The Survivors

CHAPTER 8

What now?” Much yelled over the rumbling and roiling earth. “What are we supposed to do? Push this thing down there?”

“I don’t know,” Bradok yelled back.

“You don’t know?” Much said, an astonished look on his face. “We’re in a ship, in a tunnel that’s falling down all over, surrounded by a bunch of armed and angry dwarves trying to join or kill us, and you don’t know? What was your plan?”

“I mean I don’t know yet,” Bradok called. “But everything has been planned out pretty well up to now. I’m sure there will be some sign-”

“Some sign!” Much muttered, rolling his eyes. “Well, unless you know how to levitate a boat, I don’t see how we’re going to go anywhere very fast,” Much continued. “It’s impossible.”

A thunderous crack echoed through the tunnel, drawing all eyes toward the upper end. With a crash and a roar, the ceiling fell in. Somewhere above the Artisans’ Cavern, there must have been a mountain lake; when the ceiling came down, it brought with it a torrential flood of water.

Channeled by the narrow cavern, the water rushed over the remains of the cooper’s shop and slammed into the ship. Bradok held on to the side as the ship pitched, turned, and, finding its balance, began to float. All around him he could hear the screams of the guardsmen as they were swept away by the rush of water.

From below came a grinding noise as the ship’s bottom scraped over the huge rocks that littered the uneven floor. A moment later, however, the water had risen sharply and they floated free.

“Hang on,” Rose’s voice came from the front of the boat, a note of horror in it.

That was when Bradok remembered the steep-sloping passage. A second later, the ship lurched and pitched downward, picking up velocity. Inside the boat, people were screaming and grabbing for handholds. Bradok had just succeeded in passing Much an anchor line when the passage curved sharply and the boat slammed into the wall, throwing him forward several yards. Freezing spray washed over him as the boat twisted, whipped around, and banked downward in the narrow passage.

Bradok had only just managed to push himself to his feet when another sharp turn sent him lurching into nearby dwarves. Pushing himself up, he found he’d landed on top of the hill dwarf Rose.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She pushed him off her and passed him an anchor line. “Tie off,” she said with a shy smile.

Bradok tied the line around his waist and leaned back against the side.

“Now lock arms and hang on,” Rose said.

Bradok locked elbows with Rose on his right and Tal on his left. A moment later his stomach dropped and he knew the boat had reached the end of the tunnel. Screams erupted in the semidarkness as the ship shot out, unsupported, into the empty depths.

They were falling.

“Hold on!” he heard himself shout as much to himself as to anyone else.

The eerie sensation of weightlessness seemed to go on forever. Bradok knew the suspense couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but it seemed to be an eternity. Just when Bradok decided they would never stop falling, the ship slammed into water. The impact smashed him down into the bottom of the boat.

Purple spots swam before Bradok’s eyes, and it seemed like a long time before his senses worked again. When he finally tried to move, he found himself in a tangle of arms and legs. He levered himself up, only to find he’d somehow landed on Rose again.

Tal grabbed Bradok’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet then bent to help Rose. “Really, Bradok,” he said good-humoredly once Rose was back on her feet. “If you’re going to keep doing that, I’m going to have to ask what your intentions are regarding my sister.”

“I, uh,” Bradok stammered, blushing to the roots of his beard.

“If he does that again, he’d better send flowers first,” Rose said with a sarcastic grin.

Both she and Tal laughed while Bradok tried to find his tongue.

“Too bad, sis,” Tal said, his grin widening. “This one doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.”

“Bradok!” Chisul’s voice rang out. “Stop dillydallying. We need some help over here.”

Bradok turned, surveying the ship in the bluish light of the lamps on either end. He could see the pregnant Lyra holding on to her daughter, Jade, who clung in desperate terror to her mother but seemed to be otherwise unharmed. Kellik’s younger son, however, was leaning against his father, his face a mask of pain. Even from such a distance, Bradok could see that the lad’s arm was bent at a funny angle where it should have been straight.

“Did you say you have some healing skills?” Bradok asked Tal, pointing at Kellik’s son.

Tal nodded, already pulling a small brown kit from his pack.

The ship seemed to be slowing, and Bradok was able to stand with ease. Tal brushed past him, walking with a smooth grace that bespoke time spent at sea.

“Who has bad injuries?” Bradok called out, picking his way along the long edge of the ship toward Kellik.

