Kellik swung his hammer again and again, gouging great chunks out of the bridge. The Rhizomorphs howled and staggered forward, determined to take the bridge before he could bring it down.
“Run, Kellik!” Rose screamed.
Bradok swore and grappled with his sword, trying to draw it despate the hobbling pain of his wound. Before he could free the weapon, Chisul charged by him, sword in hand. He leaped over Kellik, heedless of the yawning chasm below, and charged into the advancing Rhizomorphs.
The first of the mushroom men had already reached the bridge as Chisul met them, bowling them over, sending some screaming into the blackness below. He chopped at arms and legs, keeping the stunned Rhizomorphs at bay as Kellik continued to hammer.
A thunderous crack echoed through the cavern followed by the creaking and groaning of stone.
“There she goes,” Kellik yelled, racing along the bridge.
Beneath him the narrow causeway of stone began to crack away, broken in the center by the smith’s strong blows. Kellik dashed along the collapsing stone, leaping to safety as the last of it dropped away. Across the wide crevasse, the other side of the bridge still stood, reaching out over the expanse like the prow of a ship.
Chisul had heard the bridge falling, pushed the nearest Rhizomorphs away, turned, and ran. The gap was far too wide, yet Chisul didn’t hesitate, vaulting toward it with a look of grim determination. The Rhizomorphs shot globs of yellow spit at him, which clung to his cloak, but none hit his exposed face.
He was only two paces away from the gap when one of the fallen creatures behind him darted out its long tongue and caught him fast by the ankle. Chisul’s eyes went wide, and he cursed and screamed as his feet were pulled out from under him.
The Rhizomorphs were on him in a second, dragging him back, pinning him down, swarming him. One of them, who might have been young and beautiful before the Zhome made a perverse mockery of her body, bent down and pressed her lips to Chisul’s. He thrashed and kicked as she breathed her killing spores into his lungs.
His body spasmed, his head beating down on the ground and his feet flailing. In just a few moments, his body lay still.
A gob of yellow Rhizomorph spit sailed across the gap and past Bradok, falling with a heavy, wet slap onto the stone of the ledge. He and the others edged back. Chisul and Kellik had effectively cut off the mushroom men, but they were still trying to figure out how to get at their foes on the opposite side.
“Get back,” Bradok ordered, stepping back.
The survivors filed out of the cavern, making sure to keep well away from the edge. The Rhizomorphs on the far side of the gap hooted and called, yelling threats and obscenities that everyone ignored. The last to let them out of their sight were Bradok and Corin. Bradok kept his eyes on Chisul’s still form until the receding passage obscured it. Poor Chisul-Silas’s son wasn’t such a bad sort after all, Bradok thought. He didn’t deserve to be condemned to an eternal death as an abomination of nature.
The loss of Omer and Chisul affected everyone. As the group moved through the shapeless tunnels following the pointing image of the Seer in the brass compass, the only real sounds to be heard were the intermittent demands for food from little Bradok.
The tunnel ended after another day’s travel. Beyond it a small cavern promised comfortable sleep for the first time in days. They all needed sleep desperately.
Four days after Omer’s death, however, Bradok was still haunted by nightmares. Every night he saw images of the boy’s pure blue eyes as the life drained out of them, and of Chisul, kicking his heels on the stone as the spores consumed him.
Rose told him the nightmares would pass and so would the bad memories.
Much told him it wasn’t his fault, that Omer and Chisul had saved them all.
All that was true, of course, but it didn’t assuage Bradok’s guilt. Somehow Omer’s death came to symbolize all the dwarves he’d lost on their journey. He felt himself to be a terrible leader.
As bad as the dreams were, they didn’t compare to the dread of waking. Every mile they walked, Bradok couldn’t help but wonder what new terror would emerge from the dark to steal away more of his friends. The number of the survivors kept dwindling. Every time anyone asked him to make a decision about something, he had to force himself to appear calm and rational. Inside, he felt worthless.
“You’re taking too much on yourself,” Rose said as they started out one morning after he had slept so badly.
“I’m the leader,” he said. “If we find food, I get the glory. If someone dies, I take the responsibility.”
“That would be true if you’d recklessly sent people to their deaths,” Rose said. “Chisul and Omer gave all they could to protect us. They were willing to fight and to die if necessary.” She put her hand gently on his arm. “Your leadership has kept us from losing more.”
She was right. Worse, he knew she was right, but he still felt guilty. But if he didn’t feel bad, he told himself, then he wouldn’t be worthy to lead. The kind of leader who didn’t feel the deaths of those he led would be a depraved leader.
Bradok wanted to answer Rose, but nothing he thought of seemed appropriate to say. He did notice that she hadn’t removed her hand from his arm. As his mind took hold on that, his senses suddenly became aware of something-something changed, different.
“Wait,” he whispered, holding up his hand.
Not all the others had heard him, but most stopped in response to the raised hand. Throughout the group, both men and women placed their hands on their weapons.
At first, Bradok couldn’t say what it was that had caught his attention. Nothing in the dim lantern-light seemed out of place, and no sound reached his waiting ear. Still, something had shifted.
A puff of air as gentle as a baby’s breath touched his whiskers, carrying with it a strange yet familiar scent. Bradok had to reach back into the archives of his mind to identify it. When, at last he remembered, he shouted.
More explosive laugh than shout, the sound echoed down the passageway as Bradok kept on laughing and laughing.
“Wha-?” Rose said, her grip on his arm tightening.
“Follow me,” Bradok said, turning to face his friends. “Quickly now.”
He turned back to the tunnel and dashed forward at a slow jog so even the stragglers could keep up. It had taken him some time to identify the odor that seemed to fill up the tunnel.
It was the distinctive smell of mountain trees, of pine.
The others smelled it too, and Bradok could hear their cries of joy and their ringing laughter joining his. The tunnel ended right before him, emptying out into a wide cavern virtually overflowing with peppertops and honey mushrooms, wall root, and blackroot. There was enough food to feed them for a year, longer if they were careful to cultivate new growth.
A dazzling burst of light burned at the far end of the cave. Bradok had to squint just to see the ground before him, but he did not stop running. Laughing like a schoolboy on holiday, he raced out through the opening and into a humid blanket of warm air.
The light overwhelmed him, however, and he dropped to his knees after a few strides, feeling the prickle of grass beneath him. Rose fell beside him, laughing as heartily as he had and rolling over him and into the grass. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d pulled her up and kissed her. She kissed him back and for a long moment, the two just lay there in the grass, joined together in a circle of blinding light.
Bradok let her go as his vision began to return to normal. They’d been in the darkness so long, it took a full ten minutes before he could see anything farther than a few feet away. When his vision did clear, it felt like coming out of a dream.
“What happened?” Rose gasped as her vision also returned.
Above them, the sky was burning red with great, undulating clouds that appeared black against the sky. They found themselves sitting above a little mountain valley lined with trees and green meadows. A coursing stream cut its way through the valley and continued on down the mountain into the far side.