Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (14 page)

Robin Threadgill surveyed the camp site: Starr, Janna, and Gabriella had first watch at the various entrances, Kroh was sitting with the little Threll, and Arian was talking with Janna. Durek was sitting by himself puffing on his pipe and frowning into the distance, wrestling with the future, no doubt. Bridget and Trellan were already in their respective bedrolls, having the second watch, as did Robin, who was too angry to rest just yet. The new Badger, Rolf, was sitting to one side slicing paper-thin strips off his block of cheese and eating them with equally thin slices of dried apricot.

He was keenly aware that the Badgers had launched many a daring raid and won far more battles than they had lost, but this fight did not seem necessary to him. Oh, so what that there were children down there; a hundred whelps died every day in the Empire alone from disease and bad living,
so what were eight more or less? Leofric could whistle for his books; the odds were just too long, planning and surprise notwithstanding. Durek was letting Dwarven pride go before Badger safety, and the others were too overconfident or too raw, excepting fanatics like Janna and that manic Dwarf, Kroh.

F
rowning, Robin ran through the numbers: six votes were needed to withdraw; he had two, and the Captain could count on four (his, Janna’s, Bridget’s, Kroh’s) for certain, with Rolf unlikely to oppose Durek. That left Arian, who was a former monk and not too likely to bypass a Talon with hostages, Gabriella who wasn’t too fond of Robin but who had a level head on her shoulders, Starr who would side with Kroh until a compelling reason could be found to sway her, and Trellan who was clearly not too keen on the fight.

Let him swing three, he felt, and at the first setback he could pick up at least one more. It was still possible to halt this madness before it began. Of course, the only reason there was a chance at all was because
Durek had decided to put the subject to the vote, a rare occasion in the annuals of the Company, and a risky tack for the Captain to take as such were the only times his decisions were overcome.

Robin had nothing against his Captain other than that the Dwarf was too prone to turn soldiering for gold into a battle between Light and Darkness, and his propensity to appoint Company leaders from like-minded types, such as Axel and
Bridget, or mindless head-bashers such as Dmitri. If Robin were in charge, a circumstance which had been crossing his mind with some regularity over the last year, the Phantom Badgers would keep their feet firmly planted upon the mercenary path with none of these deviations on errands of mercy.

Robin had been born and raised on a tiny farm in the s
outhern regions of the Empire. His family lost the place when he was ten, and they had known no permanent home again until the money sent home by Robin and his two younger brothers managed to buy another small holding. The money came from the three Threadgill brother’s pay as Imperial Legionaries, pay and the death-bounty of the youngest boy, killed in some nameless skirmish north of the Ward. Robin had done his basic service and an extra hitch in the Legion before setting out on the path of a sell-sword, while his middle brother returned home to take up the new farm from his ageing parents.

The farm was still in the Threadgill name with nephews and nieces aplenty for free labor, although both of his parents were long gone, but Robin h
ad no interest in the place. He would not claw the dirt for a pittance, waiting to lose the land after two bad seasons or four mediocre ones. Better to kill or be killed than to live at the mercy of the weather. He had a good woman now and a growing cache of Imperial Marks tucked away; when Durek founded the village on the Company holdings next year Robin planned to step out of the active campaigning and see about bettering himself. After all, he would be thirty-three then, and unlike Janna he had no intention of staying in active service until some damned Orc got in a lucky stroke.

Composing his features, he moved up to Gabriella’s guard post. “Wine?” he kept his voice soft so as not to give the position away. “Navian white, travels pretty well.”

“Thanks.” The dark knife-fighter took a long drink before passing the skin back. “You’re right, it travelled well, and a good vintage; my thanks again. Now piss off, Robin, I’m not going to change my mind. We need the books, those children aren't going to get sacrificed, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop this. I didn’t come all this way to turn and run from a Scarred One and his troop of freaks. Period.”

