Roland's Path Page 8

  Roland began examining the tree and found that it was not rooted to the ground. It appeared to have been sheared off at the ground somewhere else and placed here. Roland grabbed the tree and flexed the muscles in his arms and chest. The tree tipped over, and Roland noted that it was hinged beneath and somehow rigged to a counter weight. Roland discovered a large hole leading into a tunnel below. Roland shoved the tree over to expose the hole to daylight. He left the dagger where it was, sunk into the wood, and peered down into the tunnel.

  Eldryn approached him and looked down into the tunnel as well.

  “How did you find that?”

  “Just lucky. A borrowed dagger showed me the way.”

  “I see,” Eldryn said. “So, what now? We don’t know how deep it is, or if it’s burdened with traps. Do we tie onto something up here and then lower ourselves in? Do we drop a lit torch down first so that we can see what we’re getting into? Does one of us lower the other down on the rope while…”

  Eldryn was answered abruptly when Roland dropped his sword in its scabbard, drew his axes, and jumped into the hole, feet first.

  “I guess you just jump in and we go from there,” Eldryn said to himself as much as to anyone else.

  Roland dropped for fourteen feet before he struck the ground with a thud. He looked around him in the dim daylight that shined down from above.

  “I feel a bit of a draft,” Roland said. “I think I see a tunnel leading off to the north.”

  “Well, move out of the way,” Eldryn said. “I’m going to light a torch and drop it down. Then I’ll jump down there with you.”

  Eldryn dropped the torch and Roland retrieved it. Eldryn slung his bow over his shoulder and lowered himself into the hole. He and Roland both winced when his armor scrapped the rock surface on the inside of the hole. Once he was hanging down into the tunnel arm’s length from the surface, he let himself drop. They both looked at the tunnel. It was roughly ten feet tall, and eight feet wide. Plenty of room to walk through but much too tight a space to fight in.

  Roland started into the cavern with the torch in his left hand and one of his axes in his right. Eldryn followed. Eldryn had unstrung his bow and had drawn his bastard sword.

  “You’re putting up the bow?” Roland asked.

  “Yes,” Eldryn replied. “A bow is no good underground. It requires too much of an arc during flight to be good at any distance.”

  Roland nodded, seeing the truth of it, and continued forward. Suddenly he felt a shift in the ground beneath him.

  “Back,” Roland yelled. “Quick!”

  The floor beneath them fell forward at a steep angle and a rush of oil poured down the steel plate they had walked out onto. Eldryn tried to jump back but there was oil on his heals before he could react. He slid, and fell to the surface of the steel plate.

  Roland slid forward, struggling to remain standing and his feet rapidly skidded toward the edge of a large pit. As Roland approached the pit, he saw razor sharp shards of lava glass mounted and pointing up from the bottom. Roland looked across the pit and estimated it to be about twenty feet to the ledge on the other side.

  “Leap when you hit the edge,” Roland yelled as he slid forward.

  Roland’s barely controlled slide continued to pick up speed. He bent his knees and crotched low as he reached the edge of the steel plate. He threw the torch across the pit and it landed on the other side. He leaned forward and the weight of his body brought him forward and over the edge. He looked down the sheer face of the pit and pushed off with all the strength his legs could muster. Roland jumped vertically across the hole.

  Roland saw that he would not make it to the landing. He stretched his long body and struck out with his axe. The axe blade caught just over the edge and Roland, gripping the haft, crashed into the far wall of the pit. He looked back in time to see Eldryn, with his sword in one hand, leaping toward him. He was not sure how El’ had managed to get his footing but was glad that he had.

  Roland stretched out his left hand and Eldryn caught it. Eldryn swung beneath Roland in a short arc that slapped him against the wall of the pit. Roland could hear the iron of his weapon begin to bend and scratch and he felt it edging toward the lip of the pit. Both boys hung on the blade of an axe.

  “Grab on,” Roland breathed to Eldryn. “I need my arm.”

  Eldryn grabbed Roland by his weapons belt and Roland pulled both bodies up to the edge with one arm. Once within reach, Roland grabbed for the edge of the pit with his other hand. He secured his grasp just as his axe slid off of the side.

