chaotic as folks ran in two directions at once. Evidently there was trouble at both ends.
True. A roar, a wash of light reflected on steel weapons and stone ceiling, shrills from the common room, and another wedge of brutal guards charged. The thud of ebony wood and silver on skulls and shoulders was sickening.
'This way!' Having sheathed her blade, Knucklebones planted both hands on Sunbright's midriff and pushed. Sunbright walked backward, shoving smaller folk aside like a bow wave. Before long, she called, 'Duck!'
He crouched, and backed through a doorway into a small room with only a few people. Knucklebones poked his belly, and slid under his arm.
Cold glow striped the walls. Sunbright saw long pipes fitted with shelves, jars and crocks atop. A pantry. A handful of thieves and dockworkers screamed at a man by a stout door in the opposite wall. The man was thick through the body, bald, and adorned with enough earrings to make a bracelet. He yanked an iron handle, thumped the door with his shoulder, panted and sweated and thumped again. The door didn't budge.
'Open the damned thing, Senon!' someone yelled. The crowd sweated, cursed, glanced for oncoming guards, but Sunbright blocked the doorway.
'I can't! It must be glyphed!' The fat man slammed the door with his shoulder, hammered with his fist. 'We're trapped!'
Chapter 6
'Hogwash! He's lying!' The shout came from Knucklebones, to Sunbright's surprise. She whapped his elbow. 'Go! Pound him! Knock him aside!'
The crowd mashed against pipes and shelves, creating a corridor for the two men. Without a clue why, Sunbright advanced, hands poised to grapple or brawl. Instantly he saw that Senon had been exposed at some trick, for the fat man's face changed from helpless fright to rage. Whirling from the door, he snatched at a boot top, and yanked up a triangular spike four inches long. Enough steel to pierce a heart through the ribs. Bellowing like a bull, the man charged.
Sunbright yanked his belt knife, thin and a foot long, and caught it tightly in his right hand. He wished he could unsheathe Harvester, but he had to stop the fat man's rush.
Hollering, Senon bunched an arm thick as a hog's leg to stab straight. His left he put on guard, but he counted on Sunbright quailing and falling back.
Sunbright didn't budge. Rather, the tundra-born fighter rotated both hands in circles to distract his foe. And when Senon closed, the barbarian attacked from an unexpected corner.
As Senon lunged to strike, Sunbright's left foot snapped up. Senon's fat knee smacked into Sunbright's sole, jolting him to a halt, but the fat man stabbed wildly, hoping to land a lucky blow.
Luck was no part of Sunbright's fighting. Skill and instinct drummed into him by training saved his life. As the deadly spike slashed by, he snagged the fat wrist in his free hand, locked his wrist, and twisted cruelly. With his arm crooked backward, Senon stumbled helplessly. Sunbright neatly slipped his blade into the pudgy elbow and severed the tendons. Blood erupted to spatter a half dozen folk squashed along the walls, who winced and yelled. Dragging Senon like an ox to slaughter by his trapped wrist, Sunbright inverted his own wrist, and bashed the stag horn pommel on the fat man's temple. Thin bone popped, Senon's eyes flew wide, then slammed shut. Sunbright kicked the falling body against the far wall. Senon's flopping head bashed the door frame. A fountain of blood soaked his clothes.
Amazed at the cool savagery, the crowd whispered and gasped. Knucklebones squirmed past them all, and rattled the far door's handle. It opened easily onto a wet cave smell. 'Come on!' she called.
Sunbright sheathed his belt knife, and straightened his shirt. 'He'll bleed to death!'
'Let him! He's a ferret!'
That word again. Rather than shove, Sunbright let thieves rush by. Finally, the impatient Knucklebones grabbed the barbarian's thick wrist. 'Let's go!' she said.
They scurried into wet darkness that echoed like wide-open chambers. 'What's a ferret?' Sunbright finally asked.
'A crawler. A squealer. A spy in the pay of the guards.' Her panting voice led him on. 'I saw the door wasn't locked because he was pulling it shut. You could see the muscles in his arm work, and the handle couldn't be glyphed, or his fingers would have been singed. He must have thought us stupid gulls!'
'Quick of you to spot that in a second.' Sunbright's voice was warm with admiration.
Her voice floated back, 'It's nothing.' But he imagined she smiled.
'Where are we bound?' he asked. The dark made Sunbright's neck ache, for he feared bashing his skull.
'Wherever this leads. We've lost everyone else. They went up at the fork, but I suspect a mousetrap awaits there. South by west will get us out, I hope.'
Sunbright had known they jogged alone. Now cold light glowed as Knucklebones striped her vest. Underfoot ran dirt and gravel and creases dappled with water that reflected silver. The passage opened overhead, and he heard bats squeak, a comforting sound because it promised an exit. Abruptly the trail slanted, and Sunbright had to hold Knucklebones's shoulder to keep from overrunning her. She trotted as confidently as a cat until her foot crunched something hollow.
'Whoa!'
'What is it?' he said. 'That sounded like-'
He squinted at more light. Knucklebones stroked a round rock aglow, but it bore eye sockets, an underslung jaw, and yellow fangs. 'Skull of an orc,' she said.
'Orcs,' he corrected. 'Look.'
What looked like yellow sand around them was actually bones. Knucklebones lobbed the luminous skull, and they saw that the boneyard extended farther than the glow could reach. Thousands, perhaps millions of bones littered the cavern.
'I don't… understand…' murmured the shaman.
'Sure you do,' Knucklebones hissed. 'Remember? In my time, the cities warred, and prophecies came true? The Rain of Skulls.
'An explosion hit Ioulaum's underside, and bones spilled out in the millions. The legends recalled Ioulaum was sheared from one of the Unholy Mounts, Redsnow or Bloody Hill, where an orcish army was wiped out. This is that cavern.'
'Yes…' Sunbright squinted upward. 'I keep forgetting the natural caves lie upside-down so we walk on ancient ceilings. But all this death. There should be-' He swallowed the word 'ghosts' before it escaped. No sense in conjuring the spirits of thousands of slain orcs.
'Come. Quickly,' she said. Even steadfast Knucklebones was spooked, and led him by the hand. They couldn't walk without stepping on bones, so they closed their ears to the crunching and grinding. They made for the far end of the cave.
A quarter-mile on, dawn light sparkled on cave walls. They reached a grate where the thief pronounced, 'Wisht!' to pop the rivets. Rattling it aside, they crawled into a culvert and up to the street. Merchants called to their friends and neighbors, clucked to ponies, and lugged their wares to the marketplace.
Sunbright was bewildered by the abrupt transition from death to life, but the city-born Knucklebones was already towing him into the crowd, saying, 'Come on.'
'Where?'
'East side. Street of the Faithful Protector. Bly's. To have her scry what you've sought so long.'
'It's no good, Cholena. It's foolish to fight the yak-men.'
'Oh, so, Drigor? Ayaz died for nothing? And Ridon and Nodin, their deaths were meaningless? Best their ghosts haunt your nights until all turns black before your rheumy eyes.'
'Berate if you will, woman. I only speak from three hundred years' experience. That counts for nothing, I suppose.'
Deep in the Iron Mountains, Drigor and Cholena, his sometimes wife, worked at a stone bench littered with
