The Philosophical Strangler(105)

So down we went. Down, ever downward. That’s not a figure of speech, although it certainly fit my mood of the moment. The tunnel we had now entered did, in fact, slope noticeably downward.

I didn’t notice at first, lost as I was in gloom. But then—it was gloomy, lit only by lanterns held by Gwendolyn and Hrundig—I tripped on some outcropping and fell flat on my face.

Hrundig hauled me up. “Watch your feet,” said the mercenary.

“Found your voice, did you?” I grumbled.

Hrundig smiled thinly. “Never lost it,” he rasped. “Simply had nothing worth saying.”

Still don’t! I almost snapped. But I held my tongue. He’s not actually a good man to irritate, Hrundig isn’t. So I settled on social pleasantry.

“And what are you doing here?” I asked. “The Frissaults have already been rescued. I’m sure by now you got them off safely to the Mutt.”

Hrundig chuckled. “Oh, my. Aren’t we testy? What’s the matter, Ignace? Does the presence of a hard-bitten old mercenary on this damn-fool expedition upset your weltanschauung?”

Yeah, his very words. I tended to forget sometimes, looking at Hrundig, that he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t even ignorant. Unusual, that, for an Alsask barbarian. But, for all his harsh demeanor, Hrundig was generally a placid-enough sort of fellow. So he deigned to explain:

“You know perfectly well why I’m here, Ignace. Two good reasons. First, I owe Benvenuti for rescuing my family. And second, he’s a friend of mine. I don’t have all that many friends that I can afford to lose one.”

I was a little touched, to tell the truth. I even started to utter some inane pleasantries on the subject of glorious friendship, but was brought short by bumping into Shelyid’s sack.

“Watch where you’re going!” I chided the dwarf.

“Watch where you’re going,” rasped Hrundig. “We’ve stopped.”

So we had. I hadn’t seen it, because Shelyid’s sack had obscured the view, but we had entered a rather large grotto. Shelyid now moved forward, slowly. More of the grotto came into view, lit by the lanterns.

I proposed an immediate retreat. An immediate, hasty retreat.

Large subterranean grottoes filled with bones call for that tactic, to my mind. Cracked, splintered bones; sucked dry of marrow; heaped about in piles. Crushed skulls; teeth scattered about like grains of corn.

Greyboar lumbered past me.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. Jenny and Angela pointed mutely. (Pleased I was, too, to see that their earlier insouciance had disappeared. Wanted adventure, did they? Ha!)

“What do you think, professor?” he now asked Zulkeh. “Is Ignace right? Should we try another route?”

The wizard had advanced to the very center of the grotto, and was now poking at a pile of bones with his staff.

“Bah!” oathed the mage. “Do I hear me aright? Has the proposal been advanced to thwart me in my forward progress because of a pile of bones?”

“Lots of piles of bones,” I protested. “Cracked, broken bones. Fresh bones, some of ’em. Sucked dry of their marrow.”

“Anthropophage of Reason!”

(I wasn’t offended. For Zulkeh, that’s a mild expletive. Sort of like “drat” to the average man.)

“Base cur of low degree!”

(He was warming up.)

“Dullard dunce of—”

“Professor!” interrupted Greyboar.

Zulkeh fell silent, still glowering at me. Then he made a disgusted gesture with his staff.

“These—trifles—are no cause for alarm. Merely the typical residue of that loathsome creature known to the unwashed masses as the Great Ogre of Grotum—”

Jenny and Angela gasped. (So did I.)

“—thereby, in their gross ignorance, seeking to distinguish the beast from its lesser cousin, the Lesser Ogre of Grotum, but which detestable creatures are properly known by their scientific cognomens as—”

“When will it come back?” interrupted Greyboar. (Let the mage go on, and you’ll get an entire lecture in natural history.)

Zulkeh frowned. “Do you trifle with me, sirrah? ’Tis well known that the Great Ogre of Grotum never leaves its lair for any reason.”

He thrust out his staff, pointing to a dark corner of the grotto. “Indeed, the miserable monster lurks yonder.”

Everyone had now entered the grotto. Everyone gasped. Everyone stared where the staff pointed. Gwendolyn and Hrundig held up the lanterns.

A voice came from the dark corner. A horrible, dry, croaking kind of voice.

“Don’t hurt me,” it whined.

“Show yourself!” commanded the mage.

“Don’t hurt me,” repeated the voice.