Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [69]
“She’s dead,” said Ember. “But she may still be of some use. That seems like a good way to honor her life.”
“Charr or not,” Dougal said, “that’s the coldest rationalization I’ve ever heard.”
“Bear’s blood!” said Gullik. “I’ve never heard a pack of warriors natter on so like a gaggle of old women squabbling over their weaving.”
The norn turned to Killeen. “Next time, show some more respect to those you kill. Every one of them was someone’s child once.”
“I wasn’t,” the sylvari said.
Gullik waved off her point. “You know what I mean.”
To Dougal, the norn said, “The deed is done. Rather than fight over that, let’s make some use of it. Or would you prefer one of us to wind up sharing that woman’s fate?”
Dougal groaned and looked at Wynne once more. Blood covered her from her head to her knees, to which she’d fallen after Ember had delivered the killing blow. Her mangled face was recognizable, but only just.
“All right,” he said, shaking his head as he spoke. “Put her … it … in the front. Then we don’t have to look at her face.”
“What about the rest of them?” Riona said. “Do we just leave them like this? To be eaten by the rats?”
Dougal gave her a pained shrug. He shared her anguish, but he didn’t see what they could do to fix it. “We can’t burn them down here, and we can’t bury them in stone. Someone will come looking for them soon enough.” He grimaced. “We need to be as far away from here as we can be by then, if only so we aren’t forced to thin the Vanguard’s numbers even more.”
Killeen put the shambling, dead Wynne in the lead. The sylvari followed right after her, with Kranxx on her heels. Riona trailed after them, and Dougal remained in the back of the line of people who could fit onto the walkway. Trudging through the stream, Ember and then Gullik swept along behind the rest of them.
They made their way through the last section of the sewer, which seemed to wind on forever. Dougal kept peering into the darkness, hoping to see even the faintest glow of light.
The first clue he had that they were near the exit was the way the walls of the tunnel seemed to vibrate in a tone lower than his ears could hear. He could feel it in the air, though, and eventually through the soles of his boots.
The silent thrumming slowly grew in pitch and volume until it became a dull roar. This, Dougal knew, must be the sound of the stream spilling out of the tunnel and tumbling down onto the mountainside beyond.
“We should be coming up on it soon,” Kranxx said. Dougal detected a hint of worry in the asura’s voice.
“You don’t know? Haven’t you been here before?” asked Riona.
“Of course not,” said Kranxx. “Don’t you know how dangerous this is? I’ve studied the maps many times, though.”
Dougal did not find that reassuring. He was about to say something about it when Wynne disappeared.
The walkway in front of them had tilted under their weight. Pitching forward, it had thrown Wynne into the fast-moving waters. She floundered about at the surface for a moment, flapping her dead arms in some horrible mockery of an attempt to swim, and then disappeared beneath the surface.
Killeen screamed as she nearly toppled in after her undead servant. When the walkway tipped downward, she lost her balance and spun her arms in a vain attempt to recover it. Moving faster than Dougal had thought he could, Kranxx leaned forward, bending at the waist, and tapped Killeen on the shoulder with the hook attached to his back.
Killeen managed to snag the hook with her hand, but instead of the hook hauling her back, her weight pulled Kranxx forward, dragging him along to share her fate. However, this gave Dougal enough time to react, and he pushed past Riona to snag the asura by the top of his pack. For a moment he thought he might tumble in after the others, and the trap would manage to kill all three of them at once. But he dug in his heels and leaned back hard, bringing their forward progress to a halt. With Riona’s help, he yanked both Kranxx and Killeen back to a solid part of the walkway, where they all collapsed in a heap.