Runeblade

B2 Chapter 208: Infiltration, finale

They pushed on, Ianmus hanging just behind them as they moved from shadowed stretch to

shadowed stretch. Passing beyond where they had already cleared, each long-stride was hard earned. Each of the roughly hewn openings in the tunnel wall—sometimes common enough to come every fifty strides—had to be checked thoroughly.

They were diligent, sweeping the rooms without fail.

Shifting in width regularly, the cave made for a tense journey. The boggarts—capable of quarrying they may have been—were crude workers. Where the cave had widened naturally beyond their requirements, they’d left it be, only taking the effort to crack their way through bedrock when it narrowed to the point of being unusable.

It left them plenty of space to tuck themselves into nooks and crannies, but by the same metric it overwhelmed his Toolkit and Glass Mind with spots of potential ambush. Enhanced he may have been, but the constant grind of heightened awareness abraded his nerves like coarse sand.

Looming out of the constant gloom, Kaius saw the cave split in two. Both passages were natural, the boggarts having done little more than smash through particularly notable extrusions of stone.

He narrowed his eyes—both of the passages were better lit, a notable change from the nigh constant darkness they had travelled through, moving between considerable stretches of shadow and darkness.

It wasn’t quite so bad that they would be constantly exposed without any cover, but it was still notably more revealing.

There were other changes. While the passage that peeled off to the right seemed to still have openings carved into its walls—even if they were fewer in number—the path that continued ahead had nothing of the sort. An unbroken passage, boring straight ahead as it dipped gently downwards, obscuring its final destination.

“What do you think?” Kaius muttered, asking for their opinion. “I’m tempted to take the passage with the rooms, even if just so we have more places to hide in all that light.”

Porkchop sniffed deeply, raising his nose in the air, before he shook his head noncommittally. “Whole place reeks of them, otherwise I’d suggest whichever smelled like it had fewer boggarts. Less chance of being discovered.”

Ianmus tilted his head, eyes flicking between the paths. “I’d say the straight path probably leads somewhere more important—to the bugbears, perhaps? We’ve seen little of them so far.”

Kaius nodded—a decent enough reasoning. “All the more reason to hang the right. May as well deal with as much of the chaff as we can before tackling the more challenging brutes.”

With their decision made, they set off for their chosen path.

Creeping down the cave, the added light was disconcerting. They were still dim sources that left plenty of shadows for them to lurk in, but every brush with the illumination felt like being stripped bare.

Peering through the side rooms as they passed, Kaius found that they were roomier. The ceilings had been carved taller, and while they found a complete absence of sleeping boggarts, they found evidence of other, more interesting things.

Storehouses.

Most of the early ones seemed to be stacked with fuel. Roughly hewn chunks of wood, haphazardly piled, and crude earthen pots filled with thickened fat. Judging by the myriad scents and shades of the tallow, the boggarts definitely weren’t farming anything. It seemed that before scarcity had set in, they’d been processing their kills.

Further in they found stacked hides, crude tools, and even workshops—the evidence of labour to make their wares.

Kaius found himself beset by a voyeuristic curiosity that grew with intensity with every room. It was an interesting glimpse into their lives, one he doubted many researchers or enthusiasts of the natural world would get to see—considering the danger and scarcity of boggart plagues that grew to this size.

It was smothered quickly when they found a storehouse of raided goods. Sticking close to the shadows, Kaius poked his head through the opening to the room. Carved out of the rock like the others, it held a haphazard array of simple iron and steel tools. Picks, shovels, hoes—even simple iron stakes—lay in haphazard piles.

Each and every one was in some level of disrepair. Scuffed, dented, and dusted with rust, it was obvious that the boggarts were poor caretakers of their ill gotten gains.

And ill gotten they must have been. When he’d first seen the drawings of people in some of the boggarts bedchambers, he’d hoped it had been isolated incidents. Sole travellers running afoul of bad luck.

He’d been wrong. It seemed at least one settlement in the hills had fallen prey to the plague.

That wasn’t all—he doubted they’d only taken digging tools.

Gritting his teeth, Kaius waved Ianmus forward.

Approaching quickly, Ianmus looked into the room—wincing when he saw the contents.

“Do you think…?” Ianmus whispered, voice hushed.

“That some of them are going to have better weapons than stone and wood? Yeah.” Kaius nodded.

Porkchop came forward, looking for himself. “More dangerous, yes, but we shouldn’t be too worried. I doubt they have anything high-quality, and I'll eat my left foot if any of them are some type of Weaponmaster.”

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Kaius bit his cheek, tearing his eyes away from the room. He didn’t like it, but Porkchop was right—it was just disconcerting to know that what looked to be a whole hamlet had been lost. Hopefully he was wrong.

Maybe a raiding party had simply stumbled across a ghost town—the inhabitants having long since fled the dangers of the wilds.

He shook his head, putting the matter to the back of his mind.

They continued.

After a few more minutes of slow furtive walking, they came across another room. A pair of them, really. They were on opposite sides of the cave, a bare sixty strides separating them.

The first was another store of hides—though this one was only partially full, the leathers stacked up halfway to the side of a singular wall.

Taking only a cursory look, they moved to the next.

Kaius’s eyes widened as his sight pierced the gloom—finding something he hadn’t expected.

Food.

