How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book Three (4 page)

The question of whether we should stay or go was quickly put to rest the following morning. Jespert woke us with a hearty good morning and well wishes for our trip through the tunnels. It was clear he expected us to vacate the premises forthwith.

After a breakfast of mushroom porridge with a little mushroom jam and a cup of tea (yes, mushroom tea), Jespert took us through some dark passages to a stairwell leading to a lower level.

None of the zombers had come to see us off. I suppose the novelty had worn off and they had better things to do. We weren’t exactly legendary heroes setting off on a quest to save the world, just some random people passing through.

The crypt was a surprisingly large structure, and somehow claustrophobic at the same time. I tried to think of it like a museum exhibit, although most museums don’t bother with cobwebs and damp. It would have been creepy enough being down there with full fluorescent lighting and a gift shop, but with just a couple of flickering torches and a zomber guide, it was hard not to get the chills. The big stone coffin didn’t help either.

“You don’t have to look so worried,” said Jespert, his putrid face glistening in the torchlight. “Nobody will jump out of the sarcophagus. It’s just a stone box. With a dead body inside it.”

That didn’t really make me feel any better.

“This is the start of the tunnels.” Jespert held up his torch to show the large hole in the wall. The light from the torch illuminated the brickwork and little else.

I peered into the darkness. The darkness peered back into me. Not really much you could tell other than it was colder and darker in there than out here. Everyone paused at the entrance, building up the courage to step into the void. Jenny and Mandy stood at the back, probably wondering what we were all waiting for.

“Who built these tunnels?” asked Maurice.

“The trolls,” said Jespert. “They love digging tunnels. Passes the time, I suppose. They’re very long-lived.”

“These trolls,” I said, “anything we should know about them? In case we bump into a couple.”

The trolls in Earth folklore varied from those that hid under bridges waiting to interrogate passing goats, to those who turned into stone if exposed to sunlight. It would help to know which type we were likely to encounter.

“Let me see,” said Jespert. “Well, they’re big. Their skin is hard as rock, so hitting them won’t do much. They’re either very stupid, or very smart and just pretending to be dumb, I’ve never been able to work out which. They do have quite a curious nature, so if you can pique their interest somehow, they might not eat you. Not straightaway, at least. On the whole, my advice would be to run.”

Very reassuring.

“Do they have any weaknesses?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Jespert, “they have a terrible sense of humour. Don’t let them tell you any jokes.”

I wasn’t sure how knowing that would help, but knowledge is power, I guess.

“Any other creatures down there?” It would have been nice if it was just a nice, long empty tunnel from A to B, but how likely was that? “Rabid moles? Giant worms? Balrogs?”

“I’ve never encountered any, but it is possible,” said Jespert.

I had run out of pointless questions and no one else had any more delaying tactics, so we thanked Jespert for his hospitality, lit all our torches and oil lamps (Dudley had one in each hand), and entered the darkness like a fireball with fourteen legs.

The temperature dropped quickly as we made our way deeper into the tunnel. The walls were roughly hewn with long horizontal gouges, like they’d been dug with giant claws. The tunnel was big. If I stood on Dudley’s shoulders, I’d just about be able to touch the roof. An occasional gust of air threatened to blow out our torches, but other than that there was no sound or movement.

It took about half an hour before we reached the first fork in the tunnel. According to the map, we needed to take the path on the right. I scratched a ‘Z’ into the tunnel wall with my spike.

“Why are you doing that?” asked Claire. “We have the map.”

“Because you might lose the map, and we’ll need to find our way back.” I carved an arrow next to the ‘Z’.

“I’m not going to lose the map.” Claire sounded annoyed by the accusation.

“Good.” I carved the arrow deeper so it couldn’t be missed.

We headed down the right hand tunnel for another hour and came out into a small chamber with three other tunnels leading from it. Which was a slight problem, since the map showed only two.

Claire held the map open, looking down at it, then up at the tunnels, then back at the map.

“I don’t understand…” she muttered to herself. “We can’t have gone the wrong way. This is the
only
way.”

Maurice stood next to her holding an oil lantern to light the map. “Jespert did say the trolls like to dig tunnels. Maybe they added one here.”

Everyone murmured agreements to this line of thinking.

“According to Jespert,” he continued, “the trolls tend to keep to the left side so let’s take the far right one.”

Watching them make their own decisions, and pretty sensible ones, was quite gratifying. Perhaps, one day, they’d be able to look after themselves. I carved a ‘Z’ into the wall and then we set off down the tunnel on the far right.

It was quite a boring walk. Small conversations would occasionally break out, but we were silent for the most part. No monsters, no threats, but there was still something in the air that made me feel a little apprehensive.

