I leaned forward as far as I could, trying to peer into the orc camp. A short hallway led to another doorway, and beyond was a round chamber. It had pilasters all along the walls and a domed roof. The cobwebs up there were thick enough to make it look like the roof was made of fog.

  The room was large enough to fit about ten tents made of scavenged furs. There were a few campfires scattered around, and a sheep roasted over one. The orcs hadn’t even spared the effort to skin it. I couldn’t believe it. They’d actually just driven a stake through it and suspended it above a fire. They desperately needed a cook.

  But even worse was the smell of burnt wool that seeped around the corner and the smoke it created. My nostrils and eyes stung.

  “How come the mole didn’t smell that?” I asked. It was just unfair.

  “Bad smelling range?” Romance suggested. “Only thing that makes sense to me.”

  “The prisoners are on the far side,” Shave said. “It’s dark around the edges, and if we’re quiet, the orcs shouldn’t notice us.”

  “They aren’t expecting us, right?” I asked.

  “Orcs have a few nasty tricks,” Elf told me. “See, they’re excellent at sensing arcane energies, like Presence, and they’ve got high perception for things like body heat. But if they’re not looking for it, they probably won’t notice. Their minds seem to hibernate when they’re not in battle.”

  “Regardless, we won’t have long,” Shave replied. “They won’t be expecting us, but we’ll have to move quickly. Once we get in, we’ll go straight for the prisoners. Cut them free. Ticks, you grab those weapons. They’re orc-made, but if we can arm the prisoners…the more hands, the better. Then we make for the exit. They’ll see us on the way out, but we’ll already be running.”

  As we waited, I wished we had a reading slate. From our excursion across the mole’s room, I’d practiced my stealth, and I felt something change. There was more knowledge in me, like the stealth had imprinted itself into my body. I felt like I could mimic the movements we’d done without much practice at all. It was the same degree of knowledge as I felt when it came to [Eye for Framing].

  Hopefully, that meant I had condensed a new Skill using the Labyrinth to help. But now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

  Shave motioned with his hand, and we moved. Travelling single file, we darted to the opposite wall, then, keeping to the edge and holding our weapons out in front of us, we raced down the hall. When we reached the room with the orc camp, we altered direction abruptly, arcing along the outside of the camp. We stayed low.

  I took stock of the camp layout. Ninety degrees adjacent to us was the way out—the guarded entrance that we’d passed earlier. On the completely opposite side of the camp, however, were the civilians. They were dirty and a few were bleeding, and all of them had their hands tied to a wooden rack, forcing them to stand for as long as they’d been here. One lay on the floor, his throat slit, long dead.

  We passed around the back of the camp, taking the long way toward the prisoners. I kept my feet light, and whatever stealth I’d learned from the mole encounter came into play here. I barely heard myself breathing.

  The camp wasn’t perfectly quiet. Orcs cooked over campfires or pounded their weapons, but none of them spoke, unless it was a direct order, telling another to do something. There were no camp songs, nothing.

  Halfway to the other side, we stumbled across an orc near the cavern’s back wall, sharpening his sword on the rough wall. Ticks grabbed him, putting an arm over his mouth to stop him from screeching. I was in the right position, so I lunged forward, ramming my spear into the orc’s heart. A gout of black blood burbled up, and the orc thrashed.

  The entire camp was too noisy for any of the other orcs to notice. Between the scraping of whetstones, the crackling of fires, and the faint whimpers of the prisoners, no one would’ve heard one single thrashing orc—not when Ticks held a hand tight to his mouth. He did, however, kick the tent closest to him.

  Finally, he died, falling still, but another orc emerged from the tent he’d kicked. The orc’s eyes went wide, and he drew a sword, but Shave tackled him. The orc’s lamellar hauberk clattered on the ground, and Elf rushed forward, crushing the orc’s windpipe with a slam of his axe.

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  For good measure, I raced toward the orc and pressed my hand over its mouth. It gnashed its teeth as it gasped, trying to bite my hand, so instead, I wedged my spear into its mouth until it finally fell still, suffocated by Elf. Still, the rest of the orcs hadn’t noticed, but we had to be running out of time.

  “Get the siphon,” Romance whispered.

  “Do we have time to gather their Presences?” I whispered back.

  But Shave was already extracting the orcs’ Presences. It was a fast process, and it would be a massive waste to leave them behind. They each produced a tiny white sphere. Shave handed one to me and one to Elf. “Everything always drops a Presence in the Labyrinth,” he explained softly. “Can’t let our effort go to waste.”

