A Stone's Throw (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 3)

by Annie Bellet

  “They’re hemming us in,” Drake said. “Got to be twenty at least.”

  “Stay under trees. Rahiel, can you break their line?”

  “Sure, Azy,” Rahiel said. She and Bill flew past me, moving high into the air.

  “Don’t set the grass on fire!” Makha yelled.

  The pixie-goblin sent a crackling bolt of blue flame into the warakin I’d tried to shoot. The creature yelped in pain and collapsed as blood spurted from a deep wound in its side and meaty smelling smoke wafted on the breeze toward us.

  The rest of the warakin charged, their long legs eating up the open ground between us with stunning speed. Rahiel threw more bolts, each one finding a target with hissing, wet smacks and terrible screams of pain. A handful of warakin turned and tried to leap for her, but she and the mini unicorn were far out of reach even from their powerful leaps and each creature came smashing back to ground, smoke rising from charred and wounded hides.

  I took one out with an arrow through its open mouth. Another of my arrows gouged a deep furrow in the thick hide of a second warakin, but the creature didn’t slow. I moved back behind Makha, putting her armored body between me and the onslaught, and my back to the trunk of a poplar. I shot another arrow crunching through the eye and into the brain of a leaping beast, and then they were upon us.

  Makha threw one warakin down with a mighty bash of her shield. She sliced through its throat with a quick jab of her sword and shifted in time to catch the teeth of another on her armored thigh. The thick yellowed teeth were no match for the blue-black scales of Makha’s Saliidruin maille and they splintered with a wet gust of red blood, the warakin falling prey to Makha’s sword even as it tried to back away.

  Fade leapt into the fray, his body larger and stronger than any of the warakin and his knife-like claws gouged huge swaths of flesh from any that dared close in on him. The mist-lynx sprang away from my side, landing on a warakin that shrieked and twisted even as Fade’s huge jaws closed down on its neck, snapping its spine with a bone-shuddering crunch.

  One of my arrows found a warakin’s throat in mid-leap as it came over the fallen bodies of its packmates, snapping for Makha’s head. Another monster came around the side of the tree and struck at my leg. I sprang to the side, nearly colliding with Drake as he fended off another with his dancing, needle-sharp rapier. Having no space to draw I jabbed an arrow into the warakin’s face again and again, not doing more than superficial damage but causing it enough pain that the creature slunk backward, hissing.

  It moved back just far enough that I had time to draw my bow and send my arrow crunching through its gouged and bleeding skull. The warakin crumpled to the ground and another leapt in, snapping its teeth on the empty air where I had stood just before. Makha’s shield bashed its brains out in a sickly, salty-sweet gush.

  Azyrin shifted toward us, covering Drake’s right side and the gap between a tulip poplar and a red maple, creating a choke point through which he funneled the warakin. His falchion’s heavy blade cracked through their broad skulls with brutal force.

  Makha whipped her sword around in time to sever a leg of another beast as it jumped the bodies of its fallen kin and nearly bit a chunk out of my elven scale hauberk. Its jaws came close enough that I caught a faceful of its foul breath as I deflected the snapping teeth with my bow. Hot blood sprayed my arm from its hemorrhaging leg and the creature fell back, limping and yowling. Fade sprang onto it and tore its head from its body, sending a gleaming crimson spray misting over us.

  A different cry, deeper and longer, rose up from the side and I dragged another arrow out of my quiver, expecting a new adversary or renewed attack. Instead, the remaining few warakin pulled back, turning as soon as they felt it was safe to do so and fleeing back into the long grasses. Turning my head, I saw a larger, darker warakin watching us from out of bow range. The odd cry had come from it, I guessed. With one last long look at us, the warakin leader turned and followed the remains of his pack.

  The assault had to have lasted only scant minutes, judging by the angle of the sun, but my arms felt blood-pumped and heavy as relief hit me. A pile of dead bodies smoked beneath Rahiel and Bill. Azyrin plunged his falchion into a still-twitching corpse.

  “Looks like they are actually moving away,” Rahiel called from her higher vantage.

  “For now,” Azyrin said.

