At the crack of dawn, I was shaken awake by a trooper from the squad that we would take to escort Segerick’s people to their ship. I had been having nightmares all night and when he shook me awake I quickly bolted to my feet ready to defend myself. Since I had neglected to grab my sword as I jumped to my feet, the soldier just laughed at me as I oriented myself to my surroundings.
Why was I having nightmares? We were close, so damn close to accomplishing everything that I had dreamed of when I signed up for this voyage. My experience in this world, though, had conditioned me to take nothing for granted. I wouldn’t feel safe until we were back on the ship, hightailing it back to the continent with no signs of pursuit. Later, it turned out that my feelings of foreboding were justified, but we haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.
“Seen some action, have you?” the soldier asked me.
“A little bit,” I admitted.
“Had I known, I would have been more cautious,” he replied.
Bowen and Aleyda had woken up during our conversation and soon we were ready to depart. We followed the soldier back towards his assembled squad, but I diverted on the way to talk to Tikter.
“We are doing the other errand for the Captain today,” I told him. “We should be back by the middle of the afternoon. Tomorrow, we will head back to town and contact the ship and let them know we will be ready to depart the next day. Who will be leading the others?”
“I thought maybe Dregu could lead and Pregu could keep Yahg in line,” he replied. “Those two have more experience in the wilderness than anyone else. They were farm kids growing up.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “See you soon.” Then, I jogged to catch up with the others.
There were ten soldiers in the squad that was accompanying us. They were led by the sergeant who saved our asses back on the trail. I relaxed a little seeing him. I didn’t think he would allow anything to happen to us on our way out.
“Where are we headed?” he asked me.
“I hope you are alright with caves because the majority of our trip will be under the mountain. It will take us a short time to get to the entrance. We have to traverse the cave where I harvested the bat shit, and that is pretty nasty, but there is a place to clean up once we get a little deeper inside. We did run into some hostile creatures down there but we haven’t seen anything for awhile. They were this large grubs with some sort of parasitic tentacles ringed around their mouths.”
“The orcs call those grazzoth worms,” the sergeant replied. “They can be really nasty in large numbers. How many did you see?”
“We fought and killed enemies in the high single digits,” I replied.
“Doesn’t sound like a full infestation,” he said. “We should be fine.”
“Sergeant, I never caught your name,” I said.
“I’m Sergeant Bunea,” he replied.
“I’m glad you’re the one leading this expedition,” I said.
“That’s one of us,” he replied with a little grin.
“Follow me,” I said. Then we headed out of camp.
The trip up to the cave was surprisingly peaceful. Besides small woodland creatures, we didn’t encounter anything that wanted to tear our faces off or eat us for breakfast. I thought maybe our numbers had something to do with that.
Once we reached the cave, we lit lanterns. I did not want to reveal my magic to the squad, even though it did a more effective job of lighting our surroundings than the dim light the lanterns cast. Then, it was back under the mountain.
There was a lot of complaining as we slogged through bat crap. The soldiers started bitching and Aleyda and Bowen, caught up in the spirit of the moment, decided to join them. I was the only one who didn’t complain. I desperately wanted to join in, but I was still on edge. I kept expecting to run into something we hadn’t accounted for, something big and nasty. I realized that I probably shouldn’t worry so much but knowing and feeling are clearly two different things. After we got cleaned up in the pool with the blind fish, I was even more on edge. Who knows what may have wandered into the caverns in our absence? But the place was as quiet as a tomb. Soon, the oppressive feeling of being deep under thousands of tons of rock even sapped the vigor from the complaining. For the rest of the trip, we largely walked in silence.
When we got to the narrow crevice that led into the entry hall, I broke the silence with a question.
“Sergeant, the next little bit is a tight squeeze,” I said. “We have to leave the same way we got here, so if you and your men want to remain here, that would be fine. On the other hand, if you are yearning to see the sun, there is a fairly scenic overlook not far away. It’s up to you.”
“I would dearly love to see the sun again,” he said. “But to get through that little crack, we would have to take our armor off, at least some of us would. That’s something we don’t do lightly in the field. If you promise to hurry, we’ll wait for you here.”
