Will Power

SCENE VII Hawthorne to the Rescue

Given that my general dislike for wild animals had recently taken an alarming new turn, and that creatures which had always seemed dodgy even in folktales had turned out to be real and meaner than reports had suggested; and given that the word of a goblin spy who assured us that our friends were alive was about as reliable as mine; and given that the mountains bristled with sinister troops and our mission was therefore destined for death (ours) and destruction (ditto); and given (finally, I promise) that Renthrette was a maniac only content when poised for slaughter, and that she valued my skin a good deal less than that of her horse, the fact that I had agreed to go with her on this sortie into the Abyss made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Still, what the hell.

I am not, alas, without feeling, nor (and this was the real spear in the buttock) without principle. Not utterly. I had fallen victim to a rising sense of guilt which I had been beating into silence every step of the way from Stavis. Now, with Renthrette’s careful prompting, it leaped to its feet and started roaring about talking to Empire guards, throwing stones at wolves, and generally laying the fate of our trusty comrades squarely at my door like an unwanted child. In short, she had me where she wanted me. As we trekked back into the reedy grasslands which I had fled through the day before, I couldn’t help considering how wildly different this was from where I wanted her.

This playing on my sense of responsibility had been accompanied by that hint of a threat which her family relied so heavily on with varying degrees of subtlety. While his sister talked wistfully of how sad it would be if something unpleasant befell me, Garnet preferred the grab-him-by-the-throat-and-shout-about-cutting-his-liver-out approach. This difference in form belied the basic similarity between them, an endearing little detail of sibling character which made me glad I had never met their parents.

Of course, all threats aside, it was the thought of my friends that made me agree to this little excursion. We weren’t exactly popular at the Refuge (I suggested they consider renaming the inn to something more suitable: the Hostile, perhaps, or the Surprisingly Unwelcoming) and Sorrail looked at me like he was wondering if I might be part goblin after all. I felt more comfortable with Renthrette, however distant she was currently being. But it was the thought of other friends-Orgos in particular-that made me steel myself for another encounter in the mountains.

And it wasn’t like we were going to knock on the front door and then fight our way in. This was a stealth mission, one which-if it went right-wouldn’t involve any fighting at all. I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of Heroic Deeds, but if they came disguised as sneaking about and going home quickly if anyone spotted us, I’d consider it. Factor in my sense of responsibility and genuine desire to be back with people I actually liked, and I was in.

So as the inn emptied of its clientele, all beetling off home to bar their doors and windows against rampaging goblins, and Sorrail galloped off to the White City carrying his lance and Renthrette’s all-too-sincere good wishes, I got what little money I had together and tried to drum up a few basic weapons. The innkeeper wasn’t thrilled with the idea of parting with anything that might help him against the demonic attackers which would soon come howling out of the night, but Sorrail had had a word with him, and a few extras had been found and set on the bar. Renthrette had got herself a hunting bow, a quiver of arrows, and a small shield to supplement her sword, but she was making do with a leather hood and corselet. What little metal armor there was in the area was being held onto, and our few silver pieces couldn’t loosen the owners’ grasps. I got a large round shield, about a yard across. It was oak, covered with reddish hide, and rimmed with copper. It was also heavy and old. With it came a one-handed axe: not a weapon I was used to, but my skill with a sword was so meager it made little difference. The one real find was, inevitably, a crossbow: a two-handed thing bigger than the Cherrati toy I had wielded in Stavis, though nothing like the massive Scorpions we had mounted on the wagon back in Shale. It was slow and difficult to load, but had a hefty punch which might save my neck if I could aim the thing straight. It would, more importantly, keep the enemy at a distance. Briefly.

I had, in a crazed moment, thought that a regular bow might be better, it being lighter and faster than the crossbow, but after an embarrassing experiment with Renthrette’s bow in which I came close to blinding several of the innkeeper’s family members, I decided to stick to what I knew. All these tales of marksmanship with a bow, splitting arrows at five hundred yards and such, are a lot of old horse manure. Renthrette could hang a plate on a barn and hit it at a hundred yards if she was composed and there was no wind. On a good day, I could hit the barn. The beauty of a crossbow is that, unlike with a regular bow, the stretching of the string, the aiming, and the firing are all quite separate actions. You bend over, brace the thing against the ground, and use your body weight to pull back and latch the cord. After that, casually and whenever the mood takes you, you slip an arrow in. Then, when you’re well rested and at one with the universe, you point it at something, put a little pressure on the trigger with one finger, and there you are: the hero of the hour. With the kind of bow Renthrette used, all those actions were pretty much simultaneous. I could do each one by itself, but put them all together and I turn into some kind of random death machine. That anyone can hold one of those things steady when it’s bent tight, let alone aim it, is a mystery to me. But I digress.

