The Sword of Retribution

Danger in the Dark - Part 3

     As Raptor left Tragius’s room, on his way to meet the other members of his team, Thomas Gown and his travelling companions, thousands of miles away and a mile underground, were stirring themselves awake, having a hasty breakfast and preparing for another day's march.

     They were maintaining the hard pace set by the slaver, not wanting it and Lirenna to arrive at the waterfall long before they did in case it refused to wait and went on without them. Consequently they were all tired and irritable, having had only five hours sleep. Thomas gulped down his mouthful of dried fruit, washed it down with a swallow of cold, clear water from the stream and then fidgeted anxiously, waiting for the others to finish so that they could get a move on. The thought of the demi shae all alone in the company of a slaver, ally or not, burned constantly in his mind, and he strove to make as much speed as possible, begrudging every smallest stop. He would have been quite insufferable to the others, his impatience at every delay expressing itself in the form of a short temper and thoughtless, acid comments, except that the others understood the turmoil he was going through and made allowance for it. They were as fond of the demi shae as he was, and shared his anxiety at her present predicament, so they felt nothing but sympathy for him.

     The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the stream they were following, like all the streams in this vast system of tunnels and caverns, twisted and turned this way and that, with great loops going hundreds of yards from the direct course of the river. Some of these loops were small enough that they could cut across them, but most were so large that they had to follow them around, not daring to leave them in case they lost the stream and thereby lost their only guide to the waterfall. The waterfall might be only a couple of days march away by a direct route, but by following such a tortuously circuitous path it might take twice or even three times as long to get there, and Thomas gave voice to his frustration in no uncertain terms.

     At least there haven’t been any more rockfalls, he thought gratefully. The trogs must have been right, that big rockfall must have brought down all the loose rock in the ceiling, and there won’t be another one until the forces of erosion have had a chance to loosen a few more bits, which’ll take years. We were just unlucky to be caught by a big one. He looked nervously at a great boulder the size of a four horse cart, freshly fallen by the look of it, and muttered a grateful prayer to the Gods. If something that size had fallen on them, not even the shield spell could have saved them.

     They were able to replenish their food supplies when they came upon the body of a great cave lizard that had been crushed by falling boulders. Shaun, Matthew and the trogs stripped some meat from the carcass while the others were resting, Thomas chafing at the delay but recognising that they’d need food if they were to maintain the hard pace. They cooked it when they stopped to sleep, hanging it by a crude funguswood frame over a fire, and then all of them except Diana carried a share of it wrapped in dried lizardskin. It turned out to be tough and tasteless, but it filled their stomachs and kept them going, for which they were grateful. As Thomas chewed on a bit, he found himself wondering whether the slaver was growing hungry, and immediately began a conversation with Angus to stop himself thinking about it.

     The trog was holding what looked like a writing pad in his large, wrinkled hands and was writing on it by scratching at it with the great, bullet fingernail of his right index finger which he had carefully shaped to a rounded point. Thomas thought he must be dipping his fingernail in a bottle of ink, but he wrote on and on without a pause and the symbols continued to appear until the wizard, intrigued, moved closer to get a better look. The trog had already nearly filled the pad and it didn’t look as though it consisted of more than one piece of paper. What’ll he do when he runs out of room? he wondered.