Page 62 of The Dungeon Book

The wraiths fled before the living, then closed in behind them. There’s a special terror in glimpsing a shadowy spectre vanishing just as the light catches it, so you’re never quite sure if you imagined it or not – but you’re absolutely sure, with this cold certainty that crawls down your spine one vertebra at a time to nest in your stomach, that there’s something behind you and you’re not imagining that. They were herded through the temples. By the end of it, Sir Rudyard’s moustache was white with terror, and Offa was a whimpering ball of cold sweat, but they were all still alive.

Well, almost all. Bait had gone before them, preparing the way, but she couldn’t ward off all peril. One poor wretch got skewered by a spiker, surviving only by sheer luck when the falling spike glanced off his collarbone. Another panicked and fled into the darkness; Denizens know what happened to him, but no word or sign ever came back to the world above. But still, nearly two dozen stalwart humans made it through the haunted halls.

They climbed the west stairs, past halls that stank of manticore, lugging all the supplies they’d brought with them up the steps. Exhausted, they waded the Buried River and rested on the far side. There were words and even laughter in the babble of the waters; Sir Rudyard frowned, consulted his bestiary, and decided that the best thing to do was studiously ignore it and make an inspiring speech.

“An excellent beginning!” he began. The blasphemy of his own voice against the Dungeon’s deep silence startled him. Inning . . . in . . . in . . . echoed the corridors. The river giggled.

He tried again, speaking in a stage whisper. “We have entered enemy territory! Be on your guard – but be of stout heart. A, er, well-guarded heart, stoutly . . . stouting. Our mission, our oath, is to watch the border, and not just watch, but guard!”

His rhetoric got away from him there – “guard” was almost a shout, and it too echoed. Guard . . . ard . . . ard . . .

Even I heard it, several levels up. Where was your humble narrator during all this? Why have I related the intrigues of greasy scullions, of justly exiled hags, of a knight who by his own admission is at least half toast even before he meets the dragon, instead of telling of my own great adventures? The truth is that manticores, for all their boastful tales of being creatures of infinite resource, with claws and teeth and spikes and wings and livers and so forth, are sorely lacking in hands. I suppose Only-Sister could have carried me in her jaws, but she argued that she would have need of her teeth.

So, I’d been given to the goblins like an unwanted vase, to be propped up on some shelf and forgotten about. Oh, I had a role in the plan. I was to remind Clickglee and his tribe of what needed to be done in advance of the dragon-slaying. Once, I was Master of the Dungeon, and then I was a memorandum.

So I sat on my shelf in the Trapsmiths’ Arcade, and listened.

Off beyond the Hall of Pillars, Only-Sister yowled, hunting and being hunted by the dragon’s partisans. Down in his lair, Nithscalpa snored, while the manticore bellowed and rattled her chains. Ard ard ard echoed Sir Rudyard’s platitudes, like the barking of a scrappy little dog, and I could tell from the echoes that the intruders were close at hand.

“It’s time, Clickglee.”

The trap was simple by goblin standards. I’d had many arguments with the trapsmiths over it, fending off proposals to add rotating blades or hidden trapdoors or poison gas vents. “All it needs,” I insisted, “is a portcullis. A big heavy one.”

A big heavy one was duly procured. They salvaged it from the wreckage of the Entrance Hall, so it was a little melted, but still fit for purpose.

The other part of the trap, of course, was the bait. Not our own dear Bait, but a pile of weapons. Salted with gold and gems, too – there’s a knack to making a treasure hoard look perfectly enticing. I watched a master artisan at work, Clickglee placing a gold coin just so, or polishing up a ruby and setting it at an angle to catch the light.

*

“My word!” said Sir Rudyard. Beside him, Offa said something quite unprintable; had I hands, I would have clapped them over Bait’s impressionable ears.

“Should we . . . ?” said Offa, in a tone that suggested that they absolutely would regardless of what Sir Rudyard decided.

“It is a dead end.” Rudyard peered into the side chamber, completely overlooking the concealed portcullis. “But those blades might be, uh, enchanted weapons of dragon-slaying or—”

Offa charged past him, greedy hands reaching for that perfectly placed ruby. That broke whatever thin crust of discipline restrained the others. Half a dozen rushed in before the trap triggered.

Down came the portcullis with a crash.

Up went the uproar, the shouts of alarm. Those left outside rushed to the aid of those trapped within. It was a very heavy portcullis; the porters and bearers recruited in the village threw down their burdens and joined in trying to bend bars or lift gates.

Inch by groaning inch, everyone united in one single heroic effort, the portcullis rose. Slowly, slowly, they escaped that part of the trap.

But while they laboured, no one noticed goblin hands reaching from the shadows. Ropes and poles, hammers and chisels, leather and wood and steel – trapsmiths make much better use of these things than humans.

After, there was much alarum and confusion. It’s one thing to put, say, a quill pen or a half-eaten apple down and then forget where you left it, but it’s something else entirely to mislay the baggage for an entire dungeoneering expedition. The humans huddled together, fearful of the dark, unsure of the path forward. Had they keener sight, they’d have seen the goblins just beyond the torchlight.

“We should turn back,” argued one guard. “Take the gold and go, before our luck runs out.” (Actually, he was considerably more vocal and earthy than that.)

Sir Rudyard smoothed down his moustaches. Then he picked up an ancient spear from the pile of loot and handed it to a nearby villager. One by one, he armed them all, and there were exactly enough weapons to outfit all the bearers. “I would call that,” he said, “a sign of good luck.”

It wasn’t. It was a sign that Pinshriek had fingers enough to count all fourteen villagers.

Now all the humans were armed, and the goblins had work to do.

“We press on.”

On through the Trapsmiths’ Arcade. I watched them parade past from my little nook, one by one. Sir Rudyard in the front, hoping for a convenient signpost marked “this way to the dragon”. Two boys I guessed to be Offa and Neb from Bait’s descriptions, in that one was greasy and the other in dire need of a comb. Then a bristle of spear-carrying guards and villagers, and it was a miracle they had not yet impaled each other.