The Merchant Adventurer Page 13

  The shadow turned and left the room. Try as she might, Asarah could not see the cloaked figure’s face, but his walk was familiar. Strangely familiar. Her curiosity and her natural impudence overcame her self-preservation.

  “Who was that?”

  “What, oh? I forgot you were there. I find your question tiresome, so you should sleep,” said the Wizard. With a wave of his hand, he rendered Asarah unconscious again.

  31

  Relan looked at the unconscious Orc and said, “I am a failure as a Hero.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” said Boltac. “But don’t feel bad. Most Heroes are. Now what do we do about this?” he said, gesturing at the Orc.

  “Kill him?”

  “Me or you, Mr. Hero?”

  Relan flinched a little at this. Boltac’s expression softened and he scratched the side of his round face. “Well, figure they already know we’re here. And one more Orc won’t make much of a difference.”

  “But, you must kill him, Boltac, you must!” said Relan with great sincerity.

  “En-henh. Well, if it’s so important to you, why don’t you take my sword off your hip and cut him down.” Boltac looked down at the Orc. As it slept, its terrible features somehow took on an innocence. When Relan did not speak, Boltac said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Tie him tight, we’ll leave him.”

  “But how are we going to get out? It’s a maze Boltac. A maze!” whined Relan.

  Boltac slapped Relan across the face. “Now, you listen to me. I didn’t ask you to come. In fact, I told you not to come. I told you you’d probably get killed, right?”

  Relan nodded, rubbing the red mark on his face.

  “And are you killed yet?”

  Relan stood there, still breathing.

  “Then cheer up, ‘cause things could be a whole lot worse. And likely will be before we’re done. You wanted an Adventure, ya big dumb ox, and you got one. So now what are you gonna do?”

  Relan didn’t say anything, but knelt down and began binding the Orc with strips of leather that he cut from its jerkin.

  Boltac stuck his belly out and stretched a good long stretch. “Okay,” he said to himself. “Now that we’re good and screwed, how do we renegotiate this deal?”

  “May I suggest stealth?” whispered Rattick’s voice from the shadows.

  “You sneaky bastard,” exclaimed Boltac, “you’re alive!”

  “Yes, I am rather less dead than my enemies would like. This is the truth of it.”

  “How did you survive?” Relan asked.

  “The Gods love a thief,” said Rattick.

  “You know, Rattick,” said Boltac, looking directly into the shadow where he thought Rattick was, “as your employer, I have to tell you, I have some serious questions to ask you. Not the least of which is, why didn’t you tell me there were so many of these things?” he asked, gesturing towards the Orc.

  Rattick stepped out of the shadow behind Boltac and said, “To be honest, I did not think you would survive this long.”

  To Boltac’s credit, he didn’t jump… much. “En-henh, so now what?”

  “For all the gold you have, I can return you and the boy to the surface where you will be safe.”

  “I didn’t come this far to return home empty-handed.”

  “You wish to go on?” Rattick asked, his thick eyebrows expressing surprise.

  “En-henh.”

  “You, perhaps,” said Rattick, “but I don’t think the youngling is still so keen.”

  “My courage is as good as yours, sir.”

  Rattick unwrapped his cape of faded black. He stood toe-to-toe with Relan and looked up into his eyes. “I am no sir,”–he looked the lad up and down in a way that made his next word a curse–“sir. And what does that make of your courage?”

  “Test me and you will find me ready, sir,” said Relan, trying to make an insult of his own. But the quaver in his voice was less than convincing.

  “Very well,” said Rattick, giving Boltac a mocking bow, “I lead where my Master commands.”

  “What’sa plan, Rattick?”

  Rattick bent down and lifted the Orc’s tunic. He plunged his dagger into the soft part of the Orc’s thigh and held the creature’s garment away from the spurt of greenish-black blood. The Orc let out a soft, sinking moan, as if it was deflating into death. The blood pulsed slower and slower until finally Rattick said, “There, now you can untie it. Bring me its clothes.”