“I’m bleeding,” an older dwarf with a long, white beard replied as he passed. “But ‘tain’t nothing.”

There was a long, bloody scratch on the old-timer’s arm, clearly left by the nails of the dwarf girl who sat on his left. Without a word, a matronly dwarf on his right ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress and bandaged the wound.

When Bradok reached Kellik, the burly smith cradled his son in his lap. “It’s broken,” he said glumly in answer to Bradok’s unasked question.

“Then we’ll need to set it,” said Tal, who had followed Bradok closely.

The boy’s pale face went absolutely white. Tal put his hand on the lad’s shoulder and looked into his brown eyes.

He unslung his heavy pack and dropped it at Bradok’s feet, pulling it open almost before it hit the boards of the barrel’s bottom. His hand emerged a moment later with a small, round case, painted blue with tarnished brass hardware. Tal opened the case, revealing a rare white glowstone that was held before a reflector in the device’s lid. The resulting light shone out in a bright beam and illuminated the contents of the backpack.

“Now then,” he said easily, pulling out a bottle of red glass. “What’s your name, son?”

“Hemmish,” the boy said.

“My youngest,” Kellik said, still cradling the boy. “But he’s a brave one and strong as they come too.”

“I’m sure he is,” Tal said with a genuine, reassuring smile. “Now you just rest easy, Hemmish, and we’ll get you taken care of.” He unstoppered the red bottle and pressed it to the boy’s lips. “Take a swig of this,” he said.

As Hemmish drank, Tal turned to Bradok. “See if you can find me a splint. Any piece of wood will do, so long as it’s small and stout.”

Bradok turned and retrieved a scrap piece of dowel, about an inch in diameter, which they had used to make pegs when building the ship.

“Anyone got a hand axe?” he asked the group. Several hands went up, and a grizzled dwarf with an unkempt beard and a glass eye passed Bradok a short axe from his amply laden belt.

Bradok stood the dowel on its end, and after a few taps, the metal blade bit into the dowel. Then he raised axe and dowel together and brought them down on the planks of the bottom of the boat. The axe bit right through the dowel, splitting it into two thin strips of wood about the length of Hemmish’s arm. Bradok passed both the strips to Tal.

“Those will do fine,” he said, giving them a quick once-over.

Hemmish had drunk from the red bottle, and the boy’s cheeks were rosy and his eyes were moving unsteadily in his head.

“Papa,” he said in a dreamy voice. “Where’s Mama? Why isn’t she here with us?”

A look of pain crossed Kellik’s face. It looked so out of place on the strong man that if Bradok hadn’t been looking right at the bulbous-nosed mountain of a dwarf, he’d have sworn an oath that such an expression never had darkened Kellik’s face before.

“She’s gone, lad,” he said in a gentle voice. “Gone to a better place, I reckon. We’ll be with her again one day, but not for a long time.”

“That’s too bad,” Hemmish said drowsily. “I miss her.”

“Me too,” Kellik said in a voice too soft for Hemmish to hear.

While Hemmish had been rambling, Tal laid out several strips of cloth and the splints Bradok had cut.

“We’re going to set the bone. I’ll tie it up good and tight,” he said. “Hold him.”

Kellik tightened his grip on Hemmish as Bradok grabbed the boy’s feet. Tal took hold of Hemmish’s arm and, after carefully aligning it, jerked it into place. Hemmish cried out in pain, but his face quickly resumed its happy, oblivious look. Tal swiftly and expertly tied up the arm and splinted it. Within minutes, the doctor had slipped the broken arm into a sling made from two handkerchiefs tied together.

“That should do just fine,” he said, smiling at Kellik. “We’ll check it in a few days.”

“That’s assuming we’re still alive in a few days,” Chisul’s voice sounded behind them, echoing through the semidarkness. Silas’s son stood, leaning against the rounded side of the ship.

“Why wouldn’t we be alive?” Rose said from the far side with deliberate loud cheerfulness. “Reorx didn’t inspire your father to build this magnificent craft to be our coffin,” she added, rubbing her hand reverently along the wooden side of the ship.

“You still don’t get it.” Chisul laughed. “Reorx had nothing to do with the design of this boat.” He waved his arm around. “This is a barrel without one side,” he said. “One-half of a barrel, just like hundreds of others that he made during his life. It’s just bigger. The biggest barrel that he ever made.”

Bradok frowned.

