All is Not Lost, Part 2

The boy's knees gave way and he slid against the wall until he was lying on the floor.

"Damn." Reiner said, and returned to the main chamber. "Surgeon, the boy has collapsed."

Gustaf, who was examining Oskar's wrist, stood up.

"I'll take care of him." As he passed Reiner, he raised an eyebrow. "Your nose is crooked to one side, Captain. I think you've broken it."

Reiner put a hand to his face.

"Ah. That would explain why my face feels like it's as big as a melon."

"I'll fix it in a moment," said the surgeon. "In the meantime, if you could rip your shirt into strips..." He bent down and entered the smaller chamber with his satchel.

Reiner joined the others and took off his jerkin and shirt. The air in the chamber was stale, but it was much warmer than the air inside the mine. The temperature was almost ideal. Hals was sawing the spear with the dagger in an attempt to make a crutch.

Giano was splitting the shelves into slats of the required length. Oskar was rocking back and forth while holding his arm. Pavel was pressing a piece of shirt against his mouth. His upper lip was split up to his nose and bleeding profusely.

He smiled at Reiner through reddened teeth.

"And here I didn't think I could get any uglier..."

"Maybe you'll lose the other eye." Hals said. "Then you won't have to look at yourself."

Pavel chuckled.

"It's but a hope."

After a while, Gustaf returned. Reiner thought there was something odd about his expression, a satisfied repressed smile, possibly, but the surgeon always seemed to be repressing some evil thought, so he wasn't sure.

"How's the boy?" asked Reiner.

The smirk widened for a moment and then disappeared.

"He sleeps. I gave him some syrup. A mastiff scratched him with its paw along his ribs and then a sharp stone was driven into the wound as he was falling. Very painful. I removed the stone and bandaged it. He'll be weak for a while, but he'll live." He snorted. "If any of us survive."

"Arrogant little..." said Reiner respectfully. "You try to be tough too hard."

"Yes." Gustaf replied, then advanced to Pavel and pulled out needle and thread.

Just as he squatted down, Ulf suddenly sat up with lightning speed, waving his arms and bellowing.

"The beasts! The beasts!" He struck Gustaf and Oskar involuntarily. The others turned away from him.

Reiner remained where he was.

"Ulf! Ulf! Calm down. The mastiffs are gone."

Ulf's fists stopped shaking and he blinked, looking around.

"What...?"

"We fell. Don't you remember?"

"I... I thought..."

"You hit your heads." Gustaf said as he recovered from the punch. "How do you feel?"

Ulf rubbed his eyes. He swayed, sitting on the ground, as if drunk.

"My head hurts. My vision is blurry. Shall we fall?"

"Into a slag heap." Reiner said. "We're all hurt."

"But at least we escaped the mastiffs!" laughed Hals. Gustaf looked into Ulf's eyes.

"You have a concussion. If your eyesight doesn't improve, let me know." He returned to Pavel's side to stitch up his lip.

"But where are we?" asked Ulf, suddenly anxious. "Where is the Norse war host? Have we lost them? Can we get back to where we were? Are we lost in here?"

"Shut up, you fool!" commanded Reiner. "We don't need to deal with two Oskar. Gustaf would run out of elixir."

He growled. The engineer had talked too much, and now he could see the anxiety spreading from one face to the other.

"Calm down," he said. "All of you. Yes, we're in a tough spot, but, as Hals just said, we've escaped the mastiffs, so we're better off than we were before, okay? Let's see, I don't know where the war host is in relation to us, or where we are, since we talked about it, but someone made these tunnels. They have to lead somewhere." He pulled out Barrister's compass again. "And, at the moment, they lead south, which is the direction we want to go, so all is not completely lost."

He closed his eyes for a second and almost forgot to open them again due to exhaustion.

"I propose we rest here." He said at last. "There is room for all of us. When our doctor has finished healing us we'll gather ourselves and we'll decide on a course of action when we wake up and can think clearly, is that all right with you?"

She sighed in relief as she saw the men nod their heads and calm down.

"Good. We'll take two guards. I'll take the second one if anyone thinks they can do the first."

"I'll do it." Gustaf hastened to say. "I'm the one with the least injuries."

Reiner nodded to thank him, though he felt slightly puzzled.

Never before had the surgeon volunteered to stand guard.

When Gustaf had stitched, bandaged and immobilized all the wounds and fractures and everyone had settled into the eight small rooms, they made a curious discovery. The darkness was no longer absolute. They had expected to plunge into blackness once Gustaf had stationed himself in the main chamber and extinguished the torch, but a faint light, so dim that at first they were not sure it really existed, illuminated the chambers. The greenish luminescence seemed to come from the walls or, more accurately, from the lustrous moss that lined them. "It's a small blessing." Pavel commented from the chamber he occupied with Hals.

"So it is." Reiner thought as he carefully reclined his head on a pile of stinking rags. "At least we can see what other aberrant horror sneaks out of the tunnels and kills us."

An agonized shriek wrenched Reiner from a dream in which he was playing dice with a mysterious opponent. He knew the guy was using loaded dice, yet he kept playing, kept betting even though he lost every time.

