They dashed out into the flooded cave, banging the doors shut behind them. Ghorbash glanced around frantically, picked up a long bent metal strut and secured it across the chamber exit.
'Do you really think it will hold?' Baldr asked doubtfully, at the same time straining his keen elven hearing to discern the thundering steps of the steam centurion among all the noises of the underground city, still alive though its masters were long since gone.
'No,' the Orc replied frankly, with a violent shudder at the mental image of the great automaton crushing through their fragile barricade, 'But it's better than nothing. Where do we turn now?'
His companion surveyed the many stone bridges spanning the great cavern, his mind strenuously at work. If they took any of those passages, they would soon get lost in this puzzle of a ruin, and the centurion would gain on them while they would be stumbling about, clueless, vulnerable. What they needed was to put as much distance between themselves and the colossal killing machine as possible in a matter of a minute or so. Ghorbash watched, suspicious and a little alarmed, as Baldr's expression grew dreamily absent, which was more than odd under the circumstances, and as his amber-coloured eyes glinted with the same dancing light that had appeared when he was editing King Olaf's Verse.
'Ghorbash, my friend,' he declared finally, clapping his hands together, 'I have an astoundingly brilliant idea!'
This time Ghorbash shuddered even more violently; from what he knew of Baldr's astoundingly brilliant ideas, they usually led to trouble.
Suddenly determined and energetic, Baldr stepped up to his mutely wondering fellow adventurer and took away the shield he himself had equipped him with. He proceeded to race up to the start of a downward stone slope, smooth and slippery after ages of being used for whatever purposes the Dwarves had in mind for their bizarre constructions, laid the shield down, lowered himself onto it and beckoned to the utterly uncomprehending Ghorbash.
'Climb on behind me and push,' Baldr explained simply after the Orc had given him a flabbergasted look. 'I've only tried it on ice before, but here it should work just as well'.
They whooshed down with an ear-splitting scraping noise, their lungs gripped by claws of cold, their hearts on the verge of bursting through their clenched teeth, just at the moment when the steam centurion landed the first blow on the other side of the door.
The water was icy cold and rather painful to land into. Ghorbash hurried to propel himself towards the surface, working very hard with his limbs in order for his heavy armour not to drag him down. Baldr emerged by his side, snorting and spluttering, his hair hanging loose over his eyes like the fur of a wet dog.
'I did promise you adventure, didn't I?' he grinned cheerfully, shaking the water out of his ear. 'How's that compared to working in the stronghold?'
'Let's do it again some time,' Ghorbash said breathlessly.
The two laughed, like two boys playing an exciting game, and, finding firm ground beneath their feet, waded towards the edge of a crumbling stone platform.
Ghorbash had already crawled out onto it and straightened himself up when Baldr turned round abruptly and hurried, as far as he could while moving though water, to a place where something small and greyish could be seen, curled up among the mangled remains of some metallic paraphernalia.
Having reached the little grey thing, Baldr bent down, looked it over and called out to Ghorbash, 'Come over here! It's stuck and I need your help setting it free!'
The Orc leapt back off the edge of the platform and splashed up to Baldr. 'You mad?' he choked, poking his head from behind his companion's back, 'It's one of them! Best leave it be!'
The little grey thing that had drawn Baldr's attention was a Falmer, though differing somewhat from the ones they had been coming across before - it had to be one of their offspring that usually kept to the chitin huts while the adults were skulking the dim, winding Dwarven halls. It was floating in the water, barely conscious, clinging on to a metal bar with its thin, wiry arms in order not to drown. One of its legs was twisted in an unnatural way, caught in between two large, ugly, cog-like objects, and its eyeless face was twitching with pain, mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water, enormous slit-like nostrils flaring greedily to breathe enough air for coping with the effort of holding on.
Baldr turned away from the wretched little being to give Ghorbash a scornful look, 'The cursed and shunned are loved by Malacath. And the Falmer are about as cursed and shunned as can be. So tut-tut to you, oh travel companion of mine, for forsaking the teachings of your god. True, these beings consider us enemies, but that shouldn't stop us from doing one a good turn when it needs it'.
The Orc gave a muffled sheepish cough and mumbled reluctantly, 'Yeah... Guess you are right. Let me give you a hand'.
It took all the combined strength of Baldr - who took great pride in being the only Altmer in Skyrim with Nord-like muscle power and a good sword arm - and Ghorbash to heave one of the cogs aside. When it was done, Baldr took the Falmer in his arms and lifted it, as gently as possible, out of its trap; the creature stirred, sniffing at the air in alarm, and made a faint, angrily hissing noise, but was too weak to do anything else; Baldr patted it on the back soothingly and even attempted to stroke its bare, leathery skull.
'Well, you have got what you wanted,' Ghorbash said in discomfort, 'Now set the thing loose and let's get out of here'.
Baldr frowned disapprovingly, 'Don't you see it can't move? Its leg needs tending to!'
'Its kind will come to its aid, sooner or later!' the Orc was beginning to get irritated.
'I doubt it,' Baldr remarked with a slight shake of his head, 'It smells of me now. They will likely not recognize it or even attack it'.
'What's your plan then?' Ghorbash asked, suspicious once more.
'We will take it with us - back to Calcelmo. He will know what to do... I think'.