Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild

by John Daulton

  “Well, you’re the expert, so assumin is exactly what I’ll be doin. When it glows, the first second of it, I’ll pull it out.” He glanced at the arrow protruding from Mags’ chest, then leaned over and studied the feathered back end. “I’ll break that off now to make it easier.” He reached down and gripped the shaft in his powerful hands and made to snap the last half-hand’s length off before Jasper could say anything, but his efforts were to no avail. He’d have had as much success trying to snap an oak tree in two. “I guess we need Meggins back here with that quiver to make it normal like.”

  “We don’t need him. It will come out anyway,” Jasper said, clearly annoyed as he held the two rocks in place. “Can you please just do as I ask, and leave the rest to me?”

  Ilbei fixed Jasper with a crooked look, digging deep into the wizard’s unflinching eyes. The wizard seemed confident, at least in this. “Fine,” he said. “Go on, then. I’ll wait till that there lights up.”

  “Good. Be patient. This is going to take a while.”

  “I heard ya the first time ya said it.”

  Jasper shrugged. Then, after one more scan down the spell, he began to read, his voice low and level, steady as a song.

  Two hours passed before the arrow began to glow, and Ilbei was fighting to keep his eyes open when he realized the light had come. It startled him to full consciousness, and with guilty fear that he’d be too late, he gripped the glowing arrow in one hand, braced the other just below her ribs and drew it out. The effort he thought he’d need was not needed at all, and such was the force of his initial draw that he nearly snapped his arm back and elbowed Jasper in the nose. He caught himself, however, then caught one of the rocks before it could roll off of Mags and set the scroll curling up on itself. But yank he did, and out the arrow came, straight through her body as if it were a thing made of light.

  He half expected it to solidify again and drop like a twenty-ton brick, but it didn’t. Instead, it hissed and crackled like dried pine needles in a fire, then vanished in a puff of smoke. Ilbei would have praised the young magician on a fine bit of magic, but Jasper was still reading aloud. Which he continued to do for the next four hours.

  By the time the spell was cast and Mags was breathing easily, Kaige was up and had relieved Meggins on watch down the tunnel. Ilbei, Jasper and Meggins took a few bites from their stores to refresh themselves, then fell in beside her and took some sorely needed rest.

  When he woke, Ilbei guessed it was late morning or early afternoon of the day following their entrance into the cave. They’d been in longer than he’d expected, but at least everyone was healthy and alive. He woke the rest of them, and shortly after, all were on their feet, refreshed to greater or lesser degrees. Mags complained that her chest hurt and that she had a backache. Jasper complained that his back surely hurt worse than hers did, as he hadn’t been healed after having to sleep on solid rock, which he continued to moan about for the next few hours as they made their way downstream. He only stopped complaining because, finally, they could see the entrance to the cave, the bright daylight beyond shining like a beacon of all things warm and dry.

  “I’ll never complain about the heat again,” Jasper promised, which of course set Meggins and Kaige to speculating on how long those odds would be. In truth, the sight of the sunlight raised everyone’s spirits more than a notch.

  Unfortunately, however, upon drawing near the exit, and upon Ilbei’s having sent Meggins to check outside in case Verity had stationed any of his crew out there, they had their spirits put right back down where they had been. Lower, really. Sent there by the metallic clatter of a pace-long crossbow bolt that came clattering off the stone, the vicious tip of it only missing Meggins’ forehead by the length of an eyelash standing on its end.

  He jerked sideways to avoid it, as if by spasm, and he had to fight his way against the current to get back out of the line of fire. He was sputtering and swearing all the while as he scrambled and splashed away from the opening, and as he did, another of the long steel bolts ricocheted off the edge of it and glanced off the hard leather of his armor. It flew up the tunnel and skittered to a stop ten spans beyond the rest of the company. Kaige went and got it as it began rolling down toward the water. He brought it back to Ilbei, who took it from him and shook his head.

  “The gods-be-damned Skewer. I knew that bastard was gonna be out there. I knew it like a burnin rash.”

