Child of Fate (12 page)

Namitus smiled and shook his head while
Trina’s mouth fell open. “I’m good at this,” he assured Alto. He
turned and started forward, his feet finding the softest spots on
the ground.

“What was that?” Trina hissed at him.

Alto shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for
another discussion.

She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him
around to look at her. The set of her jaw and fire in her eyes made
it clear she wouldn’t accept silence for an answer.

“He loves you,” Alto said as softly as he
could. He had more than just the goblins to worry about; he didn’t
want to upset Namitus either.

“Of course he does,” she said. “He’s my
brother in all but blood.”

Alto nodded. “That’s the problem.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.
Alto turned away from her to see Namitus peering around the edge of
the tunnel and into the room beyond. He leaned back smoothly and
retreated a few steps before turning and approaching them.

“More goblins, but no men,” he reported. “One
with a helm with a spike on it. He must fancy himself their master;
he watches and orders the others about. I saw seven, including
Spike.”

“What are they doing?” Alto asked.

“Sifting through the rocks and dirt in
carts.”

Alto frowned. A look to his companions showed
they were just as confused as he was about their task. Drefan
cleared his throat and spoke up, “They’re looking for something.
Ore, gems, treasure, or something else.”

“The way out is to the left,” Trina said.
“The first tunnel on our left is the one we ran from. It goes up a
ramp to another room with more tunnels. I’m not sure which one is
the way out from there, but it’s close.”

“Can we reach it without fighting them?” Alto
asked Namitus.

He shrugged. “Perhaps, but then they’d be at
our backs.”

“Are there any other tunnels leaving that
room?”

“Several,” Namitus said. “Like Trina said, we
took the first one on our right when we fled.”

“All right, we’d better deal with them then.
I’ll draw their attention; you two stay back unless you have a
clear chance at one.”

“You’re a fool,” Trina snapped. “I’ve seen
you fight. True, you’re a brute, but you don’t know what you’re
doing! Out there, in the open, you’ll be cut to pieces! Namitus and
I have sparred for ages. The room’s big enough for the three of us
to stand abreast, I remember that much.”

Alto opened his mouth but Trina silenced him
with a glare. “Don’t be thinking you can talk me out of this, Alto.
When we get out of these caves proper, I’ll show you how the
Kelgryn cross swords.”

“What? Why?” Alto stammered.

“So you can see what you’ve gotten yourself
into!” Trina’s eyes widened as the words left her mouth. They
darted to Namitus, and then away. “If we get out of here. Come,
let’s be off,” she amended quickly.

“You kids go play soldier,” Drefan wheezed.
“I’ll make sure nobody comes up behind you.”

Alto wanted to laugh at his companion but
Drefan had sunk to a knee and rested his elbow against his thigh to
support himself. His other arm cradled his ribs. The farm boy
nodded and turned back to the tunnel entrance. “All right, but
let’s be as quick and as quiet as we can. We don’t want to bring
any more gobs from the tunnels.”

Alto crept up to the edge, worried about
alerting the goblins before it was time. As soon as he looked
around the wooden beam supporting the edge of the tunnel, he saw
Spike, the goblin taskmaster, grunting and sputtering at the other
goblin workers. Between his verbal barrage and the sounds of the
workers digging through rocks, Namitus could have played his pipes
and they wouldn’t have been heard.

Alto burst out of the mouth of the tunnel,
driving legs honed with years of hard labor on the farm. The goblin
leader saw him after only a few steps and shouted out a warning. He
grabbed the spiked cudgel hanging from his hip but before he could
raise it, Alto’s sword smashed into him. His spiked helm went
flying in one direction while the rest of his body fell in
another.

Alto slowed and looked around. The other
goblins started to run toward him and then stopped when they saw
their leader so easily dispatched. Trina rushed past him, lunging
with her sword and piercing a goblin’s chest before it could do
more than open its eyes wide at her charge. She jerked her sword
free without slowing, turning the movement into a killing stroke at
the next goblin in her path that stood near the first.

