Against the Giants

by Ru Emerson - (ebook by Flandrel; Undead)

  He couldn’t ask the mage anything now anyway. Nemis had just murmured a spell of some kind and looked as if he were in a trance, eyes closed but lips still moving.

  Lhors glanced at the watch-vial Vlandar had pulled from his pack: a sand-shifter that marked time, much like the one Lharis had owned. The warrior only turned the thing over once before Agya and Malowan returned.

  Vlandar settled them down near the closed door and handed them water.

  Malowan passed the water bottle to his ward. “The main room is joined by passages, north and east. They’re as narrow as this one but longer and unlit. They seem deserted—no one lives in either, and they are seldom used. There is an apartment about this size just across from here, and the giant Agya heard lives there with his two apes. All three are inside and sleeping. To the south, a long passage ends in a cross-corridor. We did not check further, but I sensed guards: bugbears or possibly orcs.”

  “Bears?” Agya’s voice rose sharply. “You dint say nothin ’bout bears! Bears and apes?”

  “Bugbears,” Nemis replied. “Bears are animals. These are different. They’re intelligent as half-witted humans and good fighters, much like ogres, very strong and evil. They hate our kind.”

  “Don’t care,” the thief replied flatly. “Long’s they ain’t bears. Nasty things, bears. One used to juggle in th’ market and et ’is master. I know, ’cause I saw ’im do it. Filthy way to die. These… bugbears, is it? Let ’em hate. I’ll hate ’em right back.”

  Malowan gave her a distressed look but went on. “At the far end of the south corridor, I could see a door. There are prisoners kept there. Somewhere beyond that is a smithy. The whole area was quiet, oddly so, to my mind. Still, it is daylight up there. Nosnra and his followers may believe that we are trapped and that they can sleep the day away as they normally would, then seek us out at their leisure.”

  “Perhaps,” Nemis said. “I just completed my own search. It is very quiet out there—except for the manticores to the west. I also sensed a smithy southward and prison cells here and there.”

  “Very good,” Vlandar agreed. “We won’t trust to our being alone here, but it is reassuring. I think we can trust to this, however. Nosnra and his fellows have no magical communication with those down here, or else we would have had company waiting when we opened that door.”

  “Maybe they wanted to lure us into the open instead?” Maera suggested.

  “Why,” Vlandar asked, “if they could surround this passage and take us without a fight? Sensible of you to suspect such a trap,” he added with a smile, but Maera did not smile back, “but there’s no sense in our anticipating traps within traps. If hill giants were good at tactics, I would never have come against them with so few companions.”

  Khlened laughed. Maera gave the barbarian a dark look but let it drop.

  Nemis smiled briefly. “I found more. I am not sure what all of it means, but I can also help you map this place. One of my own spells is a variant on one the drow taught me: how to let the shape of a maze come to you.”

  Malowan puffed up at this. “That would have been nice to know before I risked my life and Agya’s—twice now!—in scouting out this place.”

  “Forgive me,” Nemis said, “but the magic works only to determine the layout of caves and buildings. It would not help in finding guards and such, which is what you and your ward were searching for.”

  The paladin nodded, but still looked very unsatisfied to Lhors.

  “What’s done is done,” Vlandar said. “What have you found, Nemis?”

  “Two ways out, but neither is useful to us. One is at the end of a long, black passage that leads to a pool. To reach the outside, we would have to swim below a wall deep inside the pool. Beyond that, if you survive the depths, is a way out.”

  “I’m not one for swimmin’, way out or not,” Khlened said.

  “Peace, Khlened!” Vlandar said. “All of you! Let the man finish.”

  Nemis nodded thanks to Vlandar, then continued, “The other way out follows an underground stream, but the way soon narrows such that I fear we would soon be forced to swim again.”

  “Then it’s swim or fight our way out?” Lhors asked. He couldn’t decide which would be a worse way to die.

  “No,” the mage replied, “I think not. There is a vast complex of caverns south and east of here, and I think they are cells and slave-pens, which will surely be filled with those who have no love for the giants and their allies.”

