Ratastrophe Catastrophe (19 page)

Thanks to some lucky hacks and a small group of enthusiastic, rock-pelting teenagers, Gordo was winning his battle with the undead. Cutting down the last hideous corpse in his path, he paused to catch his breath before rounding up the remaining innocents. Not that there were many; the children had evidently decided pretty quickly that they didn’t like the place they’d woken up in, and most of them had already begun to follow Jimmy toward the exit tunnel.

It was just as well; things were about to get a lot worse.

Tambor had managed to scrabble back onto his ledge. He got shakily to his feet and patted the dust from his robe. I’m too old for this, he thought, as he lowered himself down onto one creaky knee and began to recite another spell.

“Come on, you stragglers! Get through the tunnel!”

Gordo sighed; being three foot nothing didn’t prepare you well for ordering children to follow you.

Farther along, Jimmy was having his own trouble maintaining order. He’d realized early on that the easiest way to control the situation would be to occasionally grab one kid, issue an instruction, and hope for the best. He reached out and grasped a jerkin.

“Hurry along,” he snapped. “There’s a terrible, er, five-headed troll coming!”

He looked down. A little girl with pigtails was trembling.

Calm down.

Diek was trying to dislodge The Voice from his skull. He clapped his hands over his ears and screamed.

Calm down!

He dropped to the ground, eyes suddenly devoid of soul.

Now, focus on the rock.

Groan wondered if the foreigner was lying behind the boulder, unconscious. He hoped he was. With an almighty effort, he put tremendous pressure on the rock and moved it forward a few feet. Then he let go, leaped back, and grimaced. The boulder was rolling toward him again, fast. He turned and ran.

Jimmy was having a hard time. He’d finally managed to assure the little girl with the pigtails that, no, there
wasn’t
a terrible five-headed troll coming, but that they did still need to hurry. He’d carried her to the head of the line but had to put her down again because, surprisingly for a little thing with not an ounce of fat on her, she’d weighed a ton.

“Quiet down!” he boomed. A few sniggers broke out about twenty heads down the line.

“Mummy says you shouldn’t shout at children,” said the little girl.

Jimmy raised one eyebrow. “Mummy’s not trapped inside a mountain,” he said, then stopped abruptly. He’d expected a few surprises, coming out of a mountain with thousands of children. A portcullis hadn’t been one of them.

It ran from wall to wall and blocked the path from floor to ceiling. He felt around for a lever but couldn’t find one. He turned back to the girl.

“Does Mummy have anything to say on the subject of subterranean portcullises?” he asked.

“Dunno,” said the girl. She sniffed. “Don’t fink she’s interested in that.”

No, thought Jimmy, I bet she isn’t. “Right,” he said. “Stand back. I’m going to lift it.”

He reached down and took hold of two squares in the iron lattice. Then he pulled with all his might. Nothing happened. A few small boys hurried up to help, but there was just no moving the thing.

Jimmy sighed. “Okay everyone,” he started. “We’ll have to go back….”

“We will
not
.”

Gordo appeared from behind the knees of a gangly teenager, and nudged his way up to the group at the portcullis. “Let’s move this thing, shall we?” he said.

The dwarf clasped his gnarled hands around the squares of the grid, and began to haul with all his might. Again, a few eager teens lent some dubious assistance. At last, there was a slow and dreary creak. Then the portcullis began to grind upward. A small boy near the front cheered and clapped his hands. He was soon joined by others. Gordo didn’t know why but, somehow, this made him feel about three inches taller.

“There’s not much space,” he breathed. “You, the girl with the pigtails, go through and see if there’s a button you can push to lock this thing in place once we’ve raised it.”

Despite Jimmy’s protests, the little girl stepped forward. Then she hesitated.

“Mummy says—”

“I don’t care. Just get through and do it!” Jimmy shouted.

The girl crouched down and crawled through the gap.

A few seconds later there followed a sharp click. It echoed off through the tunnel. Gordo breathed a sigh of relief and let go. The portcullis slid down again.

The rock had caught up with Groan Teethgrit and wedged the barbarian into a corner. He heaved his body at it, but the magical force driving it on was simply too powerful.

