As we proceeded farther into the underground tomb, we passed rooms that seemed pregnant with purposes we couldn’t discern. Long gloomy halls that were like ossuaries. Vaults full of statues of strange mythical beasts and grim warriors presiding over the resting places of the dead. At points it was hard to tell if we were climbing up through the solid rock of the crag beneath the fortress, or heading deeper down into the fissures that had to lay farther below.
“Old Mother… told of a central well… into the upper levels,” said Autumn as we took a break near midnight. “She said… she once went in and saw… a fantastic dome.”
We knew that already of course. And she knew we knew. We’d thoroughly squeezed every last drop of intel about Tumna Haudh from the Old Mother and Last of Autumn and Vandahar. We even got what we could from Jabba, though the little gob knew nothing whatsoever. Vandahar and Autumn knew little more. But enough. It was the knowledge of that central well that had made us think this might work in the first place. A Back Door. If we could reach that central well, and use it… well, an express elevator to the penthouse suite that was a mad firefight behind enemy lines at the base of the Dark Spire sounded pretty good compared to what we were facing down here.
We’d had one other fight by then. Giant pulpy black spiders that looked oily in our Moon Vision. The massive arachnids had crawled into a ruined throne room right where we needed to pass. Some long-ago earthquake had opened a fissure within the room, and they had set up residence there, filling the place with their ghostly webbing, the ropy strands standing out in almost iridescent contrast to the darkness we found ourselves in.
Tanner, on point, creeping ahead silently, about twenty meters ahead of Kurtz, spotted the first strands of webs barring the way into the room. We probed but didn’t get too close. That was when one of the big brutes, a shining-black-carapaced spider the size of a water buffalo, filled the entrance of the dusty and forgotten room and howled in anger at us.
Or in warning to its brood mates.
Tanner backed up fast, swearing, and alerted Kurtz to what we’d almost stumbled into. Though the giant black thing seemed to want to rush out from its webby holdfast, it stayed there in the webs and darkness, just waiting for us to be stupid enough to come in after it. Like it could think. Like it knew we had to go this way or risk a serious detour. There were other spiders back in the shadows behind it. Chattering and howling at one another. Strange, almost dog-like baying came from them, and then whispering chitters that bothered you on levels somewhere deep inside your brain.
Imagine, the darker parts of my mind mused. Imagine getting trapped by them with no place to run. That, as far as I was concerned, was a terrible way to go.
“They’re smart. Could be pinning us down here if they’re hunters,” suggested Sergeant Thor as Kurtz assessed the situation tactically and tried to figure our next move, checking his cheap watch in the gloom. There was no clear way around them. The other passages we’d gone by all seemed to lead down into the depths. Which was definitely not the right way to go for what needed to be done in a few short hours.
It was close to midnight now. We had less than six hours to be in place before the attack at dawn began. Kurtz was right. The clock wasn’t just burning. It was on fire.
“No idea how much ammo we’d burn just to get through,” muttered Kurtz to himself. “And we can’t afford nothin’.”
Tanner kept his rifle trained on the big waiting spider inside the webs, challenging us, while Brumm watched our six with the two-four-nine. If fighting through was a no-go, it was looking like we’d have to backtrack to the last intersection, take a passage down into the darker lower levels we’d only glimpsed and not liked the sight of, and then see if somehow we could find some set of stairs going up and getting us where we needed to be.
PFC Kennedy inched along the narrow passage to come up with Kurtz. Pushing past the snipers and Autumn. Past Rico and Soprano with the two- forty. Kennedy held his gnarled old dragon-headed staff just like Vandahar had held his. Not just something to walk with. But some kind of arcane badge of office for wizards.
“Sar’nt…” whispered Kennedy. “Feel that breeze?”
Kurtz pulled off a tactical glove and held up one bare hand. He turned
to look at Kennedy. “Yeah?”
“If there’s access to more air down here… then maybe I can burn ’em out of there and not suffocate us?”
It was phrased as a question. PFC Kennedy wasn’t one to tell Kurtz what we were gonna do, or what a better plan might be. Best to let Kurtz make the call. Kennedy was getting wiser. I had a feeling some of his early troubles in the batt had been due to him assuming he was smarter than everyone else. Or it coming off that way.