  “But that does not make them our allies,” Vlandar said.

  “Of course,” the mage said as a mischievous smile spread across his face, “but if we do not find those who would be willing to aid us, we might at the least free them and loose enough chaos that the giants will have more to worry about than finding us.”

  Malowan stirred. “The plan has merit. If for no other reason than it is the lesser of three evils.”

  “Yes,” Vlandar said in resignation. “Well then, let’s be—”

  “Shh!” Rowan broke in. “Do you hear that?”

  Lhors sat still, not even breathing. Everyone else did the same. At first, there was utter silence, then ever so faintly, he caught the distant echo of picks and faint voices.

  “Can you hear that?” Rowan said. “Unless I am very mistaken, Nosnra or his underlings are digging their way down through the rubble of the staircase.”

  “All the more reason to be off,” Vlandar said. “This passage is no longer a haven for us—if it ever was.”

  “Wait.” Malowan laid a hand on Vlandar’s arm as the warrior reached for the door wheel. “A moment, my friend. About prisoners the giants are holding down here. If there are humans…” He shook his head. “You know I cannot leave them behind.”

  “Are you mad?” Khlened demanded.

  “No,” Malowan replied steadily. “Merely a man trying to achieve what purity of heart I can. I cannot neglect my duty any more than Rowan or Maera would ignore an elf or a half-elf if they knew one was here.”

  The barbarian sighed heavily. “What then? You’ll crawl through all th’ pens down here? Didn’t Nemis just say there’s more’n one? And there’ll be guards—d’ye chance us all gettin’ killed by whatever brutes are guarding ’em?”

  Nemis cleared his throat. “It will not be necessary to go into the cells. Either Mal or I can search other ways. But Mal, I trust you do not plan to free everything down here? The orcs and trolls you save may not thank you.”

  “A bargain,” Vlandar put in. “Mal won’t put us all in danger to save one human captive. That would go against your code also, wouldn’t it?”

  The paladin didn’t look very happy about it, but he nodded. “In exchange, Khlened, you and everyone else, keep this in mind. Someone who’s been a prisoner here may know his way around this level.”

  “Huh,” Khlened replied shortly. “Know ’is way from where ’e came in to ’is cell.”

  “Possibly,” Rowan said, “but the giants often use prisoners for laborers, and prisoners share information when they can. If I were penned down here, I would learn all I could about the place. Wouldn’t you?”

  “And think of this,” Vlandar added. “The person we rescue might be the one who saves your life down here.”

  “Now you sound like a paladin,” Khlened grumbled, but he sighed faintly and shrugged. “Something to that, I s’pose.” He brightened then. “Could be ’e’d know where treasure’s hid too.”

  “Just so,” Vlandar said, his face expressionless, then stepped aside so the barbarian could help him raise the door.

  The outer chamber was vaster than it had seemed when Lhors had seen it through the spy hole. The roof was vaulted, its upper reaches hidden in gloom.

  “No wonder the staircase was so long,” Rowan murmured.

  Vlandar gestured for silence, listened intently, then led them along the west wall where there was little or no light from the one dim torch burning between a north passage and a rough door. Agya touched the warrior’s
hand, pointed toward the door and signed, Giant. Beast. The warrior worked this out and nodded. After a moment’s consideration, he indicated first the dark opening straight across from them, then the ill-lit door just south of that.

  Passage? He signed then pointed toward the opening.

  Malowan nodded then pointed at the door and signed back, Prison.

  The prison door rattled slightly, and someone behind it cursed in a hoarse, thick voice. Vlandar looked around, then stabbed a finger toward the far side of the chamber. Malowan touched Agya’s arm to get her attention, then sprinted across the vast stone floor to vanish in the darkness of the hallway, the girl right on his heels. Vlandar put Lhors in front of him. Khlened came behind and the rangers, and Nemis brought up the rear.

