Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (50 page)

“Now what, Sarge?” Meggins asked. “Do I shoot her?”

Ilbei glanced back; they were only twenty steps from the edge, fifteen or so from being visible to the Skewer and the other men with their bows. He faced the harpy again. “Listen here, you. I’m fresh out of time to do all this over again.” He took a half step forward and made to hold his ground. Resisting the temptation to draw his pickaxe, he put his hands on his hips instead. “Infernal creature, I’m not yer enemy.”

She paused, crouching lower, her eyes narrowing. Ilbei couldn’t decide which would be worse: choked to death by a harpy, shot in the back by a criminal or falling to his death off a cliff.

“Damn you!” he roared, and strode forward, reaching back for his pickaxe. “Get on back there, so I don’t have to cut ya down. I don’t mean ya no damn harm, ya surly, stinkin thing.”

She shuffled back, growling that low, raspy growl.

“Now stay back there,” Ilbei said, giving ground again, though just a step. “Just get back to tendin them eggs, while I figure out how to get my people out of here.” He turned halfway around, then paused, looking back. “And if ya got half the brain Mags says ya do, you’ll do likewise and get yerself and yer brood out too. This here is no place fer nobody, not even the likes of you.”

She shifted her weight, and Ilbei leaned forward, his hand rising again toward the pickaxe on his back. “I swear …,” he said, but let it trail off. He backed up another step.

So did she.

“That’s a smart lass,” he said, giving a little more ground. Her wings lowered some and the growling stopped.

“So what now, Sarge? We’re still up get-bent creek without a raft.”

“Aye, we are. And I’m full bust fer ideas.”

Ilbei pressed himself against the right-side wall, stooped low and crept toward the mouth of the cave. When he was close enough that standing upright would grant him a view down below, he popped up and risked a glance. Two arrows and a steel bolt whistled in, two
thwaks
and a
clank
against the stone in the instant after, as Ilbei ducked and rolled to the side.

“Well, our duck is plucked and near sizzlin,” he said, regaining his feet.

“Well, Kaige will have them all up top by now. We could send him and the rest along to Hast, while you and I try to hold out until help arrives. Be a long wait, but it beats going out there and dying for sure.”

“We ain’t got the water fer a siege that long. And there’s no tellin what they’d come up with down there in the meantime. Start throwin fireballs or somethin in here. Not to say what this cranky old bird back here would do if’n she seen us squattin in her cave.”

“Sergeant,” came a call from above. It was Jasper. “You’ll want to make this quick.”

“Don’t rush me, son,” Ilbei shouted back. “I’m workin it out now.” Imagine Jasper having the gall to rush him. Jasper wasn’t the one down here, pinned down by a horde of archers at one end and a snarling harpy at his back.

“No, Sergeant, I mean you’ll want to hurry up here before it wears off. I don’t think it’s going to last very long. It’s too warm down there, and whoever wrote this spell was only marginally competent.”

Ilbei and Meggins exchanged glances, both confused.

“Jasper, what are ya talkin about?”

“Sarge,” yelled down Kaige. “He casted some cover for you. Come on up. Hurry now.”

Ilbei frowned at Meggins, who shrugged in reply. Together they crept toward the edge, stooping as Ilbei had done moments before, then, like tandem gophers, popped up to peer over the edge.

The cavern was filled with fog, a low blanket of it some ten spans deep and reaching nearly halfway to the bend. Looking down on it was like viewing clouds from the back of a gryphon. The mist was thick enough to conceal their movements, for no arrows flew up at them as they observed.

“By the gasses of Gore, would ya look at that. We’re saved.”

“Hurry,” Mags called down.

Ilbei wasted no time and put his hand on Meggins’ back. “Get on it, son. Let’s go.”

Meggins went out, cautious at first, still expecting missiles to zip out of the cloud beneath him, but soon he was on the rope, climbing hand over hand, his feet on the wall and Kaige drawing him upward with long, rhythmic pulls. The rope creaked, and his boots knocked pebbles loose, which soon brought arrows whizzing up at him. They clattered woodenly against the rock, but none struck so close to him that he lost his nerve. They were shooting blind down there.

