The Dungeoneers

by John David Anderson

  Colm tried to rouse some of the others, even slapped Tyren across his properly apportioned head, but nobody stirred. He couldn’t wait for them to wake. He was probably too late already. Perhaps there was something in the Crystallarium that could help him figure out how to get back.

  Colm made his way through the castle, calling down every hall. “Hello! If you’re here, I need help! The whole party is trapped in a dungeon! Please!” There was no answer. He threw open the doors of the chamber, with its rainbow array of rare gems along the wall and its circle of purple fire promising a trip to anyone who knew the magic words. He looked around for some instructions, a big, moldy tome full of mystical incantations, anything, but the room contained little more than crystals and candelabras. Colm stepped into the center and held the amethyst in his hand. He closed his eyes.

  “Go!” he said.

  “Vamoose!”

  “Fly!”

  “Teleport! Transport! Portalify! Transferus bodius!”

  The crystal sat cold and lifeless in his hand. It was useless. Colm called up to the ceiling. “If there is anybody out there who can help me, please!”

  He heard a grunted breath behind him and turned.

  “Oh . . . fungus.”

  Two beefy arms instantly wrapped around Colm like tentacles, squeezing, threatening to snap his spine. Colm struggled to free himself but only managed to twist so that it was his rib cage threatening to splinter. His eyes shot around the room and landed on Scratch, only a few feet away. Not that he could get to it now. Colm wondered if there had ever been a more useless sword in all of creation.

  “Where’s Finn?” Fungus growled, somehow squeezing even harder.

  “Not . . . going . . . anywhere . . . ,” Colm said, in between heaving gasps. He kicked out with his feet, banging helplessly on the cook’s shins. Fungus was nearly Master Thwodin’s equal in size. He wasn’t a dungeoneer, didn’t carry any weapons, but when you have arms thick as logs, it doesn’t matter. Colm’s vision darkened. His lungs burned; his guts threatened to shoot out both ends as Fungus pressed him closer. Colm couldn’t believe it. After all of this, to be crushed to death by the cook.

  He heard a soft thud. Then he felt everything go limp as those giant hairy hands released him. Colm flopped to the floor, the air rushing back in a great, long, rasping gasp. He turned to see Fungus standing there above him, a stupid, confused look on his face, eyes rolling up into his head. He wavered for just a moment, then pitched forward like a felled tree, Colm barely managing to roll out of the way as the body of the cook landed with a shuddering thunk.

  Colm shook his head, feeling the blood rushing back to all the places it belonged, then looked at the figure standing over Fungus’s prone body. She was more beautiful than he could ever imagine, with one eyebrow cocked, eyes like pinholes, mouth set in a determined scowl.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?” Ravena Heartfall demanded. In her hand she held a sword, the hilt of which had taken down the hulking cook with a blow to the back of the head. “Where is Master Thwodin? Why is Fungus trying to kill you?” The tip of that sword was pointed at Colm. She didn’t trust him.

  He couldn’t blame her.

  Still gasping for air, he reached into his pocket for the crystal and held it up for her to see. “Finn. Betrayed us. Sleeping potion. Treasure. Trap,” he croaked, rubbing his bruised chest. It was the highly abridged version, but she seemed to get the idea. Ravena lowered her sword.

  “And the others?”

  “Dungeon. Orcs. I don’t know.”

  Ravena nodded, as if she hadn’t expected any less.

  Colm was finally able to take a full breath again. “The last thing I saw was the whole party being surrounded. Then Finn transported us here. We have to go back.” Colm held the crystal out to her, then drew back. “Wait a minute,” he said, suddenly suspicious, “how come you’re not asleep?”

  Ravena stared at the unconscious body of Fungus in disgust. “Have you ever seen me eat anything that man cooks?” She snatched the crystal from Colm’s hand and stepped back into the illuminated circle. “How many orcs did you say there were?”

  “Hundreds,” Colm said.

  “And how many can you handle?”

  Colm considered the question carefully. “Three.”

  “That’s more than I thought you’d say.” She pointed to the sword still sitting on the floor. “Three with or without that?”

