by Jamie Davis
“That, Westy, is why I brought flasks of lamp oil along,” Helen replied. “Once we get to shore, I’ll pass out a few to each of you along with a torch. We’ll be ready if they show up. Remember to set any trolls alight as soon as you cut them down, so they don’t regenerate.”
The crew of the small boat nodded, and Cari saw both Stefan and Rodrigo shoot glances up at the high walls of the cliffs around them as they headed for the small sandy beach at the far end of the cove.
Helen sat at the tiller and guided the long boat straight in toward the beach until the bow scraped up on the sand. Stefan and two of the sailors at the bow jumped out and started to pull the boat farther up onto the beach.
More sailors jumped to shore followed finally by Rodrigo, Helen and, last of all, Cari. Her boots sunk a bit into the sand as she jumped down from the boat’s gunwale.
Helen had already started handing out the oil flasks and torches from a sack she pulled from the boat. In a few minutes, everyone was equipped and ready to go.
Cari took the lead, following the narrow strip of sand inland until it turned into a twisting, rocky path up the side of the cliffs.
The arduous climb had Cari’s thighs burning before she’d gone halfway to the top of the trail.
“I’m so out of shape,” Cari complained.
“How so?” Helen asked, walking right behind her. The first mate was flushed and sweaty from the exertion of the climb, too, much more so than her captain.
“I used to run cross country sprints back home as part of my training. My swordmaster always said good cardiovascular fitness went a long way in the salle.”
“Why would you run cross country?” Stefan asked. “Why not ride in a carriage?”
“Because people never walked anywhere and it was the only way to get exercise.”
Cari glanced behind her to see puzzled looks on her officers’ faces.
“Oh, never mind. You wouldn’t understand anyway. Come on, we’re almost to the top. Let’s pick up the pace.”
Cari climbed upward faster, smiling at the groans from her crew as they struggled to keep up. Maybe she needed to implement a program of calisthenics for the crew every morning when she got back. It would benefit her and the crew to be in better shape.
Finally cresting the top of the trail, Cari and the others spread out and caught their breath as they looked around. The old mine buildings sat a hundred yards away, most of them built up against the side of the steep hillside where there was a mine shaft opening. Thick wooden timbers framed the entrance to the mine.
“That’s where we’re headed,” Cari pointed at the mineshaft.
“Maybe we should check in at that smaller shack closest to us,” Rodrigo suggested. “The little bit of smoke coming from the chimney indicates someone is home.”
“Agreed, let’s go see who’s home.”
Cari started towards the shack. Rodrigo and Stefan rushed to get ahead of her and reached the door of the small building before she did. Stefan reached up to rap on the door, but Rodrigo lifted the latch and pushed it open, stepping into the shadowy interior.
By the time Cari reached the doorway, Stefan had also entered. She hoped whoever was there would not be too offended by their barging in like that.
It turned out she needn’t have worried. There was no one home.
The smoke from the chimney came from a small, cast-iron stove set in the corner with a tin stovepipe leading up to where it bent in a right angle to a hole in the wall. It must connect with the stone chimney built along the outside of the shack. It appeared the original stone fireplace next to the stove had been sealed up and was no longer used, based on the piles of books and papers stacked there.
“It looks like this is some sort of office, Cap’n,” Stefan said from behind a table next to the stove. He shuffled through the jumbled papers he’d found. “All these point to a series of regular deliveries to the mine via a ship visiting the cove. The deliveries consist of casks of what the ledgers call essence of starwort.”
Helen drew in a sharp breath. “Cari, starwort is a powerful herb with some medicinal properties, but it can be very toxic in all but the smallest of doses. If someone concentrated an extraction of the plant, it could cause effects that would resemble an infectious plague.”
“Does it say where the deliveries originate or who’s sending them?”
Stefan shuffled through some more of the loose papers on the table before shaking his head. “No, it only tracks the deliveries. There’s no record of payment to anyone or any other correspondence. This paper here says the last delivery was the day before yesterday. More than twice the usual number of casks were dropped off.”
“I was hoping there’d be something tying all this back to the Duke of Charon but, as usual, he has managed to keep his nose clean. This reeks of one of his plots, though.”
She was about to start shuffling through the papers herself, in an attempt to find something Stefan missed when a shout of alarm from outside distracted her.
Drawing her sword, Cari led the other three out the door and back into the afternoon daylight. The six sailors from her crew had drawn up in a line beside the shack with their weapons drawn.
Cari spotted the source of the threat right away. She’d never seen a troll in person before; however, the group of ten eight-foot-tall humanoids with gray-green skin and thick black hair atop their bulbous heads could be nothing else. She rushed to stand beside her crew, sword drawn in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Growls and threatening snarls came from the trolls, but they didn’t advance to attack. Cari took a step forward to stand in front of her shore party.
One of the trolls moved to the front of their group. The huge creature held out his hands, palm outward at his side, keeping them there.
“I think he wants to parlay,” Cari remarked.
