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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3444390" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 141STRANGERS ACROSS A CHASMArrows filled the air, and despite the uncertain updraft from the river gorge, several shots from that first volley scored hits.  The gorge had widened somewhat from the bridge, but it was still less than a hundred feet across, well within the range of the compact but powerful bows that most of the companions carried.  But the trolls merely plucked the missiles from their leathery hides, and started grabbing stones, hurling them across the chasm at their foes.  Most of the heavier rocks fell well short, but a few stones the size of a child’s head landed in the ranks of the Camarians, shattering as they impacted the ground on their side of the gorge.  None of them were hit in that initial exchange, but the threat was clear enough to drive them into cover.  Arrows continued to fly across the gorge, but while several of the trolls were starting to sprout arrows from their upper bodies like porcupine spines, none of them went down. “Focus your fire on one of them!” Pella urged, sighting down the length of a shaft held in her powerful longbow.  The archer fired with cool precision, and each of her arrows had found a mark thus far, driving deep into the body of one of the trolls.  This one was no different, stabbing into the center of the troll’s forehead.  The troll staggered back, injured, but clearly the arrow hadn’t penetrated through its thick skull.  “The one on the end!”“You may as well save your shafts,” Varo said.  “They will just regenerate, and we don’t have any fire or acid attacks that can be utilized at range.”“Gods damned mothercussing sons of bloody bastards!” Travius yelled, grimacing in pain as he fell back, clutching his left leg where one of the hurled rocks had finally found a mark.  Allera hurried over to him, pulling him back into a sheltered space behind a boulder before healing his injury. The troll on the far end that Pella had identified slumped down, staggered by no less than ten arrows jutting from its body, but as it fell, still conscious, it began to pluck out shafts from its body. “Varo’s right,” Talen said.  “This isn’t accomplishing anything.  Hold your fire!”“You’re lucky we can’t get over there, you pricks!” Bullo yelled across the chasm.  The trolls shouted back comments that were in all likelihood just as pithy, but they made no move to descend into the raging torrent below.  Instead, they headed back into the hills to the west, disappearing quickly from view.  The last to depart was the wounded one, still yanking out arrows, leaving a bloody trail behind it.  “Yeah, that’s right, run you bastards!”  Travius yelled, adding a shout of pain as Allera adjusted his leg to help her healing knit the broken bone back together.  “If you think they’re done with us, you’re a fool,” Baraka Suhn said, unstringing his bow and putting it back into the case across his back.  “If we’re lucky, we’ll reach our destination before they return,” Talen said.  “Shay, Baraka, take us out.”The companions continued on their way, with more than a few looks back across at the trail where the trolls had disappeared. It took the rest of the morning, and a few more shifts of direction to navigate around crevices too wide to jump, before they found themselves back at the river gorge.  Shay walked ahead to the very edge of the cliff, kneeling at the edge and scanning the canyon in both directions.  Talen came up, removing his helmet to wipe his forehead of sweat.  The trek had been particularly difficult for him in his heavy armor, but the knight commander had not complained.  That was in stark contrast with Dar, who had offered commentary on the cold wind, the hot sun, the ill fit of his armor (and the parentage of whoever had originally forged it for Gudmund), the rough terrain, various gods, and both the collective and individual members of the cult of Orcus.  If nothing else, the other members of the company had been given the opportunity to learn creative new applications of profanity from the soldiers of the Border Legion, who were true craftsmen of the genre. Talen quickly replaced his helm.  Despite his warmth from the hike in armor, the sun had been chased by the storm clouds from the east throughout the morning, and while it still shone high above them for the moment, it seemed pretty clear that the clouds would overtake it before the end of the day.  “Shay?” Talen asked.  “How much further?”Shay had leaned out precariously over the edge of the chasm, peering left, where the river gorge bent slightly to the south.  “There,” she said, pointing at an outcrop of stone below.  “We’re here.”“How do we get down?” Serah asked, staying well back from the edge.  “We climb,” Baraka said, lifting a coil of heavy rope from across his shoulders.  It took them a good thirty minutes just to get above the spot that Shay had indicated.  The overhang in the gorge was less than a hundred feet away, but between them and it the ground rose up in a stunted ridge, with a crumbling cliff fifteen feet high blocking them.  They could have gone inland to look for a cleft or a break that would have allowed them to bypass the barrier, but the scouts warned that the seemingly minor detour might cause them overshoot their destination, forcing them to backtrack.  