City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3) (17 page)

The lighting in the tunnels was dim, provided by glowing spheres along the sides of the pathways.  The light was barely bright enough to see by. It also had a strange blue tint to it that made the world of tunnels seem dreamlike and surreal.  Xan reached the first branch in the path and turned right, though his eyes did linger down the left hand route for a time.  He wondered what would happen if he went that way.  The scope of the mechanna crafted city was truly breathtaking.  How far did their tunnels run, and how many years had they spent building it all? 

The assassin took another right at the next branch and immediately slowed his pace.  He could hear movement in the tunnel ahead of him.  It was faint, almost impossible to detect at first, but as he stilled himself and strained his hearing he picked up the sound of heavy footfalls moving down the metal corridors.  Unshod, clawed feet with a distinctly inhuman pacing.  It wasn't difficult to guess what the source of the noise was.  Xandrith immediately began to back track until he reached the previous branch in the corridor.  There was nowhere to hide in the main hallway, so he ducked quickly down the side path and tucked himself into the smallest point of darkness between two lights that he could manage to occupy. The mechanna had also neglected to put nice little hiding places in their tunnels. Altogether, Xan was starting to miss the complicated and intricate designs of the Order.

The other footsteps in the hallway grew louder as they drew nearer, and soon Xandrith could make out voices. The sounds were low, hoarse, and inhuman. It was also soon apparent that the creatures were speaking in a dialect that might have once been an offshoot of the human language, but was nothing much like it now. Two hulking shapes came into view, filling the tunnel at the branching of the two paths. The first was easily a head taller than Xan, hunched over so that it could move down the tunnels.  It had two spiraling horns on either side of its head that curled down and forward, jutting out in front of its jaw.  Its eyes gave off a feint red glow, from their two dark pits in its misshapen face. 

The second troll was even more horrifying than the first.  It was twice as big and walked on all fours to get through the relatively small tunnel.  Its head bristled with horns, each as long as Xandrith's hand.  They sprouted from all around the crown of its head, and down along the prominent bones of its cheeks.  Its body was lean and bulging with muscle. Its skin was a dark, mottled green that looked stretched nearly to bursting.  Both creatures stopped at the fork in the road. 

The larger troll spoke, its voice rumbled like thunder in a terrible storm. The other creature's head nodded as it listened, and then it replied in a quieter but no less disturbing voice.  Xandrith kept his hand firmly on the hilt of his knife.  If they saw him, he wouldn't have much time to react.   The smaller one lifted its head to the air, taking deep breaths through its nose.  Xandrith was keenly aware that he wasn't exactly at his cleanest.  He hadn't had time to freshen up.

“Maybe trolls like their food nice and ripe.” Young Xandrith said in a conspiratory whisper, having just appeared besides the real Xan. “You probably smell delicious to them. Nothing to be ashamed about.”

Xan frowned at his ghost, holding his tongue.

“Do you really want to be fresh and clean smelling just so you taste better when you get eaten by those guys?”  The ghost pointed down the hall. 

Xandrith ignored the other version of himself. It seemed the best way to deal with him. The ghost made a rude gesture and then vanished again. 

The smaller creature spoke again, the alien speech highlighted by a guttural laugh that held no real mirth. The larger creature replied, its own joyless laughter joining the other. Xandrith could feel the tension in the air above him. It was a weight that pressed down upon him until it felt almost impossible to draw an easy breath.

The trolls began to move again.  They proceeded down the path through which Xandrith had originally passed, and Xan let out a heavy, shuddering breath as their footsteps diminished into the distance.  That had been far too close.  He uncoiled himself and started off down the metal halls again, moving more quickly this time and with less worry about going quietly.  He'd lost even more time because of those two trolls, and there was no telling how far ahead of him Rand had gotten with the knife. 

Xandrith followed the directions he'd been given carefully, and eventually he reached the end of the underground tunnels.  The door, the seal that had been made to hide the entrance to the tunnels, was torn and twisted on the ground beside the portal.  The trolls had torn it from its solid hinges, ripping pieces of the mountainside out of the solid rock in the process.  Cold air and snow blew in through the opening.  The assassin approached cautiously.  He had no intention of charging out the door into the waiting arms of a massive troll.  Being torn apart didn't appeal to him. 

