“Then you should go and make sure that there is no one left to offer such a test,” came a voice from behind them.
Remy turned with the rest of the party. A brawny and bearded man, wearing the insignia of the keep council, met their gaze. “Biri-Daar of the Knights of Kul,” he said. “You I know, and Iriani too. Your other companions I do not. I am Zegur of the Crow Fork Council. Your presence here has caused some difficulties.”
“Zegur,” Biri-Daar said with a slight bow. “Whatever difficulties accompanied us were not our doing. The market’s enemies are many.”
“True,” Zegur said. “I would ask you to reduce their number, as you did yesterday.”
He stepped to the edge of the drain and looked down. Then he produced a rolled sheet of vellum from a case at his belt. “This is a map of the highest level of the sewers,” he said. “I would ask that you go in and determine where the hobgoblins and their imp companions entered.”
“We are on a pressing errand to Karga Kul,” Biri-Daar said.
“Wylegh the stabler has been questioned,” Zegur said. “He admits that the ambush was targeted at one of your group. I do not care who or for what reason. I care only that Crow Fork Market was breached. Since that breach occurred as a result of your presence, fairness demands that you seal it again.”
“Crawling in the sewers?” Kithri said. “Not me. I’ll go underground if I have to, but I refuse sewage. Refuse it.”
“All we’ll find down there is a bad smell and boring creatures with too many teeth and not a bit of loot worth carrying off,” Lucan said.
Keverel was nodding. “Without the flippancy, I agree. We should move on.”
Zegur remained unmoved. “The council anticipated your reluctance. You will be paid. If you refuse, your horses will be seized to cover the damage to the stable and the disruption to commerce.” He folded his arms and waited.
Biri-Daar took her time answering, and when she did, her anger was barely checked. “The Knights of Kul have ridden to the defense of this market, and many of our number lie buried in the desert beyond its gates. Even so, you would treat us in this manner?”
“I protect Crow Fork Market,” Zegur said. “Those who bring threats to the market, they must also be certain those threats leave with them. I would be a poor steward if I did not find out where your troglodyte pursuer came from. You owe the market that much.”
“We owe the market-” Iriani began. Biri-Daar raised a hand to silence him.
“We will go,” she said. “But it will go hard with you if this delay does harm to our greater mission. Know this before you insist.”
Zegur shifted his weight and nodded toward the drain. “I must insist.”
Biri-Daar turned her back on him. “This is likely an enormous waste of precious time,” she said. “Let us do it as quickly as it may be done.”
One by one they dropped into the drain, landing on a smooth stone floor. As Zegur had said, the passage they found was no longer used as a sewer. Directly below the stable drain, a vertical pipe drained the stable’s waste down and away. To either side of them stretched dry and flat passage. By torchlight they clustered around Keverel as he unfolded the map. “Let’s go this way, toward the wall,” he said, pointing to the left. “The other direction siphons into sewers that are in use. Not even hobgoblins would swim for long in that.”
“We’d fit right in with the rest of the sewage after the way Zegur treated us,” Lucan complained.
“No matter,” Biri-Daar said. “He was correct. If we brought a threat to this place, it is our responsibility to end that threat.”
Moving quickly, they followed the passage. Iriani lit the tip of his wand and illuminated each side passage they encountered. All were too small for a troglodyte to have traversed. Soon they came to what must have been the edge of the market, and there they found a rough hole torn in the passage wall. By Iriani’s light, they saw that a short tunnel had been excavated from the passage to a natural cave. “Now we will have our answer,” Biri-Daar said as she plunged in.
The floor of the cave was ancient silt, and heavily tracked. The hobgoblins and troglodyte had clearly come this way. “Enough,” Keverel said. “Let Zegur send sappers down to collapse this, and let us be on our way.”
“If it was dug out once, it may be dug out again,” Biri-Daar answered. “We must find the outlet and tell Zegur where to watch.”
“Sometimes I wish you were a bit less of a paladin,” Kithri said.
“Sometimes I wish you were a bit less of a thief. Now let’s go.”
The cave was broad and winding, easy enough for all of them to stand up in. Here and there were remnants of long-forgotten camps and graves. They kicked through these to see what might be learned or looted, but found nothing. The cave descended slightly, and water began to seep from the walls. “Carefully now,” Keverel breathed. His holy symbol had begun to glow.
Emerging into a rough oval chamber, they saw a flash of movement. One of Kithri’s knives flashed in the magical light as she threw it, but it clanged among the rocks on the far side. “After it,” Biri-Daar commanded, and they picked up their pace. “If it is a sentry, we must not let it get out a warning.”
Kithri and Lucan were the fastest of them, especially in the darkness. They were across the chamber and out of sight before the other four had gotten halfway over the broken floor. Remy stuck close to Iriani, just behind Biri-Daar with Keverel right behind them. Ahead of them the chamber narrowed to a passage whose walls Remy could touch simultaneously with extended hands. “Tight fit for a troglodyte,” Iriani commented.
“It couldn’t have come any other way,” Biri-Daar said.
Shouts sounded from ahead of them, and the clash of steel. They ran as best they could over the slippery rocks, coming into a large flattened chamber just as a thrown spear deflected from high on the wall to their right. Remy saw Kithri dodging and feinting between two hobgoblins, their axes striking pieces of the rocks away in showers of sparks. He closed on one of them and ran it through as it raised its axe for another stroke. The axe flew from its hands and struck him on the shoulder, numbing his sword arm. He cried out and the other hobgoblin lunged toward him-then slipped and skidded as Kithri deftly slashed the tendons at the back of its knee. As it hit the ground, she was on it, cutting its throat.
“Where’s Lucan?” Biri-Daar called. Remy worked his sword from the dead hobgoblin with his left hand and hefted it. He wondered how well he would be able to fight. Waves of pain radiated from the point of his shoulder.
“Gone sinister?” Keverel asked, coming up next to him.
Remy didn’t understand the word, but he tapped the sword hilt against his right arm. “I can’t feel it,” he said, although already sensation was returning to his fingers. “But I think I’m all right.”
“Good thing. There might be more ahead.”
Quickly they looked through the room, finding nothing but three other dead hobgoblins. The others had gone ahead in pursuit of Lucan. Remy and Keverel followed, and a short distance ahead found the rest of the party gathered around yet another dead hobgoblin. “A commander,” Biri-Daar said as they approached. “See the brands on its cheek.”
In the dim light Remy could see what looked like simple runes on the dead hobgoblin’s skin, the pale scar standing out against the bristly hair that covered most of the creature’s cheeks and jaw. “I hate to say it, but Zegur might be right,” Iriani said. “If there’s a commander down here, one of the local warlords is planning something.”
Feeling was returning to Remy’s arm, and a bone-deep ache settled into his shoulder where the head of the axe had struck. He worked his fingers to get the blood moving and limber up the arm again. He thought he’d be able to use it if more of the hobgoblins appeared. In another half-hour, they emerged in a slot canyon in the wastes. Once a river had flowed there, but its sole remnant was a ribbon of sand on the canyon floor, churned by the booted feet of hobgoblins and their beasts and littered by their garbage.