  “With, probably,” Colm said. He picked Scratch up by its paw, then grabbed hold of Ravena. “Wait a minute. I don’t know what to do.”

  “That’s all right. I do,” she said. “It comes with having to do everything yourself.”

  They appeared the same place as earlier, except this time the halls were all well lit and no longer quiet. The trap had been sprung, and the dungeon seemed to have developed a heartbeat, a steady thumping that rebounded from every stone.

  “Drums,” Ravena cursed.

  “And drums are bad?”

  “They are preparing a ritual.”

  “You mean like a sacrifice?” Colm asked.

  “Well, they’re probably not celebrating Master Thwodin’s birthing day.”

  Colm hadn’t realized Ravena Heartfall had a sense of humor. He’d kind of assumed she had used some spell to have it removed. She handed the crystal key back to Colm, who tucked it away. “I trust you at least learned how to walk quietly?”

  Colm nodded. That part he could handle. With any luck, maybe they could sneak past the first hundred guards, leaving only three hundred or so for her to fight. They crept side by side, swords leading the way, constantly glancing behind them but following the dungeon’s heartbeat. Sometimes the percussion was accompanied by the sound of feet clopping across stone, and they would duck into the shadows as a patrol stomped by. One group of orcs carried a set of iron pikes ten feet tall.

  “For the heads,” Ravena explained. She wasn’t being funny this time.

  They ducked down two more halls, Colm wishing he had Serene’s chalk numbers to go by, trusting Ravena’s instincts even though he was the one who had been here before. At one point they reached a corridor that was darker than the others, and Ravena muttered something under her breath, her fingertips suddenly glowing with a bright white light that spread out in front of them.

  Colm let out a squeak. “I forgot you could do that,” he whispered. Cast spells, pick locks, and clobber cooks. He wondered if she could talk to spiders as well. “You really are talented.”

  “Let me ask you something,” she whispered back as they inched along the hall, pausing in between breaths to listen. “During the trials. That lock on the chest. How did you get through it so fast?”

  “It was Finn,” Colm admitted. “He made me practice it. Over and over.”

  Ravena nodded. “I knew he liked you best,” she said.

  “I trusted him,” Colm said bitterly.

  “Maybe he trusted you too.”

  Colm was about to say something to that when the sound of shouting—human shouting—from a chamber ahead caused them both to stop, their backs pressed against the walls in between the halos of the torchlights. The voice was clearly agitated.

  “When I get out of this cage, I am going to rain steel on your leathery little hides! I am going to unleash a whirlwind of wrath so furious you will turn inside out just trying to see where I’m coming from! I will stick you so full of holes, your friends will use you to pan for gold!”

  “Lena?” Ravena whispered.

  Colm nodded.

  “I won’t even need my sword,” the voice continued. “You can keep it. I’ll just shove my hands so far down your orcish throat that I’ll pull out what you had for breakfast last week and feed it to your friends!”

  There was a clang of metal on metal, followed by a grunt. Colm heard a gruff and unfamiliar voice say something about wanting to eat the loud one first, and Lena’s voice suddenly went silent.

  Ravena pointed to the open archway the voices
were coming from. “Stick close and follow my lead.” Colm put a hand on Ravena’s shirt and trailed behind her, both of them keeping to the shadows and craning their necks to get a look inside the room.

  They were there, the three of them—Lena, Quinn, and Serene—locked in separate steel cages suspended from the ceiling. Lena had been stripped of her weapons, though that wasn’t stopping her from trying to chew through the metal bars. Serene had her knees pulled up and one hand thrust through both her cage and the one beside her, resting it on Quinn’s head, running her fingers through his wild hair. The boy was curled fetal, eyes closed. His whole body shook.

  Colm started to get Lena’s attention, but Ravena pulled down his arm and nodded to the other side of the room and the six orcs standing there.

  She held up three fingers and pointed at him. Colm looked at the orcs, at least twice the size of a goblin, battle scarred and uglier than Fungus even, many of them with necklaces of polished white bones hanging from their necks. Maybe three had been a little ambitious. He shook his head and held up one finger. Ravena rolled her eyes. Then she closed them and mumbled something under her breath.

