Gearspire: Advent

by Jeremiah Reinmiller

  CHAPTER 7

  Ryle’s breath rang loud in his ears. His legs trembled as they held him braced in the vertical shaft. His bruised shoulder burned. The lantern light wavered around him. A finger’s width from his eye, fangs curved, pale and razor sharp. Its wide muzzle shone just as pale, its eyes, as caves of shadows. The creature hung above him, as still as a statue or . . .

  Muck sucker.

  He let his breath out in a rush, and almost fell from the vent as his body relaxed.

  Casyne’s pendant, the same that had snagged on a bit of metal and stopped him from puncturing his eyes on the fangs, caught now, and jerked him up short by his neck.

  Smooth.

  Once he’d ceased gasping and scrambled back into place, he tucked the pendant safely away and looked over the skeleton that had almost stopped his heart.

  The beast was long, equal to his height, and almost as thick. Its wide jaw was lined with rows of hooked teeth and dominated by the pair of fangs he’d almost run through his eyes. He couldn’t get a good look at its curled paws, but further up he saw a long bony tail. It was from this appendage that the creature hung in the shaft.

  The state of the louvered vent and the all those bones below now made a lot more sense. He hoped no great grand-beasts remained nearby.

  A scuffle of boots below brought him back to the moment. Ryle shimmied upward, bracing with his feet and knees as best could, but made little progress. The metal walls were slippery and too narrow to allow much leverage. After a solid minute of effort he’d gained maybe half a pace of elevation; the beast’s ribcage now hung in his face.

  This gave him an idea. Probably a horrible one.

  He grabbed hold of a rib and pulled. Nothing happened. The thing was dead, but it remained tough as frozen muck. Calcified he guessed. Maybe by fumes from inside. There was another lovely thought he didn’t care to dwell on.

  When another careful pull didn’t result in a marrow filled avalanche, Ryle latched on with his free hand and heaved. Up he went.

  In his life he’d climbed into a lot of places. First with his mother, and then on his own. Some dangerous, others scary. There was even one particularly terrible instance, where he’d emerged from a poorly maintained toilet seat. In all that time, he never guessed he would ascend a skeletal ladder into some ancient underground death trap.

  He suppressed a burst of laughter at the madness of the whole thing.

  The creature’s tail stretched upward for a couple more paces until it wrapped around a metal ring full of wide metal blades. Drailey had mentioned a fan, but he’d never seen one like this. If the creature hadn’t broken it free from one side of the shaft Ryle’s progress would’ve been stopped cold. As it was, the device hung dislodged leaving a gap wide enough to climb through.

  With a firm grip on the bony tail, and some scrambling, he grunted his way upward and pulled himself past the disc of blades without losing too much more skin. Above this, the shaft bent in the direction he needed to go. And that wasn’t all. He saw light beyond the turn.

  After a moment to catch his breath, and rest his aching shoulder, Ryle pulled himself past the bend. A half dozen paces distant, light flickered up through a hole in the bottom of the conduit. With a couple minutes of careful crawling, he reached the gash and took his first look at Tillence’s claim.

  Ryle didn’t know what to make of it. Square sections of the pale floor were missing, and through these he saw pipes and bundles of wiring. Long, thin, metal boxes in various states of disassembly lay in a heap off to one side. Tall metal cabinets, like coffins, stood one against the next, running off in rows out of sight.

  Then he saw the man standing in front of the nearest cabinet. He was fiddling with something inside, his spear propped beside him. Ryle’s mind started planning as soon as he came into view.

  The man was only a few paces away with his back turned, an easy target, but was he alone? Ryle listened for a minute then peeked out as far as he dared. He made out more cabinets lit by a torch lying beside the man, but no other guards.

  Ryle’s pulse raced, but his breath had been trained, and it flowed smooth and easy past his lips as he considered the scene. One man, unawares. No backup. A simple approach would be best. Take him out fast and be done with it.

