‘That sounds perfect, Sandon,’ enthused Raya.
Sandon touched each side of his head with two fingers, dropped his chin to his chest, and closed his eyes.
‘Dawada, afeaa,’ he chanted. ‘Dawada! Afeaa!’ Louder now.
‘What in Gehenna is that noise?’ came a voice. An orc appeared at the doorway. ‘Trespassers!’ he got out, before Assata clobbered him across the head with her sword, sending him to the floor. But it was too late. Shouts began to erupt around the square.
‘Come on,’ said Gurin. ‘We’ll have to go.’ He was the first through the door.
‘Dawada?’ Sandon uttered. Og put his hand around the wizard’s arm and dragged him out of the room.
They ran for the centre of the square, where a set of stone steps led down. From all around the square, orcs appeared. They shouted; drew weapons; gave chase. Perhaps Gurin was correct, and many were out raiding. But there were still plenty of them. Grim knew they had to make it to the stairs before they were surrounded and overwhelmed. Dog squealed with delight at the chase, smashing away with his mace at any orc that got within range.
Grim made it to the steps. ‘We’ll keep them at bay,’ he shouted, as Og encouraged Sandon to begin the descent. Gurin and Assata were already descending the stone steps. Raya and Brother Kane ran past Grim and took the stairs at pace. Grim moved across, blocking the entrance, his back to the stairs, facing a mob of angry orcs. Surely not many fewer than a hundred.
Og held his pike out and the orcs looked warily at the weapon, only too aware that it could take out the first of them to attack. Carefully, Grim felt with his left foot, moving it backwards until it was off the ground. He reached down until he found the first step and was confident enough to put his weight on it. Down he went, while Og and Dog waved their weapons menacingly at the orcs that surrounded them. The creatures spat and threatened but still didn’t attack. Down the next step Grim took them, then again, finding the manoeuvre a little more comfortable each time. An orc threw a spear at them, but Dog knocked it aside with his mace and barked ferociously.
Another step down, then another. The orcs remained at the top of the stairs.
‘They’re not going to follow us,’ said Og.
‘It would seem not,’ said Grim, gingerly turning around on the stairs until at last he could see where he was going. ‘Which is both good and bad news.’
‘How is it bad?’ Og demanded.
‘Because it suggests they’re too scared of whatever inhabits the next level of the dungeon.’
DEEPWOOD DUNGEON: LEVEL THREE
Before they even got to the bottom of the stairs, Og-Grim-Dog knew what inhabited the next level.
‘Trolls,’ Dog warned the party.
Troll dung was the foulest odour in all the lands and this part of the dungeon reeked of it. There was never an ogre who had any time for trolls. It was an enmity that stretched back for as long as the two races had co-existed. Goblins and orcs rarely bothered ogres: respecting their strength, they were more inclined to befriend and cooperate with them, though generally gave them a wide berth. Trolls, though. Maybe they were too similar—competing for the same resources. An ogre was more than a match for any single troll. Two trolls, though, were able to turn the tables. And trolls tended to live in groups of three to six, whereas ogres were solitary. It meant that trolls almost always had the upper hand. When they came across the scent of ogre, they would hunt, until their quarry was dead or had escaped from the trolls’ territory. It made them the biggest threat to their kind, and Og-Grim-Dog shared every ogre’s hatred for them.
Grim had to sense, as much as see, that their friends waited for them where the steps ended.
‘I suggest we play this carefully,’ Gurin’s voice came to them through the darkness.
Good, thought Grim. The dwarf didn’t need telling how dangerous trolls could be.
‘I’m going to pass you my rope. When everyone has a grip on it, I’m going to move off. If at all possible, we want to find the treasure hoard without alerting the creatures to our presence.’
When they were ready, Gurin inched forwards and the rest followed him. They were even more reliant on the dwarf’s eyes now, and Grim wondered once more whether he was partly working from memory. Grim was at the back, behind Raya, and he left a decent space ahead of himself so that he didn’t accidentally tread on her. Again, it was his other senses rather than his vision, that told him they were walking down a corridor. The ground underfoot felt like packed dirt and the walls and ceiling had the smell of earth and rot. Ahead, he heard the squeak of a door.
‘Stop!’ his friends whispered ahead of him and they waited while the dwarf inspected a room.
Waiting in the pitch black is never fun. Your senses can play tricks on you. Grim’s mind told him he could hear trolls, but it was just the breathing of his brothers, and the nervous fidgeting of one of his friends up ahead. Although it had felt like a long time, when he felt a pull on the rope, he knew that Gurin’s inspection had been brief, and that there must have been little of interest in the room.
They moved on, guiding each other around a corner, and continued along an equally dark corridor. Og-Grim-Dog were the first to hear it—more attuned, perhaps, to the sound of trolls. The dull thud of clumsy feet; the animal grunts; the sound of clubs being dragged along the ground.
‘They’re coming, from behind us,’ Grim whispered hoarsely, hoping it was loud enough to carry to his friends.
A few strangled swear words from the darkness ahead indicated that they did. They moved faster. It was hard to tell in the echoey underground how close the trolls were, or whether they were gaining on them.
‘In here,’ Gurin hissed.
Grim followed the dwarf’s voice and found himself being ushered through a door into a dungeon room.
‘I’m going to lead them away,’ Gurin told them. ‘When they’ve gone, keep searching for the treasure. Take it straight back to the stairs we came down. Don’t try to find me. I’ll find you.’
With that, he shut the door on them. If it was dark in the corridor, it was darker here. Grim felt the closeness of his friends, surmising that it was only a small room. The intense aroma of innards hung heavily in the air. He was positioned by the door and he could hear the thud of the trolls getting louder as they drew near. There were many feet.
‘I guess five,’ Og whispered, clearly thinking along the same lines.
They heard Gurin’s full-blooded war cry.
‘Come and get fucked by my axe, you shits!’
Then they heard the trolls running past their door after him, the anger in their animal grunts all too clear.
They waited in the darkness for a while, until they were sure that the coast was clear. Grim heard a rustling noise and then a flicker of light appeared as Assata lit her oil lamp. It revealed the room to them. It was indeed small: a storeroom, with foodstuffs packed on shelves and against walls. A wooden barrel was positioned in one corner and Grim could tell that the smell of the room emanated from there. The room suggested more organisational ability than Grim was willing to allow mindless trolls.
‘Not tucking in, Og-Grim-Dog?’ Raya asked them, one hand covering her nose.
‘Not interested in troll leftovers,’ said Dog dismissively.