The Trials of Caste Read Free

the edges of the scales that covered them;
three lattice-work beacons of exertion in the inky black depths of the underdark.
    “Th… tha… thanks,” Jerrig finally got out between
breaths.
    Durik, still breathing too hard to talk, looked at
the much slighter Jerrig.  “Uh-huh,” he managed to eek out.
    “I don’t think this is… working terribly well,”
Jerrig huffed, his tongue lolling out the side of his dog-like snout as Durik
just looked at him.  “This is supposed… to be the easy part… of the climb.”
    Durik stared at the patterns the rope had dug into
his fingers as he flexed them and blinked.  Rubbing them against each other he saw
a few scales fall into the void below them.
    Jerrig sat up somewhat.  “Thanks for saving me,
both of you,” he said as he looked from Durik to Gorgon.  “I thought I was dead!”
    Gorgon grunted acknowledgement as he rubbed his scaly
head just behind the horns, then looking as though he’d only begun to warm up, he
stuck his snout into the wind and looked up and down the cliff face at the
other four yearlings and their master trainer, all of whom were in some stage
of climbing this ultimate obstacle; the cliff known throughout their gen as
Sheerface.  Above him, Gorgon could see that Arbelk had climbed much quicker
and much further than the rest of them, his lithe form a bright contrast in
Gorgon’s heat vision to the pitch black of the cool rock wall he was climbing. 
On a ledge several paces above them, but still some distance behind Arbelk, Gorgon
could see Trallik’s snouted face poking over the edge, intent to see what was
happening yet devoid of any particular emotion, other than the intolerance that
he typically exuded.  Not far below his ledge Gorgon saw the tall, lanky Troka
being pulled up by Manebrow, the Kale Gen’s Master Trainer, and by Keryak, who
was probably the most normal looking of them all. 
    Gorgon watched the Master Trainer finish hauling
Troka up to his ledge then looked up at the rest of them.  This past year of
training had made him intimately familiar with every mannerism the Master
Trainer portrayed.  Now, by the look on Manebrow’s face, Gorgon could tell that
they were going to be changing tactics.
    “Everyone stay where they are!” Manebrow called
loud enough for even Arbelk up the cliff face from them to hear him over the
wind gushing up from below.  After a moment, when he could see that all seven of
the warrior trainees were looking at him, the muscular veteran warrior
continued.  “We’re not going to make it up Sheerface this way!  I think it best
that we send a pair ahead to get help and ropes to pull the rest of us up!”  The
seven yearlings muttered their approval, defeat evident in the eyes of some. 
    Truly, the Fates wound about them in the wind, and
all of them could feel it.  They were fickle things, the Fates, and not to be lightly
tempted.  But the small group of yearlings had already swung Fates’ pendulum
far in their favor.  None of them wanted the pendulum to swing away from them
on their climb; despite their acts of bravado none wanted to join the ancestors
quite yet.
    Arbelk, already several tens of paces ahead of the
rest of them in this climb, cupped his hands on either side of his snout and yelled
down to the group.  No one could hear him over the wind the first time, so he
breathed in deeply and shouted again.  “I’ll climb on ahead and bring back
help!”
    Manebrow looked in the eyes of the other six
yearlings as he pondered what decision he should make.  He cursed himself again
for not ensuring their equipment had been hidden better when they had made the
long climb down Sheerface some two moons now in the past.  After all, if the
outcasts down in the underdark hadn’t gotten to their gear, they’d still have
had the equipment they needed to make this climb safely and together in one
group.  As it was, they had recovered barely enough equipment from the outcasts
to help get