We pass the boulders, and my feet begin to slip on the incline covered with loose scree, pebbles, and snow.
“Set me down!” He doesn't have to tell me twice; I'm kind of tired of carrying his ass anyway. I drop him on his feet while he begins chanting again.
One of the redcaps, smaller but faster than the others, is almost upon us. The mace gives me a much better reach than his cleaver, but in his frenzy, he charges straight at me. He swings from high over his right shoulder, so I move at a right angle to him. With a short chopping motion, I smash the mace head, two-handed onto his right fist and blade. Sparks fly as the mace shatters the cleaver and the bones surrounding it. The hand itself folds backward along the forearm, and the ends of the broken bones tear through in a bloody spray. I step back and shatter his knee with a side kick, bending the joint in a way it was never designed to go.
The redcap hits the ground and roars at me, glaring with murder in his eyes.
“Get behind me, fool!” Acri shouts. I turn and duck under his outstretched arms just as he throws two globes of orange and blue flame, one to the left, the other to the right. Glancing over my shoulder, I see him sweep his staff from the left to the right and shout a word I cannot understand.
A wave of heat blankets us as the raging flames from both globes spreads with the speed of an arrow until it forms a blistering hot wall of flames in front of us. The wounded redcap gets incinerated almost instantly. The snow and ice vaporize into a thick steam.
I grab Acri by his tattered red robes and push him up the trail ahead of me.
“That should hold him for a few minutes, but it will burn out fast,” he gasps, out of breath. I get his arm over my shoulder, and I half-drag, half-carry him up to the top. Twenty yards away is the edge of the mountain sitting over the frothing river, but no Olivia or Thirax.
Shit, did they jump? Nah, not without us. I run to the edge after dropping Acri onto a small boulder.
Now, another little fun-fact about me. I hate heights. Really, truly fucking hate heights. I don't function well at the edge of cliffs, bridges, fire escapes, you get the drift. It occasionally has made my career choice a very poor decision, but I can get by if I really have to. This is one of those times.
I get down on my belly and low crawl to the edge and look down. The churning waters, some hundred feet or more below us, do not look inviting, and the presence of all that frothy whitewater indicates a lot of submerged rocks. The sides of the ravine have been carved away from hundreds of years of erosion. Exposed rock juts out between thick ice and hearty scrub brush.
I lean a little further out and notice that the ground I'm on is more of an overhang. Some dirt and snow scatter over the edge as I move forward, and suddenly, Thirax pops his head and shoulder into view, long sword ready to swing.
“Get down here!” he low growls at me. I turn and wave Acri over as I swing my legs over the edge, feeling for a foothold. Thirax grabs me by the hips and lowers me into the mouth of a narrow cave. He does the same with Acri and then guides us into the narrow crevice.
The ceiling is low, and the walls are rocky and narrow. About fifteen feet in, it opens into a small circular cave where we find Olivia kneeling on the ground, facing outward. She smiles when she sees me, and I can't help but return it.
We stay quiet and just hunker down for a while. It’s pretty dim this deep in, and very little light makes its way to us, but that’s just fine; it makes it easier to hide for now. Twenty minutes pass before we see a small shower of dirt and stones rain down past the cave opening.
Angry voices drift down to us, too indistinct to make out the words. A minute later, we hear a scream, and a gray-skinned body plummets past the hole. We clearly hear it crack and splash as it crashes into the submerged rocks below. Some more angry voices argue, but they begin to get fainter, as if the others are walking away, still yelling at each other.
We decide to wait out the night in our little spider hole. It's cold and cramped, but I'll take it over the fate of the villagers any day.
31
The sun hits its zenith before we venture back to the village. Frozen bodies, both elf and redcap, litter the ground. The snow is churned up everywhere, and many trees bear the scars of fire and blade. Thirax reports multiple tracks leading away from the village, consistent with the light tread of the elves. The 'Caps leave no trail to follow. We speculate they must have traveled away through the root systems, the same way they sprung their ambush.
Acri refuses to search the bodies for his relatives. He claims it doesn't matter now; he is dead to them regardless. I see a shadow of pain on his face in a rare, unguarded moment.
Olivia and I aren't as shy. We loot a few of the surviving burrows and gather any camping supplies and blankets we can. We leave the remains of the village with our packs laden with supplies. I should feel bad, but we need them more than the dead do.
We move higher into the mountains for a few days, utilizing every trick Thirax knows to throw the redcaps off our trail. We spend a miserable two weeks above the tree