  Ryle smiled grimly at the thought. Despite his hopes to the contrary, this was another thing he’d done before. Far too many times, thanks to his father. Ryle’s stomach knotted, but it didn’t matter. Lastrahn needed a way in, and this was it.

  The jagged edges of the pace long tear in the metal meant there was only one way to exit the shaft. He scuttled forward, prepared himself as best he could, and dropped through.

  The fall was short and the floor tiles proved stronger than he feared. He landed in a silent crouch. The man didn’t turn. Ryle set the lantern down and closed on him.

  The man was of a height with Ryle, but had to weigh half again as much. A stained, rough spun shirt stretched over his broad back.

  Maybe he should’ve called him out, let him put up a fight, something. Maybe that’s what the Professor would’ve done. But then again, Ryle was unarmed, and twenty on three seemed like enough of an advantage.

  Ryle slipped his around the man’s neck and latched on. The crook of his elbow under the chin just like he’d been taught. The guard tried to gasp, found that impossible, then tried to thrash and found that equally difficult when Ryle kicked in the back of one leg and dragged him to the floor.

  The rest of the struggle lasted about five long breaths that smelled of sweat and dirt and grease. After the man went limp Ryle hung on for another couple breaths to be sure, then let him go.

  The Professor would’ve been disappointed. He knew that deep down and didn’t feel great about it, but once again, he’d gotten the job done. His father would’ve been proud anyway. Ryle’s hands barely shook in the torchlight as he stood.

  The man wound up stuffed into the cabinet he’d been rooting around in, left to sleep through what was to come. He should consider himself lucky. Ryle doubted Lastrahn would’ve been so lenient.

  Kilgren wouldn’t have been.

  Ryle snatched up the spear, it was decent, but a bit long for his tastes, and went looking for any of the unconscious guard’s friends. When he found no one else waiting between the rows of cabinets, he began searching for the door barring Lastrahn and Drailey’s access.

  This proved easy. He traced the vent back until it ran into a wall. Here, at the bottom of a couple of stone steps, stood the remains of an ancient metal bookcase. In the lantern’s light he saw the other side of the metal door between its collapsed shelves. It didn’t take much looking to realize it had been tossed here to conceal the exit. He hauled it away as quietly as he could, and found he’d been right about Tillence’s obsessive control of her claim. A thick lock and chain were wrapped around the door’s handle.

  He set to work with the precious set of keys Lastrahn had imparted to him. On key number nine, the lock snapped open.

  Ryle’s heart leapt. He’d finally done something right for Lastrahn. He unwrapped the chain, eager to show he could do something useful, and almost yanked the door open, but he caught himself. With a twitchy champion on the other side that might be a good way to get run through. He rapped on the door with his knuckles and waited until he heard a corresponding knock, before slowly hauling the heavy door open.

  Lastrahn loomed out of the dark. “Took long enough.”

  So much for a warm welcome.

  “Sorry, Sir,” he said, and handed Lastrahn the keys.

  The champion pocketed them without comment and moved on into the room.

  Drailey followed after him. She held a small, copper tipped glass tube that emitted a soft blue light. He’d never seen anything like it, but guessed it must’ve been the source of the strange illumination he’d seen earlier while she was reading. He wanted to ask if it was some kind of oldcraft, but this was not the time or place. Besides, she actually looked impressed. She ha
nded Ryle his jacket and belt and nodded her thanks before following the champion. That was something anyway.

  He started after her, but the idea of the gaping door stopped him. He didn’t get the impression Tillence would stand idly by forever, and twenty opponents were more than enough. He rewound the chain and locked it again, then slipped back into his jacket. That sent every raw scrape and cut to burning. He’d have to worry about infections later though, Lastrahn and Drailey were already out of sight. He hurried after them while he buckled his sword belt back around his hips.

  The room ran thirty paces across with those metal coffins taking up almost the entire space, leaving only narrow rows between them. He never did decipher their purpose. A door on the far wall led to a smaller interconnecting room with multiple doors. Aside from a few burned out torches, it was empty.

