by Mike Wild
The trio split up, each taking a separate route with the strict understanding they were to explore no farther than a couple of hundred yards and turn back at any sign of trouble. They had some success—Trix returning with a seaweed-like lichen stripped from the walls, Yuri with three small rodents balanced on the flattened blade of his axe, and Ralph two handfuls of mushrooms which, while off-putting in their rotten appearance, he pronounced edible. They lit a fire, and the whole lot went into a stir-fry which tasted like shit.
“What pisses me off,” Yuri said as he sucked noisily on a strip of the lichen, desperate to find some flavour or nutrition, “is that if this were a real dungeon, our inventories would be brimming with stuff.”
Trix grimaced as she nibbled on a rodent. She spat out a small bone, possibly its skull; from its anatomy, it was difficult to tell. “By real dungeon, I take it, you mean something in, say, Rivellon or the Sword Coast?”
“Da. I remember playing Shadows of Amn and barely being able to move for the food in my inventory. Fifty roast chickens, hocks of ham, bowls of stew, hundreds of fucking carrots and turnips. I mean, why? One hit point here, one there. All day long I was munching carrots and turnips.”
“I found the menu options a little more realistic in later games,” Ralph said, though absently. He was, as he had been since finding it, immersed in the detail of the grimoire.
Trix smiled. “I never took you for a videogamer, Ralph.”
“More of a table-top adventurer, but known to try my hand.”
“So much,” Yuri went on, “fucking food. And drink. Bottles of wine. Of rum. Crates of dwarven ale to deliver to some bastard somewhere. Tankards, full and frothy, which never spilled. Handy to wash down my forty-three cherry pies. Tell me, tovarishes—what kind of lunatic explores a dungeon with forty-three cherry pies?”
“Yuri, I think you’re still hungry.”
“Da, I am still hungry.” Yuri threw the exhausted strip of lichen back into the now-empty pot. “I could eat a whore.”
“Horse.”
“Maybe both, English. Blya! How is it that something can taste so awful and yet smell so divine?”
Trix and Ralph looked at the Russian. Breakfast did indeed smell as bad as it tasted, perhaps worse. But here was Yuri inhaling deeply, smiling broadly. Then they caught it, too—a waft of something not from the pot. Trix felt like a Bisto kid as she unfolded herself to let her nose pinpoint the aroma. It was coming from an intact area ahead. They doused the fire and headed over, trying to be stealthy despite Yuri’s stomach delivering a medley of sounds from that of a rumble of heavy bricks to a whistling missile spiralling off course. These were, however, soon overlaid by other, even less welcome sounds—grunts, heavy shufflings, and what seemed to be a chopping of meat. The source of the aroma, then, but one now approached not with anticipation but extreme caution. They paused where the corridor met a chamber, kept to the shadows, assessed the activity within. The almighty fart that ripped from one of its stocky inhabitants only served as confirmation of their identity—orcs, seven of them. They were gathered around a campfire equipped with a spit; skewered on it was what looked like a large roast chicken. But only because the last of its limbs had just been hacked off. The leg was now being fought over by two slavering orcs who snapped it in half at the knee, as if it were a wishbone. As the torso rotated further on the spit, being basted from a bowl of drained blood, the head came into view, and though it was so carbonised it was all but unidentifiable, the burned bumps and hollows of a nose and eyes were visible, as was a screaming but silenced mouth. Into the latter had been thrust a thick clay pipe to let out steam.
The meat’s disturbing provenance didn’t stop Yuri’s stomach rumbling more loudly than ever, but he whacked it silent, looking sheepish. “That is—?”
“Yep. Boffin Surprise,” Trix replied.
“Another one. The poor bastard.”
“They do seem to have reappeared in inordinately unfortunate locations.”
Yuri hefted his axe, but Ralph laid a hand on his arm. “We can do nothing for him now. Is it worth tackling a bunch of orcs to deprive them of a dinner they will eat but we will not?”
