Chapter 2: Reunited?
They came out into an all-out melee.
The six escaped prisoners followed the sounds of battle, since it seemed the only thing to follow, through twists and turns in the narrow tunnels. The red-haired man still seemed oblivious to anything but the rodent he carried cupped in his hands. He would ask the animal if it was all right to turn this corner, safe to go up that set of steps, wise to pass through some doorway. No one but him ever heard the thing answer, but he always followed the rest of the escaping prisoners.
They came into a wide, low-ceilinged chamber dominated by huge rose-like growths of orange crystal. Black-clad men were locked in combat with other black-clad men, and neither side seemed to be winning. No one even noticed them at first and even when a few did glance their way, they were all too busy fighting to the death to do or say anything.
"I don't know if this is better than the cages or not," Yoshimo said dryly.
"There!" Jaheira shouted, pointing to a door on the other side of the chamber.
"Is it all right, Boo?" the red-haired man asked the rodent.
"It's the only way out," Yoshimo said, putting a hand on the madman's shoulder.
"Boo says it's all right," the man said, addressing another human for the first time.
A man in black robes fell screaming to the ground only a dozen paces in front of them. The two assassins who'd killed him looked up sharply at the group and came on fast, swords drawn.
Jaheira called on Mielikki, closing her eyes just after seeing Buffy, thankfully now dressed at least semi-modestly, rush forward to meet the charging assassins. She took a tiny sprig of tree root she'd pulled from the wall in the chamber of cages and secreted under her torn, sweat-soaked blouse. The root grew in her hand, and she smiled at the feel of it in her palm. In no more than two heartbeats it was a sword of polished wood with a gleaming blade that showed its razor sharpness.
"Your side!" the red-haired man shouted just in time, and Jaheira dodged the warhammer coming at her. The wielder was a black-robed assassin with all-too-human eyes overcome with panic and bloodlust.
Jaheira backed up two steps, which was enough time to recover. She brought the wooden sword up as she parried the warhammer. She sliced her sword in low and scraped across the assassin's left knee, then his right, and the man went down like a sack of wet rice.
"You will learn the price of your failure, you ..." a harsh male voice shrieked above the melee, the rest of his obviously enraged statement lost in the echoes of steel on steel.
"We know our price!" a shrill male voice shouted over the general din. "Give us our payment, necromancer!"
Another assassin somehow parried each thrust from Jaheira's goddess-given sword but was soon being pressed back into a stone-block wall.
"Sleep!" shouted from somewhere to the right of Jaheira and made her do just that.
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Willow heard someone cast a spell as an assassin came at her with a quarterstaff raised high. She muttered her own spell and sent it flying at the throat of the assassin.
Buffy knew that running into the green cloud would be a bad idea, but she'd already started in that direction when it suddenly appeared in front of her, engulfing the two black clad men she and Aquarra were trying to defend against. The cloud had obviously been conjured by some mage mixed in among the assassins. Willow, Aquarra, Buffy and the two assassins were overcome with the powerful stench of death and decay. Willow quickly cast a spell that would allow them to breath normally.
"I will destroy you all!" a strange man, a man neither Buffy nor Aquarra could see, screamed. "Your blood will serve me as your pitiful efforts could not!"
Willow, Buffy and Aquarra looked back in time to see Jaheira fall to the floor limply, Yoshimo standing impotently by their side, stepping back as two black-robed men grabbed for them. The man with red hair was suddenly standing next to them and had a wholly inappropriate grin plastered to his face.
"Buffy!"
A woman's voice screamed at Buffy, thin and weak. Buffy assumed only momentarily that it was Jaheira, she quickly realized the voices they heard were not Jaheira but Dawn's.
"Dawn?" Buffy yelled as she looked around for her sister and found Dawn standing some distance away.
Willow and Buffy were surprised to see Dawn there.
"We have to go," the red-haired man shouted with an almost cheerful tone. "Boo insists!"
"We will kill you first, necromancer," a man screamed from somewhere in the middle of the battle, "then take what you owe us ... take the daughters of ..." The voice was lost again under the din of battle.
A wave of bright purple fire washed across everything, and Willow, Buffy and Aquarra were thrown across the rough floor. All throughout the underground chamber, people were being scattered.
Buffy called, "Jaheira!" then, with a wild, yellow-eyed look of incomprehensible fate in her eyes, "Dawnie!"
"Dawn!" Willow called sharply and was sure she heard Dawn answer, though now there was the cacophony of steel on steel ringing through the chamber.
Someone grabbed Buffy and Willow roughly from behind, and Buffy whirled with her right fist in front of her.
The red-haired man grunted and stepped back fast. Buffy was surprised enough that she missed hitting the madman.
"Gotta go!" the madman said. "Boo demands it! Boo demands—" He stopped when he saw Buffy raise her fist again, and he flinched when it looked as if Buffy was going to punch him.
Instead, Buffy pushed him down by one shoulder and saved his life in the process. A gleaming steel blade arced through the air where the madman's red scalp had been less than the blink of an eye before. She waited the half second it took for the sword blade to finish its fast arc, then using Slayer strength she hit the swordsman's neck back nearly enough to kill him. Losing blood from a viciously cut lip, the man went down hard, blinking all the way. As he fell, Buffy slid the sword out of his hand, and just as the soldier hit the battered flagstone floor, she had the sword up to parry another soldier's uncertain strike.
Soldiers were flooding into the chamber from doorways no one had noticed before. In the smoke, screaming, and confusion, Buffy despite her Slayer sense couldn't tell who was who, and neither could the soldiers, who just took on everybody in the place as they came in.