Tambor was halfway through his chant when he first consciously realized the power of the spell he was about to perform. This was no mere conjuration, this was the Doorway of Death. Once you’d cast it, there was definitely no going back. He didn’t even know what was likely to happen, only that it might involve his…paying a price. Back in his days at the Elistalis, he’d heard plenty of the older pupils talking about it, and most of the fragmentary conversations he’d caught were worrying. Some said that a terrible creature arrived to claim the victim, while others warned that even the act of invoking the spell drained the life from the caster. Tambor gulped; that was a possibility he was just going to have to entertain. He began to invoke the last line of the chant.

On reflection, it hadn’t been a bad old life really, full of exciting quests and astounding magical discoveries in the early days, full of…er…paperwork afterward. He came to the end of the spell, stopped, and felt the magic surge through him.

He pointed a finger at Diek Wustapha and prayed.

The spell took effect almost immediately.

There was a thunderclap, which resonated deep inside the base of the cavern, and a seam tore in the fabric of reality. Tambor gasped; he’d misjudged his positioning, and the portal hovered a short distance behind the foreigner, who was facing away from it, oblivious.

Maybe, thought Tambor, he’ll just step back and stumble straight into it. He smiled wanly; it was wishful thinking, and he knew it.

Diek was raising the pressure on Groan, his face contorted with the gut-wrenching effort required to steer the magic in his mind.

Tambor took a deep breath, steeled himself, and began to climb down from his ledge to the cavern floor.

“What’s the holdup?” shouted Jimmy, trying to peer past Gordo into the shadows beyond the portcullis. The dwarf had managed to lift the great gate once more, but he was groaning with the effort involved.

“Pigtails reckons she can’t press the button properly,” he called. “She’s not tall enough. I know the feeling.”

“I’ll do it,” said Jimmy, scrambling under the spikes that stabbed from the underside of the barrier. A click echoed through the tunnel, but this time Gordo waited a few seconds. Then he released his grip on the iron and stepped away. Mercifully, the portcullis stayed where it was.

Jimmy scrambled back through the gap. “See?” he said. “No problem. There might be away out, too. She can see a light.”

“Good.”

Gordo turned back toward the congregation of faces. “Everyone follow me!” he shouted, and ducked under the portcullis.

“Right,” said Jimmy. “I’m going back a bit to make sure we’ve got them all. Hopefully, we’ll meet up again out in the open.”

Groan Teethgrit pushed hard against the boulder, but Diek’s unshakable concentration was closing the gap, fast. He felt as if he were trapped in a vise powered by the gods. The harder he fought, the more the pressure built, squashing, squeezing, crushing, until—

It stopped, suddenly and without any apparent victory on Groan’s part. The barbarian eased himself from his crevice and lurched forward to see what had happened.

There was a fight going on.

From what little Groan could make out through the swirls of magic still crackling through the air, Tambor had barreled into the foreigner and was currently belting him with a bruised (but nevertheless effective) closed fist. The boy’s face was progressing through a series of strange attitudes; he looked both demonic and furious. As Groan headed toward the scuffle, Diek shot up an arm which coursed with energy and sent the old man careering back across the cavern. He gazed admiringly at his own hands and flashed the approaching barbarian an otherworldly smile.

Good. Very good. You see? These people are no match for us.

Groan drew his sword, swung it back in a wild arc, and let go.

Diek caught the blade in midair, and tossed it aside. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked, his voice now exuding darkness.

Tambor struggled to his feet, screamed in frustration, and charged.

Diek gave an evil cackle and stepped aside, but he was a fraction too late to avoid contact completely. Tambor flew past, catching the boy with a heavy blow on the side of the head before he disappeared into the dark doorway amid a flurry of curses. There was a loud roar from beyond. The portal sizzled, as if in the process of digesting the old sorcerer. Then it began to close.

But Diek had lost his concentration. He staggered, reeling from the old man’s blow, clutching his skull, and moaning.

He didn’t see Groan.

The barbarian bolted across the cavern, his muscular legs pumping with furious energy. He reached the foreigner, snatched him up by the neck, and hurled him at the shrinking darkness.

Diek awoke from his reverie just in time to snake out a hand and grab the edge of the doorway, but it was too late.

The portal closed. The cavern fell silent.

