by Andy Remic
“You never answered the question,” rumbled Narnok, and before the king could retort, he dragged him to the edge of the faintly glowing slime and threw him down. Yoon cried out, and span around on the ground. The slime coated his hands and legs and finely embroidered coat. His head snapped up and he glared at Narnok with murder in his eyes.
“You fucking psychopath!” Yoon shrieked. He scrambled to his feet, slipping several times in the slime which now seemed to coat everything. “It could have been poisonous! It could have burned my flesh from my bones!”
“Well? Is it?”
Yoon stared at Narnok, mouth flapping. “Is it what?”
“Is it poisonous? Or burning you like a particularly bad case of syphilis?”
“What? No!”
“Well, stop moaning, lad. And remember,” he loomed close, baring his teeth in what might have been a smile, but was more reminiscent of something big and dark living in the caves below a deep river, “when I ask you a question, I expect a fucking answer. You hear me?” He reached out, grabbed Yoon by the throat, and shook him.
“I hear you,” gurgled the king.
“Come on,” said Kiki. “At least you proved one thing. It seems to be… safe. If that’s the right word.”
“Unless it has some terrible chemical side effect,” flourished Zastarte, and he smiled, his beautiful face cracking into a glow of handsome ruggedness. “Something that, I don’t know, damages us over a period of time, maybe socially as well as psychologically?”
“Prince Zastarte, we’re all psychologically damaged. Or had you forgotten our curse?”
“It may be a curse to you, dear Kiki, but if I’m brutally honest, the ladies enjoy a little bit of the animal in their adventures. Aren’t I right, Trista, my beautiful little scorpion?”
“You certainly stink like an animal,” said Trista, and smiled sweetly.
“I rest my case,” said Zastarte, and patted his mouth and nose with the lace ruffs of his silk shirt.
Kiki led the way through the tunnel, boots squelching through the sticky mess. The further they moved, the thicker the slime appeared, and the faint, almost fluorescent glow made it almost unnecessary for the fire torches they carried.
“You could put them out,” said Dek, catching Kiki up.
She glanced at him. She looked ashen. Weary, drawn, gaunt. She forced a smile. “I thought we might have a sudden need for fire,” she said, and Dek gave a thoughtful nod.
“You look tired, Keeks. Is it time for a stop?”
“When we get past this… area,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep here if I was dead on my feet. Which I practically am.” She gave a weak smile, and Dek reached out, touching her shoulder.
“Hang in there, Captain,” he said, his eyes shining, mouth forming a smile.
“I’ll do my best, Dek. Just hope my best is good enough.”
As they travelled, so a bad smell started to seep into the tunnels. It was rancid, like rotting fish and bad eggs, woven intricately into an aroma that made a human want to puke. Zastarte was the most offended. He pulled out a tiny little green bottle, and as Narnok and Dek watched with absolute disbelief, he squirted a little perfume onto a silk embroidered handkerchief and held it over his mouth and nose. He saw their stares.
“What?”
“You really are a fucking girl,” rumbled Narnok, scratching at his scarred chin.
“Hey,” said Zastarte, words muffled from behind the silk, “is it my fault I’m such a sensitive, delicate soul? I confess, despite being an expert in the lore of exploring a woman, and indeed on the intricacies of experimenting with a torture victim, one thing that really invades me worse than any anal rape is a truly offensive aroma.” He frowned from behind his perfumed barrier. “I cannot help it that the rest of you are stinking heathens who do not wash their armpits and are happy to carry rancid lice in their lank and un-honeyed hair. Why, you all bring shame to the concept of warriors with honour and nobility, when a damsel is being rescued from certain death, the last thing she needs is some hairy brutal oaf with all the toiletry finesse of a rutting hog.”
Dek stepped closer. “You really think you contain honour and nobility? Kiki told me what she saw. Down in that cellar.” Dek’s mouth had formed a casual snarl.
Zastarte either missed the implied threat or was completely insensitive to it. He waved his hand, a casual swatting away of Dek’s words. “Yes, yes, I concede, maybe I haven’t got that much honour and nobility. But I certainly carry myself that way, and it’s only this damn curse, I believe, which has twisted me into something… amoral.” He smiled. “But enough about me. Onwards, through the stench! I am now armoured against its putrefaction!”
