necessary from the wanted, and tried not to keep a running total in silver in her head.
Fitz and Block glared at each other all the while, the gnome shaking his head. The soldiers shifted nervously and kept glancing up the hall. Dugan emptied the bags that were going to be easiest to carry, those strapped as backpacks and pouches that could hang from belts and shoulders, and adroitly repacked the things Tilda separated to bring along. Flint and steel, canteens and wineskins, socks and undergarments. A small lantern and fuel. Weapons and ammunition. They had barely any food, and a full change of clothes was suddenly an impractical luxury. Tilda left at least two bags full of souvenirs she had gotten in Tull, the Beoshore, and Orstaf. Small things bought, bartered, or otherwise acquired. The riding boots were just too good to leave, and Tilda stuffed them full of small bundled items, tied the laces together, and slung them around her neck before standing and awkwardly wrestling on a backpack over her buksu club. She had to keep her hands free for the long gun as the emptied case was staying here.
She helped Dugan hang a backpack on either shoulder and tied them together in the middle to give him the appearance of a turtle. Captain Block cut a long strap from a spare pack and fastened it to his kit bag to sling it over a shoulder. He looked around at all that remained on the floor.
“Take what you want as a tip,” he said to Fitz. “For services rendered, such as they were.”
Fitz sighed. “There is a road, or at least a cut, running due south out of the fort. One day on that and you’ll overlook the Cross-Heftiga High Road. Left to Mont Royal, the right bends down into Chengdea via the Sibyl River.”
There did not look to be any more formal parting forthcoming, as Block strode away without another word. Tilda and Dugan moved to follow but as she passed the gnome he said one more thing.
“Miss Matilda.”
“What?” she snapped, sounding angry in her own ears.
“Don’t go out there.”
Tilda stopped and looked back. The little gnome‘s grin was nowhere to be seen and his amber eyes were solemn in the low lantern light.
“It isn’t up to me,” Tilda said, and she left.
The bodies in the last room were as bad as Fitz had said. They had been soldiers and lay in a heap surrounded by dented shields and broken helmets. Their chain mail coats had acted almost like strainers.
Block edged outside first through the open door into a short tunnel with a bend that kept sunlight from shining in directly, which was fine with Tilda as there was nothing she wanted to see better. She stood next to Dugan as the dwarf slipped around the corner, and whispered to him.
“What is a bugbear?”
“Biggest breed of a goblin.”
Tilda glanced at him. “I thought that was a hobgoblin.”
“No, bugbears are even bigger. Maybe eight feet, at the shoulder. Covered in hair, like a bear. But they climb like bugs.” Dugan glanced briefly at the bodies. “They favor big bardiche axes. Or mauls.”
Block whistled from up ahead and Tilda and Dugan stepped into the tunnel. The walls and low ceiling were of loose stone braced with timbers, not the smooth stone construction of the rest of the Underway nearby. This bit had been excavated long after the dwarves were gone.
Around the corner the tunnel opening was behind a large boulder, concealing it from view from the mountainside and hills in the area. Tilda emerged from behind the great stone to find herself in a dirt yard surrounded by a tall palisade wall of sharpened tree trunks, forming a square that met the mountain to either side at sharp, scooped-out cliff faces. This whole section of the Yellow Mountain seemed to have slumped some distance down the slope long ago. A smoking pile of wreckage was all that remained of one long wooden building within the palisade, while another that looked to have been a stable was simply collapsed in a heap against the mountainside. All around the yard lay refuse; broken weapons and furniture, blowing parchments, shredded blankets, a few gleams that might have been coins. There was a wagon turned on its side and a broken flagpole with a purple emblem trampled into the dirt. Straight across from the tunnel entrance was a gap in the palisade where the gate had been. Tilda did not see any doors, but she did not know if that meant they had been battered in, or wrenched off.