  Hanging by one handhold, Roland tossed his axe over the edge of the pit and hoisted his and Eldryn’s weight up the side of the pit to the ledge. Once his elbows were hooked over the edge Roland looked down toward Eldryn.

  “Climb over me to the landing,” Roland said. “Once you’re up there, pull me up.”

  Eldryn began to climb over Roland slowly, finally reaching the landing and relative safety. Eldryn rolled over and, lying flat, began pulling Roland up and over the side. Both boys finally made it to the level surface of the tunnel.

  Both were breathing hard. Roland and Eldryn leaned over the edge to look down into the pit. Roland noticed a small ledge, no more than six to eight inches wide, along the side of the pit.

  “I guess that is the way to cross,” Roland said, indicating the ledge.

  “That was close,” Eldryn said between breaths.

  “Close indeed,” Roland said. “Let’s move on.”

  The pair continued down the passage until they came upon two bodies lying in the tunnel. The corpses were fresh, dark skinned, lithe of build, and possessed short cropped white hair. Roland examined one, Eldryn the other.

  “These are dark elves,” Eldryn said. “They are said to be among the most evil creatures ever to walk or breathe.”

  “This one is wearing some kind of symbol,” Roland said, eyeing what looked like two off set triangles. One of the triangles was at the base of the symbol, and the other askew to the side. The details were hard to make out in the torch light. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “This one is as well. They must be part of a clan, or army in these tunnels and caverns. Great.”

  Eldryn looked both ahead and behind them down the tunnel. From what he had heard of the dark elves they were the things of nightmares.

  “They have been stripped of most of their equipment,” Roland said. “Both were killed by a single dagger stab to the throat. Only one injury each and the blows appear to have been immediately fatal. It is my understanding that dark elves are virtually impossible to sneak up on, and the injuries are on their front. That means they probably saw their attacker or were at least looking in the attacker’s direction. That implies great skill.”

  “Ash?” Eldryn asked.

  “I hope so,” Roland replied.

  The two moved further down the tunnel and found a ladder cut into the stone leading down. Roland began climbing down the ladder while Eldryn continued to scan the tunnel behind them. Both young men reached the lower level and saw that they were in a room roughly thirty feet wide and thirty feet across. There was a hallway leading out of the room on each of three walls, and one door on the north wall.

  Neither boy knew much about the formation of natural caverns or the crafting of mine shafts, but the unusual nature of this room would be easy to mark for even the uneducated. They both noted that the floor, doorways, and some of the walls were clearly crafted by hand, a skilled hand. However, much of the tunnel they had come from looked more like a crudely cut mine shaft. They also saw that the stones in the floor and forming the door jams was marble.

  “Well, which way?” Eldryn asked.

  “We can’t depend on Ashcliff. He may not even know for sure. Let’s just travel and see what we find.”

  “Very well,” Eldryn said as he approached the door.

  Eldryn tried the knob and discovered that the door was unlocked. He threw the door open prepared for a demon or some other such
creature. He found five crossbow bolts loosed at him instead. Three of the bolts struck his shield, one his breastplate, and one his bracer, bruising his wrist. Eldryn dropped his sword from the pain in his hand and began to yell a string of obscenities when he remembered where he was.

  “Are you alright?” Roland asked.

  “Only hit me in the pride,” Eldryn said.

  Eldryn looked into a small closet that had apparently been designed for the single purpose of this trap. He saw the crossbows mounted on a wooden frame and a thin wire that ran from the door to the trigger mechanisms.

  “How about this way,” Roland said as he walked toward the hallway on his left.

  “One is just as good as another,” Eldryn replied as he picked up his sword.

  The boys continued in a direction they guessed was west for another thirty feet into the black with only their torch to push back the heavy dark. They came into another room about the size of the last one. This room had a hallway across from them, a door on the south side, a hallway on the north side that appeared to turn west, and another door on the north side that appeared to turn to the east.

  “Shall I try the door this time?” Roland asked.

