“No, we won’t,” Finder insisted, jiggling his wire in the lock, but a moment later, he fumbled the wire and it bounced through the grate. He slid his arm through the grate in an unsuccessful attempt to reach it.
Something crunched on the broken stone in the passage behind them. Finder froze, his lockpick forgotten. Very slowly the bard pulled away from the grate, rose to his feet, and turned around.
In the passageway near the tunnel behind the gap in the wall stood three shadowy human-sized figures. Their beady red eyes reflected the light of the bard’s and the halfling’s torches.
With his left hand, Finder grabbed Olive’s wrist and thrust her behind him, while with his right, he drew a dagger from his boot.
One shadowy figure drew closer to the torchlight. It was a male creature with a jutting forehead, a snout, long canine teeth, pointed ears, and green skin covered with coarse hair.
Orcs, Olive thought with a disgusted shudder. Tymora, why couldn’t it have been something cleaner or nicer, like giant rabid rats?
The other two orcs stepped into the light just behind the first. Each wore a pair of trousers, a vest of dirty yellow cloth, a necklace decorated with dried human ears, and a belt with a holstered axe, and each held a loaded crossbow pointed at Finder’s middle. They carried no torches; they apparently could see well enough in the dark without them.
“S’render ’r die,” the first ore ordered in slurred, barely intelligible common.
“Such unappealing options,” Finder replied glibly. “I surrender. Here,” he said, offering his dagger, hilt first, to the orc, but Olive could tell from the way his left hand tightened about her wrist that he was tensed for a fight.
The orc squinted his eyes suspiciously, but he was too tempted by the sight of the emeralds and topazes set in the hilt of Finder’s dagger to order the bard to throw the weapon to the floor. Moving a step closer, the orc reached out to take the weapon from Finder.
More quickly than Olive would have thought possible, Finder’s right leg shot up from the floor, kicking the ore’s crossbow hand. The orc howled and fired his weapon, but the bolt discharged harmlessly toward the ceiling, then clattered to the floor. Finder charged between the other two orcs, pulling Olive with him. The halfling threw her torch into the face of one of the creatures as she passed it. Hurriedly the bard raced down the dark passage, dragging Olive behind him as though she were a rag doll.
Olive heard the orcs chasing after them, then the twang of another crossbow. The bolt thunked into something soft. From the grunt Finder made and the way he stumbled, the halfling guessed the bard had been hit, but he regained his balance and ran on. He smashed into the iron grate at the other end of the corridor. Something cackled beside them. It was a fourth orc, Olive realized, sent to relock the door leading to escape! The damned orcs weren’t as stupid as they looked. In the dark, she couldn’t see the creature, but she heard him breathing beside her.
Finder tugged on the iron grate door, but it held fast. A rough, hairy hand grabbed Olive’s left arm and began pulling her away from the bard. Olive shrieked. Finder tightened his grip on the halfling’s right wrist and tugged back. Olive felt like a wishbone at a feast. She sensed Finder slashing at the orc with his dagger, then something warm and sticky gushed over her head—orc blood. The orc released her arm and fell heavily.
“Get the lock!” Finder ordered, pushing Olive toward the door. He used his own body to shield her from the rest of the orcs, who had to be moving stealthily toward them.
Olive felt her way to the lock, slid a wire from her hair, and jiggled it in the iron mechanism. She couldn’t believe how easily she got the bolt to turn over. If she’d been the one to open it the first time, she would have realized much sooner that this was a trap. As she pulled open the grate, she heard more crossbows twanging in the darkness and the sound of another bolt burying itself in flesh.
Tugging at Finder’s sleeve, the halfling got the bard through the door, pushed it closed, and, within moments, relocked it with her wire. As she turned to hurry down the corridor, a hand slipped through the grate and grabbed her hair.
“Let go!” Olive shouted. She felt Finder near her, stabbing through the grate. She felt the hand go limp as it released her.
“Through the hole,” Finder shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”
Olive scrambled up the pile of dirt and stone in the dark, all the while concentrating on locating a trace of the cool air on the other side of the cave-in. “Finder! Here!” she called out when she felt a bit of cooler air blowing through the tunnel. The bard scrambled up the slope beside her and pushed her through the opening.
Olive crawled as fast as she could to clear the tunnel so Finder could get through. After a full minute, when he still didn’t emerge from the opening, Olive started back through to see what was keeping him. She found his body lying in the tunnel, motionless.
“Finder, you’ve got to get moving!” she shouted, shaking him by the shoulders. She grabbed his hand, thinking, quite unreasonably, that she might drag him through. His hand was warm, but it was puffed up to the size of an grapefruit.
It’s the poison from that damned needle trap, Olive thought. He didn’t get just a little scratch; he got stabbed good. “I should have realized he’d lie about it,” she muttered to herself as she rummaged through her knapsack, searching in the dark for the one potion that might help the bard. In the dark, she had to identify the correct vial by its shape. She pulled it out, then shook the bard some more. “Finder, you’ve got to drink this. Wake up!” she insisted.
The bard groaned softly.
That might be the most reaction I get out of him, the halfling thought. Quickly she turned his head sideways, unstoppered the potion, and poured it past his lips. “Swallow,” she ordered. To her great relief, he did.
After a few moments, Finder stirred, then croaked, “What?”
“Finder, come on!” Olive implored.
The bard shook himself and wriggled forward slowly. Olive backed away, tugging on his tunic encouragingly. Finally they both reached the other side and rolled down the pile of rubble.
Olive could hear the orcs arguing among themselves in some unintelligible tongue. Then the grate rattled loudly.
“I’ll light a torch,” Olive said. “It’ll just take a mo—”
“We don’t need one,” Finder muttered.
Olive felt the bard take her right hand in his left. With his poisoned right hand, he felt along the wall, leading her through the maze of passages. She could sense he was limping.
The next cave-in was easier to crawl through, but it took Finder several minutes to negotiate it. Olive put her hand on his back after he’d managed to pull himself through. His shirt and tunic were drenched with perspiration.
“Do you want to rest for a minute?” she asked.
“No,” the bard growled. “Keep going.”
By the time they reached the cave-in below the stairs, Finder’s breathing was strained and shallow, and his skin was cold and clammy. Olive wasn’t sure he’d make it up the slope of the tunnel they’d dug. When she finally crawled out into the shaft of sunlight pouring down the stairway, Olive was exhausted, but perhaps the knowledge that it was the last stretch gave the bard more strength. He clambered through the tunnel and, with a great beastlike roar, tore up the stairs, passing the startled halfling.
Olive muttered as she was forced to use her hands to help her scrabble up the steep steps. Once she’d reached the top, she slammed the stairway door closed and threw the dead bolt. Her companion had a key to lock it as well, but he was in no condition to use it.