The tunnel ended in another chamber. This one also had the wrong number of tunnels leading out of it. By which, I mean to say it had none. It was a dead end.

Claire stared at her map.

“It’s fine,” said Maurice. “It just means we took the wrong tunnel. We’ll go back and take one of the other ones.”

“What if it isn’t the wrong tunnel,” said Claire, her voice trembling slightly. “What if Jespert gave us a fake map? What if he wanted us to get lost?”

“Why would he do that?” said Maurice. “Don’t start thinking like Colin. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “Come on, let’s get going.”

We headed back through the tunnel until we reached the previous chamber. When we had arrived here the first time, there had been four tunnels in total. Now there were five.

“How? How can there be another tunnel?” Claire was starting to panic. The pressures of leadership.

It seemed unlikely someone could have dug a tunnel that fast or that quietly. Still, there it was.

“We have another problem,” I said. “The marks I made showing us the way back seem to have disappeared.”

I had gone from tunnel entrance to tunnel entrance, looking for the scratches I had made, but found nothing. The other started to look around nervously.

“This is all my fault,” said Claire. “I was too trusting. I didn’t ask enough questions. I’m such an idiot.”

“Hey,” said Maurice, “don’t say that.” He moved to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away.

“Why not?” she said bitterly. “It’s true. Isn’t it, Colin?”

They all turned to me.

“What, that you’re an idiot? Yes, of course it’s true. But this has got nothing to do with that. Someone’s obviously messing with us. There was no way to predict that. Maybe it’s Jespert, maybe it’s the trolls, I don’t know. But I don’t think I would have handled anything any differently to you. No point getting worked up about something you had no control over.”

Claire looked confused. “I thought you’d be more upset. I didn’t expect you to be so nice about it.” She burst into tears.

Jesus.

While everyone rushed to comfort her, I inspected the walls more closely. It was hard to concentrate with all the crying and sympathy-sobbing and words of encouragement.

“Alright, can we turn off the waterworks?” I said, starting to get annoyed. “We still have to find our way out of here.”

The bawling gradually receded to a few sniffles.

“Obviously the map isn’t going to be of much use,” I said, “but we have pencil and paper, we’ll just make our own map. It’ll be like an old fashioned game of Dungeon & Dragons. Right, Maurice?”

Maurice’s eyes lit up. “Leave it to me.” He started pulling out bits of paper from his bag. “Just let me find that piece of charcoal. It’s here somewhere.”

“Basic rules of D&D, make a map, test for traps—” I turned to Claire “—and no crying.”

“Not unless you’ve seen the Player’s Manual for the fifth edition,” mumbled Maurice. “Enough to bring anyone to tears.”

I ignored Maurices grudge against
Wizard’s of the Coast
and pointed at the wall next to me. “We’ll have to be less obvious. Here, see this red streak in the rock? We can use things like this to identify tunnels. If they don’t know how we’re marking the way, they can’t change it behind our backs. Cheeky bastards.”

Eyes and mouth appeared in the wall I was pointing to. It leaned down, which isn’t what you expect a wall to do.

“Who you calling cheeky?” it said in a voice like rolling thunder.

I backed away into the middle of the chamber, where I bumped into the others backing away in the opposite direction. All around us, the walls had come to life and were walking towards us.

The trolls were indistinguishable from the rocks around them. Their skin matched flawlessly, so when they stood in front of a tunnel, it seemed to disappear. Now that they had moved, you could see the chamber had many more tunnels leading from it than we had thought; at least a dozen.

“Er, hello,” I said as we quickly became surrounded. The trolls were eight feet tall and made of rock, being polite seemed a good idea. “Do you like riddles?”

Jespert had said trolls were curious and had a terrible sense of humour. Riddles seemed the ideal distraction.

The troll advancing towards me stopped. “Go on, then.”

“Ah, what has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?”
 

The troll pursed his lips. Well, he didn’t have any lips but he made a kind of small rock formation around his mouth. “Mmm. I have no idea.” And then he hit me.

Before I arrived in this world, I had never been in a fight. I kept to myself at school and did my best not to get involved. In anything. This way, I successfully managed to avoid getting the shit beaten out of me. It was a pretty rough school in North London, so the beating would have been quite severe.

Once I left school, it wasn’t too hard to stay out of trouble. Nobody showed much interest in me and I didn’t go out of my way to provoke people. You have to be noticed to be punched.

However, that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Learning how to take a punch is a useful skill, especially in world where everyone’s running around trying to kill everyone else.