As they moved forward, so the stench increased in its potency until Kiki and Trista, especially, could hardly bear it any longer. They, also, were covering their mouths and only Narnok seemed completely unaffected by the poison.
They reached the chamber after an hour of trekking through the bad smell and the glowing trails of slime; it was large, opening out into a cavern of some considerable size. Here, the walls were pebble-smooth and gleamed in the ethereal light. But it was the contents scattered across the floor in neat rows that made the Iron Wolves and their prisoner halt, boots clacking, staring with open mouths.
“What, in the name of the Chaos Halls, are those?” hissed Dek, eyes narrowed, drawing his sword unconsciously with a slither of oiled steel on leather.
“I don’t know,” said Kiki, and her head snapped around, focusing on King Yoon. “But he does. Explain, bastard, or I’ll have Narnok here cut out your liver.”
Yoon seemed unruffled by the threat, and he looked at the Iron Wolves, one by one by one, his eyes passing over and through them. Then he smiled, and it was the evil crescent of a curved razor blade. “You really don’t understand what you’re getting yourselves into, do you, little people? I warned you not to come down here. I warned you this place was… dangerous.” He savoured the word, and his eyes moved past the Iron Wolves to the pods which lay clustered across the floor of the huge chamber. Each pod was about the size of a horse, its surface corrugated and white like the ribs on a dead animal. Each pod was divided into six or seven discrete bubbled segments, like cocoons joined at a central hub. They glowed, softly, pulsing white.
“They look like eggs, insect larvae, something like that,” rumbled Narnok, choosing his words with delicate care.
Yoon glanced at him. “Yes, axeman. You are correct. These are the leski worms. Not good, my friends. Not good at all. My men only come through here at certain times; we have logged their hatching cycles. It took a long time. And cost a lot of lives. But then,” and his eyes assessed them all with cool calculation, “you common people are so fucking expendable.”
“Let me kill him, Kiki. Please let me kill him,” growled Narnok.
“No.” She shook her head. But now she was smiling. “Well, Yoon, we’re going this way. And you’re going to lead. So let’s hope you’ve remembered the way, and remembered the fucking hatching times because you’re going to be first in line if some terrible creature comes looking for blood.”
“As you wish,” said King Yoon, stiffly, and was pushed ahead by Narnok.
They moved slowly, silently, through the vast chamber. The rocky ground was thick with sticky secretions, and the stench was truly unbearable. Now, all the Iron Wolves had drawn their weapons and had subtly shifted from travellers making progress through tunnels to… something else. They moved with a natural, predatory wariness; heads and eyes were constantly moving, scanning, calculating, waiting for any sign of enemy or attack. None spoke, and they unconsciously fanned out, taking up a certain formation which they had used time and time again in battle, where each was able to protect the flank of another dependant on left or right handedness and proficiency with weapons. Kiki, for example, fought with two short swords; to her right was Narnok, right handed and holding his mighty twin-bladed axe; to her left was Dek, his main long sword in his left hand
; and behind came Zastarte and Trista, completing their unit. All they lacked was Mola, but nobody had heard or seen anything of the older, secretive, man for decades.
Time seemed to slow as they passed through the chamber, picking each footstep with care, taking their time in this realm of the unknown. As they reached the centre, so strange, distant acoustics picked up the roar of an underground river which seemed to grow louder the closer to the centre they approached. Narnok felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck in fear as he remembered Yoon’s words, and the big man seemed unusually anxious.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered, after a while, and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow.
“Just focus,” came Kiki’s calming words, her soothing tones, “and we’ll get out of here alive.”
Through treacle minutes they moved, until finally a distant maw, a cave at the other side of the chamber beckoned. This widened as they approached, until it was a giant mouth leading to a black-ribbed throat from which a cool, soothing breeze emerged fresh with the scent of running water. The sounds of the underground river had grown louder, until, as the Iron Wolves entered the tunnel, it boomed and thrashed above them.
