The Survivors (17 page)

“Look out!” Dallon called just in the nick of time.

The squat dwarf was back, carrying his severed arm and swinging it like a club. The wounded end of the arm hit Bradok in the shoulder, leaving behind a smear of foul-smelling blood.

Bradok didn’t hesitate. He chopped away the dwarf’s good hand, then smote off his head in a single stroke. The headless body stumbled forward to continue the attack, but Dallon bashed its hip with a sideways blow of his hammer, sending it into a writhing pile on the cavern floor.

Chisul and Rose had backed away from their victim, who lay undulating on the floor, her remaining hand pressed to her
abdomen. She screamed as the flesh beneath her hand began to expand in some bizarre mimicry of pregnancy.

“What’s happening to her?” Rose gasped, disgust in her voice.

“I don’t think we should wait to find out,” Chisul said, horrified, edging back.

“Good idea,” Bradok said. “Everybody out!”

They all turned and raced for the hole. During their fight most of the others had escaped, and the rest scrambled to get away.

Chisul dived through the opening, headfirst, followed by Rose. As Dallon, then Vulnar, retreated, Bradok glanced back.

The writhing woman’s abdomen had distended beyond the size of mountain boulder and seemed ready to burst.

“Hurry up,” he told Kellik as the big smith forced his burly body through the opening. Then Bradok plunged through the gap.

“Get up the tunnel,” he yelled at the loitering dwarves. “Now!”

No one saw fit to argue. They turned and ran, chasing after the light ahead that marked the flight of the others. Dallon carried their second lantern. They had gone only a few steps up the tunnel when there came a tremendous bang and the sound of wet, pulpy material exploding against the walls of the cavern.

As they whirled in horror, they saw a golden mist flowing out of the hole. Little flecks of something were suspended in it, undulating and moving as it spread.

“Quick! That mist has to be poisonous,” Rose warned before turning to run.

“Move!” Bradok echoed, and the remaining survivors sprinted away as fast as they could after their fleeing companions.

F
ire burned in Bradok’s lungs as he ran headlong up the passage of rock. Ragged breathing filled the space around him as his companions raced with him away from the golden mist. His foot struck some unseen protrusion in the floor of the passage and he stumbled. A strong arm shot out of the darkness and grabbed his elbow, steadying him then shoving him forward, urging him on.

“What were those things?” Halum said, his voice shaky and uncertain.

“Who cares?” Vulnar cried, his voice huffing through his ragged breaths.

“That mist cloud looked like spores,” Dallon gasped, his voice close behind.

“What in the world could it be?” Chisul asked.

“I don’t want to find out,” Rose said.

“Talk about it later,” Bradok wheezed.

He could already see the blue light that marked the place where the rest of the group waited for them.

“Are you all right?” Tal asked as the panting, sweating dwarves joined them, collapsing into heaps on the floor.

“Rose and Chisul,” Bradok said, leaning on his knees to catch his breath.

“It’s just a scratch,” Rose said, waving Tal off as he tried to examine her arm. Turning to Bradok, she said, “That mist—do you think it might follow us?”

A cold chill ran down Bradok’s spine. He knew that it was more than possible. They couldn’t tarry there long.

“Let’s see what we can find out,” he said, reaching for the compass. To his utter horror, his hand found only an empty pocket.

“It’s gone,” he gasped.

“What’s gone?” Rose asked in a low voice, looking around to make sure the other dwarves hadn’t heard and been alarmed.

“The compass,” he said, frantically patting his other pockets. “I must have dropped it during the fight, or maybe when we ran up the passage.”

He sprang to his feet, feeling his heart beat fast. “I’ve got to go back,” he said.

Even before he could take a step back down the passage, Rose and Chisul had grabbed his arms.

“Are you insane?” Chisul said. “That mist could be churning up the passage right now.”

“But I’ve got to get the compass,” Bradok said, struggling against them. “We need it to tell us how to survive down here.”

“Survive?” Chisul said. “I’d say we get as far away from that mist as possible, and our chances for survival will go way up.”

“He’s right,” Rose said. “Maybe the compass has served its purpose, like the ship.”

Bradok stopped struggling, and they released him. “I must have dropped it,” he said ashamedly to Rose.

She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. “Then we’ll just have to go by faith, won’t we?” she said gently. “Now let’s get these people moving. We want to put as much distance as possible between us and that mist.”

Erus, or Reorx, or whoever it was had given that compass to him for a reason, and he felt sure that reason still existed. But he had let everyone down by losing or dropping it. Some leader he was.

Bradok turned to the survivors. Anxious faces looked up at him. They had heard some of the discussion and were apprehensive about the loss of the compass. He tried to adopt a strong, stoic mask.

“All right, everyone,” he called out. “The danger is behind us, but we should probably make as much distance as we can today, so let’s get going.”

“Very diplomatic,” Tal whispered, falling in beside Bradok as the group began to move. “Just like a true leader.”

Bradok shook his head. “They know the compass is gone,” he said. “They’ll have to hear the truth sooner or later.”

The fight had taken a lot out of him. Bradok felt age and pain as they walked. He listened to the conversations around him. A young couple, whose names Bradok couldn’t remember, were taking turns carrying their toddler daughter, telling her all about the wonderful things they would do when they got to where they were going. Where was
that?
Bradok wondered silently. Where would they all end up? Had Reorx intended some destination for them? What if Tal was right and the whole world was gone? What then?

Seerten Rockhide, an armorer from Everguard, was exchanging forging tips with Kellik. Much was walking alongside the pregnant Lyra and fussing over her and her daughter, Jade. She must bring out the grandfather in his old friend, Bradok thought.

