The Dungeoneers (18 page)

Colm fished in his sack for his lockpick set, the one Finn had given him, but found only the dagger and the jewel. He dug through the sack again, then looked up.

Finn dangled the picks over his head.

“Even I have to stay in practice,” he said.

Colm snatched them back, then turned toward what had to be the best-protected pair of old boots in history.

He picked until he had blisters. Then he picked until they burst. It was excruciating. The picks were finicky, and he found he had to hold them in a variety of awkward positions depending on what lock he was working on.

In addition, he had several different picks to choose from, some with diamond tips or circles, some shaped like a saw blade or a pair of fangs or a rake. At first Finn wouldn't tell him which pick to use for which lock, just let him fumble around for a bit, experimenting. Only when Colm's sighs grew sufficiently exasperated did the rogue stop to explain, pointing to the proper pick and describing the mechanism inside the lock, how the tumblers worked and how many pins each one contained. He taught Colm the difference between a wafer lock and a disk lock, when to rake and when to push,
how much tension to apply to get everything lined up just right. He taught Colm how to listen, putting his ear to the door, waiting for the characteristic
click
that Finn said was “the sound of gold in your pocket.” He held Colm's hands and moved them around, like a puppeteer, but with such minute gestures it hardly seemed like either of them was moving at all. After each lock, Colm would open the door to reveal one pair of dusty boots. Then Finn would set the next one and close the door again.

Colm conquered the first two locks with little trouble. The third took most of an hour.

“Patience,” Finn would say, and Colm would relax for a moment, take a deep breath, and flex his fingers to get the blood back in them. Then, two minutes later, Finn would scream “Troll!” or “Spider!” or “Flaming skull!” and beg Colm to hurry lest they both perish by the claw of whatever imaginary creature was stalking them, causing Colm to get nervous and fumble with the lock, dropping his picks and losing any progress he had made.

“Stop
doing
that!” Colm protested.

“Working under pressure is the rogue's hallmark. One slip, and your whole party is doomed. Your craft requires the utmost concentration and mental agility. Now hurry up before this imaginary ogre eats me.”

By the time the afternoon was over, Colm had managed to undo the third lock and the fourth. He was just starting on the fifth when Finn told him his time was up, reminding Colm
that he wasn't the only member of the guild who needed training.

Colm nodded. He had hoped to make it further. He had had a notion, when he first saw the door, that he would make it through the first ten locks in a day. After the first lock, Finn had called Colm “a natural.” But Colm couldn't help but feel disappointed.

“You know,” Finn said, stopping him on the way out, “lock number three is the same one the magistrate of Felhaven uses for the town's treasury. I know. I've seen it.”

Colm wasn't sure why Finn was telling him this. He didn't respond.

“Which means you already know enough to be as rich as him.” The rogue offered Colm a wink and then shooed him out the door.

Colm left the workshop, picturing himself breaking into the Felhaven treasury in the middle of the night. Imagine the look on the magistrate's face when he woke up to find his coffers empty. But as soon as the thought sneaked in, Colm felt guilty for having it. He had no intentions of robbing the magistrate. Rule number one. He gently rubbed his three sore fingers with his other hand and made his way to the dining hall.

The evening stew was whitish, with beans and bacon, a smell that reminded Colm of home—on the rare occasions when his family could afford bacon. An afternoon of listening for dropping tumblers and fidgeting with picks had given him an appetite, at least.

Serene noticed him in the archway and waved him over. She looked to be her normally cheery self, and Quinn also seemed pleased, which was nice; Colm had hoped the mageling would have a better afternoon. This time it was Lena who was scowling. One look at her finger told Colm most of what he needed to know. He sat across from her, pulling the basket of bread away from Quinn, who appeared to be hoarding it like a dragon, and pointed to the bandage on Lena's finger.

“I don't want to talk about it,” she snapped, slowly bending her iron spoon in half. Colm looked to Quinn, who raised his eyebrows sympathetically.

“She lost,” he said.

Colm nodded solemnly. She lost. It didn't even matter what she had lost at. Lena was the kind of girl who could take a bad coin flip personally. But this was much more serious.

