“That’s a good idea,” he answered. “I have friends here, and they’d probably be glad to see me. Two of them were real good friends, as a matter of fact. I’d trust them with my life.” He felt a twinge of embarrassment, and shook his head ruefully. “It’s just …” His voice trailed off.
“It’s just what?” Gretchan pressed.
He grimaced. “Well, they’re both female, and, um, I was kind of close to them. They’ll be glad to see me, I’m sure.
“But I’m not sure they’ll be too happy about you,” he concluded glumly.
The monster inched along, clawed talons scrabbling at the stone floor. Though it had large, multifaceted eyes, it was not hampered by the lightless surroundings. A pair of antennae quivered from the crown of its bulbous head, touching, smelling, and tasting the moldy air. Its legs, all eight of them, stiffened in preparation for a charge as those extra-acute senses told the being that prey was near.
Behind the creature came another, and another, and still more. The column of huge bugs moved with arachnoid stealth, joined legs smoothly propelling the long, segmented bodies, scuttling steadily forward. Each of them was protected by the armored carapace that was the monster’s natural shield. Despite their insectoid appearance, they moved in unison, like a well-trained company of soldiers.
They were similar but not entirely identical insofar as the last of the creatures in the file was a bright red in color, while most of the others were pale gray, almost white. Furthermore, while all of the others possessed wide, sharp mandibles, the red one had a smaller pair. That unimpressive weaponry was perhaps balanced by the presence of a bulbous mass underneath the creature’s head. The mass throbbed and wobbled like a living thing and was tipped with a moist knob, almost like a nozzle, which twitched and wiggled hungrily.
The heads of the monsters bulged grotesquely. The wicked pincers at their mouths were sideways-snapping jaws, and they flexed eagerly on the first of the beasts in the file. That one abruptly stiffened, bringing the column of its fellows to an abrupt halt.
The monster quivered, sensing, tasting, hungering. It was in a new place, a fresh hunting ground for the creature. It was blessed with the hive memory of all of its kind, and for thousands of years it had dwelled in those deep caverns, far below the surface of the world-a surface that the monster and its fellows had never experienced and would not have tolerated if, by some miracle, they were exposed to the brightness of the sun. But it and its race knew the deep caverns very, very well. For all those centuries, throughout the passing of millennia, it had made the caves its own.
Until, only lately, new paths had been discovered. Places where there had once been solid stone barriers were exposed as tunnels, new routes through the underground world. The monsters had crept into those new places, exploring, tasting, touching, smelling, and bringing the new knowledge back to the hive. Often those new pathways had yielded prey, and the monsters had carried much fresh meat back to the queen, allowing her to feast on dwarf blood, to grow fat and fertile, and to lay many more eggs.
The numbers of the monsters had grown great, their teeming masses crawling and clacking and clawing throughout the vast dens of the underworld. Sometimes they ventured too deep into the bedrock, to the realms where subterranean fires heated the rock, so the creatures were forced into retreat, lest they be roasted alive.
But more often they probed upward, where the new tunnels were being opened, where the dwarves lived. There were many routes to pick from, and all were explored by the aggressive, hungry beasts. They always traveled in groups, and as the queen dispatched them in every direction, the terrain known to the hive steadily expanded. Some of the explorations ended in dead ends or fiery fountains of lava, but many others moved onward and up, probing farther and higher into the realms of the dwarves.
It was such an expedition that was exploring yet another newly discovered route. The lead monster’s antennae quivered with excitement. It could hear the sounds of laughter and argument and dwarves feasting very nearby. Abruptly those twin sensors stiffened, fully erect, a clear signal to the file behind it.
Then it charged, numerous feet scrabbling across the stone floor, mandibles clacking aggressively at the forefront of its bulbous, hideous head. It rushed from the narrow tunnel into a larger, circular cavern. More than a dozen filthy dwarves sat there, bickering amiably over the flesh of a large cave slug that they were attempting to divide.
The gully dwarves shrieked and bounced to their feet as the clacking monster burst from concealment, but the creature moved too fast for the hapless fellows. It seized the nearest gully dwarf with its four front legs, pulling the wriggling fellow up to its head. The sharp mandibles sliced though soft flesh, driving the Aghar into a frenzy of struggling. Blood spilled from the deep wounds, but the dwarf’s frantic squirming only made the monster squeeze harder and cut deeper into the captive’s flesh.
Holding its still-living prize aloft, the monster backed away from the band of dwarves to allow its kin-bugs to attack. The rest of them spilled out of the narrow tunnel one at a time, the whole file following their leader. Each of the giant bugs pounced on a gully dwarf, even as the panic-stricken wretches tried to flee. A few reached the exit, sprinting into the dark tunnel. But their stubby legs were no match for the speeding monsters, and most of the Aghar, when they ran, were caught in the monster’s sharp jaws before they had covered fifty feet.
In seconds there were only three dwarves still free of the clutching mandibles: a female and two youngsters. With the little ones clutching her grubby hands, she darted away from the obvious exits, sprinting toward a small crack in the cave wall. She had almost reached the safety of that refuge when the last of the monsters, the red one, came into the filthy cavern.
That crimson arachnid reared upward. The bulbous lump tilted, wet nozzle quivering as it spewed forth a long, sticky strand of webbing. The gooey material shot across the cave and blocked the entrance to the narrow crack. The female Aghar tried to claw it away with her hands, but her limbs quickly stuck in the web. The young gully dwarves shrieked as another strand of sticky web shot from the creature’s throbbing organ. That one struck all three Aghar, wrapping itself across their heads, and though they struggled frantically, their twisting and grappling only further ensnared them.
The red bug dropped its forequarters so all eight feet rested on the floor, and slowly the web, still attached to the bulbous organ, began to retract. It seemed to suck the strands back into the bulking grotesqueness on its throat, and as it reeled the sticky web strands in, it brought the three gully dwarves, all of them sobbing and shrieking pathetically, right up to its narrow, pinching jaws. With a toss of its head, it wrapped the Aghar even more securely in the gooey web and casually threw the bundle onto its segmented back.
Finally, with twelve of the monsters each holding a wounded, bleeding, but still living dwarf in its crushing mandibles-and the red one bearing the trio of webbed Aghar-the file of horax started back into the darkness, through the narrow tunnel, toward the hive.
They would bear their prizes to the queen.
TWELVE
All right. I guess we should head up to my old neighborhood. There’s an inn there where one of my old friends works,” Brandon replied. “Um, they might be able to help.”