  “No,” Eldryn said. “Surely they won’t booby trap the entire place. Eldryn walked to the door on the south side of the room and pulled it open with his shield held high.

  Five crossbow bolts flew out of another trap soaring at Eldryn. Four of them landed squarely into his shield, however, one was mounted low and struck his greaves. The bolt’s head was broken off by the iron armor but it skidded up and struck him soundly on the knee. A knot began to rise on his knee, and Eldryn could feel a small trickle of blood begin within his leg greaves.

  “Curse these dirt dwellers,” Eldryn said as he rubbed his knee.

  Roland approached the door, torch in one hand and axe in the other. He looked inside to discover a large room with what looked to be the same symbol they discovered on the dark elves drawn on the floor. There were four torches in the room, mounted on the walls and a brazier in the center of the symbol where the upper point of the triangle reached toward the point of the other triangle that sat askew.

  “What is this place?” Roland asked.

  “It looks like a summoning room. A place where wizards call and control fallen champions and their spawn. The symbol on the floor matches the one we found on the dark elves in the tunnel.”

  “Well, it’s not what we’re here after,” Roland said. “Let’s get going.”

  “I’m going through that door,” Eldryn said indicating the door on the north wall near the east corner.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Roland asked.

  “No, I do not,” Eldryn said, displaying a rare stubbornness. “But I am not going to allow them to make me afraid of simple doors.”

  Eldryn took hold of the door and jerked it open hard. To Roland’s amazement five more crossbow bolts struck Eldryn in the upper body. Three lodged in his already burdened shield, two slid just past the edge of his shield and pierced his breastplate. Eldryn fell back to the ground with the force of the blows.

  Roland ran to him and began working to get his armor off. Roland got the straps loose, being careful not to move the armor that the bolts were sticking through.

  “I think I would avoid any games of chance that involve betting, at least for the rest of the day,” Roland said. “Today you are not lucky.”

  Eldryn winced as Roland worked.

  “I told you once, Roland. Leave the joking to me. You’re terrible at it.”

  Roland took up Eldryn’s bastard sword. He braced one of the bolts in the corner formed by Eldryn’s blade and the hilt guard on his bastard sword. Roland snapped it quickly, breaking the bolt off cleanly. Eldryn struggled to contain a scream. Roland broke the other bolt off in the same fashion.

  Roland removed Eldryn’s breastplate and looked at the wounds. Eldryn had been remarkably lucky.

  “Perhaps today is your day for cards after all,” Roland said.

  Roland was looking at the heads of the bolts and noted that the first barbs of the bolts hadn’t made it past the armor. Roland had been worried that if the heads of the bolts were deep inside the flesh, he would have to cut them out, possibly causing even more damage than the bolt did initially.

  Roland remembered a time as a child when he had fallen while running with a fishing spear. Velryk had come to his cries and cut the barbs of the spear free of Roland’s leg. Velryk, always teaching, spoke to Roland then of conducting a similar operation on a fellow soldier who had been struck by an arrow. Roland had been lost in the tale of that battle when the sharp pain of Velryk’s dagger in his leg reminded him of his predicament.

  Roland grabbed a bolt in each hand.

  “El, did I ever tell you about the time that father told me about an ambush by archers?”

  As Eldryn began his reply Roland jerked the bolts quickly out. Eldryn gasped for breath.

  “Get up,” Roland said, hoping to encourage his friend. “You’re not really hurt.”

  “The heads didn’t go in?” Eldryn asked as he looked down at his chest.

  “No, they did not.”

  Roland took some extra cloth from the tail of Eldryn’s shirt and wrapped his chest, stopping the small amount of blood that was seeping out of Eldryn’s wounds.

  “There,” Roland said. “Now get dressed.”

  Eldryn pulled his armor back on slowly, not wanting to disturb the dressing on his puncture wounds. Roland looked down the hallway that ran from behind the latest trapped door. It appeared to run roughly forty feet and then open into a T intersection. Roland started down the hallway with Eldryn following him closely.