The moment he was up, the rope dropped down again. Ilbei started for it, then stopped, turning back. “I’m serious what I said,” he called back into the cave. “Get yer people out. We’ll leave the ropes here. Since, well … since yer kin can’t fly no more.”

He got no reply, which he expected, and then he started up the rope just as Meggins had. And just like Meggins, he was fired upon by the men below. Again the arrows—and two steel bolts—bounced all around him, one close enough to make him suck in a startled breath, but nothing worse.

Soon, Ilbei had rejoined his companions and his prisoner at the top of the cliff. He told Jasper to grab whatever important spells—healing, in particular—that he needed out of his trunk before they once again left it behind. Jasper didn’t complain this time. He did as instructed, and then the lot of them hustled up the treacherous slope toward the hole in the cave wall. Cavendis screamed as they pushed him through the hole, the scraping and prodding aggravating his burns terribly, but Ilbei felt no sympathy. He glanced down at the two dead harpies lying at the base of the escarpment and figured those rotting bodies weren’t remotely avenged in a bit of misery. No, Cavendis had made a bet and lost, and he’d incurred a debt far bigger than could be paid with that.

Once Cavendis was clear, Ilbei was the last to climb through. Now all they had to do was make it to the opening where the creek came out before their one torch, the remaining table leg, gave out. Ilbei thought that might be a stretch, and he really didn’t want to stumble along in the dark.

Chapter 35

I
lbei didn’t let them run down the tunnel, though he wished they could. They were too banged up for it, and Cavendis could never keep up that kind of pace. The young lord could barely stumble along, and he only did so because the pain of being helped, much less dragged or carried, was worse than carrying himself. His only relief came in those moments when they arrived at the intersection where the two caves merged, at which point he laid himself down in the creek and moaned.

Everyone gasped and panted as they took the time to rest, the lot of them sounding like a roomful of old bellows. Cavendis started to shake, a whole-bodied shivering that rendered him helpless, lying in the waterway. Ilbei cursed the luck and ordered Kaige to drag him out. “Read one of them short healin spells on him, Jasper. Make it quick. We’re gonna be in the dark here pretty soon.”

Jasper, tired and weakened by his own wound, didn’t argue. He opened the satchel, pulled out a scroll and read it by the light of the torch, which Kaige held for him. Ilbei took the time to go back up the tunnel far enough to be out of the light, and he peered down into the blackness, looking for signs of pursuit. He was just beginning to think their luck had finally turned for the better, when the first speck of light appeared, then a second, and then two more, tiny and far away, like watching fireflies across a pond. The lights were coming steadily closer, but didn’t move up and down in a way that suggested whoever carried them was running. Ilbei jogged back to where Jasper was still reading the spell, and huffed. He couldn’t wait much longer before he’d have to interrupt.

“They’re after us,” he said to the rest of them. “And they’re gonna see our light here pretty soon, and that will set them to runnin, like we can’t.”

They waited several more minutes, and still Jasper read. Ilbei ran back up the tunnel. It was only a minute before he could make out the lights. He ran back.

“One minute, that’s all he gets.” Ilbei waited, counting in his head.

Jasper finished the spell with barely ten seconds to spare. Cavendis actually thanked the wizard in his way, saying, “I won’t have you killed with the rest of them.”

Ilbei once more hurried them along, and after what had been barely ten minutes of rest, they were once again plunging downstream.

The cave was cool and water abundant, and despite such a brief rest, Ilbei thought they might make it without losing their light, which was right when it had its last sputter and went out.

He looked back into the darkness. He still couldn’t see the lights carried by their pursuers. He didn’t know if it was due to distance or some gentle bend. “Hands,” he said. “Join hands, and keep goin. Meggins, you’re up front. I’ll come behind and drag our friend along.” He took Cavendis by the rope that bound his wrist and locked his other hand with Jasper’s, causing the mage to cry out. “I’m sorry, son. I know that hurts. We’ll get to it quick as we can.”

