Swords, Sorcery, and Sex in the World of Greyhawk - Chapter 2 - Part 3

Chapter 2: Finding Shelter - Part 3

"I said I don't know." Steve insisted, still unwilling to take responsibility.

"Maybe we can go deeper and find someplace safe. At least we can see better here." Erica said.

"N. O. - No." Maria said.

"You want more bat bites?" Erica asked her.

"That's not... Fine, whatever. No one gives a damn about me." Invisible in the dark, Maria crossed her hands over her chest. Steve and Erica rolled their eyes, but Ashley and Mickey stayed silent. If the others had been able to see, they would have wondered about the dazed expression on their faces.

Taking the lead this time, Steve set off, crouching low and following the thickening veins deeper into the cave. They moved slowly, picking their way around stalagmites. Steve soaked his feet in a stream, and Peter conked his head against a stalactite that his outstretched hands had missed, but they made progress. The glowing lichen was more common here, especially around dripping water, but it still didn't offer enough light to see more than a foot away. They came to a branching of the tunnel and turned left after a brief discussion, but soon found that a cave-in had blocked that route. Turning back they started down the right fork when Steve called a halt.

"Watch it, I think the floor is-" A crack of breaking stone interrupted Steve's warning, and fracture zig-zagged around their feet. Before they could jump to safety, the ground dropped out from under them and the six found themselves in a sinkhole, sliding down into darkness.

"Aieee!" This time Maria wasn't the only one to scream.

They tumbled down a slope, bruised by the occasional fist-size rock, until they dropped into an underground river. The cold water shocked them silent, and they struggled to breathe. The river wasn't so deep that they couldn't touch the bottom, but the swift current pulled them off their feet. Its channel was pitch-black, as if the river had scoured it clean of the glowing lichen. The river carried the six farther underground, dropping them over low waterfalls, pulling them through rapids and bruising them against rocks.

It twisted, turned, and dropped, carrying them beyond any hope of returning to where they'd entered. Occasionally one would cry out, but for the most part they simply struggled to keep their heads above water and unbroken, unable to assess how far or deep they'd moved. None could say how much later it was when the channel opened up into a chamber whose ceiling was high enough that lichen could grow without being swept away.

The current was carrying them quickly towards a shallow bend, created where the river took a turn to the right and disappeared into yet another low tunnel. Peter found his feet first, his mass helping him keep upright against the current.

"Hold on!" He yelled, reaching his hands out to grab at Mickey, who was being carried past.

Erica and Maria came up behind and crashed into his back. He stumbled, nearly losing his footing and carrying them all into the darkness, but recovered as his momentum slammed him into an underwater rock. With his left ankle throbbing and his hip bruised by the impact, he groaned. For long seconds they balanced precariously on Peter's painful legs.

"Uhhhh." He groaned again, forcing himself to shift his feet towards shallow water.

The current sucked at each step, eager to pull them off to a watery grave, and Peter's world narrowed to putting one foot ahead of the other. The dull pain from both limbs sounded in a roar that filled his head. The sucking current was too much, and the pain sapped his strength. His left leg bucked, and the water spun them adrift.

"Peter!" Steve cried out, but Peter didn't hear as he slammed into another boulder and his head cracked against it. One arm scrabbled for purchase on the wet rock as the current pulled him into the darkness again.

"Come on, Peter!" Mickey urged from next to his ear, and the words found their way to the unreasoning core of his brain, where the urge to survive burned white-hot.

"Gahhhh!" A roar burbled up from his stomach as he rose to his feet, screaming defiance against the river. With new-found strength he brought his legs forwards, water whitening in his wake. The burst of energy only lasted a half-dozen steps, but that was enough to get them to shallower water, where Erica could get her feet under her and help carry the shorter girls.

When Steve came up under his other shoulder Peter sagged, with barely enough energy to collapse on the pebbly beach. The other two had been closer to the outside of the bend, and had made it ashore already.

All six lay panting, staring up at the ceiling. This deep into the mountain, the lichen grew in solid carpets rather than veins, in such profusion that they could finally see their surroundings. The gray rock of the cave's walls was overlaid with swaths of white where millennia of flowing water had laid down coats of limestone. Erica's first thought was that the bulbous flowstone looked like something from Haynes Mall's interior playground, all rounded corners and soft padding, but Peter's bruised head could attest to how deceptive that appearance was. Their waterlogged clothes felt cold against their skin, making them shiver, but the air was noticeably warmer than it had been above.

"Oh. My. God." Maria moaned.

"No shit." Erica replied, unmoving.

"Well, well... What's this?" A new voice boomed out.

Shocked, the six rolled over to find its source. At the foot of a scree-covered slope, four men stood in a semi-circle, facing them. Aside from having multiple canteens on straps they wore dull colored cotton shirts and trousers. The closest one dominated the others by his broad shoulders and a barrel chest; his hair had thinned to a strip above his ears, but he made up for lost volume with mutton-chop sideburns that covered his cheeks.