  “Showed those furlumps what’s what.” Makha smiled wearily. She hadn’t even had a chance to pull her armored hood up for the battle. She brushed at some blood on her maille. “Glad this stuff does its job.”

  “Look,” Drake said. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention this. Seemed unlikely with such a big territory that we’d even run into them.”

  “They are very territorial, moron.” Rahiel flew closer. “You ever pull something like this again, I will turn you into a rabbit. And then sell you as a pet to some spoiled merchanter’s wife.”

  “Again,” Drake said with a tiny, apologetic smile. “Don’t you mean ‘I’ll turn you into a rabbit, again’?”

  “Yes!”

  I finished pulling what arrows I could find out of the dead beasts and moved down to the stream to clean the worst of the blood off. Fade followed and plunged his head into the shallow, cold water, shaking droplets everywhere afterward. He licked my hand and I risked a wave of nausea to stroke his ears.

  “The point is,” Drake was saying when I moved back up the little hill to them, “I don’t think they’ll bug us again. And if we follow that stream north, we’ll reach the bigger stream that flows by the sunken hill.”

  “Let us go on, then,” Azyrin said.

  “Fine,” Rahiel muttered. She smoothed her skirts out over Bill’s back and they took off into the air again.

  Bending down, I ran my fingers through the fur covering one of the dead warakin. It was coarse but thick. Pity there wasn’t enough time to skin the bodies. They would stay out here and rot, slowly torn apart by insects and scavengers. Flies were already circling the drying blood. So wasteful. There had been a hint of intelligence in that big warakin’s eyes. I could only hope he or she would learn from this encounter and steer the pack clear of people in armor in the future. So much killing over what? Territorial instinct?

  “Come on, Killer.” Makha rolled her shoulders as she turned to her husband. “Nice warm-up. I feel much more awake now.”

  Chuckling, Azyrin slung his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek. Makha blushed, shoved him away, and set out after Drake. I smiled at the look they shared. They might pretend nonchalance, but after an intense fight like that, I knew they were glad to see each other uninjured and still standing. Much the same way that Fade often bumped my hand or hip with his huge fuzzy head after a fight. It was the reassurance of touch, the gesture that said “hey, still here, still okay”. Some communication even a curse can’t stand in the way of.

  * * *

  “Sunken hill?” Rahiel yelled over the roar of the waterfall. “More like sinkhole.”

  It was nearly midday before we found the ruins. The large stream that ran into them fell away in a waterfall down into a pit that was at least a hundred feet deep and twice that in width. Orange and green algae coated the striated grey stone walls of the sinkhole. Standing across from the plunging stream and blinking cold spray from the waterfall out of my eyes, I could just make out the pool of water and a wide stone area shadowed by an outcropping of rocks far below me. The stones had a smooth look to them, but from this distance it was impossible to tell if they were rounded from the water and weathering or if they had been worked by tools.

  “Fly down and have a look around,” Drake suggested, glaring at the pixie-goblin.

  “What if there is a monster down there?”

  “Then scream like a little girl and fireball it,” Makha said with a wide smile.

  “You know, your usual reaction to things,” Drake added.

  “I hate you guys. Except Killer.” Rahiel gave me a suffering look, her silvery eyes wide with mock-vul
nerability.

  Only because I can’t talk, lady. The things I would say to you at times, like what is with your impractical princess dresses? Or your hairstyles? I sighed.

  “Why do you hate me?” Azyrin asked. “I do not tease.”

  “You married the muscle mountain there. You are guilty by association.”

  Rahiel, getting no quarter from any of us, turned Bill, and they flew down into the pit. I kept an arrow ready, just in case there really was a monster down there. My keen eyes detected no movement but the rushing waterfall overpowered my hearing and all I could smell was damp stone. The pixie-goblin, looking like an exotic insect at this distance with her green-and-purple coloring and the unicorn’s pink and gold, flew around the bottom of the falls and then they rose back into the air and returned.

  “There is a good-sized opening to some kind of cave system. No way to tell how deep it goes. I saw no signs of any life.” She almost sounded disappointed at that last part.