“I’ve never heard of trolls doing anything but fighting with humans before,” Helen said. “Be careful, Cap’n. It could be a trap.”
Cari stared into the big round eyes of the leader of the trolls for a few seconds before making up her mind. “I don’t think so, Helen. Stay here and be ready to back me up if needed. I’m going to move forward to chat with the big one in the lead.”
“Cari—” Rodrigo called out.
“I’ll be fine, Rod. I think this is important.”
Cari sheathed her sword and shoved her pistol back into her belt. She placed her hands at her sides, palms facing forward, mimicking the troll’s stance. Taking a few steps forward, she watched the other creature for any sign of treachery.
The troll chief nodded and moved to meet her as she continued forward until the two of them stood facing each other between the two groups.
The big troll spoke first, its voice having trouble with forming the human words but trying nonetheless. Cari struggled to understand.
The words sounded all jumbled and were hard to understand until she tried invoking her Charm attribute in an attempt to improve communication between the two of them.
Charm skill bonus — communication +5
She had never tried to leverage her charm skill like this before, but she was glad to see an immediate improvement in her understanding of what the troll was saying. She would have to remember this in the future.
“…Our shaman told us come. Seek out golden-haired human woman. She is one to free land of blight.”
Now to see if the charm bonus worked both ways. She replied to the troll in a slow clear voice.
“What is the blight you speak of?”
“Very young and very old, all sick. Some animals in forest die. No reason. Shaman say blight come from place where humans once took shiny metal from hole.”
“We are here seeking remedy for same blight to a human city to the west.”
The troll nodded. “Shaman right. You are one we seek. Help us? Hole in hill small. Troll too big.”
He pointed up the nearby hill to the open mine shaft. The opening looked plenty big from
where she stood.
“I don’t understand. Why you too big?”
“Main tunnels big enough, yes. Side tunnel to deepest part of hole, no. Too small for troll. We chase other humans inside earlier this day. Cannot follow.”
That was why there was no one else outside the mine. The trolls had chased any people above ground back into the mine’s deepest levels, areas the trolls could not reach.
“I can help you. We seek to stop the same blight. Allies?” Cari extended her hand to the troll.
He nodded but then reached down to pull a stone knife from his belt. She froze and heard gasps of alarm from her crew. Rodrigo and Stefan started forward.
“Hold. No one do anything rash.”
The troll picked up on the tension and slowed his movements. Holding the stone knife in one hand, he drew the blade across his other palm, opening a big gash. Thick green blood oozed out.
Cari understood and pulled her dagger, drawing the razor-sharp blade across her own palm until her bright-red blood flowed as well.
Health damage – health -1
Reaching out, she clasped hands with the troll’s. Her hand slipped against the troll’s as she gripped the leathery green skin, now slippery with both their blood.
A strange warmth flowed from her palm up her arm and into her chest. She didn’t know what it was.
Alliance with troll chieftain achieved.
6,500 experience
Regeneration ability gained. One health point per second regenerated for a max of 60 seconds, one time per day.
The troll nodded and pulled his hand back. Cari noticed the troll’s hand had already healed, a testament to its ability to regenerate.
She glanced at her own palm, smeared with a mixture of green and red blood. To her surprise, the wound in her palm had also closed. There was barely a scar.
“Lead us to the small hole you cannot pass. We will enter and rid your land of the blight.”
The troll nodded and turned to go back to his tribesmen. Cari returned to the shore party.
“We have some unlikely allies it seems,” Cari explained what she’d learned from the troll chieftain.
“I’m not sure we should trust them,” Rodrigo cautioned her.
“We’ll be careful for sure. Our goals align along a common path right now so we’ll cooperate with them. If something changes later, we’ll deal with that then.”
The troll chieftain called out something unintelligible and she turned to see what he wanted. The troll pointed up the hill and started towards the mineshaft.
“Come on, he’s gonna to lead us to the tunnel into the deeper parts of the mine. I hope no one is claustrophobic because it must be a tight fit if the trolls can’t get in there themselves.”
“What’s claustrophobic mean?”
Cari shook her head. “Never mind. Just follow me. We’re going to get to the bottom of this right now.”
Chapter 20
The troll chief left his tribesmen outside the main entrance to the mine and led Cari and her crew inside. They wound through a maze of tunnels deeper and deeper into the shaft until Cari and the others were completely lost. He finally stopped and gestured with his hand to his mouth and ears then pointed around a corner in the passageway.
Cari understood and held a finger to her lips to keep her crew silent. She stepped forward to the corner and peeked around the edge.
A room opened up from the passage, and at the far side, she saw a narrow fissure. A pair of musket-wielding guards stood by the crack. They both appeared tired and bored. Neither of them paid any attention to the opening leading out into the passage back into the mine.
Pulling her head back, Cari put a finger up to her lips cautioning silence again and then held up two fingers, pointing back around the corner.
Helen, Rodrigo, and Stefan nodded. The two lieutenants moved forward to join Cari as they drew their swords.
“Quiet,” Cari whispered. “We can’t let them alert their leaders of our presence. Don’t let them get a shot off.”
