The Survivors (22 page)

B
radok hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He knew he had, though, because he was dreaming. He found himself walking through the deserted and silent streets of Ironroot. He tried to force himself to wake up, but the dream only worsened. Apart from the confusion of being in a place he knew no longer existed, he couldn’t seem to remember why he wanted to wake up. It nagged at him, like the pain of a molar that needed removing.

As he walked around the statue of Argus Gingerbeard, he realized that he had developed a limp. He didn’t remember hurting his leg and, in fact, his leg didn’t seem to be in any pain; it just didn’t work as it should. Figuring it might have fallen asleep, he tried shaking and rubbing it to no avail.

When he looked up from his exertions, he discovered the cooper, Silas, standing at the base of the statue, regarding him.

“Silas,” Bradok stammered.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Silas told him sadly. “You need to be strong. Others will need your strength.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Bradok said.

Silas shook his head. “You must do better than that,” he
warned. “Trust yourself and have faith.”

The light overhead flared, and Bradok had to shield his eyes. When it subsided, Silas was gone. Only the last words of his message, “have faith, have faith …” seemed to echo on in the distance.

While he stood there pondering Silas’s appearance, a bloodcurdling scream erupted out of nowhere.

Bradok whirled, trying desperately to locate the source of the cry. The city seemed to bend and waver as if it were melting; then it dissolved around him. Have faith, faith, faith …

He woke up, lying on the sand where he’d fallen asleep. Sitting up, he became aware of a long pink ropelike appendage hanging down from the ceiling, slowly wrapping itself around his leg. With a cry of disgust, he jerked his sword free of its scabbard and sliced the thing in two. Milky white liquid spurted from the wound and spattered Bradok’s leg and chest. He tried to wipe it off, but it burned his hand. Cursing, he rubbed his hand in the sand to get the acidic goo off.

The pink tentacle withdrew back up to the ceiling but Bradok could see the strange orange fungi above were trailing long tentacles down among the sleeping dwarves. Already they had wrapped around some and were pulling them into the air, toward open maws. Bradok could see the orange fungi peeled back, like bananas, with tiny tentacles waving inside. They would bleed their victims dry once the pink tongues sucked them in. Bradok shouted a warning to the others, but he had his own troubles.

He tried to kick his leg, to dislodge the tentacle end that was still wrapped around his leg, but his leg spasmed. Where the tentacle touched him, it had secreted a clear substance that had soaked through his trouser leg, turning his leg numb. Using the tip of his sword, Bradok peeled the pink appendage away from his leg.

Rolling over, he pushed himself to his knees and stood, or rather, tried to stand. The moment he put weight on his
numb leg, it collapsed beneath him, sending him sprawling in the sand.

A second tentacle dropped from above and struck Bradok on the shoulder. Before it could latch onto him, he chopped it away, sending the bleeding stump retreating back to the ceiling.

Off to his left, a tentacle had wrapped around one of the hill dwarves and was pulling her upward. Bradok lurched forward, putting his weight on his good leg, and chopped away the tentacle, sending the unconscious dwarf falling into the sand with a thud.

Screams and cries and the sounds of battle filled the cavern as most of the dwarves woke up to discover themselves in the grip of the nightmarish attack. Bradok hobbled over to where Kellik grappled with a tentacle that had Hemmish in its grip. Each time Kellik’s hammer struck the tentacle, it would contract; the net effect was that it pulled the boy higher and higher away from his father.

“Use your knife,” Bradok cried as he slashed wildly at the appendage, cutting it part of the way through and sending it spinning. Kellik swung at it with his knife but missed, leaving Bradok to chop Hemmish free when the tentacle spun back his way.

“Help me unravel him,” Kellik said to Rijul as he pulled the limp end of the tentacle off his younger son.

“Hemmish,” Kellik yelled, shaking the boy. “Hemmish, wake up!” Kellik thumped him on the chest, hard, and Hemmish gasped, coughed, and started breathing weakly.

“Help me!” came a terrified shriek to their left.

“Stay with him,” Bradok told Kellik as he lurched to the rescue.

A few yards away, Starlight, Marl Anvil’s eldest granddaughter, was struggling to free Marl from a tentacle lifting him off the ground. Marl’s hip was bleeding profusely. Nearby the two younger grandchildren held each other and cried.

