell

  Thud didn’t like the sound of that order at all. He noticed as he reached the mast that there were a pair of axes conveniently leaning against it. Now wasn’t that peculiar? Clink and Keezix grabbed the axes as Thud stopped to help approaching dwarves start climbing. The logistical problems of a string of bad climbers attempting to ascend a mast that two expert choppers were swinging axes at was going to become a pressing issue very quickly. Thud spared a glance at the foremast. Durham was there, using his height to help climbers, Rasp and Grottimus swinging away with axes that seem to have mysteriously been left by that mast as well. Leery was higher up, helping dwarves climb past her.

  His brain was starting to put two and two together and not liking the fact that it kept coming up with four.

  He ran out of dwarves to assist onto the mast and had a look at the progress of the chopping. The axes had eaten deep wedges into each side and wood chips were scattered around their feet.

  “Call it good!” he said. “Now, up the mast with you.”

  “Don’t like where this is looking to be goin',” Keezix said.

  “Think of it as gaining new life experiences,” Clink said as he pulled himself up and offered her a hand. Thud gave a helpful push and was now the only person left on deck. The dwarves were clustered up the length of the mast like grapes.

  “Head-check!” Thud yelled. He cast a quick look at the island as calls and responses started overhead.

  It was close. Even now the bowsprit was nudging at the fog. Thud started climbing.

  Then came the responses he didn’t want to hear.

  “Missing Nibbly!”

  “Missing Cardamon!”

  “Missing Ping!”

  “Missing Ruby!”

  “Missing Max!”

  Ruby and four dwarves below decks. He looked up at Mungo. The gnome’s eyes were full of terror.

  “Missing where?” the gnome squeaked. His voice always went up a few octaves under stress. “They can’t be missing. Everyone was supposed to be up here!”

  The Cackle Squiffy entered Blackfog.

  It was like being in a cocoon, or, at least what Leery imagined a cocoon would be like. The fog was so thick she couldn’t even see the deck below. Just the bit of mast she clung to, floating through the darkness. She didn’t even notice when the drop started. She had nothing to orientate her position against. She just became aware that she was now being pulled away from the mast. Gravity. The ship was tilting forward. She scrambled around the mast as the ship tilted, figuring the lee side would be the better option. The tilt turned into a slide forward and then a lurch as the stern of the ship surrendered to gravity. She looked up at where the jury-rigged sail would be if there were more than three feet of visibility. And then there was. The fog had a bottom and they’d just dropped through it into the strangest place Leery had ever laid eyes on. A great shimmering wall of water to each side, swirling darkness overhead. Far below them a fifty yard misty swath of tangled shipwrecks; shattered hulls and jutting masts, dangling ropes and tattered strips of sail. Leaning against each other drunkenly, broken across each other. How long would it take to…

  Her thought was interrupted by a great thump sound from overhead, the sound of a billowing sail. The ship jerked in response and there was a loud snap followed by a hard yank of deceleration. The masts had broken loose from the ship and the parachutes were working. The Cackle Squiffy dropped away below them, growing smaller with shocking speed. Now they were down to two dwarf laden logs drifting down on parachutes like giant sunlion seeds. Except there–someone falling, yanked loose. Tumbling through the sky, wailing. Coming past just now…

  Leery leapt.

  Thud thought it had been Clink. He watched as the Cackle Squiffy fell away beneath them, the two falling dwarves just above it. The ship met her final resting place with a crunch that Thud felt in his toes, splitting apart across the middle as something beneath it won the contest, the deck gaping open, a black mouth with splintered teeth. The falling dwarves disappeared into it. He looked up the mast he clung to, trying to see who was no longer on it. Clink. Definitely Clink.

  They were drifting a bit as they descended, the parachute riding whatever invisible air currents existed between two walls of ocean. The base of their mast caught against the bowsprit of a shipwreck about thirty yards from the Squiffy’s remnants. It tilted precariously and dwarves began raining from it, leaping for safety. Thud spotted an angled bit of deck that looked reasonably safe compared to being dragged along by the chute. He let go, shoving himself away and trying to not kill himself when he landed. He misjudged the angle, naturally, and thumped to a face-down landing that, due to the bladder-buoy, wasn’t too bad at all.