The two men nodded and moved up to the corner. They shot each other a single glance then darted into the chamber side by side and disappeared from sight. A second later, Cari followed right behind them.
They didn’t need her help. Both guards were already down and her two lieutenants had moved over to look into the fissure in the wall.
“Nobody else here, Captain,” Stefan reported.
“Watch the entrance and be ready to jump anyone who comes out.”
Cari turned to the troll chieftain. “We’ll take it from here, uh, I don’t even know your name.”
“Chrrrak.”
Cari didn’t think she could pronounce the sound she heard, but it sounded a lot like an old-time vid her dad used to play for her.
“Shrek it is. We’ll get in there and take care of whoever is doing this to your people. Can you and your tribesmen watch over the outside and protect our backs?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll be back out as soon as we are able.”
The troll nodded and turned away, heading back up the tunnel towards the surface.
“Alright, people, here’s where we earn the big bucks. We’ve got a city to save. I don’t know how many enemies we’ve got down there so let’s be quiet and take our time. Hopefully, we can whittle any opposition down to size.”
Cari pointed to Stefan and Rodrigo. “You two take the lead but go slow and watch for any traps or hidden guards. Helen, you will bring up the rear and watch out for anyone who might get behind us and hit us that way.”
She considered the six sailors who’d accompanied them. Gary was the oldest and most experienced one in the group.
“Gary, you, Westy, Bradley, and Killian will remain here to guard this entrance. There might be others in this warren of mine tunnels. Stop them from coming up on us from behind if you can, otherwise retreat back to us and warn us they’re coming. Francesca and Beau, you’ll stick with me. Be ready to jump in either direction to cover the rear or charge forward to help the lieutenants, alright?”
The duo nodded. The matched couple were the youngest in the shore party, both close to her age. Francesca, a striking dark-skinned woman from some island chain in the southern seas, seemed most certain of herself. She stood calm and still, waiting for the order to move.
Beau, a usually happy-go-lucky character with shaggy blonde hair, shifted back and forth on his feet with nervous energy ready for action. Though they were young, they were also both among the fiercest fighters in her crew and had distinguished themselves time and again in boarding actions.
Cari nodded at the group. “Let’s go.”
Stefan and Rodrigo both lit torches and squeezed through the narrow opening of the fissure and headed down the small passage deeper into the mountain. Cari and the rest followed, leaving the rear guard behind to watch their backs.
They were in more of a system of caverns and caves now and not an area of worked stone with regular walls, floor, or ceiling. As a result, the going was harder for all of them. Cari figured getting even small casks of anything down here must have been a difficult task, requiring a lot of work and manpower. That meant there might be quite a few people down here ahead of them.
At one point, they all had to cross a dark chasm that seemed to go on forever into the depths below them. A narrow bridge of wooden planks only a few feet wide spanned the gap with just a pair of ropes strung on either side to help steady any who crossed.
“Don’t look down,” Stefan cautioned once he’d safely crossed. “It’s better that way.”
Rodrigo followed, then Cari. As she stepped out onto the planks, one of them shifted under her by a few inches making her windmill her arms until she managed to grab the rope next to her.
She found herself leaning out over the chasm staring down into the darkness.
Heart pounding and ignoring the gasps from her companions, Cari managed to get her footing again and stood up on the planking.
; Despite her terror at almost falling to her death, Cari tried to put on a facade of bravado. She let out a little chuckle and shrugged. “That would have sucked.”
“Good lord, Cap’n,” Helen said. “Try to be careful. We can’t afford to lose you in here. They’d never let us back on the Vengeance without you.”
The first mate said the last with a wink at the others, attempting to defuse the situation. A few chuckles sounded signaling her humor worked.
“Watch that first step,” Cari cautioned. “The plank isn’t secured.”
The final three in their group managed to cross without incident, and they continued on. The cavern path continued heading down, deeper into the earth and Cari wondered how much farther they had to go.
About an hour later, the sound of rushing water up ahead, along with the flickering of light alerted her they might be close to the end of the journey. Stefan handed his torch to Rodrigo and went on ahead to scout around the bend in the tunnel.
Soon after he left, the sound of voices shouting drifted back up the passage over the rumble of the water. They didn’t sound angry, so Cari was pretty sure they hadn’t discovered Stefan. She strained her ears to try and understand what the voices said, but it was too muffled by the other sounds in the cavern.
Stefan picked his way back up the path to them and joined the rest of the group in a broader part of the tunnel.
“Around the bend there it opens up into a huge cavern. I couldn’t see the far side in the darkness. A river runs through the center, though from the exposed high-water marks on the banks, it clearly used to have a greater flow than it does now. I think I know why.”
He drew a crude map in the loose sand of the passage floor. “They’ve built some sort of dam at one end of the cavern to hold back most of the water, diverting the flow through a series of pools. That appears to be where they’re dumping the contents of their casks. There are about twenty assorted humans, orcs, and goblins down there. They’re all busy working to dump the latest load of casks into the river pools.”