Lord of the Rose

CHAPTER NINE

Dawn found the dwarf and the warrior sitting on the low stone wall surrounding a fountain at the intersection of four narrow, twisting streets in the Gnome Ghetto. Apparently water had once flowed from the mouth of the chubby-cheeked cherub, immortalized in bronze, who balanced on one toe in the middle of the shallow bowl. The fountain and the bowl were dry now. In fact, when Dram peered over the edge, he discovered a pair of gully dwarves curled up on the inside of the fountain, snoring loudly.

He raised his foot to thump them awake and shoo them off, then slumped onto the wall with a sigh without delivering a kick. “I guess if I don’t bother them they won’t bother me,” the dwarf said, rubbing a gnarled hand over the back of his neck. “I just need to sit a spell and catch my breath.”

Looking equally weary, the man sat beside him, nudging the blade of the concealed sword to the side so he could stretch out his long legs. They had only begun to work out the kinks when the dwarf elbowed his companion in the side. “Look-but don’t look,” he whispered hoarsely, indicating the narrow street to the left.

The man leaned back, from the corner of his eye catching a glimpse of two knights. Each wore the emblem of the Rose on his breastplate. They sauntered side by side down the narrow way, forcing the few gnomes who were about at this early hour to scamper onto the curb or get knocked out of the way. In another dozen steps they would reach the little plaza with the fountain.

With elaborate casualness, the dwarf and the warrior rose to their feet and ambled up one of the side streets. The pair stepped into an alley, ran a short distance to a connecting alley, and ducked around the corner. They made their way through a maze of filthy hovels and twisting paths with scummy liquid puddles, finally emerging on another street-which wasn’t much bigger or nicer than the alley.

“What do those Salamis have against you, anyway?” asked Dram, looking around to make sure the place was clear of knights.

The man shrugged. “It’s not them, it’s me. I can’t stand the bastards. I see ’em, I just want to fight ’em.”

“Why? Did one of them steal your girl? A couple of them beat you up in a bar? What is it? It’s getting on my nerves, not knowing.” The dwarf glared at his companion, but the warrior simply kept walking. With a strangled oath, Dram fell back into step, his face locked in a glower.

The narrow street took a sharp bend, and they found themselves at a small market-another wide intersection where, instead of a dry fountain, a half dozen shabby carts and tents occupied the central open space. Vendors hawked fish, eggs, and fruit. Judging from the stench, the fish and much of the produce had already passed the point of spoilage in better markets and had been brought here to the ghetto in a last attempt to unload it.

“Damn,” cursed the dwarf in a husky whisper. They had already been noticed by a couple of knights among the several roaming the market, clad in leather armor, towering over the residents of the ghetto as they looked watchfully around.

“Hey, you two-what’s your hurry?”

It was the same two knights from earlier, the ones they had spent so much time trying to evade. One beckoned the pair while the other attracted the attention of the other knights in the little market. Within a few seconds, six armed men converged on them near a loosely pitched tent where a hunchbacked human was selling wrinkled, moldering apples.

“Why are you fellows so jumpy? What’s that on your back-hey, are you carrying a sword?” demanded the accosting knight. His hand moved to the hilt of his own blade at his belt. “You must have been informed that goes against the duke’s edict!”

Dram’s eyes were wide. “Gosh, not the duke!” he said innocently.

The dwarf spun around and started to run. The warrior reached out, seized one corner of the hunchback’s shabby tent in his hand, and jerked it hard. The billow of canvas came free, enveloping the advancing knights, blocking those following. The vendor screeched venomously and came after the warrior with a club, but he was gone, racing after the dwarf.

Oaths mingled with inarticulate shouts as the Solamnics stumbled and tore their way through the entanglement. Dram and his companion sprinted around the corner of the narrow lane, splashing through the scummy puddles, leaping over crates, rubble, and drunken gully dwarves. The knights could be heard shouting directions. A trumpet blared, and more shouts converged from all sides as numerous small patrols in the ghetto rallied to the sound.