As thin and delicate as the tentacles seemed, the creatures were strong. By the time Bradok got there, they had lifted Marl almost out of reach. Bradok hacked away at the tentacle, trying not to hit Marl. Finally he struck a good blow. The tentacle spurted white fluid that mixed with Marl’s blood, and it unwound quickly, sending the old man spinning into a heap.

Bradok grabbed Marl’s cloak, still lying on the sand and pressed a corner to his bleeding hip.

“Hold this down tight on his wound,” he told Starlight. “If any more of them come down, chop at them with your knives.” Bradok motioned the other two children over to their big sister’s side. Then he realized that one member of the family was absent.

“Where’s your grandmother?” he asked. “Where’s Isirah?”

With a trembling hand, the boy, Graylin, pointed up to the ceiling. Bradok looked up just in time to see her unconscious form being sucked into one of the orange fungi. It closed its maw around her hungrily, and Isirah vanished from sight.

“Damn it!” Bradok shouted just as someone grabbed his shoulder.

“Help us,” Jeni, one of the Daergar, said desperately. Her hair was disheveled and smeared with the slime from the tentacles. The sticky liquid covered her left cheek, causing it to remain frozen when she talked, forcing her to slur her words.

“Where?” Bradok asked, forcing himself to rejoin the fight. Jeni ran ahead, pointing, and Bradok limped after her. On the far side of the cavern, Corin was battling for his life. He’d been almost completely wrapped in a tentacle, and his arms moved weakly as he tried to saw his way free. Xurces lay unconscious on the ground, and Omer, confused by the attack, was wailing and covering his head. The assassin, Thurl, hung in the air, trussed like a holiday duck, and of the rotund Hurlic there was no sign.

Bradok chopped away at the tentacle holding Corin then cut down Thurl, who dropped to the ground like a stone.

“Untie him,” Corin gasped, pulling the ropy flesh away from Thurl’s body. “The tentacles are poisoned; the longer they make contact with your skin, the more you absorb, until you’re dead.”

Bradok pulled away the tentacles from the semiconscious assassin. Even as he did so, he could feel his hands growing numb where the sticky substance coating the tentacles spilled on him.

“Thank you,” Thurl whispered. His eyes locked feverishly on Bradok and seemed to bore into him. “I owe you my life,” the assassin said weakly. “I am your man … till I die.”

“Easy there,” Bradok said. “Just rest for a minute.” He turned to Corin. “You seem to know something about these strange creatures. How come you didn’t warn us?” he demanded.

“I’ve only heard about them from stories told by old ones,” Corin said, his voice raspy and strained. “Do you think I’ve actually seen one before? They’re called cave fishers.”

Bradok opened his mouth to tell Corin that he didn’t give two figs what the tentacles were called when he heard a single word rise above all the chaos of sound filling the cavern.

“Rose!”

He whirled and saw Tal hanging on to his sister as a relentless tentacle pulled her upward. Tal’s left arm hung limply at his side, it was clear he wouldn’t be able to hang on much longer.

“Rose!” Tal shouted again.

Bradok ran toward them, forcing his benumbed leg to work by shear dint of will. As he ran, he tore off his cloak and swung it around over his head. He reached them just as Tal’s grip faltered. Swinging his cloak round, he launched it up, wrapping it around Rose as she hung upside down. He caught the loose end and pulled, using the cloak as a kind of sling. The cave fisher pulled back, trying to lift them both off the ground.

“Don’t let go,” Tal pleaded, powerless to rise from the ground.

“It’s poisoning her every second it touches her,” Bradok said. “We’ve got to get her down or she’ll die soon enough.”

Tal rolled over, face-first in the sand, and forced himself to stand.

“Use my sword,” Bradok said, indicating, as he twisted and turned, the handle protruding from the scabbard on his hip.

Tal flung his limp arm against Bradok, and his fingers caught the hilt. He could grip the weapon, but lacked the strength to pull it out of its sheath. Finally he simply stepped back, and the weapon slid from its scabbard and hung as loosely as his arm.

“Cut at it,” Bradok gasped.

“Where?” Tal asked, swinging his body around so that the sword flailed out and smacked the tentacle with the flat of the blade.

“Anywhere,” Bradok said. “Try again.”

Tal swung again with similar ineffectual results.