The inn also boasted a two-handed sword with a hilt almost a yard across. It hung on a wall over the fireplace. I lifted it down and hefted it thoughtfully. It was a weighty piece, and the blade was as long as a spear and broad as my hand. I couldn’t see myself using anything so unwieldy, since I figured you’d need arms like tree trunks to brandish it effectively, but it had a kind of powerful menace and I wondered if a warrior who could carry such a terrifying weapon ever had to actually use it.

“How much for this?” I inquired of the landlord, idly.

“Not for sale or rent,” he said, in a tone of finality. “That’s an heirloom, that is. My great-grandfather bore it when Phasdreille was besieged by a vast goblin horde which crossed the river to sack the White City. He rode with a cavalry force raised here in the borderlands, and they met the goblin ranks as they lay outside the great city.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to head him off. “That’s fine. . ” But he had a glint in his eye, and he was going to finish the story whether I wanted to hear it or not.

“The horsemen caught the goblins unawares and routed them,” said the landlord, “though many tall and fair soldiers fell in the battle. My great-grandfather survived, but he was killed shortly afterward. That was the last time he wielded this, his mighty sword. With it he struck down many dozens of goblins, cleaving a path through their ranks until he came upon their chieftain: a huge brute dressed in red and black, great ugly spikes on his helm and a weapon like a vast cleaver in his massive claws. My ancestor faced the beast and, after many blows were struck on both sides, felled him, cleaving his skull in twain. But the goblin was wearing an iron collar and the great sword was notched, as you can see. A diamond was taken from the dead goblin and set in the pommel, see? Like I said, it’s not for sale.”

Well, thanks for that, I thought. I wondered if he would go into as much detail about dishes that weren’t on his menu. Ah yes, sir, tonight we don’t have steak with grilled mushrooms and garlic sauce, which would be followed by sticky toffee pudding, if we had any, but we don’t. .

I took what weapons we had, and there we were, wading through the elephantine grasses of the pockmarked valley that led through the marshes to the escarpment, the cinder path, and the mountains. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me, but Renthrette was in charge and claimed to know what she was doing.

“Rather than following the path up and through the mountains,” she whispered, “we will cross the valley floor and then veer off to the right, heading east for half a mile. Then we climb toward an outcrop of rock which is overgrown with lichen so that it looks pale green from a distance. From its top, a few hundred yards to the east, we should be able to see a stone lion. This marks an old guardhouse and a forgotten corridor into the depths of the goblin fort.”

All this was said in a hushed voice with a good deal of glancing about, as if we might be overheard by the enemy. Having seen something of the wildlife in this doubtful region, that was probably wise. I found it hard to be so collected. “And the goblins have never noticed this huge stone lion behind their house, I take it?”

“They have not been in the fort long, by all accounts, and do not know all its secrets. It is an ancient structure locally called the Falcon’s Nest, built long ago to protect the pass from invaders, and the goblins have only expanded this way in the last few months.”

“Oh, I see,” I muttered. “I know when I move into a new place it always takes me the best part of a year to find the back door.”

“Sorrail says the goblins have only been inhabiting the parts of the fortress that open onto the pass itself. They are a lazy and shortsighted race who can’t see past an immediate profit or easy conquest.”

“How convenient.”

“Yes,” she said, missing the irony.

“So if they are so lazy and shortsighted, how did they take the fortress from Sorrail’s pals in the first place?”

“Treachery.”

“Of course.”

“Sorrail says that it’s everything in their nature that makes them so terrible-their delight in causing pain and incapacity of thinking beyond their own swinish desires-that also makes them vulnerable. Where we are explorers and nurturers, dedicated to life and learning, they are destroyers, filled with hatred against even their own kind.”

“Who is this ‘we’?” I wondered aloud.

“You doubt our friendship with the fair folk?”

“The what?”

“That’s how they are termed locally, the ‘fair folk,’ because they are tall and pale and golden-haired,” she said, still forging ahead and refusing to meet my gaze.

“Termed by who? The goblins? I doubt it. By themselves, perhaps.”

“Well, Sorrail says. .”

“Can we drop Sorrail for a while?” I said. Her admiration for the blond lancer was becoming pointedly and irritatingly apparent. I marched on through the wet grass, avoiding the sucking, water-filled pits with a shudder of remembrance. My shield and axe were in my left hand and my right supported the crossbow, which was slung about my shoulders on a leather thong.

“It’s a good thing Sorrail is so familiar with this country,” said Renthrette suddenly. “He knows this mountain fort like the back of his hand.”

“I had a feeling he might,” I remarked, bitterly. “Too bad I didn’t have chance to cut it off. We could have used a map.”

It took us several hours to cross the reedy vale, then we veered east and began to skirt the foot of the mountain range. Before, the whole range had been visible and the Armored One had been scowling down at this, our foolhardy approach. Now, flush to the steep slopes themselves, we could see nothing but the granite wall in front of us. The ground was rocky enough to prevent much vegetation, and a species of path had thus developed, tracing its way round the almost vertical sides of the peaks, which rose sharply out of the wetlands.