  Suddenly the room started to fill with smoke, billowing up from the floor in thick white clouds. Climbing up the walls, reaching even to the suspended cages. The orcs drew their swords and axes, spinning around and sniffing at the white fog, but in three heartbeats the room was filled with a haze as dense as packed snow, impossible to see through. Colm felt Ravena brush past him, tiptoeing into the room, then lost sight of her altogether.

  “Ravena!” he hissed as loud as he dared, but he got no response. He groped around the floor beside him. Then he heard the orcs cursing, heard scraping, something hitting the wall. There was a series of grunts. One orc shouted, knocked something over. Colm took Scratch and jabbed into the fog tentatively, afraid of hitting Ravena but hitting nothing after all. There were several more thuds from different places in the room, a long groan, and then silence.

  In the space of another breath, the smoke started to disappear, absorbed back into the walls or the ether or the floor, revealing the bodies of all six orcs stretched across the stone, their attacker throwing her braid of black hair behind her again. She glanced over at Colm, who couldn’t help but stare. “What? You never learn how to fight with your eyes closed?”

  Colm couldn’t even pee with his eyes closed. Not and still hit the bucket.

  Ravena sheathed her sword, bent down to retrieve a set of keys from one of the orc’s belts, and started unlocking the cages. Serene was speechless. Quinn was out of it. Ravena threw the keys to Colm to unlock Lena’s door.

  They looked at each other through the bars. Colm offered her a weak smile. She didn’t return it. He opened the door to her hanging prison. She punched him.

  A right hook across the jaw, sending him spinning backward.

  “Where have you been?” she shouted. “Do you have any idea what has happened to us? We were ambushed! There were hundreds of them! And you just slunk through that door and locked it behind you, like a coward! We could have been killed. We were going to be killed. They were going to eat us! Do you understand? Eeeaaaat us!”

  “Good to see you too,” Colm said, doubled over and holding his chin in his hand.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Ravena said. “It was Finn. Something about treasure and a trap. I didn’t exactly get the whole story.”

  Lena looked to Colm for confirmation. He nodded.

  “Oh, I see. Are you okay?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

  Colm shrugged. “Well, my jaw hurts now.” He looked at Serene, who had Quinn leaning against her, eyes shut, body still convulsing. “What happened to him?”

  Serene shook her head. “He’s sick, but it’s not like anything I’ve seen before. He’s burning up. Poison, maybe? But I don’t have anything to give him. They took our weapons and supplies.”

  Colm went and put his hand on Quinn’s forehead and jerked it back. The mageling’s skin sizzled at the touch. He was drenched from head to foot in sweat, and yet he continued to shiver. “It’s all right,” Colm whispered in his ear. “We are going to get you out of here. I have the crystal. Hopefully it has enough juice left in it to get us back.”

  “Except this isn’t all of us,” Serene said.

  “We don’t know where they took the others,” Lena added. “But apparently the orc chieftain knows Master Thwodin personally. Said he was going to put them all on trial and then execute them.”

  “Some trial,” Ravena said.

  “If you were an orc and got your hands on the dungeoneer who had spent the last twenty years stealing your gold from under your ugly nose, what would you do?” Serene retorted.

  “We have to find them,” Colm said. He turned toward the door.

  “Wait. I’m not going out there unarmed.” Lena moved from one fallen orc to another, picking up each of their blades and giving it a swing before dropping it to the ground in disgust, muttering something about balance and tang. Finally Colm just bent down and picked up the sword of the orc lying closest to him and shoved it at her.

  “Is it pointy?” Colm asked.

  “I suppose,” she said.

  “And how do you handle an orc?”

  “Stab it,” she said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Lena sighed but took the sword, then growled when both she and Ravena tried to squeeze through the entry at the same time, each trying to take the lead. Finally Ravena stepped back and let Lena through. Rule number five.

