Page: << 1 2 3 4 5 >>

*

I was very astonished when I came to again. In fact, the first thing I thought after opening one eye into the strange yellowish haze was that I was dead. When I tried to open the other eye, though, I knew it couldn't be so, as the dead were said to feel no pain. Well, pain was all I felt, so I had to be very alive indeed. I closed both eyes again and sank back into the soft- what, ground?
At that moment I didn't care where I was, and how I had come to be there. A quick damage assessment came up with a sad tale of contusions, lacerations and bruises - most of the latter the result of my wearing chain mail as part of the guard armor. Luckily, nothing felt as if it had been broken, so the worst thing that had happened to me probably was the split brow and the resulting agonizing headache, along with a multitude of minor bleeding wounds.

After a while - to be true, I don't know how long that while was - I decided to open my eyes again... cautiously, very, very cautiously so as not to provoke my aching head.
Well, the yellowish haze had been daylight, and I was huddled on top of a heap of dry grass quite close to the ore crusher close to the gate. As it turned out, the gate had vanished, buried under tons of huge rocks, and there was glittering blue dust everywhere, including all over me; access to the mine was effectively barred, and I briefly wondered how many of the others had made it to safety before the mine's roof had collapsed.
Birds were twittering in the vicinity; I deemed that tasteless regarding my current state, so I automatically reached for the crossbow.
Yup, it was still where it used to be, along with the bolts; my sword and pouch were there, too, just the fabric of the tunic had suffered a bit in the big boom. Groaning with the inconvenience to my aching limbs I got up, using the ore crusher to steady myself, and loaded the crossbow.
"Stop that, you idiot birds," I croaked and fired a bolt in the direction where I assumed them to be. "Shut your idiot beaks!"
They didn't care about my shooting in the least - what wonder, the gore in my face hindered my sight as well as the splitting headache that came with the slightest movement.
Cursing between my teeth, I put the crossbow back and thought about the best course of action.
What I felt like was laying down on the cozy heap of grass and sleep, sleep, sleep until some rescue team from the Old Camp found me.

My duty, on the other hand, was to report the disaster back to Gomez. It would be a long journey... well, at least a journey which took a healthy guy several hours. Or so. Hours during which this healthy guy might have to fight off endless attacks by wolves and rats and stingers and even the occasional shadowbeast. And then, Gomez wouldn't be exactly pleased to hear about the sad news. Nobody in his right mind would be pleased if he was told that his single source of income had just been washed away by a thundering underground river... and Gomez was famous for flying into fits of rage at the slightest provocation. Well, the highest Ore Baron even looked as if beheading the bearers of bad news with his pet sword Innos' Rage might be one of his hobbies.
A difficult decision, to say the least.
With a sigh I dusted the blue glitter off my uniform and marched - or rather, limped - off to the road to the Old Camp... and my fate.
Sometimes I harbor the faint suspicion that I must be completely off my rocker.

*

Anyhow, I limped along the road for a few minutes before I discovered that I wouldn't be able to hold myself upright much longer. Having in mind that the road had been built along the mountainside, I decided to give it a try and use the rocks to the left to stabilize my hike.
No sooner said than done. So I dragged my aching body across the landscape, always along the mountainside, and since looking up into the bright sun was too much for my agonizing head I got quite an eyeful of bright pink seraphis and other berries and flowers while I had my eyes fixed on the ground. Don't get me wrong here; usually I'm not of the flower-loving kind, and I have a special hatred for everything that grows in flower pots. Watering potted flowers seems so wrong to me. I mean, if they can't survive all by themselves, what's their use?
But back on track. I might not be very fond of plants in general, but at that time I was really glad that I saw anything at all.
Thus I 'walked' on and on, on and on. Time seemed to stretch eternally since the sun didn't change position once, and just when I began to entertain the suspicion that I probably was dead after all, I heard a faint snarl followed by a deep, throaty growl not far ahead of me.
And another one.
And another one.
And yet another one, but this one came from directly behind my aching back.
I raised my head in alarm, disregarding the pandemonium that was my throbbing headache, and looked into the faces of three widely grinning snappers.
You ought to know snappers, right? Ugly reptilian carnivores who stand pretty tall on two strong legs, their big heads full of razor sharp teeth.
These three were gnashing their razor sharp teeth and licking their scaly lips in anticipation of the tasty meal that lay ahead of them. This tasty meal had made quite a wrong assumption, as it now discovered; the road had been built loosely along the mountainside, and as it seemed I - in my half-conscious state - had followed my rocky support up the side of the mountain straight into the hunting grounds of a pack of these vicious lizards. In an instant, all the pain vanished from my body, it was like a small miracle.
"Nope," I said to the nearest snapper, "not me, sorry," and in one astonishingly smooth motion whipped out my sword and slashed it across the beast's ugly snout. With a little yelp the snapper jumped back, but the multitude of growls all around me told me that the others were preparing to jump.

