by Rob Kinsman
The tunnel they found themselves in provided efficient shelter from the advancing guards.
“How did he find it?” asked Zoe.
“He knows the entire citadel,” said Nick. “He used to wander the corridors at night, scare the shit out of people whose rooms he’d stray into.”
“So could he take us?”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think we’re very welcome here. And we need to go back to the plains. To try and find the bridge back to Earth.”
“We can’t go to the plains. They’ll be expecting us.”
“Doesn’t matter, we have to try. I need to find a way to warn people.”
“About what?”
“That they’re dying for nothing. And it’s our fault.”
Twenty Six
The secret tunnels were as much of a maze as the dungeons, their capillaries stretching for miles in every direction. Despite this, Sid didn’t need to think about where he was leading them, he seemed to have a map of the entire area hardwired into him. After the way he had proved his use escaping from the guards, even Nick was now willing to follow him.
“Something’s wrong,” said Zoe, moving through the featureless passage.
“He seems to know where he’s going.”
“I don’t mean that. Something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Nick’s sigh was audible. “Well, that’s a great thought. Keep me posted on how it turns out.”
Zoe ground her teeth, and ploughed on. Troubled.
After another hour of monotonous tunnels they were starting to feel the hunger in their bellies, yet there seemed little prospect of finding anything to eat in these deserted caves. Even if they managed to make their way into the barren plains outside, things were hardly likely to be any easier.
“Don’t worry about food, we’ll die of dehydration long before we starve,” chirped Nick, who was probably never going to earn much money as a motivational speaker.
The stone walls emanated their own light, which gave the entire complex a persistent glow similar to a haunted house at a funfair. Zoe wished they would stumble across the odd patch of darkness, just to break up the monochrome view.
“So, tell me,” said Zoe, as they trudged along. “Did you send the man up to the hotel room when we were waiting for you?”
The side of Nick lip curled up. Bastard.
“I just wanted to make sure you were playing fair,” he said. “It flushed you out and then I followed you back to your office. I needed to be sure you weren’t setting me up.”
“I’d asked for your help.”
“And you’d lied to me. You said you were alone, but there was someone with you.”
He had a point, but Zoe still shook her head in disgust.
A little later, Nick stumbled over a stray shard of rock reaching up from the ground. He let out a cry borne more of frustration than pain. It echoed down the surrounding tunnels. They stood motionless, listening for a response from any pursuers alerted to their location.
“Nothing,” said Nick when a full minute had passed.
There it was again, that nagging feeling tugging away at Zoe. Something was out of kilter.
“We haven’t heard anything,” she said as the thought took shape. “There’s been no sound of anyone following us since we left the cells.”
“They don’t know how to get down here.”
“That can’t be true, these tunnels stretch for miles. Even if they couldn’t find the exact door we came in through, there must be others. Someone must know about them.”
“Doesn’t mean they’d be able to find us. Which, you might be surprised to learn, is actually pretty good news.” Zoe wanted to punch him right in the middle of that smug smile. Had she really once loved this man enough to risk death? “We should keep moving.”
Sid obediently reanimated and led them away.
When they finally came upon daylight it was blinding. The mouth of the tunnel shone like a mirage in the desert, something so desperately longed for that it couldn’t possibly be true. They moved cautiously towards the disk of light, covering their eyes with their hands.
The view, when they had adjusted to the glare of naked sunlight, was haunting. The desolation around the castle was both breath-taking and terrible; it was as if the very ground had had the life sucked from it. All trace of colour had been destroyed, creating a huge vista of unremitting grey.
Yet in the centre of all this stood the castle. Looking up the slope of the mountainside they had emerged onto, Zoe finally got to see the mighty fortress with her own eyes. It was vast, forbidding and impenetrable, yet still somehow conveyed the beauty of a delicate artwork. The scale of both the castle and the landscape around it was overwhelming to a girl with childhood memories of growing up in a Norfolk village, although by the same token she’d once thought Peterborough was pretty impressive. She wondered if her memories of life on Earth would fade in time, to be replaced with whatever her youth in Nocturnia had entailed.
“Wait!”
Nick was calling out after Sid, who had seen something and was bounding down the side of the mountain towards it. Zoe immediately saw the danger, the ground was littered with loose rocks which could snap an ankle in a second. Sid ignored their warnings, skipping along until he reached his destination.
With far greater caution, Zoe and Nick made their way across the steep surface. Each step had to be placed carefully, which was causing problems for Zoe. Every time her gaze drifted sideways she felt a wave of nausea, there was still an enormous distance to descend until they reached anything approaching level ground.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Nick.
“Just concentrate. Breathe. You’ll be fine.”
“I am fine,” she insisted, lying. She did what he said, though, and it helped.
When they got close to Sid they could finally see what he’d discovered: a sheep with an arrow through its neck.
Food.