He could hear nothing over the howling of the wind as it whipped past the opening to the tunnels below.  Even though his skin wasn't as sensitive to the cold as it had once been, he could feet the bitter nip of the frosty air as it cut its way through the relative warmth of the tunnel's air.  Xandrith hadn't really thought about it before, but the ambient temperature within the forge had been much more comfortable than the outside temperature. He couldn't begin to guess how they'd regulated the temperature of such a large space, but that was just one of hundreds of questions he could have raised over the marvels created by the mechanna.  If he survived the end of the world, he'd have to make a point of asking some of those questions in the future. 

Xandrith reached the end of the passage and looked out onto the snowy slopes.  There were freshly cut paths of trampled snow leading out in multiple directions, but as far as Xandrith could see there were no trolls in the immediate vicinity.  Apparently they weren't worried about people escaping, and Xandrith suspected they had little reason to be concerned.  Even if some stragglers did manage to get past the two brutes Xandrith had snuck by, they would be out in the elements with only the supplies that they could carry with them.  The chances weren't good that they would survive.  A fleeting concern for the people of Forge Haven passed over Xandrith, but he chased it away with his own concerns.  He had to find Rand and the missing knife of bone.  The people of Forge would have to fend for themselves. 

Xandrith stepped out into the trodden snow. The snow was easily knee high where it hadn't been packed down by the feet of the passing troll horde.  The trolls had done him a favor by passing through ahead of him, he wouldn't need to fight the terrain and the snow.  He just needed to decide which direction to go.  He looked closely at the tracks. 

Only the two who'd entered the tunnel had come all the way down, but about ten feet up the slope there were clear signs of many more trolls passing.  Xandrith couldn't get a clear count, but he guessed there were at least a couple dozen, if not more.  The majority of the tracks were walking down the mountain from somewhere up higher, but some few were headed back upwards. It was a confusing mess of tracks.

"We probably want to go up the mountain. Rand was headed for an exit near the top of the Forge." Xandrith's double crouched down and investigated the tracks, running his insubstantial finger along the inside of one of the tracks. "That's a big guy."

"We don't know that the exit tunnels continued to run upwards, though.  The trolls might have come down from the top."  Xandrith suggested. 

The other Xandrith pointed to the widest area of tracks. "They were moving down from above. It seems to me that the largest group started higher up. Wouldn't they have started from where they met with Rand and that female? Those two would have told the trolls where to find the other hidden entrances."

"That's a good point." Xandrith agreed begrudgingly. "I suppose that's as good a place as any to get started regardless. They’re clearly not here. Unless they wanted to try and find their way down through the tunnels by nose, they’d need to have pretty good directions to navigate the tunnels. They might be following Rand’s scent down, but who knows how many of them are wondering around in there lost."

"Look at the positive side, all of those tracks were going down the mountain." Fake Xandrith pointed at the larger portion of downtrodden snow. "You probably won't have to fight those trolls."

Xandrith began his hike up the mountain. "I don't want to fight any trolls. They're harder to kill than orcs, and meaner. If we're careful, we can get in and out of this mess before we're caught."

Young Xan chuckled dryly. "Yes, caution has served us well so far."

The assassin frowned. "Your droll sense of humor is getting on my last nerve, ghost."

"You can't really blame me for your personality." 

He had a point.  Xandrith snapped his jaw closed and refused to talk to him anymore.  He was busy anyway.  He didn't need to be dividing his concentration between his work and his imaginary best friend.  Being crazy made everything more difficult. 

Xan crested a rise in the mountain, still following the trail left by the passing of the orcs traveling the opposite direction.  The jagged line of rock overlooked a dip in the mountain.  Xandrith dropped low as he spotted a single troll standing near a large opening in the mountain.  It wasn't looking in his direction, but the assassin wasn't going to take any chances.  The troll's attention was fixed on something in the snow at his side.  He was carrying a sword that he was using to poke at something that Xandrith couldn't see.  The assassin moved closer cautiously, shadowed by his doppelganger. 