“You don’t think it’s just a tiny bit convenient that we’re here in this ship, being swept away from Ironroot at the very moment it was destroyed?” returned Rose. “If that wasn’t Reorx who opened the passage in front of us, then who was it?”

A murmur of assent ran through the barrel’s passengers.

“I don’t know how we ended up here,” Chisul retorted. “And neither do you. What I do know is that we’re lost, cut off from civilization with precious few supplies, and with no idea where we’re going. Don’t you see,” he added. “This giant half-barrel boat isn’t saving us; it’s taking us further away from help every minute.”

“What do you propose we do about that?” a squat, dull-faced dwarf in the front asked.

“Yes,” Lyra said sulkily. “It’s not like we can get out and walk.”

“That’s exactly what we should do,” Chisul said, moving to the side. “We need to beach this craft and get our bearings.”

They all stared out over the water. The boat was floating along easily in some kind of current. Across the water on either side they couldn’t see much-misty shapes maybe, more water definitely.

“That’s insane,” a barrel-chested hill dwarf who was peering over the side said. “We don’t know if there’s any land out there.”

“Besides,” Rose pointed out, “how are we supposed to steer this boat?”

Bradok might have got around to adding a rudder to Silas’s design, but there hadn’t been time. He suspected he knew why Silas had left off the rudder. He had trusted in Reorx. Without a rudder, there would be no way to take control of the ship. And it would have to go wherever it floated or drifted.

“She’s got a point,” Much said, narrowing his eyes at Bradok as though it were all his fault.

“Uh, guys,” Lyra said, pointing. “You might want to see this.”

Bradok edged to the front of the ship, where the railings were short enough to look over the side. Chisul, Rose, and Kellik all clambered up next to him to see. Bradok jumped up, catching hold of the side rail and pulling himself up to where he could swing his leg over the rail and perch there. In the dim glow of the lantern, he could spy black water about six feet below him, which disappeared in the darkness beyond the light.

“I don’t see-” Bradok began; then he gasped. Something had moved in the inky water. It was long and thick and seemed to have tentacles that trailed along after it. Bradok could see it clearly because its body gave off a bright yellow light.

The creature rolled over, a black eye gazing up at Bradok, before it dived and vanished.

“What was that?” he whispered, resisting the urge to flee to the back of the boat.

“You mean what are they?” Chisul echoed, awe in his voice.

Bradok turned and spotted dozens of the yellow creatures swimming up in front of them. They seemed to rise and dive in manic bursts of energy, flashing their lights as they went.

“Over there too,” Rose said.

Bradok craned his neck around and saw more of them swimming around off in the distance.

“This must be some kind of underground lake or ocean,” Rose offered. “It’s huge.”

“What do you think they eat?” Much asked.

Bradok wondered the same thing.

“Does anyone have a spear?” Chisul asked. “These things might be edible.”

Everyone nodded and scurried for suitable weapons.

Bradok stared over the side. The creature that had first swum close to appraise him seemed to have returned. Its body pulsed, slowly getting brighter then dimmer. In the changing light, Bradok could see paddlelike flippers attached to the front end of its body that waved up and down as it moved.

Then something else caught his eye.

From deep below he could see an answering glow that pulsed in time with the creature on the surface. As he watched the glow with widening eyes, it grew brighter and brighter and larger and larger until the pulsing thing was longer than the ship.

“Much,” he hissed. “Kellik.”

Suddenly the little creature went dark and plunged beneath the water. Bradok strained his eyes to follow it, but the dark water hid it as effectively as a slab of rock. As he stared, a burst of yellow light flashed up from the water. Bradok covered his eyes for a second, startled by the brightness. When he could see better, the light from below revealed a creature similar to the others only impossibly large. One of the monster’s fore-flippers broke the surface and swamped Bradok with its spray.

Like the small snakelike creature, the gargantuan version rolled over until Bradok was staring into its black, soulless eye. The unblinking eye was easily as big around as a pony keg.

“What is that … the mother of all these babies?” Kellik asked, clearly shaken.

“Or the daddy,” Much said, trying for humor.

A moment later, the eye disappeared and the massive creature vanished below the water. Bradok watched its body flash briefly as it streamed into the depths; then it was gone.

“New rule,” Rose said in a fearful voice. “No swimming.”

“Did you see the size of that thing?” Chisul asked. “This lake must be very huge indeed.”

