The Duelist 6, page 10
“I know,” I said and gritted my teeth. “Believe me, I know.”
“Is there anything that can be done?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said in a quiet voice so as to not be overheard by the captain or even Thas. “When I got through the Trials, I spoke with the ancient Snake Tree Spirit. It saw the wound on my mind and told me I needed to find someone in Minetown named Mozz. Apparently, they can help me.”
“Have you told Thas or the Captain, yet?” he questioned.
“No, not yet, and I know this might be hypocritical of me, but I would really appreciate it if you didn’t mention anything to our paranoid friend,” I requested as I rolled up my sleeping materials. “It took a while to convince Tharfin we had no hidden agendas or ulterior motives, and I don’t want to risk damaging his trust just in case that gets misconstrued.”
“I understand.” Sskern nodded as he finished packing up his own supplies. “And don’t worry, in case you have forgotten, I made a name for myself as a rather good spy.”
“Yeah, until you were caught by Gella Vane’s booby traps like some tragic Victorian horror story,” I snorted.
“Apart from that,” he conceded with a large shit-eating grin, and both he and I snickered. “In seriousness, though. Do not fret, my friend. I will help you find this Mozz.”
“Thanks,” I said and clapped him on the shoulder.
A short while later, the hunting party was loaded up back on the crawlers, and I was seated up front with the captain again.
In front of us was a dark tunnel that howled with the whistling wind, and it gave me the deep gut feeling that the penetrating blackness was unnatural somehow, so the only thing I really wanted to do was turn back.
“This is where the mine transitions from the open pit to the Underground,” Tharfin informed me. “It is a good thing you have that Stone around your neck. The darkness has a way of messing with you.”
“What is it we’ll be looking for?” I asked as the crawlers started on their way into the tunnel.
“Wirms do almost everything underground, which makes them tough to try and track,” he explained. “But if you know where to look, there are signs one can follow. For example, when a wirm burrows itself into the ground, its tail tries its best to smooth away any evidence of the entrance it left behind. Look on the ground all along the slope. If you see any patterns in the dirt similar to a swirl or a wave, chances are it was from a wirm.”
“Okay, got it,” I said. “Then what? We track it down and… dig it up?”
“We draw it to the surface,” he continued. “I did say the wirms do almost everything below the ground, but one of the few things they do come to the surface for is to mate. Once we are sure we are close to one of the beasts, we use the crawlers to tap their feet against the ground at a rapid pace to simulate how a female calls to a potential male by imitating her mating purr. The vibrations are similar to what a competing male would come to expect, so he comes to the surface willingly.”
“Clever,” I remarked. “And then we ambush it.”
“Exactly,” Tharfin said, and we lapsed into another one of those silences he was so fond of.
The underground mine was quite different from the open pit up above. Simply put, if the open funnel of the pit was considered the Throat, then this was surely the Bowels.
The smell, for one, was definitely similar to what I would imagine bowels smelling like. Something about it reminded me of the rotten egg smell of sulfur, but it wasn’t quite the same. There was a hair more rancidness to it, as if something had recently died somewhere close by.
My Stone glowed as bright as I could make it in order to slice through the oppressive blackness, but even with the help of the crawlers’ headlights, it was still like trying to cut through cold cheese with a plastic knife-- our light could only go so far.
“Don’t worry, once we get into the main antechamber, we will be able to light the oil lanterns for more light before we start to really descend,” Thas commented, and I jolted pretty jarringly.
“We’re not even in the main part yet?” I asked. “It feels like we’ve been here for a long time already.”
“That’s what this darkness will do to you,” the captain said in a low voice that seemed to reverberate off the tunnel walls. “It plays with your concept of time. I’ve known men who have come back fickles later to families that thought they had perished, only for them to swear they’d only been down for a day. Some say the darkness somehow mixes with the ore to create the miasma you feel all around you.”
I held my Stone high and watched the light glitter off the capillaries of glittering gray rock. “Is there a reason why the ore does this?”
“Some have said it came from the Jealous Moon,” Tharfin went on. “That Terr herself is unlike any other island because when the Ocean waters rose, Terr remained still anchored to the world like a thorn until she had no choice but to build herself up to reach the sun. Every age or so, Terr rises ever higher so she may be closer to Mercedes’ warmth. When the Terrans began to mine, however, we released something connected to the old world. It is this festering evil that seems to be infecting Terr’s ore like a virus would infect one’s blood.”
The imagery was effective, and now every time I caught a glimpse of the glittering ribbons of ore, a slightly nauseous feeling accompanied it.
When we made it to the antechamber in who knows how long, we stopped for a quick stretch and so the crawlers could take a drink from some of the standing pools of water. Thas and a few others lit torches and went around lighting certain parts of the wall where an intricately carved network of grooves was arranged, and what I first thought was just some neat decoration was actually a strange irrigation system of sorts. Instead of water, however, the liquid that flowed all along the walls, illuminated the chamber, and highlighted the main shaft was apparently oil. When the torch connected with one of the channels, the flames raced along until it felt like we were being bathed under the red light of a photographer’s darkroom.
