Dirt Line (Dwarvish Dirty Dozen Book 2) by Aaron D. Schneider & Michael Anderle

Author:Aaron D. Schneider & Michael Anderle [Schneider, Aaron D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2022-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mabon had never been so scared in all his life.

Not when he’d looked down the length of a blade at the svartalf.

Not during the shuffling walk down the mountain with a rope about his neck.

Not when he’d seen…well, not even during the moment with the tunnel.

No, it was the eternal moments he spent lying in the dark, struggling uselessly against his bonds as he heard the sharp sounds of violence and the screaming sobs of his mother. Dillon swore and snarled like a caged animal, and Kai whimpered pitifully. Mabon writhed in his bonds until he collapsed, breathless and sweating, against his brother.

“What’s happening, Mabon?” Hadyn cried, his voice lighter and higher than Mabon remembered.

The young man was glad his little brother couldn’t see his tears. His body was cramping with spasms that were part exertion, part terror. Another savage burst of energy saw him wrestling with his bonds again. He pondered what he would even do if he managed to conquer the coils trapping him here. That voice in his head, more honest than most, told him it understood it was better to squirm and struggle than lie impotent and listen to his mother’s cries.

“Mabon?” Hadyn asked. “What is happening?”

Mabon collapsed again, everything hurting. Before this, he’d never appreciated all the shades of darkness, but now they all swam together until he was certain he would be sick. His head still ached abominably from the bludgeoning by the older female dwarf. His neck felt as though the muscles had been replaced by rigid rods intent on painfully holding his head immobile. In his momentary grappling with his bonds, he’d managed to make everything hurt worse and achieved nothing.

Iridescent patches bloomed across his field of vision. He lay there wheezing, unsure if blood or sweat slicked his wrists and ankles. Given how they burned, it was blood. He was distracted from his miserable contemplations when he noticed a silence had fallen over the house. In it, Mabon achieved an even greater depth of fear. It reached a perfect pitch that had his heart shriveling in his chest as he lay there, hearing nothing.

“It’s stopped.” Mabon’s little brother sobbed, his wretched cries painfully loud in ominous silence. “Why has it stopped, Mabon?”

The young man lay shaking and gasping on the floor, heart hammering in his chest. He was certain he was about to die. He should have said something to his brother, offered some deceitful reassurance or some searing truth. Anything other than lying there, hunched and useless. With their father dead, he was the man of the house, wasn’t he? It was his job to be strong and brave and protect everyone, wasn’t it?

Then why, Watchman damn him, did he just keep lying there?

“Mabon?” Hadyn murmured, but a sharp hiss from Dillon silenced him.

“Quiet, boy,” the tough old servant instructed, his decorum forgotten as he strained to listen for sound above them. “I think I hear something.”

Up above, there were dull thumps, and something was slid across the floor.

Mabon felt Kai shift to cling to his father.

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