He blocked it with his right arm, struggling to push it away, and kept stabbing at it with his left. The wolfen’s claw-fingered hands grasped his head. One twist, and it would break his neck.
Claw-fingers dug into his face. Then the creature’s body stiffened, it gave a gurgling scream, and slumped over his. Haplo heaved the corpse off of his body, found the woman standing over him. The blue glow was fading from her runes. Her spear was in the wolfen’s back. She gave Haplo a hand, helped him to stand. He didn’t thank her for saving his life. She didn’t expect it. Today, maybe the next, he’d return the favor. It was that way … in the Labyrinth.
“Two of them,” he said, looking down at the corpses.
The woman yanked out her spear, inspected it to make certain it was still in good condition. The other had died from the electricity she’d had time to generate with the runes. Its body still smouldered.
“Scouts,” she said. “A hunting party.” She shook her chestnut hair out of her face. “They’ll be going for the squatters.”
“Yeah.” Haplo glanced back they way they’d come. Wolfen hunted in packs of thirty, forty creatures. There were fifteen squatters, five of them children.
“They don’t stand a chance.” It was an off-hand remark, accompanied by a shrug. Haplo wiped the blood and gore from his dagger.
“We could go back, help fight them,” the woman said.
“Two of us wouldn’t do that much good. We’d die with them. You know that.” In the distance, they could hear hoarse shouts—the squatters calling each other to the defense. Above that, the higher pitched voices of the women, singing the runes. And above that, higher still, the scream of a child. The woman’s face darkened, she glanced in that direction, irresolute.
“C’mon,” urged Haplo, sheathing his dagger. “There may be more of them around here.”
“No. They’re all in on the kill.” The child’s scream rose to a shrill shriek of terror.
“It’s the Sartan,” said Haplo, his voice harsh. “They put us in this hell. They’re the ones responsible for this evil.”
The woman looked at him, her brown eyes flecked with gold. “I wonder. Maybe it’s the evil inside us.”
Hefting her weapon, she started to walk. Haplo remained standing, looking after her. She was moving down a different path than the one they’d been walking. He could hear, behind them, the sounds of battle lessening. The child’s scream abruptly ended, mercifully cut short.
“Are you carrying my baby?” Haplo called after her. If the woman heard him, she didn’t answer, but kept walking. The dappled shadows of the leaves closed over her. She was lost to his sight. He strained to listen, to hear her moving through the brush. But she was a runner, she was good. She was silent.
Haplo glanced at the bodies lying at his feet. The wolfen would be occupied with the squatters for a long time, but eventually they’d smell fresh blood and come looking for it.
After all, what did it matter? A kid would only slow him down. He left, heading alone down the path he’d chosen, the path that led to the Gate, to escape.
22
The dwarves had spent centuries building the tunnels. The passageways branched out in all directions, the major routes extending norinth to the dwarven realms of Klag and Grish—realms now ominously silent—and vars-sorinth, to the land of the SeaKings and beyond to Thillia. The dwarves could have traveled overland; the trade routes to the sorinth, particularly, were well established. But they preferred (he darkness and privacy of their tunnels. Dwarves dislike and distrust “light seekers” as they refer disparagingly to humans and elves.
Traveling the tunnels made sense, it was plainly safer; but Drugar took grim delight in the knowledge that his “victims” hated the tunnels, hated the smothering, closed-in feeling, hated—above all—the darkness. The tunnels were built for people of Drugar’s height. The humans and the taller elf had to hunch over when they walked, sometimes even crawl on hands and knees. Muscles rebelled, bodies ached, knees were bruised, palms were raw and bleeding. In satisfaction, Drugar watched them sweat, heard them pant for air and groan in pain. His only regret was that they were moving much too swiftly. The elf, in particular, was extremely anxious to reach his homeland. Rega and Roland were just anxious to get out.
They paused only for short rests, and then only when they were near collapsing from exhaustion. Drugar often stayed awake, watching them sleep, fingering the blade of his knife. He could have murdered them at any time, for the fools trusted him now. But killing them would be a barren gesture. He might as well have let the tytans kill them. No, he hadn’t risked his own Hfe to save these wretches just to knife them in their sleep. They must first watch as Drugar had watched, they must first witness the slaughter of their loved ones. They must experience the horror, the helplessness. They must battle without, hope, knowing that their entire race was going to be wiped out. Then, and only then, would Drugar permit them to die. Then he could die himself.
But the body cannot live on obsession alone. The dwarf had to sleep himself, and when he could be heard loudly snoring, his victims talked.
“Do you know where we are?” Paithan edged his way painfully over to where Roland was sitting, nursing torn hands.
“No.”
“What if he’s leading us the wrong way? Up norinth?”
“Why should he? I wish we had some of that ointment stuff of Rega’s.”
“Maybe she had it with her—”
“Don’t wake her. Poor kid, she’s about done in.” Roland wrung his hands, wincing. “Ouch, damn that stings.”
Paithan shook his head. They couldn’t see each other, the dwarf had insisted the torch be doused when they weren’t moving. The wood used to make it burned long, but they had traveled far, and it was rapidly being consumed.
“I think we should risk going up,” said Paithan, after a moment’s pause. “I have my etherilite[25] with me. I can tell where we are.” Roland shrugged. “Suit yourself. I don’t want to meet those bastards again. I’m considering staying down here permanently. I’m getting kind of used to it.”
“What about your people?”
“What the hell can I do to help them?”
“You could warn them …”
“As fast as those bastards travel, they’re probably already there by now. Let the knights fight ’em. That’s what they’re trained for.”
“You’re a coward. You’re not worthy of—” Paithan realized what he had been about to say, snapped his mouth shut on the words.
Roland kindly finished his sentence for him. “Not worthy of who? My wife?
Save-her-skin Rega?”
“Don’t talk about her like that!”
“I can talk about her any damn way I feel like, elf. She’s my wife, or have you forgotten that little fact? You know, by god, I think you have forgotten.” Roland was glib, talked tough. The words were a shell, meant to hold in his quivering guts. He liked to pretend he lived a danger-filled life, but it wasn’t true. Once he’d nearly been knifed in a barroom scuffle and another time he’d been mauled by an enraged wildeboar. Then there was the time he and Rega had fought fellow smugglers during a dispute over free trade. Strong and powerful, quick and cunning, Roland had emerged from these adventures with a couple of bruises and a few scratches.
Courage comes easy to a person in a fight. Adrenaline pumps, bloodlust burns. Courage is hard to find, however, when you’re tied to a tree and you’ve been splattered with the blood and brains of the man tied next to you. Roland was shaken, unnerved. Every time he fell asleep he saw that horrible scene again, played out before his closed eyes. He grew to bless the darkness, it hid his shivering. Time and again he’d caught himself waking with a scream on his lips.
25
A navigational device developed by the Quindiniars. A sliver of ornite is suspended in a tiny globe of magically enhanced glass. Because ornite always points a certain direction (believed by elven astrologers to be a magnetic pole), this direction is labeled norinth. The other directions are determined from that point.