They move so silently. He remembered how they simply seemed to appear at the door to the cell. So why do we hear footsteps?
The fellow returned after a few minutes, breathing hard, and pushed his way past the others to the smooth-faced man, jabbering at him with little regard for his voice’s volume. The smooth-faced man’s eyes widened and he barked a command to his fellows then began moving more swiftly than before.
They ran and the noise behind them grew louder and more frequent, noticeable even over the sound of their own footfalls. Khirro recognized that the sound was created by the footsteps of many, not just one. The underground-dwellers behind Khirro and Athryn pushed forward, urging them to go faster.
“Do you know what’s happening?”
“Only that we are being followed.”
The tunnel curved right, then switched back left before mounting a rise. The sound following them grew, echoing from wall to wall to ceiling until it multiplied to the sound of a soft-footed army at their heels. One of the women behind them cried out as she tripped and fell. Khirro slowed to help her to her feet, but the others grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him on.
“We can’t leave her,” he protested as they pushed him along the tunnel.
A moment later, the woman screamed, the sound piercing in the dark tunnel, then it was cut short. Khirro tried to look over his shoulder and back down the tunnel, but the underground-dwellers herded him along.
“They’re right behind us!”
“Keep going,” Athryn urged.
The two men in the lead began to outdistance Khirro. Their companion’s cry had quickened their pace to a sprint while pausing to help had slowed Khirro and his group. He pushed forward, begging all the speed out of his tired legs. He didn’t know what followed behind them, but if it put this much fear into their rescuers, he suspected he didn’t want to find out, not in a small, dark tunnel with barely enough room to move, never mind fight.
The men ahead disappeared. An instant of panic flared in Khirro’s chest until he found they’d darted over a small rise into a cavern that spread from the mouth of the tunnel. He skidded to a stop beside the two men, noting a pool of water in the middle of the cave and a slice of light filtering from high overhead; darkness hid the far side of the cavern.
The smooth-faced man discarded the worm torch and plucked a fallen cylinder of rock off the ground. He tapped it against a rocky outcropping to test its strength, hefted it in his hand, then wielded it like a short, sturdy club. Athryn and the remaining three underground-dwellers slid to a halt behind them and they all turned to face the yawning tunnel mouth.
Nothing at first. No sound, nothing to see. The woman who’d cried out had disappeared. The wound on Khirro’s hand gripping the hilt of the Mourning Sword throbbed and pulsed with the heavy beat of his heart. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet nervously as they waited.
The sound of soft footsteps floated down the tunnel, bouncing along the walls and rolling into the cavern. Khirro tried to pick out how many different sets of feet might be following them, but with the multiplying effect of cave and tunnel, it was impossible. It might be a few men or an entire platoon. He glanced at Athryn. The magician’s face was tense, the sword in his hands quivering slightly with the tense anticipation of an impending fight. The sound came closer, echoing, multiplying, growing until footsteps filled the cavern, churning the air around them and punishing their ears. The underground-dwellers began hooting and hollering, kicking stones and clapping. Athryn joined in so Khirro did, too, adding his voice to the others.
The clamor they created did nothing to deter the creature that burst out of the tunnel. Khirro’s eyes widened at the sight of a hundred sets of legs, half a dozen eyes, scimitar-shaped mandibles the size of short swords.
The huge centipede took a hard right as it spilled into the cavern. The underground-dwellers threw rocks and debris they found on the ground at their feet, but the projectiles bounced off the creature’s thick skin.
Khirro felt the air crackle with the panic of the men and woman around him; he bit his teeth hard to keep it from spreading to him. Too many times he’d let panic and fear freeze him while others protected him or died doing it.
That will never happen again.
The huge insect lunged toward them, its mandibles snapping, and the group fell back, bumping and jostling Khirro and Athryn who stood their ground. Only the smooth-faced youth stood with them, brandishing his flaking stone club.
The creature zipped in and Khirro lunged aside. Its back stood as tall as his thigh; each of its legs was as thick as Khirro’s arm. He dodged and slashed the Mourning Sword down, its tip contacting the centipede’s back, but the steel bounced off without damage to the beast. He heard water splashing behind him-the others had retreated into the pool leaving the three of them to fight the monster on their own.
“Its skin is like armor,” he called taking another swipe. He dared a glance across at Athryn and the other man. “What do we do?”
The smooth-faced man yelled and swung his club at one of the creature’s legs, hitting it with a sharp crack. The monster jerked, the leg hung limply at its side.
“Aim for its legs,” Athryn cried.
Khirro looked at the legs-fifty or more on his side alone. If removing its legs was the way to kill it, there was a lot of work ahead.
The Mourning Sword glowed red as Khirro set to the task, alternately hacking legs and dodging attacks. Its mandibles gnashed and sliced the air, first at Khirro, then Athryn, then the youth. Sweat flowed down Khirro’s forehead onto his cheeks.
Four legs gone. Six. His world narrowed to hack and slash, dodge and dance, keeping himself between the monster and the underground-dwellers, his sword between himself and the monster. Another leg came off, he avoided another attack; a commotion rose behind him.
Concerned, Khirro flashed a look over his shoulder and saw the other four underground-dwellers thrashing in the pool, screaming, running for the edge, their legs churning the water into a froth. An indistinct shape leaped out of the water and attached itself to a man’s chest, knocking him into the pool and prompting from him a high-pitched wail that drowned out everything else. Khirro took one more swipe at the insect-thing, removing another leg, and turned toward the water.
“Athryn! The centipede is yours.”
Khirro pushed past the woman and two men who’d climbed out of the pool, hovering uncertainly, not sure whether they should face their deaths in the mandibles of the insect, or give their lives to the lurker in the water. He hesitated briefly at the water’s edge, observing the gelatinous thing attached to the fallen man’s chest as he convulsed in the shallow pool.
“Hold still,” Khirro commanded, forgetting the fellow didn’t understand his words.
The tip of the Mourning Sword hovered in a circle as he followed the movement of man and thing, looking for the right moment.
Be still.
He clamped his teeth tight and lunged, hoping not to impale the creature's victim. The sword sunk into soft flesh and dark fluid oozed out of the thing on his chest. Khirro knew it was the man’s blood the leech-creature had sucked out of him. He struck again, this time slicing instead of stabbing. A flap of the leech’s back swung free and it slid off its victim and into the water. The man jerked, blood bubbling from a hole in his chest, then went still. Khirro dropped to his knee beside him, leg splashing in the water, and looked into his eyes.
“Athryn! This man is going to die.”
Khirro’s stomach knotted at his words. He should be helping him, not feeling thankful that his death would give them an opportunity to survive.
I didn’t kill him.