  I took the Presence and gently crushed it between my fingers. Now that I knew what to expect, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

  As I managed the lasting burn of the Presence, we continued on around the outside of the room until we reached the prisoners. Shave held a finger up to his lips and raced back and forth behind the prisoners, signalling for them to be quiet, then he whispered, “We’re getting you lot out of here.”

  I shifted my grip up to the very top of my spear, then began cutting the prisoners free. Their hands were bound with a thick rope, and it was harder to cut than I’d originally imagined, but I got through, using my spearhead like a knife.

  As Shave, Romance, Elf and I cut through the ropes, Ticks broke off toward a nearby tent and snatched up a barrel of shoddily-made orc weapons. Spears and axes, mainly, but there was a crude sword.

  We passed them around to the freed prisoners. Ticks pressed them into the hands of the men, no matter how nervous they looked, but one boy’s hands were trembling so badly that he dropped his axe.

  It clattered to the ground, bouncing on the stones.

  Most of the orcs didn’t look. It was just a metallic clatter. But one did. His eyes drifted over to us, then to the dead bodies we’d left in our wake.

  “Samefaces!” the orc shouted. “They’re helping the slaves escape!”

  I shifted my grip on the spear and moved down the line to cut the last prisoner free, then turned to face the orcs.

  “Make a run for it!” Shave ordered. “To the exit! Now! Get behind Romance!”

  Romance led with his shield, and because he had a point of Presence left when Shave didn’t. We raced as quickly as we could toward the exit. An orc jumped in front of us, but I jabbed it up through the chin with my spear.

  Another one rushed at Romance, but he batted it aside with a pulse of resonance from his shield. Ticks cleaved through a pair of orcs with his axe, triggering a resonance Skill of his own to blast through the pair. I moved to the rear, corralling the prisoners. An orc archer fired an arrow, and it stuck the prisoner in front of me in his eye. He fell back, dead, and a young woman snatched up the axe he’d been holding.

  “Keep going!” I shouted. I wanted to help the man, but I knew deep down he wasn’t going to make it out of here alive.

  An orc blew on a horn. It let out a deep, woody noise, which echoed around the enclosed room and stung my ears. More orcs poured out of the tents at the sound, and I did my very best to avoid them.

  We were twenty paces from the exit when, in front of us, a tent lifted. Furs flew off, and an explosion of splinters and wooden shrapnel followed. Standing in the wreckage was a hulking beast nearly twice the height of a regular orc, and thrice as wide. It had the same sickly beige skin and a long frock of black hair, but it had two massive tusks protruding from the bottom of its chin.

  “Ogre!” Elf yelled. “It’s a fucking ogre!”

  “That’s the Steel-tier!” Shave yelled.

  The beast raised a massive club above his head, leaned back, then slammed it down in the middle of our little escaping party. It split a woman in half and shattered the stone beneath her body, then swept it to the side. I dropped down to my stomach as it passed overhead, but another prisoner wasn’t so lucky. The club bashed him in the ribs and flung him across the cavern. He smashed into the opposite wall with a sickening crunch.

  For a moment, all I could think about was how vulnerable my body was, but it didn’t last long. I was separated from the rest of the prisoners and the rest of the Dupes. The ogre swung its club back and forth.

  One strike hit Romance’s shield, shattering it to splinters and destroying the buglight, and another swept back, hitting Ticks in the shoulder. It wasn’t deadly, but his shoulder had to be dislocated.

  The ogre pushed the prisoners and the Dupes back toward a corner, trapping them, and separating me from them. I had to do something. I had to get in there and help.

  But what could I do against that ogre? Maybe if I was an Iron I’d stand a chance. Otherwise, I was just going to get myself killed. Even if I tried to stab it in the leg, could I pierce its flesh?

  Even worse, the orcs were lining up in front of our planned exit, blocking our only way out.

  “Come on, Levi,” I hissed to myself. “Focus. There has to be a way out…”

  My eyes drifted to the burning sheep at the center of the hall. A plan formed in the back of my mind.

  Holding my spear out to the side, I sprinted to the sheep, then ripped up a patch of awful-smelling singed wool. An orc swung at my head, but I leapt back and kicked the beast, sending it toppling over the roasting mutton and into the fire.

  For good measure, and to make sure I got a slight improvement in my spearmanship, I gave the orc a quick jab in the heart before sprinting back the way we came.

  Sprinting back toward the mole, with a handful of pungent burnt wool in my hand.