Namitus ran after her, staying on her flank
and fending off the goblins that were beginning to react and come
after her. He parried a thrust but his counterstrike sailed over
the head of the short humanoid.

Alto had three goblins of his own to deal
with. They’d recovered from their shock at seeing their taskmaster
and friends killed faster than Alto had managed to react to Trina’s
brutality. He jumped back from the swinging pick of one of them,
and then smacked a shovel aside that a second goblin thrust at him.
He stepped toward them, moving to keep the pick-wielding creature
between himself and the third goblin. His sword rose and fell
twice, smashing shovel and goblin into the ground.

The pick smashed into the rock, the metal
point missing his leg but the shaft catching his calf and making
him stumbled forward. He took two steps but couldn’t recover his
balance before he fell to one knee and one hand. His broadsword was
held against the ground in his right hand. The third goblin rushed
at him with a dagger that looked like a short sword in his
hands.

A sword flew through the air and smacked the
goblin in the side, knocking it off course and making it yelp. Alto
planted his feet and lunged up, the point of his blade catching the
goblin under his arm and skewering along the bones until it exited
near his backbone.

The weight of the dying creature pulled the
blade free of Alto’s tenuous grip, leaving him unarmed and exposed.
He pulled his dagger free and tried to get as much distance between
himself and the goblin with the pick as he could. He finished
turning and stared, ready to leap any direction to escape the
inevitable attack. He saw Patrina wiping the blood off her sword on
a dead goblin’s clothing. He turned and saw the other goblin was
dead. She saluted him with her sword and then lowered it, a crooked
smile on her face the entire time.

Alto picked up his blade and cleaned it, and
then returned it to his scabbard. He felt his face burning for no
reason he could figure. He turned to Namitus and saw the boy
picking up the thrown blade. “Thanks,” he muttered.

Namitus grinned. “It’s bad form where I come
from to let new friends die the same day you meet them.”

Alto chuckled. “I admire your culture.”

“Let’s go. We’ve rattled their teeth but the
rest are sure to have heard us!”

Alto nodded in deference to Trina’s wisdom.
He jogged past her to the tunnel and motioned for Drefan to join
them. Drefan limped out, moving slowly, and paused to admire the
carnage. “Should have been recruiting babes all along,” he said
with great effort. He coughed, the effort to speak costing him.
When his hand came away, Alto saw the dark stains on it.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Alto said.

Drefan offered a weak smile and a nod.

“That way!” Trina pointed to the tunnel she
and Namitus had run from originally.

Alto nodded and hurried to it, pausing at the
entrance for the others to join him. The tunnel rose as Trina had
claimed, though the angle wasn’t steep enough to be of concern even
for Drefan. Alto started up the sloping tunnel and noticed a thick
chain that lay in the middle of the floor.

He paused and stared at the chain, and then
turned to the others. They shook their heads and shrugged their
shoulders, at a loss to explain it. Fearing the unknown, Alto gave
it a wide berth and continued his ascent up the tunnel.

After only a few hundred feet, the tunnel
began to level off. Ahead, he could see the light from another room
brightening the tunnel. Alto turned back at the thought of the
light giving them away. He saw that Namitus had abandoned the
lantern. They walked in the gloom of the tunnel using the light at
both ends. Alto almost chuckled; he’d grown accustomed to the dark
tunnels.

Alto stopped when he heard a man speaking in
the room ahead. “Get reinforcements! Summon the runts from the
tunnels. They can dig for silver later!”

Someone else responded but Alto couldn’t make
out their words. He heard enough to know it was another man and not
a goblin.

“I don’t care!” the first man roared. “You
go. They won’t argue with you like they will one of these gobs! And
find out where that Kelgryn princess is! If she finds a way out,
the plan’s no good.”

Alto spun and looked down the tunnel. There
was no way they could retreat in time. “What did they say?” Trina
hissed at him.

Rather than answer, Alto stared at her. He
had to attack; it was his only way. Defending would leave them
overrun. He couldn’t risk that with Drefan injured, nor would he
risk the lives of his new friends. He hesitated, looking into
Trina’s eyes. These were men he faced, not goblins. Men with
strength and skill and real weapons, not mining tools.

