Page 73 of The Dungeon Book

Bait wanted to throw open the door and run into the sunset. She wanted there to be nothing keeping her trapped here. She sank to her knees, not sure why she was weeping.

She thought of times when she’d been lost in the dark, and the minotaur had brought her home.

She crouched in the dark, all alone, for a very long time, waiting. But no one came. The Dungeon was still and silent.

At last, she rose. She wiped her face. He did not come back, and she told herself that she did not need him. She set off down the tunnel.

Bait told me none of this, then. I only learned it after, when it was too late.

And Neb, who was now Valourentius again? Well, parts of his tale you know better than I, but I’ll tell the portion I know in my own particular idiom.

He went back down the hill, head and heart as tangled as could be. He told himself he was angry, but that did not help, because he could not say who he was angry with – a common complaint of young men. He took his new sword and beheaded gorse bushes with savage fury. He returned to the village, where he was acclaimed a hero. (The villagers had already acclaimed him. This was not the first time he’d returned home since the dragon’s death, but it had been a hard year, and they took any excuse for an acclamation.) He visited his father Gyul, and the marker they’d put up for his mother’s grave, and made his farewells.

Then he set off down the road that led to Dunshelm, and past Dunshelm, and through Eskerlund, and past Eskerlund, on and on to his fortune.

He did not look back.

Anyway, as I said, life in the Dungeon returned to what passes for normal below. We lurked, we festered, we brooded and glooped according to our own particular natures, and Bait tried to be one of us.

From time to time, the minotaur came back up to the upper halls. Witless, heedless and matchless, he wandered. Now it was Bait who was his shadowy protector. There was nothing on our level that could threaten the titanic beast that Sir Peledon had become, but he might forget to eat, or find himself baffled by the complicated working of a door handle. Bait cared for him, as best she could. He did not notice. Even Gloop was more cognisant of her.

Adventurers trespassed in our halls, drawn by rumours of the dragon’s death, by tales of an unguarded hoard. They came seeking gold, they came with torch and sword, and they found only death – for keeping watch on the entrance is the common task of all. The clash of steel on scale, shouts of alarm, and then screams of pain echoed through the Dungeon, and Bait tried not to care.

Then, one night, she heard the malicious neepery of kobolds close at hand. Gloop had not eaten that day, and Bait had no love for kobold-kind. They were out in the corridors, so whatever happened to them was fair game. Quiet as a shadow crept Bait. She found them in the Green-Walled Room on the second level.

They were not alone.

The old woman clutched a guttering candle in one hand, a long-bladed knife in the other. The candle cast a dwindling pool of light, and the edge of the light was like the surface of shark-infested waters. Teeth flashed and vanished, scales and horns boiled up then sank back into the dark. The old woman slashed at the kobolds with her kitchen knife, and cut only shadow.

They laughed at her. The light flickered, and they drew closer, and closer still. “Meat!” they chorused. “Meat meat meat!”

The old woman did not speak the Dungeon Tongue. She heard only neep. Neep. NEEP. Scaly hands reached for her. The light guttered and failed.

“Mine!” roared Bait, so loud and furious the kobolds mistook her for a manticore. They fled in a clatter of dropped spears and panicked neeps.

“Who’s there?” asked the old woman, querulously. “Oh, oh, oh, take mercy. Take mercy.”

It was dungeon-dark now, casket-dark, not even a glimmer. Neither Bait nor the human – the other human – could see anything. Bait was unfazed – four steps left to the south wall, nineteen steps forward and six right to the far door, and there’s a crack in the floor under my foot that runs straight to the near door. She’d marked her place in the eye-blink before the light fled. The old woman, however, was like a wanderer on the shore swept off her feet by a sudden wave. She stumbled about, arms outstretched like sticks. She let the knife drop, too – the blade rang once off the stone floor, and Bait snatched it up before it bounced again.

“Who’s there?” The crone shuffled fearfully towards Bait, and Bait slipped to the side. Six steps left to the south wall, nineteen and four to the far door.

“Please.” The old woman’s voice cracked. “Is my boy here? Offa? Offa, is that you?”

Mistress Clove. Bait’s grip on the kitchen knife tightened.

“He is dead.”

“Oh!” Like she’d been struck in the heart.

“Aah!” An old body tripping and falling in the dark.

The rustle of old skin and bone on stone.

You learn to listen in the Dungeon.

“Aaah. Aaah. Aaah.” The wheezing of a broken thing. The sound of cloth dragging across the floor. She was crawling in the wrong direction. The old woman whimpered, and something in Bait thrilled at the sound. Something dragonish woke in her, something cold and cruel and remote. She need do nothing. This kill is mine.

But that would be unjust. That would be unworthy. Sir Peledon would not have approved.