The troll who hit me didn’t use his full strength. All he did was tap me on the forehead with his finger. When I came round, I was on the floor with Claire leaning over me.

“Are you okay?” She sounded genuinely concerned for me, which was worrying.

I put a hand to my head, which hurt like a motherfucker. There was a bump the size of a golf ball in the middle of my forehead.

“I managed to stop the bleeding,” said Claire, “but my healing still isn’t that great. I couldn’t do anything about the swelling. Or the bruising. Or that weird jelly stuff.” She pulled a face that suggested what she was looking at wasn’t very pleasant.

I sat up, groaned, placed both hands over my face and healed myself. The pain dissipated and the swelling went down. Hopefully, it also took care of the ‘jelly stuff’, whatever that was.

When I lowered my hands and looked around, I realised we were no longer in the tunnels. We were in a large cave and we weren’t alone. Apart from our group, there were a dozen other people.

Maurice knelt down next to Claire. “You alright?”

“Peachy,” I said, still feeling a bit woozy. “What happened?”

“After you got knocked out, they brought us here,” said Maurice. “We thought it best to do what they said. You know, because they’re huge and made of rock.”

“And these other people?”

Maurice looked around, pushed his slipping glasses back up his nose, and leaned closer. “This is some sort of prison,” he said in a lowered voice. “They’re all captives here, like us.”

From what I could tell, there were six men, four women and a couple of others lying down making it harder to identify them. They appeared pretty normal. Their clothes were practically rags and there weren’t any fatties among them—gaunt might be the best way to describe them—but they were all clean and well-groomed, which was kind of odd.

“Okay,” I said, “but why are you whispering?”

“Walls have ears,” he said, “and eyes and hands and feet. Know what I mean?”

I did know what he meant. The trolls who had ambushed us had been indistinguishable from their surroundings. It was quite possible there were trolls in this cavern watching us right now. I glanced around like I’d be able to spot one.

Torches on the walls lit the cave and there was one exit. It was unguarded but no one seemed to be in a rush to use it. Mind you, I didn’t know what was on the other side.

“We have to watch what we say,” said Maurice. “Plans are afoot.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

Shit. I lose consciousness for a couple of minutes and the inmates immediately take control of the asylum.

Jenny sat down next to Maurice. “Welcome back. Enjoy your nap?”

“Yes, very refreshing.” I felt like I was balancing a sack of potatoes on my head, but the searing pain had gone.

She reached out and touched my forehead. “Amazing. Good as new.”

I didn’t say anything. Is it wrong getting pleasure from a girl touching your forehead? Or just sad? She withdrew her hand and I had to grit my teeth to prevent a sigh from escaping.

“Did the trolls say anything about what they were going to do to us?” I asked.

“They didn’t say anything at all,” said Claire. “Just dumped us here, didn’t even take our stuff.” She pointed behind me.

I turned. Dudley was sitting with his back to the wall, eyes closed. Nestled into the crook of his arm was Flossie, quietly singing to him. It sounded like the chipmunk version of ‘Can’t Feel My Face’. Here we were trapped underground, in serious danger of being killed by gigantic rock creatures, and these two were so happy cartoon birds were practically flying around their heads. Sickening.

Next to them was a pile of our bags. I realised I also had all my weapons and equipment on me.

“I guess you don’t have to worry about swords and spears when you’re made out of solid stone,” said Maurice.

That didn’t make much sense. Even if they didn’t feel threatened by us, why take the chance of leaving us with all our gear? And even if we couldn’t hurt them, what about all these other people? We could easily get into a fight with them.

“You know who the trolls remind me of?” said Claire. “The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Only not so orange.” She turned to Maurice, inordinately pleased with herself and in full expectation of a pat on the head for her pop cultural reference. She’d even got the colour right, surely that was worth bonus points.

It’s always endearing when a girl tries to show an interest in her boyfriend’s obsessions. It shows she cares enough to try. But it never turns out well. Never.

“Ugh,” said Maurice. “Honestly, worst superhero team, ever.”

“Oh.” Claire’s wagging tail abruptly stopped wagging. “Really? I thought—”

“Think about it. Invisible Woman, because she turns invisible, fine. Human Torch, obvious, no problem. The Thing, okay. And then Reed Richards. How much of an egomaniac do you have to be to call yourself Mr Fantastic? And what’s that got to do with stretching your arms? Mr Elastic, sure. But Mr Fantastic? If I was in that team, I’d be like, why don’t you Mr Fuck Off?”

Claire frowned. The praise she’d been hoping for had not materialised and her contribution had been unacknowledged, dismissed even. I’m not great at sensing a woman’s moods, but even I could see we were rapidly approaching clobberin’ time. Maurice didn’t notice and was about to launch into his next rant, my guess, probably something to do with how shitty the movies were.