  One wide doorway gaped onto an empty shaft, an elevator at one point Ryle guessed. A bit of light filtered down from overhead. Another door led to a room similar to the first, which they quickly searched, but found empty.

  He began to suspect the man he’d choked out hadn’t been guarding the back door, but had been searching for some loot of his own. That made Ryle think they should’ve brought some of Tillence’s coins, bribery might’ve paid off.

  The third door in the smaller room stood locked beside a glassless window frame. The alcove beyond had the appearance of once being some sort of security station. Drailey hopped over the window ledge and ducked through a doorway at the back of the alcove. She returned a moment later and shook her head.

  “Found this though.” She tossed something to Lastrahn. The champion snorted and tossed it back.

  “What is it?” Ryle asked, looking at the small tapered cylinder in her hand. It was about the length his index finger and colored like brass.

  Drailey rolled it across her fingers and held it up beside her glowing tube. “These were valuable once upon a time. All the soldiers carried them when they went to war. Caused a lot of deaths.”

  “That?”

  She nodded. “Useless now. Look.” She produced a pair of pliers from her pocket, latched onto the tip of the small cylinder, and pulled. The metal tip came away with a pop. She tossed it away and upended the tube over her palm. A pile of black powder poured out. “This stuff used to be quite explosive.” She swapped the pliers for a small lighter, flicked a flame into existence, and waved it across the powder.

  Ryle took an involuntary step back, but nothing happened.

  “Yeah, nothing. Another thing the Rending screwed up.” She flung the powder away.

  Blasted universities. She couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than himself, but the more she talked, the more Ryle felt like a mole out of soil.

  “Enough show and tell,” Lastrahn growled and headed for the last door.

  They found a stairway leading both up and down. Below, light flickered through a doorway, casting the step’s shadows into quivering black swaths against the pitted stone walls. With a look from Lastrahn, Drailey extinguished the lantern, and her glowing cylinder, and they crept down.

  They heard them before they saw them. A loud clang, and then voices. Indistinct at first, but not unfamiliar.

  “Now?”

  Cursing.

  “No! Not damn now. Just like not the last time, or the time before.”

  “This is shit.”

  Rapid metallic bangs followed. They rushed to the doorway beneath this cover, and took in another small connecting room on the other side. The sounds and light came from a doorway inside and to the left. They moved quietly to it as the banging subsided, and peered around the corners. Lastrahn on one side, Drailey and Ryle on the other.

  A room of a similar shape and size to the room they’d first entered lay there. Torches and a few lanterns about the floor cast the light they’d seen. Metal work benches filled most of the room. A few were covered with strange structures of wire and glass Ryle couldn’t identify, others held bulky boxes of various shapes and sizes. Above each table hung the hood of what had probably been a large light at one time. None of it meant anything to him, but Drailey took it in with a single pass and nodded.

  Set in the far wall, beyond all of these mysteries, was a large metal door. Noffa and most of his men were clustered before it. The rest sat against the walls, or leaned listlessly against the work benches. Frustration and fatigue showed in their faces.

  A blonde man Ryle recognized from the tavern threw down a pry bar with a clang and stomped past the others to Noffa’s side. His face was bright red against his pale mustache.

  “What now? Huh? What now? This is your plan. Your big idea. You said you had a buyer. What the hell are we going to do?”

  Noffa ran a hand across his sweaty, balding scalp. Anger played at his features, but his voice sounded more tired than angry.

  “We’ll get in. We still have time. That lock won’t hold forever.”

  A dark skinned man shoved his way to the front and stood before Noffa with his arms crossed.

  “No! We don’t have any blasted time! It’s dawn up there, and Tillence isn’t going to wait forever. We have to get the hex out of here. We shouldn’t have rushed this. We should have waited!”

  “We couldn’t wait. I told you. It had to be today!”

  “Why haven’t we heard from her?” Someone else asked.

