Page 10 of Beholden
With a nod, I took it from him and continued my ascent. He would follow erelong since he took his role as my bodyguard as seriously as he did his scribe duties.
As I crawled up into the next level, I lifted the torch and listened carefully. At the distant sounds of scratching and squeaking from a tunnel to the west, my muscles stiffened. Though I’d yet to see one of the deadly rats, I wasn’t about to underestimate them. I unsheathed my seax from the sheath-like compartment in the sole of my boot and took off at a run.
The low, jagged ceiling and winding path slowed my pace. But as the noises grew louder, I pushed myself faster.
“They’re gaining on us!” Curly shouted.
Upon rounding a bend, I halted at the sight of the horde of rats scurrying just inches behind Curly, Lady Gabriella, and her two old servants. Curly was doing his best to fend them off whenever one latched on to him or Lady Gabriella, but the older couple wasn’t able to go fast enough to outrace the rodents.
I raised my torch higher, hoping to shine it upon the rats to slow them down since apparently the light hurt their eyes. But the flames seemed to have the opposite effect, making them scuttle faster to outrun the light.
If the brightness was hurting them, there was only one thing left to do.
“Curly! Catch!” Whether he was ready or not, I tossed the torch. It soared through the air and clattered to the ground behind him, knocking into several rats. The flames touched their brittle hair and ignited them.
At the growing flames and heat, the remaining creatures stopped and screeched. The brilliance temporarily blinded them. To escape the glow, they turned, squeaking in both terror and anger, and they scampered toward me.
I crouched and prepared for battle.
Chapter
4
Gabriella
I was frozenin place. I needed to continue onward, helping Benedict and Alice reach the safety of the surface, but I couldn’t move. I could only stare down the passageway at the new slave who’d somehow appeared from nowhere and was now preparing to single-handedly combat a pack of rats.
At the very least, I ought to rush to his aid. Or encourage Curly to help him. But my friend was standing and staring with as much shock as I was as the new slave swung his hammer at one rat and slashed at another with what appeared to be a knife.
I’d heard some of the others referring to him as Vilmar, and all week I’d been curious about the man who’d risked his life for me. But when I’d gone to his hut to thank him, his olive-skinned companion came to the door and informed me Vilmar was indisposed.
Taken aback by the rude refusal to see me, I’d done my best to put Vilmar out of my mind. The task was made more difficult because the other slaves oft talked of him, admiring his strength and good looks as well as his humility. Even Curly had a measure of regard for Vilmar he normally didn’t hold for new slaves.
Now as the scorched flesh of the burning rats rose into the air along with the shrieking of the others, Vilmar expertly wielded his knife, slitting throats and slicing open one rat after another, until within seconds they lay dead at his feet.
When finished, he toed the heap, his weapons poised to finish off any rodent that moved. The curved blade was coated in blood and should have repelled me, but I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Such weapons were forbidden, and the overseers would flog Vilmar if they caught him with it. And though the overseers allowed our mining tools, we had to subject them to periodic checks to make sure they remained dull. Some, like Curly, sharpened stones to use as weapons. But being caught with a sharp rock was cause for flogging as well.
Ever since I’d started formulating my plan for revenge, I knew I needed a weapon to kill Grendel. Once I had a weapon, I needed someone to train me to use it. Although I’d been sharpening a stone to use, my efforts were feeble. And I was running out of time.
With the attention on his knife, Vilmar lowered it. I caught the movement of his olive-skinned companion behind him, close enough to help yet a safe distance away.
Curly bent and retrieved the torch without taking his gaze from Vilmar.
“I heard screaming,” Vilmar said, as though explaining his presence to Curly. “I hope no one is hurt.” He peered beyond us to where Benedict and Alice stood, their shoulders hunched and faces shadowed.
“Our light went out again.” I squeezed first Benedict’s, then Alice’s hands, reassuring myself they were unharmed. “And it only takes a few minutes of darkness for the rats to come out.”
“Then none of you were bitten?”
I started to shake my head, but Curly spoke first. “It be too close this time, Gabi. Too close. What if I’d waited to check on ye for another five minutes?”
“We would have outrun them.” I infused my voice with confidence, but I wasn’t so sure that we could have. I had only to think of last week when we’d started up the steepest passageway and how slow Alice had been. If not for Curly’s rescue, we surely would have been bitten.
Curly held the torch over the remains of the charred rats. Vilmar had acted decisively by throwing the flaming stick. Not only had he killed some with the fire, but he’d diverted the rest away from us straight into the blade of his knife.
“Ye need to be staying with the group from now on,” Curly said, as he had after the last rat escapade.