  After a bit of shimmying around like an up-ended turtle he managed to sit up.

  The second mastachute was landing another twenty yards further along. It disappeared behind some old wreckage.

  “Everyone here intact?” he called. There was a chorus of hesitant affirmatives. “Keezix, go check on that other mast. Think Doc was on that one. Any of you that think you’re wounded go with her. Everyone else with me.”

  He slid his way down the deck and clambered over the broken railing at the bottom, dropping down onto the ocean floor. Former floor at least. Or, former ocean, rather. It was an uneven bed of pitted and rippled rock, patches of sand, various dessicated bits of sea life and quite a few skeletons. Thud swore under his breath. Recent experience had given him his fill of skeletons for a long while. These ones didn’t seem inclined to get up and walk around at least. Yet.

  There was a salty mist in the air, patches blanketing the wreckage here and there. It was eerily silent. The walls of water towered above them but made no noise. And nothing down here was moving.

  “Hallo!” Thud shouted as they ran towards where the Squiffy had fallen. Seven members of the team had gone with it, the number sitting in the middle of his mind like a great toad.

  They rounded a massive tangle of sail and rigging and found the Cackle Squiffy’s shattered remains. It had broken crosswise in the middle, the two halves cracked open like an egg. Cardamon was standing in the split, looking out at them. He grinned and waved.

  Thud almost tripped over a broken plank. A grin and a wave? That implied something that didn’t seem possible.

  “Cardamon? Who’s with ye?”

  “Hopefully everyone you’re lookin' for,” Cardamon called back. “Leery and Clink dropped in uninvited not too long ago. Leery took the hit. She’s banged up but think them bladderthingies even kept her in fewer pieces than otherwise.”

  “How? Don’t tell me them bladders saved the lot of ya.” Thud had managed to climb to the split. Cardamon stood aside to help him climb in.

  “Nope,” Cardamon said. “We was in the hammocks. Got the idea during that bit with the tentacles. Didn’t know if it would work but didn’t have a lot of time to consider it. Think we’re all going to look like bruise waffles for a few days,” he finished sadly. “Think I got one right down the middle o' my…”

  “How’s Clink?” Thud interrupted.

  Cardamon gestured behind him. Clink was sitting against the wall, Leery laying next to him, her head on his knee.

  “She saved me life,” Clink said as Thud walked up. His face was pale in the dim light. “Thought I was a deader fer sure. Think some o' me ribs are arguin' that though. Hurts to breathe.”

  “Doc will be here presently”, Thud said, hoping that was true. Doc was in the one part of the team he hadn’t directly checked on. Their landing had looked pretty reasonable, however. At least, as reasonable as anything could be in a shipwreck on the dry ocean floor between water walls beneath a fog island.

  He knelt next to Leery. “And you?”

  She grinned and gave a thumbs up.

  “Did you see that catch?”

  “I did,” Thud said. “You won’t even need to do the paperwork to get yer bonus.”

  “Yes!” She pumped her fist and winced. There looked to be a fai
r amount of blood.

  “How ya farin'?”

  “Think I broke most everything between my waist and knees but they’re already mending. Got run through my side by a piece of plank though. That’ll have me walkin' slow for a bit but I should be back to form in a half hour or so, save the itching.”

  He patted her knee. “We’ll get Doc to clean it up before the skin closes.”

  He stood and surveyed the broken room, the ring of dwarves pulling themselves back together. He gave them a grin.

  “Show time!”

