Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,33
Benji heard a “woohoo!” followed by a damp splash.
“Come down, Benji!” Calarian’s voice floated up.
“If I come down, how will we get back out?” Benji asked, because all of them getting trapped down there sounded like a stupid idea to him. Plus, he still had Calarian’s dry boots and he wanted to keep them that way.
“There’s another way out down here,” Calarian said.
“Come on, come and meet Maisy!” Lars called
Benji huffed and grumbled and rolled his eyes, but he went. He made sure to take his boots off though, tying the laces together so he could drape them around his neck before taking a deep breath and dropping feet first down the tunnel.
It was some kind of limestone, he vaguely registered, as the walls flew by. It was only a short drop, but exceedingly fast, and Calarian’s earlier “woohoo!” was suddenly a lot more understandable.
His knees gave out as he landed, and he ended up on his arse in a puddle of limestone-clouded water. He wrinkled his nose at the crawling sensation of clammy fabric against his skin, and he could feel a bruise in the making from his rough landing. It didn’t improve his mood to see Calarian smirking at him. “You could have warned me!” he accused, standing and rubbing the sore spot on his arse.
“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, I’ll kiss it better later,” Calarian said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Calarian!” Lars exclaimed, and gasped loudly, and when Benji turned to look he was standing close by in the cavern, with his big hands clasped over a dairy cow’s ears. “Don’t talk like that in front of Maisy!”
“Ha!” Benji exclaimed, and pointed a finger at the cow. “It’s your cow! She’s the monster, because she got stuck down here, and she echoes! This is an actual echo chamber, and not the philosophical kind where the upper classes convince themselves of their superiority and their right to crush the masses under an iron fist! Or, conversely, the sort that drunk political science students get trapped in all the time, especially on cheap drinks night at the local tavern.” He paddled over to where Maisy was standing in the centre of the huge, cavernous space. She was a pretty cow, as far as cows went. She was honey-coloured, with long eyelashes and dark, soulful eyes. Benji’s heart melted just a tiny bit. “Don’t worry, I was a monster once too. And I also ate a lot of moss.”
The limestone walls around where Maisy was standing had been almost licked clean of moss. That explained how she’d survived down here without anyone feeding her. It also explained her mournful bellows, because moss was pretty terrible.
“Aw,” said Benji. He reached out and patted her nose, and didn’t even mind too much when she licked his shirt, and then sucked at a mouthful of it. “You are definitely prettier than the last cow I met.”
Lars beamed at him like a proud parent, and Benji felt a warm glow in his chest that wasn’t entirely caused by the hot rasp of a cow’s tongue against his skin. “Well,” Benji said. “What are we waiting for? We’ve defeated the monster, and somebody definitely mentioned blowjobs.”
Lars clapped his hands over Maisy's ears again, lips thinned in disapproval. “Benji! Not in front of Maisy! She’s only two!”
Calarian snickered and sidled over. “Does that mean you’ve been cow blocked? Oh, wait! I’ve got a better one! Stock blocked!”
Benji didn’t reply, settling for pushing him into the puddle. Calarian was definitely getting blown last.
Chapter Nine
Getting Maisy out of the cave turned out to be trickier than Calarian anticipated. Firstly, because while there was another exit to the limestone cavern, it turned out that it was a squeeze for Lars... and that Maisy couldn’t exactly get down and crawl.
In the end Calarian climbed back up the way they’d slid in, and set off further down into the system of tunnels and caves armed only with his optimism and his rudimentary mountain troll language skills. At last though, he found a few mountain trolls who, once Calarian had convinced them that Maisy wasn’t some sort of monster after all, were happy enough to lend Calarian several lengths of rope and some muscle, just not in the usual fun way he asked for those things.
Maisy lowed once while they were on their way back to her, and Calarian felt his hair stand on end, because that sound was terrifying when it was amplified by the tunnels inside the mountains.