Fitzyear Coalmounderan was cross with the two Miilarkians for having wandered off, but it did no good to return the dwarf’s perpetual scowl and the girl Matilda was too pretty to stay mad at for very long. The gnome grumbled as everyone settled back into bedrolls but in the morning he said nothing more about it.
The second safe room was bathed in sunlight with the dawn and the spirits of Fitz’s men were high. It was not much farther to the Daulic side of the mountains where most of them were from. After a quick breakfast the group headed down the hallway toward the concealed door the dwarf had uncovered, which Fitz had closed after Block and Tilda‘s return. The gnome had of course noticed the door a long time ago but had never felt the urge to explore what might lie beyond. That was the reason why the Trellanes and the Dauls typically employed gnomes as guides on this subterranean connection. Dwarves, the Mountain Folk, lived their long lives almost completely underground, and had little sensible fear of the things in the world’s secret places. Gnomes, the Hill Folk, lived above ground as much as they did beneath it, and as a people they tended to have more appreciation for the sun and the sky. Gnomes went below ground so that they could come up again, and that was enough.
Fitz led the way past the hidden door and down the passageway to the right. For the next several hours the group traveled in their accustomed silence through what had once been heavily inhabited tunnels back when Yagnarok was a thriving city. The passages were all wide and evenly floored, connecting what had been large storage chambers and bunkrooms which now held only refuse as all potential valuables had long since been cleaned out, or else rotted away. Several shorter stairs connected descending levels so that by the time the group drew near the southern exit they were almost back to the same elevation as the wide thoroughfare they had taken for most of the second day, though not quite.
Their point of egress was not the actual aperture which had led into Yagnarok in its heyday. The ancient doors of the grand entranceway were presently buried under yards of dirt and yellow rock, the legacy of a long-ago landslide on the Yellow Mountain’s southern face. The present exit was located above the old one and had probably been part of the defenses as it would have given access to a walkway above the old gate. Fitz led the way through large storage rooms where siege engines once waited to be wheeled outside, but abruptly stopped and held up a hand. His men stopped instantly behind him, and after more than two days of similar such halts the travelers did as well. They remained silent save for the dwarf Block, who grumbled.
“Damn it, little man, we are nearly there. I can feel fresh air on my face.”
“That’s the problem,” Fitz whispered. “The door ahead is meant to be closed.”
He directed his men to hold their position which they did, setting down the lanterns and fingering their weapons. Fitz crept on alone into darkness and was gone for several minutes.
*
Tilda could now feel the motion of the air on her face as well, and faintly smell pines. There was no light from up ahead that she could see, and only the flickering lanterns with the wicks turned low played upon the nervous faces around her.
Tilda knelt with her gun on a knee and looked at the soldier standing next to her with his pick held ready. He was a young man Tilda thought spoke a bit of Codian, so she whispered a question.
“What is supposed to be up ahead?”
The man glanced at his fellows but answered her in a whisper.
“The Dauls do not hide this entrance as do the Trellanes. There is a little fort, maybe twenty men, high on the mountainside. There is a door that gives right into the yard and it is always kept closed and locked, as the men are close enough to hear knocking.”
“Why would it be open?”
Instead of an answer, Captain Block said Tilda’s name in a tone that meant shut up. She did. The gnome Fitz whistled lowly from up ahead, just announcing his presence before stepping back into the lantern light so that no one chucked anything at his head.
He spoke quietly in Daulish to his men. Tilda saw their eyes widen and brows knit. The gnome then turned to Block and spoke in Codian.
“We have a problem. The fort is sacked. The only men I can see are dead.”
A soldier asked a question to which Fitz shrugged and answered in Daulish before repeating himself in Codian.
“There are three bodies in the last room, probably ran in here but got no further. The door is wide open. I didn’t see any men outside but there is equipment all over the place. Bows and shields, everything ransacked. The barracks is a smoldering wreck. My guess is most of the garrison was inside when it was fired. Anyone who got away, gods help them, are long gone.”
