We would change up on weapons and tactics if we reached the nest proper.

I gave a signal. We all closed our eyes, excepting the centaur. He counted a hundred silently, snake-hissed. Eyes barely cracked, we mouse-footed into the mouth of hell.

We advanced a few steps, stopped, listened. Morley and I knelt to let the triplets have more freedom to support us. We continued in that fashion. The deeper we sank into the darkness, the more frequently we paused.

By right of better eyes Dojango should have been in my place. But Morley feared his nerves weren't up to it. I agreed. Dojango had buckled down and tightened up a lot, but he wasn't ready for the front line.

Gods, the stench in that hole!

The first hundred feet weren't too bad. The floor was level and clean. The ceiling was high. There was daylight at our backs. And there was no sign that anyone was waiting for us.

Then the floor dropped and turned right. The ceiling lowered until the grolls had to duck-walk. The darkness tightened and filled with the rustle and flutter of bats disturbed. Within a few yards we were saturated with the filth that was the source of the stench. The air grew chill.

Zeck Zack hissed.

We stopped. I was amazed that he could move so quietly on hooved feet. I'd assumed he was hell-bent for wherever already.

The hiss was the only sound. The centaur handed something forward. It gleamed through Dojango's fingers as he passed it.

It was the lucifer stone Morley had given the centaur before shutting him in that tomb.

An iron chill dragged its claws up my back. By the stone's light I saw Morley entertaining the same question: was the centaur announcing payback time? Burying us here would solve several of his problems.

I watched Morley struggle with the urge to kill Zeck Zack. He put it down. Barely. He gave me the stone because I had poorer eyes. I folded it into my right hand, under my fingers, against the grip of my wooden sword. I could lift a finger or two and leak light when I needed it.

Onward. Already the sun, freedom, and fresh air seemed a thousand years and miles behind us. Progress slowed as we examined every cranny for ambushers.

It looked like a dried-out corpse. Mouth open. Eye sockets empty. Hair gray and wild. One buzzard claw came reaching out of a crack at me. I fell away, throwing a wild backhand stroke with the stone-set edge of my sword. Bone parted like dry sticks.

The thing that had pushed those old bones leaped out.

A groll's spear drove through it. Dull eyes stared into mine as it pitched forward onto the unicorn horn I raised to meet it. Cold, stale, awful breath washed my face. Again I saw that look I had seen on that butte about a century ago: immortality betrayed.

It tried to sink fangs into my throat. They weren't yet well developed. Its disease was not far advanced.

I was terrified anyway.

A Dojango toe connected with its head.

I grabbed the lucifer stone and got up. Neither old bones nor the bloodslave did. But brothers of the latter had come for the party, too.

They had no weapons but tooth, claw, ferocity, and a conviction of invincibility. None of that did them any good.

Morley and I held them. Dojango retreated behind his brothers and lit a flare. The night people made little squeaks and pawed at their eyes. A moment later it was over.

There were only four of them, plus somebody who had been dead for years. It had seemed like a battalion.

Morley and I inspected each other for wounds. He had one shallow gash but waved off attention. He wasn't human enough to have to worry.

The enemy had been met. He had been overcome in the opening encounter. Our nerve solidified. Our fear came under control. Dojango was proud of himself. He had proven he could think despite his terror.

We regained our breath and went on. Without the centaur Zeck Zack. There was no telling when he had deserted. Probably during the excitement, when he was sure no one would notice him going.

Behind us, the flare burned out. The bats began to settle down. The air grew colder.

46

The second bunch were more difficult than the first, though they were no more successful. They were bloodslaves farther along the scarlet path, harder to kill, but as vulnerable to blinding and more sensitive to the power of the unicorn horn. They did make us work up a sweat.

The third bunch was bad.

They let us know we were near the nest. They were bloodslaves who had slipped past all the perils of snares and pitfalls and were so far advanced in the disease that they were on the verge of joining the masters. Which meant they were almost as fast and strong and deadly as the two we had destroyed on the butte. After we skewered one with a horn it was almost impossible to touch the other three, even with them flare-blind. In the darkness where they dwelt, they had little use for sight. They ignored their pain and used their ears.

One got past me and Morley. The grolls pinned him with their spears, then finished him with unicorn horns. Dojango's fear-fevered arm gave us the other two. He hit them with fire bombs. We finished them while they thrashed in the flames and screamed.

"And that's it for the element of surprise," Morley said. "If ever there was one."

"Yeah."

They were the first words spoken since our entry underground, save a soft grollish curse from Doris on breaking a unicorn horn pinning a bloodslave.

The fires died. We readied ourselves. "Not far now," I guessed. Morley grunted. "The odds have got to be better," I said. Morley grunted again. Some conversationalist. He looked odd in the glow of lucifer stone. Was he going to flake out?

He got himself organized inside, stepped forward, whacking the flat of his sword with his horn and listening to the echo. After about fifty steps there was no echo.

I let light leak between my fingers.

No cave wall. No ceiling. "Dojango. Give Doris a flare."

The groll knew what to do. They threw for height and distance.

We were on the platform overlooking a floor about forty feet below. Man-made stairs ran down a widening sweep. Below, nearly a hundred... creatures... faced us and started screaming, pawing at their eyes. The dozen or so in white made me think of maggots on a dead dog.

Marsha snapped a spear down the stairs. It hit a youngster who had been rushing up when the flare ignited. He tumbled.

"How do you figure chewing it now that you've bitten it off?" Morley asked. He shivered in the cold.

"Sure won't do any good to change our minds. We have to keep pushing, keep them panicked."

He growled at the grolls. I looked out along the line that began in my head, and saw a half-dozen women in white, some leading children born to the blood. I couldn't pick her out.

Morley seemed to be looking for someone, too.

"There they are." Dojango indicated cages to one side. A score of prisoners stared at us, most of them forlornly.

The flare was almost out, but the grolls had shed and opened their packs and were pasting the crowd with fire bombs. Dojango was assembling a powerful lamp. Morley and I snatched bows and scattered arrows wherever it looked like the panic was fading.

I told Morley, "Like the pregnant lady told her guy, it's time we took steps." I started down the stair, again armed with sword and unicorn horn, straining against the weight of my pack of lethal confections. Morley elected the same weapons and snuggled his pack a little tighter. Dojango chose to bear horn and crossbow. His pack was empty, so he left it. The grolls shrugged their packs back on but didn't arm themselves with anything but their clubs, which they had dragged in through all the difficulties of the entry cave, tied to their belts and trailing like fat, stiff tails.