“She was bested in single combat,” Quinn explained. “By him.” The mageling pointed across the room with his spoon at the table in the corner where Tyren was attempting to eat an entire loaf of bread in one mouthful. Lena twisted the spoon some more, apparently trying to tie it into a knot.

“Oh,” Colm said. That was serious.

Quinn and Serene both nodded. “Only wooden swords, but apparently he caught her knuckle just right. There was a little . . . you know.” Across the table, Lena shuddered and closed her eyes. “She didn't faint—but she did get a little woozy and lost her balance. Tyren disarmed her in two moves.”

“It was a cheap shot,” Lena said. “He
tried
to draw blood.”

Colm considered telling her that that was generally what sword fighting was all about, but thought better of it. The spoon was a mangled loop of twisted metal already, and he thought she might just throw it at him.

“On the plus side,” Quinn remarked, “I learned how to boil water today. Watch.”

The mageling pointed at his bowl of stew and began chanting under his breath. A moment later, you could see the first bubble start to surface, and soon the bowl of bacon and beans was bubbling and popping like it was still over the coals. “You want yours warmed up?”

Colm shook his head. Better not to risk it.

“I learned how to speak dog,” Serene said, beaming. “I mean, I knew already, but I was a little rusty. We don't have wild dogs in the glade. Most of the elders prefer owls for pets. Or wolves.” She shivered in her seat.

“Wolves are just big dogs,” Colm suggested.

“And panthers are just big cats too, but you wouldn't just go up and pet one.”

Colm was about to tell them about the door of not nearly a hundred locks and how he had managed to get through the first four already when the normally boisterous dining hall fell silent. A familiar figure stood in the archway, practically filling it. He peered out from behind his lion's mane of hair, his bulk barely contained in his golden armor.

“Don't be quiet on my account,” Tye Thwodin said. “Roar!
Boast! Shout! We are adventurers! We are meant to be loud!” There was a pause, and then slowly conversation returned as Master Thwodin stomped through the room.

“What's he doing here?” Colm wondered.

“He does this, I hear,” Lena offered, snapped out of her funk by the presence of the guild's founder mingling with his charges. “To get to know his new dungeoneers better.”

Colm watched the legendary warrior work his way down the tables, clapping his recruits so hard on the back that it made them choke, sometimes reaching over and stealing some of their food or swigs from their cups. Nobody dared tell him no. It was his castle, after all. Finally he made his way to Colm's table and peered down at the lot of them.

“Aha. Here's some fresh faces,” he bellowed. “How was your first full day as official dungeoneers in training?”

Quinn nodded eagerly, probably too nervous to try and speak. Serene said it was excellent, thank you. Colm smiled.

“And you, Miss . . . Proudmore, is it? Got your first war wound, I see.” He pointed to her knuckle.

“Just a scrape, sir,” she said, not looking up. So there was at least
somebody
she didn't have the nerve to stare down.

“Just a scrape? Judging by the size of that bandage, I'd say you nearly lost the finger! You might know something about that, though, wouldn't you?” Tye added, staring at Colm. Colm was about to explain how he had actually been born that way when a young man Colm didn't recognize walked briskly through the dining hall, snapping to attention in
front of the head of the legion.

“Master Thwodin, there's a matter requiring your attention, sir,” the young man whispered.

“Can't you see I'm mingling?” Tye Thwodin barked.

“Yes, sir. But it's kind of urgent,” the messenger insisted. “It's Master Wolfe, sir. He has returned.”

Colm noticed that everyone within earshot suddenly froze, mouths shut, ears perked, eyes wide.

Tye Thwodin simply shrugged. “And what? He wants me to fetch his slippers for him? I assure you, Grahm Wolfe can find the front door by himself. He's a bloody ranger who killed his first orc when you were still sucking on your own toes. Let's just leave the poor man alone.”

“That's the thing, sir,” the messenger said. “He's
not
alone. He has . . .
company
.”

There was a heavy pause as Master Thwodin considered the implications. Then he gave the young man a penetrating stare. “Well, in that case, call the other masters. And then run down to the armory and grab my hammer. You know which one.”

