Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

They were in sight of the farmhouse. The dog set up a volley of harsh barks, awakened by his uncle’s shouts. The farmer turned and yelled at the dog to be silent.

“Tomorrow, I’m burning your mother’s books,” he said in a quieter, more sober tone, turning back to his nephew.

“No!” Gustin sprang away from his uncle, racing toward the barn where her trunk was still stored.

“Including that daft guidebook you keep in your shirt!” yelled his uncle after him. “Don’t think I don’t know about that! No more foolish tales, boy, no more tricks! This time, I mean it!”

Upstairs in the barn, Gustin stuffed the battered knapsack as full as possible with his mother’s papers, scrolls, and books. He would leave nothing behind for his uncle’s bonfire.

Down the barn ladder he crept with more caution than he had hurled up it. The farmyard was a tangle of shadows. The hound shifted, paws churning in some dream of a hunt, and rattled its chain as he crept past, but the old dog did not wake. It knew Gustin’s footsteps in its sleep.

Gustin was out the gate and halfway down the road before he stopped to consider where he would go. Everyone in the village knew him. His uncle would look there first.

The three adventurers had talked about going back to the ruins, just as soon as the fighter’s sword was mended. After that, who knows where they would go? Waterdeep, as he had always dreamed, or some other destination equally splendid. Surely they would want a clever boy, a boy like him who knew more than a few magical tricks, to help them on their way.

Gustin turned off the road, following the track that led to the ruins. Being tired and mindful of the night shadows whispering through the tall grass, he decided not to go into the ruins by himself. Instead, he slid down into the bracken at the base of a tree, curling himself around the knapsack stuffed full of his mother’s papers.

The three adventurers found him there, dozing in the late afternoon stillness and dreaming of Waterdeep.

The dandy poked him awake with one pointed toe. “What are you doing, boy?” he asked, but his eyes were bright with laughter and he looked as if he knew what Gustin would answer.

“I’ve come to help you to find the treasure,” Gustin said as boldly as he could with grass sticking out of his hair and a few dry leaves itching their way down his shirt as he scrambled to his feet.

“How do you know we are looking for treasure? Or your help?” said the dwarf, and his face was harder and more suspicious than his companions.

“You said… last night… well, I thought,” Gustin mumbled a little, staring at his toes, wondering if he’d been a bit rash.

“Of course, we are after treasure,” said Nerhaltan. “What else would three like us be doing here? The boy’s too bright for us to deceive.” The dandy nodded high over Gustin’s head at his companions. “We welcome your help, young wizard, welcome it indeed.”

“I’m no wizard,” Gustin quickly answered. “But I do know these ruins.”

“Does your uncle know where you are?” asked Wervyn. The fighter looked concerned and frowned when Gustin shook his head. “Maybe you should go back to your farm, boy.”

“Nonsense,” answered Nerhaltan for him. “The boy’s got too much adventure in him to be content on some farm. Lead on, lad, lead on. There’s plenty for all if we can find our prize.”

Gustin led the three men toward the ruins. The woods buzzed with the usual noise of a warm autumn afternoon, birds calling to mates, the deep rumble of frogs, the chittering of insects. It sounded so normal that Gustin paused.

“What is it?” asked the dandy.

Gustin shrugged. He felt as if a dozen ants were marching up and down his spine. A prickling of his skin unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“Are we going forward or going back?” said Tapper.

“Forward,” replied the dandy, giving Gustin a slight shove between the shoulder blades. “Go to, sirrah, go to.”

“There’s something wrong,” said Gustin.

“What?”

He shook his head. Suddenly he wondered if he should have listened to his uncle and stayed home. And then he was ashamed of his cowardice. Here he was, so close to discovering a lost treasure, and he stood trembling, afraid of a few birds singing in the tangled branches over his head.

Even as that thought tumbled through his mind, Gustin let out a great sigh of relief and enlightenment.

“It’s the birds,” he said to the three adventurers staring at him. “The birds. It’s the wrong time of year. They should not be singing like that.”

And the minute he said it, the woods fell silent. Not a cheep or a chirp could be heard.

The fighter drew his repaired sword out of the scabbard with a well-oiled hiss.

“It is close,” he said to his friends.

Tapper peered from side to side. “Keep everyone together now. No one out of sight.”

Gustin stared at the three now surrounding him in a tight knot.

“What is it?” he asked, with a sinking certainty that he would not like the answer he would receive from the adults.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Nerhaltan with a strained smile. “Go on, boy, go on ahead. There’s a hole, you see, down by the base of the wall. It’s too small for us, even Tapper won’t fit, but if you can wiggle your way in…”

A shout sounded to their left. It sounded uncommonly like his uncle calling “Gustin! Gustin!”

Out of habit, Gustin almost started toward the shouts, into the thickest part of the woods, but Tapper grabbed his shirttails and pulled him back. “To the wall, boy, to the wall.”

Silence fell again. Gustin listened but he heard no more from his uncle. Perhaps he was turning away and searching toward the village road.

They reached the walls of the ruin. The place seemed colder than before and more menacing than he remembered, the shadows clustering at the base of the wall and making a gloomy twilight inside the roofless rooms of the abandoned fort.

High above his head, a kitten mewed, a lost sound. Poor thing, thought Gustin, it must have climbed the wall and gotten itself stuck. Fond of cats, he chirped, hoping to draw it into the open.

“Hush!” Nerhaltan clapped a hand over Gustin’s mouth. “Don’t call to it.”

Gustin wiggled his way free and eyed the dandy with suspicion. “Why should I be afraid of a stray kitten?”

“Not a cat,” muttered Tapper, nervously looking around. “It just sounds like a cat. When it’s not trying to sound like your mother.”

“Or a flock of birds.” That from the fighter, who had put his back to the ruins’ wall and was staring out at the woods.

“Now, about this hole,” said Nerhaltan. There was a hole at the base of the wall, newly dug, as Gustin could tell by the fresh clods of dirt lining its rim. As the dandy had said, the opening was small, the stone blocks of the wall preventing it from being enlarged beyond the current opening.

Gustin went flat on his stomach and peered within. He snapped his fingers, concentrating on a useful spell that the widow had taught him, and made a light. The little glowing ball rolled away from his hand and dropped down the hole. It disappeared into a chamber located just under the wall.

“A safe room. All these little hill forts used to have them. A place to hide treasure,” explained Tapper, leaning over Gustin’s shoulder. “The original way in… well, we couldn’t use that. So I came around to the other side of the wall and broke in through the roof. But it’s too narrow a route for us to wiggle down and back.”

The air issuing from the hole smelled stale, dank, and uncommonly like a grave to Gustin.

“Is something down there?” Gustin asked. For the end of his sensitive nose caught another scent, a stink like an animal, but no animal that he could identify.