Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (6 page)

Durek
called the Badgers together while Kurt and Gottri cleaned up after breakfast. “All right, this is the last time we go over this, so if you’ve got any questions, toss ‘em out before I’m through. We’re about to enter
Gradrek Heleth
, so I’ll cover the basics one more time. Keep a quart or so of water on you, but no more: we should have no problem finding fresh water, so there’s no point in weighing ourselves down. You each have four day’s rations; the next issue will be in four days, so don’t waste any. We’ll travel with the
komad
in the center of the group, half in front, half behind, and two scouts a hundred paces ahead, one being a Dwarf. Everyone keep alert.”

“As far as loot goes, we do no looting or searching unless by my command; we don’t have time or the portage capacity for serious gathering until we have recovered the books and are on our way out. To remind you newcomers, remember: anything found is Company property unless you find it on a solo scouting mission authorized by myself or unless you take it in si
ngle combat. Everything else goes into the Company coffers.”

“Now, as we’ve noted before,
Gradrek Heleth
sees a great deal of traffic, relatively speaking. There is an entire
keiba
of Cave Goblins, the Bronze Hydras, living in the Hold, as well as semi-permanent enclaves from the Direthrell, Dark Sun nation-cult, and others. Minions of the Void often travel here looking for loot and a chance to prove themselves, and the Orcs are known to mount raids. It is not impossible to run into other followers of the Eight, including Dwarves, raiding into the place as well. While this sounds like a great deal of traffic, remember that
Gradrek Heleth
consists of five
cidhe
, a
argalt
, a
piseagan
, and miles of mines, not to mention the under-deeps, so there is a huge volume of space for these wanderers or inhabitants; it is possible that we might even traverse the place to and from our goal without serious incident, although that isn’t something I would count on.”

“As for non-intelligent inhabitants, we can expect Titan spiders, the odd hydra, and anything th
at has wandered in from the
raith
; there are strange creatures indeed in the depths of the world. Any questions?”

“Yes, I have one,” Nuil
ia raised her hand. “What exactly are these tiles we’re getting before we look for the books?”

“They are called
advarkel
, or anvil tiles. Dwarves do not use metal anvils except in the initial stages of working raw metal; all the shaping and precision work is done on stone anvils covered with a specially-treated type of ceramic tile impregnated with metal dust; these
advarkel
are shaped and constructed for specific metal work at specific stages of the creative process, and grow harder and stronger with use, wearing out only after several centuries. Thus old tiles are much more valuable than new tiles, which is why we are going after these. Only a few hundred of the very best tiles were taken when
Gradrek Heleth
was evacuated; thousands more remain even after all this time.”

“You would think that they would have been looted long ago,”
Arian commented.

“No
t really, only Dwarves use them so there isn’t much of a market for them. Anything else? Then take a good look at the sun, for it’ll be a goodly number of days before you see it again.”

The entrance into
Gradrek Heleth
that the Badgers used would be hard to find if someone didn’t know it was there, and not much to look at even if they did. It was a small cave opening buried in a clump of stubby pine trees, a hole so low and narrow that the
komad
had to crawl on their bellies to get in with their pack saddles. Ten feet into the dank little opening the way angled sharply down into the mountain and expanded to about four feet wide and six tall, still an inconvenience for Janna and the taller men, but much more manageable.

To
Bridget the tunnel looked natural, but Kroh assured her that it was a vent which had been widened. The lithe advocate was near the rear of the group as it worked its way along the pitch-black shaft, each Badger keeping a grip on the one in front of them, Durek leading, his Dwarven eyes able to pierce this darkness, at least to some degree.

She knew from previous raids that this lightless entry tunnel was only four hundred yards long, but it still seemed like they spent days creeping along in the darkness, the rock ceiling and walls pressing in with all the weight of the tons of stone the mountain posses
sed. The dark-haired priestess crept along, crouching unnecessarily, her left hand gripping Kroh’s blanket roll in front of her, her right clutching the enchanted amber and yellow topaz amulet that hung at her throat over the leather tunic she wore, the talisman encased in a leather pouch so that it would not strike the small metal plates sewn to her tunic and make noise. The amulet was part of a set, the rest being a matching bracelet (on her left wrist) and belt, the set being attuned to her faith and a very potent augmenter of her spellcasting. The Badgers had recovered the items from a temple of the Void the year before.

The f
loor beneath her feet was slick, and she realized that the fall rains would drain down this shaft, while a west wind would push fresh air into the underground areas. In the Dwarven-worked areas, she knew, the entire layout of the hold would be centered around ventilation. She took a deep, shuddering breath and told herself that she must be strong, that they were surely past the halfway point and that each step reduced the duration of this experience. The logic did her no good.

T
he entrance tunnel terminated in a pile of broken rock that sloped upwards to a narrow crevice that opened into the larger caverns, and the party had to wait until Durek could carefully climb up the rubble to scout the way ahead. Finally the group began to move again, taking a few steps forward and then halting as the next Badger or
komad
scrambled up the slope. Finally it was Bridget’s turn, and she worked her way up the shifting slope with a glad heart, using the rope Durek had strung to aid her ascent. At the top she slipped through the crevice and stood to one side as the last Badgers climbed in.

She and the rest of the raiders were standing in a cleft in the mountain, a hollow fault that ran roughly north-south for the better part of a mile, averaging ten feet high and four wide, a diamond shape whose lower quarter was sufficiently filled with rubble as to make a fairly easy road. The darkness in the fault was far from complete: here and there dense clumps of peton moss grew, green-black lumps shot through with hollow tubes or veins filled with a faintly luminescent liquid. All underground dwellers cultivated the moss as a cheap and clean source of light, and released quantities of it into the wild areas for the same purposes. While the light put out by the small, random clumps was just enough so that
Bridget could discern movement, it was a very welcome improvement over the pitch-darkness of the entry tunnel.