Kurtz looked back toward the spider hold, thinking over PFC Kennedy’s intentions. The giant thing lurking within eyed us like a hungry killer with all the time in the world to sit there and wait for its next meal. Time was a luxury we didn’t have. And of course Kurtz was no doubt thinking about what Thor had just suggested—that we were being pinned down. Surrounded. Chances were the spiders had other ways of getting out of the room they owned and nested in. Even now they could be coming up from behind us, or out of some crack in the dark of the ceiling we’d missed. This was their world, and we were just guests.
“Not a full-on nape-strike like you did the giant with,” warned Sergeant Kurtz, studying the ceiling above and testing that breath of air once more. “Just burn ’em out of there, or drive ’em off so we can get by.”
PFC Kennedy nodded. “Roger that, Sar’nt.”
We pulled back toward a place where there was more space and air in the passage, and Kennedy went forward with Kurtz on his six. A few minutes later we smelled roasting spider.
It did not smell good.
Kennedy’s torch-staff flogged the giant gross spiders with a whip of streaming flame. Webs caught and were consumed instantly. Later Kennedy told me that, once the spiders began to shriek, which was really disturbing, and backed off, he shot them with what he called magic missiles. Tiny comets of fire that erupted from his hands and fingertips—not the staff— and then side-windered into the hulking fear-struck arachnids he was roasting alive.
The old wizard had taught him that trick. Kennedy cackled when he told me that part. Snorting as he pushed his BCGs up onto his nose. Like
some kid burning ants with a magnifying glass and reliving the lurid horror for his amusement.
But I try not to judge.
The spiders exploded in noxious gassy farts when the missiles hit. The smell was horrifying, and their poison, as it vaporized, made Kurtz’s and Kennedy’s eyes and throats burn because they were so close. They pulled back, and while we all waited for the nest to finish burning, the sergeant insisted they both get hit with atropine injections to counteract any side effects.
Eyes red and watering, Kurtz then led us into the blackened remains of the old throne room. The burnt husks of spiders, hairy legs upturned, charred and blackened, lay dead in a corner of the room where they had huddled to get away from the flames and nurse their injuries. The bodies of humanoid creatures also lay blackened everywhere. Perhaps these had been stored within the webs? Victims the spiders had dragged into their lair for later meals in times past.
“This tells us,” said Sergeant Thor, down on one knee and studying the desiccated and burnt corpse of what was most likely an orc with a fanged overbite, “that we’re headed in the right direction.”
“How’s that?” hissed Kurtz in the silence as we all stood there studying the damage and horror. His voice ragged from the burning poison he and Kennedy had gotten unhealthy doses of.
Not like mere poison would ever stop Kurtz.
“These orcs probably came down from the fortress above looking for treasure,” said Sergeant Thor. He pulled a leg off of one of the larger still- smoking spider carcasses. It reminded me of a time when I’d eaten one of those Alaskan King Crabs. Far less appetizing, being what it was, though. “Adventuring. Ain’t that what you do in your games, Kennedy? Go looking for treasure down in dungeons. That’s the dungeon part of the game, right? You call it an adventure, don’tcha?”
“Right, Sar’nt,” said Kennedy reluctantly. “You go on an adventure.
That’s what we call it.”
“So yeah,” continued Thor. “Why couldn’t monsters do the same thing? Go on adventures. They want stuff. These guys just did a little off- duty trophy hunting when not watching the fortress walls. Or they got sent down here, maybe. Either way, this tells us we’re on the right track. If they
got here and got caught by these things, then we’re heading in the right direction. That’s what we’re on, Rangers… an adventure.”
Silence as we all just listened to Thor. He was right. It was a horrible place. But we were on an adventure.
Wheeee, I thought to myself. What an adventure. Not what I signed up for. And… I bet coffee isn’t a treasure we’ll find down here.
So there’s me being selfish and all.
“Time to move,” said Kurtz, and then we were on our way out of the room and through a maze of underground halls stretching off in every direction and into… a vast area devoid of anything. A cavern, like a giant bare and empty cistern filled with a strange green mist that was always distant. Buttresses reached up to support the ceiling high above. We’d entered through a hatch that had been torn off and cast aside long ago.
“This place is probably like a reservoir,” said one of the snipers as we wandered and investigated it. “They could fill it up with water in times of siege if they had to. Or just to protect the tombs below.”
No one dissented from the hypothesis.
We searched the whole space until we found rungs in the wall leading up to a trap door in the ceiling far above.
“Looks dangerous,” said Tanner as we all sat there staring upward. “Glad I didn’t go to the assault climber course.”