"Gotta go!" the red-haired man, now standing again in front of Buffy, said.
Buffy parried another swing from the confused soldier. She batted the soldier's sword away and punched him in the face hard enough to send him down to join his friend on the floor.
"Dawn! Jaheira," Willow shouted.
"Boo," the red-haired man said, kicking a black-clad assassin in the groin and taking his sword out of his hand as he went down, "says 'Gotta go!'"
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Even a lesser vampire was strong enough to break a human's neck. This was proven three times in a single minute as two of Bodhi's thralls protected her from the rushing advance of the guards.
Bodhi looked through the smoke-filled chamber and sighed in profound disappointment. The Shadow Thieves had come, angry apparently at the handling of Buffy, Aquarra and Dawn. The Shadow Thieves had asked Bodhi and Irenicus to capture them, but Irenicus seemed as interested in Buffy, Aquarra and Dawn as the Shadow Thieves were. This is why they'd kept the prisoners longer than the Shadow Thieves wanted them too.
The response from the assassins was a testament to both their impatience and the level of desire they had for at least these four prisoners. Bodhi hoped that the guild of assassins she was gathering herself—on orders from Irenicus—would be as devoted.
Now the militia had appeared, attracted by what, Bodhi couldn't be sure. Maybe there was an informant among the Shadow Thieves. Maybe the noise and the shaking of the ground was something they could actually hear or feel on the surface. Maybe, Bodhi thought with a wry smile, the neighbors were complaining.
She tightened her grip on the hair of the girl and kicked out at a running soldier, lifting him two feet in the air by his groin and laughing as he fell to the floor with tears streaming from his eyes and blood beginning to soak through his leather codpiece.
"Dawn! Jaheira!" a voice called from somewhere in the confusion, and Bodhi looked up to find the source of the voice.
She almost allowed herself a gasp at the sight of the blonde woman. She could feel it in her undead nature who the woman was. Not only a person of interest but also a Vampire Slayer. She knew there hadn't been a Vampire Slayer in Faerun in years, not since before she became a vampire. She smiled at the thought of fighting a Vampire Slayer.
"Buffy," the girl whimpered.
This made Bodhi grin even wider.
A soldier slid to a stop in front of her, leveled a crossbow at her face, and shrieked, "Release the girls and step—" in a shrill voice cut off when one of her thralls stepped in.
The lesser vampire twisted the crossbow back into the soldier's throat. The steel tip punctured skin, and the soldier jerked, releasing the catch and sending the bolt slicing through his own throat with nearly enough force to behead him. The man coughed once, and the thrall opened his mouth, straining for the taller man's neck. The soldier's eyes rolled toward the thrall in abject horror, then blinked when a spray of blood covered his face. Bodhi's servant was feeding, and she let him.
She looked over to where a small group of soldiers were fighting with a pair of more skilled Shadow Thieves. They fought over the prone form of another young woman—one of the women who had been captured in Baldur's Gate with Buffy and Aquarra.
"Her too?" Bodhi asked loudly.
Oh, yes, Irenicus's voice answered in her head, her too.
Where are you? she asked him without speaking.
Gone from there, he answered, as I suggest you do as well. These soldiers are as endless as raindrops and even more irritating. You could take days just killing them one after another.
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Willow and Buffy glared at the red-haired man. He, Aquarra and Yoshimo had pulled the two of them out of the tunnels against their will. Then Yoshimo had run off.
"I am Minsc," the red-haired man said, smiling around blood that was oozing from a ragged cut on his right cheek, "and it is a pleasure to fight alongside you. Boo tells me your names are Willow, Buffy and Aquarra."
"Boo?" Aquarra asked before she really even thought about it.
Minsc smiled and opened a fold in his clothes to reveal a tiny brown and white rodent "This is Boo," he said with the smile of a pleased toddler. "He protects me with his stern intelligence."
"Where did Yoshimo go?" Buffy asked.
"Gone," Minsc said." "Boo says this way." He started off down one of the passages.
"That's the way back?" Willow asked, knowing that like herself that Buffy would be determined to find Dawn and Jaheira.
"I'm afraid not, my friend," Yoshimo's voice came from the darkness of a side passage.
"Yoshimo?" Buffy called, her sword at the ready. The Kozakuran emerged from the darkness, smiling contentedly.
"Indeed it is I," Yoshimo replied. "I have found the way out."
"We don't want to get out," Buffy stated flatly. "We need to get back to where we left Jaheira and Dawn."
"You're sure?" Aquarra asked.
"Yes," Willow said. "We heard Dawn's voice. So we must go back. Not only to find Jaheira but Dawn as well."
"If that were possible, my friends," Yoshimo said, "I would applaud your courage and send you on your way. But alas, that passage collapsed just as we passed through."
"Boo says this way," Minsc repeated.
Yoshimo ignored the madman and looked Willow, Buffy and Aquarra up and down. "You three are not in a condition that will help you to help them," he said. "Perhaps we should get out of here, regroup, and come back for your friends. I knew them for only a short time, but it was my opinion that they will be able to care for themselves for at least this nearly as short time, no?"
Aquarra let out a sigh and turned to Buffy. "He's right, Jaheira will be able to care for herself and she will be able to care for our sister till we reach them. In fact for all we know they are already free and seeking us out. By trying to go back we could miss them on the way out."
"If we don't go back, we might never find them," Buffy argued.
"I know," Aquarra said. "We should make our way out. If we don't see them say fairly soon after we have escaped. I suggest we hire some people to come back and try and find them."
Buffy sighed, she knew that Aquarra was right that Jaheira was capable. That she would take care of Dawn and could already be heading through other tunnels out. "Alright."