With a start, Erica realized that the man wasn't speaking English. She tried to guess what he was speaking, but the exact sounds wouldn't come into focus - like she was watching a dubbed movie and trying to guess the original language without hearing it. Somehow, though, she knew exactly what the man meant.

"Um. Hello." Erica said experimentally, struggling to her feet. Her brain sent instructions to his mouth in English, but somewhere the signals got translated into whatever language the man spoke.

"You'll be from above, then?" One of the four asked.

"Um. Yes." Erica nodded.

"Huh. Lucky ye didn't come any earlier. Any closer to the rainy season and the higher water in this channel would hae drowned ye straight away."

Typhoon season? The Blue Ridge Mountains didn't have typhoons. Anyway, it was May when they left and hurricanes wouldn't come for months. Ashley noted the incongruity, wondering what it said about where they had landed.

"Ye'll be runaways, I suppose?" The man continued when they didn't respond.

"Uh...well...it's a long story." Erica evaded the question, having no idea what the correct answer might be.

"Hm. I suppose it is. We all have our own stories here in the Hestmark Highlands, and what's past is past. I suppose you'll want to be on your way now, then. Don't let us slow you down." He said, starting up the slope.

"Wait! Um...I mean..." Erica temporized when the man turned around.

"Yes?"

"I...uh...you wouldn't happen to have any food, would you? Our...supplies got lost when we went in the river." She gave the man her best smile and lied.

"Food, eh? A precious thing indeed." He said, refusing to answer directly.

"Oh. I hate to ask this, then, but-"

"Can we spare some?"

"Yes." Erica was gratified to see his eyes shift as she breathed in, inflating her already voluminous chest. She smiled with every expectation of getting what she wanted - she'd have this guy wrapped around her finger before long.

"Not enough to get you all to One-eye Cove, I reckon, even if you did know the way." He raised his palms, as if to say there was nothing he could do.

Erica paused, surprised to be rebuffed so directly.

"Oh, anything would be wonderful." Peter finally managed to find his voice. The language interface problem didn't occur to him as it had to Erica, and the words came naturally.

"Thing is, see...out here those who work, eat. Those who don't...don't."

"We...we could..." Peter began - anything for food, he thought.

"Maybe you could, indeed. Wouldn't be the first time I had fresh runaways working for me." The whiskered man said, eyeing the waterlogged refugees, especially Peter and Steve.

"I-" Ashley began before Erica cut her off.

"That'd be great. What kind of help are you thinking of?" She said, trying not to sound skeptical.

"We're heading out to the Tetevan Pipe. Got a claim stake on a new face, but I reckon it'll only hold for season, until the other outfits catch word and it gets crowded. Came out with a full crew to take what we could first, but the Kith hit us a pair of cycles back. Lost a pair of good diggers." The men behind him looked grim. "I reckon there's plenty of ore in that face for a couple more if you know which end of a pick hits the rock. You two'd get rookie shares - same as every other runaway that makes it this far gets." He said, looking at Steve and Peter.

"You want us to dig for you?" Maria asked, incredulously.

"You?! Nah, never had a skirt dig on my crew, never will, I reckon. But there's plenty of work for li'l ladies' fingers too, sortin' and pickin'. Lost my cook, too. You look like you know your way around a ladle there, lass. I'm a fair boss, ye'd get cook's pay." He said, pointing at Maria's chubby form.

"I'm not your 'li'l lady." Ashley bristled.

"If you want to do something else, we can figure something out." One of the other men spoke with a crooked smile.

"No, no, sorting sounds great. We'll be happy to cook, too." Erica quickly jumped in before Ashley could protest. She turned his face so the men couldn't see and gave her a warning scowl.

"Alright, then." Mutton-chops spat in his hand and extended it to Erica.

Ewww, she thought. He spit into his hand, and now he wants me to touch it!? Could he be any more gross? Still, a girl didn't get to be sorority president if she couldn't keep a smile on her face, no matter how awful things got. Erica spit in her own hand and shook, doing her best to keep from shivering as he wrapped her hand in his slick fingers. Gaah! She thought. The others owe me for this.

"Welcome to the Free Hestmark, where ye work, but ye keep what ye earn. I'm Casmir, this is Ademic, Cheven, and Wenzel, and that weasel up there is Taman."

The four were a mixed bunch: Wenzel was the oldest, with thinning gray hair, Ademic was bulky, like he might have been Casmir's little brother. Taman was the smallest of the five diggers, with a protruding face. Cheven was the one who'd spoke up earlier. Thin and paler-skinned than the others, he wore baggy clothes and stood in a casual slouch. He wouldn't have been out of place on campus, Erica thought. She introduced herself and the others, but Casmir struggled with the English names. Ashley's was the worst.

"Ah... Ahss... Ahss-"

"-hole." Maria mumbled.

"Eh, curse it. We will call you 'Vila', because you are so thin, like a pixie." Ashley shrugged as if she didn't care, but she smiled inside, thinking about her Tink tattoo.

The other black-haired men came forward, spitting on their hands as they came. Peter and Steve copied them without much ado, but the other girls wouldn't spit, and only grudgingly extended their hands.

Continued in Chapter 3

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