Draxus Flameheart's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

The drain swallowed them whole. Draxus crawled first, axes strapped tight to his back. The stone pressed his shoulders on both sides. Kerra followed, one hand on her wolf's flank. The reek of old water clung to everything. Then the tunnel opened wide, and Draxus stopped. Firelight. He crept forward and pushed through a broken grate. They stood inside a ruined bathhouse of black onyx. Cracked pillars held up a caved roof. Faded carvings still gleamed in the pools of moonlight from above. And there, stacked in the far basin, sat the hoard. Old gold. Coins, cups, chains, all stamped with his clan's snarling dragon. Draxus's breath caught. He pressed a hand to the pile. It was warm from years of buried dark. Then the weight of it hit him. "We can't carry this," he said. He lifted a single chest. His arms shook. "Two of us, back through that crawl? It would take a hundred trips. The guards would find us by the third." Kerra ran her fingers along a worn onyx wall. "Then we don't carry it," she said. "We haul it." She knelt at a low crack in the floor and clicked her tongue, three sharp notes. Something answered. Stone scraped. A shape squeezed up through the gap, big as a plow horse, its shell a wet green shine. A beetle. Long legs folded and stretched. Its jaws clicked like shears. Draxus reached for an axe. "Easy," Kerra said. "He digs the deep tunnels. He's mine." She stroked its emerald back. "He can drag ten chests through a hole you'd never fit." But the beetle alone could not lift the loaded chests onto its shell. A voice rumbled from the dark grate behind them. "You'll need arms for that." Draxus spun. An ogre filled the broken doorway, green-skinned, tusks curling past his cheeks, a war-cleaver on his back. Kerra grinned. "Grok. You're late." "You paid half," the ogre said. "Half is late." He stepped in, and the floor shook. Draxus had hired the sellsword weeks ago on Thorin's word. He'd doubted the coin was worth it. Now he watched Grok lift a full chest one-handed and set it gently on the beetle's back. They worked fast and quiet. Grok loaded. Draxus lashed the chests down with rope. Kerra guided the beetle to the crack in the floor. Its legs found holds no man could. Chest by chest, the hoard sank into the earth and away, toward the open air beyond the wall. Draxus lifted the last coin from the empty basin. His clan's mark stared back. The hoard was moving. It was his again. Then a horn sounded above them, long and cold. Boots pounded the stone overhead. The guards had counted their gold and found it gone.