Once again the armies of darkness are sweeping across the world and this time there may be no stopping them. Only by standing together can the heroes of civilization hope to prevail, but at this hour of their greatest trial the mightiest of their nu...
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Three days later, they arrived at the caves of Shanathin.
Once, millions of years before, an underground river had emerged from the foothills of the White Mountains here, carving a roughly circular tunnel twenty feet wide out of the solid rock. It had long since dried up, though, and the bottom third or so of the tunnel was now filled with gravel and hard soil to form a flat, level floor on which, near the entrance at least, a few shrubby plants grew. A few animal bones could also be seen further in, gleaming white in the light of the largest moon and the huge comet which were shining in through a hole in the roof, indicating that the caves were inhabited, probably by a pride of lions or possibly a family of cave trolls. They’d have to be very careful going in.
“This is as far as we can take the horses,” said Shaun. “From now on, we have to carry everything ourselves.”
“There was supposed to be someone waiting here to take the horses back to the palace,” said Matthew, scanning the distant, dusty horizon with his eyes. “Where are they?”
“When the horses arrived back without us, they probably assumed we're dead,” said Thomas. “They probably got a wizard to send a farspoken message telling him not to bother coming here.”
“So what do we do with them?” asked Jerry, fondly stroking the flank of the one he’d shared with Matthew. “Just let them go?”
“Yeah,” said Shaun. “Don’t worry, they’ll be all right. There’s plenty of grass around here, and sooner or later someone’ll find ‘em and give them a good home. Creatures as good as these won’t be ownerless for long.”
They unsaddled their horses, therefore, unloaded all their provisions and equipment and then let them go to graze at will around the entrance to the cave. They then set about picking everything up and fastening it to various parts of their bodies so that they could walk about easily and still have their hands free. It was pretty heavy, but not as heavy as it would have been if they’d still had all their original equipment, and it would get steadily lighter as they gradually ate their food and drank the water. Thomas shifted the weight on his shoulders into a more comfortable position and decided he could bear it easily enough. He’d rather stagger a bit now than go hungry later on.
The slaver waited patiently until they were all ready, and then strode into the darkness of the cave, seeming not to care whether the others kept up or got left behind.
“Hey, wait for us!” cried Jerry, running after it, one hand on his head to keep his conical red hat from falling off.
The others followed on behind, Shaun cursing as he tripped and nearly fell over a loose lump of rock that had fallen from the ceiling. Thomas fumbled with his red glowbottle, the only one they had left between them, added a drop of activating fluid, and soon the cave was illuminated by a dull red light, about as bright as that given by the red sun. Not very bright but enough to see where they were treading once their eyes had adjusted to it. He looked behind him, at the entrance to the cave and the few stars that were still visible through it, and wondered how long it would be before they saw the sky again.