A cold wind had picked up since we left the inn and it tousled Renthrette’s hair and made her eyes water. She proceeded without a word. I battled on behind her, trying not to think about what we were doing, where we were, how we were going to get back, the bloody miserable weather, and so forth. From time to time we would round a crag and a gust of wind would hit us hard and knock the breath from our bodies like some specter barreling down the mountains to ward us off. There were no birds, nor even any bird calls, but I couldn’t decide if that was good or not. There was only the wind, which, just occasionally, seemed to whine up there in the ramparts of the mountain and through its hidden crevices, so that I wheeled and looked up and about me with momentary panic. Renthrette scowled at me and sighed to herself, as if wondering if it had been such a great idea to invite old Liability Hawthorne along for the ride. Ignoring this unhelpful attitude, I kept my eyes skinned for whatever hostile brute was likely to pop up and rip my legs off.

But the journey passed without event. Renthrette gestured suddenly and stood still, smiling. Above was a great rock face like a cliff, smooth as a sea-washed pebble and green as the shoots of spring saplings. The stone glowed with the emerald light that shafts through a wooded glade, and jutted out like it was the knee or elbow of the crouching mountain. Below that it came down, sheer and unblemished as a frozen waterfall on a winter morning. Getting up it was going to be an absolute bugger.

Renthrette, inspired, no doubt, by the memory of Sorrail, all-purpose warrior and romantic hero, was undaunted. While I slumped into the grass and pawed through my haversack for something edible, she paced the ground, gazing up at the lichen-covered rock face, stepping up onto boulders and testing hand and footholds. Then there would be a little shower of stones and she would jump down, muttering irritably.

“Are you just going to sit there, or what?” she said. “I don’t know why I brought you.”

“I did wonder,” I answered, dragging myself to my feet and starting to pace around as she had been doing, as if this was going to help somehow.

“I looked there,” she said, irritably. I moved east along the rock face and tried to look busy.

“Not that far, idiot,” she said. “Try over there.”

I did. “Over there” was a point directly beneath the great green outcrop. It was, so far as I could see, completely featureless. Still, far from wishing to upset the tyrant queen still further, I snuffled about like a lost dog and listened to her whispering to herself as she searched. And then, while my attention was almost completely on her, a remarkable thing happened. I took a step to the left, a spot I had passed over a dozen times, and the rock face changed. I repositioned myself very carefully and it happened again. When I was in just the right position, motionless, and the light was falling on the rock at a certain angle, stairs appeared recessed into the stone three feet from my face. For a second I stood dumbfounded, then I called to Renthrette, not daring to turn away in case I never found the place again.

They were camouflaged so well that it took her a couple of minutes to see them, and she muttered doubtfully the whole time. I suppose she thought I was pulling her chain. When she finally saw them she grew very still, an expression of mute wonder on her face. Because it was more than camouflage. It was an extraordinary piece of engineering and artistry. The stairs were cut to be invisible anywhere but in the precise spot I had been standing, and the rock about them seemed to just blur them away. Perhaps when the sun was higher or casting longer shadows, the edges of the recess would be more sharply defined, but the rock around it sheltered them so perfectly that the face seemed unbroken. I was still admiring this remarkable craftsmanship when a voice came from halfway up the face.

“Come on,” Renthrette was hissing, with more enthusiasm than impatience. “What are you waiting for?”

My flicker of delight was doused, as ever, by her yearning for blood and glory, and I was left with that trembling, dreadful anticipation that came in its wake. In this case, the “wake” I had in mind had less to do with passing ships and more with farewell drinks round a coffin. Of course, were I to perish in this mountain stronghold, it seemed pretty unlikely that the goblins and their hungry mounts would host a wake where my corpse could be mourned by my loved ones. Not that I had any loved ones.

With such encouraging thoughts, I ascended the stairs, wondering all the while if the recess concealed me as effectively as it concealed the flight of steps. I had, till fairly recently, lived a pretty quiet life, much of it with my head down, an eye on the door, and an ear open for the approach of the authorities. But even in my days as an actor the notion of invisibility had always had its appeal, no more so than now. Imagine being able to take this ingenious little recess with me, to melt into the walls or trees around me whenever I felt like it! To just turn into scenery as soon as the audience got volatile! To be able to just slide away until the world forgot my existence: Wouldn’t that be a kind of bliss?

At the head of the stairs we emerged onto a narrow granite shelf that ran onto the greenish outcrop, onto which we crossed. I stared fixedly ahead, trying to avoid considering the drop to our right, which was about fifty feet and quite sheer. Up close the greenness of the smooth swelling was patchy and pale, covered with a carpet of tiny pale lichen, and moss rich and vibrant. I squatted and ran my hand over their surfaces, the one rough and brittle, the other soft as deep velvet.