Had I been in good health and wide awake, I might have gotten two or three of them before the rest of the pack bit off my head, so I decided to make a dash for it.
Not that I knew where I was, exactly. But every place within the barrier was better than one with four snappers in it, so I ran as fast as I could, always up the mountain, through - and around - a small copse, into a shallow cave where they nearly got me, and back out again as fast as I could, and on, on, on.
I could hear my reptilian admirers growl and hiss and gnash their teeth directly behind me, and then, suddenly, there was a tug at my leg. I made a mighty jump forward just to get out of reach of the beast's teeth; yes, I was pretty sure that one of the lizards had taken a bite out of my pants, but it didn't hurt, so I didn't care as long as I was able to run. After a while they obviously had fallen back; not hearing their big feet and expectant chatter behind me, I decided to stop and turn around...
...well, first I wondered about the bloody trail on the ground. Obviously, the little bite hadn't been as harmless as it felt. Then I saw that two of them were still behind me; they had followed me in a certain respectful distance. Now they stopped to gawk at me, flicking their tails and hissing.
"Go away," I told them. "Leave me alone, you idiot snappers, will you?"
They didn't look as if they had understood a single word, or if they cared. Lowering their heads until they were flat above the dry grass, the snappers grinned at me and advanced again. Cautious at first, then a bit faster.
Since reasoning with them seemed to be of no use, I turned on my heels to gallop off when I all of a sudden noticed a dusty path crossing the dry meadows. Paths just as this one usually lead to civilization, so the decision to take it came only naturally. I had the faint impression that the sun finally was setting; those beasts couldn't have been hunting me across the territory all day, could they?
Then again, I didn't know at what time I had started out, so I stopped those idle considerations and concentrated on running. Not too far along the mountain road something like a watchtower became visible.
So I had been right.
Civilization at last.

Never letting my resolve to be faster than those gnashing critters falter, I stormed toward the tower; there was a human figure standing casually by the way near it. Waving my arms like an idiot I ran towards him, shouting: "Snappers! Watch out!"
As far as I could see with my hurting eyes he had a bow ready and an arrow notched, but all he did was stand and goggle at me, so I decided to run past him and dash along the path that now wound down again. Not my business if he wasn't scared of snappers...
I ran on, but when there were no clicking claws to be heard on the hard ground after I had traversed a few more meters of land, I slowed down.

This turned out to have been a grave error; as soon as the fear of those murderous lizards left me, everything else seemed to leave me as well... the delightful numbness that had been keeping pain at bay as well as my resolve to get the message back to Gomez. Little needles seemed to poke me from the inside with every breath, my guts wrenched. My canter slowed to a trot, the trot to a slow pace, and then I was limping again. My leg hurt like hell, and I felt very dizzy.
I guess I must have been quite a sorry sight when I rounded the next bend and bumped into ten or twenty1 guys. They didn't make very intelligent faces, either, when I said, "Hello."
"Hello," one of them automatically responded, a sour-faced individual with a drooping mustache, and then all ten - or twenty - of them drew their respective weapons. As I looked into the assortment of arrowheads, maces and spiked clubs, I somehow got the feeling that the next few minutes might become very unpleasant for somebody... and only then did I notice that all of those idiots I had dubbed 'civilized' just mere moments ago wore the rag-tag garb of New Camp rogues, complete with those silly blue scarves and everything.

Hadn't I said something like 'every place within the barrier is better than one with four snappers in it'? Bite me, I should have added 'with the exception of a New Camp outpost', for I had in all probability just stumbled upon one we hadn't known of.
Perhaps Gomez would be pleased to hear that I had found it; on the other hand, it would be a cold comfort for his loss of worldly power. Then again, I would probably not live to tell him about it, anyway.
"Hold it," I said, one hand at the hilt of my sword... not that I felt too good about the whole situation.
They all started to laugh, of course.
"Hold what?" another guy said; he was one of those average-looking crooks you'd never recognize in a lineup. "Hm, I don't think I want to hold anything even remotely connected to a Gomez fanboy."
Hahaha.

I still don't know why they deemed this so funny; our senses of humor obviously differed by a wide margin.
"Quentin," the guy with the mustache addressed the average-looking crook, "what are we going to do with the half-wit?"
What I wanted to say was, 'You might offer assistance to a survivor of a major tragedy'; however, it came out as "I'm not a half-wit, you shit-faced molerat mongrel!"
Quentin shrugged. "What would you call a Gomez fanboy who walks into an outpost of the Anti-Gomez-League, saying 'hello'?"
"There's an Anti-Gomez-League?" I'm pretty sure my eyes bugged out while I was goggling at my opponent in sheer disgust. He, on the other hand, just looked bored.
"You are a half-wit." Quentin nodded at his mustachioed toady. "It'll be a shakedown for him."
"Awww. Can't we use the dunce for targeting practice?"
"I'm up for it." Quentin buried a dirty finger in his henchman's dirty vest. "After the shakedown."
"You wouldn't dare, idiots," I growled. My sword slid out of its sheath. "You don't want to get hurt, do you."
"That's right," Quentin stated and punched me squarely in the face. Now I'm not one of those who are especially susceptible to minor forms of physical abuse, but in my current state it was enough to make the lights go out once again.

---

1 No idea how many they actually were, as my eyes were swimming.

Page: << 1 2 3 4 5 >>