The swordsman took a swig of wine to cover his shock. “A bit more vehement than perhaps was necessary,” he chuckled lamely. “I just wonder if we really need
to risk this. With Axel here it would be another story, as one good Wizard would make a huge difference, but he’s still waiting for his legs to finish recovering, so here we are, back to cold steel.”

“And surprise, which counts for a great deal, plus whatever deceptions we can come up with;
put a Threll archer on that bridge and the odds will narrow quick enough. A scattered, disorganized Talon versus eleven Badgers are not that long of odds, Robin. Not long enough for me.”

“We could win, that’s very true, but we could lose some Badgers doing it, and that’s equally true.”

“Losing Badgers is something we risk in every fight, Robin. We win so often that we lose sight of how high the risks really are, but we could lose Badgers every time we draw a blade. My way of thinking, if I have to die on a Direbreed’s blade, I would like it to be while rescuing some children, rather than in some skirmish we were hired to fight.”

“I see you’ve made up your mind.” Robin levered himself to his feet. “I’m not convinced, but a vote’s a vote.”

“You’re thinking with the wrong blade, Robin,” Gabriella grinned. “It’s always a bad idea to bring your lover along in the field: it gets you thinking too domestically.”

The next ‘morning’ saw the Badger camp humming with activity as the mercenaries turned to their assigned tasks. Durek and Kroh gathered the rock-crawling supplies together and set off to explore the crevices in the area, taking Starr and Trellan along for security. They spent two hours probing the area, scraping dust and limestone drippings off of walls to better see the layering of the rock, discussing the possibilities in low voices using their native tongue. After considerable debate, they selected a crack in the stone that to Starr looked like every other fault they had encountered, and crawled in. They emerged twenty minutes later in good spirits and moved a few hundred feet away to another hole in the mountain and crept into it. This process was repeated three more times before they settled on a crevice that seemed to suit them.

For the little Threll it
was a dull duty indeed, leaning against the cool stone with an arrow nocked, watching an empty tunnel or corridor-sized fault for long periods of time; she couldn’t even talk to Trellan as he was usually positioned too far away. Guard duty was no new experience to her, but at least above ground there were the thousand and one sights and sounds that her attuned and highly trained senses noted to keep her from getting bored. Down here it was just stone, stone, stone, stone, stone,
stone
. And then more stone. She spent thirty minutes watching a spider the size of her little finger’s nail build a web, an experience which was the high point of her guard duty. Naturally, when bored enough, one broods upon the past, which was a problem for Starr, as in the terms of her people, she was not far out of childhood and hadn’t much past to brood upon.

She
had been born and raised in
Lana
Larnex, the huge and ancient forest in the southern reaches of the Empire, overshadowed by the Thunderpeaks where they angled to the southeast as they headed towards the sea. Of course, the Larnax Forest was not part of the Human Empire despite the fact that everyone, Human and Threll alike, referred to it as
in
the Empire; to be accurate, the Empire had grown up around the Forest. The Threll and Humans got along well enough; both the Empire and Threll marked the boundaries of the forest with a wide belt of non-Forest forest land to accommodate the very slow growth of the Elvan holdings and to provide the Threll with a handy buffer zone, and in return the Threll respected the Empire’s right to the rest of the continent.

As a child, Starr had been raised in a conflicting manner by her parents: her mother, Lonia, had initially been an adventuresome youth who
was fond of forays outside the
Lana
and all sorts of mischief. This spirit of carefreeness had ended abruptly when she was not much older than Starr, for she and a group of friends (including Lonia’s closest companion, her cousin Star) were ambushed by a Direthrell raiding party while they ventured into Human territory for a picnic. The Dark Threll killed or captured as slaves every member of the little party except for Lonia, who was hidden by Star, who then led the Direthrell and their Direbreed minions on a merry chase away from Lonia’s hiding place, being captured in the process but ensuring that her cousin escaped. Lonia never set foot within miles of the
Lana’s
boundaries after that day. Star, of course, was never seen again, although the fate of anyone who fell into Direthrell hands was clear: slavery, a lingering death through torture, or a combination of both.

