The Broken Knife

Once everyone had eaten - and Kaz stuffed half of his portion into his pack for ‘later’ - they all walked the short distance further to the passage that would take them down. They saw a few more totems, but they weren’t particularly large or threatening, so Kaz just led the group around the indicated territory.

When they had almost reached the cavern, Kaz dropped back a bit, allowing Raff and Gaoda to pass him, and waited for their reactions. He wasn’t disappointed.

Both humans stopped dead in their tracks as the ground fell away at the edge of their light. They edged forward cautiously, and Raff swore under his breath, while Gaoda simply stood, mouth agape. Lianhua moved up beside Kaz and stared out into the blackness that surrounded the colossal pit ahead of them. The only things visible after the cavern entrance were two rusty chains, about six feet out, coming from somewhere above them and vanishing into the depths.

Raff looked back at Kaz. “How big is that hole?”

Kaz shrugged. “I don’t know. It narrows as you go down, but even at the bottom it’s more than ten yards across.”

Gaoda finally managed to shut his mouth, snorting with disdain. “It can’t be that large. It seems bigger than it is because of the darkness.” He held out his hand, and the ball that hovered by his shoulder split into two, with the slightly smaller one moving out to float above his palm. With a soft grunt, he hurled it out over the chasm. It illuminated exactly nothing but the two thick chains until it finally vanished, presumably moving too far away for Gaoda to continue feeding it power.

Raff swore again, and Lianhua shook her head in amazement.

“Do we have to climb the chains?” she asked, eying them dubiously.

Kaz shook his head, fighting a grin. “Not this time.” Lifting his chin, he let out a long, low howl followed by four short yips. After a moment, an answering howl echoed up from the darkness, followed by a creaking sound. Ahead of them, the chains began to shift, one moving up while the other moved down an equal amount.

The humans tensed, but Kaz held up a hand. “Wait.”

The creaking continued for a long time, slowly growing louder. Every now and then, other howls and yips could be heard, and sometimes the chains and the rattle of whatever was coming toward them would pause, causing the humans to look at Kaz questioningly.

He shrugged. “Must have been at the bottom.”

At last, a faint glow appeared in the depths, and a cranky voice called up, “I’m coming, I’m coming! You better have the fare, or I’ll take your head as payment instead.”

Kaz’s tail wagged at the familiar sound, and he called back, “I like my head where it is, Ogden. If you try to take it, I’ll nip you again.”

The sound and the light hesitated, then sped up. “Kaz? Is that you, pup? What’re you doing back here?”

Kaz whined softly in excitement as the top of a strange contraption came into view. It was a square metal platform with one chain attached to the center of it, moving it up and down, while the other passed through a hole beside it. A squat powerhouse of a husede stood beside the chains, hauling on the chain that passed through the platform, causing it to sway and rise a few more feet. As the light illuminated his features, he turned to look up at them, and his craggy face split into a broad smile.

“It is you, pup! I’d know that fur anywhere. I thought I’d seen the last of you when Idil Ironclaw chased your lot up here.” He pulled at the chain again, muscles rippling beneath the deep gray skin of his arms and chest, until the platform jerked to a stop, swaying slowly, still a good three feet below ground level. The man glared at it, gave the chain a ferocious yank, then ducked as a few particularly large pieces of rust broke free of the links above him.

“Eh, fine,” he muttered. He pulled a hooked metal bar as thick as his forearm from his belt and stuck it through the broad links of both chains at a precise angle. The bar fit perfectly, neatly preventing either of them from moving. Turning back toward the small group waiting for him, his black eyes glittered as he eyed them.

“Who’re your friends, Kaz?” he asked. “I haven’t seen humans in a good twenty or thirty years, and they weren’t exactly common then.”

Kaz nodded to each human in turn. “Gaoda Xiang, Lianhua, Raff, and-” he looked around, realizing that Chi Yincang had disappeared again. Sighing, he said, “Chi Yincang is somewhere,” before motioning to the husede in turn. “This is Ogden. We met when I still lived a few levels down.”

Ogden looked amused. “‘Met’, he says. You bit me!”

Kaz’s ears drooped with embarrassment. “I didn’t know what you were. You smelled strange, and I thought you were in our territory.”

“Eh, no harm done.” Ogden slapped his hand against his bare chest, the sound more like stone against stone than flesh.

“Except to my teeth,” Kaz muttered.

Raff shook his head wonderingly. “One of the Gray Dwarves,” he said. “I thought you all lived far beneath the mountains, not,” he motioned around, “all the way up here.”

Ogden snorted and hooked a thumb at Kaz. “The pup’s mother isn’t the only one who knows how to make herself an enemy or twelve. It was better for my health to go wandering for a few decades.” His eyes grew sharp as he focused on Kaz again. “Speaking of which, how is Oda? And Rega?”

Kaz’s chest tightened, but he kept his voice calm as he said, “Joined the ancestors. Both of them.”

The husede huffed out a breath, shaking his head. “I have to admit, I’m not all that surprised about Oda, but I’m sorry to hear Rega’s dead. Sorry to hear about Oda, too, for all that she could be a hard female to like. I suppose your sister is chief now?”

Kaz bowed his head and tapped his closed fist to his chest. “She is, and thank you.”

