Ducking inside with them, Raeln had to squint to make out anything, even with the torch once Yoska closed the door behind them. For several long minutes, Yoska kept a hand up to silence them while he pressed his ear to the door, but then he eventually relaxed and sat down with his back to the wood.
“Has been nearly a day,” the gypsy told them, surprising Raeln as he had lost track in the endless night of the dwarven tunnels. “Is easy to keep going until you make yourself sick or too weak to go on first time down here. This is good place to rest and let whoever follows lose our trail.”
As On’esquin sat down with Yoska, Raeln began moving out into the edges of the dark, trying to determine the sort of place they were in. Slowly, shapes solidified as his eyes adjusted, letting him see that they were in a massive open space, with long rows of crates on either side. He sniffed, finding so many scents that he had trouble picking them out. When he closed his eyes, the chamber’s smell reminded him of the first time he had gone to the markets outside Lantonne.
Seemingly noticing his confusion, Yoska said, “Is food stores for southern part of fortress. King’s guards keep people out, so figured would be empty now, no matter what happen outside. Is also fine place to replace our few bits of food with some that will last longer.”
While the others settled in to rest, Raeln moved slowly through the warehouse, peeking inside one crate after another. Most were filled with vegetables, wheats, and gains, packed tightly with a scrub grass that he knew slowed their decay immensely. In the steady temperatures of the caves with that grass, he was willing to bet most of the food would last for weeks if not months.
Raeln filled his pack as he went, finding that the farther back he got within the warehouse, the hardier the goods. By the time he reached the limit of his vision, most of the crates were filled with spices and other items that would be of little use on the road. Circling back, he double-checked the crates closest to the light and found several with salted meats and fish, which he carried by hand, hoping to provide a meal that did not come from a dingy pack.
Coming back to the others, Raeln sat down and lay out the fresher meats and some fruit he had found on top of his bedroll, smiling broadly at the other two men. On’esquin smiled back and reached for the fruit, only to have Yoska slap his hand and glower.
“You trust too much for these times,” Yoska warned, picking up an apple and sniffing at it. Scowling at it, he turned it over several times before he held it out to Raeln. “You did sniff these, yes?”
“They’re just apples,” answered Raeln, in no mood for the man’s oddities. He bent to pick up a piece of salted beef, but Yoska kicked aside the entire bedroll with his boot and held up the apple again. “What is wrong with you?”
Yoska’s expression hardened further. “You do not know how they kill those in the cities?”
Raeln’s chest tightened as he remembered that his own sister had been taken by the Turessians through the use of poison. It had been so long in the wilds that he had not even considered the risk.
“I do, but I don’t know what I’d be hunting for,” Raeln admitted, taking the apple.
“My dear friend once say he finds the poison in Altis,” said Yoska, relaxing somewhat. “Was in water and anything cooked in it. Most of this is likely safe, but he say that the poison is bitter to his nose. Was not something a human could smell. I think many times this is why crazy dead people work so hard to kill those with fur. Always better to finish off enemy that can ruin plans before you go after rest of enemy, no?”
“Yes, in fact it would be,” offered On’esquin, eyeing the food skeptically. “It would not hurt me…not anymore. This was not how he turned us in times past. Things have changed.”
Lifting the apple to his nose, Raeln felt foolish as he sniffed it under tense watch by the others. It honestly smelled like an apple and little else. Shrugging, he put that aside and picked up a piece of meat and sniffed that, finding little there that he would not have expected. He was ready to tell Yoska to stop worrying when he picked up the fish and almost immediately gagged as a bitter aroma rose off it. Now that he was paying attention, the scent was definitely unmistakable and would have hinted at meat going bad if it were a little more rank. In the fish, it seemed to linger as though it was not the fish itself, but something on or in it.
“The beef is safe,” Raeln told them, hurling the fish and several others that had come from the same crate into the darkness. “Anything from the front rows of crates might be tainted. Stick to the older supplies.”
Yoska nodded grimly and picked up some of the meat, eyeing it with suspicion until Raeln took a bite of his own. “Was probably last shipment they brought down before whatever happened. Does make sense.”
The three ate quietly for a while, gingerly nibbling at the various foods until they were surer of themselves. Once they were done, On’esquin had offered to take the first watch, as he admitted that he did not require sleep often. Neither Raeln nor Yoska had argued that and within the hour they had bedded down to rest.
When Raeln did wake, he felt far better than he had in a long time. The consistent temperature of the caves lended itself to sleeping soundly, which had been something eluding him for months in the wilderness. His muscles still hurt from hiking so long, but the aches had faded considerably.
Looking around without getting up, Raeln took a minute to get an idea of where he was, as he had grown accustomed to pre-dawn light overhead when he woke. The near-dark of the warehouse with its faint magical lights high overhead made him initially think he had woken too early, but his mind finally caught up and he remembered the long walk through the underground passages. Sitting up quickly as he also remembered the creature following them, he found that On’esquin was reclining against a wall while Yoska had his ear pressed to the door of the warehouse.
“Is safe,” the gypsy told him without looking over. “Something small ran past maybe hour ago. It did not stop, so I think we have lost it. We will need to start moving again soon, before it circles back.”