  Chapter 26

  “So what’s the Skewer doing out there?” Kaige asked. “Didn’t the major say he run off?” The man’s brawn and the strong line of his jaw sometimes belied his youth and farm-grown naivety.

  “Aye, lad, he did. So either the Skewer come round this way on account of our bad luck, or the major is as low and slimy as a snail’s arse.”

  “I think it might be the second one,” Meggins said.

  “As do I.” Ilbei stroked his beard, and bits of sand and gravel fell out, bouncing off the bulbous projection of his belly, the larger pieces ticking first off his chainmail and again when they fell to the ground. “Ya happen to get a count of em out there?”

  “I didn’t,” Meggins confessed. “I only just saw the movement when the Skewer raised his crossbow. It was all I could do to duck back in time. I think I saw someone else with him, but I got nothing like a count of who all might be out there. Could be no one, could be fifty of them.”

  “He only had two men with him when we run him off, Sarge,” Kaige offered helpfully.

  “Right, he did. But no tellin how many he’s got now. Major surely gave him reinforcements when he sent him down here with Verity.”

  “What?” That came from both Kaige and Jasper.

  Ilbei shared a look with Meggins, who simply shrugged. Meggins had at least twenty years on the other two, and likely a lot more living in those decades than Jasper or Kaige would have by the same count.

  A third long, silvery shaft careened off the edge of the tunnel entrance and cut through the air. It whipped between Ilbei and Meggins and actually puffed Mags’ hair, slicing off a few strands just below her ear. They heard it land several spans beyond, followed by the metallic hiss of it sliding deeper into the darkness.

  “Back upstream, let’s go, let’s go,” Ilbei said. He put one hand on Meggins’ back and the other on Mags’, shepherding them both along. When they were out of range, Ilbei shook his head. “By the gods, we’re pinned down again. Never seen two archers so mean.”

  “But they’ve got damn fine weapons, you have to admit,” Meggins said, holding his newly acquired bow out and twisting it in the torchlight. The flames reflected dully off its black surface. It had a thin green line running through one of its composite layers, but Meggins, for all his experience with bows, could not muster a guess at what it might be. It matched the fletching on the arrows though, suggesting the feathers might be treated with something, or not be feathers at all.

  “Yes, they do,” Ilbei said. “Too fine. Strikes me squirrely to find two weapons what can shoot the moon right outta the sky, and both of em here in a backwoods like Three Tents.”

  Meggins nodded.

  “Perhaps it really is because of the harpies,” Jasper said. “As you suggested before.”

  Ilbei started to scold him for going on about harpies again, but stopped. “What makes ya say that?”

  “Well, what else would require such weapons? I’ve never actually killed one, but I can’t imagine you need a thing like that to hunt deer. I’ve known lots of hunters, and none of them used anything like either of those.”

  Ilbei scratched his beard again, dislodging more bits of stone in the doing. “You’re right, son. He wouldn’t. And a man who has resigned hisself to makin his livin off a handful of dirt-poor miners hasn’t got no reason to have such a weapon neither. He’d make a fine bit more with that thing workin fer Her Majesty, or fer any of the nobility, whether huntin or mercenary work.”

  “Well, I did see him leaving the barracks back when I shipped in,” Meggins reminded
him. “So he was military for a time.”

  “Right,” said Ilbei. “And now he’s out here spearin grouse and peahens for copper coins. And right friendly with the major too.”

  “Maybe they sent him out here to help flush out the counterfeit coins,” Mags said. “He’s been up at Fall Pools often enough over the last year or so.”

  “Did he come down to Camp Chaparral much?”

  “On occasion. There weren’t enough of us to feed, so he didn’t come by often. But I saw him a few times. We bought a boar from him for Candalin’s last birthday. She turned one hundred and sixty-five.”

  “Not bad fer a commoner and a blank,” Ilbei said. “Especially livin out here with no casters healin folks.”

  “Too bad it turned out to be her last,” Mags observed.

  “Aye.” Ilbei looked down for a moment. He regarded the panniers sitting next to Jasper’s trunk, all of which they’d retrieved before their attempt to exit the cave. He jerked his head right back up. “Speakin of that, and just so as it matters to ya all, and in the event I get one of them steel spits between my eyes, them other coin molds ain’t gone to Hast like I told the major back there. I put em in with poor old Candalin. The dirt was fresh dug, so I buried em down a half span.”

