Fletcher took stock, and saw that the teams had barely cleared their quarter of land, and that didn’t include the large central pile that was to be burned.
‘What about the prisoners?’ Rufus panted, looking at Malik beseechingly. ‘My mother?’
‘We’ll get this done first,’ Malik replied, grunting as he bisected an egg with a slash of his scimitar.
‘Get on with it, Rufus. It’ll take all of us to destroy these in time,’ Didric snarled, shoving Rufus towards the nearest egg.
Rufus stumbled, then turned back, his shoulders stiff with anger. There was something in his eyes Fletcher hadn’t seen before. The mousy-haired boy was shy and unassuming at the best of times, yet now he was filled with a steely resolve.
‘I’m going to get my mother. I’ll be damned if some pleb with ideas above his station thinks he can tell me otherwise.’ Rufus spat at Didric’s boots, and Fletcher couldn’t help but grin as Didric’s face fell at the insult.
Before anyone could stop him, Rufus sprinted over the nearest bridge, dodging through the eggs to the closest tunnel. Fletcher didn’t hesitate. He charged after him, with Mason hard on his heels.
‘Rufus, stop!’ Mason said in a half-shout, half-hiss. ‘You’ll give us away!’
But Rufus was fast and had a head start. By the time Fletcher had crossed the bridge and reached the tunnel, the young noble had disappeared into the darkness.
‘At least the bloody idiot’s goin’ the right way,’ Mason groaned, catching up behind him. ‘The other tunnels lead to the surface.’
‘We’d better follow,’ Fletcher said, listening for sounds of disturbance ahead. ‘He can’t do it alone.’
Mason hefted his sword, a large, cleaver-like weapon known as a falchion. It looked almost comical next to the boy’s emaciated frame, which was already weighed down by a large crossbow. He was still skinny from his long incarceration, but he handled the sword well enough. After all, the boy had once been in the Forsyth Furies, a fearsome regiment by all accounts.
‘Let’s go then,’ Mason said, leading the way.
Fletcher paused. He knew the pain of losing a parent, and his heart went out to the scrawny young noble.
But was this really what Hominum needed? There were thousands of eggs that were yet to be destroyed. How would rescuing a mad old noble change the fate of the war?
Still, he could not let Rufus run into danger blindly, not least because he might raise the alarm.
Torn, he left Athena to continue destroying the eggs. Pacing into the tunnel, he sheathed his khopesh and drew his bow, an arrow ready on the string in case of sudden attack.
‘We come back in fifteen minutes,’ Fletcher murmured to himself. ‘With or without them.’
The tunnel sloped upwards, so much so that Fletcher began to breathe heavily from the climb. In the dim light, he could just make out Mason ahead of him. The boy was moving stealthily, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the stream of light from the exit at the end. This glow was of a different kind – natural. They had to be near the surface.
There was a final slope before the tunnel opened up, blocking their view of the cavern beyond. Mason crawled up to the edge and Fletcher followed his example, making sure to keep himself pressed firmly to the ground. His chest was soaked from the damp soil by the time he reached the top, but this small discomfort was swiftly forgotten as he took in the scene within.
‘Bloody hell,’ Fletcher breathed.
45
There were thousands of them, sprawled across the rocky ground like toys in a spoilt child’s playroom. Goblins, sleeping in the warm shade of the cavern. Their numbers were so many that there was more grey skin than ground, their limbs splayed out on top of each other as if they had fallen dead where they stood.
Above, the light filtered through openings in great beams, cutting through the darkness like solid blocks of ice. It did not appear that there were any guards, which was just as well. Rufus was on the move.
‘Bloody lunatic,’ Mason muttered, watching as the young noble picked his way through the sleeping goblins. ‘He’s lucky they get blind drunk on fermented coconut during the festival.’
Fletcher followed Rufus’s direction and found his target. It was a bamboo cage, abandoned against the wall of the chamber like an afterthought. Within, Fletcher could make out a bedraggled figure, hunched over in the corner.
Something else caught Fletcher’s eye. There were a dozen young men dozing on the other side of the cavern, as well as a handful of gremlins. The boys wore no more than loincloths, as did the gremlins, and they were all tied together by cruel leather straps.
‘Your friends?’ Fletcher asked, nodding at the group.
Mason shuddered as he saw them, his face losing its colour.
‘Three years I spent there,’ he said, his voice quavering. His hands trembled as he unslung his crossbow and quiver, laying them on the ground.