Renthrette put one booted foot on a rock splashed with a mustard-yellow lichen and looked about her. “There,” she said simply, shielding her eyes from the sun.

And sure enough, only twenty-five yards from where we stood, the head of a stone lion peered out over a boulder as dark as charred timber. Its sightless eyes looked past us and across the wetlands stretched out beyond.

“The world’s most useless sentinel,” I said to myself, “I hope.”

Renthrette was already stroking the beast’s mane absently and peering into what I soon found to be a corridor, the mouth of which was overhung with the dead or dying branches of some twisted shrub. The tunnel cut into the cliff wall in a perfectly straight line, its floor level and paved, its ceiling vaulted, buttresses intricately carved out of the mountain’s living rock. Impressive though this all was, the thing that really struck me was that ten feet inside, a shadow fell across the corridor and from that point on you couldn’t see a damn thing. A chill, moist air condensed on my skin like sweat and I swallowed hard.

“You aren’t thinking of going in there?” I breathed.

Renthrette just gave me one of her blank looks, drew her sword, and edged into the blackness, disappearing almost immediately. Invisibility no longer seemed like such an obvious plus.

“You will get used to the darkness,” she said under her breath. “Just wait a little while before you go farther in.”

“Good idea,” I replied. “I’ll give it a shot when I’m fifty.”

“Quiet, Will,” she answered, drifting off into her adventurer’s world and advancing, sword poised to champion justice, defend virtue, and win honor, all by hacking bloody great holes in whatever came out of the blackness ahead: a scary way to live but, at least for Renthrette, one uncluttered by dilemma.

I fixed my attention on the shifting of her dark, blurred form and followed, swinging the crossbow round and wondering how the hell I was supposed to shoot enemies I couldn’t see. This was a bad idea. I turned to the rectangle of blinding light through which we had come and considered just walking back that way, but then a hand grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me on.

It was Renthrette, which-in the circumstances-was probably for the best. Sensing the flagging of my barely existent resolve, she had pulled me around the corner where the light vanished. Relief that it was only her who had her claws in my shirt quickly turned into something unpleasantly like terror.

The darkness was complete, opaque. Every sound echoed like rolling thunder or empty wine casks. I stood stock still and lifted the heavy shield in front of me, figuring that it was only a matter of time before something that could see better than I could launched itself at me. I waited, braced for the impact. There was sweat running down my neck and my knuckles were white. Probably. In this light (joke!) I was as likely to see the rooftops of Stavis as I was the color of my knuckles.

“Will you stop that,” hissed Renthrette, making me jump two feet in the air.

“What?”

“That gasping, breathy thing you’re doing.”

“Sorry,” I said indignantly. “I don’t like it here. And I do have to breathe, you know.”

“Debatable,” she muttered, walking away. Of course she started developing her withering banter when I was too petrified to think. I inched blindly after her, my right hand (no longer cradling the useless crossbow) stretched out in front of me.

Renthrette struck a shower of sparks from her flint and steel onto a tiny square of alcohol-soaked cotton: a standard and annoyingly useful part of her campaign equipment. With this she lit a tiny terracotta oil lamp that sat like a perching sparrow in her right hand. The walls around us flared up amber, every detail of their surface flickering tiny shadows as the lamp flame fluttered. Suddenly the tunnel was something quite different and, awful though it still was, it had a dark beauty. This was no natural cavern but a carved passage with a vaulted roof and rows of columns against the walls, rising like perfectly symmetrical stalagmites. So many months, maybe years, of work, now left to the darkness and damp and goblins! What a waste of bloody time.

And did I believe in goblins now? Tough not to, really. I’d seen them, and now I was poking around in their yard, as it were. Still: goblins, for crying out loud? Talk about difficult to swallow, especially for one as brutally realistic as me. And I suppose there, right there in the dark with the threat of these irrational monsters around the next corner, it finally dawned on me that we, or at least I, had been deliberately brought here. I remembered the ambassador’s references to my sense of what was real and I knew that he was involved up to his neck, though where this got me I couldn’t say. All I knew was that I was now living in terror of things which I hadn’t believed in three days ago: no, things that didn’t exist three days before, not in the world I knew, anyway.

I was exploring this seemingly important distinction when Renthrette hissed at me. I turned to find her standing on a great pile of rubble. Part of the ceiling had fallen in (not a terribly encouraging sign in itself), and the corridor was blocked right to the roof. It seemed we could go no farther. Ah, well.

“So,” I said, “back to the pub?”

Renthrette, of course, had other ideas, and had already started clearing the rocks out of the way. She set her lamp down and gave me a wordless look. I helped, but slowly, far from sure I wanted to see what was on the other side.

Predictably enough, the blockage was minor and, after only a few minutes’ work, we were able to clamber over the rubble. Renthrette went first, lamp and sword in hand. As soon as I heard her low, pleased whistle, I knew we were in trouble. On the other side of the rubble was a door, wooden with iron fittings. Judging by the webs across its hinges, it had been undisturbed for some time. Well, it was going to get disturbed now, I thought ruefully as Renthrette put her hand carefully on the latch and set her shoulder to the wood.

