by Tom Lloyd
‘Sorry. Oh, you’ll fall a long way, no doubt, but it’s what lives down there you don’t want to come across.’ She paused again and this time there was no humour in her face. ‘Or have a gun battle nearby to wake them up. Especially that.’
Their hosts were true to their word and while the warriors who’d escorted the mercenaries followed their labourer charges, others came with food and drink. Lynx recognised neither, but hunger overtook fascination and he devoured all he was given without paying much attention to the unfamiliar flavours. The rest seemed more hesitant, prodding at the steaming dough-like but fungus-coloured parcels, but eventually they all ate and even Sitain managed to keep some down. With Teshen happy to stay awake and keep watch, they settled down and slept fitfully for a few more hours.
When Lynx awoke he found himself staring up at a pair of tall, scarred Wisp warriors. He still couldn’t tell which was male and which was female, but behind them was the shorter frame of a third and it was that one that Toil went to speak to. The third wasn’t dressed as a warrior, instead wearing some sort of flowing white robe that looked almost priestly to Lynx. The conversation was brief and before Lynx had cleared his head Toil was back to report.
‘Time we buggered off?’ Teshen commented as she arrived.
‘Correct. Sitain’s welcome to stay if she wants, though,’ Toil replied. ‘Like I said, they don’t mind mages nearly so much.’
‘Stay?’ Sitain croaked, struggling up. ‘Alone?’
‘If you can’t go on. They’ll see you to the other side in a few days. Probably safer than sticking with us.’
Sitain blinked at the woman, clearly alarmed at the prospect. Accepting a hand offered by Reft, she pulled herself up to her feet and wobbled precariously as she tested her strength. ‘I … I don’t want to be left on my own.’
‘Sure you’re strong enough?’
‘I—’ She wavered and Reft raised a hand to stop her talking any more, gently urging her back to the ground and pointing at the travois.
‘You sure, Reft?’
The big man nodded.
‘I’ll take a turn too,’ Lynx said. ‘Give you a rest.’
Reft inclined his head to acknowledge the offer and scooped Sitain up in his hands, placing her as easily as an infant into the travois and setting his mage-gun down beside her.
‘Well,’ Toil said doubtfully, ‘if you’re certain, I’ll tell them. If you can stand now you should be okay to walk soon, but if we get caught in a fight …’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ Sitain said as firmly as she could.
‘Fair enough.’
Toil went to report as much to the third Wisp, who made a curling gesture with its hands that Lynx took as acceptance. The third bowed its head slightly and removed a fist-sized metal object that was hung on a cord around its neck. This it held out to Toil while making a complicated gesture with one hand. The muscular woman nodded and brought the lamp over to where Sitain lay propped on the travois. It was much smaller than Toil’s lantern but made of the same dark glass-like substance.
While Toil’s had a solid brass casing to protect it, this one looked more delicate and was entirely encased in a thin filigree of some dark metal. Toil turned it over in her hands briefly before handing it over. Sitain cradled the lamp reverentially until Toil pointed at the bottom end.
‘Looks like you twist in there,’ she said, ‘but don’t turn it on yet. Just in case we need it later. Probably not got much light stored.’
‘Okay. Ah, will you thank her, them, for me?’
Toil nodded and raised Olut’s mage-gun. She handed that to the third with a similar degree of ceremony as when she’d been given the lamp, then pulled a handful of cartridges from the case she’d taken off Tyn’s corpse. There was a short discussion over how many and what type, Lynx guessed, which resulted in Toil adding another handful to the pile. The deal done, Toil returned to the mercenaries as the third walked away with the mage-gun slung over one shoulder.
‘These two are to guide us,’ she said, jabbing a thumb towards the two warriors who’d stayed behind. ‘They’ll see us safe to the rift.’
Anatin stretched and grunted as he hauled his pack on to his back. ‘Good enough. First things first, though, where can an old man take a piss round here?’