  The mages lips and fingers were moving in his personal beneath notice spell as he gained the east passage. The man spun around and knelt just behind the opening, one hand fumbling at his belt as everyone else crowded close behind him. Lhors could see a little box, but before he could study it further, an enormous, shaggy creature stumbled into the open, backlit by torches in the cell area. The sudden light hurt the youth’s eyes, and he shrank against the wall, blinking furiously. Vlandar’s hand closed reassuringly over his forearm—the warrior had his sword in the other.

  “It’s a bugbear,” he whispered against Lhors’ ear. “We’re protected by Nemis’ spell.”

  The brute snarled an oath at someone in the pens and gestured furiously. The door slammed behind him. Nemis seemed half-blinded by the light as well. He worked the lid from the box by feel, then froze as Malowan touched his shoulder.

  “It’s only me,” the paladin breathed against his ear, his voice prudently low even with the beneath notice spell in place. “What have you there?”

  Nemis held the box out. “Illusionary wall.”

  “Not a good idea. The creature sees a wall where there should not be one and he’ll raise an alarm. Save your box. I know how long it takes to prepare that powder.”

  “What would you use?” Nemis whispered.

  The paladin grinned, his teeth ruddy in the faint light. “Fear.”

  The mage shook his head. “That takes as long as the wall to prepare!”

  Vlandar tapped both hard on the shoulders and drew a meaningful hand across his throat.

  Nemis eyed him sidelong and nodded. “Won’t do, Mal. He senses fear, he’ll raise an alarm or run yelling for help. Wait.” He leaned forward, keeping a close eye on the massive brute. It was mumbling to itself in a nasty-sounding guttural voice. The creature shambled off straight south. A little dim light leaked into the chamber as the south door opened, but it cut off as the door slammed. “Save your spell. We are clear for the moment.”

  Vlandar eased around mage and paladin. He froze as the door into the prison slammed open again. Lhors swallowed dryly. Someone in there was wailing in a high, broken voice and two guards were bellowing furiously at each other.

  How can Vlandar bear that? he thought. The warrior showed no emotion whatever as he looked a question at Nemis, who nodded. I hope that means his spell is still working, Lhors thought.

  Another door—the one set in the south wall perhaps—banged into stone, the sound echoing briefly through the chamber before it was swallowed by a blare of arguing, shouting, and fighting. Someone stomped into the open and bellowed what sounded like an order. The prison door slammed shut, and a moment later, the second door cracked into its frame. Utter silence followed.

  Vlandar sighed and eased back on his heels. “All right,” he whispered. “Unless the guard and his ape came out unheard during all that, we have the space to ourselves. I suggest we make use of it and get ourselves down that long hall before someone else comes.”

  “No one else is out there,” Malowan said. “I would know. Get going, Vlandar, and I will catch up in a moment. My business is against the north wall. If there are giants close by, I may be able to learn what they plan.”

  The mage eyed him. “If—”

  “If I can, then we may have useful information. If not, we will not have lost anything. Either way, I will join you at once. I do not seek a martyr’s death here, my friend.”

  Agya stirred.

  “No,” he added. “You stay with them. I am safer alone.”

  To Lhors’ surprise, the girl nodded and slid back into shadow while the paladin edged along the east wall, heading north. He gave the doorway around the guards’ room a wide berth, skirted the north opening, then settled against the middle of the north wall, listening intently.

  Vlandar got to his feet and led the party straight across the open, the shortest distance between east passage and south corridor.

  There was light in the vast open area, most of it leaking around the door leading to the prison cells. Once they plunged into the corridor, however, the darkness was daunting. There were no openings of any kind along either wall, and it seemed to go on forever.

  Halfway down the corridor, Malowan caught up to them.

  “Anything?” Vlandar asked softly.

  The paladin nodded. “Not now.” He sounded short of breath.

  Near the end of the long passage, Vlandar stopped and drew the company around him, then gestured for Lhors and Rowan to check the cross-passage. The youth nodded and moved out along the west wall, glancing now and again at the ranger, who had set her back to the east wall and moved in utter silence. He hoped he didn’t look as afraid as he felt.