“Cover me,” she whispered and, before I had chance to respond, she twisted the handle. With an agonizingly loud creaking and scraping, the door shuddered open and we found ourselves looking into a wall of barrels and crates, all dusty and apparently discarded. The timbers were broken and rotted, the metal bands rusted into nothing. Renthrette pushed a couple of the larger ones aside and we found ourselves in a corridor just like the one we had been in, apparently abandoned to low-priority storage. We paused, listening, then Renthrette stepped carefully past the barrels to where the passage ended in another door. This one was unlocked, and she dragged it open with little effort and almost no noise. For a moment she was absolutely still and silent, holding the lamp back within the doorway. Then she was gone and I was left darkling.

Fear and anger blended, leaving me in a blundering panic. I sprang through the door after her, collided with the hard stone edge of the jamb, and went sprawling on the floor of the corridor beyond. The noise seemed to have been deafening, but when I looked up, there was still only Renthrette, lamp held up so that its warm light made her faintly bored exasperation all too apparent. She motioned at me to get up, turned her back, and trotted silently off down the corridor on her toes. I limped after. God alone knew why she’d asked me to come here; I was obviously more than capable of maiming myself even if no goblins were around to do it for me. Moreover, taking me on a stealth assault was a bit like strapping a marching band to your ankle. We may as well have sent them formal notice of our visit a week ago. At least then they might have laid out a few drinks.

The corridor ended in another door, this one so small that even I had to stoop a little to get through it. It was dusty, but not disused, and it swung open easily and without a sound. This struck me as good, since not alerting the demonic hordes to our presence seemed crucial to our momentary survival, but Renthrette looked less happy. She touched the hinge and her finger came away oily. That meant that the enemy was at hand. I tried to ready myself mentally for meeting them. Fat chance.

The door admitted us to a triangular chamber, carved as before but lit by torches bracketed to each wall. Each wall also had a door like ours, so there were two others to pick from. Renthrette looked at me with something that might have been encouragement, blew out her lamp, and chose, either randomly or on some tip from Sorrail which she chose not to share with me, the door on the left.

Again, it opened quite easily, admitting us to another long, torchlit corridor. It was narrower than before and the ceiling was lower, the effect being oppressively confining. The torches smoked and filled the air with the scent of burnt fat. I began to wonder what animal grease the goblins used, and then thought better of it. We were halfway along the corridor when we heard heavy footsteps approaching from round the next corner.

There was nowhere to hide, so I froze to the spot and did nothing. Renthrette flung herself against the wall farther up and waited. A second or two later a dark figure appeared, walking swiftly, a dull jingle that might have been armor accompanying each labored step. The goblin’s silhouette filled the corridor, large and square, its head set on broad shoulders, its arms long and ape-like, its legs short and stocky, splayed to balance the weight of its barrel chest. As it stepped into the torchlight and its huge shadow flickered around the tunnel walls, I saw first its great shield, then the cleaver-like weapon in its immense fist, then its face. It was heavy-jawed, with teeth that seemed to protrude beyond its lips. Its nose and cheeks were broad and flat, and, glittering blackly in deep pits were small, malicious eyes which fell upon me and narrowed slightly.

The goblin, if such a name could apply to this hulking and savage creature, stopped and lowered its head. It began to say something in its own tongue, but the sound dried up quickly and a change came over its face and body. It became tense, and the blade of its cleaver, long and angular, moved forward and glinted in the torchlight. Then it grinned, or its face made something like a grin as it swung the vast shield in front of its chest. It advanced, its eyes on mine.

I suppose this had been the plan, for it gave Renthrette a fractional advantage as she launched herself at it, lunging with her sword as best she could in the confined space. Her adversary bellowed, forgot my existence, and slumped against the wall, blood rushing from its ribs. But however big and clumsy it looked, there was an astonishing agility in the way it wheeled its shield arm toward her second attack, fending off the sword point. In almost the same instant that Renthrette withdrew her blade, the goblin drew itself up and hacked at her. Its reach was astonishing-grotesque, even-and it was with a small cry of surprise that she responded, reaching up and catching the massive cleaver with her shield. The force of the blow seemed to drive her into the stone floor and her shield splintered, split quite in two. She crumpled to her knees and the creature loomed over her.

Enter Will the comrade-in-arms. I didn’t know what else I could do, so I raised my axe and roared as maniacally as I could, running full tilt at the monster and hoping against hope that something would stop me from reaching it while it was still alive. The goblin eyes turned to meet mine again, and as its body twisted to face me, it raised its heavy blade to strike. I lifted my shield and slowed to a halt. Fear overpowered me and I felt the axe slipping from my grasp under the goblin gaze. It grunted and I thought drool dropped from its lips. It took a step toward me and its jaw fell open slightly, teeth showing tusk-like. I sagged still further.

