Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“Nothing down there now,” said Nerhaltan.

“Now that it is out here,” added Wervyn. The fighter was facing away from the wall, looking up the broad stone staircase that wound around the tower to the guards’ walk at the top of the wall.

“Go on, wiggle in.” The dandy gave Gustin a little push from behind. “Look for a box, a little gold box with brilliants around the edge of the lid. That’s all we need to pay our way to Waterdeep.”

The late afternoon shadows stretched from the trees to the base of the fort, like long black fingers reaching for the adventurers standing over Gustin. “Hurry,” said Nerhaltan. “We should be out of here as quickly as possible.”

For the very first time in his ten years, Gustin wished that he was back at the farm and his uncle was yelling at him about his neglected chores.

He slid headfirst into the hole, plunging his arms in front of him like a swimmer to drag himself forward. His feet kicked the air outside until somebody grabbed his ankles-Nerhaltan, probably-and shoved him all the way in. Gustin slithered forward, concentrating on his light spell. A faint glow began to strengthen before him.

“What do you see?” The shout sounded very far away and muffled to his ears.

“Nothing!” he yelled back.

Then he popped like a cork from a bottle, tumbling out of the tunnel and onto the littered, stinking floor of the room under the wall. Piles of debris cushioned his fall. For which he was grateful until he put his hand onto the half-rotted corpse of a mouse. With a yelp of disgust, he rolled away, only to land on a much larger pile of bones that crumbled and cracked under his slight weight.

Gustin sprang hastily to his feet and spat a hasty command to his spell. By the glowing light that he now made float in the center of the room, he could discern rib bones, leg bones, and a few vertebrae. After a squeamish moment, he came to the conclusion that these were the remains of a lost sheep or, possibly, a calf. It certainly could not be a ten-year-old boy. After all, if somebody his age had gone missing from the village, he would have known. Even if it had been years and years ago. Or so he told himself firmly.

Gustin began kicking through the trash strewn about the room, looking for the gold box that Nerhaltan described. Nothing glittered or gleamed. After one quick turn around the room, he decided the search was hopeless and that he would rather be above ground, no matter what lurked among the trees.

Crossing back to the hole where he had entered, Gustin found that it was just out of reach. Even pushing the larger bones, dead leaves, and other bits of rubbish in the room into a pile under the hole didn’t help. The material was too unstable. Every time he climbed up, the pile collapsed under his feet.

“Help!” he yelled. “I need a rope!”

There was no answer.

Gustin called again, louder and more urgent.

A faint cough sounded far above his head and then he heard Nerhaltan call, “Where are you, boy? Where have you gone?”

The dandy’s voice was muffled and strangely distorted and, Gustin shivered despite himself, altogether too eager for an answer. Especially for a man who should know exactly where he was. After all, Nerhaltan had pushed him down this hole.

All the magic Gustin possessed tingled up and down his spine. Something was out there and it meant him harm.

Something sniffed at the hole leading into the safe room. Something scratched at stone and dirt, as if something too big for the hole was trying to dig its way in.

Gustin drew a deep breath and concentrated as he had never concentrated before. Then he opened his mouth and let his voice sail out and away from him, using the very same spell that had so startled the adventurers in the tavern. “Here I am! Here I am!” His words should be sounding from the very top of the hill fort’s crumbling tower if his spell worked.

He held his breath, keeping perfectly still. Faintly, distantly, he heard the scrape of a heavy body moving away.

“We found a way but we could not use that,” Wervyn had said. Not a lock, not a barred door, Gustin decided. But a creature hunting in the tunnels under the fort? Is that what had driven the adventurers above ground and to this second, futile attempt, using him to rob the safe room?

He dashed across the room, running his hands across the dank and soiled walls. Solid stone scraped his palms. He ran a circuit of the room, banging heavily against walls, kicking at the foundations, looking in the waning light of his spell for any sign of a door.

When he found it, he practically tumbled through it. Rotted wood painted to look like stone gave way before his frantic blows. He kicked a hole large enough to crawl through and found himself at the base of a bare stone stair twisting up toward the fort’s main gate.

With as light a step as possible, Gustin speeded up the stairs to arrive, panting, at the top. By the slant of the shadows covering the courtyard, he had been below ground for barely an hour, perhaps even less. But he was acutely aware of the unnatural stillness of the woods beyond the ruins. Not a bird chirped, not an insect buzzed.

Above his head, he heard a cry, almost startling him from his crouched hiding place at the top of the stairs. Then he realized it was his own voice, still echoing among the stones: “Here I am! Here I am!”

“Where are you, boy? Why are you hiding?” A great shadow passed overheard as something huge and beastly clattered along the guards’ walkway that ran across the top of the fort’s wall. The voice was Nerhaltan’s but the shadow cast by the dropping sun upon the weed-choked courtyard was too large to be that of the slender man.

Gustin crept under the broken arch of the main gate. He slid around the gate’s main pillar, hugging as tightly to the wall as he could, hoping whatever prowled above him would not glance down.

The woods were very close, he told himself firmly. He only had to sprint a short distance with no cover at all before he could lose himself in the friendly shadows under the trees. Whatever hunted at the top of the wall surely could not leap down and catch him before he reached the trees. All these arguments made perfect sense in his head but he could not persuade his trembling body to leave the relative safety of the wall.

Then he remembered Nerhaltan pushing him down the hole with uneasy glances toward all sides.

Gustin stared in the direction of the hole where he first entered the hill fort. He could easily see the loose dirt piled outside the wall. Equally easily, he could make out the distinct shape of a man’s boot leaning against the wall. It looked very much like Nerhaltan’s leg. As for the rest of the dandy, there was no sign. Just the one leg leaning against the blood-splattered wall.

Fighting back the bile rising in his throat, Gustin prepared to run as he had never run before. Directly above him, he heard the beast cry out in Nerhaltan’s voice, “There you are, clever boy!”

Another shout sounded across the meadow: “Gustin!”

Emerging from the trees, his uncle ran toward him, shouldering the heavy crossbow that he kept over the mantle for winter’s wolves and other raiders of the chicken coop.

Behind his uncle strode the widow, her hands alight with flame. “Get down!” she yelled, even as his uncle dropped to one knee and fired an iron bolt over Gustin’s head.

Gustin flattened himself in the weeds at the base of the wall. He heard the beast above cry out in pain, no longer disguising its voice, but screaming with a ferocious roar of frustrated bloodlust.

The widow spat out the words of a spell and long ropes of flame streamed from her outstretched fingers. The beast howled louder. The stench of scorched flesh and fur rolled over the gagging Gustin as he crawled as hastily as possible away from the wall.