My heart is pounding harder; the beating pulses in my head, disrupting the signals from my ears and distorting my view of the hunting ground—which is no longer the hunting ground of us dwarves, but the hunting ground of the twelve foot tall dithyok. Its four bladed arms are twitching too fast for me to tell their exact location.

“I need my weapon!” Galar hisses somewhere from the left. “Hothuk, give me permission to try getting it out again.”

“Yathak, give him your hammer.”

There is the thud of something heavy landing at Galar’s feet.

“That’s no use,” he says. “I need my spear.”

“Pick it up! There’s no time.”

“What use is a one-handed hammer with no shield?” Galar spits.

Rude as he is, he does have a point. I would not want to face this creature with a short weapon. Heartseeker only just outranges its blade-arms, and that is just my estimate—it could easily be the other way around.

“It’ll spring on you the moment you turn your back,” Yathak says in a low voice. “It sees that as weakness. Use the hammer or use your bare hands.”

“I won’t use another’s craft!” Galar hisses.

“This is mortal danger. Swallow your pride—”

“And I’m already the weak point without my spear!”

I think he’s right—the dithyok has walked past me and is slowing as it approaches the rear of the gelthob where Galar is. It stops and faces him—if a single gaping mouth can be called a face. Hothuk chimes his bell loudly and I get the clearest outline of it yet: a hundred razor-edged sheets of bone welded onto something vaguely insectoid.

Galar spins around to grab at his spear. The dithyok takes this opportunity to leap. Yathak, stationed beside him, puts himself between Galar and the beast, raising his spear horizontally to block. His runes of speed make him fast, but the dithyok is faster. Its upper limbs slice down with incredible force and impact both his shoulders at once. He shouts in pain as his titanium pauldrons crumple with a metallic scream.

The dwarf to my left charges the dithyok and stabs up at its neck. Its right top arm lashes back and knocks his spear aside before instantly changing angle to slice at his head. Sparks briefly illuminate shavings of metal spiraling in the air. The dwarf, concussed, falls without a sound.

But now the creature’s arm is up, and that means its side is exposed. On instinct I charge and thrust Heartseeker with brutal strength—but my instincts are wrong. I have failed to take into account the dithyok’s lower set of arms, and also Heartseeker’s diminished accuracy toward things with no proper blood.

That, and my inferior boots and gauntlets drag on my movements.

Heartseeker is knocked away violently; the force twists my body and I’m off balance. The ringing of my armor disrupts my hearing, turning the world into shifting chaos, but I can tell an attack is coming. I bring an arm back to defend my head, and this time my instinct is correct.

The blade smashes into my arm and I’m sent reeling to the ground. The clang blurs everything and the hot pain in my forearm sends me into a further panic. I think it’s sliced right through my armor. I scramble back, and the dithyok senses weakness. It lashes down at me again. The sensation is like sensing a shadow expanding toward my throat.

Mathek leaps over me to block its attack. At the same moment, Galar, who has managed to tear out his spear, charges. As Mathek is sent flying sideways with his spear cleaved in half, the twin manages to get a hit into the dithyok’s soft side.

It emits a sound like a hundred clicks in instant succession which clearly outlines the position of its limbs. All four are now aligned to attack Galar.

He rips out his spear and it unleashes a flurry of slashes at him. I hear my opportunity and scramble to my feet, pain in my arm totally eliminated by a fresh burst of adrenaline—the armor plates of its back overlap tightly, but a stab made at an extreme low angle should be able to pierce through a gap.

I thrust. My prediction proves accurate, and I feel Heartseeker slide deep and turn toward some vital organ, though only a little. I rip it out. Hissing in rage, the dithyok turns its body to get at me with its two left limbs.

With its right limbs engaged with Galar’s frantic thrusting and parrying and its left ones poised to strike at me, the dithyok’s front is wide open. Hothuk vaults over the dead gelthob and leaps at the creature with spear outthrust. The dithyok snaps its limbs back to defend, but Hothuk’s accuracy is honed by several centuries of hunting and enhanced by extremely well-crafted ears. His undulating spear pierces through the creature’s chest and tears its organs apart from within. Ichor sprays out, covering him with a sickening scent.

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The dithyok stays standing for a moment, its twice-jointed legs locked in a death-rictus, then Galar delivers a vicious cut to its ankle and it crashes backward.

“Pull back the injured,” Hothuk orders in a low voice. He’s too experienced to waste any time in celebration. “Expand the formation to accommodate them.”

Heart still pounding from the combat, I rush to obey the order: I grab the unconscious dwarf next to me and pull him back.

Galar does not obey the order.

“What took you so damn long!” he hisses at Hothuk. “Nearly bloody killed me! Would have, if I hadn’t had the quick thinking to grab my spear.”

“Silence! Turn outward!”

“Give me a straight answer. Why wouldn’t you let me grab my spear?”

