Descent into the Depths of the Earth (17 page)

In the dark of night, the stink of corpses hung foul and
sickly sweet. There was a reek of smoke, and a stir of rats and night creatures
fleeing from gnawed carrion. Standing beneath an ancient stone archway, Escalla,
Jus, and Polk looked about, listening to awful, furtive little noises in the
dark.

“Sour Patch.”

The shanties were burned, and the bodies of slain refugees
were hanging rat-gnawn in the gloom. At least the stink would have driven away
any faerie courtiers. Surveying the wreckage, Jus rested his hand on his sword
and pointed the way over to the apple orchard.

“This way.”

Escalla looked around, appalled by the half-seen corpses in
the gloom.

“What the hell happened here?”

“Massacre before dawn this morning. It was a slave raid. They
killed the old and weak, then took everyone else through a gate over there in
the apple trees.”

Escalla had found the body of one of the familiar half-orc
guards. She flew slowly backward, trying not to stare at the corpse.

“Wh-who did it?”

“Troglodytes.”

“Yeah.” Escalla looked bitterly at the stinking dead.
“Troglodytes led by a faerie.”

The Justicar looked over at her with his steadying dark eyes.
“You all right?”

“I’m all right.” Escalla blurred her wings and headed for the
apple trees. “I’m getting sick of this. Let’s get ’em.”

A dead troglodyte lay near the gate tree. As Jus fished the
carefully folded black threads from his pouch, Escalla wincingly drew close to
the bisected troglodyte. A javelin lay glittering in the grass nearby, the head
severed from the shaft in the tell-tale sign of Jus’ celebrated parry
technique.

“Ick! It stinks like an orc’s outhouse!”

“Oil.” The Justicar wrinkled his nose at the stink. “They
excrete an offensive oil when roused.”

“It worked. I’m offended.” Escalla looked at the hideous
splay of troglodyte organs lying on the ground. “Do you have a key to this
gate?”

Jus held up a glimmering black thread and said, “I’m pretty
sure I do.”

“Then try this locator spell thing of yours. Let’s see where
the slowglass necklace is hiding.”

Lord Charn had cast the spell on the necklace. The broken
link of Escalla’s necklace had been glued to a small sliver of enchanted wood,
and the wood had been hung from a length of thread where it could quiver and
swivel like a compass. Holding her battle wand casually beneath her arm, Escalla
hovered in midair and watched intently as Jus dangled the little charm and let
it slowly twist and settle.

The needle pointed south and hung quite still. The Justicar
looked at it intently, then bundled the charm back up again.

“You father said it would start to quiver as we got closer.”

“Well it’s pretty damned still.” Escalla ran her fingers
through her long blonde hair, letting it spill like a waterfall down her back.
“Damn! That was one greedy piece of work, snitching the necklace!”

“We’re lucky they seem to value it.” Jus settled the faerie
into her accustomed place, setting her on his shoulder. “How long until the
light passes through the slowglass jewel?”

“Fourteen days. We’ll have plenty of time!” Escalla shrugged.
“We’re only an hour or two behind them. How far can they get?”

Walking around and around the dead troglodyte, Polk heaved a
sigh then unshipped a heavy ledger from his pack. He licked his pen—forgetting
it was a pen and not a pencil—and took notes with blue ink now staining his
tongue.

One trawglodite,
the little man scrawled awkwardly, using
spelling he invented on the fly. “Was it a mighty battle? Fierce?”

“It chucked a spear at me, and I cut it in half.”

“I see. I’ll put it down as a mighty blow, then.” Polk
sniffed, partly from troglodyte stink and partly in annoyance. “Son, do you have
any idea how hard it is to keep accurate records around you?”

“Look into my eyes and see how much I care, Polk.” Jus jerked
his thumb toward the gate. “Now come on! Let’s get out of here before the faerie
hunt finds us!”

“Wait! Hold on.” Escalla hovered with her spellbooks open.
She dusted herself in diamond powder from her kit packs and sent spell syllables
twisting through the air. Her skin took on a brief gleam of magic, which faded
cleverly from view. “There we go!”

Jus glowered. “What was that?”

“Stoneskin! It’s brand new. You’ll love it!” The girl posed,
admiring her perfect, pure white little arm. “Protects you from cuts, punctures,
bites, and swords!”

