Crossing the Precipice: the Eludrians, #2 by LN Heintz

Author:LN Heintz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LNH Books

31

It had taken them all night to descend through the caverns—hours longer than Boson had anticipated. The limitless darkness and their unfamiliarity with the complex system of descending passages and irregular cavities had slowed them terribly. With each passing hour, more and more of their torches and oil lamps expired on the underground switchbacks, raising fears they’d all be expended before finding the exit at the bottom of the mountain. Several times they had taken wrong turns, finding the way forward impassable, blocked with underground cliffs, fissures, streams, other fantastical rock formations, or caverns that simply petered out before them like a flower crushed under a boot heel. Ever the constant worrier, Havless had stalked Boson the entire time, demanding reassurances there was indeed a way out of their bottomless abyss.

Daybreak began with several tiny glows high up in the caverns where cracks and portals admitted nascent sunlight into the empty black spaces that were otherwise barely illuminated by their torches and lamps. Those slivers and spots of light grew brighter with every passing minute, lifting everyone’s spirits, giving hope to every man and woman that they’d actually escape this dire place. An hour before they found the exit—an oval cave opening within which thirty men could walk abreast—their last torch sputtered out. But by that time, the morning had intensified the sparse rays of light emitted into the cavern through overhead openings in the ceiling and walls. Thus, they had no problem finding a path out of Ethelliphus’s demesne of darkness.

About the same time they found the exit, reports of enemy activity filtered down through the ranks from the vangards scouting the rearward approach. They could hear whisperings echoing downward, grunts as men fell, sounds of rocks falling as they were disturbed by intruders. No doubt the Bipaquans had found the cavern entrance at Flattop and had followed Havless and his men into the mountain. Making matters worse, they were close.

Boson imagined how an underground battle might be fought, but quickly decided the real threat lay in what would happen after they exited the caverns. Inside this mountain everything was too confined to allow a real battle to be conducted, and that meant there’d likely be no significant losses on either side as long as they remained underground. He tried to figure out a way to collapse the exit, thereby entrapping the Bipaquans and sealing their doom, but without an eludrian that just didn’t seem possible. Instead, they’d have to depart the caves and make their run to Grassy Creek, several leagues east of their current location. And if the Bipaquans were as close to them as Bosun feared, no doubt they’d be able to outrun and catch them.

Havless didn’t like the news.

“We won’t make it to Grassy Creek?” he asked.

“Not until we face and defeat the Bipaquans following us. Because of our wounded, they’ll outpace us and force a confrontation.”

“Do you think Lazlo Urich is with them?”

“I do not,” answered Boson. “Otherwise, he’d have attacked us by now. These caverns are nothing to him and his demon.

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