We found the area where Barricade had been taken and Borka saw us as she left the area, offering to trade for information. I kind of like Borka; at least you know where you stand with her. The others don’t seem to trust her, though, so there was no trade.
Instead it was up to me to go scouting again and boy oh boy—giants! I saw two inside the entrance playing cards at a guard post, another near some cells, and I could hear signs of mining so there were bound to be more giants with the slave labour.
This was going to be a tough egg to crack, so I thought I might be able to take some of the pressure off if I could provoke a fight between the two giants playing cards. One of them was already accusing the other of cheating so I figured all it would take would be to sneak some money from one side to the other. Not really my strong suit (pardon the pun)—I'm more into scouting than stealing.
The giants knew something was going on so I magically whispered to the others to come in and help while I stood in a position where I could magically silence the alarm bell, which amusingly meant I was standing on top of the card table right between the two giants.
The tunnels weren’t that wide so they could be taken one at a time and a good thing too because they thumped Ili and Malakar when we had the advantage of numbers. If only we could have put a barrier in front of both of them because the one at the back did absolutely nothing with its javelins.
I stayed well out of the way because I knew it would be a bad idea to get in the thick of things too soon and sure enough not one but two fireballs went off in the area I would have been in had I tried to help.
Not that I didn’t play my part—I just made sure I waited for the area effect spells to clear before I got involved.
With the guards out of the way we moved further into the caves. I knew that the side off to the left was completely empty so we headed straight around to the interesting part of the complex and with the other guys standing by I snuck past the cell guard and confirmed that the cells were empty. One fewer giant to fight is fine by me.
We avoided the mining area and Obegard could tell where Barricade’s belongings were so he used magic to jump in and a couple minutes later he appeared again with Barricade and a bunch of stuff and told us to run for it.
We made it out of the caves before the giants caught up, and then the ground started shaking as the boulders they threw hit the ground around us. One caught Obegard beside me and he went down like a sack of potatoes so I took a potion to turn myself invisible and then poured another down Obegard’s throat so neither of us would be targets, and then bundled him into my storage sack.
Malakar was circling around with a spell of flying so I grabbed hold of him and we high-tailed it off the mountains faster than the giants could chase us and we didn’t really stop until we got back to Golden Axe.
Well, that’s not completely true because the others had some weird hangup about riding Obegard’s summoned horses into the ground. I don’t understand it at all—we thrashed them while we were chasing Borka and even when they all die one day there they are the next, fresh as a daisy again. I mean they’re magical—you can’t kill them.
Back at Golden Axe our “reward” was that we’ll be given a stronghold in a keep the dwarves are going to build outside the caverns with the temple of Kor. You should have heard the others carrying on about temples, and towers, and barracks, and guest rooms, and dining halls, ... Wassamadda—eating with the dwarves not good enough for you?
Me, I’ll just be making a nice little room or two underground. Maybe with a couple of dozen traps set up to keep any guests out of my business.
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