Closely pursued, the two fugitives ran down one street, only to be met by several knights charging toward them. They turned in another direction, shouts and alarms sounding behind them.

“In here!” exclaimed the dwarf, skidding to a halt, tugging on the warrior’s arm. Dram ducked under an overhanging section of wall. With a grimace, the warrior bent and followed, grunting as the pommel of his great sword-still wrapped and strapped to his back-caught on a timber. He and the dwarf emerged in another tight alley

Moments later they found themselves in a small courtyard, enclosed by ramshackle buildings. The warrior spotted several flimsy looking doors, a few hanging loosely, and glanced at Dram.

“That way?” he asked dubiously.

The dwarf shook his head, bending down to grab the rusty bars of a grate that capped a drainage sewer. “Are you going stand there and watch or give me a hand?” he grunted, straining to lift the heavy grid. With the human’s help, he lifted it from its frame and slid it a foot or so off to the side. The water was filthy, the stench unbearable, giving them pause

“There’s a ladder on the side-follow it down,” Dram urged. The warrior slid his feet and legs through the gap, located a rung on the ladder, and started down. Almost immediately one of the ladder rungs snapped, and he tumbled into blackness. The fall wasn’t far. He splashed into an ankle-deep puddle of scum, his feet slipping out from under him. He landed painfully on his hip, in disgusting muck. He slowly rose to his feet, bumping his head against a low drainage pipe.

By then Dram had descended more carefully, dropping the last few feet with a splash, landing next to the human warrior.

“Damn, it stinks down here. And it’s black as night,” the dwarf grumbled. “Give me a minute to adjust my eyes, and we’ll get going.”

“Adjust?” the man replied. “Here’s the way I plan to adjust.” Sparks flared as he struck his flint and coaxed the glowing specks onto the wick of the small, oil lantern he had carried through the night. Quickly the flame took root, and he held the light up, illuminating a low, brick-walled pipe. The bottom was trenched and wet in the middle with thick liquid.

They couldn’t keep the stench out of their nostrils. The warrior tied a kerchief around his face, while the dwarf just grimaced, wrinkling his nose. “Which way?” he asked.

“The flow goes that way, toward the bay, no doubt. If they figure out we’ve taken to the sewers-and they will, as soon as someone spots that grate up there-that’s where they’ll be waiting for us. Let’s surprise them, and try the other direction.”

The warrior began to move against the sluggish flow, bending nearly double to avoid the low ceiling hung with pipes. Dram, still scowling, came behind. Each had drawn his knife, holding the sharp-edged weapons ready in their right hands, staring through the shadows and murk.

The man held his lantern out before him. Even so, the shadows beyond the pale circle of light were dark and impenetrable, as lightless as if they were a thousand feet underground. He passed a drainage pipe to the right, a shaft only about three feet in diameter that for now was dry. They came to a similar tube on the left, one that trickled with slimy effluent.

Abruptly the dwarf gasped. The human whirled, spotting a large snakelike object emerging from a side pipe. Eyes wide with terror, Dram stumbled away, flailing with his knife at a hideous creature hissing from a grotesque, circular mouth ringed with sharp teeth.

The warrior’s knife slashed out. A white tendril dropped into ooze, but suddenly there were a dozen more, all spewing from the same dark pipe. The warrior swung his lantern in a wide arc, and with fierce hissing the snake-thing-for it was one long, multi-limbed creature-retreated.

“It got my shoulder!” the dwarf hissed between clenched teeth. His left arm hung limply at his side.

The warrior stabbed again, gouged another one of the slashing tendrils, but barely pulled back before the others lashed his hand. He took a step back, as more of the creature slithered out of the drainpipe. It had numerous legs and a grotesque, segmented body, resembling a huge centipede-the size of a crocodile.

The tentacles dripped with a gummy elixir that numbed its enemies. Dram, his left arm dangling uselessly, lunged with his own blade, but the dwarf had to fall back as more tendrils flailed in his direction. One of those stroked the back of his hand, and the dwarf cursed, stumbling back.