  Rowan reached the corner and dropped to one knee, then went flat, listening for a long moment before she edged the top of her head into the open. She looked behind her first, then turned her head slowly so she could look over the west tunnel. She made no sudden moves, Lhors realized, and she moved the way his father had taught him when they hunted deer. Silent, slow, steady, cautious moves were unlikely to be noticed by those who called an area home. He suddenly felt more confident than he had in all their journey. This is something I know, something I’m good at, he thought. Sliding down the wall, he slipped quietly into the open to check the east corridor.

  There wasn’t much of it. Seven or eight long strides on, enormous boulders blocked the way as if there had been a slide. He could see this clearly, he suddenly realized, because of an opening to his left, halfway between him and the stones, where a torch was burning. The sputtering flame cast an uncertain light on the shaggy bugbear guard who sat bolt upright just inside the doorway, its back against the nearest side of the opening, its attention fixed on that boulder-pile—or possibly something beyond it.

  Lhors brought his head slowly back around. There was a door just beyond the guard on the other side of the hall. There was a door opposite Rowan also, and a dreadful smell came from the hand’s width of space between floor and ill-fitting slab of wood. Possibly a prison, Lhors thought. The door didn’t seem to fit well enough into its stone sill even to latch, but there was a thick iron bar on the outside, holding it shut.

  Somewhere to his right, he could hear the distant but unmistakable rhythmic clang of a hammer on an anvil. There was a smithy down here.

  He looked over at Rowan, who was waiting for him. She sent her eyes sideways, back the way they’d come, then slowly began easing away from the opening. He did the same, only getting to his feet after she did. With one last look toward the cross-hall, the ranger came over and wrapped an arm around Lhors’ shoulders, briefly hugging him.

  “Well done,” she murmured against his ear.

  Lhors nodded. His face felt hot, and he was too embarrassed by the unexpected praise to know what to say. Besides, it was hard for him to remember that she was at least as old as his mother would have been. She was warm and sleek-bodied, like a very young woman. Her hair was soft. He forced his mind back to more serious matters—such as how to briefly let Vlandar know what he’d seen down there.

  Vlandar drew him back a little farther up the broad passageway where he squatted near the wall close to Malowan. Agya crouched by his feet, eyes moving constantly. The paladin’s e
yes were closed, his hands outstretched, and his lips moving soundlessly. As soon as the two passed Malowan’s fingertips, Vlandar nodded and spoke in a low voice. “You can talk here. Malowan has worked a spell to keep sound within the tube of space formed around his arms.” A faint smile turned his lips. “Had he longer arms, everyone could hear at the same time.”

  “I’ll pass on to my sister anything she needs to know,” Rowan said. She glanced up the hall where Khlened and the Maera stood.

  Lhors gave a brief account of what he had seen. Once he was done, Rowan took up the narrative.

  “There is a long passage, half the width of this, and a chamber at the end with no door. There are two giants asleep on a mat near a fire, and there may be others. I know there are more fires. I could see the light of at least three. It must be a torture chamber. I am sure I saw a rack and a spiked crown of pain hanging from a chain. There is a door straight down from here flanked by matching doors. Both are barred. Farther west, an opening seems to angle southwest. There may also be another passage going north. I could just make out shadow but nothing else.”

  Vlandar nodded, then fixed his gaze on the opposite wall as he decided on a course of action.

  Lhors studied the rest of the group while he waited for Vlandar’s decision. Maera seemed to be talking to Khlened. As Lhors watched, the ranger drew the man into the middle of the corridor away from the wall. What Lhors could see of the barbarian’s face was unnerving. He was dead white and sweating freely. His eyes were screwed shut, and he was chewing on a corner of his moustache.

  “He fears caves,” Rowan murmured against his ear, “any dark and enclosed place. He admitted that last night when Maera and I pressed him about it. Do not let him know you know it. It shames him to be afraid of anything, but he cannot control it.”