Tad Williams - Shadowrise

Forward. Only forward, he told himself. No point in anything else.

How the gods must be laughing!

Sweaty, shivering, with mud stinging his eyes and every joint trembling, Ferras Vansen at last crawled out of the far end of the crevice into a small cavern that felt as capacious and airy as the great temple in Southmarch after the tunnel. Browncoal crawled out behind him, followed by Antimony, who clutched the drow’s rope like a child hanging onto a kite string. They ate and rested, unspeaking, and then when Vansen could stand without his knees shaking they made their way forward.

They encountered only a few narrow spots the rest of the way, and nothing like that long, throttling tunnel; at last, after perhaps an hour or two of steady upward movement they clambered up into a gallery that had clearly been worked by the hands of thinking creatures, with crude pillars of stone left to hold up the roof so that the long, low series of chambers had the feeling of a beehive or a garden maze. Vansen was just wondering who and what had created it when a spatter of arrows cracked off stones above them. Vansen and Antimony dove for cover, the monk yanking the drow’s rope so hard the little creature flew off his feet and tumbled like a child’s toy.

The attackers quickly found the range and arrows smacked against the rocks all around them. A chip of broken stone gouged Vansen’s cheek. The drow Browncoal, crouching beside Antimony, began to scream at the unseen enemy in his guttural tongue.

“Tell me what he says!” Vansen demanded.

“I don’t understand all the words.” Antimony listened as the others shouted something back. Browncoal called out to them again, an odd tone of desperation in his voice. “Our drow is saying we come in peace to talk to the dark lady,” he told Vansen quietly. “But the others—they are drows, too—say something about the rope around his leg. I think they do not trust him—they think we force him to tell lies for us.”

“Cut the rope.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Cut the rope, untie it, what you will. But let him go to them so they can see we speak the truth.”

“Forgive me, Captain, but are you mad? What will stop them from killing us then?”

“Don’t you understand, Brother? We cannot fight them. They have bows and we do not, and even now they may be sending for reinforcements. Let the drow go.”

Antimony shook his head but did as Vansen ordered. When he realized what the monk was doing, Browncoal’s eyes widened. When the rope fell off he began to inch away from his captors.

“Tell him to say to his fellows that we come in peace.”

By the time Antimony finished translating the drow was already several steps away, raising his arms as he walked toward his fellows. One arrow snapped out of the shadows but by good fortune missed him. Browncoal stared balefully at the place from which the arrow had come and no more were launched.

“Now we wait,” said Vansen.

“Now we pray,” Antimony corrected him.

Ferras Vansen had time to address several different gods before Browncoal returned with a troop of his fellows, all dressed in leather armor and wearing almost identical expressions of suspicion. Despite Antimony’s misgivings, Vansen surrendered his ax—the drow who was detailed to carry it looked like an ordinary man staggering beneath a side of beef. The drows used the rope that had bound Browncoal to tie Vansen and Antimony by the wrists. Then their former prisoner said something to them, sharp and short. Vansen did not need the translation, but Antimony gave it anyway, in a voice of weary resignation.

“He says, ‘March.’ ”

They climbed steadily for another short while. As they went, squinting drows and other, stranger creatures appeared out of the darkness on all sides until a good-sized crowd followed them. Vansen began to feel like the leader of a religious procession, but couldn’t help remembering that in some processions it was the beasts meant for sacrifice that were carried on the foremost wagons.

They finally reached a huge, high-ceilinged chamber like the inside of a domed temple. The narrow path wound up the outside of the cavern wall and had been widened in some place with wooden walkways fixed directly to the stone. A troop of full-sized soldiers waited there, alien faces stern and eyes bright in their dark armor, and Vansen thought at first they had reached their goal, but instead the guards stepped aside to reveal a massive armored figure sitting on a rock. For a moment Vansen thought it was the demigod Jikuyin and terror gripped him, but as the drows prodded him forward he saw that this new figure, although huge, was smaller than the monster that had held them prisoner in the mines of Greatdeeps, and less like a man as well. Its skin was covered with rough, scaly skin like a lizard’s and its heavy-browed face seemed a crude approximation of human features, as if some creator god had hurried through its making.

Even seated, the thing looked down on them. As Vansen approached, the bright, surprisingly small eyes watched unblinkingly.

“Antimony,” Vansen said quietly, “ask Browncoal to tell this creature that we come in peace to speak with the dark lady ...”

“You shall not need Master Kronyuul,” the giant said in a voice like stone dragged over stone. “As you see, I speak your tongue. The Lady Yasammez likes her generals to know our enemies well.” His chuckle sounded like a hammer pounding slate. He rose, towering far above even his tallest guards. “I am Hammerfoot of Firstdeeps, war-chief of the ettins. You are assassins.”

“No!” Vansen took a step back. “We come to parley ...”

“Why should she parley with you? We will sweep you all away in days, both above and below the ground, and you know it. You come in desperation, hoping to kill our general. Do not worry! You will have your chance… but only if you kill me first.”

“What?” Vansen took another step back. “Don’t you understand? We come to parley!”

“Here, take up your weapon,” Hammerfoot said. “Give him back his ax. I shall have none.” One of the drows staggered forward with the Funderling ax. Vansen took it, in part out of pity for the creature who had carried the heavy thing some distance, but he did not lift it.

“I will not fight you,” he told the giant.

“Come, even you Sunlanders are not such cowards, are you?” Hammerfoot rumbled, leaning forward until his immense, cracked-leather face was no higher than Vansen’s own. “I will even let you strike first. Are you still afraid? Your ancestors were not so hesitant at Qul-Girah, where they killed my grandfather with buckets of burning pitch. Does only water run in the veins of their descendants?”

From childhood, and even after, when he became a soldier, Vansen’s quiet calm and slowness to anger had often been mistaken for cowardice. Only his captain Donal Murroy had recognized the fire that burned inside, that Ferras Vansen was a man who would put up with nearly any provocation to avoid a meaningless fight, but would battle like a cornered animal when there was no other choice. Still, Vansen felt hot shame rush through him at Hammerfoot’s taunts and the harsh laughter of those Qar who could understsand what the giant said.

“Take me to the dark lady,” Vansen said again.

“Your path is through me,” Hammerfoot said. “Is it because you have left your armor behind?” The ettin peeled off his giant chestplate and let it drop to the cavern floor with a noise like a temple gong. “Come, Sunlander, come and die—or are you completely without honor?”

“Captain!” It was Antimony’s voice, fearful to the breaking point.

Everything in Ferras Vansen strained to take up the ax, to wipe the smirk off that great, leering face in a cascade of red—or whatever color a giant bled. He lifted the weapon, weighed it in his hands. Hammerfoot spread his massive arms to show he would not block the blow.