  “Then we’ll go in,” Drake said. He slipped a double-banded steel ring from his finger and separated the rings with his thumbnail. “Here, pull on this end.” He held it out to Makha.

  She took the steel ring and pulled. The rings came apart in a linked chain, growing and spreading and lengthening. “Saar’s balls,” Makha said.

  “That is a chain ring.” Rahiel moved closer as Drake walked the original link back to the nearest tree, a great spreading oak that had probably been a sapling when duels were still fought in this place. “Where did you get that?”

  “Remember that bastard in Magerill? The one who was cheating at cards?”

  “I remember man who won all your share from shipwreck we explored,” Azyrin said, his pale blue eyes narrowing.

  “He was cheating,” Drake said.

  “We pulled you out of the tavern before you got arrested for fighting,” Rahiel added.

  “Oi, well, I went back and settled things between us like men.” Drake shrugged.

  “By that you mean you waited until he was passed out drunk and then robbed him blind, right?”

  Drake fixed the chain around the tree by twisting a dagger through the links and pulled, testing its strength. “He snored like a rabid bear fighting off a wolf pack.”

  “Man had fingers like Traegalean sausages. Was he wearing that ring?” Makha shook her head as she walked to the edge of the sinkhole and tossed the pile of chain links in her hands over the edge. The links were large enough that our boots would easily fit in them. It wouldn’t be an easy climb, but the chain made a tenuous ladder down into the chasm.

  “He ordered butter and toast before bed. Was a fresh crock of the stuff right there on his nightstand.” Drake grinned. He motioned over the cliff and looked at me. “Elf ladies first.”

  Slinging Thorn over my shoulder, I descended the chain. The mist from the waterfall made the thick steel links slippery and the climb slow. I jumped off the chain a few feet above the rocks and let out a deep breath when my feet were firmly planted on solid ground. As Makha began her descent, I took a look around.

  The stones around the edge of the pool into which the waterfall plunged were a mix of natural shale and tool-cut granite. I brushed my fingers over faint designs carved into decorative columns smashed in the collapse of whatever ruin had once been over the sinkhole. Whatever had been carved into the grey, black, and white stone was obscured now by water and time. Beyond the half-moon beach was an overhang and my keen vision showed a passage angling back into the rock. I walked to the overhang and ducked under. Damp, earthy air cooled my face. Air movement. Beyond the shallow cave was an opening that looked to be a tight fit, but passable enough.

  I squeezed through the opening, my eyes adjusting to the lack of light and picking up a faint glow down ahead of me. The floor of the passage sloped downward and the walls were striated and almost sharp to the touch, carved by water over the course of many floods and many years. The air stayed damp and fresh, pushing slightly against my skin. A draft. I couldn’t tell if the dim light ahead was daylight but it seemed odd that a passage going deeper into the ground would have light at the end. Makha and Azyrin would find this corridor an uncomfortable squeeze. I moved down a short ways, testing the width with my hands. They would fit but once we were in this passage, there would be no turning around if the leader got into trouble. I tried not to think of the massive weight of earth and stone over my head.

  I heard my companions arguing about something behind me. I backed carefully out of the passage, wincing as I forgot to duck and banged my head into the overhang.

  Makha and Drake were collapsing the chain ring, the pixie-goblin having flown the end down. Rahiel perched on a piece of column and glared at Bill. The mini-unicorn stood with his gold hooves splayed and nostrils flared, staring into the shallow cave I had just come out of.

  “You go into houses. You went into the castle under that lake. Do not be ridiculous now.” Rahiel folded her arms, her wings flicking in agitation.

  “Rahiel,” Azyrin said gently, “if he not want to go, we will not make him.”

  “Caves are different than man-made buildings,” Drake added.

  “Fade isn’t coming, either, I’m guessing,” Makha pointed out.

  That was true. Fade didn’t like to be out of the open air. He never entered buildings without great protest, not even as a kitten. In the beginning, I’d had to hide him in my pack when I went into towns. As soon as he got large enough to fend for himself, I just left him on the outskirts when I made supply runs. He was one of the main reasons I had never bothered actually sleeping indoors before I met my companions.