“No, but, those supplies …” Trix indicated the boffin’s backpack spilling its contents in a corner of the chamber. Not only more rations than he’d ever have needed on his sojourn but flares, medkits, and other gear to replenish what they had lost. Orcs or not, they needed these things.
“I don’t suppose we could wait until they’ve eaten. Hope they wander off?” Ralph asked.
Trix shook her head. Pointed out the oddly shaped skulls and bones littering the floor, the remains of what only god knew had been on the menu earlier. There was also a primitive still, clumps of matted straw to serve as sleeping areas, and a makeshift latrine below a shattered stone flag in the floor. You could see the stink rising from it.
“If they were moving on, they’d just crap wherever,” she said. “But even orcs won’t do it on their own doorstep. This place is a nest, and they’re not going anywhere.”
Yuri hefted his axe once more. “Then we fight.”
“We fight.”
But not head-on. That, they all knew. Three humans versus seven orcs in such close confines was just asking for trouble. Instead, they’d let the orcs do most of the work. Trix took the initiative, kneeling to roll the last of her smoke grenades into the group, waiting while it detonated to fog the chamber, then rolling after it with dagger drawn. Ralph, at the same time, slipped along the chamber wall, his palms beginning to crackle with magical energy, waiting for his moment to move. The orcs, meanwhile, had risen, angry, suspicious, but blinded—not to mention dim—and when Yuri let out a sudden battle cry, they spun, stomped, and swung their weapons as one. At this point, Yuri had already shifted, letting out a second cry elsewhere, and orc weapons swung again, wholly uncoordinated in the confusion. One orc took off the arm of its neighbour, a second sliced another’s jugular, and while the first victim roared, staggered, and spurted, the second dropped to its knees with a gurgle, there surprised to find Trix lurking in the smoke to end its suffering with a swift stab to the brain. Ralph acted now, sending two already thoroughly confused orcs into apoplexy by a laying on of hands which discharged a few thousand volts into each, and as one was jolted towards Yuri’s position, the Russian grabbed it by both sides of the head and snapped its neck. The other, enraged by its pain, swung its battle-axe in an indiscriminate arc, and there was a wet chock as the head of the orc who had already been spurting departed its body in the same way its arm had.
Three down. But Trix, Yuri, and Ralph didn’t get it all their way. One of the orcs—a shaman by the look of its robes, and thus a wilier opponent—managed to inflict some minor damage in return. Fireballs were never a good idea in close-quarters combat, but he launched one anyway, towards Yuri’s last roar. The burning sphere exploded, and the shaman’s three remaining compatriots took fire damage, one fatally, flesh charred as badly as the boffin on the spit. Yuri, in turn, took some peripheral splash, a second-degree burn to the whole of his left thigh, and cursed loudly—chyort voz-mi! The exclamation brought a snarl from the remaining orc fighters, and they snapped towards him, but before they could reach the Russian, one crumpled with an incomprehending grunt, Achilles tendons severed by Trix, while the other was stopped dead in its tracks as Ralph again laid on hands—not electricity this time but a spell of winterchill leaving the orc frozen and crackling with a steaming blue frost.
The shaman was in a state of some panic now—its ‘muscle’ gone—and to protect itself swiftly cast a sphere of invulnerabilty. It did little good. Wilier than your average orc a shaman may be, but it was still an orc, essentially dim. Thus, it didn’t realise Trix had already manoeuvred herself directly to its rear, within its sphere, and as the ugly bastard growled at unseen assailants through the shimmering, throbbing field, she tapped it on the shoulder before flattening it with her quarterstaff. The field disappeared.
Four
down, three incapacitated. The survivors were too unpredictable to let live. The winterchilled and the cripple were despatched first, but Ralph delayed a killing blow to the shaman. The smoke dissipating, it got a clear view of its dead compatriots and bowed its head in submission.
“Grunga tret kabo?” Ralph prodded.
“Kakshi. Kitra kakshi.”
“Taret? Grunga tipi?”
The shaman spread its arms. “Ut livik,” it spat. “Ut orakai.”
“Nugyet ten transi?”
“Nugyet.”
