by Lee Hayton
Oh, well. Her mind just didn’t run the right way for flirting. She knew it. Now, Baile knew it as well.
“Have you had any thoughts on how to stop Wella getting into the mountain today?” Shandra asked as they slowly walked back to the camp. “Apart from killing her and every guard who attempts to defend her, I really haven’t come up with another idea.”
“We’re not doing that.” Baile stared hard at her and Shandra nodded.
“I know. I stonewalled at that point, too. How about you?”
Baile stopped and stared at the ground with a frown on his face. “I think,” he said after a long pause, hesitating between each word, “that we should lead her into the mountain, exactly as she wishes.”
Shandra was shaking her head before he reached the end of his sentence. “No. We can’t do that. You didn’t hear what my brother Zen said about the weapon. It’s not just a new style or a slightly larger range. This thing could wipe out our entire district with one blast.”
“I don’t think she’ll get what she needs.”
She waited beside him for an explanation. Used to his quick-witted though off-the-mark quips, it was a strange sensation to see Baile deep in thought. Finally, after a good three minutes of silence had elapsed, he looked back up and stared out toward the horizon.
“Wella has been trying to get hold of this mineral for a while. Each time, the dragons or the dwarves have successfully fought her into retreat. If the strength of the main army hasn’t been enough to get her what she wanted, I doubt our motley collection of men and women will prove equal to the challenge.”
“Except, we’ve already taken her closer than she’s been before. As you said, the dwarves expect her to fight them on the main trails. They don’t know she’s found the tunnels into the very center of their territory. If we surprised a dragon that lives near the edge, then imagine how surprised those in the very heart of this hillside will be.”
But Baile just shrugged. “They’ve defended this place successfully for many years. I don’t think Wella’s going to crack the code in a day.”
He turned to Shandra, then suddenly reached out to ruffle her hair, his usual carefree smile back in place. “I might not have the stomach to kill her outright, but I’m more than happy to lead her into a maze of tunnels for her to meet certain death.”
Although the scenario was horrifying, he said it with such glee Shandra couldn’t help but join in his laughter.
She hoped Baile’s assessment was right and Wella would fail the trek into the heart of the mountain just as she’d struggled so many times before.
“What about the motley collection, though?”
When Baile frowned down at Shandra again, she explained. “The army. Our bit of it, at least. Unless Wella is going to join up with the rest of the battalion at some point, then these men and women will be fighting those same dwarves and dragons right alongside her. You know Wella—she might lead them into the battle but at the first real sign of trouble, the guards will get her out of the way until every other man is slaughtered.”
For a second, the grim sight Shandra had seen on a hillside in the neighboring mountain recurred to her. Wella safe under an overturned carriage while all about her were the remains of her strong harem of men.
Even if she didn’t call for them to sacrifice themselves, those in her harem seemed compelled to do so. They’d definitely place the makeshift army in front of her.
“Don’t forget, Ricci is amongst those men and women. So are Elgerry and Wilma. I might only have spoken with them a few times, but they’ve been loyal to me. I can’t imagine sacrificing them.”
“We’ll have to keep thinking on it.” Baile sighed and started forward to the campsite again.
Despite the excesses of the night before—and the night before that, and the night before that—some people were now milling about. A couple of women passed by on their right, waving merrily as they walked down to the stream.
Shandra flashed on the horrific carnage from the destruction of Wella’s harem again. This time, the victims wore the faces of the women who’d just walked past. Others looked like Elgerry, Wilma, and the broken form of Ricci, the flesh torn from his bones.
She shuddered, knocking her knuckles on the side on her head to drive out the terrifying images. As Baile had said, they would think on it.
They would find a way to save those fragile men and women, even as they let Wella fall to her knees.
Chapter Thirteen
Once again, Wella threw herself in the path of Baile’s attention. Shandra was getting sick of seeing her caress him or whisper secret jokes into his ear. As they got chummy, she gave a long sigh and set about packing up the provisions they’d need for the trek ahead.
The tunnels weren’t large enough to let the horses in, so the guards had worked quickly to set up a series of pens to keep them enclosed. As she led Starburst in to meet the other horses, Shandra bumped her hip against the quickly erected posts. One of them leaned at such an angle, she was scared it would collapse.
“Looks like this might be goodbye,” she whispered to the mare. “If the workmanship is the same low standard throughout.”
Starburst didn’t seem particularly concerned, running away to stretch her legs before taking shelter under a tree with wide-spread branches. Shandra wrinkled her nose and turned away. So much for that relationship, it was going about as well as the one with Baile.
Elgerry greeted her warmly as Shandra walked back to her belongings. “You went into the caves yesterday, right?”
“And lived to tell the tale.”
“How bad is it going to be?”
She stopped fiddling with her pack and turned to see the man’s face was pale and his eyes wide. “Are you scared of the dark or small spaces?”
“A bit of both.” He looked over his shoulder, then leaned forward to whisper, “It’s not completely dark in there, is it? We’ll be taking torches.”
“If you run into a dragon, those torches will be extinguished before you know it. Otherwise, it’ll be able to track you far too easily.”