  Relan was wide-eyed and pale. He looked to Boltac. Boltac just observed everything with a look of professional disgust. As if the whole thing were going to cost him money no matter what he did. Relan bent to the task.

  “I know these passages far better than I have let on, stout Merchant.” Rattick said, as he wiped his dagger clean with a black rag.

  “No shit, Rattick? You’ve been keeping secrets from me?” Boltac asked with absolutely no air of surprise.

  “You have no idea.”

  “En-henh. So, once again, what’sa plan?”

  “By keeping to the shadows and whispering with their ancient tongue, I have found the woman. She is being kept by the Wizard in a room at the very bottom of this dungeon.”

  “You found her, and you didn’t bring her back with you?”

  “Gods, no!” hissed Rattick. “She is clumsy and loud like you. And how I am I to know that she would not do something stupid, like this one?” He pointed at Relan. “For money, I risk my skin, but for nothing do I risk my life.”

  “A wise policy, Rattick, and one I support. But can you get us to her?”

  “I can, but you will have to do what I say, when I say it,” he pointed at Relan, “Especially you. If you do not, I will slit your throat myself.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” said Relan.

  “That’s the point,” Rattick said, his eyes floating glassily in the feeble light of the winding darkness, “you wouldn’t see me try. You wouldn’t see me at all.”

  “All right, all right, Mr. Death-Waits-in-the-Friggin-Darkness, you’re very scary–do you have a plan or not?”

  “I do,” said Rattick, “but you won’t like it.” Then he stripped the crude clothing from the Orc. When he was done, he said, “Now we must skin him.”

  “Skin him!” said Relan.

  “I told you you weren’t going to like it.”

  32

  It hadn’t taken that long to skin the Orc, Relan thought, not really. It just felt like forever because he had wanted to throw up. Relan had skinned things before, sure. Deer, squirrel, pig. But never a person. Orcs weren’t people. They were monsters, but they had faces that were just too human.

  Boltac shook his head and turned away while Rattick worked with his sharp knife and little tugs and jerks. “You really think this is going to work?” asked Boltac. “What’s your plan, scare them to death?”

  “Scare, no,” said Rattick, “distract and confuse.”

  “With a pinch of disgust thrown in for good measure, no doubt,” added Boltac.

  “Ah, there it is.” Rattick held up the skin and scalp of the dead Orc, complete with ears. He had fitted the creature’s faceleather to his hand and held up the dismal beast’s countenance, as if it were a puppet. “Looks like you,” Rattick said to Relan. Then he darted his hand towards Relan’s face and made him jump. The ragged cackle that followed was the first time Relan had heard the evil little man laugh.

  “I don’t trust him,” Relan said to Boltac.

  “I don’t trust him either. I employ him,” said Boltac.

  Rattick donned the Orcs crude harness and then slipped the creatures face and ears over his own.

  “Wait a minute? Where did Rattick go? He was here just a minute ago,” said Boltac. “Seriously, that’s a disguise?”

  “This is a distraction.”

  “Where are our disguises?” asked Relan.

  “They’re never going to see you.”

  “I’m not much on sneaking around like a coward,” said Relan.<
br />
  “Oh, you won’t be sneaking. You don’t have the talent. They’ll just be looking elsewhere.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon kid, I think I know what he means. Rattick, get us out of this maze before the Orc starts to rot.”

  Rattick bowed low, “Your humble employee lives to be of service.”

  • • •

  They retraced their steps to the main tunnel. If anything, there were more Orcs than before.

  “Horrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, horrrrrrrrr,” the Orcs wheezed as their powerful legs pushed against the crudely paved surface of the tunnel. Slowly, slowly the wagons climbed from the depths.

  “Merchant,” asked Rattick, “do you have any oil in that remarkable sack of yours?”

  “En-henh, just a minute.” Boltac rummaged through his bottomless sack.

  “There are so many of them,” said Relan.

  “So many shadows in the darkness, and what will three more be?”

  “Is that from a saga? It sounds like it’s from one of the sagas,” asked Relan.