They moved on into darkness. Slowly, the slime trails dissipated and they allowed at least one worry to drift away like dragon smoke, to be replaced with a different kind of fear. Somewhere above, a river ran through channels of rock. No terrible thing. Except the further they now progressed down this new, wide, high-ceilinged tunnel of black rock and stalactites, the more they noticed trickles of water running down the walls, and occasional drips coming from what appeared, on inspection with Narnok’s torch, to be cracks.
“Not good,” muttered Dek, as the river boomed above.
“That’s a bloody understatement,” croaked Narnok.
“Keep moving,” said Kiki, and they pushed on, travelling with great weariness, like walking cadavers; like echoes of the undead.
Finally, leaving the river behind and taking more branching tunnels, they found a cave with a sandy floor where they could camp, and eat, and sleep. They unrolled thin blankets, for now the rocky tunnels were damp and cool, and after tying Yoon so tight he could barely move a finger, they slept, Zastarte taking first watch as he usually did. The Prince was almost reptilian in his lack of a need for sleep. He claimed it was what helped make him such a magnificent lover.
Kiki slept, and did not dream. It was a sleep of exhaustion. And utter, total recharge. For a while.
Sometimes, her dreams were happy. Sometimes, they were sad. Sometimes, they were downright fucking evil. There was one recurring dream that haunted her. The settings changed. Sometimes forest. Sometimes an undulating, snowy plain bordered by dark, towering pines where the yellow eyes of wolves watched from the shadows above slick, bloodstained muzzles. Occasionally, the dream contained a sterile white room, with a large white cup central to the chamber. That was the only furniture. In the white cup sat a perfectly fitting black ball which pulsed gently. In all the variations of the dreams there was one constant. Five figures, wreathed in shadow. Tall, lithe, featureless. They were there to kill her. And they always did.
When Kiki awoke, groggy, half within her sleep world, half within the real, her thoughts drifted long and low like winter mist, and she thought back to Dalgoran, and to the honey-leaf she had so recently craved. She thought about Dalgoran’s suicide, and how the noble old general had been willing to take his own life, to step through the portal to the final destination so that he could, hopefully, spend an eternity with his loving wife Farsala. Kiki liked to think he’d killed himself because of the strange, dark magick of the forest through which they’d travelled – Sayansora alv Drakka, the Forest of Suicide, the Forest of Angry Spirits, the Sea of Trees – but somewhere, deep inside her own soul, she knew it had been the general’s own choice. His own decision. He was a man of ramrod iron. He’d made his own choices in life. Why not in death?
Will anybody ever love me like that? she thought.
Enough to kill for? Enough to die for?
Three times, in her life, she had been in love. Or so she thought. And, she admitted, the last time had been at the height of her honey-leaf addiction and she probably hadn’t been the most attentive girlfriend. That made her smile. Girlfriend. Wasn’t she beyond thinking of herself as a girl?
Dek crouched beside her, and touched her shoulder.
“Mmm?”
“Time to move, Kiki.” She stared up at him, and the broad-shouldered pit-fighter caught the strangeness in her look. “What?” he said. “What is it?”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“You were? Nice thoughts, I hope. I saw what you did to Orlana the Changer and her army of mud-orcs. Whoosh! Instant earthquake. When we have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about that.”
She smiled. “Yes. They were. Nice thoughts, I mean. About you.”
“Good.” Dek straightened himself. “It’s time to move. Our mentally deviated torturer prince has scouted ahead – said he’s found something big. Something amazing.”
“Down here? Like what?”
Dek shrugged. “I don’t know. He was pretty impressed by something, though. And it takes a lot to impress the dandy bastard.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that. I don’t like surprises. Not when I’m a hunted woman.”
“Believe me,” said Dek, thinking back to his debts with the Red Thumb Gangs, “you get used to it.”
“Down here,” said Zastarte. There was almost music in his voice, and he sounded a little like an excited child unwrapping presents on his birthday. “Trust me, guys, you will be amazed! I was amazed, and it takes a fucking lot of shit to amaze me, so trust me, you will be completely amazed!”
