Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [53]
"S'render 'r die," the first orc ordered in slurred, barely intelligible common.
"Such unappealing options," Finder replied glibly. "I surrender. Here," he said, offering his dagger, hilt first, to the orc, but Olive could tell from the way his left hand tightened about her wrist that he was tensed for a fight.
The orc squinted his eyes suspiciously, but he was too tempted by the sight of the emeralds and topazes set in the hilt of Finder's dagger to order the bard to throw the weapon to the floor. Moving a step closer, the orc reached out to take the weapon from Finder.
More quickly than Olive would have thought possible, Finder's right leg shot up from the floor, kicking the orc's crossbow hand. The orc howled and fired his weapon, but the bolt discharged harmlessly toward the ceiling, then clattered to the floor. Finder charged between the other two orcs, pulling Olive with him.
The halfling threw her torch into the face of one of the creatures as she passed it. Hurriedly the bard raced down the dark passage, dragging Olive behind him as though she were a rag doll.
Olive heard the orcs chasing after them, then the twang of another crossbow. The bolt thunked into something soft. From the grunt Finder made and the way he stumbled, the halfling guessed the bard had been hit, but he regained his balance and ran on. He smashed into the iron grate at the other end of the corridor. Something cackled beside them. It was a fourth orc, Olive realized, sent to relock the door leading to escape! The damned orcs weren't as stupid as they looked. In the dark, she couldn't see the creature, but she heard him breathing beside her.
Finder tugged on the iron grate door, but it held fast. A rough, hairy hand grabbed Olive's left arm and began pulling her away from the bard. Olive shrieked. Finder tightened his grip on the halfling's right wrist and tugged back. Olive felt like a wishbone at a feast. She sensed Finder slashing at the orc with his dagger, then something warm and sticky gushed over her head-orc blood. The orc released her arm and fell heavily.
"Get the lock!" Finder ordered, pushing Olive toward the door. He used his own body to shield her from the rest of the orcs, who had to be moving stealthily toward them.
Olive felt her way to the lock, slid a wire from her hair, and jiggled it in the iron mechanism. She couldn't believe how easily she got the bolt to turn over.
If she'd been the one to open it the first time, she would have realized much sooner that this was a trap. As she pulled open the grate, she heard more crossbows twanging in the darkness and the sound of another bolt burying itself in flesh.
Tugging at Finder's sleeve, the halfling got the bard through the door, pushed it closed, and, within moments, relocked it with her wire. As she turned to hurry down the corridor, a hand slipped through the grate and grabbed her hair.
"Let go!" Olive shouted. She felt Finder near her, stabbing through the grate.
She felt the hand go limp as it released her.
"Through the hole," Finder shouted. "Go! Go! Go!"
Olive scrambled up the pile of dirt and stone in the dark, all the while concentrating on locating a trace of the cool air on the other side of the cave-in. "Finder! Here!" she called out when she felt a bit of cooler air blowing through the tunnel. The bard scrambled up the slope beside her and pushed her through the opening.
Olive crawled as fast as she could to clear the tunnel so Finder could get through. After a full minute, when he still didn't emerge from the opening, Olive started back through to see what was keeping him. She found his body lying in the tunnel, motionless.
"Finder, you've got to get moving!" she shouted, shaking him by the shoulders.
She grabbed his hand, thinking, quite unreasonably, that she might drag him through. His hand was warm, but it was puffed up to the size of an grapefruit.
It's the poison from that damned needle trap.