Nudging On’esquin to wake him, Raeln began packing up his bedroll and the food they had determined to be safest. Within minutes, all three men were ready to travel again, though Raeln distinctly did not feel any desire to march for another day or longer. The underground traveling made him sleepy and more than ready to return to the surface.
They set out after briefly watching the street outside the door, letting Yoska lead the way, as he had the best idea of the layout of the city. During longer stretches of traveling where there were few turns, On’esquin or Raeln took the lead. The path they took eventually came to a staircase down after leaving the main street. At the bottom, another set of large doors were barred shut, though these appeared undamaged and far stronger than the ones at the entrance to the city.
“Go on or go back?” asked Raeln, pointing at the door.
“Go on,” Yoska insisted. “Bar is on outside, so is still good sign. This is place where defenders would hide out if they lose battle outside. If that were so, they put bar on inside. Bar here is precaution and little else, yes?”
“How would we know? I cannot answer that question.” On’esquin said, sounding somewhat agitated.
Raeln could detect a bit of nervousness in Yoska’s voice, but he seemed sure enough of himself. From what he could tell, Yoska was afraid in general, not of this room or the strange silence of the city hinting at secrets they might not want to know the details of. For all Yoska’s bravado, he was not immune to fear. He simply chose to hide it behind his foppish behavior.
Going down the narrow steps as fast as he could, Raeln smelled death again, though far more clearly than he had anywhere else in the fortress. Blood was somewhere nearby, reeking of bodies left out until they had begun to decay and burst. It was a scent he had smelled all too often in the last year, but one he kept hoping he would never encounter again. Each time he encountered it, his heart felt as though it sank into his stomach.
Raeln lifted the heavy bar on the door and held his position briefly, waiting for something to charge through the doors at him and his companions. When nothing came, he set the beam aside, propping it against the wall. Gingerly, he placed his ear against the door, hearing nothing.
Walking down the steps, Yoska eyed the beam Raeln had just moved. He pushed at it without budging it. “Is heavier than I am. Did not see you even strain. Can I get wolf to promise to never hit me? I think you break me if you did.”
“No,” Raeln growled as he continued trying to listen.
After a minute of silence, Raeln pulled the doors open. A sickly gasp of air being sucked into the room beyond shifted much of his fur. Immediately after the air stopped moving, the stench of death wafting out of the room became so strong Raeln collapsed and vomited.
Spread through the massive open space before him, Raeln could see fly-covered bodies of dwarves. They were piled everywhere, lying two or three deep in most places. Blood stained the smooth walls of the oval room in long, thin streaks, telling him these people had clawed at the walls until their fingers were torn open or something had caught them. There had to be at least a thousand dwarves in that large room, all of them staring blankly at the floor or ceiling—those that still had eyes at all.
On’esquin seemed to be faring little better, somehow managing to look more grey than green for once. He held one hand to his mouth, staring at the piles of corpses with more sadness than nausea as he attempted to step between the torn bodies on his way into the room.
Behind On’esquin, Yoska looked horrified but managed to keep from getting sick. He followed the orc into the large room, his wide eyes darting from one corpse to the next nervously. “This is garden,” he noted softly, coming back and offering Raeln a hand to help him off the ground. “Many simple plants to keep air fresh and make horrible food for dwarves stuck down here. Holes high in roof let in more air from outside. Large well in middle keeps defenders alive for months or years. No one should be dead here. This was to be safe place. No matter what, was to be safe.”
“How far to the other side of the city?” Raeln managed to choke out.
Yoska hesitated, almost as though he had not heard Raeln. “We have walked maybe twenty hours already since we were in daylight, forgetting rest time. If we can get through short way, is about half day more to mountain rivers that we can follow north, where we hopefully find boat. Long way…two to three days and then we still must follow river, maybe with no boat.”
Swallowing hard as he stood outside the door trying to calm his lurching stomach, Raeln said, “There’s no way we’ve been down here that long.”
“Is true,” Yoska insisted. “Dwarves make fun of gypsies during first visit. They say we do not know how to tell time. Is point of pride to not have to be mocked twice. I would wager on time being right or very close to it.”
Raeln’s stomach continued to clench and unclench, forcing him to clamp his jaw closed to prevent himself from vomiting more. He eased into the room, trying not to use his nose at all and rely instead on his less-refined senses. For once he thought he might have a clue about what it was like to be anything but a wildling without his sense of smell…it was something he did not want to repeat.
The room had few features Raeln could make out past the bodies, though in a few spots he did manage to see the trampled and rotting remains of some sort of plant. The center of the room held a huge pond that might once have been spring-fed, but now sported three floating bodies of its own.
Raeln looked around the walls and saw the room was roughly domed, the stones above them lined with heavy steel or iron beams to support the weight of the mountain above them. Four doors came into the room, two of which were closed, with vast numbers of bodies piled in front of them. Far overhead, he could see holes in the dome that he guessed were for the air vents Yoska had mentioned, though none let in any light, as though they were blocked or it was nighttime.
The fourth door stood open like the one that they had come through. There, only a handful of bodies lay, but those were torn open rather than rotted. The farther the bodies got from the door, the fewer visible injuries Raeln could see, but when he stared long enough, he could pick out clawlike wounds on all of the bodies, no matter where they lay.
“Raeln,” whispered On’esquin, pointing toward a pile of dwarven remains.