  “You mean you lied to Major?” Kaige said. He looked disappointed and surprised.

  “Aye, Kaige, that I did. But only as he’s been lyin to us since day one. And I figured if’n things worked out right, we’d make what I told him true enough in time.”

  Kaige thought about that for a while and seemed mollified. Mainly. It was obvious to all who observed that his particular notion of reality was being shifted sideways considerably.

  The metallic scrape of another crossbow bolt sliding across the stone sounded a few paces downstream.

  “Well, we can’t stand here all day. We need to figure a way out of here.” He nodded to the trunk filled with Jasper’s scrolls. “Jasper, ya got all yer spells back now, what do ya have that can get us out of here? Can ya teleport me, Meggins and Kaige behind them fellers out there so as we can sneak up on em and clear a path?”

  “Not without getting much closer to the entrance,” Jasper said.

  “Well, I’ll stand in front of ya while ya cast. I can use that trunk of yers to shield us some.”

  “I still only have fifty spans, you know. And we are twenty spans up the wall. How far away was the Skewer from there?” Jasper looked at Meggins as he spoke.

  “Maybe twenty or so down from where the creek turns down the hill,” Meggins replied.

  “Well, if he doesn’t have any more men down there, I think it might work.”

  “Can’t ya look first? Don’t ya have them seein spells?”

  “I do!” Jasper went to the trunk and started looking through it, using his bit of fungus to light the inside. He muttered what served him as epithets, cursing Kaige for shuffling them all around, but eventually he pulled a proper seeing spell out. “All right, let’s go have a look.” He actually seemed giddy about casting it.

  They waited in silence as Jasper read the spell, his eyes seeming to stare at the words and at nothing simultaneously. After several long minutes of this, he stopped chanting and blinked. “Well, they certainly spare every expense with these things. I’m beginning to think the only spells of any value in that whole box are the ones I wrote myself.”

  “What did ya see?” Ilbei asked.

  “There are six of them out there. The Skewer is where Meggins said he would be, and there’s another man with a crossbow as well, although not like that one the Skewer has. The rest are down where the shale gives way, not far from the second harpy corpse. And before you ask, no, I can’t get you behind them.”

  “How about above? Can ya get us up top?”

  “I didn’t look up top. But I think it’s too high. And these seeing spells are terrible. I don’t think the seer was ranked higher than a G. No wonder the outlands here are in chaos. If this is all the army cares to spend when it sends out a patrol, it’s hardly a surprise.”

  Ilbei did not hide his impatience. “Well, you’re gonna look anyway.”

  Jasper was clearly irritated as he went back into the chest to pull out another seeing scroll. He found one, and once again went to work. When he was done, he came back to the group with a look of triumph on his face. “You see, I told you. It’s too high. I couldn’t teleport you to the top with these shoddily written scrolls if I jumped before casting them. I should like to place a formal complaint about it, and as you are my immediate superior, I will register it with you. The slapdash workmanship is simply inexcusable.”

  “Noted,” Ilbei said, in part to silence the complaint but, to a degree, in agreement with him as well. While there were some advantages to having a scroll mage along—technically giving Ilbei and anyone fighting alongside Jasper the benefit of access to spells from all eight magical schools, like having an Eight, really—the disadvantage was that the range and power of the magic available seemed to be all over the place, and mainly on the short side. His mustache twitched for a time as he thought about Jasper’s report. “I reckon that don’t help us much.”

  “You said you heard voices back there where Verity had us pinned down,” Meggins offered. “Must be something close enough around. Now that we got Jasper’s trunk with us, we could go back.”

  “Aye, we could. But I got a nasty feelin that it’s the major and his boys in that cave.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, Mags here says there is only three places where there’s water along the steppe. Given we gone about as far up that cave as we come down along the rock face earlier; and given that crack I was listenin to run down into the pool; and given that the pool in the ettin cave done filled itself through the roof and was ringed with the same glowin stuff as we cleared out, it seems likely enough that that there pool we was waylaid in is the source of the one below.”

