120 – Meeting more locals

  Roxanne woke with a start, listening. She could see in her extended vision range. Caspian and Cyrril lay across from her, breathing in deep sleep. Then she heard the rattling of pebbles. Anywhere else she might not have noticed it. Here it was the only other sound. Rox slowly reached out and put her hand on her bow grip, pulling out a wooden arrow from her quiver with the other, and finding the end. Now she heard a faint scratching across stone. She looked up and beyond Caspian, but could not spot anything. She looked up the pillars and could see some faint patches of warmer stone on one, as if something had held on at those points. Her fingers rolled the arrow by feel as she looked around.

  As noiselessly as she could she rolled to a crouch, knocking her arrow as she did. She looked at the surrounding pillars but saw and heard nothing. She waited, remembering the times she had been bow hunting. Only then she had stalked or sat up a tree, not crouched looking up. After a few eternal moments of listening, movement attracted her attention.

  Something was crawling down a pillar, head first. Quadruped. A bit larger than a large dog, or maybe a small bear. Its claws held it to the rough stone. It had eyes, and large ears, and its head seemed to have a large nose cavity. It sniffed and listened. One ear swiveled to her, as Roxanne pulled back the bow string, and the compound wheels rolled over. She found herself aiming between its shoulders, trying to count its ribs by the heat of its body.

  At this angle it presented a terrific target but no soft spots for quick kills, except for right there. She aimed and then just as she released she moved her arm slightly, and caught the creature right at the base of its neck as it jumped at the sound of her bow. Instead of catching on to the next pillar, the thing just crashed into it and fell with a dull thud to the dirt floor.

  At the sound of the bow Cyrril had awakened; as the beast tumbled against Caspian he awoke with a start. He jumped sideways without seeming to pass from lying to standing, giving a startled shout.

  “What happened? What was that? What hit me?” Caspian flailed a bit in the dark, until Cyrril landed on his staff, causing the carved dragon to glow.

  Rox stood and toed the creature. “You tell me. It was climbing down the pillar above you.”

  The whole staff brightened, illuminating the thing. It lay on its side, looking vaguely like a piled up rug, with a broken arrow sticking out of it. Caspian picked up the staff, and switched its glowing to the spotlights. He looked the thing over. Its head was a bit smashed, and its legs at odd angles.

  “Some kind of bugbear,” Caspian did not sound certain.

  While its back had course short fur and looked well muscled, its underbody looked almost like an exoskeleton, a rough surface all over its chest with small spikes. It had stout looking jaws and fangs. Caspian showed Roxanne its paw. Talons as long as her fingers, barbs on its knuckles.

  “Is it worth anything?” Rox was wondering about how they might take it with.

  “Not here or now. Best we move.”

  They hiked an hour through the rock garden parallel to the road, and camped again without disturbance.

  Steven dreamed again. But this was a familiar dream. He had had it several times growing up and a few times since, with more and different details each time, as life got closer to the event. In the past, it usually came when he was depressed, and would cheer him up. This time he did not need cheering up, but it still helped.

  He wore some kind of leather armor, and was fighting with a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, against some kind of uniformly armored men. He was fighting these bad guys off. Roxanne is nearby. The kids are also nearby, standing with two trusted strangers, when . . .  the dream ends, at least as far as Steven could ever remember. The setting was always an afterthought. But it seemed they were in a forest, having made camp. And that whatever happens after the dream ends, everything will be all right.

  This dream always renewed his optimism. But he had not had it in some time. Then the armor the elves gave him began to look and feel familiar. As did the old sword. And while he was marching out from Skarg the memory of this dream returned to him. From that point he had looked forward in quiet anticipation for the moment when he would live what he dreamed. And now he could remember and see most of the elements of the event. He still could not see all the elements, but he thought he knew who they all were, and generally where. And it made him happy.

  Steven woke from his sleep feeling refreshed. The humidity was pleasant, as was the sound of the lapping of the water against stone. He cleaned up his camp, and packed everything carefully. He did not want to make anymore noise or mess than he needed, so he secured everything in their pouches. He had pushed himself hard the afternoon and night before, and had rested well. Now, with the village near by according to Karen, he had to scout it out and plan the best way to go about approaching and rescuing his son. His eyes quickly adapted to the dim conditions, as his sense of hearing seemed to give new information. He could hear movement approaching. A party of some kind on the trail coming from the way he wanted to go. They would be looking nearly right at him as they passed this point.

  Quickly Steven repacked his stuff, and slung his pack across his back. He cast about for somewhere to go, and realized he had a shelf to stand on, on the far side of this pillar. Steven lowered himself to stand on the balls of his feet in just his socks, and gripped the lip with his hands. As he looked past his feet and the shelf he could see the water, and the luminescent lichen or moss below going deep into the water.

  Steven waited there for the party to go by, sneaking peaks over the rocks to watch, hoping they would not notice his boots he had not thought about to grab. Three beings went by. Most of what Steven could see was by pattern-recognition in the very low light.

  They were short, as everybody on this planet was to Steven. But these also looked lightly built. They wore some kind of rough cloth with worked leather of some kind. They did not carry any light source with them, but did have what looked like torches or clubs of some kind, wrapped in bundles on their backs. They all carried short swords and knives on their belts. The sword hung level, rather than down. Also they all wore their hair pulled back and tied into a tail that hung down their backs. They all were probably male, but Steven wasn’t about to worry about it. In the dark, he was surprised to see that much.