Then, quite suddenly, Renthrette rolled from beneath her shattered shield and stabbed once, precise and hard. Once more, a change came over the goblin’s face, its eyes losing their focus, its jaws becoming slack as blood trickled out. Its legs gave out and it fell forward with an echoing boom. I squatted and began to breathe quickly.

“Thanks, Will,” said Renthrette.

“What?” I said, presuming sarcasm.

“I owe you one,” she said, smiling sincerely. “I wouldn’t have thought you. . Well, thanks.”

I nodded dumbly, trying to figure out why she couldn’t smell the fear that was oozing out of every pore on my body. The axe had slid to the floor and was merely resting against the open palm of my hand, so I grasped it quickly, before she saw just how utterly useless I would have been if she had acted a moment later. And with that little dissemblance came words: “No problem,” I said in a voice so calm and confidant that I felt like a ventroliquist’s dummy. “You can count on me.”

She touched my arm and said, “Come on. We shouldn’t have far to go to get to the cells.”

Her apparent confidence in me struck home and I followed her with something ludicrously akin to eagerness. I knew I was a coward, but she had thought I was a hero, and that somehow made me into one. I have said this before and I will say it again: Nothing astonishes so completely or so regularly as man’s capacity for self-delusion. Mine, at any rate.

So the valiant adventurers proceeded. They found themselves, having rounded the corner, at a broad arch with caryatid gargoyles shaped like giant trolls, each supporting the roof on stone necks and hands, elbows turned outward and heads bowed under the weight. The chamber beyond was brightly lit with many torches, and from within came the sound of voices in some foreign tongue. My courage fluttered like a trapped butterfly.

“I thought there would be no guards?” I hissed.

“Sorrail said there wouldn’t be,” said Renthrette, peering cautiously around one of the columns. “But there are only two, and they’re a lot smaller than the last one. The cell doors are right there.”

She unslung her bow and nocked an arrow.

“This is pretty much always your solution to difficulties, isn’t it?” I hissed again.

“What?”

“If in doubt, kill something.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I’m just saying your approach isn’t very, you know, inventive.”

“You take the one standing,” she answered. “I’ll take the one sitting at the table.”

“Take” was one of those little euphemistic expressions that she and her brother favored. It usually meant, as it did now, “kill.” Feeling that things were moving far too quickly for my liking, I swung my crossbow round and fiddled frantically with the cocking mechanism.

When she stepped out into the room, she did so with quiet ease and confidence, her bow already raised and the string drawn back. I scuttered after her and dropped to one knee. The standing goblin was in my sights before it knew we were there. It turned at the swish of Renthrette’s bow, but her arrow plunged into its comrade’s chest as it struggled to its feet. It barely had time to cry out before I fired and the bolt silenced it forever. Renthrette was already grabbing the keys and running to the cell doors calling Mithos’s name.

“Renthrette?” called a voice in answer. “Renthrette, listen, this is important!”

I was running over to join her, barely able to contain my delighted laughter, when there was a metallic sound behind me and I turned to find doors on either side of the arch we had come through, doors we hadn’t even seen, opening virtually simultaneously. A great goblin clad in dark, waxed leather and brandishing a huge scimitar was coming in through one door. There were others behind him. A pair of smaller goblins, their skin ochre and their limbs thin, had already come through the other, and there were darker, bigger forms following.

Renthrette drew and fired again, and one of the smaller creatures fell, holding its stomach. I took the keys and fumbled desperately at the lock, but the first key I could fit in would not turn at all. I turned to find the large goblin already bearing down on Renthrette, who had dropped her bow and drawn her sword. I thrust my crossbow head to the ground, braced it against my stomach, and leaned all my weight on it until the slide clicked into position. By the time I had fitted a bolt and swung the weapon around, Renthrette was almost surrounded, and several blows had been struck. I picked the nearest goblin, fired hurriedly, and, as it fell, drew my axe. One of them was closing on me and there was no way I was going to be able to get Mithos and Orgos, who were shouting our names wildly, out to help. The doors behind the archway continued to breed goblin forms. Renthrette parried a goblin slash and looked wildly round. For a moment our eyes met, and for once the feeling was mutual: This was not going well. In fact, it didn’t look like it would be going much further.

One of the goblins strayed close to me, leering through its narrow eyes. I cut at its legs with a savage sweep of my axe. The blow went wide and threw me off balance, and when I looked up, the goblin had edged cautiously closer, a slim spear aimed at my vitals. Renthrette was backing off, leaving her riven shield on the ground. One of the large black goblins had collapsed at her feet, bleeding, but another was advancing steadily, wielding a two-handed weapon that looked like an axe/sword hybrid, but bright and keen edged. She held her ground as the monster brought down its hacking strike. Her sword flashed up and parried, but as it did so, its blade shattered and fell in glittering shards.

