RuneScape: Return to Canifis (51 page)

And Doric did so. His axe darted forward, a short stab that smashed Imre’s fingers into twisted shapes. The werewolf howled and kept moving. But Doric side-stepped, bringing the flat of his weapon against the same kneecap he had damaged a moment before. This time the crunch of bone was unmistakable.

Imre collapsed in a heap.

Doric held his axe over the werewolf’s head.

“And I once told you I wanted a new coat, Imre.”

The axe went up.

“Wait!” It was Arisha. She advanced quickly, although Pia noted that she stopped a good distance from the wounded werewolf. She stared directly at him.

“I will ask Doric to spare your life, if you swear to do something for us.”

“Arisha, what are you—” Doric began, but she held up a hand to cut him off.

“If you promise us, on the very name of your god, to help our friends in any way you can, then you will leave here alive.”

Imre spat at the dwarf and tried to move away. Doric gave a wicked chuckle and rammed his booted foot down upon the werewolf’s chest.

“I don’t know, Arisha,” he said doubtfully. “I really want that fur coat. The swamp’s a cold place at night.”

“What is to be, Imre?” the priestess asked. “Death, or your promise upon the name of Zamorak that you will do all you can to help our friends, with the aim of returning them to safety. I warn you, he
will
know of your word, just as he will know of your deeds if you dishonour your promise. And you will promise not to tell any of your kind—or even Malak himself—of our presence here.”

“Come on, Imre, you cur. I grow cold waiting.” Doric lifted the axe menacingly.

“Very well,” the creature gritted. “You have my promise. I swear on Zamorak himself that I will do all in my power to aid your friends, with the aim of returning them to safety. And I will keep silent about your presence here.”

Doric removed his foot.

Imre sat up and scowled.

Finally, he stood and limped from the island. He gave a last look back at Doric before vanishing into the swamp.

“How did you do that, Doric?” Karnac asked. “I thought he was going to kill us all but you bested him by yourself, and with ease. How?”

Doric shared a look with Lord Despaard and Arisha. The nobleman nodded and Doric revealed a familiar two-pronged dagger. He explained its origins, then sheathed it quietly.

The onlookers gazed at the three strangers in wonder.

“Well, I am glad of it,” Karnac said, and he looked longingly at the weapon. “But it is time we were moving. We must reach Hope Rock before midnight. Come.”

And with that, Pia forced herself to stand, her caked boots an unwelcome reminder of the journey ahead.

Pia lost count of the miles and the hours. She lost count of how many times she stumbled and fell, of how many times Jack staggered behind her, or of how many times Arisha pulled them up and encouraged them to walk ahead of her.

The land was against them, too.

From the island they set off through another swamp where what seemed to be an old road, long since broken into stepping stones, made their way less treacherous. Once, they had to wade across a foul-smelling river, their belongings held over their heads. The water had risen to Pia’s chin, and although told not to drink anything she was sure she had swallowed a mouthful or more.

For Doric it was even worse. Lord Despaard waded through with the dwarf upon his back, and Vanstrom did the same for Jack.

“If you tell anyone of this, Despaard, especially that wizard,”
Doric said from his perch, “then I will likely have to kill you.” The lord nodded solemnly.

When they emerged from the other side they found their bodies covered with black leeches, each the size of Pia’s thumb. She cried out in disgust, and it took them several minutes to remove the wretched creatures.

Her brother remained silent throughout.

But at least Canifis is behind us now.

She kept her eyes on him, for she could tell that he was weak and exhausted, hungry and cold. They all were.

“Never a rope, Jack,” she said. “Not us. Not for you or me.”

“What does that mean, Pia?” Arisha asked. “Why do you say that?”

Arisha had lasted the journey better than most. She had swum across the river, her clothes bundled above her to keep them dry, and although she was obviously tired, she did not seem exhausted like the others. Now, her dark hair was slick, the silver band that held it more brilliant than usual, and her blue eyes shone in a face that was reddened from exertion—a face that had been challenged but not beaten.

Pia’s respect for her had only grown, and she responded to the question.

