At that moment, Sarah materialized back in their midst. Noting the burning piles, the horrible stench, and the tenseness of the soldiers, she went wide-eyed.
“What happened? Were you attacked again?”
“The moment ye left, actually,” Pheron confirmed. “How is Darius? Will he survive?”
Smiling, Sarah shook her head. “Shardwyn is looking after him as we speak. Said he hadn’t seen a bite that bad in some time. Don’t worry, he said that he’ll be fine.”
“Excellent.” Rheyon let loose a deep sigh of relief. “Do ye need one of yer power crystals, sir Steve?”
“Ummm, I don’t think so.” Steve ignited both hands, trying to determine if his jhorun was fatigued or not. Not sensing any type of weariness, he shook his head. “So far, I think I’m good.”
“Keep one ready, nonetheless.” Rhenyon gestured to the far cavern wall. “They came from that direction. Shall we?”
“So these things can inflict pain, whether we have armor or not?”
“So it would seem,” Rhenyon answered, turning to address the soldier who had asked the question. “Why do ye ask, Kern?”
“If it matters not whether we are wearing this armor, then I would rather remove it.”
About to protest, Rhenyon closed his mouth with a snap. Armor or no armor? If they could be hurt either way, what was the point?
Taking the captain’s silence as permission, Kern started to unbuckle the protective leather padding he was wearing.
“Just a moment. We do not know if the armor saved Darius from losing a leg or not. I believe I will retain my armor. Whether ye choose to remove yer armor is yer choice to make.”
Not wanting to risk losing any appendage, Kern hastily retrieved his pieces of armor that had fallen to the ground.
Up near the mouth of the guur tunnel, Pheron and Breslin were both peering into the dark opening, whispering together. As one, they slipped inside, vanishing from sight.
“Shouldn’t they wait for us?” Steve wanted to know.
Rhenyon’s head jerked up.
“Pheron! Breslin!” the captain snapped. “Get back here, on the double! Acknowledge!”
Silence.
“Lieutenant!!”
Suddenly they could hear distant shouting. With a curse, Kern and Rhein darted into the tunnel, followed closely by Steve and Sarah. Rhenyon brought up the rear, hurrying them along so that they could render assistance as quickly as possible.
“Sir Steve! Light!”
Steve ignited both hands as he ran, racing to catch up to the two sprinting soldiers, all the while straining to hear if Sarah was still next to him. No matter how fast the soldiers ran, he wouldn’t dare try to outpace her. There was no way he’d leave her behind. Not in here. As they rounded yet another bend in the tunnel, he spared a few moments to glance behind him. There was his wife, just ahead of Rhenyon.
The shouting increased in volume as they progressed deeper into bowels of the earth. Without warning, the dwarf shot by them, heading in the opposite direction as fast as his short legs could carry him. A second later Pheron appeared, also running as fast as he could, shouting erratically. Breslin managed to avoid running into the humans, but Pheron wasn’t so lucky. Coming around the bend he ran full-tilt into Rhein as Kern dove out of the way in the nick of time. Both soldiers went down in a tumble of arms and legs. Hot on their trail, however, were a group of guur. As the insects observed the two bipeds fall to the ground, they clicked their pincers hungrily. They were about to feed. Life was good.
Running up to the fallen men, the lead guur prepared to gorge on the highly coveted piece of meat it had finally caught up with. The larger version of these strange bipedal creatures were much quicker than the smaller ones!
Pheron and Rhein started to disentangle themselves from each other when a searing blast of heat was felt directly above them. Lying as still as possible, with one soldier still draped over the other, they waited, motionless, as the entire tunnel was illuminated. Loud screeching noises sounded all about them, and yet they still did not move for fear of being caught in the deadly stream of fire whizzing by less than a foot above them.