“What are you thinking?” Trina hissed.

Alto turned and charged, bursting out of the
tunnel with every bit of strength and speed he could muster on
short notice. He yelled, gaining the attention of half a dozen men
and a full dozen goblins. The closest enemy to him was a goblin.
Alto caught it across the chest with a two-handed swing. The
goblin’s ribs and flesh broke and parted, leaving blood behind even
as its body went sliding across the floor.

Taking a lesson from watching Trina earlier,
Alto kept both his feet and his sword moving. He broke the rusty
blade of a goblin and hacked off the arm of the screaming creature.
His element of surprise was lost by the time he reached the next
three goblins that were gathered in his way. They’d turned to face
him, weapons poised. The humans, collected together near a tunnel
with a turned-over cart between the tunnel and them, began to move
toward him.

“You stupid farm boy!” Trina shouted as she
burst from the tunnel entrance behind him.

Alto ignored her and swatted aside the axe of
one of the goblins. Another sword poked at him, bruising his thigh
but failing to pierce his leather. A club from the third goblin
narrowly missed his hip. More goblins rushed toward him, eager to
flank and surround him.

“That’s her!” The voice Alto recognized as
the angry man spoke. He pointed at Patrina. “Kill the others—we
only need her.”

Alto swung his sword around him, buying
himself some time from the goblins pressing him. He was surrounded
by five goblins; escape seemed impossible.

“You sure there’s more of them?” William
asked. They’d been waiting outside the mine entrance but other than
a few distant echoing sounds, they heard nothing.

“At least one of them got away. We’d have
seen him running down the trail and unless Gerald blew him a kiss,
he probably didn’t get scared and jump off the edge of the cliff,”
Tristam said.

“Hey!” Gerald muttered from where he leaned
against a rock. He’d woken up only a few minutes before when
William and Karthor had pulled him off his horse and laid him on
the ground.

“Might just be the one man left,” Kar
offered. He stood at the entrance and stared into the tunnel. It
went straight into the hillside for half a dozen feet to the first
doorway. Originally constructed to keep out invaders, the door had
been broken apart and the scraps lay pushed against the side of the
tunnel, out of the way. Beyond the open gateway, they could see the
tunnel opened into a larger room but details were impossible to
make out due to the refuse piled in the doorway in place of the
original doors. “Might be a horde of goblins and worse.”

“Where’s Drefan and Alto?” Karthor wondered
aloud what they were all thinking.

Gerald grimaced and then belched. He sighed
at the relief and then saw everyone staring at him. His response to
their disapproval was a grin.

“Can Gerald fight?” Tristam asked the
priest.

“Another bout of indigestion like that might
do him in,” Karthor said with a frown. “A sudden movement might
reopen an injury and I’ve used all of Leander’s blessing I have
until I’ve had a chance to earn more.”

“So you’re saying if we get hurt, we’re on
our own.”

“I can still perform last rites,” the priest
offered.

Kar snickered at his son’s dark joke.

“Well, wizard, would you be of more use
staying with Gerald or coming into the mines with us?”

“Leave me your crossbow,” Gerald grunted.
“There’s naught for miles around us. I’ll be fine!”

Tristam nodded. William removed his quiver of
bolts and handed it to Gerald, and then offered him his crossbow.
Gerald winced as he tried to crank it back. “Milking this a bit,
aren’t you?” William said. He grabbed the crossbow and pulled it
back so he could load a bolt in it. Then he handed it to his
gap-toothed companion.

“Let’s go,” Tristam said. Without ceremony,
he turned and headed into the mine entrance. William and Karthor
glanced at one another and then jumped when Kar gave them a gentle
shove from behind to get them going.

They met Tristam at the makeshift barricade.
Karthor summoned the light into his holy symbol and lit the room
beyond the tunnel. With the priest’s light, they could see where
partitions had been built up out of wood and cloth to provide a
measure of privacy for sleeping and cleaning. Many of the cloth
sheets were ripped or slashed open. In other places, the wooden
beams providing support were broken or knocked out of place.