“You were making noise.”

“The smell was far worse than any noise I was making. Is this some plot of Cathez to get me killed?”

“You’re acting like a child!” Yathak hisses through gritted teeth. Leaning back against the gelthob, he's clearly in terrible pain, his pauldrons caved in badly. It’s obvious there must be serious damage beneath. “This hunt will be discussed later.”

“When you and Cathez and Hraroth can gang up on me?”

“Shut it!” Hothuk orders. “Get in formation, Galar. You stabbed the beast and have won your honor. No one will be ganging up on anyone. You will get your due fairly.”

“That is not what we are discussing,” Galar says acidly. “But fine. We will all get our honor.”

He steps back into position and is silent.

----------------------------------------

In the first piece of luck we’ve had this whole hunt, nothing else is attracted by our disturbances. Maybe the smell of dead dithyok makes the other predators think twice about going for us.

After another few hundred chimes of Hothuk’s bell, he takes up the mallet and manages to split apart the gelthob’s armor like an eggshell. We then begin the grisly process of extracting its flesh using our spears like awkward knives, cutting it into long strips and throwing it into the same sacks we used for the mushrooms. The stench is terrible—it’s a good thing fire eliminates it, or I’d be going hungry every other mealtime. Then again, at least it doesn’t smell so bad as raw beetles and worms taste.

We sling the heavy sacks over our shoulders, hurry back to the stairs and descend. It's an even more frightening ordeal than climbing them was. In front of me stumbles the dwarf who caught a concussion from the dithyok’s attack, and at several points I have to grab him and pull him sideways to stop him plummeting off the edge.

Halfway through the farm my adrenaline dies off completely and my arm begins to ache badly. I can feel blood drying on it, and when I run a finger over my armor I can feel a long cut.

I really need some titanium. Ragged steel welded onto ill-fitting iron really isn't good enough.

I breathe a sigh of relief when we make it into the tight confines of the tunnel—I never thought I’d find a coal-black tunnel comforting, but it’s far better than being in a coal-black open space expecting an attack from any angle.

“Good stabbing there,” Galar whispers. He’s walking directly behind me. “You probably saved me.”

“Not so green after all, am I?” I whisper back in a less-than-friendly tone.

“No, no. Not green at all. I apologize. You have fighting instincts as good as anyone here. Better than most, actually.”

“Thank you.”

“No need to sound so suspicious. Just being nice, aren’t I?”

“No one here is very happy with you, you realize.”

“Including you, you mean?” He lowers his voice. “I’m not very happy with them. Hothuk especially. Dithyoks go for smell more than sound, everyone knows that. Did you see any ears on that thing? It was a fool decision to tell me to pick up that hammer. Not to mention insulting."

"We were all under a lot of pressure."

"And that excuses his bad decision making, does it? Well, maybe it should, for all I know. I've never had to lead a hunt, after all. But even so, he took his sweet time leaping to our rescue, didn't he?”

“I don't think so. And you shouldn't have disobeyed him.”

“If I hadn’t disobeyed I might be dead. But I’m not dead, the dithyok is. Thus proving the wisdom of my decision. As my decisions usually prove.”

“Like your decision to shout your head off in the forges?” I say acidly. “It was rather distracting to me. And to everyone else.”

“That was out of passion. Passion for my craft. You have a fine spear, so I know you understand. Crafting is in your blood more than most. As much as it’s in Fjalar and mine’s, eh?”

“Are you trying to flatter me?”

He slaps me on the back. The reverberation makes me wince and the corridor appear to twist. “Just trying to be friendly,” he laughs. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? That damn dithyok nearly had me until you distracted it.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Ach, still sounding so suspicious. Zathar, isn’t it? You’ll find I’m a good friend to have, Zathar. My brother also. Smart friends.” He steps up very close to me, and lowers his voice until it’s barely audible. “You’ll find smart people rather lacking down here. Maybe it’s the same up near the surface, maybe not. At any rate, good friends are hard to find.”

“I assure you, I have no trouble making friends.”

“Of course not!” he laughs. “You’re a most friendly person. Now, I best shut up before Hothuk bites my head off. But I won’t forget your help.”

He gives me another friendly pat on the shoulder, then steps back and starts to whistle. He keeps the tune going just long enough to be annoying, but stops before Hothuk loses patience and tells him to shut up.

I feel rather uncomfortable. Making friends with someone universally disliked is never a good move. I wonder if there aren’t some dwarves down here who’d prefer if I hadn’t distracted the dithyok—but no, these guards against the darkness are too professional for stupid grudges. Everyone but Galar and Fjalar, at least.

Eventually we get back to the fort. The injured, including me, are taken to the infirmary chamber. My arm is bandaged, the bandages wrapped with healing chains, then I return to my room for a good sleep.

I keep the candle lit.