Chapter Four Hundred and Fifty-Six - Booksie's Angels

The guards and the cook were secured with lengths of rope that had, until very recently, been holding up the camp's tents. They were gagged too, especially after one of them started to scream out details about us towards the cave.

Their gear was confiscated. I expected us to make a pile of it to one side, but instead, Hannah had let the others take their pick of spears and machetes and knives, then she grabbed the pile and carried it over to the latrines off to one side of the camp.

She made a face as she pulled off the board on top of the latrine, then dumped all of the weapons we wouldn't be using within.

I... found that kind of very gross, but also it did make it so that no one would be using those against us anytime soon.

My team surrounded the cave entrance, with Awen and Calamity both aiming bows into the cavern's darkness, ready to stick anyone that came out with quarrel or bolt.

There was movement within the cave. At a glance, it looked like it went down a few paces, then turned towards the right. There was light spilling out from around the corner. It was too steady and white to be torchlight, so someone was probably using magic down there to light things up.

"I zink we're secured," Jean-Pierre said as he returned from making a quick sweep of the surroundings. "Now for ze hard part."

"You think getting Booksie out of the cave will be hard?" I asked.

He nodded. "Might be. We don't know numbers, zey know we're coming. The passage is tight. Our numbers advantage won't be worth much in zere. But we do have time on our side, assuming zere isn't an exit to ze tunnel somewhere else."

"Haven't noticed any," Calamity said. His ears twitched. "And I've been paying attention. I can't tell how many are down there, but I'm thinking it's no more than five, and that number hasn't changed. If there's a second exit to the tunnel, then they haven't used it."

Jean-Pierre nodded along. "Zey're stuck. Like a rabbit in a warren."

I felt my ears twitch at the comparison. "So, our options now are to wait them out--which I don't like because it means spending more time out here where things could go wrong--pushing in to fight them in the cave, or the third option."

"Third option?" Gus asked from nearby.

I nodded, then walked over to the entrance of the cave. I cleared my throat, aware that I had a bit of an audience beyond just the people in the cave. "Hello!" I called out, hands cupped around my mouth to better project my voice.

There was some commotion in the cave, so I figured they'd heard me, at least a little.

"My name is Captain Bunch, of the Exploration Guild. We're here to investigate something. Please come out with your arms raised and your weapons dropped. We don't want to hurt anyone."

There was a small scuffle within, then I heard someone approaching the corner. "I can hardly trust anything you say, now can I? How do I know zat zis isn't a trap?" a grenoil asked. I could just make out their shadow on the cavern wall, squat and rotund, so definitely a grenoil.

I pulled my pin free from my bandoleer, then tossed it underhand so that it landed close to the corner.

A hand darted out and picked it up. "Is that enough proof?" I asked.

"It proves nothing," he muttered. "You could have stolen a guild pin off of anyone. Why are you attacking our camp? We have a legal right to be here."

"Can we talk to the bun you kidnapped?" I asked politely. "We'd like to know that they're safe, and whether or not you had a legal right to kidnap them."

There was a long, long stretch of silence after that. "You don't know zat we did anything of ze sort," he said.

"If you let us make sure that everyone in your camp is here of their own free will, then we'll leave and be very, very sorry about all of this."

Was it wrong to hope that they were kidnappers? Because if they weren't, then we had just attacked a camp of innocents. Very suspicious innocents, but still. There probably weren't any laws against camping in the woods over here, as far as I knew. This territory was ostensibly owned by Deepmarsh, but it was also a frontier, with few laws and regulations.

"We won't bow down to your orders," the grenoil said. "Go away."

"Um... no?" I tried. "We'd really rather not have to go down there and get you. Or wait you out. If you did kidnap Booksie, then... uh, you do know that she's the fiance of a dragon, right? If you have any friends or family in Port Royal, then it would be really nice of you to let her go. Um. For their safety. Not - not that I'm threatening you! But, well, I can't exactly stop Rhawrexdee from ... you understand, right?"

"How did you even find us?" he asked.

"We, uh... have our ways," I said, mostly because that sounded a heap better than 'it was all a coincidence, actually.' "Could you let Booksie go, please?"

"If--and it's a big if--we let ze bun prisoner go--" he asked, then was cut off.

I saw the grenoil's shadow peel away from the wall and step back, and there was a hushed conversation that I couldn't pick out, even with my ears ram-rod straight.

"Sounds like he's arguing with two others," Calamity murmured. His eyes narrowed and he leaned forwards a little. "One of them is against giving us 'the bun' because it would mean giving away their only leverage. Another wants to give us the 'other weird one' because that'll still give them a bargaining chip."

"The other weird one?" I asked.

Calamity shrugged without looking away from the cave's entrance. "Beats me."

"Are you sure he's the leader?" Harrison asked.

"He's got that vibe. You know, the person in charge who really should stick to running a desk instead of fieldwork?" A lot of the group nodded at Calamity's assessment. "They're coming back."

"Hello!" I called out as I saw the shadow return.

"Hey," the grenoil said. He sounded a little defeated. "We can't give you ze bun, we have a contract. But we could give you ze other prisoner."

"Uh... I mean, we'll free them too," I said , because what else could I say? "But we're also taking Booksie. And if you hurt her any more than you have, then... I'll be very upset."

The grenoil didn't say anything for a long moment. "You really think you can just come in here and take us on?" he asked. He was making an effort to sound tough.

"I mean, probably?" I said. "There's more of us than you, and we have some senior members of the Guild here." 'Some' might have been a slight exaggeration. "How many of you down there have more than two classes?"

"Uh," he said. I noticed his shadow shifting, as if looking back. His arms waved a bit, and it looked like he was gesturing to his buddies in a sort of 'what do you expect me to do' kind of way.

"Look, mister... I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Zat's because I didn't give it to you," he said.

"Okay, that's fair. Look, if you surrender, we'll let the guards know that you weren't so bad. I'm sure they'll be much nicer than if we have to go down there and fight you to free the prisoners. And if the people you kidnapped are hurt... I... I don't know." I swallowed. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this hostage-negotiation stuff.

There was more harsh whispering in the cave, then Calamity's eyebrows shot up a moment after I heard a smacking noise.

"I think someone just punched someone else," he said.

I picked up my spade, the point having been stuck into the earth. "Booksie?" I asked.

"No, I think their boss," he said.

Someone stepped out into the light at the cave's entrance. He was a grenoil man, dressed in a gambeson with scale-mail over his upper chest. He had his arms raised. "Alright, I surrender," he said.

He walked out, then so did two more grenoil, dragging a third behind him who looked like he was going to have a real shiner in the morning. His eye was already swelling shut from where someone smacked him.

We disarmed the grenoil, then gently made them kneel to one side.

Jean-Pierre, Calamity and I went into the cave.

It stank of sweat, and was uncomfortably damp, and not all that big. The main room just a curve in was maybe three times the size of my bedroom on the Beaver.

There were two figures in the back of the room, with sackcloth bags on their heads. One of them was immediately recognizable, even with the bag.

"Booksie!" I shouted.

***