  Oh, you will soon, Ryle thought, but he wasn’t feeling great about the situation. Tillence and her men had either underestimated, or tried to conceal the scope of the issue. He counted more than twenty men before them, and that still left the guards up top, the man he’d taken out, and however many more were out of sight.

  He hoped Lastrahn had a plan, but so far the champion was silent, observing, jaw hard and eyes harder. This would be a hex of a thing, even for him.

  “Why is this door even locked?” The blonde man asked. “You said Tillence would have it open for an extraction. That was the whole point!”

  Noffa sighed, Ryle sensed he’d explained this before.

  “She was supposed to, early this morning. But she never showed up. Was probably out late for the holiday. You know how she is.”

  Grumbling ensued.

  “None of this helps us now. What are we going to do?” The blonde asked.

  “Let’s just take what we can and get out. She doesn’t have the men to stop us.”

  “The hex you say! I want what’s in there!” Noffa said. “My buyer won’t take it kindly if I don’t deliver to her.”

  “So send Till another letter. She’s screwed until we leave and she knows it.”

  Shouts and curses echoed around the room. Faces burned nearly as red as the torches.

  Ryle’s hands tingled. This was going to get ugly. Their ire was up and he didn’t see it cooling any time soon. One spark and this whole place was going to ignite.

  Drailey felt it too. Her face was grim and pale, and for the first time she didn’t look confident. When she looked at him she forced a smile, but it came across sickly.

  For the first time she was out of place. In a horrible, shameful way this made Ryle feel better. He tried to look confident to reassure her. He couldn’t tell if it came across that way.

  Lastrahn was still observing the room.

  “What’s the plan, Sir?” Ryle asked when no instructions were forthcoming.

  His eyes swept back and forth a couple more times. “Drailey,” he said without looking at her. “I need something dramatic.”

  She pursed her lips and looked at the walls, then up along the ceiling.

  “How dramatic?” she asked.

  Lastrahn smiled darkly, and walked into the room.

  For a couple seconds Ryle was too shocked to react. By the time his senses returned, Lastrahn was five paces ahead. He wanted to scramble after the champion, but Drailey moved no further than the wall inside the doorway, and he wasn’t about to leave her alone. He stepped in front of her and held the spear before him, his mind racing, his heart at full gal
lop.

  What the hex was Lastrahn up to?

  “Gentlemen,” Lastrahn said loudly. Every head in the room snapped around.

  They looked as shocked as Ryle felt, but they were soon moving. Weapons were snatched up and in a short breath, Lastrahn stared down a bristling crescent of sharp instruments. He wasn’t the only one. The nearest thugs had spotted Ryle and Drailey and he soon faced down his own array of weapons from a handful of men.

  Beside Ryle, Drailey was still looking along the ceiling. Her expression said she was calculating something, but chaff knew what that was. He hoped she was smart enough to stay clear when he needed to move.

  “What the hell?” someone among the men said.

  Ryle was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Lastrahn let the moment draw out until Noffa pushed his way to the front of the group and stood there, mouth open, eyes wide. “You!” he said.

  Lastrahn said nothing.

  Eyes darted among the men, hands worked on the shafts of spears. Ryle figured more than a few of them had to be looking at the huge sword hilt poking up over the champion’s shoulder.

  “That bitch Tillence hire you? She send swordsmen to handle her problem?” Noffa asked.

  Still nothing from Lastrahn.

  “Looks to me like she should’ve sent more of you. There’s thirty of us and we ain’t going anywhere.”

  Twenty-six, by the count Ryle had taken, and he wasn’t so sure all of Noffa’s men shared their leader’s sentiment. More than a few eyes looked ready to bolt. A few, but probably not enough.

  This wouldn’t be like last night. This wouldn’t be some bar scuffle. This was going to be a straight up hack and slash affair in very short order. Ryle’s palms felt damp against the spear shaft. His heart hammered against his ribs. Only his breath remained even, and that through force of will.

  With relief, he felt his center, drifting, almost in hand once again. The Professor’s training coming back when it counted. He pulled it a bit closer. He’d have an instant to seize it before the men rushed him.