The last wisp of stray magic faded away. Groan stood ready to fight, one eye on the space previously occupied by Tambor’s doorway. I’ve gotta get myself a bigger sword, he thought.

“G
OOD-BYE, DULLITCH! MAY ALL
your future monarchs suffer the same hellish, vomitous luck that I’ve had to endure.”

Modeset tilted forward on tiptoe, allowed himself one final glimpse of the city, and dropped, down…down…down….

At this point, somewhere past the third floor, he landed on a flagpole, which propelled him back up at an alarming speed. He subsequently erupted through the wooden floor of a balcony on the fourth floor, crashed the wrong way through its awning, clung frantically to the tattered remains of the same, swung into the palace like a crazed monkey, and landed face first on the floor of the throne room before Quaris Sands and Burnie.

“Nice of you to drop by, milord,” said the troglodyte, ducking a brick that had followed the duke in. “At least you’re doing your bit to keep the crowd entertained.”

There followed an inevitable outburst of derisive laughter, punctuated by some serious blasphemy from the bruised duke. This petered out when the throne-room door came crashing down, and a sea of enraged parents poured in through the gap.

S
OMEHOW, BECAUSE OF A
strange conjunction of circumstances, Gordo found himself playing catch-up. Since leaving the mountain, he appeared to have lost the initiative. Children milled around him, pushing and shoving (in some cases without so much as an apology). It seemed as though, via some basic instinct, they knew the way home. Perhaps, Gordo thought, you log stuff on some higher level when you’re in a trance. Remarkable.

Jimmy caught up with him. “Bit of luck, that portcullis coming up easy,” he said.

The dwarf scowled. “It wasn’t luck and it wasn’t easy! It was strength, boy. Never judge a man by his size.

“Strength? You think?”

“Yes. Do you want to make something of it?”

“No, of course not.” Jimmy held up his hands in surrender. “I just wouldn’t of thought it, that’s all. You must be very, er, able.”

Gordo nodded. “You ever hear of the time when Groan defeated the seven-headed dragon of Anzell Bay?”

“Hmm…I think so,” Jimmy lied.

“I ripped the claws off it when he’d finished.”

“Amazing,” the thief muttered. “I bet that took some doing.”

“Ha! It’s no fun, I can tell you, manicuring a dragon. Grime gets right under your fingernails.”

“No, I’m sure. Have you seen Stump, by any chance?”

“Your mate with all the hair? I thought he was with you.

Jimmy shook his head. “He fell down a chute or something.”

“Ha! Silly sod. He’ll be in that mountain for weeks!”

“Oi,” shouted a voice.

Gordo and Jimmy tuned to see Groan emerging from the tunnel. The barbarian looked battered, bruised, and miserable. At least
he’s
unaffected, thought Gordo. As the barbarian approached, Jimmy looked around him. “Where’s Granddad?” he called.

There was a dreadful, dreadful silence. “E’s gone,” Groan managed, at last. “Sorry.”

Jimmy shook his head. “What do you mean ‘gone’?” he asked, fighting back the first hint of a tear. “Where? How?”

Groan took a while to answer. “He went fru the doorway, took the foreigner wiv him.”

“He was a brave man,” said Gordo, patting the thief affectionately on the leg. “Those children may very well owe their lives to him.”

“And us,” added Groan, who was prepared to go so far with sympathy, but didn’t want any sentimental issues interfering with his share of the reward.

A wind whistled on the mountainside.

“Looks like the children can’t wait to get back,” said Jimmy, trying not to show his sorrow. He was gesturing toward a group of thirty or forty youths who had wandered off the path to start a rock fight between the trees. “Bless them, eh?”

“Little demons,” Gordo snapped.

“City owes us money,” said Groan, with rancor.

Jimmy smiled at the thought of Modeset parting with gold; perhaps Dullitch’s purse-string vigilante wasn’t going to get away without a scratch after all.

“I wish I hadn’t lost that horse,” he said.

“So do we,” Gordo muttered.

The thief shook his head. “No, I meant for the ride home.”

“I like walkin’,” said Groan. “More chance of a fight.”

“Me too,” added Gordo. “Nice fresh air in your lungs.” He licked his lips. “I expect you’ll be in for your granddad’s fortune,” he said, grinning. “The spell book, that is.”