“Again,” Bradok said, his voice a near scream. “Hold on, Rose!”

Then he heard the sound of steel whirring through the air, and suddenly Rose fell free. He fell with her, quickly rolling off and tearing the tentacles away. The top of the tentacle had been cleanly severed. Bradok turned and saw Thurl, his body forced into a sitting position, nodding before he slumped over.

Rose coughed, gasped, and began breathing. Tal cradled her head in his lap as best he could, and Bradok retrieved his sword.

“Go help the others,” Tal said. “We’re all right now.”

Bradok stood and faced the chamber. Everywhere dwarves were attacking the tentacles with knives and swords. Several bodies hung in the air, in the process of being pulled up to
the ceiling, some already too high up to save. Bradok willed his eyes to avoid their faces. There would be time for a reckoning later.

A scream broke upon his ear as he chopped at a fresh tentacle that had dropped down too close to him. The sound was horrible, somehow visceral in its anguish. It took Bradok a minute to recognize the voice as Much’s.

He looked over to spot his old friend racing madly from group to group, chopping at tentacles with his short sword. But he kept moving and appeared to be looking for something, or someone.

“Teal!” Much screamed, vaulting over a cowering dwarf and racing on.

Bradok remembered the curly-haired toddler and looked around. With a gasp he realized he didn’t see the little girl. Fear gripped him and pulled his eyes inexorably upward. There, far above him on the ceiling, he saw a flash of color—the rag doll Much had made. The little girl Teal lay, still cradled in the arms of her unconscious mother, both wrapped by a tentacle.

“There!” Bradok yelled before he realized there was nothing that could be done. Already the mouth began to close around mother and child, and he had to turn away at the grisly slight.

Much screamed something, but his voice faded to insignificance as an animal roar erupted from behind Bradok. Turning, he saw Omer staring up at the horror. Omer’s hands were clenched into fists. Even from that distance, Bradok could see veins popping in the boy’s neck. An unearthly orange glow shone out from his eyes, as if his very brain were on fire. Then he screamed.

“TEAL, NO!”

The sound was so overpowering, it shook the ground, taking Bradok so much by surprise that he fell over backward from the force of the scream. Then, as Bradok lay on the
ground, watching agape, the young dwarf with the mind of a child took three steps that brought him close to Bradok and launched himself into the air.

Remarkably, Omer’s leap took him all the way up to the roof of the cavern. He caught hold of the cave fisher that had grabbed his precious girl and, holding it around the middle, swung his legs up so his feet were planted on the ceiling. Then he pulled.

From his vantage point below, Bradok could see the veins in Omer’s arms and legs bulging and the look of naked rage on his face.

With a wet, tearing sound, the cave fisher began to pull free of the ceiling. Bradok could see its wiggling, thrashing roots flailing about. With a groan and a thunderous crack, the ceiling broke away, and Omer and the cave fisher both dropped to the ground.

The cave fisher burst open like an overripe melon, and Teal’s mother slid out. Her arm flopped down, sending little Teal rolling free from her grasp. Teal ended up in a heap on the sand, still clutching her rag doll but showing no signs of life.

Bradok started forward, but Omer beat him to Teal. He leaped beside the little girl and stood there, as if guarding her. The orange glow died from behind his eyes as he reached out one of his oversized hands and nudged Teal. The girl didn’t respond.

She had been too long in the grips of the tentacle, and she was so very small. The poison had taken Teal long before she’d reached the ceiling. Her tiny form lay in the sand as if asleep, but Bradok knew it was a sleep from which she’d never wake.

Omer pushed her again. “Teal,” he said, his voice childlike and pleading. “Please get up. Teal?” Finally, Omer understood. He reached out with trembling hands and lifted Teal to his bosom. In his hands, she seemed like a doll.

Omer’s shoulders shook as he sobbed, then he threw back his head and howled like a wounded dog. The mad howl echoed off the walls of the chamber, a howl of pain, love, and loss.

Much had come up beside Omer. He leaned down and picked up the rag doll that had slipped from Teal’s hand. As the young dwarf vented his grief, Much held the doll gently, as one would a living child. Tears streamed down the old dwarf’s face and wet his beard. Dwarves rarely cry in public, especially revered elders such as Much. But it took all of Much’s self-control not to drop to his knees and howl along with Omer.