“We were born and raised in East Ardougne. We were thieves. There, ‘never a rope’ is a saying. You are trained as a thief by one of the guild-masters. You trust your brothers and sisters absolutely, and you can never steal from them. If you betray them, it is certain death. The rope is what we are taught to fear—the hangman’s noose. Any other death is to be welcomed, for it means you didn’t get caught by Lathas’s Justice, and you haven’t told on your brothers and sisters. Anything else is a death with honour.”

Arisha looked at her curiously.

“So you think anything other than hanging is an honourable death?” she asked.

“To hang you have to be caught,” Pia explained. “If you are caught by the Justice you will be tortured into telling on your brothers and sisters. Therefore, we are told it is a dishonourable way to die. That it is the way of cowards and traitors.”

“You have been told that by wicked men who would use you,” the priestess said, “to ensure that you are so afraid of hanging that you would throw yourself into an army of swords rather than give yourself up. It keeps them safe.”

She turns what I say into questions and uncertainties. But there is something in her words...

“I don’t know,” Pia whispered, embarrassed by her ignorance. “I don’t understand.”

“The world is not just, I’m afraid,” Arisha said. “Even an honourable person can hang. That does not undo the good work they have done in life.”

Ahead, Karnac called a halt and stared into the distance.

“There it is,” he said. “Hope Rock.” He pointed south, to a mesa that stood above the swamp like a pointed finger, barely visible in the darkness. “That is our home. It is a natural fastness surrounded on all sides by water.

“Come, if we make haste we will be there within a few hours.”

Pia’s energy returned with every step she took. Now that she could see their destination, her will to be there powered her on. It was the same for Jack, as well, and the party as a whole moved more quickly.

A boat waited for them at the edge of a still body of black water. In the darkness behind them, through the swamp, several lights came and went.

“Marsh lights,” Karnac commented. “We all thought they were ill spirits before he came from the west and told us otherwise. Now we know they are a natural phenomenon.”

“Who came?” Lord Despaard asked.

“You will see soon enough. Now, the people from Misthalin will go in the first boat with me. In we get!”

Pia didn’t like boats or water. In Ardougne, in the winter— when traders and merchants were scarce—she had been forced on occasion to work the river, hacking out ice blocks with her brothers and sisters to earn what little they could. It had been cold, painful work, and once she had seen something in the water, something big.

Things live beneath the waves
, she thought to herself.
Horrible things.

She looked at the black waters and sat Jack down beside her in the middle of the boat, as far from the sides as possible. It was cold on the water—colder than on land. Then as the oars beat their steady rhythm in the rowlocks and the boat moved forward, she closed her eyes.

She only opened them when they ground to a halt on a beach of oily gravel. There, at the bottom of the sheer rock, a lift awaited them.

“Don’t be scared, little Pia,” Doric said, his eyes scanning the heights above them. “It is safe. I am sure of it.” Yet when they were in the lift and it began to move upward, the dwarf closed his eyes and gripped his axe tight.

I am not the only one who is afraid. And he even bested a werewolf.

When they finally arrived at the top, they were greeted by a group of people, nearly twenty in all, dressed in rags, their eyes shining with hunger and their bodies unwashed.

They look at us as if they’ve never seen another human before.

“It is a time of miracles,” a gaunt woman muttered from the rear of the onlookers. “Small folk drop from the sky, and visitors cross the river from the west to make war on the undying. Blessed be these days, for change is coming.”

Karnac led them to a small fire close by that gave little warmth. The inhabitants closed around them in a ring, as if fearful they would vanish if they lost sight of them. It made Pia nervous. She took Jack’s hand and sat down with Arisha on one side and Vanstrom on the other.

“Are you all part of the Myreque, like Vanstrom?” Lord Despaard asked.

“We are,” Karnac confirmed. “We fight the Undying Ones any way we can, and we seek a way out of this dreadful realm. We escaped from the ghettoes of Meiyerditch, nearly two years ago. I led over two hundred of us out then. Now we are less than thirty.”

He waved the onlookers back, and for the first time Pia got a good look at their home.

The summit of Hope Rock was a plateau, its edge a ring of rising stone that reminded Pia of a castle’s battlements. This natural wall rose to the height of three men, keeping the plateau hidden from view save from directly above. Against the circle’s inner wall, natural ridges and outcroppings, supplemented with crude wooden beams and scaffolding, provided a means of reaching its top. Below, at the circle’s base, Pia noticed a dozen caves from which people ducked in and out.