  “No lad,” said Rattick from the darkness, “it’s not from a song of Heroes, but from a song of the other kind.”

  “There we go,” said Boltac as he pulled a large flagon of oil from the depths of his Magic sack.

  Rattick took the flagon and said to Relan, “Heroes aren’t the only ones who perform deeds worth singing about, youngling. Watch and learn.”

  Rattick wrapped himself in the Orc’s skin and donned his cloak of darkness, seeming to disappear before their very eyes. A shadow moving through shadows, he stepped into the flow of traffic. He was a blackness with pointed ears, nothing more. For a moment, he was in step with the wagons going up, and then he stepped into the lee of one of the great pillars that kept the ceiling from collapsing.

  If Relan hadn’t known better, he would have thought this was just another Orc resting on the long climb to the surface. And if he hadn’t known better he would have thought that this ordinary Orc was relieving himself on the pillar? Rattick held the oil flagon at his crotch and poured it out onto the passage floor.

  “Uh, is he..?”

  “Clever, I’ll give him that.”

  “In front of everybody?” asked Relan.

  “Hidden in plain sight. Our friend is very, very sneaky. No wonder he’s stayed alive so long.”

  “He’s not my friend,” said Relan.

  As wagon neared the pillar, Orc-Rattick appeared to finish his business, looking like just another Orc in the darkness.

  The next wagon was pulled by six Orcs, yoked together in teams of two. As the pair closest to the wagon drew abreast of the pillar, something happened to one of the Orcs. It barked out in pain and dropped in its traces. The other Orcs immediately bellowed in rage, as the “driver,” lashed out with the whip indiscriminately. The cavern was filled with such a roaring and commotion, Relan couldn’t hear himself think. Even though Relan was looking for Rattick, he almost missed the sneak-thief’s next move.

  A ripple of darker darkness came across the floor, underneath the reins of the wagon. It was Rattick, rolling with noiseless precision. There was a small, silver flash in the murk and another Orc collapsed, clutching a wounded leg. The roars of protest turned to howls of fear as the wagon slipped backwards. The driver whipped and whipped, but it was a disaster in slow-motion, the oil making it impossible for the remaining Orcs to keep their footing.

  The driver was on to Rattick. He saw a figure that was not quite Orc, crouching motionless on the floor. Relan tensed to flee. But as the driver cried, “HOARRRRRRRK!” and raised his whip, Rattick uncoiled from the floor. He grabbed a torch from the holder on the front of the wagon and shoved it in the driver’s face. As the Orc screamed in agony, Rattick continued the motion, lofting the torch into the river of oil he had poured onto the floor. As it erupted in flame, Relan could see Rattick rolling towards them across the floor.

  Flames engulfed the wagon team. The overloaded wagon slid backwards, crushed the Orcs behind it, and slammed into the next wagon. A terrible cry went up as the entire train of carts broke loose and crashed into the depths, one after another.

  The flames died down quickly leaving Relan barely able to see in the darkness. He was only aware of the sounds of agony and the smell of burning flesh. “It’s horrible,” Relan said.

  “That guy is worth every penny,” said Boltac.

  “NOW!” Rattick hissed, appearing between them as if from nowhere. He thrust both of them across the passage and into the mass of confused Orcs. Some were trying to flee the flames. Others were rushing to help their fallen comrades. They were everywhere, pressing on all sides of them.

  “Keep moving,” Rattick hissed.

  Relan was nearly overpowered by their oppressive, musky scent. He wondered if this was what a lathered horse must smell like in hell. If any one of the Orcs in the passage had looked closer they would have recognized them for human interlopers they were. But, in the confusion, the Orcs did not see them. The three were across the passage and safely away into the darkness. Relan felt like laughing. They had gotten away with it!

  33

  Asarah was awakened by someone shaking her shoulder. She shrieked, and scrambled back underneath the table.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me,” said a voice that was familiar but shouldn’t have been there. Asarah opened her eyes and saw a face lit from underneath by a faint glow. She gasped. The figure opened the shutter on the lamp it held and more light flooded out into the room. It overpowered the otherworldly glow of the sinister flame under glass so that she could see who it was.