Shandra remembered the creature thrusting its thoughts into her head and shuddered. The poor man seemed frightened enough without telling him that weirdness.
“What’s the penalty if I just walk away right now?”
She straightened up and looked Elgerry in the eye. “You know the penalty. If you get caught deserting, you’ll be put to death.”
Elgerry’s hands were wringing together. “I heard they weren’t as strict nowadays.”
“I’ve heard other tales”—Shandra shifted her weight from one foot to the other—“but nothing that ends up differently. From what I heard, if they don’t kill you outright, they place you at the front of every charge until the enemy does it for you. Either way, it’s the same outcome.”
“Your brother deserted, didn’t he?”
“Zen did but the army had already recorded him as dead before he scarpered. From what I heard, it was accurate enough at the time. If a witch hadn’t taken a fancy to him, he’d be—” Shandra drew a finger across her throat.
“Still, they know he’s alive now and yet he’s still running around free.”
“He’s part of his own army now.” Shandra sighed and shook her head. “Look, if you want to try to get away, I’ll do my best to cover for you. I don’t know where Zen’s men have moved onto and he’s certainly not returning to the last place I saw him. That’s the first place Wella would look.”
“You’d do that?”
Shandra nodded. “I’ll happily do that for you.” She hesitated and tipped her head to one side. “And Wilma if you’re leaving together.”
Elgerry blushed and ducked his head down a second too late to hide it. “Yeah. I might have to rescind that offer I made you.”
“What offer?” Shandra stared at him with a frown.
“When I said, I’d be happy to join your harem if you’re short a member.” Elgerry puffed out his chest and looked he
r in the eye. “I’m sorry to say, I’ve found a different place to lay my head.”
She nodded, careful not to smile. Considering the quality of the other men and women in the same party, Elgerry really was a catch. He didn’t compare to the clan brothers but then again, who did?
“I hope you find happiness together.” Shandra pulled him forward and laid a kiss on his cheek. “If you’re ever in need of safe harbor, feel free to drop by my farmhouse. Even if I don’t make it back, tell my brother Halv I sent you. You can tell him stories about our journey together, short though it may have been.”
Elgerry gave a sharp nod. “I’ll do that. If your brother is anything like you, I’m sure he’s a fine young man.” He turned to leave, then twisted back to face her. “I hope you do make it back out safely.”
Shandra thought of the twisting tunnels, so narrow she had to push with all her strength to make it through. She thought of the dragon, its vile thoughts intruding into her consciousness, making it almost impossible to hide.
“So do I.”
When the forward party reached the dragon’s lair, it had been stripped of its treasure. For a moment, Shandra thought they must be in the wrong place. Then she investigated the cavernous darkness overhead—the ceiling so high it hid in the blackness of empty space. Yeah. This was the right spot.
“Did you send men in here to haul the jewels out?” Shandra asked, turning to Wella with her eyebrows raised.
The woman snorted. “Do you think I have time to waste on those trinkets.” She held up her arms and patted her neck and earlobes a second later. “Does it look like I care for baubles? I’m a warrior. The gold might have come in handy but bugger if I’m going to drag that weight around with me while I’m searching for something far more precious.”
“I guess that means another dragon found this place unoccupied,” Baile said. He lifted his torch higher, though it did little more to penetrate the surrounding darkness. “It’s cleaned the whole place out.”
“Quick work. I wonder if they connect telepathically, the same way it did with us?”
Baile shot her a strange look. “What’s that?”
“The dragon. I heard its voice in my head when it chased us.” Now it was Shandra’s turn to frown. “Didn’t you?”
“No.” Baile turned to look behind them, gauging how many were close by. He dropped his voice down to a lower register. “It’s unusual, though not something that’s completely unheard of. If you have a link to the dragon’s thoughts, we might find that handy up ahead.”
“You can be our chief dragon spotter,” Wella said with a smirk. “It’s good to know you might finally come in useful.”
“If you don’t find me useful, you’re welcome to send me home right now.” Shandra glared at Wella, but the woman ignored her, curling a hand around Baile’s shoulder as though she had her own pile of treasure to worry about.
“Not now. Can you hear any of them around?” Wella tapped the side of her skull. “Any connections coming through?”
Shandra jerked her head away. “No. I certainly can’t hear one talking about cracking your head open like an egg and sucking out your brains.”
“How about we head on? I mean”—Baile pulled his mouth down—“we can stay here and shoot the breeze if you really prefer, but if you want to track down some dragons before we get out of here…”
“Lead the way, then.” Wella waited for him to step ahead, then inserted herself between him and Shandra. “I’ll just follow along.”
She tipped a lascivious wink at Shandra and made a groping motion with her hand aimed at Baile’s rear end.
The tunnel out the other side of the empty treasure cavern led upward. Although the path wasn’t steep, the gentle slope weighed on Shandra’s ability to breathe evenly. Once she heard Wella panting, she stopped trying to hide the effort.
At the next turn, Shandra almost cried out. The wall on one side fell away completely, revealing a deep chasm with a faint glow spreading up from the base. She pressed herself back against the rock, her fingers trying to find a grip to hold onto. When the wall reappeared, she gave a sigh of relief.
