A Thief in the Night

chapter Twenty-nine

When Malden found the trap, he had to smile. It was the most elegant kind of trap, and often the hardest to find—a hazard hidden in plain sight.

The spiral passage led downward for hundreds of feet and then opened into a wide arch looking out on a natural cavern far larger than their paltry light could limn. The walls on either side of the arch were of uncut rock, rough to the touch and streaked with mineral deposits that glittered when he moved his lantern over them. The floor of the cavern was made of blocks of rough-cut basalt. He could feel how uneven they were through his soft leather shoes. It looked like the dwarves hadn’t cared enough about this chamber to ever bother finishing its construction. Malden knew how thorough dwarves were, though, and he was sure that was an intentional semblance.

Running through the middle of the cavern was an enormous crevasse in the rock, a canyon carved by some turbulent subterranean river aeons ago. He could hear water rushing by at the bottom of this defile, perhaps fifty feet below. It looked like a perfectly natural feature, a crack in the earth that even the dwarves could not heal. Malden wondered if it was more than met the eye. He tied his lantern to a rope and lowered it carefully down into the crack to get a look at its walls.

Just as he’d thought, the sides of the crevasse were smoothed out by dwarven tools. Every ledge had been rounded off, every crevice filled in with mortar. If you fell down into the crack, it would be impossible to climb back up. Yet to an uninquisitive eye, it looked perfectly natural.

The dwarves had placed a bridge across it, a wide, inviting path with high rails on either side to keep passersby from falling off the edge. A dozen men could walk abreast on the bridge—or rather, a dozen soldiers could march side by side. It looked like it could easily hold their weight. Nor was it a particularly long bridge, as the crevasse was only ten feet across.

To someone like Malden, who had spent years learning to look for subtle and carefully hidden traps, it positively screamed of danger.

He stopped Mörget before the barbarian could set foot on the bridge.

“Hold,” he said. “Let me take a look, first.”

Mörget scowled and studied the bridge. “It looks more sound than many a bridge I’ve crossed over in my time.”

“I have no doubt it will hold your weight—for a time,” Malden said. He tied off the rope holding his lantern so both his hands would be free, then picked another rope from the supplies. “Slag, drive a spike into that stone there,” he said, pointing at one of the basalt blocks, “and tie this rope to it. I trust your knots.”

“Oh, any knot I tie will hold the f*cking moon down,” Slag insisted, perhaps thinking his workmanship was under question. He did as Malden asked, then handed the free end of the line to the thief.

“Look,” Malden said, “how this end of the bridge is so well supported.” He lay down on the basalt and peered underneath the bridge. A buttress of ornate stone scrollwork held it up. “Yet on the far side—it’s not as strong.” The buttress there was cunningly carved to look much the same as its brother, but a close inspection showed it was made of thinner beams and the scrollwork looked lighter and finer. “Mörget,” he said, “take hold of this line and pay it out as I instruct.”

The barbarian did as he was told. Malden crawled forward and lowered himself carefully over the edge of the crevasse. Just as he’d thought, he was unable to find handholds in the smooth rock, and could only hang from the rope like a sinker on a fishing line. As he dangled, one foot against the wall to keep himself from spinning, he looked up at the near buttress from underneath.

In his lantern light there were clear seams in the scrollwork.

Also just as he’d thought.

“Give me six more feet of line,” he called, and his body jerked as the barbarian let the rope slacken and he dropped another six feet into the fissure. He had a moment of panic as he heard the hemp rope creak, but it held his weight. “All right, that should be enough.”

He put both of his feet against the stone wall of the crevasse and bent his knees up to his chest. Then with one quick spring he pushed against the wall and swung out on the rope, toward the far side of the gap. His fingers splayed outward to try to grab the far buttress, but he missed entirely and swung back, barely catching himself against the near wall before he smashed his teeth out on the rock.

“Malden!” Cythera cried, her face popping over the edge so she could look down at him.

He smiled with all the bravado he could muster and gave her a cheery wave.

“All’s well,” he said. “I just misjudged the distance. Mörget, give me another three feet.”

The rope creaked again as Malden dropped deeper into the fissure. He braced his feet once more and pushed hard for another swing. This time he managed to grab onto the far side of the crevasse and haul himself up onto its rim before the rope swung back. “More rope,” he called, “and Slag, toss me a spike and your mallet.” Mörget paid out the line and Malden tied it off on the far side, yanking it tight so it stretched across the fissure like a bowstring. “Now,” he said, “everyone stand back.”

On the far side the others did as he said. Malden approached the bridge and tapped it with his toes. It held—he expected it to—but he made a point of not putting his full weight on it. He found his balance and struck it with his foot again, this time bringing his foot down as hard as he dared.

The bridge dropped under his blow, the whole span of it falling away as it swung down into the crevasse. The side of the bridge closest to Malden had been held up by only a weak latch, while the scrollwork buttress on the other side was in fact a massive hinge.

Malden looked down into the crevasse and saw swirling darkness below. Twenty, maybe thirty soldiers could have gotten onto the bridge before it fell, and all of them would have fallen to their deaths. They would have been the best knights the elves could muster, the vanguard of their army. The message would have been very clear.

Malden walked back across the crevasse on the tight rope he’d strung between the two spikes. Foot over foot, his arms held out at his sides for balance. He’d done it before a million times. He made a point of bowing toward Cythera before he leapt back to the safety of the basalt.

“The rest of you will have to go hand over hand, I’m afraid. A less dignified method to get across, but far safer,” he said.

They divided up the supplies into five knapsacks. Mörget took the largest share without complaint. Anything they couldn’t carry they left behind as a cache for later. That significantly increased their mobility, but still it took the better part of an hour to get everyone across, each of them crawling along the rope, hand over hand, helping each other as much as they could. Cythera, surprisingly, had the hardest time of it. She was nimble enough, and so light the rope barely sagged under her weight, but she had to cross with her eyes clenched tightly shut. Malden knew the signs of someone with a fear of heights, and he spoke gentle words to urge her across before she opened her eyes and looked down. If she did that, he knew she would freeze up and be unable to cross at all.

He had a bad moment when Mörget started swinging across like a monkey, hand over hand with his legs dangling over the drop. The rope creaked and sagged as he stretched out its fibers and Malden worried it might just snap. Which he found he truly didn’t want it to do. True, if Mörget fell here and perished in the water below, then his own life would become a jot less dangerous. But it would also mean he would have one less warrior on his side when they eventually met the demon.

No, let Mörget kill his beast—and then all bets were off, and the barbarian could get himself killed however he pleased. Until then, Malden thought, he would do his best to keep him alive.

The rope held, despite Mörget’s antics. It was stout, strong stuff from the best of Ness’s ropewalks, and it had never gotten wet or been coiled improperly. Malden had taken care of it himself during their journey—every thief knows that his life will some day depend on a strong rope, just as he knows he may one day swing from one. All of Cutbill’s employees treated ropes with respect.

However, when they were all across, Croy looked back with skeptical eyes.

“It’ll be hard getting back across the same way on our way out,” he said. “Especially if we’re in a hurry.”

“You expect ghosts to chase us off?” Malden asked.

“Just considering all possibilities. That’s something I learned from you.”

Malden sketched a bow in his direction. “You are too kind. All right, from here I think we’ll be safe. That should be the last of the traps.” He strode across the basalt flagstones to a door in the far wall. This one stood barely five feet high. As Malden flung it open, he stepped back to bow and gesture through the door with one hand. “Mörget,” he said, “do watch your head.”

Had he not been so cavalier, he would have walked right through the doorway—and impaled himself on the iron spikes that came slamming through to meet him.