  “Boltac?!”

  “The one and only.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here. You’re the one who got us into this mess.”

  “Us? Wait, what’s going on?”

  “I’m here to–”

  “No! No, you are not. Are you telling me that I’m the damsel in distress? I am NOT a DAMN DAMSEL in DISTRESS!”

  “Fine, fine,” said Boltac, “just keep your voice down. Now, how about you rescue me and get out of here.”

  “That’s right! Because I’m the Heroine. I am the girl who rescues herself.”

  “And doesn’t forget to take her best customer, Boltac, with her.”

  “Best customer, ha! Why, Boltac, when you’re not trying to chisel me out of a drink you’re trying to beat the check.”

  “En-henh, and I’m very sorry about that, but if you could hurry up and rescue me so we could get out of here…”

  “Oh,” said Asarah, sighing into the darkness, “I forgot. I’m chained to this table.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, uh, if I…”

  “Don’t you even think about it,” Asarah said.

  “Well, I think I have something in my sack here that could loosen those chains enough so that, y’know, you and I…”

  “All by ourselves? You attempted this stupid rescue all by yourself–what were you thinking?”

  “Hurry up!” Relan whispered from across the darkened room.

  “Wait, you brought someone else on this suicide mission?”

  “Ennnn…yeah, the kid I loaned the sword to?”

  “You’re endangering a child in this foolish rescue attempt?!”

  “All right, enough!” Boltac yelled, his voice echoing through the chamber.

  “I think somebody heard that,” whispered Relan.

  Boltac clapped a hand across his face and shook his head. “Look, Asarah. Please be quiet.”

  “Quiet!” she shouted, “Why should I be quiet? So you and some other fool can get himself killed in a rescue attempt that is pointless, because I was going to save munh…”

  Boltac smothered her mouth with a kiss. It was so unexpected that when it was over, neither of them knew what to say.

  Asarah spoke first. “Uh?”

  “You know this already, but I never told you. I love…
I Love you.”

  “The only thing you love is money, Boltac,” she said.

  Boltac ignored this and plowed on. “And here’s something else you already know. You should shut up and let people help you.”

  “Hmmpfh.”

  “En-henh. That ain’t an argument.”

  “Hm-mpfh!” she said, making it into an argument by sheer force of inflection.

  “Okay, look. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t come here to rescue you. I came here to ransom you. You know, to buy you back.”

  “BUY ME!” screamed Asarah, creating a racket that might have been louder than any racket this dungeon had yet heard. “THAT’S EVEN WORSE!”

  From the darkness, there was laughter. In keeping with tradition, laughter from darkness should be sardonic. Or sinister. Or, at the very least, mocking. This laughter was not. This laughter was simply amused. “Ho ho ho ho ho, that. Ho ho ho ho, that is… whoo! I can’t take it anymore.” There were two short claps in the darkness, and then the room was flooded with light.

  Dimsbury was visible as a darker area near the now blinding light being emitted from within the glass jar. After a moment, the intensity of the light faded, and it became possible to see again. Dimsbury said, “Oh, that is rich. Without a doubt, that is the finest entertainment I have seen since the comedies of the Imperial Opera. Or were they tragedies? I don’t know. It’s so hard to tell until the end. Do either of you sing?”

  Boltac turned to face the Wizard. The light that still suffused the chamber was too powerful for anyone to notice that the lamp in his hand now glowed a little brighter than before.

  Relan stumbled awkwardly into the room. Partially, it was because he had been blinded. Mostly, it was because Rattick was pushing him from behind as he held a dagger to the boy’s throat.

  Relan knew who it was before he heard his rasping voice.

  “Undo your sword belt.” commanded Rattick.

  “Rattick, how could you?” asked Relan.

  “Come now, boy, the question isn’t how could I. The question is, how couldn’t I?”

  “For money, Rattick? For money, you help the man who sacked Robrecht? Your home?”