Not too shabby for a people who didn’t have electricity.
Although, I wasn’t sure if the intense light was any better.
There was nothing for it, though, so I just kept my head down and pushed onward with the rest of the hunting party as we approached the mouth of the shaft.
“From here, we go on foot, and we can only take two crawlers with us,” the captain informed us and then swiped his hand under the jowls of his skitter, only to come away with his palm covered in a sheen of slime. “The main shaft is on a steep slope. You must coat the bottoms of your boots with skitter saliva, which will give you the traction you need to keep from slipping.”
Then he demonstrated by doing just that, until everyone was following procedure.
“All set,” I said as I was wiping my hand off with a special scaled cloth that cleared the stickiness off my fingers better than Goo-Gone.
“Arm yourselves,” was the captain’s last order before we all plunged into the mine shaft that connected the various levels of underground so ore could be transported to the surface.
I brought my crossbow around and loaded a bolt with the safety on, and I made sure my eyes and ears were open and alert to any other dangers.
After what seemed like at least thirty minutes of endless walking, the captain suddenly threw up his fist for us to halt as he crouched low to the ground on his muscled haunches.
“Thas, Ambassador,” the man intoned, and after exchanging puzzled looks, we both shrugged and walked over to see what he’d found.
“See the pattern here?” he said and traced something that resembled a Nike Swish in the dirt.
“Wirm tail?” I asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “An old one, but it is definitely a sign.”
“How can you tell it is old, Father?” Thas queried.
“The breeze changes with the temperature, causing an ebb and flow much like the tide as the day goes on,” the captain explained like a dude who knew what he was doing, and we were on some Animal Planet show, or something. “From the weathering, you can tell this track has been disturbed by the rising wind gusts at least three times, making it at least a day old.”
“But are we heading in the right direction at least?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” Tharfin grinned. “We shall reach our target shortly.”
Thas and I smiled at each other, but the small moment of triumph was cut short by a vibration building under our feet.
“Do you feel that?” I asked as I looked down.
“What is it?” Thas peered at our feet. “A wirm?”
“No…” the captain trailed off as he squinted up the slope with a frown. “This is… something else.”
“Captain!” someone screamed from behind us, and I turned just in time to see one of Tharfin’s men get sucked underground like a sinkhole the size of his body just opened up.
“What’s happening?” Sskern yelled as whipped around, only to see another hapless victim get swallowed up by the earth.
“Ground leeches!” Tharfin roared, and his pupils dilated to slits. “Run!”
Chapter 9
I didn’t even hesitate to follow when Captain Tharfin took off sharply to the right, and I even tried to imitate his long leaping stride in order to limit my contact with the ground.
“Get off the slope!” he ordered as he tugged the reins of his skitter so the beast would hurry up and crawl into the corridor where a lot of mining had taken place ages before.
I was right on Thas’ heels as he tugged the reins on the other side, and together we crossed the threshold where the slope butted up against one of the large excavation chambers.
“Ahh!” another person wailed as their foot came down precisely at the same time as a man-sized hole opened up beneath him, and he was awkwardly sucked down the gullet of what I could only assume was a ground leech.
“How are the leeches doing that?” I asked the captain as we were forced to watch the rest of the party scramble toward the chamber before they were swallowed by an invisible enemy.
“They hibernate in the ground with the upper half of their segmented bodies filled with dirt,” Tharfin said. “Then when they feel the vibrations of their preferred-sized prey, they evacuate the dirt in their upper body down to their lower in order to suck in whoever happens to be unlucky enough to be there.”
“That’s both gross and terrifying all at once,” I remarked.
“Indeed,” he replied and scanned the remaining members of his party with trepidation. “Oh, death.”
“What?” My adrenaline spiked when the captain cursed, and I followed the line of his finger toward the other skitter.
Four of its ten legs were already gnawed through and bleeding a foamy white fluid that contrasted starkly with the glaring red of the lantern-lit walls. Two more legs were trapped by the leeches and currently being made leech-food while another had recently fallen victim. Before long, the poor creature wouldn’t be able to crawl any more.
“Should we help it?” I asked as I itched for my crossbow even though there was nothing to aim at.
“There is no use.” Tharfin shook his domed head with a sigh, and he grabbed the reins of the last skitter left. “Even if we were to get to it without being eaten ourselves, the beast will not be of much use without its legs. It would have to be put down regardless. At least this way, the skitter’s body will feed the ground leeches and force them back into hibernation. Come.”
This dude was like the most depressing Steve Irwin I’d ever met.
“But the rest of the men…” Thas faltered when his father kept marching further into the chamber.
“They will either make it through to join us, or they won’t, but we must press on,” the captain said without looking back. “We need to pick up the wirm’s trail again. Chances are it also ran into the colony of ground leeches and tried to find its way around like we are.”
