Ivan wiped a line of blood from his brother's neck. "Druid?" Ivan asked, and there now remained little sarcasm in his tone. Pikel's wild fighting obviously had impressed Ivan, and the dwarf had no way of knowing how much more there was to being a druid than barking animal noises during a fight. "Maybe that'd not be so bad." Pikel nodded gratefully, his smile wide under his low-hanging helmet.
"Where do we go from here?" Ivan asked Cadderly, who was leaning quietly against the wall.
Cadderly opened his eyes. This passage was new to him and the fight had agitated him. Even concentrating on the dripping water did little to help him get his bearings. "We went mostly west," he offered tentatively. "Ws have to come back a-round ..."
"North," Ivan corrected, then he whispered to Pikel, "Never met a human who could tell his way underground," which brought a chuckle from both dwarves. "Whatever the direction," Cadderly went on, "we have to get back to the original area. We were close to our goal before the attack. I am certain of that."
"The best way back is the way we ran," reasoned Ivan.
"Uh oh," muttered Pikel, peeking around the comer to the passage behind them.
Cadderly and Ivan didn't miss the dwarfs point, and they understood even more clearly a second later, when the now familiar scraping-scuffing sound of approaching bony feet came from beyond the bend.
Ivan and Pikel clasped their weapons and nodded eagerly- too eagerly, by the young scholar's estimation. Cadderly moved quickly to quench the battle-fires burning in their eyes. "We go the other way," he ordered. "This passage must have another exit, just like all the others, and no doubt it connects to tunnels that will allow us to get behind our pursuers."
"Ye fearing a fight?" balked Ivan, narrowing his eyes with contempt.
The dwarfs suddenly gruff tone alarmed Cadderly. "The bottle," he reminded Ivan. "That is our first and most important target. Once we close it, you can go back after all the skeletons you desire." The answer seemed to appease Ivan, but Cadderly was hoping that once they had closed the bottle and defeated whoever or whatever was behind this whole curse, no further fighting would be necessary.
The corridor went on for a long way with no side passages, and no alcoves, though some areas were lined by rotted crates.
When they at last did see a turn up ahead, a bend that went back the same way as the one they had left behind, they were greeted once again by the scraping-scuffling sound. All three glanced at each other with concern; Ivan's glare at Cadderly was not complimentary.
"We left the others far behind," the dwarf reasoned. "This must be a new group. Now they're on both sides! I told ye we should've fought them when we could!"
"Turn back," Cadderly said, thinking that perhaps the dwarfs reasoning was not correct.
Ivan didn't seem to like the idea. "There are more behind us," he huffed. "Ye want to be fighting both groups at once?"
Cadderly wanted to argue that perhaps there were not skeletons behind them, that perhaps this unseen group in front of them was the same as those they had left behind. He saw clearly that he wouldn't convince the grumbling dwarves, so he didn't waste the time in trying. "We have wood," he said. "Let us at least build some defenses."
The brothers had no problem with that suggestion, and they quickly followed Cadderly a short way back down the passage, to the last grouping of rotted crates. Ivan and Pikel conferred in a private huddle for a moment, then swept into action. Several of the boxes, weakened by the decades, fell apart at the touch, but soon the dwarves had two shoulder-high-to-a-man and fairiy solid lines running out from one wall, forming a corridor too narrow for more than one or two skeletons to come through at a time.
"Just get yerself behind me and me brother," Ivan instructed Cadderly. "We're better for smashing walking bones than that toy ye carry!"
By then, the scuffling was quite loud in front of them and Cadderly could detect some movement just at the end of his narrow light beam. The skeletons did not advance any farther, though.
"Have they lost the trail?" Cadderly whispered.
Ivan shook his head. "They know we're here," he insisted.
"Why do they hold back?"
"Uh oh," moaned Pikel.
"Ye're right," Ivan said to his brother. He looked up at Cadderly. "Ye should've left the fighting to us," he said. "Be keeping that thought in yer head in the future. Now they're waiting for the other group, the one we shouldn't have left behind us, to catch up."
Cadderly rocked back on his heels. Skeletons were not thinking creatures. If Ivan's appraisal was correct, then some one, or something, else was in the area, directing the attack.
Shuffling noises proved the dwarves' guess right only a few moments later and Cadderly nodded grimly. Perhaps he should have left the fighting decisions to his more seasoned companions. He took up his appointed position behind the dwarven brothers, not sounding his concerns that the undead seemed to have some organization.
The skeletons came at them in a rush, a score from one side and at least that many from the other, and when they found the single opening to get at their living enemies, they banged against each other trying to get in.
A single chop from Ivan's axe dispatched the first one that made its way down. Several more followed in a tight group, and Ivan backed away and nodded to his brother. Pikel lowered his dub like a battering ram and started pumping his legs frantically, building momentum. Cadderly grabbed the dwarf's shoulder, hoping to keep their defensive posture intact, and it was Ivan, not Pikel, who knocked his hand away.
"Tactics, boy, tactics," Ivan grumbled, shaking his head incredulously. "I told ye to leave the fighting to us."
Cadderly nodded again and pulled back.
Pikel sprang away, battering into the advancing skeletons like some animated ballista missile.
With the general jumble of bones, it was hard to determine how many skeletons the dwarf actually had destroyed. The important factor was that many more still remained. Pikel wheeled about quickly and came rushing back, one skeleton right behind him.
"Down!" Ivan yelled and Pikel dove to the ground just as Ivan's great axe swiped about, bashing Pikel's pursuer into little pieces.
Cadderly vowed then to let the dwarves handle any future battle arrangements, humbling himself to the fact that the dwarves understood tactics far better than he ever could.
Another small group of skeletons came on, and Ivan and Pikel used alternating attack routines, each playing off his brother's feints and charges, to easily defeat them. Cadderly rested back against the wall in sincere admiration, believing that the brothers could keep this up for a long, long time.
Then, suddenly, the skeletons stopped advancing. They milled about by the entrance to the crate run for a moment, then systematically began dismantling the piles.
"When did those things learn to think?" asked a disbelieving Ivan.
"Something is guiding them," Cadderly replied, shifting his light beam all about the passage in search of the undead leader.
* * * * *
No light could reveal Druzil's invisibility. The imp watched impatiently and with growing concern.
Counting the skeletons back in the earlier passages, these three adventurers had destroyed more than half the undead force.
Druzil was not normally a gambling creature, not when his own safety was concerned, but this was not a normal situation. If these three were not stopped, they eventually would get into the altar room. Who could guess what kind of damage the two wild dwarves might cause in there?
Yet, it was something about the human that bothered Druzil most of all. His eyes, the imp thought, and the careful and calculating way he swept his light beam, reminded Druzil pointedly of another powerful and dangerous human. Druzil had heard of dwarven resistance to all magic, even potent ones such as the chaos curse, so he could understand how the two had found their way down, but this human seemed even more clear-headed, more focused, than his companions.
There could be only one answer: this one had been Barjin's catalyst in opening the bottle. Barjin had assured Druzil that he had put spells on the catalyst that would keep the man from remembering anything and from posing any threat. Had Barjin, perhaps, underestimated his foe? That possibility only increased Druzil's respect for Cadderly.