A full room, fifteen strides deep and wide, stacked with crude racks made of lashed sticks and shaped wood. Each shelf was layered in smoked meat.

The sight of such stores surprised him. Everything they had seen had pointed towards the plague being on the verge of starvation. Between the cannibalism, and the boggarts fighting over a scrap of bone, food was one of the last things he expected to find hoarded.

Perhaps it was being rationed? Kept for the more valuable members of the tribe? He doubted that the warchief was as hungry as the lowest status members huddled in groups far from the inner reaches of the warren.

Regardless, it was barely processed. Instead of thin strips, they’d cut whole hunks of meat—crudely drying it over hot smoke without the use of salt, by the looks and smell of it. Focusing his eyes, he saw a great deal of variation between the cuts.

Some looked like haunches of mountain goat. Others, rib racks that could have been taken from wolves. Nothing had been spared, he could even see what looked like shrivelled and blackened hearts piled near the far walls.

Not even those of their own race.

An odd cut had caught his eye, drawing his attention. Only for him to realise that it was likely a forearm. Just the right length to have come from a boggart. Analysis only confirmed that truth.

Fearing what else he would find in the room if he looked too deeply, Kaius felt his nausea rise.

He backed away.

“Store house—smoked food, including boggart.” he whispered with grimly pursed lips.

Only to freeze as a low laugh echoed through the cave from up ahead. Kaius held his breath, not daring to make a sound as he strained his hearing. The sound petered out, turning into a barely audible murmur.

Whatever it had been was close, but not that close. It also wasn’t coming any closer. They hadn’t been discovered.

Sharing a look of determination and resolute nods with his team, Kaius led them onwards.

They crept through the cave, taking care to place their feet softly on the hardened ground. Slowly, the noises grew louder, resolving themself into a barely heard conversation of deep guttural tones. Too deep to be boggarts. Bugbears, it had to be.

It was still hard to tell how close they were. The omnipresent serpentine curve of the cave passage was helpful in that it broke up sightlines, but it did severely hamper their ability to see more than a hundred strides in either direction.

Rounding another bend, the far wall of the cave ahead glinted with reflected light—more than could be expected from the small torches that had been lighting the passages since they entered the nest.

Sharing a silent look with his team, Kaius stepped out alone.

He approached quickly, pressing himself close to the cold stone wall as he peered around the corner. Seeing nothing but another illuminated bend, he rushed to the edge of the next bend—heart pounding with every step.

Feeling sweat bead on his brow, he listened close. The guttural speech had faded now, but he could still hear something awake down the passage.

Poking his eyes out, Kaius saw that the cave continued for a good thirty strides before it terminated in a large natural cavern.

Illuminated by a roaring fire of a size yet to be seen, stalactites broke up the ceiling with needle tipped points. Their upwards turned siblings had been smashed and cleared, the floor crudely smoothed.

For a good reason, Kaius realised. A crude tent had been pitched along one cavern edge—made of roughly carved wood and stitched together hides.

An understandable improvement from the living facilities of common boggarts—understandable, considering the seven bugbears that sat around the fire at the cavern’s centre.

Each and every one of them was alert and awake, tearing into haunches of smoked meat. The biggest of them—perhaps tall enough to reach his collarbone—had what looked to be a woodsman's axe at his side, confirming his fears.

No doubt a bugbear of status, because the others had crude stone weapons. Albeit ones of a better and sturdier make than most he’d seen.

There was no way they could take them on without a cry going out. For one, they were undoubtedly tougher than boggarts—better armed and stronger too. Two, he had absolutely no way of being spotted unawares.

Their fire kept the whole room lit, and they circled it in such a way that he’d likely be spotted as soon as he rounded the bend.

Worse, there was a pillar of stone at the back of the room, with a large plate of metal shaped into a crude gone jutting off its side. Covered in the large and jagged runes favoured by the tribe’s shaman, If the bugbear’s got the chance to wail on it they’d no doubt be able to wake the dead.

Kaius pulled back—this tunnel was a bust, they’d have to scope out the next and hope for more easy prey.

He returned to his team quickly, not bothering to hide in the shadows since it would have been impossible for anything to creep past Ianmus and Porkchop with them being unaware.

They greeted his return with relieved nods, Ianmus giving him a questioning look.

Shaking his head, Kaius held a finger to his lips, before gesturing back the way they had come. They were far too close to speak—even a whisper might be overheard if they were unlucky.

They retreated back the way they had come. Putting a couple of bends between them and the bugbears, Kaius felt comfortable enough to share his findings at a low whisper.

“Seven bugbears, awake and no way to sneak up on them. Room’s at least a dead end—we check out the other tunnel.”

Ianmus nodded.

“No chance at all of taking them by surprise?” Porkchop asked.

“Not without an alarm going out.” Kaius replied with a shake of his head for Ianmus’s benefit.

He set off, waving for his team to follow.

Backtracking eased his nerves. Walking through stretches they’d confirmed empty was a balm to cold tension in his spine. He knew all the creeping and hiding was necessary given the scale of the plague, but give him a straight up fight any day of the week and he’d be happy with it.

The larder came into view, and Kaius picked up the pace, passing the doorway—his team hot on his heels.

Only for a hammer blow of fear to rock his chest as a piercing squeal of surprise shattered the silence.