But it was the contraption at the far end of the plateau that made her gape. A great swathe of canvas was delicately rested across much of the plateau’s area. Nearby stood a squat metal object in a small wicker frame. It reminded Pia somehow of a stove.

“What is that?” Doric asked suspiciously.

“That is the balloon,” Lord Despaard answered with a sudden
grin. The nobleman dashed forward. “Master Peregrim? Master Peregrim are you here?”

Pia spied a diminutive figure appear from beneath the balloon’s voluminous folds. He looked no bigger than Jack, yet when he stepped forward she saw how wizened his face was behind a grey wisp of beard.

A gnome.

“Lord Despaard? By the gods! It
is
you!” When he spoke, his voice was high-pitched and his speech fast. He grabbed Lord Despaard’s hand and shook it firmly in his own. “Have you come here to liberate us from this dreadful place? Can that be true?”

“It is not, Master Peregrim. I am as much a fugitive as you are now.”

The gnome’s face fell as Lord Despaard explained their situation, and many of Hope Rock’s inhabitants listened with interest. When he finished, he looked carefully toward Master Peregrim.

“But tell me, friend, of your own adventure. In Varrock we had given up all hope of seeing you again.”

The gnome shook his head and sat down.

“I came down in the swamp, only a few miles from here. My wicker basket that I used to carry people up was lost, smashed to pieces on impact. I have managed to salvage enough of it to secure the burner beneath the balloon, but there is not nearly enough to build a place for everybody else.”

Doric’s eyes widened. “Then you mean to fly out?” His words nearly choked him.

Master Peregrim nodded. “It is the only way. We cannot walk through the swamps. Karnac and his group have already tried that when they first fled the ghetto. There were two hundred of them then. Now there are less than thirty.”

“What about a boat?” Arisha suggested. “Isn’t that a possibility?”

Karnac shook his head. “Many have thought it a better idea than the gnome’s balloon. But the swamp to the west is unnavigable. It would be impossible to do it.”

“Yet how can this work?” Doric asked. “How does it
fly
?”

Pia heard the disbelief in his voice.

“I have seen it work, Doric,” Lord Despaard said. “In Varrock it rose from its tether each day and carried at least twenty people aloft on each occasion. But that made use of what what was described to me as a gas called hydrogen—”

“I prefer the term phlogisticated air if you please,” the gnome said with a wave of his hand. “But yes, we do need this gas, and happily there is enough left in the burner’s containers to inflate the envelopes as well as to heat the air. Of course, once I have inflated the balloon I will leave the empty containers behind. There is no point in carrying dead weight.”

Doric shared an uncertain look with Arisha.

“Hydrogen is lighter than air,” Lord Despaard explained further. “When the balloon was in Varrock, Master Peregrim would fill envelopes in the top of the balloon with this gas. Combined with heat from the burner, which also uses hydrogen as a fuel, the air inside the balloon would warm and provide lift.”

Doric nodded blankly.

“And how do you steer it?”

Lord Despaard sighed.

“You don’t. It floats on the winds. The trick is to find a wind going in the direction you want.”

“I see you are a doubter, master dwarf,” the gnome squeaked in amusement. “But I came here in this balloon, and I intend to fly out in it, as well—carrying the people of Hope Rock with me. It
can
be done. We will make our ascent within the next few days, and we will do so at dawn when the air is cold. The warm air inside
the balloon will lift us upward, and once we reach a certain height the wind will carry us west, to Misthalin.”

“But like you said only a moment ago, you have lost the wicker basket to carry people. How will you get around that?” Doric dared a smile.

He’s afraid of this idea
, Pia realised.
Heights scare him, and he intends to add as much doubt as he can to its success.
She shivered.
I don’t blame him either.

The gnome grinned suddenly.

“When Karnac’s people first settled here, they tried to fish. But the things that swim in the swamps are not edible, save for the wretched snails that are all we’ve eaten for the last few months.” He gave a sour grimace. “But the nets they made have proved their use as a substitute for the wicker basket. We are stitching them to the bottom of the balloon itself right now. That will allow people to tie themselves on.”