Most of the carrion crawler’s body remained in the pipe, where the man and dwarf could not reach it with their weapons. Only its forequarters were in the sewer, its head and tentacles weaving wildly. Dram, collapsing against a side of the pipe, could no longer hold onto his weapon. The blade dropped from his nerveless fingers, vanishing into the brown muck. His knees buckled slowly until the dwarf was half-squatting in the slimy liquid. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.

The carrion crawler now whirled toward the warrior and spilled the rest of its clawing legs and undulating body out of the drainage pipe. The man quickly sheathed his knife and pulled out his small crossbow. He shot a steel dart into the blur of tentacles. The carrion crawlers shrieked eerily, accelerating its charge. Angrily the man pulled out a second crossbow and fired that dart right into the monster’s mouth-still it bore down upon him.

The warrior drew his dagger again and retreated, slashing back and forth, cutting several more of the grasping tentacles, but the knife was too short to strike the crawler’s hateful head.

The big sword strapped to his back was a nuisance, restricting his mobility. He couldn’t draw or swing the prized weapon down here. The warrior glanced at the dwarf, all but useless. Clenching his teeth, the man retreated before the lashing tendrils. The circular maw pulsed hungrily, the creature’s sharp teeth flexing outward before retracting with each snap.

Holding the lamp in his left hand, the warrior managed to parry the creature’s relentless attack, even though he was against the walls. Dram was motionless, half-lying in the stagnant water, his eyes wide and staring. He could only watch the battle. The warrior cast his eyes around, looking for something, anything, that would help him in this fight.

He stepped on something slippery, an eel-like fish that shot away from him, thrashing frantically through the shallow water. The carrion crawler lunged at him as the man lost his footing, and, recoiling, he tripped backwards, almost dropping the lamp. Tentacles lashed out to touch, almost gently, the side of his leather boot, and in that touch came the icy chill of paralysis.

He felt the effects instantly. In a second the tingling had spread into his calf. He kicked out viciously with his other foot, and the creature hesitated, its tendrils waving, just beneath one of the bricked archways that supported the sewer pipe.

The warrior had seconds, at the most, before more tentacles engulfed him. He hurled the ceramic lamp at the bricks just above the carrion crawler’s head. The clay jar broke and the wick flamed the oil. The warrior threw up his hands, shielding himself from the explosive blast of heat as the burning liquid spilled over the front of the monster’s segmented body.

The creature thrashed convulsively, bending and twisting, slashing its tentacles wildly. Hissing and clacking, it churned in the mucky liquid. With the last of his strength the human pushed himself away, his numbed foot a soggy leaden weight. The flames were quickly dying-smothered by the muck.

He collapsed onto the monster’s hard-shelled, twisting body. Spotting a gap between the segments, right above the carrion crawler’s mouth, he reached and drove his long dagger home with a powerful stab. In its dying frenzy the monster whipped its tentacles across the warrior, striking his hand. Bringing his left hand around, he seized the hilt of his knife and wrenched it back and forth, driving it deeper into the monster’s small brain. With a final hiss and a shudder, the carrion crawler died.

The paralysis spread quickly through the human’s body. He used the last of his strength to push himself off the disgusting corpse, tumbling to the sewer floor, onto his back. Moments later he was utterly helpless, though his face was above the ooze.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, but he was fully conscious the whole time-and utterly incapable of moving a muscle. At last he heard someone or something approaching. The water rippled softly, lapping against his cheeks. Though he exerted every shred of his will, he could not turn his head to look around. Instead, he heard the sloshing sounds come closer and closer.

“What you sleep for?” He heard the voice, and allowed himself a small wave of relieve. A second later a strong hand grabbed his shoulder, pulled him out of the water, and dropped him unceremoniously onto some bricks. He couldn’t see anything but vague shadows in the darkness of the sewer, but he caught a whiff of something that smelled even worse than the rank sewer.

The voice clucked again, critically. “Strange place to take nap. Get eaten, prob’ly-or I not Highbulp of all Caergoth.”