“Huh,” Jerdren said shortly. “Unless kobolds seriously outnumber you, anyone can do that.” Blorys tugged at his sleeve, and he subsided.
“Well, what he said, at least. Don’t remember as any of us were so impressed with him and his tales, ’cept I remember him tellin’ us at some point that if you’re fighting goblins and one of ’em yells out, ‘Bree-yark!’ that means they give up.” He blinked in surprise as Blorys and Jerdren broke out laughing. “What?”
“He must have been army, wager anything!” Jerdren said finally. He was still chuckling. “We got told that when our company first went north to fight orcs. Bunch of green recruits, most of us were, and that nearly got us killed!”
Blorys shook his head. “It’s an old army joke. Just about every green village recruit in that company I ever talked to had heard that one. I’m not certain what it really means, but it’s something like, ‘Hey, you idiot!’ Bad insult, anyway. We didn’t get nearly killed, Jers. None of us was fool enough to stop fighting and wait for ’em to toss down their weapons, were we?”
“Stupid kind of joke,” the hunter said earnestly. “What if a man took it serious like?”
Eddis bit back a smile. Shed already noticed most of the Keep guards lacked a sense of humor. Blorys tipped her a wink, then went to open the door as someone tapped at the panel. A nearly bald old man in clerk’s robes came in with a small basket containing several dusty scrolls and another containing a stoppered ewer of water and plain wooden cups. The man murmured something rather anxiously. Blorys nodded and took the basket. The clerk scurried off, closing the door behind him.
“Wanted to know if we needed anyone to read Common,” Blor said as Jerdren raised an eyebrow. “Said some of these are old, the writing’s bad, and some are fading.”
“I’ll try,” Eddis said. She unrolled the first, shifting around until light fell on it, and pored over the contents. “Here,” she said at last. “This is from when Lord Macsen first began to build the Keep. He sent a large armed company on a long scouting party up the east road to see how far they could safely journey and what was there. And with orders—” her gaze flicked toward Jerdren—“to not take serious chances or engage the enemy, if there was one, because they were there to bring back information.
“Macsen’s men took their lord at his word—particularly the last words, because most of them returned alive. They’d spoken of orcs in a long, deep ravine where the road went northeast, of kobolds and something very large and dark that followed alongside them, back in the trees where all they could make out was the general size and shape and speed of it. It hadn’t come close, perhaps fearing their numbers, good arms and armor. They hadn’t gone after it, nor had they ever strayed from the road. They’d built large fires at night and kept watches by twos and threes, had heard plenty of wolves and other odd, disturbing cries in the night but saw only a huge flying shadow cross the fire once, nothing else.”
The second scroll yielded nothing but most of the rumors they’d already heard and a few new ones.
“Eater of men?” Jerdren scoffed. “That could be nearly anything! Orcs, lizardmen, ogres, too, though it’s said they prefer dwarf, and …” He faltered to an embarrassed silence, eyed Willow and Mead from under his brows.
“And elves,” Willow said dryly. “We know. Never mind, Jerdren.”
The third scroll was newer than the other two, less dusty. Eddis examined it for some moments, then glanced up. “I think I’ve found something. It’s—let me see—a new copy of a very old scroll, one Lord Macsen brought with him when he came here. There’s some notes here, see?” She indicated the beginning of the neatly written text. “It says, ‘I Veriyan, make this fair copy of a scroll scarce ten years old but damaged by the damp, and it was in turn a copy of one brought to these lands by the Lord Macsen himself. Some say the lord had that scroll from a kinsman who rode these lands and saw in person the wonders written down here. Others say that he bought the scroll or was given it, and this I believe to be true, since it was not ordered to be placed with histories.’”
Jerdren cleared his throat impatiently. Eddis shrugged and began scanning down the document as quickly as she could.
“Ah,” she said finally, “here is the most detailed thing so far. ‘To me it was told by one who journeyed there, a hero who knew nothing of the caverns until he drew near them and was accosted by dire and diverse enemies. Vast they are, with many ways in, and often the passage in is the only way out. Many the sorts of monster which dwelleth there, but like men and monsters, oft the varieties of these do not or cannot live together. For many long, weary days did this man and his followers battle the small dog-men armed with spears who withdrew from bright lights and fled from greater numbers. There they found the hyena who stalks on two legs and bears weaponry. Here were orcs, and traps, and the strange creatures that often inhabit the dark places of the world, and serve no one but themselves and their own hungers.’” Her nose wrinkled. Caves were all right, but nasty creatures lurking in the darkness… “‘And in yet another place, a vast silence and stench and a fear so great even the hero himself would not tread the darkness there.
“‘Often he spoke of these matters I here record and often told me how he came to believe all the foul creatures had been gathered by one master. Or, perhaps, dwelling there separately, they had come to serve a single master. But of this, he could provide no proof, though he said there were many caves he had not yet entered, or even discovered, when he and his men wearied of the battle.
“‘Here ends the tale of the caverns wherein dwelleth chaos.’”
She read silently and rapidly down the rest of the scroll, but it was short, and she soon rolled it up and laid it back in the basket with the others.
Brief silence. Blorys broke it. “It’s something, I suppose—let me finish, please, Jers. It seems to match with the other stories, so if it’s simply a tale, it’s consistent. That makes it more likely to have some basis in fact. We ourselves have seen orcs, and some of the Keep men have seen lizardmen. We have Mead’s word that there’s a strange or possibly mad man out in the north woods, in control of a mountain lion—but he may not be connected to the caves.”
“Maybe he was,” Mead said. “Maybe he was the one this hero suspected of controlling the caves and their evil occupants.”
“Anything’s possible,” Jerdren said. “To me, this scroll and everything else we’ve heard tells me we wouldn’t simply be riding out the east road to enjoy the falling leaves and the chill nights. And I’ll tell you what—me and my brother, we’ve fought not just orcs but worse monsters, way up on the north borders. We were part of an infantry company, sure, but we learned a few things there about fighting the brutes. They can all be killed, if you know what you’re doing.”
“And,” Blorys said, “if you have plenty of luck.”
“Same as for anything else, Brother,” Jerdren said, “but this I can tell you for fact. Creatures like that kill travelers, villagers, whatever’s handy or whatever they want. And they keep everything those folk had. Remember that one cave, Blor? It was the nastiest mess I’d ever seen—clothes and mail-shirts piled in heaps, rusted blades and arrows with the points all brittle and the feathers long since molted and half-eaten by bugs. Chests, locked ones, full of gold and silver coin, so much of it that it took three of us to carry it back to the commander’s wagon. And two others, filled with cut gems and jewelry, that made the dimmest man of us want to plunge his hands in it. Those bandits we just took maybe weren’t smart enough to hold onto much treasure, but you can trust orcs and the like to do just that.”