An uneven spot in the floor caused him to stumble, and he fell flat on his face, the air rushing from his lungs upon impact. Pain shot through his body like lightning. His side felt as if it were on fire, and his shoulder as though someone were trying to twist his arm from his body. It took all his willpower not to take a breath and suck in a lungful of spores. He leaped back to his feet and ran. He could feel himself getting dizzy from the lack of air; then the cave before him began to shimmer on its own. Staggering, he put out his hand to guide himself along the wall of the tunnel.
Rough hands grabbed him and dragged him forward. He stumbled on as best he could, until the pain in his arm seemed to subside.
“You can breathe now,” Kellik’s voice came out of the fog.
Gasping and coughing, Bradok sank to his knees and shook his head to clear the dizziness.
“Here they come again,” Thurl said behind him.
Bradok heard the hiss of steel blades whistling through the air and the wet sound as they struck diseased flesh. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his side, and raised his sword.
Behind him the dwarves and Perin were hacking and slashing at the Rhizomorphs crowding the hallway. A pile of severed limbs and unidentifiable chunks of flesh were strewn on the ground. The Rhizomorphs fought with their hands, rending flesh whenever they could with their long, clawlike nails. Occasionally one of their pink tongues would lash out at an opponent’s exposed flesh.
As Bradok moved up behind Thurl and Much, one of the ghastly creatures spat a wad of yellow goo directly at them. Much ducked, and Thurl dodged, but the wad hit Bradok on his shirt. The yellow substance appeared to contain some of the spores from the yellow cloud.
While being careful not to cut himself, Bradok scraped off the spores with his sword and flung them to the ground.
Just then someone cried out in pain. “My eyes,” bellowed an older dwarf named Serl, falling over onto his back and clawing at his face.
The Rhizomorph in front of him stepped into the gap and leaned down, trying to take a bite out of Serl’s leg. Bradok stepped forward and chopped the creature’s head from its body.
He moved to the fallen hill dwarf and saw that the yellow goo covered his face.
“Tal!” he yelled, dropping his sword and reaching painfully for his waterskin.
Tal was there in an instant. The doctor bore many cuts and scratches on his arms, a testament to his intense combat. “Hold him,” he said, pulling out his own waterskin, for Bradok was still struggling to produce his.
Bradok tried to keep Serl still as Tal washed the muck from his eyes. With only one good arm, it wasn’t an easy task.
“Duck,” he heard Thurl yell, and instinctively Bradok hurled himself sideways.
A long pink Rhizomorph tongue sailed over his head and struck the cave wall. Someone severed it, and the next instant it fell, writhing, on the floor. Bradok kicked it away in disgust.
Bradok picked up his sword and got painfully to his feet. The remaining defenders had killed and dismembered enough of the Rhizomorphs that now only a handful remained. Little by little, the dwarves and Perin were driving the monsters back.
Bradok moved among the still-flailing limbs and bodies, striking the heads of any that appeared still capable of causing trouble.
A few moments more, and it was over. Bradok stood on weak legs. He slowly moved his sword across his body, trying to catch the tip of it where it belonged, in the top of his scabbard.
“Are you all right, lad?” Much asked, taking Bradok’s sword for him and slipping it into the empty scabbard.
He nodded, feeling tremendous exhaustion.
“You’re bleeding again,” Thurl said in a disapproving voice.
Bradok looked down to see a red stain soaking through the bandage on his side. “There’s no time,” he said, pushing Much’s hand away. “I’ll be fine. We need to get back to the main group and spur them to keep going. There’s no telling how long it will take the rest of these walking mushrooms to catch up with us.”
“Yeah,” Chisul agreed. “Stay ahead of them.” The big dwarf was cradling his left arm, which appeared to have been burned by acid.
Bradok held up his own arm, looking at the wound, and realized that it was burned like Chisul’s, though not so badly.
“I counted about twenty in this group,” Perin said. “How many more can there be …?” He let the question trail off glumly.
“Can he walk?” Bradok asked about Serl.
Tal waved his hands in front of Serl’s eyes. The big dwarf’s eyes appeared white and watery and didn’t follow Tal’s hand.
“He’s been blinded,” Tal explained. “It might just be temporary; I can’t tell yet.”
“Well, I might be blind, but I’m not deaf,” Serl said, sitting up. “And I can still walk. One of you lead me along and I’ll do fine.”
Corin and Vulnar each took one of Serl’s hands, guiding him quickly up the passage. Bradok started after them, more slowly, hampered by his wound.
“Keep going until you find the others,” Bradok called. “I’ll catch up.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Thurl said.
“Tell Rose to use the compass,” Bradok called as the other dwarves began to outpace him. “She’ll know what to do.”
Bradok and Thurl walked along in silence and darkness, their eyes adjusting to the lack of light. Finally, when Bradok could no longer hear the tread of the dwarves in front of them, Thurl paused. He stretched his arm out from his cloak. He’d wrapped a handkerchief around his forearm. A large, dark stain covered it.
“This may be a problem,” he said, showing his wound to Bradok.
“What happened?” Bradok said, panting with the effort of walking.
“One of them bit me,” Thurl said.
“Before or after the spore cloud?” Bradok asked.
“After,” Thurl said. “I’m worried about it.” Such a declaration seemed out of character for the normally stoical Daergar.
“Corin said no one knows how the Zhome is spread,” Bradok said. “I think that if it was spread in such a mundane way as bites, Corin would know about it.”
“Still,” Thurl said. “Rose has the Zhome on her arm, right where she was scratched in our first encounter with the Rhizomorphs.”
“True,” Bradok agreed worriedly.
“Almost everyone was wounded this time,” Thurl said. “We may all be infected.”
Bradok sighed heavily. “Well, we’ll just have to deal with that somehow,” he said.
“How?” Thurl asked. “If we’re infected, sooner or later, we become Rhizomorphs. If that happens, we become a danger to everyone, so it stands to reason that before anything like that happens …” He let the sentence trail off.
“I see what you mean,” Bradok said grimly. “We either have to abandon those who carry the Zhome germ at some point, or we have to kill them.”
“Such decisions are difficult,” Thurl said. “But perhaps they are made more easily and rationally in advance, when we are discussing the problem in the abstract and no one particular person’s life is on the line.”
Bradok wondered at Thurl’s resoluteness. “What do you suggest?”
Thurl reached into his belt and pulled out a small crystal phial. “A few drops of this in someone’s waterskin before bed, and they’ll never wake again,” he said. “Quick and painless.”
Bradok thought about it, not answering for a long time. Perhaps Thurl’s idea was the most humane option, but as the group’s leader, the decision would fall to him. He would have to decide when to abandon or kill those who suffered from the Zhome. He would have to decide whether to abandon or kill Rose. But as leader, wasn’t it his responsibility to act on behalf of the group?
“Thank you, Thurl,” Bradok said, quietly. “If the time comes that we have to let one of our own go, I will