  Chapter Eleven

  There was light, but no light source that Leery could see. The light hung in the air as a mist of blues and greens, everything cast in its hues. It swirled behind them when they walked, leaving warbles in color and vision in their wake. The sea rose to each side, massive walls of water that glittered with eddies flickering across their surface. Nothing visible held it back. The seawalls rose out of sight, rounded in at the bottom then straight up. There were sinuous curves along their length. Far down the wall she could see an opening. Another chasm in the sea, meeting this one. The walls came together behind them, the chasm ending in the direction from which they’d come. The edge of the island, the end of the sea canyon. Before them lay the graveyard of ships, jagged shadowed shapes of shattered masts and seaweed tangled lines, splintered hulls and ragged angles. Around them were tumbled rocks and tangled weed, bloated purple and orange starfish, some with over a dozen arms.

  They’d set up camp next to the wreckage of the Squiffy, mostly to save having to carry their gear very far. The sails from the mastachutes had been salvaged and strung as tents against the side of the ship. Gammi had a fire going and they had a dubious all-you-can-eat feast of pickled Kordavian ginger-herring, dragoneye onions and ship biscuits, a menu determined entirely by which barrels had shattered in the fall. Gammi hadn’t yet determined starfish edibility but was gamely trying to roast one. Ruby was making tea, moving around a little stiffly like the others, but with far less theatrics. There was a bald cat sharing Mungo’s herring with him.

  Most of their gear seemed to have survived the fall. Leery had helped with going through the backpacks as it didn’t require much in the way of walking around. The mirrors were done for and they now had at least three times as many pieces of chalk. A conflagulator flare had gone off in one of the packs and burned a hole through the side but everything else in that pack was alright save reeking of sulfur. Gryngo had been pleased that his sawdust packing idea had kept the powder kegs from exploding. Leery felt that was the sort of thing that should have been tested beforehand but was glad that it had worked. Most of Gryngo’s cargo was barrels of ingredients but he liked having a few live kegs available for emergencies. Gryngo was of the opinion that most problems could by solved by exploding them and Leery had always been hard-pressed to find an argument against.

  Now she was keeping herself entertained by watching the vanguard sort their armor out. It had gotten tumbled in the fall and the dwarves were standing around trying on various pieces in an attempt to reassemble them into proper sets. Save Rasp. He’d stenciled his initials on each of his armor pieces and was now reclining with a herring sandwich calling out helpful suggestions. The vanguard had two dwarves on wounded roster now, only one of which was even here but that wasn’t an unusual situation for vanguard.

  She noticed Ginny sitting a ways apart from everyone. She had a pixie lantern resting on her knees and was staring at it blankly. Leery stood with a wince and limped over. Were those tears in her beard? Leery sat down next to her without saying anything.

  “He broke his wing,” Ginny said after a bit. It took Leery a moment to realize Ginny was talking about the pixie. She hadn’t known they had any males. She squinted at the lamp. The pixie was crouched at the bottom, holding a broken piece of wing in his hands. The left upper one, Leery could see. The other half of the wing was still attached to his back, the smaller wing below it almost as long.

  “They don’t grow back,” Ginny said. “He’ll never fly again. His light has gone out.”

  Leery decided to think things over before responding. Pixies didn’t rate much higher than mosquitoes in the popularity department. They looked like little people and gave off pretty light when they flew but that was as far as their endearing qualities went. They tied hair in knots, curdled milk, drove pets insane, stole anything they could lift, even peed in your beer when you weren’t looking. Leery’s mother had kept tally marks on her pixie-paddle and had proudly displayed it over the mantle.

  Ginny seemed somewhat attached to this one. Pixie lamps were common everywhere there were pixies. Granted, fairy cake cost more than whale oil or candles but the light produced was much stronger. Their best feature was that, as pixies were attracted to light sources in an attempt to mate with them, pixie lanterns produced fewer flaming pixies than candles and oil lamps. The dungeoneers had special lamps of Mungo’s design. They were round with a gyroscopic frame of metal wire allowing the lamps to be rolled across the floor without sending the pixie end over end. The lamps tended to spring traps when rolled. The lamps did pretty well against dart traps but jets of flame, falling stone blocks, tar pits…yeah, they’d lost more than a few pixies over the years. No one ever thought anymore of it than they did swatting a moth.

  “Is that…is that a little helmet?” she asked. “On his head?” she clarified, after a moment’s reflection.

