Aravi followed the behind the other women, her bow in hand. She listened for any sound of someone coming from the tunnel ahead. Kayla stopped and pointed above her head. Aravi’s eyes followed… Oh. That would have been bad.
“Can either of you see it?” Kayla asked.
“Don’t move,” Aravi answered. She moved up to them and looked at the trap above. Her eyes let her see just fine in the gloom of this cave, and she examined the trap. She found the release mechanism, if she could call it that, for the maces quickly. It was a rusty nail jammed into a couple of chain links with a piece of string attached.
Aravi moved out of the way of them quickly. “You both should move. These look like they could fall without the trigger. Come towards me.”
She examined the crude trap some more. When the string was pulled, the nail would slide free, letting the maces swing. All they had to do was cut the string to prevent the trap from triggering. If the nail doesn’t break on its own.
She moved forward slowly towards the mouth of the tunnel. The trap looked like the work of an idiot, but the tripwire was work of a genius. Straw was thickly scattered on the ground here. Without knowing about the maces, even she wouldn’t have guessed it was somewhere here.
She turned back to face Vera and Kayla. “I can’t spot the tripwire in this. We can go forward slowly and feel our way forward on our hands and knees until someone finds the tripwire, or I can shoot the trap with my bow and just have it come down. The chains will rattle and the maces will collide. Someone will hear it.”
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