The Rangers still had their heads on a swivel. We all did. The entire place so far was incredibly creepy. But as far as we could tell there was no other way out of this reservoir. If that was what it was. And straight up… well, that was the way we wanted to go.
“I’ll go up top,” said Private Soprano. The assistant gunner. He had been to the course and was an assault climber. “Sergente?”
Kurtz studied him. Soprano was the smallest and probably the most agile. Other than Jabba.
Kurtz okayed the plan, and Soprano shucked his extra ammo for the two-forty and gave it to me. He made ready to try the rungs, checking his gear and making sure his pistol was secured in the holster and his carbine was well placed and slung across his back. Barrel up. The rest of the Rangers formed a perimeter to make sure we didn’t get suddenly ambushed at any moment.
By ghosts.
The air felt tense down here. It was that kind of graveyard place where you know you shouldn’t be. Anything bad could happen at any moment. But hey, that’s the optimist in me talking. There was a breeze coming from somewhere, and despite spending over two hours searching the reservoir for a way out, we never did find the source of that dusty and foul air. Rotten, like it was coming from someplace down below instead of from above where we needed to go.
“You sure we’re on the right path?” Tanner asked Sergeant Thor. But the big sniper didn’t reply and only continued to watch the misty green darkness all around us. Waiting for those unquiet ghosts. Sure that by rifle or tomahawk, he’d get it done.
“Clock’s burnin’,” said Kurtz again as Private Soprano got ready to climb. Re-lacing his boots once again. “Now get up to that door, Ranger. When you’re at the top drop a green ChemLight if it’s all clear and we’ll start our ascent. Drop a red one if for some reason the way is blocked or we can’t assault up through there. Got it?”
Soprano nodded and turned to checking his gear one last time, whispering loudly to me as he finished.
“Hey. Know why I joined the Rangers, mi amico?” The son of Italian- immigrants-turned-Ranger’s voice was rusty and he was breathing fast. I think he was nervous. And he should be. It was a pretty far climb up to the ceiling to reach the trap door, and if he fell from up there, it would be either death, worst case, or best case, pretty serious injury. And our situation, down here in the dark and crawling around a dusty old tomb full of otherworldly dead, wasn’t the best for someone who was going to need a trauma team and an osteopath.
“I joined because mia famiglia… see, Talker, we are in… ah… how to put it… we’re in the family business. Back in Sicilia.”
Ah. I suddenly realized we were doing an info dump. The last will and testament the Rangers had been all about lately. I put on my listening face. But I prefaced that by saying, “You ain’t gonna fall, Soprano. Don’t think about it.”
Because I sure wouldn’t, I didn’t add. When my turn came, if it did. Falling sucks. Physics don’t care how bad you might get hurt. It’s just math. But I said it like I knew for sure he wouldn’t. I didn’t know that, of course. Still, it pays to think positively in dire circumstances down in deep
tombs you never thought you’d find yourself in.
Now he started looping around his body all the climbing gear he could carry up. Rope. D-clips. 55O cord. All of it. The Rangers were always ready to climb. That was just second nature.
“I joined,” he said breathily. His voice rasping in the hushed darkness. “Because my family is part of La Cosa Nostra. Not a big part. Kinda small, in fact. But, you know… back in Sicily we have some very nice action. But… ah… you see, mi amico, we need to expand. My uncles, who are the real bosses, well, it’s like dis… they thought it would be nice if our family hadda some more skills. Violence. Combat. Ambush. That could go a real long way back home. We ain’t so good at that right now. So… Uncle Andrea, he sees Black Hawk Down. The movie, y’know?”
Yeah. I’d seen that one.
“And he says to my old man one day, ’Let’s-a send Giacomo to America and he learna ta be da Army Ranger. Then he come-a back and teacha us how to do the killing. Those guys are real tough.’”
Makes sense, I thought.
“Of course my old man was never in the mob. Came to America to escape it. Used to be a carabinieri in town. Ran the desk at the local precinct. He had dreams of me singin’ opera. So he says to me… ’we come to America, Giacomo, and you learna to sing opera like-a Pavarotti. Okay? Then you never have to join the family business,’ and he means La Cosa Nostra because if I’m a big opera singer and I ever come-a back to Sicily I get a pass. Only real way outta the family is to either be a priest or singa the opera. Sì?”
