by Gene Wolfe
Auk opened his eyes to squint into the darkness behind them. "They killed Dace, maybe. I dunno. In a minute I'm going to see."
Chenille prepared to rise. "You feel awful, don't you? I'll go."
"Not now, Jugs. It's still dark back there. Urus, you said your culls took down lights. That was to make a dark stretch here so you could get behind us, right?"
"That's it, Auk. Getada got up on my shoulders to pull four down, 'n Gaur run them on back. They spread out lookin' for dark. You know about that?"
Auk grunted.
"Only they don't go real fast. So we figured we'd wait flat to the side till you went by. Her, I mean, 'n this runt augur cully. That's all we figured there was." "And jump on me from in back!" "What'd you of done?" (Auk sensed, though he could not see, Urus's outspread hands.) "You shot a rocket at Gelada. If it hadn't been for the bend, you coulda done for our whole knot." "Bad man!" (That was Oreb.)
Auk opened his eyes once more. "Three or four, anyhow. Hammerstone, didn't you say something about a couple animals Patera shot?"
"Tunnel gods," Hammerstone confirmed. "Like dogs, like I told you, only not nice like dogs."
"I got to go back," Auk muttered. "I got to see what's happened to the old man, and I want to have a look at these gods. Urus, you're one, and I did for one, so that makes two. Hammerstone says Patera got a couple, that's four. Anybody else do for any?"
Hammerstone: "Me. One. And one Patera'd shot was still flopping around, so I shot him again."
"Yeah, I think I heard that. So that's five. Urus, don't give me clatter, I'm telling you. How many'd you have?"
"Six, Auk, 'n the two bufes."
"Counting you?"
"That's right, countin' me, 'n that's the lily word."
"I'm going back there," Auk repeated, "soon as the lights get there and I feel better. Anybody that wants to come with me, that's all right. Anybody that wants to go on, that's all right, too. But I'm going to look at the gods and see about Dace." He closed his eyes again.
"Good man!"
"Yeah, bird, he was." Auk waited for someone to speak, but no one did. "Urus, they threw you in the pits. Do they really throw them? I always wondered."
"Only if you get their backs up. If you don't, you can ride down in the basket."
"That's how they feed you? Put your slum in this basket and let it down?"
"'N water jars, sometimes. Only mostly we got to catch our own when it rains."
"Keep talking."
"It ain't as bad as you think. Anyhow mine ain't. Mostly we get along, see? 'N the new ones comin' in are stronger."
"Unless they get thrown. They'd have broken legs and so forth, I guess"
"That's lily, Auk."
"Then you kill 'em right off and eat 'em while they're still fat?"
Someone (Incus, Auk decided) gasped.
"Not all the time, 'n that's lily. Not if it's somebody that somebody knows. We wouldn't of et you, see."
"So you got stuck in a pit, riding down in this basket, and you're a bully cull, or used to be. Found out they'd been digging, didn't you?" Auk opened his eyes, resolving to keep them open.
"That's it. They meant to dig out, see? Over till they fetched the big wall, then down underneath, deep as they had to. Ours is about the deepest, see? One of the real old 'uns 'n one that's near the wall. They'd dig with bones, two culls at once, 'n more carryin' it out in their hands. The rest'd watch for Hoppy 'n tramp it down when it was scattered 'round. They told me all about it."
Hammerstone asked, "You hit this tunnel when you went to go under the wall?"
Urus nodded eagerly. "They did, that's the right of it. They told me. And the shiprock-it's shiprock there, it is in lots of place-it was cracked, see? 'N they scraped the dirt out, hopin' to get through, 'n saw the lights. They got wild then, that's what they said. So they fetched rocks 'n chipped away at the shiprock, just a snowflake, like, for your wap, fill you can wiggle through."
Incus grinned, exposing his protruding teeth more than ever. "I begin to comprehend your plight, my son. When you had accessed these horrid tunnels, you found yourself unable to reach the surface. Is that not correct? The fact of the matter? Pas's justice on you?"
"Yeah, that's it, Patera." With an ingratiating grimace, Urus leaned toward Incus, appearing almost to abase himself. "Only look at it, Patera. You shot a couple friends of mine just a minute ago, didn't you? You didn't lend 'em no horse to Mainframe, did you?"