Ogden nodded, eyeing Kaz appraisingly. “You look good. Almost as tall as me, though a bit too skinny. What’re you doing here? Unless I’ve completely lost track of time, which is possible, you should be about ready to go on your spirit hunt, but I don’t see the mark of a warrior on you.”

Kaz reached up to his throat, where a necklace made from the bones and teeth of the creatures he killed during his spirit hunt should hang. “Oda said it wasn’t time yet.”

Ogden’s black eyes narrowed, and he humphed thoughtfully, but before he could say anything else, Gaoda broke in.

“Is this contraption how we’re expected to descend?” he demanded. “It looks like it’ll crumble into a pile of rust at any moment, condemning its occupants to certain death. I think I’d rather climb.”

Shrugging, Ogden gestured into the darkness surrounding them. “You’re welcome to try. You can’t use my chain without paying up, and about twenty feet down, the walls smooth out until they’re slick as polished obsidian. They stay that way until the bottom, which is a good half mile further on.”

Gaoda shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

Ogden chuckled. “Clearly not. You do what you like, though, so long as you don’t take Kaz with you when you go.” He gestured invitingly to the swaying platform. “You coming, pup?”

Kaz looked at Lianhua, who nodded, though she looked doubtful. They stepped forward together, and Gaoda moved to stand in front of them, arms spread.

“Chi Yincang!” Gaoda called, and the missing human stepped silently from the shadows just beyond the light emitted by Gaoda’s orb. Gaoda pointed to the platform. “Make sure this thing is safe.”

Chi Yincang bowed, and moved to the side of the pit so swiftly he seemed to blur around the edges. He jumped down to the platform, which creaked and swayed, but remained level. He stamped his foot, then walked across the surface, which showed no reaction except for losing a few more flakes of rust. Returning to the front, he nodded to his master, who sighed.

“Fine,” Gaoda said, and jumped down to stand beside Chi Yincang. Raff followed, then Kaz. Finally, Gaoda held his hand up to Lianhua. She ignored it and jumped down, landing lightly and not even making the platform sway. Gaoda glared at her back, but had his smile in place again when she turned to face him.

“Now what?” the gold-haired human demanded.

“Now,” Ogden said, withdrawing the bar from the chains and grabbing one, “you tell me where you want to go, and how much you’re going to pay me to take you there.”

“To the bottom,” the human said, “and as for payment… how much gold do you want?”

The platform jerked as Ogden began lowering it, allowing the chain to slip through his grip bit by bit. Going down was faster than going up, and soon enough Gaoda’s light proved the husede’s words true. The walls changed from rough-hewn stone to become so smooth it seemed as if Kaz should be able to see his own reflection in it.

“What do I want with gold?” Ogden asked, not even breathing hard. “There are gold veins twenty feet thick winding through this mountain, and hardly anyone up here bothers to dig it out. It’s too soft to be useful. Better to spend time and energy mining for iron, or even copper.”

Gaoda looked shocked, and Kaz said, “We have cloth.”

Now Ogden looked interested. “Real cloth? Woven, not fur?”

Kaz nodded. He looked at Gaoda. “Show him the cloth you used at lunch.” Behind his back, he pretended to wipe his fingers with something, and Gaoda blinked. Snapping his fingers, the human motioned to Chi Yincang, who produced the square of fabric from a pouch at his waist.

The platform ground to a halt, and Ogden slid the metal bar into the chain before stepping closer to the cloth, eyes narrowing. Looking at it, Kaz was pleased. He had only seen the material from a distance, but it had looked unstained and whole, and it was. Bright yellow, with silver thread picking out some kind of pattern in one corner, the fine weave of the fabric was of a quality rarely seen inside the mountain.

Ogden snatched it from Chi Yincang’s hand, folding it carefully and tucking it beneath the wide leather belt circling his well-muscled abdomen. “Done.”

Turning back to the chains, he removed the bar and set to work with renewed enthusiasm, which soon brought them to the first of the levels controlled by the Graybelly tribe. Two tall, lean warriors watched them with pale eyes until they passed, but didn’t challenge them. This was repeated again on each level thereafter, until the bottom of the platform settled to the ground with a clang of metal against stone.

“That’s as far as I go,” Ogden said, finally releasing the chain with a sigh and flexing his thick fingers. “Think I’ll take a break and get something to eat.” He stepped away from the chains, but hesitated before stepping off the platform. “If you’re heading deeper, you should know the Ironclaws control the stairs on this level. I don’t know if any of them will recognize you, but Idil said she’d kill or take any Broken Knives she saw.”

Kaz’s shoulders tightened. “That’s okay,” he told his friend. “There are no more Broken Knives. We joined with the Longtooth tribe, so I’m a Longknife now.”

Ogden looked surprised, but shook his head. “That’s interesting news, but you know what I mean. Idil won’t care what you call yourself, only that you’re one of Oda’s pups.”

Lianhua stepped in front of Kaz, lifting her chin. “We won’t let anyone hurt him,” she said. “But thank you for the warning.”

The husede’s broad shoulders relaxed. “Good. I’ll be off then. Kaz, I hope to see you again when you return.”

Kaz’s tail wagged gently. “And I, you.”