He looked up at me and smiled. Satisfied his gear was good to go. “You can hear how I sound, Talker. I’m ain’t a good singer, either. But
truth is, I kind of wanted to join the family business. My Uncle is watching Blackhawk Down and having dreams, well, I’m watching Goodfellas and doin’ the same thing. Nice suits. Good cars. Lotsa pretty girls. Travel. So I join the Army. Become a Ranger. I learn how to do all the stuff that’s gonna put us on the map back home in Sicily. The family, that is.”
Soprano pauses to fiddle with his gear. “That’s why I’m doing this, Talker. I wanted go to Ranger School then go back and teach everyone how we can put those Scagliotti in their place. They’re a rival family. Always gave us Sopranos a hard time. So… you know how it is.”
He spits and then adds, “I can see the look on your face and you think I’m crazy. Put it down in the registrare, anyway, okay?”
The record.
I said that I would.
It didn’t seem to occur to Soprano that the Scagliotti-Camilieri rivalry had probably wrapped up about ten thousand years ago. And for that matter so had the last cycle of Ranger School.
But why ruin a dream?
Kurtz was waiting at the bottom of the ancient rungs.
“This is gonna make-you recommend me for promotion, right, Sergente Kurtz?” asked Soprano as he pulled on the first rung in the wall. Testing it.
Sergeant Kurtz gave me a rare conspiratorial look and rolled his eyes behind Soprano’s back.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Sure thing, Soprano.”
The little man was about a quarter of the way up the rungs climbing toward the ceiling of the cistern, or whatever this place was, when Tanner whispered to me in the dark. “You know if he was in a regular line unit he’d’a been the guy fillin’ out 4187s for Ranger School in the S-1 every month.”
The rest of the climb wasn’t hard for PFC Soprano. He moved like a monkey and when there were missing rungs, he had himself up to the next one based on sheer arm strength alone. Pulling himself upward. Impressive considering the amount of gear he was carrying.
He was way high up now, had to be at least five stories, when he made it underneath the trap door. We watched as he pulled a knife, reversed it, and tapped on the bottom of the lid.
The soft sound we heard far below had an odd quality to it. Later I’d put two and two together, but at that moment as the little Ranger hung beneath the trap door, balanced on rungs that had been set in the walls who knew how many thousands of years ago, the analysis of the sound wasn’t the first thing on my mind.
“It’s locked or something,” Tanner suggested. Tanner had great eyes. “Now I think he’s picking the lock.”
“Where’d he get a lockpicking kit?” asked Kurtz.
If anyone would’ve asked, I had one. But that was supposed to be a
secret. I had a pretty good idea where Soprano had gotten his though. Probably in a care package from back in Sicily. If his career track was leading toward the family business, well, I’d read a few Mediterranean Noir crime novels just to get a feel for French and Italian when I was studying them. Jean Claude Izzo was outstanding. Too bad he only wrote three crime novels before he died. But I was betting the lockpicking kit was courtesy of some Uncle Vito, or something similar.
You be a good boy and come-a back after you learna everything the Rangers know. Black Hawk Down, mi bambino and all.
Later I’d learn that most Rangers were skilled in lockpicking and hotwiring vehicles in accordance with the airfield capture missions. Soprano picked the lock in about thirty seconds. Five stories up, loaded with gear, and balanced on a couple of narrow rungs. No mean feat, to say the least.
“Got it!” he shout-whispered down below to the rest of us. Kurtz shushed him.
Soprano slapped his forehead. Comically of course. Then a thick finger to his lips. But when he spoke again, it was in that same loud comic- whisper.
“Sergente!” he gestured for us to back away from below. “Sumting’s not right about-a this door. Make-a space, si prega?”
Please.
We backed away and then he undid the bottom of the trap door.
Anyone else up there, and they would have died in what happened next. I was completely convinced of that as a sudden rockslide came pouring out of the trap door. And anyone up there except Soprano… and a bunch of us down below would be dead now too. Crushed by the falling rock that gushed out and onto the floor below where we’d been standing.
When the dust cleared, I fully expected to see Soprano’s broken body lying among the rockfall. I didn’t. Instead he was hanging by one hand from the ceiling above. He’d found, or made, some place to hang on in order to avoid falling to his sure death below.
We’d been warned. This place was filled with traps.
He swung into the trap door and climbed up, disappearing into the dark rectangle above. Two minutes later, a rope came down, dropping onto the floor. Then a green ChemLight tumbled down to us and Kurtz caught it
with one gloved hand.
It was time for us to go up.