Incus shook his head, plump cheeks quivering. "I thought it best to let the gods judge for themselves in this instance, my son. As I would in yours, as well."
"All right, I was fixin' to kill you. That's lily, see? I'm not tryin' to bilk you over it. Only now you 'n me ought to forget about all that, see Patera? Put it right behind us like what Pas'd want us to do. So how about it?" Urus held out his hand.
"My son, when you possess such a needler as this, I shall consent to a truce gladly."
Auk chuckled. "How far you gone, Urus? Looking for a way out?"
"Pretty far. Only there's queer cheats in these tunnels, see? 'N there's various ones, too. Some's full of water, or there's cave-ins. Some ends up against doors."
Chenille said, "I can tell you something about the doors, Hackum, next time we're alone."
"That's the dandy, Jugs. You do that." Painfully, Auk clambered to his feet. Seeing that the blade of his hanger was still fouled with blood, he wiped it on the hem of his tunic and sheathed it. "Things in these tunnels, huh? What kinds of things?"
"There's sojers like him down this way." Urus pointed to Hammerstone. "They'll shoot if they see you, so you got to keep listenin' for 'em. That was how I knowed he was a sojer in the dark, see? They don't make much noise, not even when they're marchin', but they don't sound like you 'n me, neither, 'n sometimes you can hear when their guns hit up against 'em. Then there's bufes, what he calls gods, 'n they can be devils. Only this cull Eland caught a couple little 'uns 'n kind of tamed 'em, see? We had 'em with us. There's big machines, sometimes, too. Some's tall asses, only not all. Some won't row you if you don't rouse 'em."
"That all?"
"All I ever seen, Auk. There's stories 'bout ghosts 'n things, but I don't know."
"All right." Auk turned to address Incus, Hammerstone, and Chenille. "I'm going to go back there and have a look for Dace, like I said."
He strolled slowly along the tunnel toward the lingering darkness, not stopping until he reached the point at which the men and beasts shot by Incus lay. Squatting to examine them more closely, he contrived to glance toward the group he had left. No one had followed him, and he shrugged. "Just you and me, Oreb."
"Bad things!"
"Yeah, they sure are. He called 'em bufes, but a bufe's a watchdog, and Hammerstone was right. These ain't real dogs at all."
A crude bludgeon, a stone lashed with sinew to a fire-blackened bone, lay near one of the convicts Incus had shot. Auk picked it up to look at, then tossed it away, wondering how close the man had gotten to Incus before he fell. If Incus had been killed, he, Auk, would have gotten his needler back. But what might Hammerstone have done?
He examined more curiously the one he had cut down with his hanger. He had stolen the hanger originally, had worn it largely for show, had sharpened it once only because he used it now and then to cut rope or prize open drawers, had taken two lessons from Master Xiphias out of curiosity; now he felt that he possessed a weapon he had never known was his.
The radiance of the creeping lights was noticeably dimmer here; it would be some time before the section in which he had left the old fisherman was well lit. He drew his hanger and advanced cautiously. "You sing out if you see anything, bird."
"No see."
"But you can see in this, can't you? Shag, I can see, too. I just can't see good."
"No men." Oreb snapped his bill and fluttered from Auk's right shoulder to his left. "No things."
"Yeah, I don't see much either. I wish I could be sure this was the spot."
Most of all, he wished that Chenille had come. Bustard was walking beside him, big and brawny; but it was not the same. If Chenille had not cared enough to come, there was no point going-no point in anything.
How'd you get yourself into this, sprat, Bastard wanted to know.
"I dunno," Auk muttered. "I forget."
Give me the pure keg, sprat. You want me to window you out? If I'm going to help, I got to know.
"Well, I liked him. Patera, I mean. Patera Silk. I think the Ayuntamiento got him. I thought, well, I'll go out to the lake tonight, meet 'em in Limna, and they'll be glad to see me for the gelt, for a dimber dinner and drinks, and maybe a couple uphill rooms for us after. He won't touch her, he's a augur-"
"Bad talk!"
"He's a augur, and she'll have a couple with her dinner and feel like she owes me for it and the ring, owes for both, and it'll be nice."
What'd I tell you about hooking up with some dell, sprat?
