Morth pulled his blood-stained fist away from the prostrate bandit's face and smiled. The weedy little bastard had stopped breathing. All to the good.
Barrows were no place for Inox. Low ceilings and a stink that stays with you. But this run came with a promise of money and he needed all of that.
So, for that matter, did the little tinkerer Merkusa and the Cragheart whose name Morth couldn't pronounce. They were picking through the belongings of the six bandits they'd just killed. Based his companions' expressions, they weren't finding much. The Cragheart seemed to be cursing to himself in the weird collection of grating sounds and grunts his people call a language.
"Why hole up here," Morth asked, almost to himself.
"No idea," Merkusa replied. Morth was always surprised at how well she could hear. And that her voice was deeper and gentler than you'd expect from someone short of four feet tall.
"Any of them the guy we're looking for," she asked.
"No," the Cragheart said, not looking up from his looting. "All little men."
Their patroness had set them after the "big" man only a few days before. All three of them must have set the tavern reeking with the sweet smell of failure; or at least that's why Morth figured she approached them.
She had a common story: thief steals from thief and aggrieved thief hires the destitute to do her bidding. She had money up front and gave good directions, so it was all fair enough, but Morth still couldn't figure out why bandits would hide out in a tomb.
"Traps by the door," Merkusa said evenly. She was down on her hands and knees gently feeling around the edges of the traps.
"What now," the Cragheart asked.
Merkusa didn't respond, but produced a gimmick from her pocket. They are best described as little balls of wire, metal, and witchcraft. Tinkerers use them for all kinds of purposes. She pressed a button hidden somewhere inside this one and it began to glow an off shade of green. She stood up, took a step back from the trap, and tossed the gimmick onto the floor. It scuttled a few feet forward, straight as an arrow. Before long the trap triggered and the gimmick was shattered into metal fragments.
"Poor business," Merkusa said, collecting a few of the bits of the gimmick that were scattered about. "No great genius at work here."
She took a step towards the closed door in the middle of the wall just past the traps.
"And what's your plan," Morth asked.
"Opening the door," the Tinkerer responded, still facing forward.
"How do you know there aren't half a hundred of these buggers waiting on the other side?"
"Why didn't they come crashing through the door when we were carving up their friends," Merkusa said, finally turning to look at the Inox.
"They're cowards," Morth said.
"I'll see them," the Cragheart said, taking a step toward the door.
Merkusa didn't wait. Seeing the door had no handle, she pushed at its center and it swung easily into the next room. It swung so easily, in fact, that the tinkerer tottered forward a bit.
And that's when the arrows came.
The trio later figured out that there had been three bandit archers hiding behind overturned tables in the middle of the room. Merkusa never saw them or their arrows. One fired well wide of her to the right but the other two struck home, burying one arrow in each of her shoulders. Since she was much younger she had learned never to let an enemy hear her pain and so she kept silent, but the wounds forced her to the ground.
As took a knee, Morth and the Cragheart could see more clearly into the room beyond. Morth understood immediately why the bandits had chosen to stay in the barrow.
At the back wall, standing beneath a guttering torch, was a pair of re-animated skeletons. Morth had heard rumors of humans consorting with the dead, but the sensibilities of the Inox are such that he never thought it possible. Watching the skeletons advance towards Merkusa, trapped as she was in the doorway, was almost too much for the him to process.
Almost.
Whatever the unreality of it, if Morth had an instinct it was to combat and it carried him into the next room. He leapt over Merkusa, crouching as she was in the door way, and then waded into the small pool of bandits and bones, screaming horrible curses. Two of the archers fell at a blow and he rushed further into the room and towards the skeletons who had joined the remaining bandits at the tables. Both tables were turned on their sides and the two had been placed just far enough apart to block most of the room but permit the passage of a single person between them.
As he prepared to jump over the tables, he heard the Cragheart shout, "what now?"
"Heal her and kill them," he replied over his shoulder.
"I'll be fine," Merkusa said. "Just get me out of this doorway."
Morth heard an arrow whistle past his ear and he wheeled to see the last of the archers notching another. She fired and hit him just below his left shoulder. He covered the last few feet between himself and the tables in two strides and jumped to the other side. He landed no more than two feet from the archer who by now was having a difficult time preparing another arrow for all her trembling.
Morth laughed. Inox young are taught that fear is the first and the last enemy.
He and his friends would live. Hopefully the thief they were looking for would be among the dead.
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