It took more time than anticipated to settle the precise wording of the letters of acknowledgement with the dwarf Heuch. For one thing, when Kosohona turned up his armour and weapons in one of the storerooms, he insisted that a precise inventory be attached to the letter, together with a list of the travelling gear and food given him. When at last both copies were signed, he clutched Kosohona tightly about the waist as he was ferried to the clifftop on the flying dog, eyes tight shut. Once there, Heuch bowed his thanks, settled his gear and stumped off towards the trail.
When they were all assembled above ground again, it was with fatter pouches, packs stuffed with potions and with various portable Items distributed among the party. Venalse wore better armour and a helmet with a small glowstone mounted on the brow. Rakt had a similar helmet. Aitonala’s pack would save her from injury in the event of a fall from a height. Kosohona had taken a fine Silver Steel dagger, Grymwer carried a black rod which would hold spells and Chrys had stowed a Spirit Jar in her pack. In addition, Salko’s cupboards had yielded some fine sausages and excellent cheese, and they had brought a few bottles along as souvenirs. In two or three days they would be back to trail rations, but they would eat better in the meantime. Aitonala and Grymwer regretted having to leave so many interesting things but could only hope that Tumne would be a good caretaker.
The contents of Salko’s storerooms had told a sad tale. From the clothing they estimated that at least twenty captives had passed through his hands, a number corroborated by his notebooks. Chrys and Grymwer had been too repulsed to study these in detail, but they gleaned that Salko had not conducted his experiments for their own sake, nor out of curiosity, but with an eye to future riches. When the techniques had been perfected, he planned to sell new or exotic bodies to those discontented with their present shape. From some letters Venalse had found it appeared that he already had buyers. Chrys remarked mordantly that, had the party not intervened, at least parts of her could have ended wealthy. They hesitated but, in the end, added the books to their haul.
“Twenty murders? How did he get away with it? And hope to get away with many more?” asked Aitonala.
“Why not?” Venalse replied. “This is the Wild. The land refuses human settlement, so no law runs here.” He waved at the surrounding view over forest, hill and meadow. “Try to clear land or plant a crop here, or build three houses together, and you will come to grief. Set up as a judge, and you will come to more grief.”
“True,” chimed in Grymwer. “The land east of the Brahnzhever resists humans. Some of us Brahnaks thought we should accept this and leave it alone. The ones that rule in Paghin Paail thought they could tame it. They failed, and now it really dislikes people. To travel there even in small numbers or alone is dangerous. The air and water can turn against you.”
Rakt added “There may be no law, but Salko found out that wrong-doing brings its own reward. He is dead, his prisoners freed and his goods confiscate.”
“After twenty deaths,” said Aitonala.
Rakt nodded but argued that wrong things could be done under the law, and then not remedied quickly or perhaps at all. He cited as example that several League cities permitted penal slavery. The argument took its twists and turns throughout the day. If they did not resolve anything, it passed the time as they walked. Still, Aitonala looked at the landscape with a new eye. She had taken for granted, she realised, the acquiescence of the lands she knew in pasture and plough, buildings and roads, wells and walls. The oddities they passed – a group of birds that flew and sat by threes, a patch of grass that rippled like disturbed water, a tree whose waving branches were imitated by a neighbouring tree, were all signs of the underlying wildness. She wondered if the land might change in attitude to humans, threatening the places and people she knew. It did prompt another question, this time to Chrys and Grymwer.
“That little flying thing with the tongue? Was that really a demon? What are demons?”
“I don’t know a lot about demons,” Chrys began.
“Nor I,” chimed in Grymwer.
“But we did cover the basics,” went on Chrys. “Demons are thought to be a pattern in the ether, usually formed by some great dramatic act, that is complex enough to have at least the rudiments of a personality. Every demon has a unique name and nature. So they are unlike Spirits, which have kinds. Saying the name can attract the demon, so we were warned about reading aloud any unfamiliar words we came across.”
“If you do come across a demon, you want a weapon handy,” added Grymwer. “Magic does not affect them at all, so you have to bash them until they dissolve back into the ether. I think that tongued thing was a demon, but only a weak one.”
The evening after next found Doryid and Kosohona lying under a bush, trying to glean what information they could on the underman den. Both had spells to deflect attention, but kept their gestures small and voices low.
“The main door looks bad. That flight of steps is exposed, the landing is too small for all of us, and I’ll bet there’s a murder-hole above and arrow-slits to the side. Plus the approach is completely open.”
