Chương 13: Bait

Murren stood in the middle of the cavern, cracking his neck with a swift, sharp motion, like something had come back online inside him. Color had returned to his face, a little. Enough that the goggles no longer looked like something a dying man had strapped on out of desperation. Solstice watched him a moment before speaking.

"Now that we've all drunk and filled every waterskin we've got, we should start moving." Murren looked at him for a long beat.

"Don't state the obvious, brat. I'm still the one in charge here."

"You didn't let me finish." Solstice tapped the side of his own head.

"I found us a new way out." Behind him, Lere jerked, then caught himself before it showed.

"What are you talking about?" Murren's eyes narrowed.

"You sensing something?"

"Yes." Solstice pointed toward the pond.

"There's a ridge under there Lere and I can expand. We could swim through." Murren laughed, short and ugly, a sound with nothing warm in it.

"You're a crazy little thing, you know that? There's no light down there worth calling light. You'd be swimming blind, hoping to stumble into an exit before your lungs give out. Even with these." He tapped his goggles.

"That's not a plan. That's a way to drown quietly instead of loudly."

"Oh, of course. My mistake." Solstice lowered his head.

"What do you suggest, then?" Murren's hand shot out and closed around the scarf at his throat, hauling him up onto his toes, the fabric biting into his neck. Pain shot straight through Solstice's leg and he couldn't quite bite the sound back.

"Are you playing with me, kid? Mocking me?"

"No." His voice came out tight, strained.

"Just a suggestion. A stupid one, apparently." Murren let go. Solstice hit the ground hard, weight landing straight on the torn thigh, and hissed a breath in through his teeth.

"We keep going forward." Murren turned his back on both of them. Lere stepped up.

"The path ahead is infested with dwellers. I can feel them." Murren stopped.

"How many." His voice had an edge of real interest in it now, sharp enough to pass for respect.

"Six, roughly. All inside the same stretch." Solstice pulled himself up using the Uron vein for balance.

"We could use that." He nodded toward the unconscious man on the ground.

"Him." Murren's mouth curved into something like approval.

"Now you're speaking my language."

"He's the one who proposed the idea first. Only seems fair."

"Gather everything. Lamps, pickaxes, whatever's still usable. Gag him tight enough that if he wakes, he doesn't make a sound before we can put him to use." Lere collected the remaining lamps and a blood-crusted pickaxe.

"And the plan?"

"We move slow. You navigate with whatever your senses can still give us out here." Murren picked up his own pickaxe.

"I drop him the moment it counts, and we run for the nearest way out. No hesitating."

"What if there isn't one at all?" Solstice said. Lere stepped forward, then again, one eye closing in concentration, his whole body gone still with the effort of it.

"There's something. The Uron and salt keep interfering with what I can feel, but there's something out there, further than anything we've walked through yet." He looked between them.

"I can't tell if it's another cavern or the way out. Could be either. Could be both." Murren slung the pickaxe over his shoulder.

"Only one way to find that out now." The group moved toward the opening, lamplight already thinning down to next to nothing, the dark pressing in closer with every step forward. Murren led. Solstice stayed close behind him, favoring the good leg without meaning to. Lere brought up the rear, the masked man slung over both arms, legs shaking under the added weight and the hours already stacked against him. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Solstice kept his eyes open the whole way, watching for any color that didn't belong here. A crunch cut through the dark. Scraping. Hard meeting hard. Murren's hand went up, and he crept forward, slower now, every step deliberate. The lamplight caught them a second later. Two dwellers, hunched over a salt vein, tearing chunks free with their teeth, wet sounds carrying further than they had any right to in a space this size.' Dwellers.' Murren fired a wind slash before Solstice could say the word out loud.

Colors bled into the dark ahead of his eyes, thin and fast. Both dwellers launched at once, jaws wide, claws already reaching. The slash caught one clean, folding it sideways with a wet crack. The other kept coming, faster than Solstice's leg wanted to let him move. Solstice threw himself forward anyway, ignoring the scream from his thigh, and swung the pickaxe into the side of its skull with everything he had left.' Don't touch my lifeline.' It dropped.

So did Solstice, nearly, his balance gone entirely, only the pickaxe planted in the ground keeping him upright. He breathed hard, ragged, spots crowding the edge of his vision, his whole leg screaming in time with his pulse. Murren finished the first one off with his boot, crushing its skull flat, blood spreading fast beneath it and steaming faintly in the cold. They kept moving.

The tunnel widened as they went, more claw marks scoring the walls, more holes gouged wide enough to fit a body through, dark mouths that could have been hiding anything. More dwellers came with it. One dropped from above and landed square on Lere's back, weight and claws both at once. Lere dropped the masked man hard and threw himself sideways, grabbing a loose rock and driving it into the thing's skull. It staggered back, screeching, blood spraying dark across the ice.

Solstice spun and finished it, pickaxe through bone, the impact jarring all the way up into his shoulder. Murren had two of his own, one slipping past his guard to rake claws across his ribs. He hissed through it and answered with a wind slash that folded the creature sideways, then rounded on the second before it could close the gap.

"Two more incoming," Lere said, voice tight, eyes still half closed.

"We're too loud. Every hit, every scream, it's calling more of them in."

"You said six!" Murren snapped.

"No time for that." He gripped the pickaxe tighter, forced his eyes open through the sting, and watched color spill through the dark ahead, thicker than he'd seen it in this stretch of tunnel yet. Two shapes he still didn't understand, tangled together in patterns his mind hadn't caught up to reading. Useful anyway, even half understood.

Murren stepped back, cracked the canister, and dumped a mouthful of unrefined salt in, chewing through the rattling grit like it cost him nothing, though the tremor in his jaw said otherwise. He thrust his remaining arm forward and fired twice, wind screaming both times. Solstice watched him go, then snapped his head toward Lere, breath coming ragged.

"Is the exit close?"

"Yes!" He turned back toward Murren, still cutting through the wave in front of him, wind and steel and blood everywhere at once.

"We push through! It's close!" A dweller lunged and Murren caught it with his fist, sending it flying, then whipped his arm out for another slash. A scream tore through everything.

"WHAT IS THIS? WHAT? I CAN'T MOVE, UNTIE ME!" Solstice's head snapped around. The masked man, awake, eyes wide and rolling, the gag hanging loose off his jaw where the fighting had jarred it free.' Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.' He grabbed the man by both shoulders, trying to pin him down before the sound carried any further.

"Lere, help me!" Lere lunged for the legs, both of them fighting to keep a thrashing, screaming man still while claws scraped closer through the dark on every side.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK! What are you doing! No! Untie me, please, I'm begging you, oh god, please, don't leave me here like this!"

"SHUT UP!" Solstice hissed, and his head whipped toward Murren, eyes blown wide with something close to fury. Murren was already gone, cutting his own path forward, leaving all three of them behind without so much as a glance back, pickaxe rising and falling somewhere ahead in the dark.' Fuck.' More dwellers spilled from the holes in the walls, one after another, faster than either of them could count, drawn straight to the one sound in this whole cavern that hadn't bothered to stay quiet.

"NO! We're going to die!" the masked man screamed, thrashing hard enough that Solstice nearly lost his grip on him entirely.

"Sol!" Lere's voice cracked, panic bleeding through every syllable.

"We're surrounded! I can feel them closing in from every side, there's nowhere left to run!" Solstice bit down on his own lip hard enough to draw blood, the pain the only thing sharp enough to cut through the panic threatening to swallow him whole too.

"We've become the bait."