I swallowed thickly at the sights and sounds of the poor bastards who weren’t fast enough to make it, but I turned away along with Thas and Sskern. It was grim, to be sure, but there was something to be said for stoicism in the face of the things one could not change.
So, the remains of the hunting party pushed onward.
We followed the captain to the far side of the excavation chamber and down another narrow corridor where another shaft seemed to be situated. This one, however, was a vertical one which was probably used to transport materials straight up to the plant to increase production.
“Normally, our drillers would be used to navigate this shaft,” Tharfin said as he coated his hands with more skitter saliva. “They would usually be able to carry us, but since that’s not the case, we will have to climb down to the next level ourselves.”
He then pried open the large steel-plated doors to reveal the shaft, and thereby the thick length of iron chain both descending and ascending into darkness.
“Is one level enough?” one of the other men asked. “How far has this colony expanded since we’ve been away?”
“We shall go down two levels, then,” the captain said with a decisive nod, and satisfied with that answer, we all repeated the process of coating our appendages with more sticky muck.
After the skitter went in first with its many feet clinging comfortably against the wall, the rest of us leapt out and caught ourselves a good handful of chains so we could start shimmying down.
The saliva on my hands was pretty neat because after a while it formed a thick jelly over my palms that not only allowed me to cling easily to the thick chain, but it also provided a barrier from blisters.
As gross as it was, I added skitter spit to the list of Things Terr Can Do to Stop Being Isolationist Dicks. And then I idly considered I might need to give this list another name. Or maybe an abbreviation.
TTCDTSBID?
I’d work on it.
Finally, we reached the level Tharfin wanted, and after a low whistle, the skitter managed to pry the shaft doors open, crawl out, and then back up so the upper half of its body was stretched out toward the captain in what looked to be an improvised gangplank.
That way, the captain could easily lower himself on top of the beast’s large head and then walk to safety.
“Everyone, quickly, now!” he called up the shaft, and all of us followed until we were inside another chamber and headed back toward the main slope.
“Father!” Thas waved the captain over to the far edge of the slope, and then he crouched down at the threshold of the chamber across from us and outlined another one of those Nike Swish patterns with his forefinger. “This one looks fresh.”
“Yes, fresh,” Tharfin agreed. “Newly fresh, actually. It seems as if the beast is traveling in and out of the chambers just in case. Let us check this one here.”
And so the wild goose chase for the wirm commenced as we tracked the beast from chamber to chamber. There was a silent agreement to stay off the main slope just in case because if it was good enough for the wirm, then it was good enough for us. Even though it required us to climb down two more vertical shafts in the process, it was worth it when the captain finally threw up a signal for silence.
All of us froze where we were, and we watched as he checked the patterns in the ground. Whatever it was he was looking for, he seemed to have found it because a moment later he rushed around the skitter and positioned it right over the mark.
Then he came back and ordered us to form a circle around the skitter with our weapons at the ready, and I jammed my boot into the cocking stirrup of my crossbow and loaded a bolt.
“When I give the signal, the skitter will start to tap its legs,” he said as he pulled out something that looked like an atlatl and spear. “Hut!”
The barked word cued the skitter, and it immediately began to drum all ten of its legs rapidly against the ground until my feet felt as if they would vibrate out of my boots.
This went on for some time before the captain called a stop to it, and all of us looked around in confusion.
Where was it?
“Are you sure it was here most recently?” Thas asked his father.
“Positive,” he said. “Usually, it takes two skitters to replicate the length of the female… maybe the wirm is trying to figure out if this is a trap. Let’s go again. Hut!”
The skitter started up its many legs again to that almost hypnotic vibration before something else could be felt traveling through the ground.
Something big, and something fast.
Suddenly, in a shower of dirt and rocks, the wirm exploded out of the ground and immediately twisted itself around the skitter.
“Hurry, before it realizes we’ve tricked it!” Tharfin bellowed and launched his spear with his atlatl directly into the wirm’s flank.
I loosed a bolt with a yell along with the rest of the hunting party.
The ugly mottled thing really did live up to its worm-like expectations with its long saggy body and banded tail. However, the front of it looked like an actual Graboid from Tremors except with a set of lashing mouth tentacles and about a hundred eyeballs.
The beast finally let out a dramatic shriek when he realized the thing he was tussling with wasn’t a lady wirm like he was expecting, and with a roar, the wirm twisted so tightly around the skitter that its large square head actually popped right off.
“Move in! Don’t let it try to burrow!” the captain shouted, and the hunters tightened the circle around the enraged creature.
I loaded another two bolts rapid fire and was pleased when they embedded themselves in the wirm’s flank and one of its eyeballs respectively.
The beast wailed as more and more spears were thrown at it, but the real show stopper was when Thas brought out the Rock Launcher prototype and fired the double-rock-vine-combo at its face.
The projectile wrapped around the wirm’s head a solid two and a half times before setting.
“Noooowww!” the captain bellowed and pulled out a jagged black blade.
The rest of the hunters surged forward on his call and started tossing spiked hooks with rope on the ends over the maimed beast in an attempt to strap the thing down.