"Yeah, sure, brother. Whatever you say. Only then he was gone and she was fuddled, and I got hot and lumped her and went looking. Only everybody say's he's going to be Caldé, the new Caldé-Patera. That would be somebody to know, if he pulls it off."
"Girl come!"
Never mind that. So now you're going back here, back the way we come, for this Silk butcher?
"Yeah, for Silk, because he'd want me to. And for him, too, for Dace, the old man that owned our boat."
You've snaffled a sackful like him. You don't even have his shaggy boat.
"Patera'd want me to, and I liked him."
This much?
"Hackum? Hackum!"
He's waitin', you know. That buck Gelada's waitin' for us in the dark next to the old man's body, sprat. He had a bow. Didn't any of em back there have no bow.
"Girl come," Oreb repeated.
Auk swung around to face her. "Stand clear, Jugs!"
"Hackum, there's something I've got to tell you, but I can't yell it."
"He can see us, Jugs. Only we can't see him. Not even the bird can see him from here where it's brighter, looking into the dark. Where's your launcher?"
"I had to leave it with Stony. Patera didn't want me to go. I think he thought I might try to kill them with it once I got off a ways."
Auk glanced to his right, hoping to consult Bustard; but Bustard had gone.
"So I said, we're not going to do anything like that. We don't hate you. But he said you did."
Auk shook his head, the pain there a crimson haze. "He hates me, maybe. I don't hate him."
"That's what I told him. He said very well my daughter-you know how he talks-leave that with us, and I shall believe you. So I did. I gave it to Stony."
"And came after me without it to tell me about the shaggy doors."
"Yes!" She drew nearer as she spoke. "It's important, really important, Hackum, and I don't want that cully that knocked me down to hear it."
"Is it about what the tall ass said?"
Chenille halted, dumbfounded.
"I heard, Jugs. I was right there behind you, and doors are my business. Doors and windows and walls and roofs. You think I'd miss that?"
She shook her head. "I guess not."
"I guess not, too. Stay back where you'll be safe." He turned away, hoping she had not seen how sick and dizzy he was; the darkening tunnel seemed to spin as he stared into its black maw, a pinwheel that had burned out, or the high rear wheel of a deadcoach, all ebony and black iron, rolling down a tarred road to nowhere. "I know you're in there, Gelada, and you got the old man with you. You listen here. My name's Auk, and I'm a pal of Urus's. I'm not here for a row. Only I'm a pal of the old man's, too."
His voice was trailing away. He tried to collect such strength as remained. "What we're going to do pretty soon now, we're going to go back to your pit with Urus."
"Hackum!"
"Shut up." He did not bother to look at her. "That's 'cause I can get you through one of these iron doors down here that you can't solve. I'm going to talk to 'em in your pit. I'm going to say anybody that wants out, you come with me and I'll get you out. Then we'll go to that door and I'll open it, and we'll go on out. Only that's it. I ain't coming back for anybody."
He paused, waiting for some reply. Oreb's bill clacked nervously.
"You and the old man come here and you can come with us. Or let him go and head back to the pit yourself, and you can come along with the rest if you want to. But I'm going to look for him."
Chenille's hand touched his shoulder, and he started.
"You in this, Jugs?"
She nodded and put her arm through his. They had taken perhaps a hundred more steps into the deepening darkness when an arrow whizzed between their heads; she gasped and held him more tightly than ever.
"That's just a warning," he told her. "He could have put it in us if he'd wanted to. Only he won't, because we can get him out and he can't get out himself."
He raised his voice as before. "The old man's finished, ain't he, Gelada? I got you. And you think when I find out, it's all in the tub. That's not how it'll be. Everything I said still goes. We got a augur with us, the little cull you saw with Jugs here when you shot at her. Just give us the old man's body. We'll get him to pray over it and maybe bury it somewhere proper, if we can find a place. I never knew you, but maybe you knew Bustard, my brother. Buck that nabbed the gold Molpe Cup? You want us to fetch Urus? He'll cap for me."
Chenille called, "He's telling the truth, Gelada, really he is. I don't think you're here any more, I think you ran off down the tunnel. That's what I'd have done. But if you are, you can trust Auk. You must have been down in the pit a real long time, because everybody in the Orilla knows Auk now."
"Bird see!" Oreb muttered.
Auk walked slowly into the deepening twilight of the tunnel. "He got his bow?"