The messenger spun around and ran back through the archway at twice the speed he had come in. Master Thwodin turned back to Colm's table. “Sorry to cut the conversation short,” he said. “But it appears we have guests.”

It didn't take long for the dining hall to clear out. Once Tye Thwodin gave the command for the other masters to arm themselves and meet him at the front gates, the younger dungeoneers collectively determined that dinner was over. Even
Colm got a little chill when the gilded giant of a man stomped out of the dining hall, bellowing commands. There was a huge commotion as the surge of trainees funneled through the archway into the great hall to the front doors, but they were quickly stopped by Master Merribell, who had both hands raised, commanding them to halt.

“Where do you think you're going?” she demanded.

“To watch,” Lena said eagerly.

“I'm afraid not. The castle is on lockdown. You should return to the dining hall until the lookout rings the all clear.”

Master Thwodin, Smashy Two now slung across one shoulder, heard the collective groan and turned around. “It's all right, Bell. It's just a little raiding party. Let them watch from up top. It will be educational.” Then he turned and strode toward the giant double doors beneath the hourglasses, Masters Velmoth and Stormbow in tow, along with the goblin. Colm noticed that Finn was not among them. Apparently rogues weren't called upon to defend the castle from invaders.

“Come on!” Quinn said, tugging on Colm shoulder. “I don't want to miss this!”

Colm turned and followed Quinn up the stairs, catching Lena and Serene and the rest of the crowd as they made their way through the halls to the doors leading out to the battlements. Colm had been on the roof to visit the rookery on his first day, but this time they moved toward the front of the castle, looking down over the courtyard and the field beyond, edged by the emerald forest all around.

Colm froze. There, racing across the wet grass, leaning hard
into his horse's mane, was a figure dressed in black. Both hands clutched the reins as the steed's hooves kicked up clods of mud behind him, the pair making straight for the castle gate.

This, apparently, was Master Wolfe. And the messenger was right: he wasn't alone.

Along the edge of the forest, pouring out from between the trees, was a wave of orcs—Colm recognized them from the book Herren Bloodclaw had insisted they read. In person, they looked much more vicious than their black-and-white engravings: clubs and axes brandished, ugly green-and-brown faces contorted in snarls. The monsters were mounted on what looked to be giant boars with tusks the size of tree branches, two to a back, careening down the sloping plain that led to the castle's outer wall. You could hear the thunder of their hoofbeats.

“Didn't he say
little
raiding party?” Serene asked. There had to be at least fifty of them.

The boars were fast—faster than Colm had ever imagined they could be—but the black-clad figure's horse was faster. There was no way they would catch him. All around him, he heard the other young dungeoneers cheering Master Wolfe on. Colm had to admit, it was more exciting than sitting in Finn's office blistering his fingers.

“He's going to make it,” Quinn said.

Colm agreed. The ranger would have, certainly. That is, if he hadn't stopped, his mottled gray mare reeling back and wheeling around to face the horde bearing down on him.

“What's he doing?”

A girl standing behind them, tall enough to look over the top of Colm's sandy mop of hair, laughed. “It's Master Wolfe. What do you think he's doing?”

The figure on the horse crossed both arms, reaching down to either side of his belt and drawing the two swords he found there. Colm thought he could almost hear, from all the way up the castle walls, the
zing
of the metal pulled from the scabbards.

“Anywhere and Anytime,” Lena cooed, her voice steeped in pure awe. “The twin blades of one of the most feared swordsmen ever.” Colm looked down at Scratch by his side.

“Wait a minute. He's not actually going to attack them, is he?” Quinn croaked.

Colm wondered what Finn would say, outnumbered fifty to one. Run. Run and hide and live to fight again. But the man with a sword in each hand charged instead—the clop of the horse's hooves mixed with the rolling drums of two dozen barreling boars, destined for a collision in the middle of the field. Colm figured the ranger might take down four of them. Ten, if he was as legendary as everyone around here seemed to think he was. But that still left forty clubs, axes, and scimitars to deal with, not to mention all those gouging tusks. It looked like suicide.