Once their bladders were emptied and waterskins filled, the Wisp warriors led them past the guardhouse that watched the archways and on to the slope leading up to the main settlement. They didn’t get far enough to see more of the lake and had to content themselves with a clearer view of the stone mage-built houses surrounded by makeshift huts. Lynx struggled to estimate how large a population the settlement contained, but he guessed it was almost the size of a small town. Going by the lights and elusive columns of smoke, there were also houses on the far shore of the lake itself.
They didn’t enter the town, however, a huge double-vaulted archway coming into view around a spur of rock. The warriors ushered them through to a now-familiar sort of huge tunnel – taller and narrower than the one they had arrived by, but still wide enough to walk arm in arm should they choose to. With Toil’s lantern illuminating enough of the darkness to walk safely, the pair of Wisps swiftly led them to a bewildering crossroad of tunnels on four separate levels, then up a pair of ramps to take a much smaller one. Lynx lingered for a moment but as the rest walked on he was left with no choice but to follow and with a pounding heart he trudged along behind, gritting his teeth as he prayed for the tunnel to open up again.
It took a hundred yards for the corridor-sized tunnel to oblige, climbing through twists and turns and meeting three other similar ones before it became a road again. Only once did the Wisps halt them, one creeping further forward to scout the path while the other scooped a handful of rock from the wall and left it hovering above one palm as it waited.
‘Maspids,’ Toil reported once she’d asked. ‘Hunting party passing us.’
‘After the Charnelers?’
She nodded. ‘Fair chance of it. If they’ve still got their horses they’ll smell delicious to maspid foragers, but they know not to tackle a large group of humans without numbers on their side.’
‘Just how intelligent are those bastard things?’ Anatin growled.
‘You don’t want to know,’ was Toil’s dark, humourless reply. ‘Let’s just hope they do us a favour, eh?’
‘From what I heard about maspids, I won’t wish that on anyone.’
‘That’s where we differ, then. If it keeps me alive, I’m all for it.’
‘Where’s this rift?’ Lynx broke in, unwilling to hear how far Toil would to go to save herself.
‘Half a day I’d guess. Needing some fresh air back there, are you?’
‘Something like that.’
Up ahead the Wisp released his magic and continued on down the tunnel, gesturing for them to follow. Toil gave the mercenaries behind her a nod.
‘I’d keep a little more distance from Varain, then. I’ve not seen him bathe in days.’
With the dawn’s light, Exalted Uvrel dragged herself from her blankets and stood to survey the camp while she cleared her head. Sleep had been fitful, the near-complete silence of the ruins enough to keep her on edge. Her limbs now felt shaky and weak, her head cold and muzzy. She rubbed her palms roughly over her face to scrub the sensation away, swilling a mouthful of water around her mouth to wash away the sour taste.
All around her, soldiers were doing the same, sergeants kicking the last few awake. Most were already up, having slept as warily as her, and they were already pulling down tents. There was the usual morning hush, murmurs and grumbles all restrained as eyes turned her way. Once Uvrel was sure her troops were standing she gave a short nod and dropped to one knee. Head bowed, she didn’t need to see to know the rest would follow her example.
‘Insar, Lord of the Still Night,’ she intoned in a loud voice, ‘we thank you for your gift of rest.’
All around came the susurrus echo of her words from officers, s
ergeants and more pious troopers, darting around the camp as though carried by the fluttering wings of the dawn chorus.
‘Insar, Voice of the Dark Night,’ Uvrel continued, ‘we thank you for watching over us and seeing us safely to dawn. Great Insar, Breath of the Cold Night, be with your servants this day. Lord Insar, protect us should we enter your blessed dark this day, and guide us to the heretics we seek.’
All around her the soldiers replied with the usual refrain, ‘Bless the still night,’ and then she stood, saying, ‘Insar’s blessings upon us all.’
As the camp set about their morning preparations Uvrel caught the eye of a dragoon sergeant and nodded towards the steps. The grey-whiskered man nodded and snatched up his gun, growling for two others to follow, and the four of them headed towards the picket. The guards there were awake and alert still, the cavalry officer in charge a man she didn’t know. He snapped a textbook salute as she approached and Uvrel couldn’t help but notice the man’s boots looked freshly polished, even out here.