“We’ll go as fast as we can, but some of the people are old and getting them back to the ship is going to involve a slower pace than we have been setting.”
“Once we get back out of the cave, I’ll have my men carry them if necessary,” he replied. That let loose another round of low grumbling from his men. He didn’t seem to care, though.
“Alright,” I said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
The three of us squeezed through the narrow passage. “Let’s round up anyone who is outside first,” I said. We turned right and headed out to the overlook.
In our absence, quite a bit of work had been done on the path. There was a tunnel through the overgrowth that extended past the first switchback, but they had taken my advice and left a stand of trees on the outside edge to camouflage the path. I could hear the faint sounds of work below us, so I started trotting that direction.
We made it about half way down the path before we encountered a small work crew. Five men and women were working to clear the path and to haul the fallen trees back into the complex. They started when I approached and then relaxed when they recognized me.
“You have done an impressive amount of work,” I said. “Unfortunately, you will never finish it because I have found you all a way off the island but we have to pack up and leave now.”
“You found a ship already?” one woman asked.
“I did some work for one of the officers from Gremmans,” I responded. “One of the conditions was that they evacuate you from the island and settle you all there. They don’t practice slavery there, although there is still plenty of bigotry against our kind. It’s better than being here, though. Let’s head back in and find Segerick.”
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There was a spring in their step as they dropped their tools and followed. I had to call them back and ask them to take the tools with them. “You may need them to use or sell when you get where you are going,” I explained.
We moved quickly down the tunnel and through the kill zone into the stronghold. Once again, Sawwar was at the gate. He smiled when he saw us. After I explained that they would be leaving the island today, his smile deepened.
“I need you to gather everyone as quickly as possible,” I said. “Are there any foragers out today?”
“Not today,” he said. “They just came back yesterday with quite a bit of food so today they are resting.”
“That’s a relief,” I said. “I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”
We charged through the tunnels to the main area of town. Sawwar didn’t stop moving. Instead, he continued towards the stairs to the observation tower and started charging up them. Although he was probably in the best shape he had ever been in his life, I expected him to poop out about half way up.
“I have a way off the island for all of you,” I proclaimed loudly. “But we have to leave today. Gather only those things you can comfortably carry. You will be supplied with food on the voyage to the mainland.”
People started shouting questions at me but I largely ignored them.
“Get your things,” I demanded. “I only want to explain this once.” I guess that wasn’t really true, because I had already explained it once.
It took about a half an hour before Segerick and the others who had been up in the tower arrived. Segerick jogged up to me.
“James,” he said. “What is this about a way off the island?”
So, I explained things again. I didn’t go into details about sabotaging the portal but I did let them know that I had done a service for a captain from the Gremmans Confederation and part of the payment for that service was to evacuate Segerick and his people from the island. I let them know that slavery was not practiced where they were headed but I didn’t try to sugarcoat things. I told them that they would likely still be judged for their appearance and that their lives would still be hard, but not as hard as trying to eke a living out on the island would be. I let them know that the soldiers who would escort them were waiting in the tunnels and everyone needed to get packed up with the things that would allow them to travel quickly and we needed to get going or else we were going to lose our escort. While I was talking, I noticed that there were at least two new people who had wandered into camp.
Segerick immediately started barking out orders and the others scurried to comply. Then, he walked over to me.
“James, you actually came through for us,” he said. “Part of me was resigned to living here under the mountain for the rest of my days.”
I dug into my pouch and pulled out a few coins, placing them in my pack. Then, I handed the pouch to him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Seed money,” I said. “Your lives will be hard but having some wealth will make things easier. It’s not a tremendous amount but it is all that I have on me. Don’t let anyone know you have it until you are back on the continent. I wouldn’t want it disappearing into the hands of some greedy sailors.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You have been very good to us when you didn’t have to be. I will not forget this.”
“Segerick,” I said. “After today, I don’t know that we will ever see each other again. I want you to know that I want nothing but the best for all of you..” Then, I reached out and we clasped hands.
Off to one side, I saw Bethany. She looked like she was already packed up and ready to depart, most likely because she had acquired very little. I noticed she was still wearing her oversized boots. I walked over to her.