A few of the hardier guur managed to survive Steve’s furious attack, only to stumble out of the roaring flames and quickly be dispatched by Rhenyon. These nasty insects weren’t nearly as fast when they were being roasted alive! The captain glanced down at his two lieutenants, still lying sprawled on the floor of the tunnel as Steve fired off jet after jet at the swarming bugs.
“Rhein! Pheron! Stay as ye are!” Rhenyon ordered. “Do not attempt to move!”
“Fear not, captain,” Rhein called, from underneath the bulk of Jheron’s body. “We are quite content to remain here for the time being.”
“Ye would not say that if ye saw what was trying to take a bite out of ye!”
Rhein twisted around on the ground to see for himself. Flat on his back, head tilted as far back as he was able to, all he could see between the jets of fire streaking over him were legs. Hundreds of insect legs.
“Wizards be damned!” Rhein started wiggling out from under Pheron, back towards the safety of the others.
All of a sudden Pheron let out a shout of alarm. From his ground-level vantage point, he had just caught sight of several of the large insects stealthily appearing out of the shadows behind them. Had he not been flat on his back, staring back at his companions, he would never have seen them.
“They approach from behind!”
Steve threw a quick look behind him. Sure enough, a group of about five guur were preparing to attack his companions where they were the weakest.
“Aw, crap. This is not good.” He turned to his wife, who was trying to make herself as flat as possible against the tunnel wall. “Babe, this is about to get seriously ugly. You need to get out of here. Get out of here now!!”
“What about the others? If they are hurt, I can’t help them!”
“We’re gonna have to chance it. I’m not risking you. Not now, not ever!”
Steve shared a quick look with Rhenyon, who gestured in the direction of his men. Steve nodded, whispering instructions to his wife.
“Ready?”
Sarah nodded, hugging the tunnel wall as Steve simultaneously let loose jets of fire both in front of and behind them.
Rhenyon yanked Kern away from an advancing bug, while simultaneously plunging his sword through the insect’s cranium. He pushed him towards Sarah.
“Ye will be the first. Go now! We are outnumbered here!”
Even in the midst of circumstances as dire as this, Kern bristled.
“With all due respects, captain, ye can take that suggestion and –”
Sarah lunged forward and grabbed Kern by the wrist. Both vanished right before their eyes, with echoes of Kern’s curses fading away moments later.
Steve addressed the two fallen soldiers who still hadn’t regained their feet.
“I’m going to fire off one helluva blast. Should be enough to back them off a bit. When I do, you two need to move, got it?”
Both fallen soldiers nodded.
Firing off a blast behind him to keep the bugs back there in check, he swung his right arm around to join his left. Before the guur could take advantage of the momentary lapse in their defenses, Steve fired off a massive wall of flames towards the carnivorous insects.
“Go!”
The two soldiers scrambled to their feet, joining their captain as they fought off more guur from the rear.
Sarah materialized right then, snagged Rhein by his ear, and vanished before his cursing could begin.
Pheron turned, noting Rhein’s absence. He then swung his gaze around the area, taking a head count.
“Captain! We lost Kern and Rhein! Were they taken by the guur? We have to get them back!”
Sarah appeared again, right before him. Pheron suddenly understood what had happened to his companions.
“Lady Sarah, do not even think about –”
Sarah gr
abbed the shaking finger and the two of them both vanished.
“It is just the two of us now, sir Steve,” Rhenyon called, hacking through the advancing horde of guur.
One guur hesitated, trying to decide which biped to sink it’s fangs into. Its hesitation cost it dearly; the head and fangs went flying left while the rest of the body flew right.
“Make that three.” Breslin retrieved the axe he had thrown, eyeing the surviving guur with undisguised hatred.
“I think I need a mimet!” Steve called.
In a move so blazingly fast that he could barely follow him with his eyes, Rhenyon slashed viciously through an attacking bug, whirled his sword to decapitate a second guur, spun around Steve between bursts of fire, and then returned to his position facing the rear. Steve’s mouth fell open, for in his mouth was the mimet that the captain had so deftly extracted from one of his pouches.