Not one for the recruiting list, she decided. I can’t waste my time breaking soldiers of their parade ground habits. ‘Anything to report?’
‘Nothing, sir. A few of the men getting twitchy at shadows, that’s all.’
‘Right.’ She pointed at the sharpshooter and grenadier who’d been assigned to the morning duty. ‘You two, with me.’
Without explaining, Uvrel headed down the ancient crumbling steps and on through the scrub beyond. With her gun out she moved as quickly as she could, keen to see what lay ahead. After fifty yards she had seen nothing alive at all, which disquieted her, just the sound of a handful of birds greeting the dawn. The grassy road they were following wound an oblique path ever onward, the mountainous misshaped towers looming close now, until quite suddenly it ended. Or rather, it didn’t – it just led somewhere she didn’t want to go.
Ahead of them, at the end of a long open stretch of ground skirted by trees, was an ornate pair of pillars fifty feet high, through which some grand domed chamber was visible. Guano stained the stonework and vegetation had crept over and inside, but so enormous was the space that it was perfectly distinct despite the passing of years.
‘Damn.’
‘Looks dark,’ commented her sergeant in as neutral a tone as he could.
‘Suspect it’ll get darker further in,’ Uvrel replied. ‘But that’s the way the ridge was heading. Time to get underground and see if we can’t work out which tunnel our prey will scuttle out of.’
‘Let’s just hope that’s all that scuttles out.’
‘Stow that talk, Sergeant,’ she snapped, glaring at all the men with her. ‘The troopers are already twitchy. I don’t need your jokes spooking them further.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Come on.’
Uvrel checked she had a fire-bolt in her gun then led the way towards the entrance. Beyond was a shallow sloping bridge underneath which a small spring ran. She moved cautiously over it, blinking at the gloom, then headed on in with her gun at the ready. Beside her came the grenadier, a pretty young girl who didn’t seem to suit the coldly calculating expression most grenadiers wore when they had a grenade in hand, while the others followed.
The chamber was huge, bigger than any single room she’d ever seen before. The keep of Forvern Castle, where she was technically stationed, could have fitted inside. The great dome was worryingly fissured but still whole and stood over the entrance only. There was a larger stretch with a vaulted roof that only reached the base of the dome but ran for a hundred yards, the side walls alternately dotted with fat pillars and small enclosed structures. The vaulted ceiling was smooth, bare stone while the ancient decoration on the dome was largely intact. Great slabs of some dark blue mineral were set into the dome, cut into the shape of constellations and seemingly held in place by metal studs to mark the stars, while an arc of veined marble described the Skyriver.
There was a carpet of dirt underfoot but nothing growing until the far end, where the carpet became topsoil and stunted plants rustled their spiky leaves. The foliage extended through a variety of smaller archways, some leading up and others down. Uvrel took one of the upper ones through which grainy light filtered, picking her way past spindly bushes until she was out in a strange sort of galleried hall – beyond which were miniature jungles enclosed by high stone walls. One was brighter than the rest so she gambled on that path, telling herself she would see what lay beyond that corner before turning back.
Uvrel headed out and looked around the corner on to a clear stone floor that ended in a jagged tear. She barely noticed the ruined mess where a whole section of stone seemed to have been ripped away. Beyond it the world seemed to open up around her and Uvrel’s jaw dropped as she surveyed the steep, greenery-choked rift.
The chasm was enormous, running for several miles in either direction, plunging for hundreds of yards to a tree-covered floor below. Fifty yards to her left was a covered stone bridge, wrapped in coils of creeper as though it was being devoured by some great snake.
The far side was a steep, stepped slope at least half a mile high and almost entirely covered in dense foliage, most likely the same sort of overgrown galleries and enclosed gardens as she had seen on this side. The bones of stone outcrops and pillars jutted from the morass to punctuate the regular steps of huge balconies all the way up the cliff side.
Away to her right, one fifty-yard-wide section had been ripped away entirely, as though a giant had smashed its fist down on the cliff. The foliage was reclaiming the shattered section but only slowly, and Uvrel could see the trace of wide doorways and windows all the way to the rubble on the ground.