  Mags was nodding even before Meggins did. “So we know where we are at least,” he said.

  “Aye, we’re havin to choose which bunch of Major’s crooks we want to fight our way through. And that’s assumin Jasper there can sight us through the rocks and get us through with that infernal teleport.” He shuddered thinking about it. Bad enough to have it done to him once already.

  “We could look up the other tunnel,” Mags suggested. “There must be an opening. Water ran through it at some point, so it had to come from somewhere.”

  “Well, we don’t know that’s the case no more,” Ilbei said. “All this could have been cut out a thousand years ago or more, and that one might a’ gone dry by collapse any time since.”

  “Yes, but that vinegar smell you’re talking about means there’s something rotting up there. That didn’t happen a thousand years ago, or it would be gone by now. And even if I am wrong on that, there’s still a chance it might run us up closer to the surface. Even a thousand years ago, the water still had to come from somewhere, and the odds are decent the source is snowmelt and rain from above. If we’re lucky, it might even bend nearer to the northern face of the mountains, where they look out toward the Sandsea. If we take enough water with us before we go out, we could make it to Hast by skimming along the desert’s southern edge.”

  “Well, I’ll take my chances with the heat over the major and whatever tricks he’s got up his nobleman’s cuffs, that’s sure,” Ilbei said. “It’s worth a look.”

  They gathered their equipment, loading poor Kaige like a pack mule, and headed once again deeper into the mountainside. Meggins trailed behind, keeping watch for pursuit, and Ilbei led the way, the torch held out and seeming to drive the darkness before them, the black spot of it retreating steadily down the tunnel like a cork being drawn out of a bottle that might never end. They reached the fork in the passage, and Ilbei wasted no time moving up the right-hand branch. He turned back long enough to see what Kaige was cussing about and discovered the big man was forced to stoop now, making carrying Jasper’s trunk
and one of the panniers more difficult.

  Kaige saw Ilbei looking and said he was fine. His eyes sparkled in the dancing light of the torch in a way that told Ilbei he meant it, despite the profanity. Ilbei nodded and looked beyond him. “You still with us back there, Meggins?” Ilbei called.

  “I am, Sarge,” came the reply.

  Onward they went. The slope was barely perceptible for some time, and after an hour and a half, Ilbei thought Mags might have been too optimistic when she suggested this passage would lead them to the top of the steppe, or even just near enough for Jasper to get them teleported out. But, gradually, and before he decided to voice his skepticism, the incline grew steeper and more promising again, so steep that, for nearly a quarter measure, it became slick and precipitous. They scrabbled and clawed their way up, Ilbei having to pull Kaige along in places, with Mags shoving him from behind. Even with their cooperation, it was all they could do not to slide right back down again. But finally the stony slide gave way to a slope so gradual it seemed nearly level again, and Ilbei wondered if they’d climbed high enough to be close to the surface yet. Hoping that they had, he asked Jasper to try another one of the seeing scrolls to have a look around.

  Not only were they not at the surface, they were somewhere deep enough in the mountain that Jasper couldn’t even run his magically enhanced vision out into anything. “It’s all black,” the sorcerer reported when he was finished with the spell. “Solid stone everywhere except up ahead. At least for as far as I can see.” This was followed by another long diatribe about the low quality of the standard-issue army scrolls, which Ilbei didn’t bother to silence and rather just waved everyone along, onward up the passageway.

  Eventually the cave bent in a direction Ilbei believed was taking them southwest, deeper into the mountain rather than toward the north and the desert beyond. He was about to call a halt when, just like that, the cave ended in an oblong chamber not unlike the space Verity had trapped them in at the end of the other passage, though larger by half again. This one, however, had no small pool and no glowing fungus. Nor was there any fermenting anything to explain the vinegar smell that filled the air. It was strong enough now that everyone could smell it, and Meggins, upon finally catching up to them, came into the chamber making a lemon-eater’s face. “A damn fine place you led us to, Sarge. Smells worse than those heaps of rotting grape skins out back of Gallenwood wineries.”