“What killed the three in the last room?” Block asked. Fitz sighed and pushed back his cap to mop his brow with a dirty hand that left smudges.
“They are bashed up rather stringently. Pulpy, almost.”
“ Ogru,” one of Fitz’s men said, but Dugan shook his head.
“There are no ogres in these mountains. Probably bugbears.”
All the men seemed to understand his last word, and nodded grimly. Tilda wanted to ask what in the hells was a bugbear, despite being certain that she was not going to like the answer. Block continued before she could ask.
“If they are gone, they are gone, and if the barracks have burned out it was a while ago. Lead on, Coalmounderan.”
Fitz closed one eye and raised the eyebrow of the other.
“Begging your pardon, Cap’n, but I’ve orders to head straight back should any trouble crop up on the Way.”
Block sneered. “We are what? A few hundred yards from the exit? Do you really think I am going to turn around and march back three days, only to be on the wrong side of the mountains again?”
Fitz sighed through his large nose. “No, I don’t. But I am saying that not one of my boys is setting another foot forward. Were you wise, neither would you.” The gnome pointed a stubby finger almost into the dwarf’s broad chest. “With the fort sacked you are still a day from anywhere. The Dauls would have given you escort, but with them run-off at best, and bugbears in the hills, how far do you three expect to get?”
Block glared, and when he spoke it was to Tilda.
“Gather our baggage. Separate just what we three can carry.”
Tilda stared, and such of Fitz’s men who lugged some of the Miilarkians’ possessions started setting down bags and packs next to her.
“Captain,” Tilda said. “We can’t carry more than a…”
Block silenced her with a look. Tilda snapped her mouth shut and settled to a seat on the floor, undoing the drawstrings on the nearest duffel. She knew the way ahead was going to be dangerous, but that was a given. But she also knew they were about to abandon quite a bit of money, not just Block’s but hers, and that made her want to tell the dwarf what she thought of him at the moment. Tilda breathed through her nose as she sorted the necessary from the wanted, and tried not to keep a running total in silver in her head.
Fitz and Block glared at each other all the while, the gnome shaking his head. The soldiers shifted nervously and kept glancing up the hall. Dugan emptied the bags that were going to be easiest to carry, those strapped as backpacks and pouches that could hang from belts and shoulders, and adroitly repacked the things Tilda separated to bring along. Flint and steel, canteens and wineskins, socks and undergarments. A small lantern and fuel. Weapons and ammunition. They had barely any food, and a full change of clothes was suddenly an impractical luxury. Tilda left at least two bags full of souvenirs she had gotten in Tull, the Beoshore, and Orstaf. Small things bought, bartered, or otherwise acquired. The riding boots were just too good to leave, and Tilda stuffed them full of small bundled items, tied the laces together, and slung them around her neck before standing and awkwardly wrestling on a backpack over her buksu club. She had to keep her hands free for the long gun as the emptied case was staying here.
She helped Dugan hang a backpack on either shoulder and tied them together in the middle to give him the appearance of a turtle. Captain Block cut a long strap from a spare pack and fastened it to his kit bag to sling it over a shoulder. He looked around at all that remained on the floor.
“Take what you want as a tip,” he said to Fitz. “For services rendered, such as they were.”
Fitz sighed. “There is a road, or at least a cut, running due south out of the fort. One day on that and you’ll overlook the Cross-Heftiga High Road. Left to Mont Royal, the right bends down into Chengdea via the Sibyl River.”
There did not look to be any more formal parting forthcoming, as Block strode away without another word. Tilda and Dugan moved to follow but as she passed the gnome he said one more thing.
“Miss Matilda.”
“What?” she snapped, sounding angry in her own ears.
“Don’t go out there.”
Tilda stopped and looked back. The little gnome‘s grin was nowhere to be seen and his amber eyes were solemn in the low lantern light.
