Tordhir - Lost in the Deep - Part 6

Day 189

8♦ To say that I woke up refreshed, would be to stretch and bend the word far from its original meaning. But I did feel a lot better than yesterday. I didn’t spend any time cleaning the room where I had slept. Instead I took my kerchief and polished the necklace I got from Belgrima along with the helmet of the old dwarven king. When I escape this place I will at least be able to show my people that these artefacts survived.

I have felt the evil lurking in this place, but thinking about it I believe our fault was that our numbers were to few. On the next expedition here we need to send half a battle clan, it might even warrant a full fist. First I needed to find my way out, I needed to start moving.

When I came back out in the hall I couldn’t say why I was so disoriented yesterday. Today I was clear about where I had came from. I started to walk to the tunnel leading east, or rather I called it east. I didn’t have any notion of the actual direction but east felt like it would lead home. Also it made me feel better.

It struck me then that while I was counting the days I spent down here I no longer actually knew if my days and nights had the correct rhythm. It could be that when I finally got out, it would be at the end of my day but that I’d still walk out to face the sunrise. The thought made me feel silly. I would of course be happy regardless of when I came out.

Then it came crawling, the doubt. Could I even trust myself at this point. What if this was day 243. Or 139? Had I written in my diary every day? Where my numbers correct? Did I sleep longer or shorter than was normal? While walking I leafed through my diary, it horrified me to note how my penmanship changed over the months.

I heard something break on the step just before the fatal one. The false floor gave way and my left leg caught in the splinters. Echoes from the cracking sound bounced across the walls. I had a few seconds before the pain hit. I should have followed my training and tried to find that place the warriors meditate to reach. The Heart of Stone, that temple of focus where neither pain nor suffering holds sway.

It wasn’t to be, I screamed when pain engulfed me. My hands were shaking when I tried to free my leg, that had stuck. The blood wasn’t that bad but I had twisted my ankle. What worried me, was that I could see that the someone had sabotaged the walkway, where I had stepped, and recently at that. I tried to look at the cuts to determine when it had occurred, but such efforts were wishful thinking. Even uninjured with all the time in the world that kind of investigation was beyond me.

Instead I thought about who might have set the trap. All I knew for sure was that it wouldn’t be a friend of mine, what was also clear was that I needed to leave that place, to run. Though my second step told me that wasn’t an option. Instead I started to limp away.

9♥ At first I left a trail of blood, so I had to stop and improve my bandage. I also wrote some thoughts in this book. Setting out again the pain in my leg was worse. I had to lean with all my weight on my spear just to limp. I had no business being up and about in my current state. Still staying put was even worse.

With my heavy breathing and the sound of my spear hitting the floor each step, it took a while before I heard it. At first I held a conviction that the sound was some form of echo. Alas they were there, the sounds of steps behind me. Half of the steps might have been my mind playing games with me. Perhaps I made up most of them. Still I was growing sure, some of them were real.

I kept turning to watch behind me, whatever was back there stayed out of sight. I considered laying an ambush, my reasoning was that it might be a single scout and that my situation would be worse if I didn’t confront my pursuer now. With the state of my leg I didn’t dare a confrontation as I’d be fighting with a sever disadvantage. Though in all honesty even if I’d been at my best I might still have hesitated. I didn’t actually know if only a single creature was following me, or if I could best it.

For a time I tried moving faster, my mistake was that I was focusing more on the faint sound of the steps behind me instead of where I was going. I leaned too much on my bad foot and pain shot through me. As I stood there engulfed in pain I wanted to scream out, “what are you waiting for?” Was it waiting for reinforcements, that I would show them the way out? Was the thing just curious?

Were the steps even real?