Ralph nodded. “Kill it.”
Yuri did the deed. Wiping his blade down, he looked at the others. They’d acted perfectly in sync, the perfect team, but none had a taste for slaughter.
“Let’s hope,” Trix said, “that was worth it.”
It was. The backpack spill yielded all that they’d seen plus more. In addition, the struggle that must have ensued as the orcs brought the boffin to the spit had caused a number of items to fall from his pockets. There were also some finds on the orcs, amongst them the makings of homemade bombs, which explained the destruction and blackening of walls on other parts of the level. It was a good haul, and the boffin, at least, was thanked for it. Trix pulled a torn banner of unknown provenance from the wall, doused the ancient cloth in the product of the orcs’ still, threw it over the boffin’s body, and watched the campfire ignite it. It was the closest thing to a cremation they could manage, done to a background of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever?” played from Yuri’s headphones, and each said a few words.
“Easier to take down than they should have been.”
“I suspect most on this level are.”
“Meaning what, Professor?”
“The orcs were malnourished. And this place more bunker than camp.” The old man moved out of the nest, stared across the continuing ruin—with most of the structure razed, it was possible to actually see the level going on for miles. Signs of conflict—hails of arrows, smoke—were visible in the near and far distance. “It told me they fight for food.”
Yuri picked something green and stringy from his teeth. “If they want this crap so badly, let them fight.”
“Not that kind of food, Major. They are literally fighting for their lives.”
“Elaborate, please.”
“Let me put it this way. The boffin was takeaway. The rest of the menu is ‘eat-in’.
The Russian paled. “Lyudoyedstvo … cannibalism?”
“As the consumption is cross-species, strictly not. But no doubt it will come to that, for whichever species survives, when their dwindling larder is exhausted.”
“Dwindling?” Trix asked.
“The orc described this place as their ‘world’.”
“The dungeon?”
“No, Patricia—the level.”
Trix took a second. “Are you saying there’s no other exit?”
“The exact phrase our friend used was ‘nowhere to go’.”
“No, that can’t be right.” Trix used the wormglass, though, as it had been for a while now, Shen’s image was degraded. This deep, perhaps, there was a limit to their link after all. “Shen, have we hit bottom?”
“Don’t think so, Trix,” his voice came back after a few seconds delay. “But the level is a mess, everything below, a haze. Very difficult to pinpoint an exit.”
Trix sighed. “There has to be one somewhere.”
They searched. For half a day. Finding no sign of a way down. It was starting to look as if it—or they—had been blocked during the fighting, if any had ever existed at all. If that was the case, they were looking at serious backtracking—if that were even possible anymore. Exasperated, they took a break, Ralph retreating into study of the grimoire, Trix planting herself on some masonry to light a fag. She found herself staring curiously at Yuri poking his nose hither and thither.
“There’s nothing here. What are you still sniffing around for?”
“Call of nature.”
“Again?”
“It is not that kind of call, English. Breakfast, it has disagreed with—”
“I do not want to know. Just get on with it.”
Yuri retreated into an alcove some yards away. A moment later Trix heard him mutter, “Rulon tualetnoy … sheet.”
She shook her head, dug into the boffin’s supplies, found a couple of toilet rolls. She tossed one in the direction of the alcove. It was only as she turned to share a moan with Ralph that she realised the old man had gone strangely silent. This was because Ralph was pressed up against a wall with the tips of three spears pressed to his throat.
The holders of the spears Trix knew well. Their species, that was. She had no idea what they were called where they originally hailed from, but from the first encounter with the annoying, pint-sized, pointy-eared, pickle-green little fuckwits, the keepers had dubbed them goblins.
“Chat-lak,” Ralph was saying, his hands up beside both sides of his head, “chat-lak, restik.” We come in peace. But the goblins, it seemed, didn’t give a stuff, their spears pressing so hard that blood was now oozing from beneath Ralph’s chin. Three more spears were being jabbed now at Trix’s stomach, and she was forced to back up with her own hands raised.