Cavendis laughed, then called out at the top of his lungs, “Come on down, boys. They’re all worn out. Put the spurs to it and—” Ilbei hit him so hard that he fell into the water with a splash.

Ilbei stood over him in the darkness, leaning down close enough to hear him breathe. “I got more’n enough left in me to drag yer carcass all the way back to Hast. You’re gonna get there, one way or the other, I promise ya that. So how ya go is up to you.”

Cavendis was too woozy to laugh, or perhaps he might have, but he offered no response at all. Ilbei didn’t wait for the man’s head to clear. He dragged him out of the water and reached for Jasper again, this time feeling for his robe and grabbing him by the belt. “That’ll hurt less,” he said, to which Jasper agreed.

It was a long string of hours in the darkness. Cavendis called out twice more to the men that were following them. Both times, Ilbei busted him in the head, and both times bought them a degree of silence for a time.

Cavendis was just beginning to murmur again, the blood filling his mouth giving his voice a liquid quality, when Meggins called back that he saw the opening. “There,” he said. “Finally, the ever-loving daylight.”

“Praise the goddess, there it is,” Ilbei said. Like drooping blooms resurrected by a sunrise, the weary party found their energy again. Their pace quickened—all but Cavendis, who tried to lean back against Ilbei’s hold on the ropes. For raw power, Cavendis was but a child beside Ilbei, and Ilbei yanked him forward so hard he landed face first in the shallows of the stream. Ilbei jerked him to his feet and tugged him along again, roughly when he had to, and soon they had reached the nearly blinding patch of daylight.

They hunkered down against the wall, and Ilbei considered how best to approach the hole. If some of the Skewer’s men were still out there—or even the Skewer himself, perhaps sent back by that teleporting Ivan Gangue—then they were trapped, caught between the proverbial dragon and the manticore. He didn’t want to ask any of his men to be first to look out, so he handed Cavendis off to Kaige.

“Go ahead and bust him to sleep if he calls out again,” Ilbei said. “I was only bein nice on account of us havin to run along in the dark.”

“Sure thing, Sarge.” Kaige gave Cavendis a great big grin and sat watching him hopefully.

Cavendis shook his head. His face was a bloody mess, and his lower lip was split wide open. “You’re a few days from the headsman’s axe, Spadebreaker, so enjoy your time while it lasts.” His words were slurred by the blood and swelling.

“That count, Sarge?” Kaige asked.

“No.”

Ilbei crawled up the hole, careful not to get into the water until he had to. He knew from having been outside that being in the water changed the flow, which would announce that he was there. He craned his neck, bobbed back and forth, looking out as far as he could see, which wasn’t much, and crawled into the narrow opening.

The water backed up behind him, his broad frame filling the narrow passage fairly tight. He wondered if maybe it wouldn’t have been smarter to send Meggins after all. But he was committed to it, so he kept on. The water rose up to his ribs as he squeezed toward the opening, splashing and whirling all around. It wasn’t quite enough pressure to wash him out as it had Meggins the first time he came in, but it was enough to make Ilbei work to brace himself. If someone was taking aim at that hole when he stuck his head out, he was going to be the apple in the pig’s mouth for the time it took to fight his way back in.

As he came to the edge, the heat of a hot summer day blasted him like opening an oven. He might have welcomed it after having been underground so long, but the anticipation of an arrow to the face takes those sorts of satisfactions away. With no other way to go about it, he drew in a breath and put his head outside.

There were Hams, Corporal Trapfast and the two new recruits, the sisters Decia and Auria. Sitting on the ground not far from the corporal were two other men, their feet and wrists bound and both of them looking miserable.

“Hams, by the gods, look at ya sittin there like sweet salvation on a hot rock!”

Hams swung round and saw Ilbei poking out of the turbulent spew. He waved, a big, welcoming smile on his face. “Well, you took too damned long in getting back, so we come looking for you. We tracked you this far and found these two. Me and Decia here was just arguing over who ought to go in there after you.”