“Perhaps he didn’t name himself,” I said. “Maybe his wife named him. He can stretch any part of his body, after all.”

“Oh,” said Claire, successfully distracted. “That is pretty fantastic.”

“Mm,” agreed Jenny. They both sat there staring into space. I didn’t know what they were thinking about, but I could guess.

“What happened to Mandy?” I had suddenly noticed she wasn’t with us.

“She’s over there,” said Maurice. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Mandy was sitting in a group of men, chatting away. She seemed very much at home.

“Didn’t take her long to jump ship,” I said.

“No, no,” said Maurice. “She’s been great. It was a bit edgy when we first got here, but she made friends with them and smoothed everything over.” He leaned in close again. “May even have found us a way out of here.”

My natural inclination was to have little faith in whatever scheme Mandy had cooked up. But I also have little faith in my own gut instincts, so if Mandy had stumbled onto an escape plan, I wasn’t going to turn my nose up at it.

“See the guy she’s talking to?” Mandy was deep in conversation with the largest of the group she was sitting with. A burly, heavily-bearded man. “He’s their leader. I think he likes her.”

Maurice could well have been right. As Mandy leaned against the man as she spoke, he stared into her face, paying attention to every word. Which was odd, because her breasts were right under his nose. Literally. He was completely ignoring them.

Mandy looked over and caught my eye. She smiled. She’d never smiled at me before. She said something to the man and they both got up and came over. I stood up, as did the others.

“Colin,” said Mandy, “this is Raviva.”

The man, who towered over me, put out his hand. “It’s good to meet you, friend.” His voice was so deep I felt it in my chest. I had to stop myself from wincing as he crushed my hand in his. “You have arrived at  fortuitous time.” He lowered his voice to the loudest whisper I’d ever heard. “We are on the verge of escaping this pit of despair.”

Seemed a bit of an exaggeration. “How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Ahhh,” said Raviva. “It’s hard to measure the passage of time in this place. Months? Years? No, not that long. We were travelling to Dargot when a storm drove us to seek shelter in some caves. We didn’t know the danger within.”

“Why?”

“We are merchants who travel from—”

“No,” I said, “I mean why did they capture you and keep you here. What do they want with you?”

Raviva shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. They’re not big on explaining themselves. Occasionally, they take one of us away, for what reason I do not know. We used to be twenty-three. Now we are twelve.” His welcoming smile evaporated at the thought of his lost companions.

“And you’ve never tried to escape?”

“There’s never been an opportunity. Until now.” He moved towards me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me in close. “Every day they take us to the washroom so we can perform our ablutions.” He was speaking into my ear in a hushed voice that was loud enough to rattle my skull. “An underground stream runs through a cave and we are allowed to bathe in it. A few days ago, on of our group, a young man called Samara, couldn’t stand it any longer and dived under the water. He swam through the wall and disappeared. We thought he must have lost his mind.”

Raviva pulled back and widened his eyes to express the shock he had felt.

“What could have been waiting for him other than death? But no! He was recaptured and returned a day later, but he had seen where the stream led.” He pulled me in close again. “According to him, he had been flushed out into a large cavern where hundreds of trolls were mining. And there was a large opening that led to the outside world.” Raviva shook me violently. “Freedom, my friend, freedom.”

“And they just returned him?” I asked once the shaking stopped.

“He told them it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to get washed away, and almost died when he fell down the waterfall. They seem content that none of us would intentionally do something so stupid. But that is where they’re wrong! I would rather die in the attempt than stay here any longer. We have discussed it amongst ourselves and agreed to do this. You are welcome to join us.”

“What about the hundreds of trolls on the other side?” I said. “How do you plan to get past them?”

“Samara said they were too busy with their mining operation to notice him. Unfortunately, he was so disorientated by the fall, he ended up walking into their midst. But now that we know what to expect…”

“But do you really think the best way to sneak past a large number of trolls is to take as

many people as possible with you?”

Raviva scratched his heavily bearded chin. “You make a fair point, but who do we leave behind? And at least this way, even if we are spotted, the more of us there are, the better the chance that at least a few of us will manage to escape.”

I thought it over. What he said made a lot of sense, and there was definitely a possibility it would work. And there was definitely a possibility it wouldn’t.

“Well, it sounds like you have a reasonable chance of making it. I wish you luck.”

Raviva let go of my shoulders. “You don’t want to come with us?”

“No thanks.” Everyone looked a bit miffed at my decision. “I’m just speaking for myself. The others will have to make up their own minds, of course.”