“Er, Yuri …”
“You cannot rush these things, English.”
“We have company.”
“Company?”
“Goblin raiding party. Six of them.”
Yuri sighed. “As if one shit is not enough.”
“Look—just hurry up.”
“You must buy me a second.”
“What?”
“Distract them. If it is of any help, they hate magic, I am told.”
Trix’s mind raced. Then she held up the other toilet roll, letting it unravel in the manner of a scroll. She fought for words. “Benidorm … Lanzarote,” she boomed after a second. “Amsterdam … Alicante … Majorca!”
Surprisingly, it seemed to work, but then goblins were dim little fuckers. They faltered in their advance, even took a step backwards, wary of what foul sorcery the scroll would unleash. But when nothing happened after a second, they looked at each other, then back at Trix, and began to yabber and jab with their spears once more. Thankfully, it had given Yuri the time he needed, and Trix saw something sail over her head to land in the goblins’ midst. At first she thought it was the toilet roll and wondered exactly what Yuri’s plan was, but then the whole area whited out as the flash-bang he’d dredged from his pockets went off. Trix was as momentarily staggered and blinded as the goblins, but she could hear their screeches, and that was good enough to locate them. She had her staff from her back in a second, used it to sweep away the spears before her, and then ducked and spun, knocking the legs of those goblins who’d jabbed at her out from under them. From nearby she heard a crack, a sizzle, and three yelps, and she guessed that Ralph had also taken advantage of the few seconds confusion and incapacitated his own attackers by pumping some power through his palms.
By the time Yuri came sauntering out of his place of business, the goblins were tied in a tight bundle. They struggled against their ropes, but a quick slap from Yuri soon quietened them. While Trix piled up the goblins’ weapons—primitive things really, of little use as anything other than kindling to Trix and Co.—Ralph knelt before them, jabbering fracturedly in their own language and, where that failed him, using signing to try to get the answers he wanted. Where was the exit from this level? Where could they go down? The goblins were either wilfully or stupidly uncomprehending until Yuri clambered up a pile of rubble and mimed walking down stairs, and then suddenly, the small green captives were more forthcoming in their reactions. They were not, however, the kind of reactions Trix and the others might have wanted. Goblins were generally too stupid to be scared—hence their proclivity to take on opponents three times their size—but these guys were suddenly scared. Really, really scared. Nich, nich, nich, they spat—no, no, no—and words that Ralph interpreted as deadly, danger, and die. It was so
mething of a worrying development but proved, at least, that there was a level below this one—all that had to be done now was convince the goblins to show them how to get there.
Yuri pulled on the rope binding the goblins and plucked one from its grip, holding it by the scruff of the neck. It struggled and spat, but Yuri swung it around, including accidentally on purpose into a wall, and it quickly got the picture of what was wanted. It pointed, and Yuri followed, eventually leading the two of them, with Trix and Ralph in tow, to a pile of rubble that turned out not to be a pile of rubble at all. From its arrangement, it seemed to have been purposefully planted as a barricade. Now, examining it more closely, Trix could see that it was seeded with various goblin fetishes serving as signs of warning. But warnings of what?
“Chikta-kobba-rumay?” Ralph asked, meaning “What’s behind there?”
The goblin didn’t answer, only struggled to get away—struggled to get away from the rocks and the fetishes. Ralph persisted. “Chikta-kobba-rumay? Chikta-kobba-rumay?”
Yuri gasped as the goblin turned away from the barricade and towards him, grabbing on and burying its head in his chest. As the small green creature trembled violently, he even ignored the clawed hands that dug into the top of his ribcage. Then, suddenly, something the size of a baby’s fist erupted from its mouth, the goblin’s grip released, and it fell dead in his arms.
The Russian stared at the glistening lump of muscle atop the goblin’s chest; it dangled from a sinewy thread extending from its mouth. “I think it had a heart attack.”
“I thought goblins were too stupid to be afraid of anything.” Trix wondered if she had somewhat misjudged the creatures.
“It wasn’t just afraid,” Ralph said. “It was terrified.”