Dirge Danorum

Chapter 14

"Do we want to know?" Grigor asked, and I think it was a fair question.

"I wouldn't."

"Are you sure?" Velvet said tiredly.

"I think so."

It didn't thrill anybody, but it was what it was. We hadn't rested since… I didn't even remember. I didn't know what day it was. But now it was time to run. Jogging's one thing; jogging with packs and equipment is another. Maybe the fact that we had nothing but handguns between us was good. Of course if we'd been armed, maybe we wouldn't have needed to run.

Careful to keep our lights both ahead and on the ground in front of us, we set off. That we might be hurrying deeper into a trap was at the front of everyone's mind.

It didn't last. In moments we were out of the tunnel and in the open. Not the real open, of course – but the open. Another of these huge caverns. There was water in front of us, lots of it by the dark color – this was probably the deepest we'd seen yet. We could go left or right. There were no echoes of falling water here; it was eerily quiet.

"I'm left handed," Ever said, and it was the only sound.

We started to move again. "But where is the Goblin King?" Velvet wondered aloud.

"That's not in good taste," Ever replied. His Russian was awfully good, but letting it bother me down here would be counterproductive. He put up a hand, and everyone stopped. That irked me – that was Velvet's job, and occasionally mine. "Anyone else hear that?" He switched abruptly to English.

I held my breath. There was something. Something like croaking, maybe? But it was distant, and it was impossible to know what direction it was coming from.

The water sloshed out in the dark. Something had broken the surface and gone under again.

"Back off," I said, moving away from the water.

"The Watcher?" Velvet said.

"Wrong book," I said distractedly, feeling very nerdy that I knew what she was talking about. "And quit it. That wasn't in a cave."

"It was by a cave," Grigor said. Thanks a lot, old timer.

"We shouldn't be talking right now," Ever pointed out, and I had no choice but to agree. In the silence we all listened again. There was no sound but our breathing. Then a wet slap from somewhere far off, like someone dropping a heavy piece of meat on the rocks or something. Ever waved his light, and we started walking. We were stuck between the wall of the chamber and the water; there wasn't a lot of room. This wall was covered in the most detailed carvings yet, but I didn't even bother to look. What were the odds that they'd brighten my mood?

We were leaving the last of the glowing fungus behind and entering true dark. I was trying not to think about the woman I'd seen, or the eerie community whose invitation we'd refused.

I should've known that if someone was waiting to make their move, this would've been the time – when we were out of the dim illumination of the fungus, and relying solely on our own lights.

There was a splashing, then more of that strange croaking.

Yeah. I stopped. "We've got incoming," I stated flatly. Ever and Velvet had been thinking the same thing, but someone had to come out and say it.

"Lights out," Ever said. "Let's have a listen."

I turned off my light, and the others followed suit, Venge and Velvet both visibly reluctant – but they both knew that our lights made us easy to follow. Even now we weren't really hiding our location, but it would buy us a little time – provided an attack had been imminent, and I was fairly sure that was the case.

There was movement in the water. Nothing overt; no flopping around or loud splashing, but a subterranean body of water like this isn't going to make a lot of noise on its own, and any sound loud enough to carry in here had to be made by something alive. I was getting a bad feeling about this water.

"Check the wall," I whispered. "See if we can't climb up." Someone must have agreed, because I heard hands patting stone. I reached out and put a hand on the wall myself. We had to keep moving. Moving blind wasn't an option, but if we didn't go too fast, and we never strayed from the wall, that was at least theoretically workable. If we could be quiet, we might even balance the scales a little.

I felt a lot more confident with Lunch Box than I would've with that puny Glock I'd brought in originally. My hand was on the grip, but I left in it in the holster. This was a sensitive moment. No one wanted to make the first move.

I stumbled. My hand on the wall had suddenly found nothing but air. "Hold up," I whispered, and I heard the others behind me paused. I felt around a bit – there was something here, maybe an alcove, maybe a corridor. Taking random turns down here was a bad idea, but was it worse than staying near this water and whatever was in it?

"I found something," I said quietly. "Should we risk the light?"

"Do it," Velvet said.

I clicked it on, and it immediately lit up pale, wet, glistening skin. Because of what I'd seen before, the lack of clothing didn't take me completely by surprise. Now that I was much closer, the scaly qualities of the skin were more evident. But weird skin or no weird skin, she had a great body. The face was another matter entirely. There's having a face like a fish, and then there's having a fish for a face. This was definitely the second one.

Fins. Big, bulging eyes. Lips like balloons. Throbbing gills.

I was surprised at seeing it there, and the abomination clearly hadn't expected me to turn on my flashlight at that moment, so there was an awkward moment before I pulled Lunch Box and unloaded the whole magazine into it. And that was even more disturbing to hear than to see; the .44 was not a stealthy weapon.

The monster blew apart, and all hell broke loose. The other creatures had probably intended something a bit more tactful, but now that we'd seen what we were up against, they just came at us, emerging from the water in numbers that looked depressingly large in the light of our flashlights.

As I dropped the magazine from Lunch Box and slammed my final one in, I noted with disappointment that they were not all female. Well, maybe they were – but not the at least partially hot humanoid kind. It was hard to tell if they were more like fish or frogs. They were all very pale greyish-white, and some were pretty big. But it wasn't like I could look in detail; there were lights waving around and shooting and everything.

For that first instant, it was a bit like Pulp Fiction, only with five of us instead of two. The things came dripping out of the water and we just gunned them down with our pistols. But suddenly everyone was empty, myself included, and even past the ringing in our ears and the echoes of the gunshots, we could hear enough splashing and sloshing for at least five swim teams. They came on, croaking at us and reaching out with big, webbed hands with big, pointy claws. These things weren't bulletproof, but though they were sort of humanoid, they were scaly and tough. I knew exactly what those claws would do to soft targets like us.

"Run now," I said, impressed at my own calm. There are things you're prepared for, then there's being swarmed by fish people. To their credit, the others hadn't really needed the prompting. Velvet and Ever both had their knives in their hands, but neither looked very enthusiastic about mixing it up with an army like this in the dark.

On the other hand, I guess it didn't really matter how much light there was. Our flashlights were showing too many of them to handle, and if there had been proper light, all it would've shown us was just how hopeless the situation really was.