  “Fine, you can stay out here.” Rahiel glared at Bill. The pink unicorn snorted and jumped up onto a somewhat flat rock, turned around twice, and lay down on the sun-warmed surface, his back to the pixie-goblin.

  “You’re just mad because you’ll have to fly under your own power,” Drake said. He ducked the pebble Rahiel threw at him.

  “So? Into the cave?” Makha asked.

  “That’s where the rapier would have washed into, I think. Unless you fancy a swim in that pool there.”

  I turned and went back to the passage. I slipped two arrows from my quiver and held them in the same hand as my bow. There wasn’t enough room in the corridor to have a good shot or to draw my bow properly, but I felt better being ready for it and having something sharp in my hands.

  “Dark as tar in here,” Drake muttered behind me. “Wait, is that light up ahead?” I felt Drake’s breath warm on my ear as he pressed up behind me and squinted over my shoulder.

  “Tight fit,” Makha said. “Keep moving, I don’t wanna scrape the shit out of my shield on these walls.”

  “That is light ahead. Weird.” I felt Drake shake his head. “Sorry to crowd you there,” he mumbled as I moved forward, away from his pressing body heat.

  The channel descended for at least one hundred paces before it turned sharply to the left. It was one of the longest hundred paces I have ever traveled. Dripping water rang in my ears and the walls of rough, striated stone seemed to close in on me even though I could tell the passage wasn’t getting much narrower as we went. My grip on my bow turned slick and I strained my eyes in the near darkness, focusing on the glimmer of dim light in front of me.

  I squeezed around the bend in the passage and abruptly had space to move. Drake, pressing through the turn as well, ran into me again as I stopped and stared, gaping like a fish at the cavern the tunnel opened into.

  Thick terraced shelves of glowing green lichens lined the walls of the huge domed cavern. Water trickled down from far above, draining off the wall near where I stood gawking and into a shallow pool that spread out across a large part of the cave, its water shimmering with eerie light from the phosphorescing moss coating its banks. The floor was wet and shining with lichens and stalagmites rose from the stone like exotic trees.

  “Bloody gods above,” Drake whispered as I stepped to the side to give him and the rest of the group room to en
ter.

  “Don’t see something like this everyday,” Makha said. She walked forward a few steps and touched a gauntleted hand to one of the stalagmite columns near us. Her fingers came away glowing faintly green as the lichen rubbed off on her armor.

  “That stuff might be toxic.” Rahiel flew out of the passage and up into the open space above us, flashing her pink leather boots and white bloomers. She had a wand in each tiny fist and a grudgingly awed expression on her delicate face.

  Makha sniffed it. “Seems fine. Smells like dirt.”

  “It is safe,” Azyrin said. “Is called glimmer moss. Will stain clothing and skin. Make you shine like lamp for little while. So careful what you touch.”

  “Is it worth taking some with us?” Drake scuffed up a glowing furrow with his boot.

  “Is like ocean algae and will die quickly. You cannot keep it.” Azyrin shook his head.

  After checking my hauberk for scratches, even though I doubted stone could do real damage to my elf-crafted armor, I walked over to the pool and brought a little of the water to my nose. It smelled heavy with minerals, which I expected, but also somewhat sweet, which I did not. I picked up no movement in the water and the pool looked wide but shallow, though the glowing light on its banks cast the middle into shadow. Not that it mattered; there was enough room to give the pond wide berth and still get around it.

  “I think there’s some daylight filtering in over here,” Rahiel called from further in the cavern. “And a big passage to somewhere else down there.”

  “Drake? Is your call if we go on.” Azyrin looked at the rogue and motioned toward where Rahiel flitted about.

  “We gotta search this place first. Maybe they washed into here and the sword is in that pool or something.” Drake ran a hand through his hair, smearing glowing lichen into his black curls.

  “I ain’t goin’ in the water,” Makha said.

  Drake looked at me but I turned and pretended to study the nearest stalagmite very closely. Behind me, he sighed and I heard the rustle of clothing being removed.