He looked around, blinking in the green gloom, momentarily not knowing where he was. The scream was heard again. This time he recognized Gustaf's voice. Gustaf! Gustaf was on guard. They were under attack! He jumped to his feet, grabbed his sword and almost fell down again because his body hurt too much and in too many places. He had the impression of being wrapped in iron ropes that tightened with every movement he made.

He forced himself to move despite the pain and stumbled out into the main chamber. The others were also coming out of the smaller chambers with weapons in hand. Oskar was not there.

Reiner limped toward the tunnel, but was stopped by a horrible stertorous groan that echoed inside Franz's chamber. Reiner turned around, and he and the others entered the chamber ready for a fight.

Before their eyes appeared a bewildering tableau vivant. Franz was leaning against a wall, wild-eyed, and holding his jerkin closed with one hand while in the other he held a bloody dagger. Gustaf lay at his feet in a pool of blood, clutching a wound in his throat that would never close. As Reiner watched, Gustaf's arms relaxed and fell, limp, to the floor. The air in the chamber filled with the smell of urine.

"By the gods, boy!" exclaimed Reiner, horrified. "What have you done?"

"He..." said Franz. He did not seem fully awake.

"He's killed our only hope of getting out of here, that's what he's done." Hals snarled, furious. "You stupid little fool, I ought to wring your neck!"

Franz wrapped his arms around his torso.

"He tried to... put his hands on me."

"Again with that?" said Hals. "Well, it's no good, my boy. You were with us when Gustaf went after that poor wench. He didn't like boys, no matter how unmanly they were."

"What does it matter what the fellow does!" cried Giano. "We need him. How will we do now if he doesn't heal our wounds, eh?" He spat at Franz's boots.

"Gustaf knew the way out." Said a voice behind them. It was Oskar, clinging to the wall, his expression too alert to be good. "Remember. There was some obstacle up ahead. He didn't want to tell us which one."

"He didn't want to tell us so we wouldn't kill him." Hals nodded. "And now this fool goes and kills him!" He clenched his fists. "I think the time has come for us to teach this crybaby what it means to be a man. I propose we give him a few hard lessons, eh?"

"No!" Reiner replied. "We're all battered enough as it is. It's a bad thing I killed him, I admit, but we need all the hands we can count on and-"

"Shhhhhh!" hushed Ulf from the doorway. "Don't you hear anything?"

They all remained quiet and listened. There was something, more a vibration in the rock than a crisp sound.

"Into the tunnel." Reiner said.

They tiptoed out into the corridor, leaving Franz and Gustaf's corpse inside, and stopped with alert ears.

The sound was louder there, a rumbling murmur. The vibrations seemed to come from above and far away. A song could be heard above the murmur, a harsh choleric psalmody.

"The war host!" said Oskar. "It has to be!"

Pavel grinned openly. "I never thought I'd be glad to hear the Norsemen on the march."

Reiner smiled. "Well, gather your accoutrements. We leave at once."

They walked back into the round room.

"When you are ready, depart," Reiner said as he entered Franz's chamber. "I will catch up with you shortly. I want to speak to the boy alone."

"Yes, Captain." Hals said.

Reiner entered the chamber as the others began to gather their things. The boy, teeth gritted in pain, was slowly pulling on his leather doublet and keeping his feet apprehensively away from the pool of blood that was growing larger and larger under Gustaf's corpse.

Reiner crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

"All right, boy. Tell me about it."

Franz looked up at him and then averted his eyes.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't play the fool with me, young man. I know there's more to this than meets the eye. Hals was right. Gustaf liked wenches, not boys, so the excuse won't work this time. What did he want from you? Was he extorting money from you?"

"No." Franz replied in a confident tone. "Why..., why would he do that?"

"That's for you to tell me. I gather that he discovered something about you when he was healing you. Some secret you want to hide."

The boy clutched his knees and looked at the floor. He did not respond.

"Come on, boy." Reiner said in a kindly tone. "I am not a religious fanatic. I will not denounce you, but to be a good commander I must know who I command. Know your strengths, your weaknesses, the little things in your past that could complicate life for all of us in the future."

Franz snorted through his nose looking wretched.

"What is it, then?" asked Reiner. "Do you bear the mark of some pagan god on your body? Do you possess some anomaly or mutation? Do you have a second pair of arms? Or a mouth on your belly? Do you like men?"

"I can't tell you." Franz replied. "I can't."

"Come on, come on, it can't be worse than what I just mentioned. Tell me and let's get it over with."

Franz dropped his shoulders. His head touched his knees. Then, with a sigh, he rose painfully to his feet. He looked toward the door. The others were going out into the tunnel. When they had disappeared, he turned to look at Reiner.

"Will you promise not to tell anyone?"

"I don't make promises, boy, so I never have to break them. But I know how to keep a secret if there's reason to."

Franz frowned as he heard this, and sighed again. With reluctant hands he loosened the ties that closed his shirt and opened it. His chest was bandaged from armpits to belly. Reiner grimaced.

"Were you hurt that badly?"

"The wound is serious." Franz replied. "But only part of the bandage is to cover the wound." And with lowered eyes he tugged at the bandages to bring them down to the ribs. Reiner uttered a choked exclamation. the boy was deformed! Two swollen pinkish protuberances protruded from his chest. By the gods, Reiner thought, the poor boy really was a mutant. He almost looked like he had...

"By the son's divine balls! You're a girl!"