“Run!” I shouted. “This way.”

There was nothing else for it. There was one way out of the chamber, since the enemy had blocked the way we had come, and that was out toward the other side, to the pass where we had been attacked the previous day. Barely waiting for her, I fled down a corridor of doors and tunnels, not knowing where I was going but running as if every devil in Hell was on my tail. For all I knew, that was exactly what was happening.

A black-flighted arrow whistled over my head and clattered against the wall, and I heard Renthrette’s bow gasp back its defiance. There was a cry of pain, harsh and loud as the bellow of a bull, but it was a token retaliation on our part. We knew we could not stand and fight. One of the doors ahead of me opened, and a goblin stepped out, curious about the commotion. I ran right into it and hacked at its neck once, barely breaking stride as it slipped to the ground, foaming blood.

Renthrette was immediately behind me now, but the pursuit had slowed. They were organizing themselves. If we were going to get out of here, we had to do something before they were on our heels again. I tried a door. It revealed a chamber full of shelves laden with pots, so I slammed it shut and moved on, trying the next: another storeroom. Then a third, and the sound of the door reverberated hollowly. It was dark inside, but I could hear the slosh and trickle of water: a great deal of water.

Renthrette grabbed a torch from the corridor, pushed me inside and pulled the door shut behind us. We stood on a rock platform in a huge square and high-ceilinged chamber cut out of the rock. The platform was only a few yards long. The rest of the room was filled with water.

“A cistern,” said Renthrette, looking quickly about her. “There must be a spring or something that brings in the water. Maybe we could use it to get out.”

“It’s probably under the surface,” I said. “Or it just seeps in through channels in the rock. Most of it is probably melted ice from the mountaintops.”

“Then why doesn’t it flood the whole fort?” Renthrette demanded.

“Good question. There must be some kind of overflow drain to stop the level from getting too high. Look around the edge.”

She paced the platform with her torch outstretched, peering into the water to see how deep it was. I did the same but could see nothing under the surface.

“Quick!” I said. “They’re coming!”

“There!” she said. “Over on the far wall.”

There, barely visible in the torchlight, was a small rectangle of darkness: a channel cut into the stone right at the water’s brim. My heart sank.

Renthrette jumped in without another thought. For a moment I thought she was standing on the bottom, but then she started to bob up and down as she treaded water, somehow managing to keep the head of the torch above the surface.

“Come on!” she hissed.

“I can’t swim!” I whined, awash with self-contempt and horror.

“Yes you can!”

“No. .” I began.

“You have to! Now get in! I’ll help you get across. It’s not far. Come on! They’re coming!”

I sat on the shelf and lowered my feet and legs into the still, freezing water. “I can’t!”

She reached over and tugged at my boots, pulling me in. I sank into the cold and silence, bobbing up a moment later, terrified and gasping for air. I began to go under again and she caught me, dragging me along as she began to swim.

“Hold the torch and kick!”

I tried, but my legs were too stricken with cold or the paralysis of fear to respond. All I could think about was the depth of water beneath me. Then the door into the cistern clicked and opened.

I pulled the torch underwater and it hissed briefly. Then all was dark and quiet, save at the door, where a pair of goblins stood framed in the flickering light of the corridor.

Renthrette’s hand slipped over my mouth and her legs began to kick silently. I let the torch go and began to move my arms and legs to her rhythm, my heart thumping. The goblins came in and looked around, but the chamber was pitch black and even their night eyes would have difficulty seeing us if we kept still.

If. I flapped my arms like a wounded duck and prayed not to break the surface with my hands or otherwise make some telltale ripple that would leave us floating here shot full of black arrows.

It was only a few seconds, of course, but it seemed like an hour before the goblins stepped out into the corridor and closed the door. Renthrette uncovered my mouth and began to swim for where the hole had been. I got a mouthful of water, spat it out as if it was acid, and began flailing my way after her like some hyperactive puppy.

Fortunately her sense of direction was better than mine. She swam to the wall, pulling me after her, then began testing the stone with one hand till she found the space which marked the mouth of the drainage channel. It was a rectangular hole cut into the stone about five feet high, its floor no more than an inch below the waterline of the cistern. She swung herself up and in, then offered me her hand. Once in, I lay on its wet stone floor and breathed.

“There’s no time to lose,” said Renthrette. “They’ll notice the missing torch and be back soon enough.”

And so we set off, stooping, hands in front of our faces and still trying to run, though we were utterly sightless. I hit my head, painfully skinning my right temple, and the roof got steadily lower. After only a few yards we could go no farther upright.

“We’ll have to crawl,” Renthrette breathed.