“Wow!” Spitting the disc into his hand, he replenished his jhorun before firing off a tremendous blast at yet another wave of insects who tried to overwhelm them with sheer numbers alone. Fanning the air in front of him, Steve glared at the remaining guur, all of which were now slowly retreating. He cast a look behind. Three guur remained.
“Would you step aside a minute?”
Rhenyon nodded, flattening himself along the tunnel wall while Steve incinerated everything behind them. With retreat now a possible option again, the three of them turned to face the last of the attacking horde.
“Let’s end this. I’m tired of smelling burnt bugs.”
Steve’s head swiveled as he counted the remaining insects. Seven left. Three leapt towards him. Make that four left, he corrected, nostrils flaring at the unpleasant odor of deep-fried guur.
The last four bugs paused to determine their next move. Attack or retreat?
Rhenyon lunged then, impaling one guur while decapitating a second. Their numbers halved yet again, the remaining two guur attempted a last ditch effort to eliminate this new foe. Deciding to attack the torso and the legs of the closest human simultaneously, both guur leapt in tandem. Both ignited in mid-jump; their charred carapaces landing with unceremonious thuds next to the captain.
“I really,” Steve kicked the smoking remains of a guur out of his way, “really hate bugs,” he finished.
In one fluid motion, Rhenyon cleaned his sword on the back of his tunic and slipped it neatly back into its scabbard.
“Nasty creatures, these guur,” he observed.
“Let us find the female and be done with this,” Breslin said.
“Lead the way, master dwarf.”
****
“How dare ye remove us from battle!” Pheron was bristling with anger. “I do not recall hearing an order for us to retreat. We left them to deal with those creatures without our help! Return us now!”
Sarah held up her hands to the angry lieutenant. “I know you’re mad, Pheron, but it’s what Rhenyon wanted. With us out of the way, they can go after that ant queen by themselves.”
“How do ye know it’s what the captain wanted?” Rhein wanted to know.
Standing in the plaza where not twenty-four hours ago they had a pleasant lunch together, Sarah explained her actions to the angry soldiers.
“Steve and Rhenyon were whispering together, and then he told me to get all of you to safety, myself included. Don’t you understand? My husband was worried about me. He wanted me safe. So he looked to Rhenyon to see if that’s how he felt about you three. And your captain agreed.”
“The captain wanted us gone?” Kern was incredulous. “I do not believe that at all.”
“I have a feeling that my husband is about to go nuclear,” Sarah carefully explained. “Remember the attack in the orchard? The explosions? Something along those lines. If any of us happen to be too close when he does that, then it’s all over for us.” Taking a deep breath, she continued. “Now, Steve will only fight like that if he feels that he won’t hurt anyone. Rhenyon and Breslin can take refuge behind him when that happens. Two people can do that,” Sarah said quickly, observing Pheron ready to interject a complaint, “but not five, and certainly not six.”
Rhein put an arm on Pheron’s shoulder. “She’s right. I certainly don’t condone their decision, but I do see the logic of it.”
“Do ye feel that?” Kern had squatted down to lay a hand on the ground. “The ground is shaking.”
Pheron dropped to one knee, placing a hand on the rocky surface as well. “Aye, the ground is trembling. Is that from them?”
The rock floor continued to shake for a few moments more before slowly dissipating. The soldiers looked to Sarah for an explanation.
“I don’t know, I guess it could be them.” Sarah held up her hands. “Who’s to say that the ground doesn’t shake around here?”
Pheron straightened. “I can feel it trembling without even squatting down. It was not like that a few moments ago.”
“I feel it, too. And I could not earlier, either,” Kern helpfully supplied.
Rhein, still squatting, kept his hand firmly planted on the ground. “The shaking has increased in strength. They must really be going at it in there.”
****
“Well done, sir Steve!” Rhenyon fanned the air in front of him, trying to ward off the nauseating aroma of burnt bug. “Ye got near twenty that time!”