“It isn’t up to me,” Tilda said, and she left.
The bodies in the last room were as bad as Fitz had said. They had been soldiers and lay in a heap surrounded by dented shields and broken helmets. Their chain mail coats had acted almost like strainers.
Block edged outside first through the open door into a short tunnel with a bend that kept sunlight from shining in directly, which was fine with Tilda as there was nothing she wanted to see better. She stood next to Dugan as the dwarf slipped around the corner, and whispered to him.
“What is a bugbear?”
“Biggest breed of a goblin.”
Tilda glanced at him. “I thought that was a hobgoblin.”
“No, bugbears are even bigger. Maybe eight feet, at the shoulder. Covered in hair, like a bear. But they climb like bugs.” Dugan glanced briefly at the bodies. “They favor big bardiche axes. Or mauls.”
Block whistled from up ahead and Tilda and Dugan stepped into the tunnel. The walls and low ceiling were of loose stone braced with timbers, not the smooth stone construction of the rest of the Underway nearby. This bit had been excavated long after the dwarves were gone.
Around the corner the tunnel opening was behind a large boulder, concealing it from view from the mountainside and hills in the area. Tilda emerged from behind the great stone to find herself in a dirt yard surrounded by a tall palisade wall of sharpened tree trunks, forming a square that met the mountain to either side at sharp, scooped-out cliff faces. This whole section of the Yellow Mountain seemed to have slumped some distance down the slope long ago. A smoking pile of wreckage was all that remained of one long wooden building within the palisade, while another that looked to have been a stable was simply collapsed in a heap against the mountainside. All around the yard lay refuse; broken weapons and furniture, blowing parchments, shredded blankets, a few gleams that might have been coins. There was a wagon turned on its side and a broken flagpole with a purple emblem trampled into the dirt. Straight across from the tunnel entrance was a gap in the palisade where the gate had been. Tilda did not see any doors, but she did not know if that meant they had been battered in, or wrenched off.
She and Dugan spread out a bit, both looking back up the mountain behind them. The way was steep. Tilda thought she could probably negotiate it but doubted something bigger than a hobgoblin could, no matter how bug-like were its climbing abilities. Block had crossed to the palisades and mounted a narrow walkway on the inside. He stared at the surrounding country all around in a number of directions for several minutes before coming back down, and approaching the others in the middle of the yard. The Captain met Tilda’s eye and pointed one finger at the ground. He crooked it and rolled his wrist in a circle. Take the weapon.
“I doubt it is worth looking for food,” Dugan said. “That’s probably what the bugbears were after.”
Block hurled himself into Dugan’s lower legs, grabbing a sandal strap in either hand and twisting. The man twirled and pitched headlong, crying out as Block straightened and actually hoisted him airborne before darting away. Dugan landed on his tied backpacks with a grunt and lay there, more turtle-like than ever. Block pulled a pistol from his kitbag but held it at his side, left-handed. With his right he pointed a dagger at Dugan’s face.
Dugan blinked at the dwarf and sighed, then looked down at his own hip to where he had shifted his short sword to hang from a cord. The cord was cut, and Tilda was standing several paces away with the heavy imperial gladius in her hand. Dugan looked back at Block.
“Seriously. You want to do this right now?”
“Tell me where John Deskata has gone,” Block said softly. “Or Tilda repacks the luggage for two.”
Dugan lay back atop the packs, almost comfortably. He started to say something but abruptly stopped and shouted, “Cover!” He twisted sideways and started struggling loose from the packs.
“Don’t be an ass,” Block said, but then noticed at the same moment as Tilda that there was a shadow around Dugan, rapidly becoming bigger.
Tilda snapped her eyes up in time to see a boulder plunging down from high above, with more following. The first, half the size of a man, crushed a backpack Dugan had only just gotten loose from, missing him by inches and sending a sharp, echoing bang off the mountainside. The rocks behind it came like hail.