She and Dugan spread out a bit, both looking back up the mountain behind them. The way was steep. Tilda thought she could probably negotiate it but doubted something bigger than a hobgoblin could, no matter how bug- like were its climbing abilities. Block had crossed to the palisades and mounted a narrow walkway on the inside. He stared at the surrounding country all around in a number of directions for several minutes before coming back down, and approaching the others in the middle of the yard. The Captain met Tilda’s eye and pointed one finger at the ground. He crooked it and rolled his wrist in a circle. Take the weapon.
“I doubt it is worth looking for food,” Dugan said. “That’s probably what the bugbears were after.”
Block hurled himself into Dugan’s lower legs, grabbing a sandal strap in either hand and twisting. The man twirled and pitched headlong, crying out as Block straightened and actually hoisted him airborne before darting away. Dugan landed on his tied backpacks with a grunt and lay there, more turtle-like than ever. Block pulled a pistol from his kitbag but held it at his side, left-handed. With his right he pointed a dagger at Dugan’s face.
Dugan blinked at the dwarf and sighed, then looked down at his own hip to where he had shifted his short sword to hang from a cord. The cord was cut, and Tilda was standing several paces away with the heavy imperial gladius in her hand. Dugan looked back at Block.
“Seriously. You want to do this right now?”
“Tell me where John Deskata has gone,” Block said softly. “Or Tilda repacks the luggage for two.”
Dugan lay back atop the packs, almost comfortably. He started to say something but abruptly stopped and shouted, “Cover!” He twisted sideways and started struggling loose from the packs.
“Don’t be an ass,” Block said, but then noticed at the same moment as Tilda that there was a shadow around Dugan, rapidly becoming bigger.
Tilda snapped her eyes up in time to see a boulder plunging down from high above, with more following. The first, half the size of a man, crushed a backpack Dugan had only just gotten loose from, missing him by inches and sending a sharp, echoing bang off the mountainside. The rocks behind it came like hail.
Tilda ran for the nearest shelter, the tunnel back into the Underway. Crashing rocks echoed behind her like cannon blasts, and a horn was blowing. She reached the bend in the short tunnel and turned to find the door closed. Fitz and his boys had shut it up behind them before leaving, but they could not have gone very far yet. Before she could start hammering on the door to bring them back, Dugan barreled into the tunnel behind Tilda and slammed her against the rock wall even harder than he had bashed her off the cottage before gutting Procost. She at least took this blow on her shoulder and hip rather than with her forehead, though she crumpled to the ground all the same. Dugan snatched his sword out of her numb hand as Tilda blinked up at him, and the blade. His eyes were as cold as they had been facing the knight.
“I’m sorry?” she tried.
“Me too,” Dugan said.
*
When the stone rain began to fall the closest cover to Block had been the smoldering barracks, which he ran behind. He looked back around the edge in time to see Dugan follow Tilda into the tunnel. He had fully expected Fitzyear to seal the door behind them and doubted the gnome would be brought back by any amount of pounding. Fitz was worried for his own men, which was a feeling not totally alien to Block.
High up the mountainside a horn sounded and guttural voices hooted and roared, almost barking. From a ledge or shelf far up there multiple pairs of hairy arms threw another volley of stones ranging in size from melons to barrels, most of which arced at Block’s shelter as they could not get at the tunnel opening directly below. Block put his back to the wall and looked at the open gate in the palisade as the rocks started crashing into the wrecked barracks, knocking down what remained of beams and scattering ashes and embers.
Tilda was likely dead already, as she would have been for sure had his and Dugan’s roles been reversed. Block could at least get out of here himself, and live to fight another day. The old dwarf growled and bolted out from behind the wreckage, turning away from the gate and heading back for the tunnel entrance. His own choice surprised him a bit.
He yanked a pistol from his kit bag and fired it up the mountainside on the run, knowing he was not going to hit anything but hoping to make the bugbears cautious, if they were capable of it. The hooting redoubled and more