Kosohona nodded concurrence as she sketched what they could see. The undermen had again chosen to tunnel into a low cliff above a stream, but much more effort had been put into defences. The stream had been dammed and the narrow space between the water and the cliff blocked by a wall and tower, while a ditch and palisade closed off the other end. A line of stakes topped with skulls divided the area below the cliff.
“My guess is the part to the right is where the smaller ones are kept, and they use those low holes in the cliff. The bigger ones have the stairs and the area to the left,” observed Kosohona.
“I wonder if they connect?” Doryid said. “If we can take out the ones in the tower, maybe we can by-pass the front gate.”
“Let’s get back and show the others the layout.”
A little later they spread Kosohona’s sketch on a flat rock. There, illuminated by a careful beam of light from her index finger, the party considered it together with their description. Going in through the warren was agreed to have merit as an idea. Venalse noted that they would need to move fast and could not afford to get lost or trapped. Also, they would need to dispose of the tower-guards quickly and quietly beforehand.
“We could get lost in the tunnels without a native guide but, you know, I have an idea on how we could get one,” Chrys said. The others looked at her. “Kosohona, you said you noticed some traps in the undergrowth near the stream as you went out?” Kosohona nodded. “Here’s my idea...”
* * * *
Zhema was fairly happy. That morning she had found a mouse nest, and been able to enjoy the mouslings all by herself. One of the guards had aimed a kick at her as she passed, missed, and hit Proghi instead. She had not been called to Berzo’s chamber; Aghru had been, last week, and was still not walking properly. And now it was the evening and she and two others were out checking the traps. If they caught enough animals, they would be able to eat one themselves and not be beaten for bringing nothing back. That is, they could do this if the others could be trusted not to squeal, and Zhema was very doubtful on this point.
Zhema was still happy some time later. They had four in the bags and still had some traps to check. She trotted up the narrow trail, ears alert for larger game, bow hanging loose from one hand, then stopped as her nose caught a strange smell, a waft of cooked meat. She tested the air; it was definitely cooked meat but no other smell accompanied it, no smell of her kind or of humans. She eased ahead, around a twist in the trail, and the smell was stronger. She stopped again, to listen and sniff. Again, there was no untoward sound, no silences, no smells out of place other than the meat odour. She moved forward again, the smell grew and then there it was, a short string of meat cubes hanging from a low branch. Zhema checked again and could find no threat. Well sometimes the world did odd things. She took one, sniffed and popped it in her mouth. It was delicious.
“Is poison? You feel bad?” Dgur asked. Before she could decide how to answer, he reached past her, took a cube and ate it. Kzeod, coming up behind, did likewise. Zhema grabbed another, and Dgur took the last.
“Good, is more?” Dgur sniffed, then moved past her, nose raised. A little further on, two pieces dangled from another branch. Dgur ate both before the others could arrive; Kzeod, moving eagerly on, found some more. They followed their noses, jostling one another in the race to be the first to the next find, down across the stream, up a gully. A few cubes dangling from an exposed root were grabbed, they raced on, rounded a corner and there in front of them were tall figures, armour glinting. Dgur and Kzeod yelped in surprise, tumbled to a halt, then turned and ran back, to find the way blocked behind. Clever Zhema spun to the side and leapt up the steep gully wall. Her hand found a projecting rock, her toes a tiny ledge and she was almost out of the trap before she found that she had been anticipated. A heavy stick came down on her head, she slid back to the gully floor, was clouted again, seized and bound. She lay there, dazed and unhappy, until she was picked up, slung over a shoulder and carried away. As she hung there, her mind seized on an oddity. Why could she not smell this human? Had shebeen captured by ghosts? This was not a comforting thought. In Zhema’s world ghosts ate children.
* * * *
Chrys and Grymwer sat their captive down against a rock.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“She looks pretty sick. That’s a big lump on her head.”
“Two big lumps. We’ll give her some Healing. After all, Salko left us plenty.”
Grymwer leaned forward, evaded Zhema’s feeble try at biting him, tipped a dose of Healing into her mouth, held her nose and jaw until she swallowed. Her eyes brightened and the lumps receded. Grymwer looked at Chrys.
“Ready?” She nodded. He again lent towards Zhema, spoke in underman. “Do what we ask, you live. Do not, and ...” he waved towards Chrys. Chrys’ hands moved, she uttered strange words and her eyes glowed red. She waved a hand across Zhema’s face, trailing sparkles in the air. Zhema shrank back as far as her bonds permitted, head bobbing frantically.