“How’re you doing back there?” Baile called out. Shandra nodded, then yelled back she was good, along with another dozen voices behind her.
“I sure hope they find a dragon soon,” a man grumbled from farther down the line.
“Fuck that for a joke,” another responded. “I’m happy if we come across nothing and emerge at the other end still alive.”
Time ceased to hold meaning as the small army clambered through the warren of tunnels. The turns, some right, some left, became jumbled together in Shandra’s mind, so she soon lost all sense of direction. At one thin spot, where she had to shove herself through a narrow gap in the rock, she lost the difference between up and down. When she popped out the other side, she staggered, bumping heavily into the wall.
“There’s another cavern up ahead,” Baile called back down the line. “If there’s treasure, this could be home to another dragon.”
“Get up here, Shandra. Put those telekinetic skills to some good use.” Wella’s voice made her skin crawl, but she obediently moved forward, nodding to Baile as she passed.
“I can’t hear anything,” she told Wella. “The last time, the dragon only came into my head when it had seen us.”
“I don’t care how it works, just do your thing and report back.”
Shandra inched forward, wishing she was back at the stream this morning, with clean water swirling around her body and clean air breathed deep into her lungs. The air inside the tunnels was fetid and disturbingly warm. It reminded her of dead things rotting away to nothing in the compost bin.
When the tunnel turned again, off to her right, Shandra slowed down, not wanting a repeat of the chasm earlier. She inched over the rough ground, the torch in one hand spitting a sudden burst of sparks over her forearm.
The cavern she crawled into was larger than the first. The echo of her steps seemed to come back to her from miles away. The jewels were piled higher than the first dragon’s stash. This treasure had been added to for longer—perhaps bulked up that very morning from the dead dragon’s lair.
“Can you sense anything?”
Shandra ignored Wella as she walked further into the cavern. The ground under her feet felt different and she crouched down, feeling the porous surface of the aerated rock.
Had this once been a volcano, throwing pumice into the air, rock suffused with the air until it floated?
“I can’t see—”
Shandra’s feet gave way beneath her and she fell, her right side scraping against dense rock until her clothing gave way to bare skin, then bloodied flesh.
A second later, she landed hard on the solid rock again. Her breath rushed out of her body and her jaw clicked shut, cutting into her tongue.
“What’s happening?” Wella’s imperious voice called out into the darkness. “Where’d you go?”
For a moment, Shandra toyed with the idea of not answering. Let the overlord find the same trap as she had. Instead, she picked herself up and brushed her hands over her body to feel the extent of the damage. Her foot brushed against something and she jumped back, then realized it was the torch, extinguished in the fall.
“Watch out!” Shandra peered above her, trying to work out how she’d fallen and how on earth to get back to where she’d been before. “The floor of the cavern gave way beneath me. Stick to the edge of the tunnel to be safe.”
The rock she now stood on must be the base to another cave beneath the one with the mountain of jewels. Shandra could feel empty space on her left side, hard rock on her right. That was the only way she’d get back up, so she climbed, struggling to find hand and footholds in the dark.
“What’s going on?” Wella sounded as though Shandra’s accident was a personal affront. “How can the floor collapse when it’s solid bloody rock?”
Shandra saved her breath for the climb. A few minutes later, she bridg
ed the lip of the hole her body had created and lay panting on the floor of the original cave.
“Thank goodness, you’re all right.” Baile ran to her side, dropping to his knee and heaving her up over his shoulder to carry her back to the tunnel. “You’re all cut up.”
“It’s just a few scrapes from the rock.” She dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand. “There’s another cave beneath this one. We’d better stick close to the edges if we want to stay safe.”
“No.” Baile shook his head. He walked around the edge of where the cavern floor had given way and held his torch to a fixture mounted on the side of the rockface. Another few yards along, he did the same, and the same again.
As the light penetrated the darkness of the cavern below where they stood, Shandra saw it wasn’t a natural cave in the rock at all.
“It’s a mine,” she said in an awed voice as the levels and holes became clear to see in the increasing light. “But where are the dwarves? Shouldn’t they be down here, working the area.”
“It must be an old one,” Wella said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Rest up, then we’re moving on again. This won’t get us where we need to be.”
“This is as far as we’re going.” Baile clambered back up the side of the collapse to stand in front of Wella, meeting her angry gaze head-on. “This isn’t a disused mine, there’ve been workers down there as short a time as a few hours ago. The dust hasn’t even settled from the last blast they set off.”
Shandra saw what he meant as the motes danced through the air in the space below them, some catching the light. Not enough to cause a problem breathing, but if the place had been left fallow, they would have fallen to the ground long ago. Even her unexpected arrival through the roof of the cave wouldn’t have caused that much disturbance.
Baile handed his torch over to Wella. “This is far enough. You told us we’d be free to go once we led you to where you could get the minerals you sought. Well”—he waved his hand around the two-leveled chamber—“this is obviously a dwarf mine and you can see where the dragons have piled up their treasures. Wait here for long enough, and your long-awaited prize will show up. I want you to honor your part of the bargain.”