Zoe’s mouth salivated at the thought of it, even though dinner was still looking rather more sheep-like than she was accustomed to. Nick held a hand up to stop her going straight over to it. He was scanning the area around them, his senses keen and alert.
“What’s wrong?”
“Who shot it?”
Zoe felt her brief moment of joy drain away. He was right, of course, but that didn’t make her feel any better. They were halfway up a deserted mountain, yet someone had managed to shoot a passing sheep.
“Maybe they’ve gone?” she said. “A hunting party. Or an archer from the castle.”
“Why would they shoot it, if not for food? It’s hardly dangerous.”
“Maybe they just really hate sheep.”
“Help me move it.” Nick pointed at Sid. “Get your pet to give us a hand.”
It took the three of them nearly an hour of back-breaking slog to drag the sheep across to the nearest cave mouth. It hardly seemed worth it, if an archer was waiting for them, they would have been picked off by now, but Nick insisted. At the very least, he hoped the roof of the cave would prevent the smoke from the fire announcing their location to the world.
Creating the fire itself was another of Nick’s hidden skills. He had either been a very attentive boy scout or whatever mysterious training he’d had in this world had become as indelibly part of him as Sid’s knowledge of the tunnels. Across the mountainside were the skeletal remains of what had once been trees, now withered and brittle. They’d gathered enough wood for a small fire, and Nick then created a spark by striking stones together. Before long he’d got an efficient blaze going. Sid sat cross-legged on the floor, warming his hands.
“So now’s the hard part,” said Nick, worryingly chirpy.
“I thought dragging a dead sheep across a nearly vertical mountainside was the hard part.”
“Now we have to cut it up into pieces small enough to cook.�
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If someone had offered Zoe the option of painlessly dying then and there she probably would have taken it.
They’d used sharp stones in the end. By the time they’d managed to hack off a chunk of meat small enough to cook, Zoe suspected she’d lost her appetite for good.
“Don’t stop carving,” Nick told her, not bothering to disguise his glee. “We need to cook as much as we can, so we’ve got food to take with us.”
Zoe felt the sharp burn of vomit rising up.
“Don’t puke on the sheep!” cried Nick, possibly the only person in either world to have ever uttered those words in that order.
Zoe managed to turn away just in time.
It wasn’t the most charming meal Zoe had ever had. She chewed miserably away at what had once been a bit of leg. Sid eventually won a war of attrition with the sheep’s neck, and was now sitting in the corner talking to its severed head. He held it out in front of him, like he was the leading part in a particularly grim avant-garde production of Hamlet.
The three of them barely exchanged a word until it was time to leave.
“Where do we go?” said Zoe, thoroughly miserable.
“Down.”
“I mean after that. Which direction?”
Nick looked over at Sid, who seemed to be planning on bringing the sheep’s head along with him for company.
“Maybe the fool will remember.”
They made slow progress. The sun beat relentlessly down, even clouds had abandoned this barren land. By the time they neared the base of the mountain they were in a tired daze, so much so that they nearly didn’t notice the two hunters directly below them. They were both on horseback, armed with spears and bows. Sid saw them first, yelping at the others, his eyes bulging even more than usual.
Nick pressed Zoe to the ground as he threw himself down.
“We need to take them out,” he whispered.
“Dinner and a movie, or straight back to their place?”
Zoe’s propensity for nervous jokes was directly proportionate to their unsuitability in times of crisis.
“We need their horses,” continued Nick, putting a finger across Zoe’s lips. “Without them we’re never going to get anywhere.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Their opponents had sharp weapons, while all they had was some cooked sheep.
Nick’s eyes flared. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Sid had stood up again and was eyeing the two hunters like he was about to take the decisive penalty in the World Cup Final. When they saw what he was actually planning, they realised that wasn’t far off the mark.
“No, Sid!” hissed Zoe.
One of the hunters registered the movement on the mountain and pointed it out to his comrade. They hadn’t finished unhooking the bows from across their shoulders before Sid made his move.
For a long moment five people and two horses were paralysed, watching the sheep’s head gaining momentum as it rolled down the slope, dislodging other rocks and debris along the way. Within seconds a small landslide was taking form.
Nick was in motion moments later, having calculated that while the rocks might disable the hunters it was just as likely to kill their mounts too. Fortunately the horses reacted instinctively, rearing up onto their hind legs, and throwing off their riders before bolting for safety. Their masters were less lucky, and were soon buried beneath the rapidly accumulating scree.
Nick descended towards them as fast as he dared, taking chance after chance with the uneven ground, which teased and threatened his vulnerable ankles. Zoe didn’t understand why he was taking the very risk he’d warned her about, until she saw movement from beneath the fallen debris. The hunters were still alive.
They were stunned however, and Nick reached them before they had time to regain their senses. What he did next made Zoe’s blood run cold. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, he twisted and snapped the first man’s neck.
The limp body fell to the ground. The adrenaline rush of the impending danger had hit the second hunter, who scrabbled to retrieve his weapons from beneath the rocks. Nick was faster. Within seconds he had the point of the dead hunter’s spear at the other man’s throat.
