Skaldi led them along the mountainside without hesitation. Every now and then the dwarf would and wrap a knuckle against a stone, or sniff at a crack in the rock, or some other arcane action which seemed to have meaning only to himself. The descended slowly down the cragy slope until they came to an overhang that Skaldi had apparently been expecting. At the back of the rocky ledge was a narrow fissure, perhaps three feet wide.

“Aye that’ll be it,” the dwarf remarked with evident satisfaction. Camilla peered at the crack dubiously, it was going to be a very tight fit for Ivan and even Cydric would struggle. She cast a look back at Dietricha who seemed to be picking mountain flowers and threading them through her unkempt hair. Yantz, still pale from the encounter with the Dragon Ogre, caught her glance and shrugged apologetically. Wind whipped up the mountain side like a knife making Camilla shiver and hug her cloak tighter around her.

“Well I suppose it is better than freezing to death out here, better get your armor off gentlemen,” Camilla pointed out. Grumbling but obeying the men began to strip out of there armor. Camilla began gathering the fallen branches of some of the scrubby stunted trees that clawed their way into the rock. Skaldi took it a step further and simply uprooted a half dozen with jerks of his powerfully muscled arms.

“I’ll go first,” Skaldi declared and turned sideways to squeeze through the narrow opening, his heavy set body scraping against the stone before he disappeared from view. Camilla, eager to get out of the cold, went next, slipping easily between the rock faces. The narrow point lasted perhaps ten feet before the cavern opened out to something that a wagon might fit through if its driver were very careful, it stretched away, curving out of sight about twenty feet on, the way was rough, much rougher than she had expected.

“It opens out,” she called back, “come on in.”

“Its always the way last, harder stone close to the surface, otherwise it would ave worn away and collapsed,” the dwarf noted with professional pride. Yantz, looking thin without his armor but still wrapped in powerful cords of muscle squirmed through next, the firewood they had gathered was wrapped in his cloak that he dragged behind him like a body. Dietricha joined them next looking satisfied if a little ridiculous with all the flowers in her hair. Heavy cursing in Kislivite followed her and for a moment she feared Ivan had gotten stuck in the narrow entrance but there was a sudden unpleasant scraping sound and the big man stumbled into view. A scraped bloody area was visible at his shoulder and hip. 

“Lady de.. Whatever,” Konrad whispered and Camilla moved back along the passageway and began to pass weapons and armor back to the remainder of the group. Konrad came through next. Camilla had a sudden terror that some unseen enemy would strike while Cydric was alone on the mountain side. The fear choked her for a long moment before Cydric squeezed through, grunting with effort and holding his sword out to the side. She clasped his hand and pulled him through, feeling only the slightest scrape on the rock.

They climbed down the descending chambers for another ten minutes before Skaldi discovered a pool of water fed by a slow trickle from the rock and declared it was safe to stop. They built a small fire from the timber they had scavenged and clustered around it for warmth, trying to shed the enervating cold of the mountains. There wasn’t much food, only a little hard tack and ancient cheese that left them all hungry.

“There will be cave mushrooms as we get deeper,” Skaldi assured them with something like relish, a feeling which Camilla couldn’t share but her empty belly approved of.

“Always is where there is water,” he explained, sniffing at the pool before dipping his leather water skin in to fill it up.
[@POOHEAD189]