The Game of Fates (42 page)

D
urik panted lightly as he took
his helmet off and brushed the sweat from his brow.  It had been a long,
arduous climb so far and the water skins they’d filled in an underground stream
a while back seemed to be emptying quickly.  Surely time passed more quickly in
the loneliness of the underdark, without the sun interrupting the timeless
existence to be found here.  Ahead of him Mahtu squatted, pointing out
something to Arbelk and Gorgon who squatted on the top of the rise with him. 
Behind Durik, Manebrow was helping Jerrig and Troka get the large boar-hide bag
of climbing equipment up over a shelf and onto the rocky climbing path where
Durik stood.

Mahtu
had promised to take them to what he called the ‘Cross Way’; a long, mostly
straight and level passageway that led, unbeknownst to both of the surface
gens, almost directly between the Krall and Kale Gens as it traversed the
valley from far below.  When Durik had questioned him more thoroughly, Mahtu
had mentioned that he’d only traveled to the passage once and had never
actually traversed its length himself, and that was six years ago as part of an
escort for some orc scouts…  Durik hadn’t wanted to know more.

One
interesting thing Mahtu had told them about, however, was some group of
outcasts that were calling themselves a gen.  In fact, they were calling
themselves the ‘Deep Gen,’ if Mahtu was to be believed.  In pressing him
further, however, Mahtu revealed that he really didn’t know more about them
than their name, and that they seemed to have dominated the underdark beneath
the southern valley.  Durik and the rest of his party wondered if perhaps the
outcasts that they had encountered during the two moons they had spent training
in the underdark prior to the Trials of Caste might, in fact, be part of that
Deep Gen.  Manebrow thought probably not, since the outcasts they’d encountered
were unorganized and mostly naked, using rocks and long sticks made from the
shafts of the great underground mushrooms for weapons; all signs that they were
just normal outcast rabble, scavengers and nothing more.

Either
way, Durik was taking no chances down here in the unfamiliar terrain of the
underdark.  He’d assigned Arbelk to stick to Mahtu like glue and to serve as
the party’s forward scout, leaving his armor for Troka to carry.  The last
thing he wanted was for the seven of them, in their heavy metal armor, to get
surprised by the outcasts that called this abyssal realm their home.  They
needed all their equipment if they were to make the trip up Sheerface, and
their armor and weapons if they were to fight themselves out of whatever bad
situation they might find themselves stuck in when they got home.  Because of
that, he knew that outrunning whatever they might run into down here wasn’t an
option.

Soon
he reached the top of the slope and, with a clank that echoed uncomfortably, he
took a knee next to the other three.  Fortunately, the sound of running water
up ahead masked the sound nicely.  The armor was certainly taking a bit of getting
used to.

“Sire,”
Arbelk started after Gorgon nodded for him to go ahead, “It appears that we’ve
run into something of an outcast community.”

Durik
looked ahead where the passageway ran another thirty or so steps then dived
down a stairway into what appeared to be a large, sandy grotto, complete with
water dripping down the left wall, gathering little strength as it cascaded
down into a little pond at its base, passing through multiple lines of thick,
edible fungus that grew in obviously cultivated, uniform lines on the wall,
tightly packed and well nourished.  The chamber was dimly lit be green
phosphorescence that streaked the walls like paint thrown about wildly, all of
which showed clearly a number of mud brick dwellings.  Their doors were made of
some unrecognizable wood and the roofs of their small round dwellings were
giant mushroom tops that had been fitted to the rough mud walls.  As Durik
looked at them, he could tell that the wood was nothing more than the bark of a
giant mushroom stalk that had been formed to lay flat.

As
Jerrig and Troka came up and joined the other four, a rather well-built kobold,
dressed in a long, flaxen shirt that hung down past his knees, emerged from one
of the dwellings.  Over his back was a round shield of giant mushroom wood,
ringed in metal of some kind with a pointed metal cap sitting square in the
middle of it.  In his hands was a short spear with a metal tip and on his belt
sat a short sword in a scabbard.  As he adjusted the shield over his shoulder a
pair of young whelps, no older than five or six years, ran screaming past him,
one eventually tackling the other as they both went plunging into the pond. 
Their voices barely pierced the sounds of gurgling water, but it brought back
memories of Karto and Lat, Lord Karthan’s sons that the company had rescued
from the ant queen’s lair.

Gorgon
motioned for them all to move back down the slope to where they wouldn’t be
seen.  Slowly, and very carefully, the four of them did so with hardly a sound.

“Are
you sure this is the way to the Cross Way?” Durik pressed Mahtu as soon as they
were all out of sight.

“Yes,
grin room, grin light.  Is way!” he replied.  “Whole way was no kobolds in six
years,” he said, meaning that the whole route had been unoccupied six years
before.

“Sire,
it may be that these outcasts set up there sometime in the last few years,”
Arbelk said.

“These
aren’t ordinary outcasts,” Manebrow said as he shook his head.  “You saw the
metal on his shield and weapons.  With equipment like that, these guys probably
dominated everyone around them.  I think we’ve found that Deep Gen you were
talking about,” he said, looking at Mahtu.  “Besides, the outcasts we’ve seen
are a bunch of savages; they run around naked and certainly don’t build
permanent structures, much less nice ones like those mud-brick houses down
there.”

Durik
nodded his head in agreement.  “Well, outcasts or not, they’re not from our
gen, and we need to get past them.  What options do you see that we have?”

“We
could take ’em!” Gorgon muttered, fire shining in his eyes as he slammed a fist
into his other hand.