Tilda ran for the nearest shelter, the tunnel back into the Underway. Crashing rocks echoed behind her like cannon blasts, and a horn was blowing. She reached the bend in the short tunnel and turned to find the door closed. Fitz and his boys had shut it up behind them before leaving, but they could not have gone very far yet. Before she could start hammering on the door to bring them back, Dugan barreled into the tunnel behind Tilda and slammed her against the rock wall even harder than he had bashed her off the cottage before gutting Procost. She at least took this blow on her shoulder and hip rather than with her forehead, though she crumpled to the ground all the same. Dugan snatched his sword out of her numb hand as Tilda blinked up at him, and the blade. His eyes were as cold as they had been facing the knight.
“I’m sorry?” she tried.
“Me too,” Dugan said.
*
When the stone rain began to fall the closest cover to Block had been the smoldering barracks, which he ran behind. He looked back around the edge in time to see Dugan follow Tilda into the tunnel. He had fully expected Fitzyear to seal the door behind them and doubted the gnome would be brought back by any amount of pounding. Fitz was worried for his own men, which was a feeling not totally alien to Block.
High up the mountainside a horn sounded and guttural voices hooted and roared, almost barking. From a ledge or shelf far up there multiple pairs of hairy arms threw another volley of stones ranging in size from melons to barrels, most of which arced at Block’s shelter as they could not get at the tunnel opening directly below. Block put his back to the wall and looked at the open gate in the palisade as the rocks started crashing into the wrecked barracks, knocking down what remained of beams and scattering ashes and embers.
Tilda was likely dead already, as she would have been for sure had his and Dugan’s roles been reversed. Block could at least get out of here himself, and live to fight another day. The old dwarf growled and bolted out from behind the wreckage, turning away from the gate and heading back for the tunnel entrance. His own choice surprised him a bit.
He yanked a pistol from his kit bag and fired it up the mountainside on the run, knowing he was not going to hit anything but hoping to make the bugbears cautious, if they were capable of it. The hooting redoubled and more stones were hurled. Block dropped the pistol back into the bag, drew the other and fired it as well, which was a shame as at just that moment Dugan sprinted out of the tunnel entrance, sword in hand.
The man saw Block coming and angled away, meaning to move around him for the gate. There was no way the dwarf was going to run down the sprinting human, so Block skidded to a halt and spun, racing straight back to get to the gate first. Stones crashed all around both of them. Block and Dugan closed on the gate at the same time from different angles. Up the slope the bugbears howled, for the gate was too far away for them to pitch stones with any accuracy.
“Block!” the renegade huffed. Block slid a dagger from a sleeve and threw it at the man’s head. Dugan narrowly batted it away with his sword but the dwarf had another in each hand as they came together. Dugan tried to twist sideways but Block lashed out and cut him shallowly across a hip. Dugan swore and swung a blow the dwarf ducked under. Still half back-peddling, Dugan’s back hit a palisade post and he barely kept his feet. Block lunged a blow that would have nailed the man’s spine to the log through his belly had Dugan not proven exceptionally fast for a man his size. He threw himself sideways with another parting counterblow Block barely parried with his second dagger, as the first buried almost to the hilt into the wood.
Dugan rolled and came up swinging a blow that would have cut Block in half had the dwarf chased him right away, but leaving one dagger stuck in the wall he paused to draw a fourth from a boot. He threw it high as he charged but rather than bat at it Dugan only ducked and leveled his sword, forcing Block to switch his grip on the dagger he still held and bring it down against the sword blade, pushing both weapons to the side as he slammed into Dugan’s chest.
They fell to the ground, weapons locked. Dugan reached for Block’s throat with his free hand while the dwarf went for his eyes. Before either got a grip or a gouge, Tilda Lanai ran past the struggling tangle.
“They are climbing down the mountain!” she shouted in passing as she ran out through the gate.
Block blinked after her, then down into the furious eyes of the man under him.
“You didn’t kill her?”