“You draw us a picture of your tunnels, here in the dirt. The other two, they draw also. One who draws worst picture, well..” He drew a dagger and lightly touched Zhema’s face, then pricked her thigh. Chrys scooped the drop of blood on to a finger and smiled wolfishly, red eyes blazing.
“I draw, I draw.”
The ties around Zhema’s wrists were loosened, she was handed a pointed stick and set to a smoothed patch of dirt. The humans stood just too far away for a sudden stab or grab, near enough to see what she was doing. The magician hummed from time to time, disturbingly. She had Zhema’s blood, and so her curses would strike true, twisting Zhema’s entrails in knots or sending wasp-worms into her brain. She concentrated on drawing as well as she could, tongue flicking against teeth as she tried to remember every branch and hole. She had not finished when another human arrived and the one who spoke the language left. This one too had no smell, which to Zhema made her a strangely disembodied presence.
Chrys felt sympathy for the little underman (underwoman?). She was clearly terrified of magic and had no reason to trust human promises. Old bruises, scars, scraps of ill-cured hide, her thin build; all said that underman life was hard, and hardest on those at the bottom of the heap. She probably expected to die in some horrible way. Yet she concentrated hard on her sketching,muttering under her breath as she scratched in the dirt, often erasing a line and re-drawing. She was doing her very best to live.
When their little captive was reduced to hovering uncertainly over minor details she was pushed away and Aitonala crouched down to transfer the map to paper. That done, the captive was securely bound and they gathered to compare notes.
All three captives had been set to drawing, separately. One had alternated between frantic indecipherable scratches and despairing whimpers. The second had produced three sketches, all slightly different. The last had drawn a clear and detailed map, scoring main tunnels more heavily and marking blind side-caves with small stones. Chrys felt a twinge of pride in her little underwoman. Cross-checking showed sufficient similarity that pure invention seemed unlikely, and it did not take long to identify a route through to the upper levels.
Venalse summed up. “Last entrance towards the stairs, third passage left, second right, second left. Everyone remember that. The tunnels will be low, so make sure your helmet straps are tight. Short weapons in the tunnels. Chrys, you said you had found a spell to block the tunnel behind us?” At her nod he went on “Then you and Aitonala go last. She can cover you while you work.”
“What do we do with our three...uh, informants?” Chrys asked. The party looked at each other. There was clearly no appetite for killing them in cold blood.
Venalse made a decision. “Alright. We keep them tied up, and dose them to sleep just before we leave. That stuff will keep them under for four hours. If it’s not all over by then, we’ll have more things to worry about than three underman slaveys.”
Kosohona suddenly looked thoughtful. “What happens when our three don’t come back? Does that alert them? Maybe we should find out.”
The little underwoman was where they had left her. She cringed away a little when Grymwer checked her bonds. He noted scuff marks in the dirt where she had dug, hoping to find a sharp stone, but made no comment. Instead he loosened her hands and tossed her an animal from her own bag, skinned and cleaned. When she had devoured it, he handed her a cup of water. She sniffed it, then drank.
“You catching food, right?” A wary grunt of assent.
“Sometimes food catchers stay out too long, maybe run away?” Another grunt.
“They go away, live by themselves?” A look of disbelief.
“Then what, if not that?”
“Guard comes, with tracker and whip. Catch, take back, give to Berzo to play with.”
“How long before the guard comes?” The underwoman looked at the stars, thought a little.
“Night move one hand, maybe two.”
“Come. Say nothing.” Grymwer picked her up and carried her back to the others.
“She says a guard and tracker should be along in an hour or so.”
Venalse grinned. “Then we can even the odds a bit more.”
Chrys had to lie still under a bush for nearly an hour before the slave-takers appeared. The guard was a hulking brute, armed and armoured, a heavy whip at his belt. Before him ran a small underman, restrained by a leather leash, bending low to sniff the trail. The tracker grunted softly, pulling at the leash as it led up the gully. The guard was alert. At a light noise, possibly from Venalse where he lay behind his crossbow he wheeled instantly, shield coming up. Rakt’s bolt from the other side caught him square in the back, punching through armour to drop him where he stood. The tracker bolted, came up short on the leash and fell to arrows from Chrys and Kosohona.
Chrys scrambled down into the gully, to meet Doryid and Aitonala coming up from their position as backstop. They both barely glanced at the bodies, but Chrys paused at the sad corpse of the underman tracker. He was a slave, without choice in his fate, yet perhaps he had wished to live as fiercely as her little map-maker did. She shook her head. Undermen hunted humans, and were hunted in return. Then on another thought, she cut the leash and dragged the body back down the gully, out of sight.“So which underman is likely to identify this one and tell us how many are left?” Venalse asked.