We did so, and the passage descended gradually, just enough to keep the chill water around our hands and knees flowing. But soon the walls narrowed and the roof dropped still lower and I began having to squeeze myself through the tunnel. The water level had risen proportionally, and over half my body was now beneath its surface. I was freezing, but I desperately wanted to slip out of my jerkin and cloak, which were now taking up valuable inches of space. I tried to shrug myself out of my cloak, but there wasn’t enough room. A horrible, fearful sense of paralysis came over me. I flexed my back against the dripping rock overhead as if I could somehow push through it, expanding the way. When I couldn’t, and the passage seemed almost to contract against me, I felt the urge to scream building in my throat. My eyes closed tight and my fists clenched and, for a second, I thought I would go mad. Then the sound of Renthrette splashing and scrambling in front of me came to an abrupt halt and I got hold of myself, bracing for some new development.

“What?” I stuttered, desperately. “What’s the matter?” My words boomed in the tight, dank passage.

“It gets narrower,” she said. “I don’t know if we can get through.”

“If it’s worse than this, I don’t see how we can. But I can’t turn round here. I don’t think I can get back this way. I can’t move.”

Neither of us said anything for a long time. We stayed where we were, still in the darkness, and the icy water flowed around us.

“We’ll have to go on,” she said eventually.

And then she was gone. I crawled a little ahead and found that the ceiling of the tunnel stepped down abruptly. I knelt at this new gateway with growing fear. There was only an inch or two of space between the stone and the top of the water. And farther inside even that might be filled.

Renthrette had gone. She might have been drowning only a few feet away from me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could try to inch my way back, but I was unsure that I could get all the way to the cistern without getting stuck. And even if I did, then what? What mercy could I expect at the hands of the goblins after our little assault? They would have found the way we got in and it would be guarded even if I could get that far unseen.

Loneliness, if that is not too tame a word for the crippling sense of isolation that struck me, won out. I could not stand to be left there by myself or to attempt to escape without Renthrette. I lay down in the water. Then, with infinite care, I rolled over onto my back. For a terrifying second I was completely immersed in the black water, then I thrust my neck and shoulders up on my elbows and lifted my face out into the ribbon of air between the water and the rock. I breathed, then inched backward, walking crab-like on my elbows, into the smaller tunnel. My face was pressed up against the stone and the water lapped around my cheeks and ran into my ears. I put my lips right against the granite, inhaled, then held my breath and continued my backward crawl.

I had been making my painstaking and nightmarish passage like this for several minutes when the water closed over my face altogether. I spluttered and pulled back, jerking involuntarily toward a sitting position and cracking my forehead hard against the rock. I retraced a few feet of my slithering steps, surfaced, and breathed, calming myself. Then I filled my lungs to capacity, rolled onto my face and clawed my way along the bottom of the channel. In so little water buoyancy was hardly a problem, and I was able to wriggle against the walls of the now tube-like tunnel, but the rock was closing in. The water above and around me was running faster, and, as I pulled myself along, nearing the end of my air, I hit my shoulder hard against a stony outcrop.

I gasped, swallowing water and losing what little air remained. My stomach contracted and my knees snapped hard against the rock beneath me, then the outcrop ground into my waist and I stuck fast. The gorge in my throat rose and I fought against it, stretching out as much as I could, flattening myself to the floor of what had turned into a pipe less than two feet in diameter and full of rushing water.

I remained lodged there and panic overcame me. I began to thrash as much as I could, but the sides of the pipe were quite smooth and I could get no purchase to drag myself through. I lunged forward with the little strength I had left and a strong, slender hand took mine, tightened and pulled. Sinews in my shoulder cracked and a flash of pain went through my arm, but then I was sliding forward and out. The water and darkness fell away and I found myself retching into the weedy pools of a waterfall on the western side of the mountain.

Renthrette watched me with her usual detached curiosity, as if she was looking at something in a museum case, while I continued to vomit water onto the grass: not a technique renowned for impressing women, but that was, for once, far from my mind. She didn’t speak, but she looked stern. Our survival, harrowing though it had been, had not taken away from her awareness that our mission had not been a raging success. I sat up, coughing. The swollen stream into which the waterfall flowed wound through the wetlands we had crossed that morning, and squinting in the noon light I thought I could just make out the smoke from the Last Refuge Inn. I suppose I was grateful to be alive, but I had been so close to not being that all I felt was my customary petulant anger.

“There are only a couple of them, she says,” I wheezed bitterly. “Sorrail knows this place like the back of his hand, she says. Has he ever looked at the back of his hand? It’s probably crawling with goblins.”

“Shut up, Will,” said Renthrette. “Well, at least we know Mithos and Orgos are alive.”

“If our little visit doesn’t change that,” I replied grimly.

All peril and near-death experiences aside, I was puzzled. I still didn’t understand how we had got in, why the side door wasn’t better protected. Maybe the goblins had only been there a little while, but. .

“Mithos was trying to tell us something,” Renthrette added, pensively. “I wonder what it was.”

“We may never know,” I answered. “I hope it wasn’t important.”