"Got bow!"
"Put it down, Gelada. You shoot me, you're shooting the last chance you'll ever get."
"Auk?" The voice from the darkness might have been that of Hierax himself, hollow and hopeless as the echo from a tomb. "That your name? Auk?"
"That's me. Bustard's brother. He was older than me."
"You got a needler? Lay it down."
"I don't have one." Auk sheathed his hanger, pulled off his tunic, and dropped it to the tunnel floor. With uplifted arms, he turned in a complete circle. "See? I got the whin, and that's all I got." He drew his hanger again and held it up. "I'm leaving it right here on my gipon. You can see Jugs don't have anything either. She left her launcher back there with the soldier." Slowly he advanced into the darkness, his hands displayed.
There was a sudden glimmer a hundred paces up the tunnel. "I got a darkee," Gelada called. "Burns bufe drippin's."
He puffed the flame again, and this time Auk could hear the soft exhalation of his breath, "I should've figured," he muttered to Chenille.
"We don't like to use 'um much." Gelada stood, a stick figure not much taller than Incus. "Keep 'um shut up mostly. Wick 'bout snuffed. Culls bring 'um down 'n leave 'um."
When Auk, walking swiftly through the dark, said nothing, he repeated, "Burn drippin's when the oil's gone."
"I was thinking you'd make 'em out of bones," Auk said conversationally. "Maybe twist the wicks out of hair." He was close now, near enough to see Dace's shadowy body lying at Gelada's feet.
"We do that sometimes, too. Only hair's no good. We braid 'urn out o' rags."
Auk halted beside the body. "Got him back there, didn't you? His kicks are messed some."
"Dragged 'im far as I could. "E's a grunter."
Auk nodded absently. Silk had once told him, as the two had sat at dinner in a private room in Viron, that Blood had a daughter, and that Blood's daughter's face was like a skull, was like talking to a skull though she was living and Bustard was dead (Bustard whose face really was a skull now) was not like that. Her father's face, Blood's flabby face, was not like that either, was soft and red and sweating even when he was saying that this one o
r that one must pay.
But this Gelada's too was a skull, as if he and not Blood were the mort Mucor's father, was as beardless as any skull or nearly, the grayish white of dirty bones even in the stinking yellow light of the dark lantern-a talking cadaver with a little round belly, elbows bigger than its arms, and shoulders like a towel horse, the dark lantern in its hand and its small bow, like a child's bow, of bone wound with rawhide, lying at its feet, with an arrow next to it, with Dace's broad-bladed old knife next to that, and Dace's old head, the old cap it always wore gone, his wild white hair like a crone's and the clean white bones of his arm half-cleaned of flesh and whiter than his old eyes, whiter than anything.
"You crank, Auk?"
"Yeah, a little." Auk crouched beside Dace's body.
"Had the shiv on 'im." Stooping swiftly, Gelada snatched it up. "I'm keepin' it."
"Sure." The sleeve of Dace's heavy, worn blue tunic had been cut away, and strips cut from his forearm and upper arm. Oreb hopped from Auk's shoulder to scrutinize the work, and Auk warned him, "Not your peck."
"Poor bird!"
"Had a couple bits, too. You can have 'um when you get me out."
"Keep 'em. You'll need 'em up there."
From the corner of his eye, Auk saw Chenille trace the sign of addition. "High Hierax, Dark God, God of Death…"
"He show much fight?"
"Not much. Got behind 'im. Got my spare string 'round 'is neck. There a art to that. You know Mandrill?"
"Lit out," Auk told him without looking up. "Palustria's what I heard."
"My cousin. Used to work with 'im. How 'bout Elodia?"
"She's dead. You, too." Auk straightened up and drove his knife into the rounded belly, the point entering below the ribs and reaching upward for the heart.
Gelada's eyes and mouth opened wide. Briefly, he sought to grasp Auk's wrist, to push away the blade that had already ended his life. His dark lantern fell clattering to the naked shiprock with Dace's old knife, and darkness rushed upon them.
"Hackum!"
Auk felt Gelada's weight come onto the knife as Gelada's legs went limp. He jerked it free and wiped the blade and his right hand on his thigh, glad that he did not have to look at Gelada's blood at that moment, or meet a dead man's empty, staring eyes.