  Karen’s voice echoed through his mind ‘When you encounter the locals, think ‘empty;’ not just the word but the concept. These people can sense your mind. There is little you can do to sneak up on them, except distraction.’ Steven found himself thinking of empty space, until they passed.

  He figured he had at least part of one more day of travel before getting to the village. He had better get moving. Once they were past and a bit away, Steven chinned himself back up, grabbed his boots, crossed over to the trail, and proceeded along in the direction the three had come for a bit to put some distance between him and the three before putting his boots on. If they found the ant-pillars down, and the creature beyond missing they might start looking for him. Steven put his boots on, and moved along in hasty stealth. He was several turns of the trail along before realizing that his woodcraft skills from his active duty days had essentially returned. Also the cavern was just light enough he did not need a portable light source.

  Steven though things over as he went. Karen’s implanted memory told him he would skirt this lake for most of the rest of his way, then turn at a tributary stream and follow that up to the village. From there he could exit the main village passage and eventually get back to the large cavern and the main road from there.

  But what still troubles Steven was the tactics of the situation. He was uncomfortable with the idea of just walking into an armed village, and demanding his son. But on his own, there was little else he could do. As he walked, Steven tried to review his situation and what he could do about it. His primary objective was getting Alex, while keeping them both alive. Secondary to this was getting a certain book or scroll. Karen had implanted this, rather than mention it. Steven was not sure why, but would ask about it later. Then was to get them back to the main trail and out.

  About the village he was going to, normally his first concern would be reconnoitering the place. If it was in a cavern, he could not just skirt around its perimeter, without being observed, as he might on the surface. Nor was he in position to get airborne images or maps of the place. So that meant entering it blind to its layout. Add the light limitations, and the apparent psionic abilities, or talents, or these people.

  With the technology and tools he might have had on Terra, Earth, he could have done more planning and felt better about the situation. But none of that was available. Caspian and his magic might have been able to overcome these limitations, but for whatever reason Karen had arranged the plan for a simultaneous retrieval of Alex and Diana.

  In following this plan Karen had surmised and discussed with Steven, this his options were reduced to walking in and introducing himself, or abandoning the project.

  Perhaps it was just as well. A group of three novices attacking a village for a extraction of one person was not necessarily going to work. Particularly if every member of the village could sense the presence of any strangers before the stranger got even into bow-range.

  The memory of the dream intruded into his line of thought. Alex was in the dream. The dream was of future events, and judging by what was becoming reality around him, these were near future events. So best to stick to the plan, and remember that last bit of all battle plans. No plan of attack every completely survived its first encounter with the enemy. Thus be ready to improvise and adapt.

  Steven spent until lunchtime trotting along the trail. In that time, he had still not encountered another person or creature. This was starting to trouble him. Even when walking the mountains with Caspian, they had occasionally passed some sign of life.

  “In most stories,” he mumbled under his breath, “caves are full of things to fight or hide from. All I have found is an oversized badger, and an anthill.”

  Steven stopped in a bright spot for lunch, but only long enough to pull the food out of his pocket, and munch as he went. The taste was nothing to write home about, but it was filling. Then he encountered a problem.

  The cavern had been opening up, and the trail increasingly less on the edge of the lake and more on its shore. From family travels, it was like walking in a variation of Goblin Valley, Utah. With water carved boulders and formations, glowing lichen all over, and the air moist. The problem came as he reached a bend, and quickly ducked back behind it. First the shore stopped, and the cavern looked to close on itself like the shore at Lake Powell, or parts of Lake Mead, and like so many of the bends this morning. The terrain was not the problem.

  Ahead of him stood a hand full of beings. They looked like the three that had passed him this morning; smallish men, maybe a bit shorter on average than the locals on the surface. But these looked to be guarding a post on a waterway.

  Steven ducked behind a pillar to think. Karen’s instructions had got him this far, but did not explicitly cover this. She said he had to hike that river a ways and get back onto a side trail. It looked like the trail went across the river and down a parallel tunnel these guarded.

  Some how he had to get past, but how? Four, or more, on one? Not unless no other way existed. Even then that could get him killed, if they were as skilled, or more skilled, than Karen.

  Climb? Steven looked up, near as he could tell, the way would be next to impossible without proper gear, like a pneumatic drill and a team. And the ceiling sloped away quickly. Not a probable climb.

  Swim? Back track and circle in wide in the water? Possible, as long as his gear didn’t sink him. And any current did not take him too far.

  One other option, and the one that was originally planned, was to walk right in and see what happened. Karen said these were an honorable people. But she also said he needed to get a certain book, or scroll, to take with. She did not say why.

  Steven had gathered from bits of conversation that Karen had let slip that these people had the same skills she did, in being a psi-talent. Steven had a vivid enough imagination to be concerned; and had seen enough, both during his time with the Marines and in the week with Karen that he felt any fight would have to be entirely one sided; either he kill or incapacitate the person quickly, or get killed or incapacitated that quickly.

  The more Steven though about it, the more it seamed diplomacy was his best weapon, but he would need to be very careful, as he suspected these people could read minds. Not necessarily all of them, but enough. He also wondered why his first instinct had been to fight.