“Aye,” Much said. “And deep.”

Bradok swung his leg over the side and dropped back into the bottom of the boat.

“We might as well get comfortable,” he said, sliding down into a sitting position. “This may be a long journey.”

After that first encounter with the huge yellow beast, there was only calm and stillness, punctuated by intermittent visits by the glowing creatures. By the third day on the lake, the tension combined with the strange tedium had taken its own toll on the group. An unnatural pall hovered over the survivors. No one spoke or sang or laughed.

“Something better happen soon, or I’m going to go mad,” Kellik whispered to Bradok as the two of them sat in the front, keeping watch.

“Well, at least we’re going the right way,” Rose said from nearby.

“How do you know that?” Bradok asked.

“Well, I’m an optimist. What choice do we have really?” Rose shrugged. “We might as well assume we’re headed in the right direction.”

Bradok chuckled, the sound seeming to echo unnaturally through the stillness.

“We could just as well be drifting in circles,” Chisul scoffed. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to try something other than just sitting here and rotting.”

“Like what?” Rose asked. “We can’t get off this boat, there’s nothing on board to paddle with, and even if there was, we have no idea which direction is best.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Chisul said sarcastically, lowering his voice, “but the food’s running out, even with rationing. I guess we’ve got three or four more days’ worth, and then we’re going to start starving. I, for one, do not care to watch the children starve.”

Silence greeted his comment.

Bradok was worried about the food supply too, though he wasn’t going to admit it. They had about a dozen children with them. At some point they were going to have to try catching one of the glowing creatures and hope word didn’t get back to daddy.

“He’s right, you know. I think I hear your stomach rumbling from here,” Rose said, looking over at Bradok.

“That’s not me,” Bradok said, suddenly aware that he, too, heard something different than the eerie silence. As he strained to listen, he figured out what it was: a roaring noise, like rushing water.

Much grabbed his shoulder and pointed off into the darkness. At the very edge of visibility, a wall of rock emerged into view. In the center, right where the boat was headed, gaped an opening like an immense black maw.

“Everyone hold on to something!” Bradok cried out as he and Much leaped down to the bottom of the boat.

All the dwarves burst into action-some grabbing their possessions, others their loved ones-and clutching for something solid to hold on to.

Bradok had barely managed to grab onto one of the ship’s ribs and link arms with Rose when the ship pitched wildly, entering what seemed to be a dark tunnel. Suddenly they were being swept down and away from the lake at a tremendous speed.

A thunderous crash shook the boat, and they spun around. The dwarves on board were tossed about like rag dolls as the vessel pitched and rolled and rocked out of control.

Rose clung to Bradok’s arm, pressing her feet against one of the ribs of the ship to brace herself. Even as they careened through the black unknown, even as he wondered if he would live through that latest calamity, Bradok found himself distracted by the sweet smell of Rose’s hair.

The ship shuddered again, slamming into something and grinding up and over the obstacle.

Bradok noticed Kellik. The massive dwarf had pulled Hemmish into his chest and was leaning over the boy, forming a living barrier to protect him. That was dangerous; he wasn’t bracing himself enough. Bradok was about to call out to him when he felt himself suddenly tossed into the air, with the ship falling away beneath him. The sensation of falling lasted only a second before he was slammed into the wooden side of the ship. He could hear wood splintering and water roaring as he was thoroughly doused.

A gash had been torn in the side of their ship, and water poured in. Before anyone could make a move, however, they struck solid ground with a thud and screeched to a halt. The torn side of the boat was propped up in the air, the water no longer rushing in.

“We’ve stopped,” Chisul said from somewhere in the tangled mass of bodies back in the center of the boat.

Bradok pulled Rose to her feet and asked if she’d been hurt. When she shook her head, he left her and moved to examine the boat and the gash in its side. Bradok could see that something had torn a ragged hole across four of the planks that made up the wall of wood. Had they been back in Silas’s shop, it would have been an easy fix. Out in the middle of nowhere, however, it was a fatal wound.

“She’s served her purpose, lad,” Much said sympathetically, seeing what Bradok saw. He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Looks like you’re going to get your wish after all, Chisul,” Rose said with a smile. Chisul, looking bedraggled as he stood up, snorted.

But Bradok nodded appreciatively. “This is the end of the line,” he announced, moving to the opposite side of the boat, where the rail was just above the water line. “Like it or not, we all walk from here.”