Jozan looked down into the darkness and scratched at his chin again. “I have to admit,” he said, his quiet voice still echoing in the wide cave mouth, “I’m not much of a climber myself.”
“Are there spiders down there?” Lidda asked, rubbing eyes still puffy from her long night’s sleep.
“We tracked them here,” Jozan answered.
“But it wasn’t spiders that attacked us last night,” said Naull.
Regdar looked back at their campsite and let his eyes roam slowly over their various packs and pouches. He didn’t see any rope at all, much less a hundred feet or more of it. It would be a free-climb, something more like what a thief might learn how to do.
“Lidda can make the climb,” Regdar said. “Can’t you, Lidda.”
The halfling stopped rubbing her face and looked up at the big fighter. There was something about the look on her face that made Regdar unsure whether she was about to laugh or attack him.
“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Jozan said.
Regdar nodded to Jozan, but quickly turned back to Lidda. “Well?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, peering down at the huge hole, surely unable to fathom its depths from where she was standing, “I can make any climb you can make, Redbar, but Naull and the good father can’t. So, what say we head for New Koratia… or maybe Zarreth?”
Regdar turned back to the cave and said to Jozan, “Lidda will go down first, picking out the easiest climb as she goes. She’ll let you and Naull know how to follow. I’ll go last. If we can rig up something—anything like a rope, I could tie it between myself and—”
“Or,” Lidda said, “Regular here can climb my—”
“Lidda,” Jozan interrupted.
The halfling threw up her hands and turned back to the campsite but didn’t walk away. Regdar watched her, a hand over his mouth made him, he hoped, look thoughtful. He was really trying to silence a laugh. Lidda reminded him of his days in the duke’s infantry. She was ribbing him like soldiers do, and she was good at it.
Lidda put one arm behind her back, grabbed that wrist with her other hand, and started to stretch as if in preparation for a climb.
7
Regdar was happy to find that the shaft wall wasn’t as steep as it looked from above. Though hardly an easy climb—no climb was easy wearing scale mail and a good thirty pounds of weapons and gear—he knew he’d get them all down safely. Looking down he saw Naull just below him. He was most worried about her. She seemed more afraid than he’d assumed she’d be. She’d faced down the spiders easily enough, but something about either the height they were climbing from (or, more accurately, the depth they were climbing into) or the darkness that constantly nibbled at the edges of the light from Lidda’s lantern was causing her hands to shake. She was pale and ghostly even backlit from Lidda’s lantern, and she often gasped and made other uncertain noises.
Regdar hadn’t hoped on being quiet by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a crucial difference between the sound of the approach of a heavily armed, heavily armored, confident party, and the descent of a confused group of nervous women. Regdar had no doubt that something—spider, humanoid, or worse—was waiting for them at the bottom of the shaft. He only hoped that they would have any advantage left against it when it made itself known.
Jozan was nearly as nervous about the climb, and nearly as taxed by it, as Naull. He didn’t complain—Jozan seemed incapable of that—but his shield kept bumping into his crossbow, which bumped into his mace, which bumped into his armor over and over again all the way down. The noises reminded Regdar of a one-man-band he’d seen perform in the marketplace in New Koratia.
For her part, Lidda was a marvel. She climbed with the grace of a monkey, the lantern dangling from her belt hardly swinging at all. She was obviously holding back, keeping close enough to them so that they could all benefit from her light. Between Jozan’s cacophony, Naull’s grunted curses, and the creak of his own armor, Regdar couldn’t hear her move at all. She was also smart enough to refrain from speaking-to Regdar’s mind a small miracle—and he was sure the little halfling was enjoying herself.
Regdar couldn’t help but think that the lengths they were going to to defend a village’s sheep herds might have been a bit extreme. Though he wasn’t in the habit of questioning priests of Pelor, Regdar wasn’t so sure that Jozan was thinking only of Fairbye’s herds. They had been traveling together for only a little while, but Regdar got the feeling that Jozan was in no particular hurry to return to the city. The farther they’d traveled from the Duchy of Koratia’s eastern frontier, the more Jozan seemed to want to slow their progress.
Regdar pushed these idle thoughts from his mind when he heard a sharp hiss below him. Lidda was clinging to the wall with one hand and holding her lantern up by its belt strap. She caught his eye and turned her head sharply to her left. When Regdar followed her gaze he saw something glowing faintly at the edge of the lantern’s light.
It was a line of some kind, hanging down along the wall of the shaft. If it was rope, it was made of some kind of bleached hemp or other material Regdar had never seen before. It disappeared into shadows above and below so he couldn’t tell how high up the shaft it was tied or how deep it hung.
Regdar nodded at the halfling. She let her lantern hang from her belt once more, and started scrambling sideways along the rough wall, moving smoothly but cautiously toward the line. Jozan and Naull had both noticed the exchange and had stopped climbing. They hung close to the wall, panting, both obviously happy for the chance to rest but feeling only less secure clinging to the wall when something might be hanging there with them.
Lidda stopped once to peer at the mysterious line from a closer vantage point, then Regdar watched her scramble the rest of the way to it. She reached out and took hold of the line, testing its weight a little.
She looked up at Regdar and whispered something, but he couldn’t quite make it out. He had two good footholds and a decent handhold, so he let go with one hand, held it to his ear, and widened his eyes at her. Even from so far below him, he could see that she was irritated at his inability to hear, and that embarrassed him a bit.
She let go of the line and climbed up toward him. Regdar was impressed by how quickly she was no more than arm’s length from him.
“What are you, deaf?” she whispered. “It’s a rope ladder.”
Regdar narrowed his eyes and peered at the line again, still not able to make out any detail. He looked down at the others and with a hoarse voice whispered, “It’s a rope ladder. Climb over to it.”
“It doesn’t look very big,” Lidda told him. “I doubt it’ll hold all four of us.”
“Let Naull and Jozan take it, then,” Regdar said. “We’re better climbers.”
Lidda looked like she was about to make some kind of nasty remark, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “I’ll help Naull.”
The halfling scurried down and across to Naull, and Regdar could hear her whispering encouragement and advice to the shaking, uncertain young mage. Jozan began his clanging, clumsy way toward the ladder himself.
Soon enough, they were all gathered around the strange rope ladder, clinging to the craggy walls like so many giant bugs—an image Regdar wasn’t altogether comfortable with, given the fact that for all they knew the cave was crawling with spiders.
“Will it… hold… us?” Naull asked Lidda, her whispered words coming out between great gulps of air.
Lidda tugged on the rope. It hummed quietly but held fast.
The halfling pulled it toward the young woman and said, “There’s only one way to find out.”
Naull nodded and reached out for the rope.