They’d been attacked in the woods a week later.
They’d come in the early hours of the morning, when the entire party was asleep around the fire. Tortoise had woken to find a sack over his head and his arms and legs being brutishly tied. He’d struggled, as they all had, but it was no use: they’d been captured.
Their captors had quickly and efficiently slung them over their own horses and led them through the forest for almost an hour. The horses sloshed across a river a couple of times, climbed steeply up a hill, crossed a wooden bridge—and then a cool, musty darkness enveloped them as they descended down a long, spiralling tunnel, descending and descending and descending, the horses hooves echoing endlessly on the stone, and their captors’ identity wasn’t revealed until they were all deep underground and were pulled down from their horses and had their blindfolds pulled off.
They were short, nearly all pink and wrinkly, with big teeth and neat grey uniforms. There were a couple of dozen of them, three or four to a prisoner.
Mole-rats. They’d been captured by mole-rats.
The mole-rats spoke curt Laudanese. Miguel tried to reason with them, his hands tied behind his back, but was repeatedly struck with thick and hefty truncheons and brought to his knees. He briefly bowed his head, and they all did what they were told after that.
Their captors processed them quickly, taking everything from them, dipping their tails in a pungent white dye, and issuing them with bright red overalls. It was disorienting. Before they knew it they were all standing in a large prison cell together. A guard jerked the door closed and locked it. They were the only ones in the cell. The lights burned fiendishly bright, reflecting off the endless white tiles and the shiny foil trims of their overalls. They stared at each other.
“Are you okay?” Dee asked.
“Yes,” Miguel said, rubbing his bloody crest and checking his hand. “Many bruises. I’ll be okay.”
“So does anyone know why we’re here?”
“Booty, I guess.” Ibrahim sounded resigned.
“Weren’t you on watch, Geck?”
Everyone looked at Gecko.
Gecko put out his hands. “Guys, my bad. My bad. But I think we have some options here, I really do. It’s not all doom and gloom.”
Everyone glanced at each other and back at him.
“What? Come on!” Gecko said. “A prison breakout is just a reverse heist. It’ll be fun! With a team like this we’ll be out of here in no time.”
“Where are the toilets?” Penny asked, looking around.
Next episode: Sunless Days, Sunless Nights