Glancing up at the inclement skies, Talen agreed that it would be better just to tackle the obstacle. Boosted by Baraka, Shay leapt up the cliff easily enough, and secured their rope to a boulder.  The climb was theoretically an easy one, but the rocks of the cliff came away with random ease, and more than one of them had bruised arms and shins by the time they had all made it up.  The far side of the rise was a more navigable slope back down to the level they’d been at before, but Serah put a foot on a loose stone and fell hard, spraining her wrist as she slid eight feet to the base of the ridge.  Allera quickly moved to help her, and healing magic eased the damage caused by the fall, but the cleric looked chastened. “I’m sorry,” she said, as Talen and Pella came over to her.  “I guess I’m not much of a climber.”“Don’t worry,” Talen said.  “It could have happened to any of us; I’m surprised that we haven’t had more injuries thus far, given the difficulty of the terrain.”“Besides, better to get the fall out of the way on the eight foot hill, rather than on the sixty foot cliff,” Dar said.  The fighter was standing at the edge of the gorge, looking down at their objective below.  Bullo came up beside him, and hurled a fat gob of spit out into the chasm.  Both men watched it fall into the raging torrent below.  If anything, the river seemed more violent here, smashing against the rocks on the side of the gorge. Kalend came up, and took a look.  “Long way down,” he said.  Shay and Baraka were already talking quietly about the best approach to the climb.  Talen came over to them.  “What do you think?”Shay turned to him.  “It’s a more or less straight shot down.  The problem’s not going to be the descent, but what’s at the bottom.  There aren’t a lot of flat spaces down there, and everything’s going to be covered in water.  Slick, cold, and noisy to boot.”Talen glanced over the edge.  “And the river... you said it’s navigable?”“For most of its length, yes.  At least when I came down, there were banks on the side that could be walked almost all of the way back into the cavern.  But at the end, where it emerges from underground and hits the river, it’s almost entirely underwater, pretty rough.”Talen turned and saw that Varo had made his way down the hill, and was standing a short distance away, giving the cliff edge a small but definite berth.  Don’t tell me he’s afraid of heights! Talen thought. But the cleric merely met his questioning gaze with a small nod.  “I am ready, commander.”“Shay?”“I’ll go down first, and set up a guide rope along the top of the overhang,” the scout said.  “We’ve got plenty of spikes, better to use them, and minimize the chances of someone falling.  Baraka can help, he’s got the footing of a mountain ram.”The ranger nodded, already replacing his gauntlets with tight leather climbing gloves.  The pair worked efficiently in tandem, securing a pair of ropes to some very large boulders, and then tossing the coils out over the chasm.  Talen set a few of his people to watch the ridges to the south and west, and then crept up to the edge of the cliff to monitor the climbers. Shay and Baraka had already reached the overhang, and were affixing the ropes to the stone ledge using pitons.  Talen wasn’t quite sure how they would get to the outlet itself without being blasted away by the surging water, but Varo had said he would handle that, and while the knight did not trust the cleric as far as he could throw him, he had to admit that his divine talents were considerable. He saw Shay look up and wave to him.  “All right, Varo, you’re up.” The cleric nodded, and went over to the rope.  If Talen’s suspicions about Varo’s fears were accurate, the cleric gave no sign at all as he descended on the rope.  He was a bit clumsy, but the scouts had rigged everything carefully, and it only took him a few minutes to make it down to the overhang.  “You want me to head down and babysit him?” Dar asked. “Shay and Baraka can do that,” Talen said.  “Let him do whatever he’s going to do, first, and then we’ll head down.  I want you to bring up the rear; you’re a good climber, and if there’s trouble while we’re heading down, you can handle it.”Dar grinned.  “The more things change, the more they stay the...”But before the fighter could finish his thought, he was cut off by a loud cry from Travius, keeping watch on a protruding knot of boulders a short distance to the west.  As the legionary lifted his bow, shouting a warning, something hard slammed into his chest, and he toppled over, falling six feet onto his back.  The man struggled to get up, but could not.  Allera was already running toward him, even as Talen shouted orders to his people.  Dar and Bullo, hefting their weapons, headed toward Travius’s position, beyond which the ground rose again in a rough, uneven slope up to a jagged crest about a bowshot away. But the enemy that had felled Travius was much closer.  As Dar reached the knot of boulders, he saw that there was a culvert that began on its far side, and which cut deep into the opposing ridge.  He couldn’t see far into it, as it curved out of view, but what he saw was enough. The culvert was packed with trolls, who saw him at once, and surged forward to attack.</blockquote>

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