“Hold
on, Gorgon,” Manebrow said.  “I don’t think we need to go starting another war
here.  Besides, we don’t know how many of them there are.  This may be only the
muzzle of a much larger dog.”

“I
don’t think so,” Gorgon countered.  “After all, there haven’t been that many
outcasts from our gen, and probably not many from the Krall Gen either.  With
our gen’s Deep Guard Warrior Group making periodic patrols down here, well,
there just can’t be that many of them or we would have heard already!”

Manebrow
looked away in thought.  “Why is it we’ve never heard of the Cross Way?  It makes me wonder if our Deep Guard’s patrols ever come this far.  When’s the
last time you heard of them leaving for more than a day or two?  And, by the
way, why haven’t we ever heard of this Deep Gen, or of mud-brick houses in the
underdark and warriors armed with metal?  In two months in the underdark, your
yearling group never left the caverns that spiral far down into the earth below
Sheerface.  It may be that the entrance to the Cross Way lies hidden and the
Deep Guard in our gen have yet to discover it.  Did you think of that?”

Gorgon
frowned judiciously.  “No, but I still doubt there’s that many of them,” he
said with less enthusiasm.

“Well,
either way, we need to either go around them or go through them,” Durik said. 
“Mahtu, is there any other way to the Cross Way?”

Mahtu
shrugged his shoulders.  “No think so.  Maybe?”

“We
need to get to that Cross Way,” Manebrow emphasized.  “This is a race against
time, you know.  That orc horde certainly isn’t going to wait for us.”

Mahtu
looked around anxiously.  “Um, maybe is way back there?  Yoo know place where
two ways split?”  He was speaking about a previous split in the passageway,
where they’d followed down the right passage, leaving the much smaller left
passage unexplored.

“Do
you
think
that might take us there, or do you
know
?” Manebrow
pressed.

“I
tink is right,” Mahtu said.  It wasn’t a good answer, but it was probably
better than any other option they had right now.

“What
do you think, sire?” Manebrow asked.

“We
can try it,” Durik sighed.  It wouldn’t be the first wrong turn they’d
suffered, and he doubted it would be their last.  “We need to get moving,
however, if we’re going to get to Sheerface in time to do any good.”

“Right. 
Off we go then,” Manebrow looked at the warriors in the party.  Almost in
unison they scurried down the slope back the way they’d come.

Arbelk
stopped cold.  Mahtu saw him freeze and, after only one more step, he too
froze.  Behind the pair Gorgon held up his hand to the rest of the party,
signaling that they should freeze in place immediately.  After a few moments
the rest of the party complied, all of them looking anxiously down the boulder-strewn
slope with its low ceiling to their forward scout at the bottom of the slope.

Peering
into the darkness, Arbelk carefully backed up a couple of steps and slid around
behind a boulder, putting it between himself and whatever was to his front.  Turning
around, he quietly put his sword away and drew his bow and an arrow from off
his back.  Looking Gorgon in the eyes, he shrugged his shoulders and gave a
look of uncertainty while holding up two fingers.

Slowly,
and ever so cautiously in his metal armor, Gorgon moved forward to join Arbelk
behind the boulder.  Seconds after he arrived Durik and Manebrow joined them.

“I’m
not sure exactly what I saw, but on the other side of this mudflat,” he
whispered, indicating the muddy field in front of him, “I thought I saw a pair
of kobold heads pop out from behind two different boulders, on either side of
that exit,” he said, motioning toward a passage that had the look of being
carved out of the far wall, and not by nature.

Durik
poked his head out from behind the boulder for a moment to catch a glimpse of
what Arbelk was talking about.  As he looked, the bright white form of a kobold
darted from behind one of the boulders and into the exit.  A moment later, from
the other side of the exit, another kobold darted from behind the boulder into
the exit as well.

“They’ve
seen us, and they’re going for help!” Durik hissed.

“Oh
no, they’re not!” Gorgon stated.  Unsheathing his hammer, he ran from behind
the boulder and charged around the edge of the mudflat on the only ledge that
provided any solid ground.  Within moments he was to the far end of the mudflat
and was charging into the exit.  Behind him, the other six members of the party
came streaming after.

“Oh
no!  Deep Gen, they kill us!” Mahtu was keening to Arbelk.

“Keep
him quiet!” Manebrow hissed back at Arbelk, who passed the dirty look straight
on to Mahtu.

In
several moments Gorgon, despite his metal armor, caught up to the first of the
two watchers.  Seeing he was about to be taken down by the charging metal beast
behind him, the watcher dived behind a boulder and huddled up in a ball, hoping
that its fury would carry it right by him.

Gorgon
waited only long enough for Manebrow and Durik to appear around the bend so he
could point out the huddled watcher before continuing his sprint after the
second of the watchers.

For
all his endurance, the metal armor weighed terribly on Gorgon and, after giving
it all he had, he arrived at a small chamber with three other passages heading
out of it, one straight ahead and one to either hand.  While the construction
of the chamber wasn’t dwarven craftsmanship, it was solid and reliably built
nonetheless.

Gorgon
didn’t spend any time admiring the workmanship, however.  Stopping to listen,
he tried desperately to calm his heart down sufficiently to hear anything, but
the blood pounding in his ears was too loud, and soon he knew that he had lost
his prey.

“Argh!!!”
he cried in a strained hiss, slapping his thigh in frustration.  Turning about,
he began the walk back toward his companions, shaking his head at whatever was
to come.