  Roland came to the intersection and looked east and west. Looking east Roland only saw hallway for as far as torch light would reveal. Looking west Roland saw that the hallway turned back to the north about twelve feet in. Roland started west.

  Roland turned north and followed the hallway for another thirty feet before coming to a door. At the sight of the door Eldryn raised his shield.

  “Hold this,” Roland said extending the torch toward Eldryn, “and move back.”

  Roland lifted his axe and struck the doorknob, knocking it cleanly out of the door while holding the door its self in place. Both young men heard several thumps strike the door on the other side. One of the crossbow bolts struck the door with such force that part of the head protruded through to their side of the doorway. Roland and Eldryn exchanged a tired look. How many traps could there be?

  The boys entered and found a descending staircase that ran into the dark as far as the light from their torch would travel.

  Roland began down the steps placing his feet lightly as Ashcliff had shown him. He had climbed down twenty feet when he heard some type of movement, and could see a landing approximately forty feet below him. Roland continued, axe in one hand and his retrieved torch in the other.

  Eldryn followed with his shield up and sword in hand. Eldryn moved quietly as well, but in his excitement, he scraped his shield against the stone wall. Both boys held their breath for a moment. When there seemed to be no response from around them, they continued.

  Step by step, controlling their breathing and fighting the urge to leap, they finally arrived at the landing. They saw that they were in a large round room with a single door on the far side. Between them and the door they discovered two very surprised creatures. Creatures of a squat, but mighty, build and skin the color of old bruises. Fangs protruded irregularly from cracked and stained lips.

  “What are those things?” Eldryn asked as the creatures lifted stoutly built crossbows and leveled them at the boys.

  Roland charged forward with Eldryn closely behind.

  “Gray Ogres,” Roland yelled. “Shorter than their above ground kin, but just as strong.”

  Roland charged forward and both creatures took aim at him. Both triggered their stout crossbows and the bolts cut through the air toward Roland. One bo
lt glanced off of his helmet rocking his head back. The other bolt struck Roland’s knee, felling him.

  Eldryn watched both bolts strike his friend and his rage flared. His rage? Well, perhaps not rage, but Eldryn felt the stirring of anger deep within him. He was, however, a well-trained warrior and he tried to immediately put his feelings away and continue toward the ogres with a layer of frost around his heart.

  Roland toppled to the ground, his knee bent in a direction that was not intended. He did, however, maintain his grasp on his axe and the torch. One of the gray ogres began preparing another crossbow bolt, the other hefted a heavy thick blade.

  Roland pulled himself up to a sitting position despite the strength sapping pain that stole lightning quick up his injured leg. He held his torch to the side and his axe at the ready.

  Eldryn, sword in hand and shield up, charged for the ogre with the large cleaver. He feigned an attack, and then ripped his sword away from the first ogre to strike the one still loading the crossbow. Eldryn’s attack was not meant for the ogre, but rather his weapon. Roland could still defend himself against a melee attack, but with a crossbow one could just stand back and slowly execute the fallen warrior, his fallen friend. The crossbow was reduced to nothing but a collection of wood and cable with one great swipe of Eldryn’s bastard sword.

  The ogre with the large sword grinned at his open chance. The ogre cast aside all thoughts of defense and raised his enormous blade high in the air. Eldryn, with his sword too far off course to use for attack or defense, utilized the only other attack available to him. Eldryn struck up hard with the steel edge of his shield against the ogre’s exposed chin. Blood sprayed from the ogre’s mouth as his jaw sagged away from the roof of his mouth in two distinct pieces.

  Eldryn attempted to quick-step back to put both of his opponents in a smaller angle for combat. The broken jaw injured the ogre, but his sword still fell with wicked accuracy. The edge struck Eldryn’s shield and shoulder, knocking him down to one knee and shattering his shield.

  Eldryn whipped a cut between the ogre’s legs aimed at the inside of its thigh. The cut was true and blood spewed out of the creature. The ogre fell back, now bleeding profusely from two different places. The beast attempted to stem the flow of its life out of its body, but had no success. The ogre was bleeding to death, and rapidly.