When the last raider had climbed into the fault and the rope was recovered, the Badgers set off, their formation looser now due to the faint light and wider passage. Near the south end of the fault
Durek led the party into a narrow crevice and along a smaller crack in the bones of the mountain which opened into a crudely-worked tunnel. They followed the tunnel for a few minutes, then left it to wade down an underground stream whose water was icy cold and crystal clear. The clumps of peton moss were more and more frequent as they travelled; degree by tiny degree the light improved until Bridget found she could see for about ten feet, albeit vaguely and in shades of gray.

The stream’s tunnel was a
n oval tube five feet in diameter, with the few inches of gravel flattening out the bed making for easier walking; the stream was only a few inches deep, but it filled the ‘floor’ of the tube, making it impossible to walk without getting one’s boots wet. They marched for forty minutes through the cold water which managed to defeat the waterproofing of nearly half the footgear worn by the party; taking a break was pointless as there was nowhere to rest.

Bridget
noticed that Kroh was scooping handfuls of gravel out of the stream bed and tossing them aside stone by stone as he walked, which at first she thought of a merely an idle diversion, but the Dwarf’s methodical approach to the pastime intrigued her. Picking up her pace, she leaned over the Waybrother’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

The Dwarf picked a tiny flake out of the debris in his hand
and held it up. “Gold.”

Their trek through the cramped stream-tunnel ended when the tunnel opened up into another fault within the mountain, a much larger one whose ceiling was at least forty feet above them. The stream twisted and danced between the rounded stones at the fault’s bottom following the path of least resistance, but Durek led the Badgers up a steep slope to a narrow roadway cut into the wall of the fault halfway up its side.

“Break,” the Captain called softly. “
Janna and Bridget stand watch.” He pointed to either direction of the road as he spoke their names, indicating the direction they were to guard.

The tired priestess moved a dozen yards down the elevated roadway in the direction he had indicated and sat down with a sigh of relief on a small boulder which apparently had fallen from the ceiling. Laying her blanket roll on the ground, she untied two of the leather thongs that held it shut and fished out her clay jar of foot powder and a dry sock; her left boot had sprung a leak. Using her kerchief to dry her foot, she carefully powdered both it and the inside of the boot before pulling the dry sock on and replacing the boot. Returning the powder jar to her roll, she bound it back up tight, tying the wet sock around her left thigh so it would dry.

Loosening her sword-rapier and basket-hilted parrying dagger in their scabbards, Bridget loaded a bullet into the pouch of her staff sling and watched the roadway, relying more on her ears than her eyes in the poor light. She had stood watch on dozens, perhaps even hundreds of other occasions, in every conceivable clime and condition; this post was nothing special. She leaned against the dry crevice wall, careful not to let her iron cap strike the stone, half-closed her eyes, and deliberately relaxed. Guard duty or not, this was all the break she was going to get for the next hour or so.

A low cough recalled her to the main body, which was forming up as she rejoined them. Moving at a steady pace,
Durek and Janna scouting a short ways ahead of the main body, the Badgers followed the roadway along the fault’s wall to the end of the cleft, and beyond as the road entered a tunnel. The luminescent moss was thicker here, extending Human vision to fifteen feet, Dwarf and Lanthrell’s three times that.

Bridget
ended up next to Kroh as they moved two abreast down the tunnel, which was a comfortable eight feet high and six wide. “How much gold did you find?” she whispered to break the tension that the weight of stone overhead was building in her.

“Twenty-seven flakes and a pea-sized nugget,” the Waybrother muttered back.

“For that you nearly froze your hands off?”

He gave her a withering look. “It is gold.”

She hid her smile-for a Dwarf, ore or craftsmanship was all the reason required for anything.

Arian had ended up in the lead next to Robin as they worked their way down one tunnel after another. After an hour they took a break and Kroh moved forward to replace Robin, but the monk declined replacement, preferring to be where he could see and hear what was going on instead of being buried back in the ranks.

Durek
guided them by leaving arrows painted in white on squares of black cloth at any turning point. When he ran out of arrow-cloths, he and Janna stopped and let the main body catch up, then set out again. It was a monotonous process, as the tunnel they followed had been cut along natural cracks and fissures to speed the work, leaving numerous side-openings all along its length which quickly depleted their stock of signal cloths, forcing the scouts to frequently halt and reclaim the markers.

“What pur
pose do all these tunnels serve?” the monk whispered as he rejoined the Dwarf, stuffing an arrow cloth under his belt. “They aren't mine shafts.”

“Felher siege tunnels,” the Waybrother scrape
d away cobwebs and dust from a patch of wall next to a side-opening, exposing faint scratches. “They couldn’t trust the Dwarven tunnels, so they carved their own.”

“Did it work
?”

“Not too well:
they had to follow the mountain’s weak points in order to save time, so it wasn’t too hard for the defenders to extend the raids into these tunnels as well. If
Gradrek Heleth
had been part of the normal Dwarven defense net, the inhabitants would have simply harried the Felher until the rats got tired of taking losses for no gain and pulled out.”

“Assuming that this was part of the Dwarven defense net, wouldn’t these siege tunnels just make the hold more vulnerable next time?”

Kroh shook his head. “No; oh, they would leave some in place, carefully mapped, with secret side-tunnels, pits, all designed to turn them into death traps, but the bulk of them would be sealed off.”