“Can I have one?”

“Tomorrow, man! What? You think I’m made of high level
spells?” Escalla ushered the way to the apple tree gate. “You’ve got armor,
muscles, and stuff. Now come on. Let’s get weaving!”

Jus held out one of his pieces of black silk thread. As it
passed beneath the arched apple boughs, a gateway shimmered into life. Polk
immediately walked past Jus into the gate, his quill pen behind one ear and a
half eaten apple in his mouth. Jus made an annoyed noise and stepped after the
man, Escalla flying along at his side.

* * *

They stepped out into a wilderness of charred, dead bones.

It had been a town once, a healthy place with earthen walls
topped by a palisade. Wooden houses and temples now lay burned and broken,
making shocking silhouettes against the night stars.

An ancient dolmen made an arch overhead—an arch tall enough
to shelter a giant. Jus straightened up, Cinders glistening like new iron in the
starlight. He listened for sounds, then strode into the ruins, surrounded by the
moan of wind traveling through the weeds.

As Polk crunched on his apple, a voice suddenly echoed from
the dark.

“Hold!”

The voice was very excited and very, very young. Jus, Polk,
and Escalla turned.

A young man slithered down from the earthen ramparts, holding
a crossbow in his hands. Chain mail rattled, and a long sword on the boy’s belt
threatened to spill him head over heels. He stumbled in his eagerness to keep
his captives covered as he yelled out into the dark.

“Sergeant! Sergeant! I’ve found them! I’ve got the Takers!”

Escalla instantly turned invisible. Jus held his peace until
three more men arrived in a clank and clatter of chain mail armor.

One of the newcomers took one look at the youth and bellowed
in rage, “Private Henry! Do these individuals look in the remotest way
reptilian?”

“N-no, Sarge, but—”

“Do they perhaps have claws or scales of a lizardlike
persuasion of which I am unaware?”

“Uh—” The recruit waved a hand in vindication. “But Sarge!
See! The big one’s wearing black!”

“Private Henry, you are a pustulous canker on the hallowed
butt of the border patrol!”

Annoyed by his recruit as only an old soldier could be, the
sergeant looked Jus and Polk carefully up and down. He kept his voice loud and
his hands resting near his weapons.

“Gendemen! Geltane is a strange place to be taking a stroll
in the dark.”

The Justicar made a bass growl in agreement, then nodded
slowly in the dark. “I’m on a private commission, hunting a murderer.” Jus
looked about at the ruined town. “Someone raided the refugee camp of Sour Patch.
The whole adult population’s gone.”

With a bitter huff of breath, the sergeant relaxed. His
martial fury gone, he revealed himself to be a very tired soldier. The man shook
his head and pointed across the ruined town.

“Well, I guess they must have come through here. Gods know
how. It’s at least twenty miles from here, but someone did see movement in the
ruins just before dawn.” The man turned and led the way along through the ruins.
“Found a trail. Looks like a couple of hundred people. The trail just seems to
start right about here, and we lose it about half a mile farther on.”

“Lose it how?”

The sergeant gave the helpless shrug of an angry, frustrated
man. “You got me beat. Come and see.” The man clicked his fingers. “Private
Henry, you light one field lantern in the approved fashion! Now, boy!”

It took Private Henry a good three minutes to manage the
mysteries of his tinderbox. As he worked furiously away in a corner, a little
patch of svelte perfection popped into existence beside Jus and produced a
brilliantly glowing stone upon a string.

“Hey, J-man! Hey, guys!” Escalla waved to the soldiers. “In
the interests of the preservation of social skills, I’m Escalla, the one with
the big nose is Polk, and the man with the dog skin is your pal and mine, the
Justicar!” Escalla produced her packets of sweets and began to hand out all
around. “Here you go. Good for the soul. Private Henry? Good tinderbox, man! You
really know how to strike those sparks!” Stared at by astounded soldiers,
Escalla slapped her hands and rubbed them together. “So what have we got?”

The Justicar laid a level glance upon Escalla and said, “My
partner, Escalla.” Jus bent down, producing his own charmed light stone—a gift
from Escalla many weeks ago. “Did anyone see who made these tracks?”

No one answered. These were the same tracks as those in Sour
Patch—troglodyte footprints flanking a horde of human tracks. The line of march
headed straight toward a gap in the ruined walls of the town.