Dek leaned in to Kiki. “Do you think it might be amazing?” he whispered, and Kiki snorted a giggle.
The tunnel ended abruptly on a ledge, which split, winding around alternate sides of the massive cavern. But it was the contents of the vast cavern which had so inspired Zastarte’s uncharacteristic outburst.
A huge part of the central cavern contained a building. Nothing natural, not rock or stone; this was iron, grey, and foreboding, with sheer walls forty or fifty feet high, smooth and impenetrable. The roof, from what the Iron Wolves could see from their vantage point, was also smooth iron so that the huge edifice formed an almost perfect cube.
“Good, eh?” enthused Zastarte.
“What is it?” said Dek, slowly, eyes narrowed.
Narnok prodded Yoon. “Go on, lad, spill the beans, before I spill your guts.”
“I cannot say,” spoke Yoon, softly.
“Cannot, or will not?”
“I told you people not to come down here.”
“It’s a prison, isn’t it?” said Kiki, head tilting to one side, bobbed brown hair falling to her left shoulder. “You can see a door, way down there. A studded portal. The whole thing, it’s a prison, or a holding cell. I’m right, aren’t I, you obstinate and secretive little bastard?”
Yoon looked at her, and pursed his lips, and said nothing.
“We should go and explore,” said Zastarte, who seemed to have come alive after his apparent depression at heading deeper underground, dropping beneath the earth as if walking towards his own tomb and burial. “There could be… treasure!”
“There could be big hard fuckers with swords,” snapped Dek. “I strongly suggest we circumnavigate. We have no need to go into this place. It would be tactical foolishness; an unnecessary risk.”
Kiki was still staring at Yoon. “What’s in there?” she said.
“You’ll never get in.”
Kiki lifted her bunch of keys; General Dalgoran’s keys, from when he had been in charge of Desekra Fortress years – decades – earlier. “You think so, do you, King Yoon?”
Yoon visibly paled, despite the gloom of the tunnel and the reflection of strange, ethereal light. It was as if the metal gleamed, supplying its own visibility from some intrinsic light sour
ce.
“This is a bad place,” said Trista, pushing back her golden curls, her eyes seeming to glow in this underworld. “Dek’s right. We need to leave here. Many, many bad things have happened – are still happening. This is a haunted realm, Kiki.”
“Ach, horse piss and nonsense!” declared Zastarte. “Nothing the Iron Wolves, in all their heroics and combined battle expertise, couldn’t handle! I suggest a fluid, swift and decisive entry, which is what I suggest to all the ladies.” He winked in the gloom. “Unless you’ve all suddenly turned into a bunch of spineless lick pussies. No offence meant.”
“Listen to Dek and Trista,” whispered Yoon, with passion, and Kiki felt herself flinch. In all the time she had known King Yoon, this was the first time he had ever referred to them by name. Now, it seemed, “peasant” or “you” just wasn’t good enough. He turned and stared at Kiki, his eyes curiously fixed, his breathing coming in short, sharp pants. “There are some things in this life you do not want to discover. There are some things stranger, some things more decadent than even you would wish to explore. And that’s coming from me, the King of Vagandrak, after witnessing you, a cursed and deviated woman, a Shamathe, summon a fucking earthquake to take out the witch queen Orlana and her filthy, mud-orc scum. Do you hear what I am saying, sweet Kiki, my mass-murdering little witch?”
Kiki considered this, face hard, eyes shadowed. Then she turned, and her eyes tracked the long sweeping ledges that followed the walls of the vast cavern, and eventually dropped to ground level where undulating rock formed a plateau leading to the massive iron prison.
“Get your shit together, Wolves. We’re going in.”
Dek gave her a questioning stare. “Why?” he said, finally.
Kiki glanced at King Yoon. “Because anything this bastard is trying to protect so bad – well, that’s something we need to investigate. Don’t you agree, King Yoon of Vagandrak? Of course you don’t. Well, prepare to offer up your deepest, darkest secrets. We’re the Iron Wolves, fucker, and we’re not in this for the fame, the glory, the power or the fucking money.”