“Hey, Grih. Move.” Bly stood in the mouth of the cave below him to his left, and gestured to him impatiently.
“Do you want her to keep freezing with fear, or do you want me to talk her down?” Dray didn't so much as pretend to move.
“Do a better job of it, then. We're losing the light.” Bly turned away in disgust, and went deeper into the cave to do something. Dray assumed he was sorting out the supplies.
The cave lay close to the top of the cliff, but under a deep overhang, which meant they had to come at it diagonally from the right.
The mouth of it was wide, which made him wonder how cold it was going to be in there.
Right now it was just below the fog line, but that could change in a moment, and he wondered if mentioning that to Lucy would help her find the impetus to move, or merely frighten her even more.
She hadn't moved since he'd spoken to her, though, so he decided he didn't have much to lose.
“The fog could lower,” he called up softly. “And much though I hate to admit it, Bly is right. We are losing the light. Rather get down while we can still see relatively well.”
She sucked in a breath, nodded, and started down again.
The clips on her harness jingled, and he could see her arms and legs shaking as she moved.
When she was just above him, he reached up and squeezed her calf in encouragement.
“Nearly there.”
“Really?” Her voice was choked.
“Really.” He started moving again, sliding left, closer to the cave, and called out handholds and footholds to her.
She moved slowly but surely, without so many pauses, and when he swung into the cave, she was only five minutes behind him.
He grabbed her as she lowered herself in, and unclipped her harness.
She sagged, and he eased her down onto the cave floor, where she sat and drew up her knees and hugged them.
“It's over.” He crouched in front of her.
“It's over for now.” She buried her face on her knees. “I still have to get back up at some point.”
He didn't respond to that, because she was right, but there was no sense in thinking about that now.
Instead he rose up and looked around their new prison.
The mouth was wide, but it widened a little more as it stretched back into the cliff, and there were nooks and folds in the rock that meant there would be some shelter from the freezing wind blowing in off the sea.
He moved deeper into the cave, to where the light didn't reach, and realized he hadn't seen Bly since they'd arrived.
He saw the Tecran had moved the supplies deeper inside, away from the entrance, and had stacked them as neatly as possible against the uneven walls, but there was no other sign of him.
“What's that smell?”
He looked back, and saw Lucy behind him.
She was wrinkling her nose and waving a hand in front of her face.
He didn't smell anything.
She suddenly gagged, and turned away, walking back to the cave entrance.
“Sorry, that is just rank. Is there something in here?” She looked back at him from closer to the entrance. “Like, an animal?”
He shrugged and kept moving deeper in, into what was now a wide passageway that was pitch black, and eventually he smelled it, too. It wasn't as foul to his own senses as it obviously was to Lucy's, but there was a strong scent of musk.
And there was still no sign of Bly.
He considered calling out, but before he could decide whether that would be wise, he heard the faint sound of something hard scrape against rock.
He had studied Tecran flora and fauna on the Urna, with a particular emphasis on things that could kill, and he ran through them now.
There was nothing in the information that he could remember that referred to cliff cave dwellers.
He heard the sound of a raised voice behind him, and reversed course, without turning his back on the narrowing passageway.
When he moved into the main part of the cave, Virn spun to face him.
“Where's Bly?”
“I was looking for him when I heard you shouting.” Dray gestured to the stacked supplies. “There's no sign of him. But there is the stink of something back there.”
“Something?” Virn's tone was sarcastic. “Bly!”
His shout echoed in the cave, but there was no reply.
“Get down on your knees.” Virn pointed his shockgun at Dray.
Dray slowly complied.
“Hands out.” Virn unclipped the restraints from his waist.
“If there is something back there, I'll need my hands to protect Lucy and myself.”
“I don't believe you. But if you are telling the truth, tough.”
Virn secured the restraints. Looked over at Lucy. “You, too.”
She hesitated and Virn shoved the shockgun against Dray's head.
“You might survive a kill shot, but your protector here won't. Come here.”
She moved forward, knelt beside him, hands out.
There was something deeply obscene about the gesture. It offended Dray to his core.
She shouldn't be kneeling in front of them. They should be kneeling in front of her, begging her for forgiveness.
Some of what he felt must have been evident on his face, because Virn hesitated a moment, and then turned his head in that impossible way the Tecran had, looking nearly 180 degrees behind him, as something darted out of the dark passageway.
For a moment, it was hard for Dray to understand what he was seeing in the dark shadow at the back of the cave.
It looked like--
“Nynt!” Virn staggered back, and then lifted his shockgun and shot.
The large predatory bird shrieked in outrage at the hit, rearing back and then lunging forward, snapping its beak.
Virn cried out as he shot it again, and this time he must have increased the power of the charge, because it flinched back and then disappeared into the passageway again.
Dray had scrambled back when the nynt had darted forward, putting himself between the enraged bird and Lucy, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.
When he looked up at her, though, he saw her attention was on Virn, her eyes wide.
As he shifted his gaze, the Tecran staggered to the side and went down on one knee.
There was a bleeding gash deep in his shoulder, and his left arm was limp.
He panted as he looked down the dark tunnel where the nynt had disappeared.
Lucy squeezed Dray's shoulder, and before he understood what she was about to do, she darted forward and snatched the restraint opener, as well as the restraints Virn had meant to use on her, from where he'd dropped them on the ground during the attack.
She had Dray's restraints off in moments. Virn seemed to realize belatedly that something had changed, but by the time he turned his head to look at them, Dray was already moving, grabbing the shockgun from Virn's loose grasp.
“You'll never get up the cliffs.” Virn spared him another look, then shuffled closer to the wall, his gaze back on the passageway. “I brought the cams down with me.”
Dray saw the bag near the door, and moved toward it, opened it up.
He didn't say anything, but when he looked up, Lucy was watching him, face set and serious.
“I can't get up without help.”
“It's all right.” He pulled the bag straps over his shoulders. “I can. I'll go up and put the cams back, but I'll also try to set up a way to haul you up.”