“Nevertheless, someone must go to see these Boreholes, as you called them. Take heart—perhaps it is only the imagination of hungry monks. But we must go quickly, in case it is not.”
“We Funderlings have no army, Captain Vansen,” Cinnabar reminded him.
“You must have some who can fight.” Vansen looked around. “Who were those who came at me when I first arrived? Most had only shovels and picks, but a few were young and fit and carried what looked like real weapons.”
“The Warders of the Guild,” said Cinnabar. “They are like sentries—no, they are more like reeves. They help to guard the guildhall and other important places and things. But it has been long since they have dealt with anything worse than ordinary crimes like theft and public drunkenness, or putting down the occasional public riot.”
“It matters not.” Vansen’s heart was beating fast. Here was something he could do, a way he could truly help instead of merely answering Chaven’s endless mirror questions. “They must have some training and they will at least have weapons. Send me a troop of these warders, as many as you can spare, and with the Guild’s permission I will take them down to see who is whispering and spying out there.”
“It will take hours to get a messenger to the Guild and back,” Cinnabar said unhappily.
“Perhaps monks could accompany Captain Vansen,” Chert suggested.
“They could not!” Nickel said, scowling. “They have taken sacred orders to serve only the Elders!”
“Truly? Would the Elders prefer to have the Qar living in the temple and frolicking in the Mysteries?” Chert asked him.
“Enough,” declared Magister Cinnabar. “There are a half-dozen warders here who came with me as an honor guard for the Astion.” The Astion was like the Eddon family royal seal, Vansen had learned, a disk of stone that showed the bearer was doing the Guild’s official business. “They can go with Captain Vansen while messengers take a letter from me back to Funderling Town and tell the Guild of our fears and our need of more men.”
“That sounds like a wise plan, Magister,” Vansen said, nodding. “Can the monk who brought the news lead us back there?”
“He has run all day,” Antimony told him. “He collapsed after he gave us the news. He is in the infirmary.”
“We’ll think of something else, then. Chert, can you help me to prepare for this? I know so little about your people and this place.”
Chert gave an unhappy shrug. “Of course. Brother Antimony, would you find my wife and tell her I may not be back for the evening meal?” He watched the young monk go out. “Better him than me,” Chert told Vansen quietly. “The old girl won’t like it a bit.”
Cinnbar presented the newcomer with the distracted air of a man walking a dangerous dog on a very short leash. “This is Sledge Jasper,” he explained to Vansen. “He is the wardthane of the men you are taking. He wanted to meet you.”
The newcomer was not much taller than Cinnabar, which meant he barely reached Ferras Vansen’s waist, but he bulged with muscle so that he was nearly as wide as he was tall. His arms were long and his hands were as big or bigger than Vansen’s own. Everthing about him seemed aggressive—his shaved head was round as a cannonball, and he had beetling eyebrows and a fierce bristle of whiskers on his chin.
The intimidating little fellow stared up at Vansen for a long moment. “Have you commanded men?”
“I have. I was… I still am captain of the Southmarch royal guard.”
“In battle?”
“Yes. Most recently at Kolkan’s Field, but not all my commands ended as disastrously as that, praise the gods.” Vansen was amused by such harsh scrutiny, but he had waited a long time for Cinnabar to return and he was growing impatient. “And your warders—will they do what they’re told?”
“If I’m there,” Sledge said, still peering fiercely into Vansen’s eyes. “They’ll dig granite with their fingers if I tell ’em to. That’s why I’m going along. The question is, who’s in charge—me or you?”
Vansen wasn’t going to be drawn into a pissing contest with this brusque little hobgoblin. “That’s up to the magister.”
“Captain Vansen is the leader, Sledge,” Cinnabar told the wardthane. “And you knew that already.”
Vansen suppressed a smile: he had suspected as much. “However, I do welcome your help, Wardthane Jasper. We’ll be careful of your men’s safety. We’re only going to investigate some noises—I’m not expecting a fight.”
Sledge snorted, crossing his thickly muscled arms across his barrel chest. “ ’Course you are—if you weren’t, you’d be taking a troop of these temple fungus farmers with scrapers and baskets. The magister wants my warders, which means there’s a good chance someone’s going to get their faces pushed in.”
“We’ll see.” He turned to Cinnabar. “I’ll need a weapon, since I came here without one. Where are the rest of the men?”
“Waiting outside,” the magister said. “We’ll find you something by way of a fairy-sticker, then you can leave as soon as you want.”
“Let me go and tell Opal goodbye, will you?” said Chert, rising.
“Why?” Vansen asked. “You’re not going.”
“But you wanted me to tell you…”
“I wanted you to answer my questions and you have. But as far as a guide for the tunnels, I’ve got permission to take Brother Antimony, a young fellow with an excellent knowledge of the place and no family of his own… unlike you. So shut your mouth, Master Blue Quartz, and for tonight at least, go back to your wife and boy.”
Chert looked at him gratefully, struggling for words. Vansen did not linger long enough to let it become an embarrassment. Jasper’s warders were waiting to meet him, men he would lead into danger and perhaps, for some of them, even to death. At this moment, the fact that they were half Ferras Vansen’s size meant absolutely nothing.
It was as strange as anything in Greatdeeps, Vansen thought—no, stranger. To think that sights like these had been beneath his feet all the years he had been in Southmarch! The Cascade Stair was huge, a vertical tunnel in the shape of a great downward spiral, as though the stone had hardened around a whirlpool that had subsequently drained away. The bobbing coral-lights of the men winding down it in front of him looked like little stars bouncing in a thundercloud.
We have our own Shadowline right here, he thought. But instead of two different lands side-by-side, it is two lands with one beneath the other, our Southmarch above and all this below.
“Watch your step, Cap’n,” growled Jasper. “Not so bad if you lose your footing here, but a little farther down you’d be falling for a long time. Better get used to looking where you’re walking.”
“Right.” Vansen paused for a moment, propping the weapon Cinnabar had found him against the wall, a “warding ax” as the magister had named it, a one-handed battle ax with a knobby hammer on the poll, the opposite side from the blade. He reached up to straighten the piece of coral bound to his forehead in its little lantern, then picked up the ax again. The sickly, greenish yellow light was not very revealing—Funderlings saw much better in these dark places than he did. He wished he had a good old-fashioned flaming torch, but when he had mentioned it the Funderling wardthane had looked at him with disgust.
“Oh, they’d smell and hear that coming from a long way away, wouldn’t they? Not to mention how fast it would eat up the air in some of the tight spots. No, Cap’n, you just leave the thinking to old Sledge.”