Page 69 of Besotted
I shoved him back. “Let me do it. I’m the weakest and most expendable.” With my injured leg, I feared I’d slow them down. Moreover, they were both better trained at stealth and warfare than I was.
“No!” Chester hissed, starting down the ladder. “I know the movements of the basilisk the best. If any are still alive, I’ll be able to detect their presence.”
And do what? I left the question unasked and stood by helplessly as he descended. Since the creatures sprang with haste from their lairs, he’d have little time to react without any light to warn him. Their bites were painful and deadly. Worse, the poisonous fumes had the potential to render us immobile.
I could only distinguish his outline disappearing into the blackness. When the ladder ceased wobbling, I knew he’d reached the bottom. He was silent for an everlasting moment before we heard his whisper. “None yet. You can come down.”
My pulsed picked up its pace, and I started descending. Once my feet landed, I tensed. The stench of poison in the air was heavy even through the thick wool over my mouth and nose. If we didn’t hurry, we would be overcome erelong, too weak to cross.
“Here.” Chester guided my hand to his cloak. “Hold my garment and stay directly behind me.”
An instant later, Jorg’s footsteps thumped behind me. He grabbed a fistful of my cloak in one hand and hefted the ladder across his shoulders with the other.
Chester moved with caution, using an axe to slice the blackened limbs and barren branches tangled across the pit. As an elite guard, he’d learned to use all his senses and was no doubt employing them now to guide us through the darkness without walking into a basilisk.
“Try not to breathe,” he whispered.
Though we’d been in the pit but a few minutes, already my mind grew dull. I held my breath, praying that cutting off the fumes would help.
A few seconds later, Chester halted abruptly, throwing out his arm to stop us. At a jostle of dead branches ahead, I stiffened and could feel Jorg do the same behind me. Chester crouched, the axe in one hand and his sword in the other.
The soft but distinct high-pitched squeal of a weasel shattered the silence. The tension in Chester’s back eased. He straightened and continued forward. My tension remained, however. If a weasel was loose in the pit, it must mean basilisks were still lurking. Had we come down too soon? Should we have waited another hour?
I let the thought pass. We’d already delayed our rescue attempt long enough. All day, while we’d felled trees and hewn logs, my mind had returned to Aurora and the possibility the queen was mistreating her, that perhaps she was cold, hungry, and maybe even wounded. While preferable than death, I loathed her enduring any suffering at all.
I had to reach her. The panic within my chest had been slicing deeper. And now it chopped hard and painfully, so that though my lungs burned with the effort of not breathing, I forced myself to go even longer than I imagined possible.
When I finally had to draw in another breath, the intake made me dizzy. I paused to fight a wave of blackness. Behind me, Jorg wavered, struggling just as I was.
Chester pressed forward, increasing his pace, hacking more frantically through the dead branches. If he was having trouble fighting against the fumes, he didn’t let it stop him, and I was grateful more than ever for his strength and training that allowed him to persevere beyond the limitations of the average man.
With every passing minute, each step I took seemed heavier and more laborious than the one before it. Jorg’s grip on my cloak began to loosen. He dropped the ladder several times, towing it behind him on the ground, stumbling and tripping as he struggled to maintain his footing.
I simply put one foot in front of the other, until I tripped and fell to my knees. Chester yanked me up and shoved me ahead of him along with the ladder. He pressed me against the rungs, as though urging me to climb. For an instant, I couldn’t move, couldn’t make myself ascend. All I wanted to do was fall over and sleep.
The sharp prick of a blade into my backside prodded me upward, and somehow I managed to pull myself rung after rung until I reached the end. I hoisted myself up and collapsed onto solid ground, unable to think or move. All I could do was breathe in and out.
An instant later, Jorg fell next to me on his knees, gasping. For long moments, only the sound of our labored breathing filled the air. With each intake, my mind became clearer until I realized Chester hadn’t mounted the ladder yet.
“Chester?” I attempted to push myself off the ground but failed.
Jorg lifted his head and then crawled back to the ladder.
Drawing on a reserve of strength I hadn’t known I possessed, I dragged myself to the ladder too and peered over the edge. I couldn’t see Chester, but I sensed he’d used the last of his coherency to make sure Jorg and I were safely out before he succumbed to the fumes. “We have to go back for him.”
“I’ll go,” Jorg whispered, already on the top rung.
“Let me,” I hissed after him.
“No, if I can’t find him”—he wheezed for another breath—“you need to give the others the signal and then go after Aurora.”
I hesitated. One of us needed to survive the crossing and throw the stone to the courier, who would then relay the news to Mikkel and Vilmar, letting them know we’d survived.
In my moment of indecision, Jorg was already climbing back down. I held the ladder in place and watched the blackness, waiting and praying he’d have the strength of mind and body to locate Chester.
“He’s here,” came Jorg’s strained whisper. “I’ll lift him as high as I can, then you drag him the rest of the way.”
I took in a deep breath, then climbed down several rungs. I couldn’t feel my limbs, but I forced myself to move anyway. As I bumped into a body, I grabbed it and began to heave it upward, working mostly on instinct. Though I was still weak and dull minded, I had enough wherewithal to keep going. Once above the pit again, I collapsed next to Chester and was relieved when Jorg landed beside us several seconds later.