Replenishing his jhorun for the fifth time, Steve wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers.
“Stragglers?”
Breslin peered through the dense smoke at the retreating guur. “Five,” he reported.
“Can you see which way they went? Sooner or later one of these suckers are gonna lead us to the female’s lair.”
“They took the right tunnel up ahead. We have them on the run! Come, lads! We must not lose them!”
The dwarf and two humans raced to keep up with the fleeing survivors. Sprinting through various tunnels, Steve quickly lost track of how many lefts and rights they had taken. Was anyone as concerned as he was?
“Breslin!”
“Aye, lad!”
“Dude, tell me you’re not as lost as I am. Do you know where we’re at? I don’t want to have to worry about wandering around in these damn tunnels trying to find my way out!”
“I was born in here, lad,” Breslin wheezed out, running slightly behind him. “I cannot get lost in my own home.”
The tunnel they were following deposited them in a large cavern with several smaller openings dotted along the wall and ceiling. Guur holes? The retreating insects all disappeared into the same hole about four feet off the ground on the far wall. Running over to the tunnel to peer inside, Steve swore loudly.
“Cowardly sons of bitches! Think you’re safe in there?? Have a taste of this!”
Placing both arms directly in front of the tunnel opening, Steve sent a brutal blast of fire and energy into it, watching with satisfaction as the tunnel’s perimeter started to glow red. One order of guur flambé coming right up!
“Look out!!”
Rhenyon’s warning caused Steve to snap his head up. A reddish-orange light had appeared directly above him and grew brighter by the second.
“They have set a trap for ye, sir Steve! Get out of there!!”
With a bemused expression on his face, Steve watched as the exorbitant amount of jhorun he had just expelled rain down from the ceiling above, completely enveloping him in a shower of pure fire.
“Sir Steve! Can ye hear me? Get out of there!!”
“Lad! Drop and roll!”
The fire storm finally tapered off, leaving Steve bare to his waist with only his nohrstaff harness criss-crossing across his chest. His magically enhanced dwarven gauntlets remained unaffected as well.
“Why is it always my damn shirt? What’s the deal with that, anyway?”
Rhenyon ran up to him. Concern for his friend had him dropping formalities. “Steve, are ye alright? Are ye injured?”
“I’m fine. Lost my damn shirt, though.” He peered into the still smoking ho
le. “Think I got ‘em?”
Breslin nudged some debris that had fallen from the ceiling.
“I believe so, lad.”
“Where now?”
Rhenyon turned to Breslin. “Master dwarf? Ideas?”
“Aye, we must go deeper. The female guur will prefer to have her nest situated on at least three sides by solid rock. The better to defend it from intruders. A guur nest will have to be close to a source of water. In fact,” the dwarf paused, tapping his fingers on his axe, “I believe I have an idea where we might find her.”
“Where?”
“We are near the source of Duvvin river.”
“What river? I haven’t seen any river.” He glanced at the captain. “You?”
Rhenyon shook his head.
“It feeds the lake, lads. At the point where the river emerges above ground, there is a large cavern with several smaller caves scattered about. It would be a perfect place for a guur female to nest and hide. I have not actually laid eyes on that cavern in quite some time.”
“Lead the way, master dwarf. Sir Steve, if ye please, flanking position.”
****
“The rumblings have stopped,” Kern reported. “Either they successfully destroyed the female guur, or else –”
Pheron smacked the soldier on the back of the head. Hard.
“Think before ye speak, soldier!” he hissed furiously at him. He indicated where the female Nohrin sat, a scant ten feet away. “Lady Sarah is right over there. Speak nothing of this to her, understood?”
“Aye,” Kern lamely responded, rubbing the back of his sore head.
Sarah, in the meantime, had already detected the lack of vibrations in the rock floor. Since it was the one sure way she could tell that her husband was still alive, she had started praying for the trembling to begin anew.
Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy Page 36