She had rarely seen a human-made weapon capable of such damage – it would take the largest bombardment spheres to achieve that. Perhaps it had been a shooting star or some agent of the gods, but Uvrel felt a flicker of fear as she imagined it as the work of something that lived amid these ruins.
Uvrel found herself frozen to the spot as she tried to put the thought from her mind and instead work out how they would find the mercenaries across such a great space.
‘Damn,’ the sharpshooter said quietly from beside her, ‘that’s a whole lot of cover.’
Uvrel ignored the low whistles of agreement that came from her dragoons and tried to clear her thoughts. She looked left and right, trying to map the path of the ridge they had been following. It was hard to estimate and she had no idea of how many tunnels there were in this city, but the rift was so enormous it was a reasonable assumption most would lead here.
‘Decent vantage for us too,’ the dragoon sergeant pointed out. ‘If we can get across this bridge we can cover both sides.’
‘Can you even see the bottom? A small group might walk the length of this without us seeing.’ The sharpshooter gestured up and down the rift. There were glimpses of movement everywhere, darting wings and long fronds drifting in the breeze, while a clamour of birdcalls and buzzing insect wings echoed out across the rift.
Uvrel cocked her head and looked at her soldiers. ‘The gods favour those who strive,’ she said thoughtfully. She went to the very edge of the broken balcony, testing the ground underfoot to ensure it was solid. Looking down at the slope continuing below, she nodded to herself and waved forward the young grenadier. Uvrel plucked the grenade from her hands and inspected it. A sphere the size of her fist, it had a thin outer skin of iron, ridged for grip, while at the top a mushroom-like disc protruded. A band of red paint made it clear this was a fire-bomb while a white line ran perpendicular to that all the way around the sphere. She twisted the detonator so the line on that matched up to the one on the grenade then hurled the grenade out into the rift.
The soldiers ran forward as one to watch it fall. For a moment Uvrel thought it had failed, the dark shape of the grenade disappearing from view before it reached the bottom. Then there was a shudder and a distant crack of noise. A flower of white light blossomed below them before a dome of orange fire hammered out and simply obliterated th
e foliage around it. The fire raced in all directions, flowing over stone and smashing apart anything alive.
From their high vantage the soldiers stared in fascination. Rarely did they have the luxury of seeing a fire-bomb’s effects and the view from almost directly above only increased the sense of wonder. The swift firestorm lashed tendrils of flame out beyond the clearing it had made and a great flock of birds erupted from the branches of nearby trees, wheeling and shrieking.
‘Reckon we can spare another,’ the grenadier commented. Before Uvrel could say anything the young woman slotted a second grenade into one end of her steel thrower and hurled it off to the right, as far clear of the first explosion as she could manage.
Uvrel felt her breath catch as she waited for the second to explode; again that anxious moment after it had disappeared, but the explosion’s roar followed a second later and this time she could see the trees shudder and bend from the impact. The grenade tore another section from the narrow strip of jungle below and soon its snaking flames were spreading and hungrily consuming more. Before long the flames of each grenade met and merged, driven by a steady breeze. The fire raged across the rift floor and between the two epicentres Uvrel could make out the skeletons of trees writhing as the fire consumed them.
‘That should serve,’ she said after a full awestruck minute of watching the fires rage. They had started to die back now, their ferocity consuming everything in that section so swiftly the fire hardly had time to move too far beyond it.
‘It won’t take the whole thing,’ the grenadier said, ‘too damp to burn long or spread too far.’
‘I’ll not waste all our grenades clearing the rest.’ She pointed at the grenadier and sharpshooter. ‘You two stay here; keep a lookout for anything we’ve flushed out. I’ll bring the rest of the troops so we can clear that bridge and set up shooting positions to wait for our mercenary friends. They can’t have passed this already so we will wait.’
‘And if they have?’ asked her sergeant.
‘They won’t have, Sergeant!’ she snapped. ‘Any damn fool who thinks they could have kept ahead of us on foot, however, is welcome to head straight into those tunnels. Am I clear?’