  “Yeah, I made him a little sword too,” Ginny said. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  “Doesn’t seem the sort of thing that would come up in conversation.”

  “It would if you mentioned it. It would come up in every conversation for the next three months.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Wink.”

  “Ah.”

  “On account of his…”

  “Yeah, I caught that.”

  “He’s the one I sent down to scout this chasm,” Ginny said, looking up at the swirling wall. “Practically a member o' the team. I don’t know what to do. Can’t just let him go out here with a missing wing. He’d starve to death.”

  “Maybe you could teach him to ride around on Corporal Cluck.”

  That at least got a chuckle.

  The title of ‘corporal’ was an honorific as far as Leery knew. Thud had promoted the trap-tester chicken as a lark but Leery didn’t think Thud had the authority to bestow rank on anything other than his socks. She wasn’t under the impression that Thud expected any of them to start following the chicken’s orders anytime soon. Nobody else even had a rank as far as she knew. Dwarves were not big on the idea of ranks. In any given group of dwarves everyone knew which one was in charge. There was a pecking order that operated on the level of instinct. The chicken had gotten the rank by accidentally saving the team which didn’t speak much for command credibility. However, ‘Corporal Cluck’ was fun to say so the rank had stuck.

  “Could make a little saddle for him,” Ginny said.

  “He could hold the worm-stick so he could steer her around.”

  “Worth a shot,” Ginny said, surprising Leery. She had been under the impression that they were joking.

  “I think the others are going to notice if you start trying to train a pixie to ride a chicken.”

  Ginny stood and shrugged. “Experimental project for traps team. Better chicken guidance systems is something Mungo’s been trying to develop for a long time.”

  “Moot point, for now. We didn’t bring the chickens on the ship. Probably for the best. I’m not sure how they’d have fared in that fall. Oh, and make Mungo swear the ‘Ancient Dwarven Oath of Secrecy’.” She winked. “He’ll believe whatever oath you make up and it’ll keep his lips shut.”

  ***

  Durham was sitting on a rock near the wreck, doing his best to mend the rip in his trousers while still wearing them. He was pleased that the rip was in his trousers rather than in his leg but now had growing concerns that he’d just sewn his trousers to his leg. He gav
e them an experimental tug.

  “So,” came a loud voice from behind him, turning his tug into a yank. Yes, Durham thought. That had indeed been sewn to his leg.

  “Aaaaargh,” said Durham.

  The voice behind him was replaced by a prolonged silence. Durham took a deep, slow breath and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes before turning around. Catchpenny was standing there, wide-eyed. Durham felt a stab of panic. His experience in talking to elves was limited.

  “Sorry,” Durham said, rubbing at his leg.

  “You’re apologizing to me?” the elf asked. “How curious. Should I get the medic dwarf?”

  “Uh, no, I’m fine. Doc is his name.”

  “You’d think that would be one of the ones I’d remember.”

  Durham started in with a too-loud laugh then cut it off abruptly out of fear the elf might take it as an insult.

  “So,” Catchpenny began again. “Twenty dwarves, four humans. Two came included with the boat, and the third is an opportunistic scribe. Which leaves you as the mystery.” He shook Durham’s hand. “How did you get stirred into the stew?”

  “Well, the last job they did…”

  Catchpenny gave a dismissive wave. “I’ve read the journal. My question is why you’re still here.”

  “I’m the cart…”

  “No,” the elf said. “Not that either. Here, let me stitch that for you.” He leaned forward with the needle and thread that he’d somehow procured without Durham noticing. “You had options, certainly. And the one you chose was to be the diversity-hire for a group of dwarves that spend all of their time crawling through deathtraps. How was this the option with the most appeal?”

  Durham started to answer but fell silent. Had this been a better choice than being the lord of a ruin or returning to a career of guarding sheep? It had seemed so at the time.

  “There’s a saying among elves,” Catchpenny went on.“Or, rather, a question. ‘ If the way forward is a mirror showing the way behind, would you keep walking?’”