“Well, one just sobs and refuses to open its eyes and the second tries to tell us what it thinks will please, without having any idea of what that is. So we go with the one that made the best map,” was Grymwer’s answer. The underwoman was fetched and shown the body.
“This one’s name was...?”
“That is Gharriagha. He fourth after chief and Berzo.” She kicked the body. “He like to whip us.”
“Tell us names of all in high caves after chief and Berzo.”
The underwoman reeled off names, was asked to repeat, then told to place a pebble for each name. Eleven names, one the luckless Gharriagha. So ten underman fighters, eight in the caves if they could take out the gate guards. Not impossible odds, and it made planning a little easier.
Venalse frowned. “I still can’t think how to get the gate guards without raising the alarm. What have we got?”
Aitonala spoke up. “I’ve been through all Salko’s potions. Things like Unrot and Unwere aren’t much use, but he had some Catatonic. It’s a paralysing contact potion, but it takes a little time to work and has no effect if resisted. The Scentless we are all wearing will help us get close – it will last another day. Aside from that, I have some Sneeze Dust and”, she hesitated “an absorbent poison called Galvang. If we can get them to touch the agent, then I can deliver pain, incapacity or coma.”
“You know, I refused to believe the rumours about the Guild of Select Services until now,” observed Chrys.
“Thanks to Salko, we now have an invisibility spell. You can’t cast magic while using it, but a potion should be fine,” contributed Grymwer.
“I think the guards are going to raise the alarm if someone invisible throws stuff at them,” Doryid objected.
“What if someone visible throws stuff. Someone visible but not threatening?” Chrys asked.
* * * *
Zhema did not like the sun. She also did not like open spaces in daylight, the leash around her neck or the eerie sense that she was led captive by a ghost. Nevertheless she walked on, mostly because she saw no other choice. Doing what she was told had kept her alive so far. Beyond that there was a faint flicker of hope. The humans had not hurt her, had fed her, given her water, had not, as Berzo would have, played with her. She was fairly sure that even Kzeod was still alive, useless as he was. Perhaps she might come out of this not only alive, but free of the hated jharghek, the bosses.
She trotted across the dam and up the path to the tower. As she had expected, the guards could not be seen through the embrasures. They disliked the sun almost as much as she did. A pebble was pressed into her hand by unseen fingers, and she tossed it through the gap. A few seconds later a surly face appeared. A hand squeezed Zhema’s shoulder and she made a throwing motion. A clay ball flew past her to hit the face, causing a bellow of outrage.
“You little snotrag. I’m gonna break four bones for that.”
“Gharriaga sent me on ahead with a message for Berzo. Let me in.”
The mention of Berzo limited the outrage. She heard the guard cross the tower and start down the steps, then felt a pull on the leash as her invisible companion raised an arm. She wondered how anyone would see an invisible signal. From within came a grunt of pain, the scrape of a stumble and a series of thuds. The other guard called out, then cursed and descended the steps. She called out again.
“Told yer, I got a message for Berzo. Stop arsing about in there and open the gate.”
“Shut up, mud-head. Blaggh, out like a whacked rabbit. Musta hit his head.”
A peep-hole in the gate opened and the guard’s eye swivelled around suspiciously.
“Where are the others? Watcha doin all alone?”
Zhema felt a squeeze on her shoulder again, not threatening but… oddly… reassuring?
“Told ya. Gharriagha sent me ahead. Told me to tell summat to Berzo, and her first.”
“Anything dangerous out there?”
“Not to me.”
“You got a mouth on ya. I’ll have a use for that, after Berzo’s through with ya. But you can help me carry this one into the shade, and then send someone to get him.”
There was the rattle of the bar being drawn, a creak as the gate opened enough to admit Zhema. She felt the leash fall down her back, heard the softest of scrapes as a boot moved on stone, the hiss of an arrow and the guard fell back, transfixed through the throat. She was pulled forward, through the gate. The dead guard was dragged to the steps, left there sitting slumped over. The other was bundled under the stair. She was pulled back into the corner under the tower, out of sight of the main door.
In a few minutes the jingle of armour told of the arrival of the rest of the humans. There was a quick exchange above her head, and then the big magician spoke.
“Thanks. We go to fight. Stay here and be safe, run away if we do not come out.” Zhema nodded and huddled back into her corner. The tall human who had been at her back blinked into sight and they all ran for the warren entrance.