“Moment of truth time,” I said. “Are you going with the others or do you want to come back with us?”
She looked nervous and fidgety. She was quiet for a moment, like she was trying to gather her thoughts. Finally, she spoke.
“Thanks for your offer, but I have found someone. If you can take us both, I am more than willing to go with you. If not, I’ll be going with him.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Uhm, it’s Sawwar,” she replied.
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. She looked offended but the offended look just made things more funny to me. Soon, tears were streaming down my face and I was struggling to find enough breath to speak. Finally, I pulled myself back under control.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “That’s just not what I expected. Good for you. I think you are both great people. Have you asked him what he wants to do?”
“He is pretty loyal to Segerick,” she replied. “But maybe you can convince him.”
“If you really want this to happen, you will have to do the convincing.”
She wandered off to find him. I watched their animated conversation out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if it was their first real argument. When Bethany approached me again, there were tears in the corners of her eyes.
“He wants to go with Segerick,” she said. “So, I guess that means that I will be going with them as well.”
She was obviously hurting. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and hugged her. Then, I stepped back and looked her in the eye.
“I wish you nothing but happiness,” I said. “Sawwar is so lucky. You are way out of his league.”
She blushed prettily, and then bounded off to rejoin him.
It took longer than I wanted for everyone to be ready to move but finally everyone was prepared to depart. We only had to stop once on the way out of the complex for the old people to rest. The prospect of safety must have put some pep in their step.
When we reached the crevice leading to the squad of soldiers, I called out. “Sergeant, we’re coming back.” Then, I started leading the ragtag batch of misfits through to meet their saviors.
“It’s about time,” he said. Then, his eyes widened a little as more and more people started streaming through the crevice into the cavern. “That’s a lot of people.”
“Yeah, but it is still less than the thirty we planned for,” I replied. “It’s going to be slow going through the caverns but once we get out the other side, things should speed up.”
“Are those children,” he asked.
“They are,” I said. “You need to remember that they were torn away from everything that they knew and loved and deposited here. These people are vulnerable. They are refugees from other worlds, here through no fault of their own. I know that getting them moving can be really frustrating, but the ones I have talked to, they are good people. I would ask you to remember that when your patience is tested.”
“I’ll try,” he said with a sigh.
I introduced him to Segerick. Given that they didn’t share a language, communication involved a lot of gestures, smiles and nods.
“Segerick,” I said. “Your people need to follow the sergeant’s orders. He is a good man. He will get you to safety.”
Then, it was back through the passages at the languid pace set by the slowest among us. By the time we made it out of the cavern and got cleaned up, it was much later in the day than I had expected. We still had plenty of time to make it back to camp, but the others would likely have to spend a night camped out in the wilds.
“Sergeant Bunea, are we good?” I asked him.
“We’ll get them safely to the ship,” he replied.
I turned to the assembled five fingers. “Follow Sergeant Bunea’s orders as if your lives depend on it, because they do. Now is the time when we part company. It has been a pleasure to get to know each of you.”
Then, Aleyda, Bowen and I turned and started hiking down the mountain, the echoes of thanks in what I assumed to be a couple of dozen languages echoing behind us. I didn’t look back. I thought if I glanced back, I might break down. Partings were always emotional for me. I hoped we had done the right thing.
Getting back to the camp was easy. As soon as we arrived, I walked up to the Captain and earnestly thanked him for being a man of his word. I think he could sense my fragile emotional state and my misgivings. Trusting him was so hard. I hardly knew him. I hoped with everything I had that the squad’s orders was not to slaughter everyone as soon as we were out of sight.
While I was standing there, one of the scouts came jogging up to us. He stopped and stood at what passed for attention in front of the Captain, waiting to be recognized.
“Report,” the Captain ordered.
“Clan Galwick is moving in force up the mountain,” the scout said. “Based upon our estimates, they outnumber us two to one. We expect their scouts to be here by tomorrow morning.”
Great. I knew everything had been too easy recently. How in the hell were we going to make it back down to port? Without listening to any more of the conversation, I turned and went sprinting back to our camp.