Book: 4

  Chapter 17

  Highs And Lows

  Barry spidered across a dark fissure in the bowels of the mountain, clambering over a set of ancient chains that once held a bridge deck… Or perhaps they were simply stage dressing, a manifestation of the odd place the young Adventurers found themselves in.

  In any case, Perry remained on the other side; belaying each party member as they crossed the gently swaying iron chains.

  Lindsey was the last to cross the chains under Perry’s silent gaze, high above an underground river polluted with goblin shit. Her heart hammered against her ribs, even with the safety lines and all the training she’d undergone… So terribly high above a lightless void balanced on a swaying, ungainly construct, her old fear of dark and deep places came roaring in. Lindsey trembled under those distant and faded memories of terror, of hiding from slavers in the cesspit of an abandoned outhouse, while her village fell and the screams went on and on. The echoes rang in her mind, freezing her in place, high above the reeking rift, in the dark.

  ‘Lin… I’m with you.’ The touch of Flash’s distant mind soothed her in an instant, tempering and reducing her fear with their shared memory of running across an endless meadow of wildflowers, on a moon that lay between dreams and waking. Lindsey gasped softly, releasing a breath she’d been holding for no good reason at all.

  “Lindsey, check in. You’re good?” Perry asked in her ear across the comm system; his voice was so much like Barry’s… and so different at the same time. He lacked the smooth warm and calm timbre Barry always expressed; Perry spoke crisply and with a clear, unhurried directness.

  “I’m good. Crossing now. Thank you.” She answered warmly, sharing the words with her familiar as well. ‘Good horsie.’ She whispered across the miles… or whatever, to the silly colt she shared her life with.

  Perry landed with a soft clatter of well fitted wooden armor, just a few seconds after Lindsey dragged herself, exhausted and drenched in fear-sweat safely on the other side; if the goblin haunted mines could be considered ‘safe’ at any time. “Uphill or down?” Perry asked across the open channel, so the lookouts could weigh in as well.

  “Downhill. Barry, this calls for fire-walk-with-me.” Harry answered a moment later, which made Barry and the boys chuckle with evil glee.

  “Barry is going to scatter a bunch of tiny fishbone caltrops on the ledge, all coated with chemical irritants like chili peppers, mild acids and stinging salts.” Harry whispered in Lindsey’s ear, as they crept down the narrow ledge, leaving Barry to his silent work. “The irritants are to make sure any sneaky followers make lots of noise to alert our rearguard. Gobs are always barefoot, while our boots will just crunch over them, if we need to make a quick escape.”

  “I see…” She replied flatly. “And how many more of these nasty tricks do you boys have up your sleeves?”

  “Tons. Barry should have given you our playbook a week ago.” Harry answered, sounding annoyed. “Did you read it?”

  “I did, until my eyes started to cross and my head tried to explode from the sheer number of diagrams, charts and code phrases.” She quipped, flashing him a grin that totally would have worked on Barry, but failed hard against the youngest Ward boy.

  Harry remained unmoved by her charms, smiling grimly and shaking his head. “Stay close, listen and watch for my signals. Barry will be too busy to help, when things pop off.” He paused for a moment and then sighed. “We’re gonna have to give you extra tutoring… Cram-school every time we make camp. No arguments. I think I can draw up some flash-cards for you when we stop for lunch.”

  “Flash-cards? Cram-school?” The lanky damsel grumbled unhappily at the youngest of the four brothers. “I’m not a child, young man.”

  “We’ve been training, living and working together our whole lives, Lin… You’ve joined up; now you need to find a way to fit in.” He shrugged calmly and smiled. “Just stay with me; let us work and watch how we do things. When it starts getting dynamic, you’ll know what to do.” The warm, calm confidence in his tone reminded her of Barry and the boys’ strange, terrifying parents as well; an odd blend of excitement and fear squirmed in her belly when he smiled again, a mad, crooked grin that washed away the last of her lingering fear.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Barry, take point. Perry, back him up; Larry rearguard, please.” Harry whispered across the comms, bringing his team back into formation. Together, a tight cluster of young people slipped around a rough hewn cliff-face corner and into a tunnel of roughly worked stone, lit by only a few scattered clumps of glowing moss and fungus. “Time to delve.” Harry whispered softly, as the sound of distant, incoherent chatter drifted down the tunnel.

  “Six hostiles, no non combatants, twenty yards ahead.” Barry’s firm, warm voice murmured in Lindsey’s ear, as if the message were just for her. “This tunnel opens up on a ledge ten feet above the chamber floor… there’s some old-ass ladders and scaffolds, mostly rotted I’m sure.”

  “Heard. Do you have a play in mind?” Harry asked in reply, while the rest of the team listened in.

  “Three exits from the chamber, not including ours. We could blitz them; but it might get hairy if more come to join the party. Purple Haze would work… that kinda seems like overkill, though.” Barry answered after a moment.

  “Lets go with Magic Carpet ride, then. We have plenty and it should be entertaining. Masks up, we go on Barry’s mark. Larry, watch our rear. Gandree and Lindsey, stay close.” The only reply to Harry’s whispered commands were the soft sounds of the team checking their own gear, then double checking their partner’s.