“Does it look like I did, you mad little bastard?”
A smaller stone, only the size of a grapefruit, hit in the yard and bounced past them. Block looked over his shoulder and saw several great dark shapes scrambling down the sheer mountainside while those remaining above tried to skip smaller rocks toward the gate like they were throwing stones across a pond.
“Am I the only one running?” Tilda called from outside the fort. Block looked down at Dugan.
“Truce.”
“Get the hell off of me!”
A stone bounced by, narrowly missing Block’s head. The dwarf growled and stood to run, pushing off with a foot on Dugan’s sternum. The man likewise growled and scrambled to his feet.
A narrow but deep chasm Block had seen from the top of the palisade surrounded the place for the long-ago landslide here had cracked open the ground. When the Dauls had constructed their fort much later they had made the gate as a drawbridge, raised and lowered with rope winches Block had also seen above, all ruined now. The gate door was however left in its down position as a bridge. Tilda was already across it, pointing her long gun back at the mountainside where the bugbears descended back out of range.
“Careful,” she said. “The bridge wobbles.”
In fact it did more than wobble as Block ran onto it, with Dugan directly behind him. When the bugbears had bashed the winches and cut the ropes, the bridge had fallen hard, breaking the spikes that were meant to secure the far end. It had also knocked the round beam around which the bottom end rotated out of its metal braces. When Tilda had run lightly across it, the bridge had shuddered. When Block planted one foot on it at a huffing sprint, the near end of the unsecured wooden platform slid under the bulky dwarf’s weight, and he stumbled sideways. When Dugan hit it a step behind him the whole surface shifted sharply forward.
It was a near thing. The man fell forward and landed spread-eagle in the center of the short span. The dwarf, with a lower center of gravity, kept his feet. That made him stumble two steps forward, and just a bit sideways. One foot hit the very edge of the bridge, half-on and half not.
*
The Corner Stone of the House that Tilda Lanai served wheeled, spun his arms, and for a frozen moment she thought surely Block would catch himself, right the ship, and run across the bridge to stand beside her. But it was not to be.
Seeing Block’s predicament, Dugan scrambled sideways and threw out an arm, straining for the edge of the dwarf’s Guild cloak or even the end of his braid. Block tottered for a long moment. Then he fell. Dugan’s hand closed on nothing and his chin banged against the bridge. Just that fast, Captain Block was gone.
Dugan scrambled to the edge on hands and knees and looked down into the darkness untouched by the sun high above in the clear sky. He looked up at Tilda but she did not meet his eyes, only stared at the last place Block had stood. Dugan scuttled the rest of the way across on all fours, and stood up beside her.
“Tilda,” he said.
“What?” she asked numbly. He had no answer.
Inside the palisade one nimble bugbear had already reached the ground. It loped across the yard straight at the open gateway with its fellows whooping high above it, dark shadows cavorting against the yellow stone of the mountainside. Tilda looked across at it coming for a few moments, and when it was nearing the gate she raised her gun. The thick hair and hide of a full-grown bugbear might have been proof against a lead ball, but Tilda shot it in its gaping, fang-rimmed mouth. It fell in a heap.
“Tilda,” Dugan said again.
“Yes,” she said. She put a heel against the near edge of the fateful bridge and threw her weight at it, but it moved only slightly. Without a word Dugan crouched and put his hands on the edge, and shoved hard in time with her next lunge. The bridge did not move far, but in its present state it did not have to. A corner of the far end slipped off the rocky edge and the whole thing turned before plunging down, crashing and splintering for long, long moments.
High above on the mountainside, the shadows of the bugbears were still as they stood silently watching. The rest that had started to climb were nearly down into the yard. Tilda looked across at them. She set her gun down on its stock and dug a ball out of a pocket. She started to reload.
“Tilda,” Dugan said for the third time.
“I know,” Tilda said, though she was not sure what she meant. When her gun was reloaded, she turned and walked away into the woods.