Damien allowed himself an hour’s rest after the battle with Sloan. He wished he’d taken the time to bring his writing supplies so he could let his master know what had happened. He settled for tearing a relatively clean strip of cloth out of one of the dead bandits’ tunics. He conjured a pen and dipped it in the corpse’s fresh blood. A gruesome way to write, but Damien had limited options. He sent the message on its way and stood up.

Most of his power had returned and he figured the rest would regenerate during the short flight south. He leapt in the air and moved along at a modest pace. Below him the hardwood forest gradually gave way to patchy, twisted evergreens. Soon enough the vegetation went away altogether, save for the occasional clump of scraggly grass. Hot, dry wind struck his face.

The badlands spread out before him in shades of brown, gray, and dull orange. Towering mesas dotted the otherwise featureless desert. One of them must house the bandits’ fortress. Damien assumed from the directions the dead bandit had provided that the first mesa he came to flying southeast would be the target.

He wrapped himself in invisibility and flew toward the stone tower. The trip only took five minutes and he soon found himself hovering fifty feet off the ground facing a massive wood-and-iron double door. A well-worn path led up to the gates. It looked like they received regular visitors.

Higher up on the rock face narrow slits looked out over the approach. Damien peeked inside and found every third one had a lookout. They all seemed alert and their bows well oiled and in good condition. These men resembled real soldiers rather than scruffy bandits.

Damien landed a short distance away behind some boulders and wracked his brain trying to think how he could get the women and children out in one piece. He could blast the place to pieces easily enough, but at the first sign of trouble the hostages would be killed. That wouldn’t do at all.

A little ways to his left, movement caught Damien’s eye. A narrow head covered in tan fur popped up out of a hole, looked around, and vanished again. A second later the little guy popped up from another hole twenty feet from the first. Damien grinned. The prisoners were underground. A tunnel would be the perfect way to slip them out.

He tipped an invisible salute to the critter that inspired him and flew away. Damien would need a hidden place to dig. The terrain was so open the lookouts would notice at once if he just started flinging dirt around. He circled the mesa, hoping to spot something not too far from the fortress. On the back side a clump of trees grew maybe a mile away. That could work.

Damien slipped through the palm fronds and landed beside a small pit filled with water. He scanned it and found the water pure. There was probably an aquifer deep underground that bubbled up in this little oasis. The bandits must have tapped it as well. They couldn’t survive out here without a good source of water.

Now that he had a starting point Damien needed to find out exactly where the prisoners were. It’d be a hell of a thing to discover he tunneled into a storage room instead of the dungeon. He sat with his back to a palm tree, conjured a spy bug, and connected it to a viewing rectangle.

When he was satisfied with the link Damien sent the spy buzzing toward the fortress. The tiny wasp flew through an unwatched arrow slit and flitted down a long, empty corridor. He needed to find stairs. The corridor ended at an intersection and Damien guided the bug left, deeper into the fortress.

Halfway down the hall he reached a loose-fitting door. The bug crawled underneath and went down a set of steps to a massive open chamber filled with benches and tables. There had to be enough seats for five hundred people. At the far end of the chamber a pair of guards stood at attention beside a closed door.

That looked promising. The bug slipped through a gap in the frame and flew down another set of stairs. At the bottom was a circular depression filled with water. Now he was getting somewhere. This had to be the bottom floor. Now where was the dungeon?

Two archways led out of the well chamber. Damien had good luck with left before so he tried it again. The spy bug flew into a chamber filled with sacks, crates, and joints of meat hanging from the ceiling. A pantry, great. So much for lucky left.

A short ways through the opposite arch was a locked door with a small barred window. That was more like it. Wherever there were bars the dungeon couldn’t be far off. The bug flew through the bars into a hall with cages on either side. Filthy, gaunt women and children filled the cells. Once-fine clothes were torn and caked with dirt. The women held on to the little ones, trying to offer what comfort they could.

Four men sat around a rickety table, passing a bottle and playing cards. This must be where they stuck the lazy guards. Lucky for Damien, less lucky for the guards.

The spy flew to a bare section of wall and fused with it, changing color to blend in. Now Damien had a target, he just needed to hit it.