“They might be able to flank us,” he said. “If they can climb that wall, or get into any of these buildings.”
“I don’t know if they’re that clever,” Damaric said.
“We may yet find out, right?” Amoni said. She and Ruhm took up positions at the alley’s end. Amoni was ready to hack any approaching dune reapers to bloody bits, Ruhm to pound those bits into the ground with his greatclub.
A drone came into the alley first, clacking and chuffing. The drones were smaller than the warriors, and where the warriors had those impressive bladed arms, the drones had thin arms ending in vicious claws.
This one skittered toward them on clawed feet. When it reached the end of the alley, Amoni swung her cahulaks at it. It reacted quickly, raising claws to block the attack, but the flail’s sharp blades slashed its arm. One claw, severed entirely, clattered to the ground. The drone let out a pained wail, which Ruhm silenced with a blow from his club.
Eight more drones tried the alley, only to be met by Aric’s sword, or Damaric’s singing stick, or Ruhm and Amoni working in concert.
After the last was slain, the moment’s peace dragged out so long that Aric grew concerned. “There were warriors,” he said. “Surely they haven’t abandoned the hunt.”
Damaric sniffed the air. “That sour-sweet smell?” he said quietly. “Smells like death, like rotting flesh? That’s them.”
“We’ve killed five of their drones,” Amoni pointed out.
“Aye. But they don’t smell as strong as the warriors. They’re near.”
Ruhm took in a great breath. “Yes,” he agreed. “Close by.”
All four of them heard the sound, a thump from inside one of the buildings facing onto the alley. “In there!” Damaric said.
Amoni had been inspecting the doorway of the house opposite, where some indecipherable runes had been burned into the wood. “This way!” she cried. “I think we can defend the doorway.”
The other three darted past her, and she closed the door just as five warriors emerged into the courtyard, two through a door and three dropping down from windows. The door had a heavy iron bolt, and Aric silently shot it after Amoni was clear.
The house they had entered had low ceilings and small rooms. They had come into a kitchen, with a washbasin and a stove made of mud bricks still intact.
Having taken that in, Aric watched the reaper warriors through a hairline crack between the door and jamb. They milled about in the courtyard, appearing confused. They don’t know which way we’ve gone, Aric thought. At the same time, his hand rested on the ancient iron bolt, and a strange certainty grew in him.
They only had moments before the warriors tried the door. But those moments, he was convinced, could count. He gestured the others through the kitchen doorway into the next room, empty but as cramped as the kitchen. A door was hung on iron hinges at the far side of the room, its heavy wood planks carved with strange runic symbols blackened with age. Aric grazed the iron hinges with his fingertips as he passed, and allowed a smile onto his lips. He felt like he hadn’t smiled in days.
He closed this door behind them as well. “The staircase,” he said. “Down. We’ve got to go down.”
“So those things can wait up here for us?” Amoni asked. “No.”
“We must,” Aric said. “It’s telling me to.”
“What is?”
“The metal in this place. It’s calling to me. We need to go down, and fast.”
Sure enough, around the corner was a staircase. The flight up had, as they had so often seen, been destroyed, but there were stairs leading down, in reasonable repair. “It’s dark down there,” Amoni said. “And we have no torches.”
“All the more reason the dune reapers won’t think we’ve gone that way,” Aric argued. “Hurry.”
“Metal speaks to him,” Ruhm said. Amoni and Damaric had heard this, and they knew why Kadya had brought him on the journey, but they had not seen it in action.
“And now it’s telling me we have to go down,” Aric said. “I’ll lead the way.”
“Then whatever’s down there will get you first,” Amoni said. “I’m game.”
With his agafari-wood sword in his right hand, Aric grasped his coin medallion with his left. It had no messages for him, but he felt a warming tingle. A comforting sensation, assuring him he was making the right moves. At last, he thought. Confidence spread through him with every step into the darkness.
When he reached a landing, he was lost in a pitch-black world. He tapped ahead with his foot, waved his sword ahead of him, but the staircase had ended. He touched the medallion again. “There’s another way down,” he said.
“Farther?” Amoni almost whined. Perhaps she didn’t like the darkness. Aric wasn’t fond of it himself.
He felt along the wall until he found another opening, with more stairs, leading down further. Above, they heard the crash of dune reaper warriors breaking through the bolted door, then the thumping about as they searched for the escaped Nibenese. But he kept going, silently, into the blackness, the others right behind. Each of them kept a hand on the next, as the dark was impenetrable.
The stairs led down and down, eight steps, a small landing, a turn and then eight more. The deeper they went, the more convinced Aric became that they were going the right way. There was a vibration in his head, almost a song, growing stronger all the time.
Then he realized that he could see a little, although they were far underground. They crossed a landing and at the bottom of eight more steps was a faintly glowing corridor of stone, the walls themselves somehow luminous.
“Ahh!” Amoni said. It was the first vocalization any of them had made since hearing the reapers above them.
“I think we’ve left our foes behind,” Aric said.
“And left Kadya and the others to deal with them alone,” Damaric added.
“I’ve no love for her sort of magic,” Amoni said. “But if anyone can defeat the dune reapers, it might well be her.”
“While we’ve found what?” Ruhm asked. “Illuminated rocks?”
“Unless I’m wrong,” Aric replied, “we’ve found what we were sent here for.”
“The metal?” Damaric asked. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” Aric said. “But we’re getting close.”
They reached the bottom of the staircase. The corridor extended in both directions, faintly lit, as far as the eye could see. The walls, floor and ceiling were constructed of the same stone, the floor worn smooth as if from the passage of many, many feet over the centuries. More runes, like the ones on the door and others as well, were carved into the walls.
Littering the floor were bone fragments. Here and there, whole bones stood out, but most had been stepped on, crushed, broken by feet passing through here over the span of years.
“Ahh,” Aric said. “It’s some sort of battleground.”
“Or abattoir,” Damaric added.
“This must run beneath the entire breadth of the city,” Amoni said.
“At least,” Aric said.
“But which way do we go?”
Aric listened to the humming in his head. He pointed toward the right, which he believed was the east. “This way.”
“You’re sure about this?” Damaric said. “I’d hate to be lost down here.”
“You have to trust me,” Aric told him. “The steel calls to me.”
The others agreed, Damaric perhaps less happily than the rest, and they started in the direction Aric had indicated. They passed occasional doorways, most of those paved over with the same sort of stone. A few were open, and side tunnels led off in various directions, but Aric felt no pull to follow those. They kept to the main tunnel.