“No!”
Zoe’s voice sounded thin and weak, the shout swallowed by the great expanse of nothingness in front of her. Nonetheless, her words worked – the other man was still alive by the time she reached them.
“Let him go.”
Nick scanned the surrounding area, his spear still tickling the man’s larynx.
“Summon the horses back and I’ll let you live,” Nick told the hunter. His offer was greeted with silence. Zoe decided to take over the interrogation.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Who cares?” interjected Nick. “He’s the one about to get a spear through his throat.”
“What do you want?” repeated Zoe softly.
“My horse,” said the hunter. “Without it you may as well kill me.”
“Call it,” said Nick, reluctantly.
The hunter looked between Nick and Zoe, unsure if he could trust them to keep their end of this arrangement. Conceding defeat, he climbed to his feet and put his fingers to his mouth. The sound that came out was unlike anything Zoe had ever heard before. She had been expecting some kind of wolf whistle, but this was sweet, melodious and quite beautiful. The horses immediately stopped taunting Sid, who was charging about after them like a trainee sheepdog, and came back to the hunter.
Nick searched the saddle bags, removing the leather flasks of water. He gulped down a mouthful before giving the canteen to Zoe. When he went to remove the same item from the other horse’s saddle, the hunter protested.
“I need it.”
“We need it more,” said Nick. “There’s three of us.”
Zoe didn’t understand the problem.
“You can get more water in the castle.”
“He’s not going to the castle,” said Nick. “Now he’s been defeated, he’s as much a fugitive as we are.”
It struck Zoe that it might have been kinder to let Nick finish him off after all.
“Go,” she told the hunter. “And good luck.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Zoe recoiled at hearing this title in such incongruous circumstances. The hunter mounted his horse and rode off.
“That was…” started Nick. Zoe turned her back on him and went over to give Sid some water. “We’re fugitives in the middle of nowhere. You can’t just ignore me.”
Zoe tried to, nonetheless.
“Zoe…”
“How did you know how to do that?” She shrieked, pointing over at the body lying on the ground like a discarded rag doll.
“Saw it on TV.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me.”
“I don’t know!” he cried with heartfelt pain and frustration. “I must have been taught these things. They’re second nature, I don’t even have to think about them.”
Zoe hadn’t thought she could be any more scared of a man who’d already killed her once, but she was wrong.
While Nick took stock of their new supplies, Zoe went over to deal with the dead hunter. She felt deeply uncomfortable touching the still-warm body, but it felt wrong to let his murderer have anything to do with him.
She arranged the man’s clothes, preparing him for the grave she insisted they gave him. The delay may well get them killed, but she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she just left him there for the vultures to prey on. They lacked the tools to crack into the parched earth so had to settle for covering him over with loose rocks.
As Zoe was preparing the body for this makeshift funeral, she noticed something on his belt. A small phial of liquid. She took it, curious. The liquid inside had no scent. She went to stick a finger in it…
“No!”
Nick came rushing over to her.
“What is it?” said Zoe.
“Poison. They dip their arrows in it.”<
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He held out his hand to take it. Zoe put the lid back on and secreted it in the folds of her tunic. The last thing she was going to do was give him something else to kill people with.
Twenty Seven
As daring escapes went, it wasn’t elegant. With only one horse to share between the three of them, there ended up being protracted negotiations about who was going to sit where. Zoe ultimately insisted that she went at the back, with Sid and the middle and Nick at the front. This configuration helped her a) avoid being too close to bloody Nick, and b) avoid having to feel Sid’s apparently perpetual erection in her back. The fact that Nick was unhappy with this arrangement, for much the same reasons, only made it all the more satisfying.
The one stroke of good luck they did have was that there was a trail to follow. With the freed hunter unable to head back to the castle he would presumably be trying to make his way to civilisation elsewhere, leaving a neat series of hoof-prints in his wake. Their progress was slow, nonetheless. Although their horse was from a hardy breed accustomed to the harsh conditions of the wasteland, the poor beast wasn’t accustomed to carrying three bickering people on its back. Zoe couldn’t remember if this world had a God of Horses, but if it did then the unfortunate creature was probably praying to it that they’d all just bugger off and leave him in peace.
The hope was that they would be headed towards Ramford, the unfortunately named town from Nick’s fragmented recollections. They had no idea if this was likely, of course; they could just be riding to their deaths. Nick claimed he couldn’t furnish them with any further details about their previous journey, maintaining that he had already told them everything he could remember. Like Zoe, the events he could consciously recall were all of a life lived far from this inhospitable place. A Yorkshire village; a comprehensive school he had been expelled from; moving to London as a teenager and getting in with a bad crowd. He was lighter on the details of how and when he’d decided to become a con-man, but the days when that was Zoe’s biggest concern about him literally belonged to another lifetime.