Eventually Lonia finally married and late in her life bore her only child, whom she named Starr Brightgift after her beloved and heroic cousin. Thus Starr was raised by a mother whose morbid fear of the world outside of the Forest was offset by the tale of Starr’s heroic namesake, the beloved Star who had saved Lonia from a horrible fate by sacrificing herself. Starr’s father pretended to agree with his wife about the horrors of the outside world, but any
traveler who entered
Lana
Larnex would find himself stalked and relentlessly questioned about the outside world by Starr’s father, who often had his daughter in tow.

Starr had grown up with her mother’s taste for adventure, and her father’s curiosity, a vivacious tomboy who was ever ready to take a dare to prove that her lack of stature in no way affected her courage or
ability. Eventually she served in the
Lana Erhant
, the border-scouts before leaving the Forest to seek wonders and adventure in the outside world. And having done so, she found herself here, dirty, bored, sick of field rations and buried under miles of stone like a maggot in a dung heap. On days like this her mother’s belief’s seemed to gain validity by the minute.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump and brought hot blood flooding her cheeks
in shame: a Threll surprised! “See any Draktaurs?” Kroh rumbled good-naturedly, giving her shoulder a squeeze she felt through her armor.

The Dwarf flopped down beside her and rummaged in his gear for his waterskin. He had
left his armor and axe at Starr’s post for mobility and silence before entering the crevice, and was now liberally coated in grime and much battered about the elbows and knees.

“What’re those
?” the little Threll indicated greenish-black stains on the Waybrother’s clothing as he took a long drink of ale.

“Ah, that’s good. What’s what
? Oh, spider guts, Rock Titans. Bastards are thick in there, must’ve killed six or seven.”

Durek
, armor-less and equally filthy, came up and accepted a swig from Kroh’s flask. “Good ale-I could use a keg of it right now. Now, to business: Starr, we have a problem that only you can help us with. We’ve located a very promising strata which looks as if the rate of shift has...well, you won’t be interested in all that. Basically, by way of rock lore and careful exploring, we believe we’ve found a route through the crevices that will lead us to an opening in the bridge cavern.”

“Good,” Starr nodded cautiously.

“Yes, well, the problem is that about halfway to where we want to be there is a point where the going narrows very sharply, down to just a few inches; now, if we
knew
that this route leads to the bridge cavern we would get Bridget in there to put a silence rune upon the bottleneck and sledge it open, but we don't want to risk any unnecessary spellweaving until we’re sure because some Minions can sense it.” Durek shifted a bit in embarrassment as he explained.

Starr nodded vaguely with a growing sense of horror.

“The only way to know for sure that this route leads to where we want to go is for someone, a very
brave
someone, to get past that tight spot and finish the scouting, specifically someone who is both short and thin, small build, nimble, very brave as I said before; basically, you’re the only Badger here who fits the bill. We need you to crawl in past the choke point and see if we’re correct about this route.”

It was established now and for
all time: her mother was right-she should have never left the Forest.

Until she reached the choke point Starr had clung to the idea that she could talk her way around this task; after all, Bridget was nearly as slender, and Trellan was almost as short. Surely there was a way out of this business of crawling into the guts of a mountain like a berserk field mouse racing through a Dwarfish sewer system, but one look at the bottleneck had proved that to be a false hope: sometime in the years past a massive slab of rock had broken free of, well, the rest of the rock and had reduced the clearance in the crack from two feet (which was narrow enough to give her goose bumps), down to scant inches. To make things worse, the slab had shifted at a place where the crevice turned for reasons known only to Dwarves and cave rats, so that whoever crawled through the narrow bit would have to be both very slender
and
very short in order to keep from getting stuck as the free space angled sharply, a thought which made her knees weak. At just under two inches over five feet and lithe as only a Threll could be, she was the only possible candidate.