  Lindsey and Gandree watched from the far end of the tunnel, while Barry produced two egg sized and shaped pale tan objects from his mysterious storage gift.

  “Those are umber puffball mushrooms; when agitated or struck, they swell up and burst into a silent, odorless cloud of intoxicating spores. Barry is going to pitch a few silly-shrooms into the chamber. They should start to hallucinate within a few minutes of breathing the dust.” He tapped his face mask and nodded his helmeted head confidently. “Keep your helmets and masks on, or you might go on a groovy trip as well.”

  /

  Gary sighed in silent frustration, perched on a ledge high up the crevasse, while his kids made their way across the chasm and down the narrow, rough hewn trail that skirted the edge of a terrifying drop. The weight of all that lightless earth above his head felt like his own gravestone, pressing down trying to immobilize him with claustrophobic terror. ‘Ugh… Hate tunnels!” He grumbled so quietly that only the bats heard his complaint. At that moment, things became more entertaining down where the action was.

  Without apparent cause, one of the goblin men stood up and began desperately trying to climb the far wall of the chamber while giggling madly and gibbering nonsense words. His five comrades watched with varying levels of annoyance, amusement and dull, vague curiosity, unaware of the silent cloud of miniscule dust particles drifting down on them.

  Within a minute, the wretched, naked creatures began hooting and quarreling with each other, while the first victim sat huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth, eating something imaginary. That triggered even more chaos, as the other gobbs began insisting that he give up his stash of hallucinatory food…

  /

  “That was weird.” Lindsey whispered, while pulling her spear from a small, green monster’s heart. “They pretty much killed each other.”

  “Dungeon goblins are dumber than wild gobs, but way more aggressive and territorial.” Harry explained carefully. “These are just like the goblin men we fought before; savage, half mad and only able to cooperate when a stronger monster is controlling them. Without a real leader it’s easy to turn them on each other.”

  “I thought you were such nice boys…” She sighed winsomely, in the midst of wiping her spear down with an oiled rag. “That was cheating.”

  “I’ll be certain to offer a formal duel to the monsters, going forward.” Barry mumbled with a bow to his fair maiden. “For now, let’s get the loot and pull back. This room is going to be hazardous for three or four hours and we need to rinse the spores off our gear.”

  The team quickly and efficiently moved through the rough hewn chamber, searching the matted piles of bedding and furs for valuables and looting the bodies before they could vanish, leaving only their magic stones behind…

  Lindsey gasped at the sight of the first corpse de-spawning, a few seconds after Larry filched a small sack and a rusty iron dagger from its pitiful remains. A faint shimmer of hazy light engulfed the little body for a moment, then faded away. A tiny red gemstone clattered to the floor, flawed, cloudy and misshapen, but faintly luminous in the dim cavern. The rest followed soon after, fading away into nothing, with only the small jewels to mark their passing.

  “Magic stones are super handy.” Gandree mumbled eagerly as he collected the tiny gems from the cavern floor. “Don’t miss any!”

  Harry used the time spent looting to lecture the two new members on the finer points of Ward family strategy over the comms system. “We can’t always use drugs, toxins or irritants like this… If the plan goes tits up or equipment fails, the whole thing can become a total shitshow. One lucky hit to a helmet and we wind up in the same boat as our targets, tripping balls or choking and blind.”

  The younger lad spoke across a private channel, sounding confident and a little excited. “In the end, it comes down to managing risk and controlling the battlefield. Any critter that comes near here, is going to be affected by the spore cloud and spots us is going to have real trouble calling for backup, while on a mushroom trip. That gives us the luxury of searching carefully, even if we do have to stay buttoned up in our gear.”

  Harry continued his lesson through the climb back up to their ledge and through the passage, back out onto the trail beside the crevasse. Larry spread more of their silly, fish vertebrae caltrops on their backtrail, to confound any wandering critters that might come through, without leaving explicit evidence of foul play. “Fish bones are perfect for this, since they’re exactly the kind of thing goblins leave lying around anyway, unlike metal caltrops. As a bonus, anyone in decent boots can just crunch on through with no problem and we don’t give the gobbs anything to use against us…”

  At the foot of the former bridge, the team regrouped and began wiping each other’s armor and gear with damp, tacky cloths and spraying each other down with diluted vinegar. “Dungeon goblins can use metal weapons, if they steal or scavenge them…” Harry explained during the cleanup process. “That’s why we even take rusty or broken weapons and armor when we leave.”

  “Back in Dwarf-hold, goblin raiders were always hanging around the valleys and hills; harassing the human traders.” Gandree agreed while wielding a soft bristled scrub brush on Barry’s armored form. “They were always more troublesome whenever they got their hands on proper weapons… or so I heard.”

  “Let’s move up the trail.” Larry hissed quietly from his position, watching the as yet unexplored passage. “I left some drugged jerky behind, just in case.”

  “Larry, you’re an evil and terrible person.” Perry mumbled at his brother. “I should’ve thought of that first.”

  /