The Justicar stood, looking carefully over the burned ruins
nearby. “What happened here?”

“Old history, my friend. The Takers came here a month ago!
The town began missing its people five by five, ten by ten. They sealed the
gates and gathered together in the temples. Then the Takers came and got ’em in
one go.” The Sergeant gestured to the dark. “Must have burned about two hundred
folk alive in the temples. The rest were just gone. Six hundred folk lost
without a trace.”

The Justicar turned a slow survey of the ruins. “These
‘Takers’… you know what they are?”

“Reptilian chameleons. Vicious. They’re like troglodytes,
only smarter. They have magic. They hit fast, they have brains. No one sees them
come or go. No trails ever last more than three miles.” The sergeant flexed his
hands. “All over Keoland it’s the same. Ain’t seen anything like it since the
giants.”

“Giants?”

“Three, maybe four years ago. Giants raided the whole
kingdom. Killed hundreds.” Walking along beside the trail left by the Takers,
the sergeant beckoned Escalla, the Justicar, and Polk to follow. “The forest
march is in ruins. We must have lost—what?—two thousand people in the last two
months.”

Polk ceased crunching on his apple and goggled. “Two
thousand
people! Son,
you’ve
got a problem!”

Escalla drolly raised one alabaster brow. “Thanks man. They
may have picked up on that one by now.”

The trail led straight through the shattered town ramparts
and then into overgrown fields. Old cabbage crops had gone to seed, and the
trampled plants showed the path of the prisoners and their reptilian guards as
they headed off toward a wilderness of scrub. The sergeant motioned toward a
flat patch over to one side of the trail.

“Found us a dead one there. Half-orcish boy, about ten, maybe
twelve. Shot in the back.”

Bending carefully over the indicated spot, the Justicar
searched carefully amongst the cabbage stalks. “You buried him?”

“Yep. Buried him at midday.”

Turning to the sergeant, Jus suddenly tilted his head. “You
said
shot.
Not hit by a javelin?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Could have been a javelin. No weapon
left in the wound.”

“But you said
shot!”
A soldier’s instincts were not to
be ignored. Jus knelt down over the trampled patch of earth and leaves. “Was he
found on his front or his back?”

“Lyin on his, ah, on his back.”

Escalla and Polk crowded close, watching in interest as the
Justicar combed the dirt with bare fingertips. It was soft black loam, well
seasoned with manure by patient gardeners. His fingertips struck something
buried in the muck. He brushed dirt aside, and then carefully began digging down
into the soil.

An arrow lay buried in the dirt point-upwards. It was a short
shaft, the point snapped off by the victim as he spun and fell.

The arrow shaft was ludicrously small and fine, like a scale
model of a crossbow bolt. Escalla looked at the thing and gave a little frown.

“It snapped off right down at the end?”

“No. I think it was made this short.” The Justicar carefully
blew dirt from the business end of the shaft. “See? There’s a metal shank in the
shaft where the point broke away. This arrow was made this long.”

It only measured six inches in length. Escalla picked up the
arrow, examined the wood, the feathers and the nock, then pitched it away from
her in disgust.

“It’s from a hand crossbow.”

Drow.
The dark elves. Only
they
used such weapons,
and drow haunted the dark places of the earth where troglodytes might dwell. Jus
and Escalla looked at each other in perfect shared knowledge, then stood up and
flanked the sergeant.

“Where did you lose the trail?”

The soldiers hurried them through the brush, looking left and
right to scan the darkness.

“Half a mile ahead. It just vanishes.” The sergeant waded
over tall cabbage stalks and broccoli. “We’ve seen it before. Do you know how
they do it?”

“I can guess.” Jus pitched the broken crossbow bolt away.
“Take us there.”

Jus’ voice seemed the one iron-hard, dependable thing in all
the world. The soldiers had never once asked for proof of his identity or
authority. The big man moved with a solid, tireless step, his eyes scanning for
danger and his thoughts kept to himself. The sergeant followed close behind like
a pup trailing a wolf.

Half a mile’s walk in the pitch darkness was no laughing
matter. The scrub land seemed full of roots and stumps designed to trip a man
over on his face. As the terrain separated the party out from one another, Jus
beckoned Escalla over to his side.