Everywhere around him, the survivors were walking and talking and letting some of the tension slip away. After two days of desperate hunger, it felt good to hear their voices again.

Several hours later, they emerged into a small, round cavern. With the exception of the hole Bradok had made in
the wall, it was the only change in the long fissure since they had left the beach almost a week before. Much consulted his watch and pronounced it a good time to stop and camp and review their plans in the morning.

The chamber had a smooth, featureless roof and rounded sides, like a bubble of air in a sea of stone. Two passages exited the little cave, both appearing to continue on for some distance.

Everyone had eaten so much that no one felt particularly hungry. Instead, Chisul told everyone about the gory fight with the mushroom people. He had a rapt audience. Although Silas’s son embroidered his own bravery, he also gave credit to everyone else in the battle. Bradok found as he sat listening, cross-legged on the rocky floor of the cave, that he quite enjoyed Chisul’s version of the fight; it made them all seem heroic.

During the story, Rose and Tal sat next to Bradok.

“Was it really like that?” Tal whispered at one point.

“Pretty much,” Rose said, rubbing her arm where Tal had bandaged it.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Let it heal.”

Everyone agreed that those who fought to protect them should be allowed to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Bradok had taken first watch every night since they started on their adventure, so he didn’t mind a little break. As the others continued to talk about the exciting events of the day, he quietly rolled himself in his cloak and almost instantly went to sleep, snoring softly.

By the time he awoke the next morning, Rose and Chisul were already up and arguing about which of the two passages that exited the little chamber offered the best prospects. Tal glanced meaningfully at the arguing pair as Bradok took a swig from his waterskin to wash the taste of sleep from his mouth.

“I think they need a leader,” Tal whispered.

Bradok stood and shook the dirt out of his cloak before wrapping it around his shoulders and hitching the metal
clasp across his chest. Some of the dwarves had dug a small privy down the tunnel, just beyond the range of the light. Taking a deep breath, Bradok headed down the tunnel to relieve himself.

It took Bradok’s eyes almost a full minute to shrug off the darkness and find the privy in the empty tunnel. It had been dug far enough back along the tunnel that the argument still going on behind him had faded into incomprehensible echoes.

As he stood there doing his business, trying not to think about the decisions that lay ahead, he heard a strange sound. His senses tried to grab hold of it, identify it.

It sounded like a giggle.

Thinking that perhaps one of the children had followed him, Bradok turned his head back up the passage. Finding it as empty as he’d left it, he spun forward again. His eyes swept the black depths and, for a moment, he thought he spied something. Out on the edge of his vision, he could have sworn something shifted, melting back into the darkness as his eyes passed over it.

He stared, fixedly, at the spot, but it remained unchanged, just a blank face of rock that made up one side of the fissure. Still, Bradok couldn’t shake the feeling that he had seen something move there, something that had retreated when he noticed it.

The memory of the cave spider skeleton lurched into his mind, and he shuddered, turning to go back. Bradok cursed and heard the sound again—a short, truncated giggle. Whatever he didn’t know about cave spiders, he knew they didn’t giggle.

“Is someone there?” he called nervously.

Only silence greeted him from the depths.

“I won’t hurt you,” he called.

Still, nothing responded.

His hand slipped around the hilt of his sword, and he twisted it loose in its scabbard. Straining his ears, he could
make out only the continuing dull drone of the argument between Rose and Chisul. He took a few tentative steps down the passageway but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The more rational part of his brain warned him not to go too far, for if something did rush him from the darkness, he would be too far away to call for help.

At length, he shrugged. It had been a long and stressful week, and he was hearing things. With a sigh he turned back to camp.

The argument he’d been avoiding was still raging as he entered the little cave. It had escalated to shouting, and had everyone’s attention. The survivors looked at Bradok expectantly as he marched up to Chisul and Rose.

“And I’m telling you that way is the right way; it slopes
up,”
Rose was shouting, mere inches from Chisul’s face. “You remember
up
, don’t you, the direction of the surface?”

Chisul pointed at the opposite opening. “As far as I can tell, they all go up, and then later they go down. Up and down. Round and round. Back and forth. That’s where we’ve gone so far.”

“There you are finally,” Rose said, noting Bradok’s appearance. “Will you please tell this buffoon that I’m right, and—”

Chisul looked scornfully at Bradok.

Bradok held up his hand for peace, and amazingly, both Rose and Chisul stopped arguing. He walked to the tunnel that Rose had suggested. It did slope slightly upward and looked promising.

Undecided, Bradok walked across the cave to the other opening. All eyes in the chamber followed him as he went. That passage resembled the one they’d been following for the past week, ragged and straight. As Bradok stood there, he could feel the push of air against his face. There was good air in that passage.

“Chisul’s right,” he said, turning back to the group. “We should take this one.”

Rose looked taken aback and strangely hurt.

“I told you,” Chisul said, puffing up his chest. “I told her,” he said, addressing all the dwarves.

Bradok pointed up the passage. “There’s air moving down this passage,” he explained. “That means that somewhere up ahead, there’s a way out. I think it’s our best choice.”

The crowd of survivors nodded their approval.

“Now let’s get some breakfast,” Bradok said. “We’ll want to put some good distance under our feet today.”

At the mention of the word
breakfast
, the gathered dwarves emitted an audible sigh of anticipation. Three days’ hard marching with no food once had seemed like an eternity. At that moment it was like a bad dream to be forgotten. Everyone sat, clustered together in groups of kin or friends and brought out chunks of mushroom to share.

Rose pointedly moved to sit among the other hill dwarves, though she cast a glance back at Bradok. He sat next to Much and was joined by the human, Perin, and Kellik and his sons.