"This is troubling." The phantom said from beside Xan. "The rest of his fellows must be inside right now. What would keep this one away from that fun?"

Xandrith didn't reply.  Unlike the ghost, his voice would carry on the wind, and he didn't need to make the situation any more difficult than it already was. 

The troll that remained behind was one of the smaller creatures.  It was just a bit shorter than Xandrith, with skin that shone bright orange beneath the harsh white light of the mountain.  As Xan drew closer to it, he could hear it laughing quietly to itself as it remained fixated on whatever it was poking at with its sword.  Xan drew his knife as he approached.  He would get one chance to take control of the situation.  The troll might have been small, but that didn't mean it wasn't powerful and dangerous.  Unfortunately he couldn't simply strike to kill the beast outright.  He needed information.  He needed to find Rand and the knife. 

Xan crept closer, moving so slowly that he felt like he was barely progressing at all. The snow was his enemy.  Even as packed down as it was, it crunched beneath his feet as he stepped down.  Only the horrible laughter of the troll and the wail of the wind as it tore past rock was there to hide the sound of Xan's advancement.  Patience and practice kept Xandrith from just sprinting the last few feet towards the troll.  The beast would be fast.  It would only need a fraction of a second to react.  Xan wasn't going to give it that.  He drew to within a single step of the creature's back and shifted his grip on his knife.  He'd need to be precise.  His eyes passed over the knots of muscle that comprised the troll's back, looking for the weaknesses in its physical design that were present in all living things.  Anything that needed to move had flaws in its armor. 

Xandrith spotted his moment and struck.   His first blow was directly to the troll’s soft underarm, just beneath the shoulder joint on the arm holding the sword.  Its thick skin resisted the point of Xandrith's knife, but he'd put everything he had into the thrust.  The troll's thick skin gave and Xandrith drove his blade deep into the joint of beast's shoulder.  It roared in anguish and tried to turn on Xan, but the assassin had been prepared for that.  He used the force of the troll's turn and his own forward momentum to twist his knife through sinew and muscle and into the fulcrum of the creatures shoulder joint.  He twisted his knife and leaned all of his weight against the blade. 

There was a dull pop and sickening rending sound as Xandrith's carefully planned move did exactly what he'd intended it to.  The troll's sword clattered to the ground, his arm hanging uselessly by some strands of flesh and a few bits of torn muscle.  Xan pulled his knife free and slammed the hilt into the creatures face again and again as it scrambled to get away from the source of its pain.  It fell backwards and Xandrith fell atop it, twisting so that they landed on the troll’s good arm with the elbow joint facing the wrong way.  A human's arm would have splintered at that joint, but the troll wasn't as easily broken.  Tendons pulled and snapped, but the arm held as the creature shrieked and tried to free its last functional arm.  Xan pinned it down with his knee and leaned into it.  The arm still refused to break, but he now had the troll pinned. 

"Where is the human, Rand?  Where is the bone knife?"  Xandrith asked his questions quickly and quietly.  His knife was resting at the troll’s throat.  His time was limited.  Trolls healed very quickly.  The arm he'd disabled with his knife would be working again in minutes, if not faster.  The longer his questioning took, the less likely it was to succeed. 

Even through its pain, the troll laughed.  Its eyes flicked over towards the place in the snow where it had been playing with its sword until recently.  Xandrith allowed his eyes to wander there for a second.  He didn't need to see all of the mess to know what he was looking at.  Pieces of Rand were strewn through the snow.  His dead, horrified eyes were open and starring out at Xandrith from a face that was mostly pure wreckage.  He hadn't died well. 

"Where is the knife?"  Xandrith restated his second question, feigning indifference.  No man deserved a death like that, but the assassin didn't have time for compassion.  It was wasted on the dead. 

The troll's body surged as it tried to throw Xandrith free and escape.  Xandrith spun his blade and drove the point into the troll's left eye, flipping the deflated orb out of its head and onto the ground.  The troll roared and thrashed about again.  It was all Xandrith could do to hold his place on top of it.