“You need to rest, Mal,” she protested. “You shouldn’t be movin’. I can carry Dhamon. I can! All of us need…”
“We need to get out of here,” he gasped. “Just like you said. There’ll be more dwarves soon, wondering what the quake did to their blessed valley. Time to heal later, Riki— provided we can get out of here alive.”
The ground trembled again. Maldred had braced himself, but the half-elf wasn’t as quick to react. She tumbled to the ground and managed to catch herself on a spire. The ground shook a moment more, then quieted.
You coming? Maldred mouthed, as the half-elf picked herself up. He turned and started up the mountainside again.
They recovered two bulging bags of gemstones on their way up, Rikali carrying them when Maldred insisted he could handle Dhamon by himself. Even so, he stumbled a half a dozen times as they continued on. The mountain rumbled twice more as they climbed—aftershocks of the first quake or precursors to another. Fear made them drive themselves faster.
“It’s still here,” Rikali said when she spotted the wagon. “Pigs, but I figured the horses would be long gone—takin’ all of our gems with them.” A moment later she saw why the horses hadn’t bolted. A boulder had tumbled down, blocking the horses’ path. There had been nowhere for them to flee.
Maldred nested Dhamon on top of the bags in the wagon bed, using their stolen clothes to pad him. Fortunately, the wagon had received little damage. Maldred sagged to his knees and closed his eyes. He sat back, opened his mouth to say something, then passed out and fell onto his back.
“Mal!” Rikali struggled to pull him up, but he was dead weight and too much for her. Fetch deposited the bag of gems he had somehow managed to hold onto, then scurried to Maldred’s side and began tugging on his shirt trying to help. “Worthless,” the half-elf spat at the kobold. “You had a hard enough time with the sacks of gemstones. Ain’t possible for you to lift Mal.” Undaunted, the kobold put his effort into pinching the tight flesh of Dhamon’s face and chittering at him in his odd native tongue, which he knew the human found irritating.
Dhamon’s eyes fluttered open as he softly moaned. “What…” Fetch nodded toward the back of the wagon.
“Help me,” Rikali urged him. “C’mon, you can do it.”
Dhamon shook off the dizziness and reached over the back of the wagon, wrapping his arms around Maldred’s chest. Muscles bunched and his jaw tightened as he tugged the big man into the back of the wagon. “Heavier than he looks,” Dhamon huffed, his arms momentarily numb from the effort. “Much heavier.” He slumped next to Maldred and his fingers felt about his own forehead, finding the gash and pressing tentatively on it.
“Get us out of here, Fetch,” Dhamon snapped. “Before we have more company.”
The kobold scampered to the front of the wagon and put his shoulder against the boulder blocking it. He grunted and cursed, his muscles straining. Rikali joined him and pushed hard. The earth helped the pair’s efforts, rumbling slightly with another aftershock and providing just enough impetus to budge the rock. It rolled slowly down the mountainside, careening into natural pillars, sending shards of crystal into the air and breaking apart as it went.
Panting, the kobold climbed up onto the wagon, his feet dangling. Rikali passed him the reins, then scrambled up and ripped open Mal’s shirt, tearing the sleeve and fashioning it into a tourniquet for his injured arm.
“I can’t feel my arm, Dhamon,” Mal said, his voice so hoarse and soft he had to lean his face over to hear. “I can’t move it.”
Rikali offered him soothing words as Dhamon searched about beneath the canvas sacks and found a jug of hard cider. He poured some on the wound, and Maldred shuddered at the stinging sensation.
“There, you can feel something,” she said. “That’s a good sign.” Softer, she said, “Isn’t that a good sign, Dhamon?”
Dhamon didn’t reply. Holding his forehead, he was scrutinizing his big friend, his eyes unusually wide and sympathetic, but he was frowning. “I hope so,” he finally whispered.
Rikali regarded Dhamon for a moment. “Perhaps this should be me layin’ here instead of Mal,” she said too softly for him to hear.
Then she returned her full attention to the big man and tried to blot some of the blood away with a section of her own tunic. “Where should we go? Someplace to get him help. Someplace. Dhamon, I don’t know what to…” she started.
“We have got to get away from here,” Dhamon said, wincing slightly as he poured more cider onto Maldred’s arm. “Toward Blöten. Fetch knows the way.”
Four nights later they sat around a fire roasting a large rabbit. Despite the late hour, the air was still hot. The ground was so starved for water that it had become powdery like ash. Fetch risked a few sips from his last water-skin and grumbled that they’d be even richer if they could find a way to make it rain in these mountains.
Many of the clothes they had claimed from the merchant wagon had been fashioned into bandages for Maldred, replaced as they were needed.
Dhamon refused Rikali’s attempts to bandage him, saying he wanted all the available cloth saved for Mal. He convinced the half-elf that he looked far worse than he felt—though he was certain he’d either bruised or broken a few ribs. He moved carefully, and breathed shallowly. His oily hair was matted with blood, and it was badly tangled and streaked gray and brown with dust and dirt. The stubble on his face was becoming an uneven and unsightly beard, and his clothes were soiled and tattered. He’d managed to save one shirt from the merchant haul, tucking it away beneath a sack of gems so the others wouldn’t find it and rip it into bandages. But there was no reason to wear it now—it was for later, he decided, when he reached Blöten and needed to look better.
All their clothes were dark with sweat stains and dried blood. Fetch had fared the best, escaping with only a few scrapes, though his clothes were riddled with holes. He was playing nursemaid to the rest of them, inspecting the cuts and bruises they’d picked up from their ride down the mountain, and serving as their sentry.
Now, with his good hand, Maldred was tracing patterns in the dirt. His wounded arm was wrapped close to his chest to keep it immobile. The kobold intently watched the big man, thinking the symbols mystical and part of some spell. He tried to copy the patterns, then grew bored when he couldn’t fathom them and instead busied himself by passing out wooden plates.
After Fetch finished waiting on them, and after he wolfed down his own meager share of the cooked rabbit, he recovered the last jug of distilled spirits from the wagon and placed it next to Dhamon. In a great show he withdrew the old man pipe from its pouch, tamped tobacco into the bowl, and lit it with his finger in an effort to demonstrate to all that he’d truly perfected the fire enchantment.
After that, the kobold paced in front of them, clicking his pointed teeth on the stem and gently thwacking his hoopak on the ground while he waited for a magical request. When none came, he took a deep puff on the pipe, blew a smoke ring into the air, and broke the silence. “At least I didn’t lose my weapon in that quake, like Maldred and Riki did. Didn’t have to take one of them dwarven axes like Mal,” he stated. “At least Dhamon’s pretty sword stayed in his belt. So we had some good fortune after all. My ‘old man’ didn’t get a scratch on him. And we got all these rough gems…” He frowned when he saw Maldred glaring at him. “Oops. Well, I’m sure you’ll find another sword just as big and heavy and sharp,” he said quickly. “And we’ll get some more daggers for Riki.
In Blöten.” When he figured out that nobody was appeased, the kobold finished with his pipe, carefully replacing it in the pouch, and then he excused himself to patrol the grounds around their camp—just to make sure no dwarves were tracking them.