  Colm helped Serene with Quinn, nearly dragging him along as they worked their way through the dungeon, following the pounding and thrumming that echoed off the walls. They avoided the larger corridors, sneaking through side tunnels, peeking into open chambers to find them all empty. Apparently the whole tribe was gathered together in one place. Colm didn’t think that would make rescuing the masters any easier at all.

  The drums grew thunderous. Colm could feel the vibrations in the walls, like the hum of an enchanted lock. “We’re close,” Lena said, wrinkling her nose. “Nothing like the smell of a thousand orcs crammed in one room.” She led them through a narrow archway and down a steep staircase, then through another hole in the wall. Suddenly the din grew overpowering, and Colm found himself staring into a chamber easily twice the size of the great hall, completely awash in club-brandishing, skull-necklace-wearing, growling, spitting, snarling, stinking orcs, all dressed in bits of leather and iron, studded with spikes and hooks, each one more vicious-looking than its neighbor.

  “That’s a whole lotta ugly,” Lena said. Serene, surprisingly, didn’t argue.

  The mass of orcs was writhing and undulating to animal-skin drums thumped with polished leg bones. Whose legs, Colm didn’t want to know. And in the center of it all, on a circular stone platform raised high enough for all to see, stood the largest orc of them all.

  “That’s him,” Serene said. “Gutshank, they call him. He was there when we were captured. He was the one who said we’d be on tonight’s menu.”

  Colm didn’t need an introduction. You could tell Gutshank was the chief by the full plate of armor, scarlet-stained steel that he had probably ripped off one of his victims. He also wore a dragon on his head. Or at least the skull of one, minus the lower jaw, to make room for his own knotted face.

  “And look there.” Serene pointed.

  On the stone stage, lined up in a row, kneeling before the orc chief, were the masters of Thwodin’s Legion. All except Herren Bloodclaw, who was bound at the wrists and stuck in a wood cage barely tall enough for him to crouch in. They all looked to be alive, though the giant ax that Gutshank was leaning on suggested that condition was only temporary.

  “I guess the trial’s over,” Lena said.

  Luckily, Colm thought, the swarm of creatures before them was so preoccupied with the impending execution of their prisoners that they didn’t notice the small pack of fledgling dungeoneers hiding in the shadows at the back of the vaulted room. �
�All right,” Colm said. “We need a plan. There’s all of them.” He indicated the horde with his short-fingered hand. “And the five of us.”

  “Four,” Serene said, nodding toward Quinn. She was right. The boy was barely conscious. If he could be certain how much power was left in the crystal, Colm would teleport Quinn back to the castle and leave him there, but there was a good chance such a trip would use up whatever energy the jewel had left and would leave the rest of them stranded. It was only guaranteed to make one round trip, after all, and it had already made one and a half.

  “I can probably take ten,” Ravena said, then looked over at Lena, whose face had turned gray.

  “Twelve,” she said, refusing to be outdone. “Maybe fifteen.”

  That left only a few hundred or so. Colm turned to Serene. “What have you got?”

  The druid shook her head, started reaching into the pockets of her cloak, to the few small vials and packets of powder that her captors hadn’t stripped her of. “Let’s see . . . I can heal gout and shrink warts. Sorry, Colm. I’m not really cut out for the whole taking-out-a-throng-of-bad-guys thing.”

  “That’s all right,” Colm said. “We don’t need to take them out. We just need to find a way to free Master Thwodin and the others and get out of here.”

  “If we could get down there without being noticed, we might be able to hold them off long enough for you to release them,” Lena proposed. “Then we would only need to clear a path.”

  “If we could get down there,” Colm repeated. But he wasn’t skilled enough to move through hundreds of orcs without getting noticed. Slipping by his sisters was one thing. His sisters weren’t usually armed with spiked clubs. They could try disguises, but none of them were near ugly enough to pass for orcs. Still, there had to be something. He scanned the room until his eyes fell on a couple of large, dome-shaped steel cages along the back. He tugged on Serene’s shirtsleeves.

  “Are those what I think they are?” he asked, pointing.

  She took one look and shrank back, grimacing.

  “You can’t possibly—” she started to say.

  But Colm was already dragging her in that direction.