by Oisin McGann
She burst out crying and kissed his hand, holding it to her face.
‘They’re here!’ she called back, torn between laughing and sobbing.
There was a good way still to dig. The four of them had been trapped in a tiny air pocket under a slab that had fallen in from one wall and wedged against the other. Mirkrin had stretched his arm out to several paces in length in order to reach his daughter. But with both parties digging from their ends, they soon cleared a crawlspace large enough for the miners to fit through. Dusty and dirty, they all hugged and laughed and cried when Mirkrin, the last one, finally crawled through. Even Rug was able to stand well enough to join in the joyous occasion.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ Emos said wearily. ‘And I mean that literally. Let’s start walking and we’ll tell you all about it.’
He gave Rug a concerned look.
‘This is as far in as we can go for now,’ the Myunan told him. ‘But you should find a clear tunnel and keep going. This is where you belong.’
‘I’ll come back with you, if that’s all right,’ Rug murmured.
Emos was visibly disappointed. He picked up his lantern and the whole group started down the passage, having to bend over to keep their heads from hitting the ceiling. Nayalla was able to walk with Mirkrin’s support, but Noogan was reduced to hopping on a freshly broken ankle, leaning on Paternasse’s shoulder for balance. Before long, the tunnel became high enough for them to stand upright and their walking became more comfortable. Echoes of a tumultuous fight carried to their ears. They were approaching another corner, when an acrid smell pervaded the air and Rug stiffened.
‘That animal. It’s right there,’ he said hoarsely.
‘I can smell it,’ Nayalla said. ‘We’ve run into this thing before.’
‘We injured it,’ Mirkrin added. ‘But it’s far from beaten. We might just have made it angry.’
There was a low, hackle-raising growl and Mirkrin pulled out his knife, letting Nayalla lean against the wall. Emos and Paternasse also put up their guards, blades at the ready.
‘Lorkrin, Taya,’ Nayalla said. ‘Get behind me, now.’
‘We’re not babies, Ma …’ Lorkrin began, but then there was a roar and the beast came around the corner at a furious charge.
It swept Emos aside and piled into Mirkrin, closing its jaws around his shoulder and driving him backwards. Paternasse was caught behind him in the narrow tunnel and staggered back against the wall. Emos’s lantern dropped and smashed, spreading burning oil across the floor. Mirkrin screamed as the animal’s teeth sank in. The creature tossed him to the floor, puzzled by the lack of solid bone in his body. The Myunan cried out in pain as it tried his foot instead, but again it found no bones. Nayalla and Emos attacked its sides with their knives, but it violently crushed one and then the other against the wall with the sheer weight of its body. Taya and Lorkrin only narrowly managed to drop to the floor out of its way. It advanced on Paternasse, who scrambled backwards. Mirkrin grabbed his shoulders and pulled, but it was no use. The beast seized the old miner’s leg and bit into it, dragging him down the passage, thrashing to free him from the Myunan’s grip. It shoved past Taya and Lorkrin and they tried to hold on to the old man’s hands, but they could not stop the creature’s retreat. Paternasse screamed.
Lorkrin looked at his sister.
‘Draegar used …’
‘… his lantern,’ she finished for him.
Lorkrin swung his lamp underarm and threw it past the beast. It shattered behind it, against the wall at the corner and exploded in flames. The animal shied away from the fire, frightened by the sudden heat. It dropped Paternasse with a frustrated snarl and turned on them instead. Taya hurled her lantern at its head and the beast knocked it out of the air with one clawed hand, but the lamp still broke, spilling burning oil over it. It bellowed with pain but did not stop. It was almost upon them when a long pair of thin arms reached out and seized its flaming head.
‘Run!’ Rug shouted at them. ‘Run, all of you!’
The flames were starting to go out as the creature crashed against one wall and then the other, trying to break Rug’s grip. Nayalla and Mirkrin grabbed Noogan, and Emos stumbled forward, pushing Taya and Lorkrin past the pair of struggling bodies. Together, they helped Paternasse up.
‘We can’t leave Rug!’ Taya cried.
‘His body doesn’t matter!’ Emos gasped, still trying to get his breath back after being crushed against the wall. ‘It can’t hurt him, but it can kill you! Now go!’
She looked back in distress, but Rug stared back at her.
‘Run!’ he yelled.
And they did, rushing through the dying flames that flickered over the wall and floor and stumbling down the passage as fast as their injuries would allow. They lost sight of Rug when they turned the corner, but the beast’s snarls followed them far into the darkness. With only one lantern left, they were soon forced to slow down. The ground shook, constantly knocking them off balance. Over the rumbles and dull cracks of the rock around them, the noise of battle reached them.
‘Something’s gone wrong,’ Emos said, grimly. ‘Wait here.’
Leaving the lantern with them, he ran ahead, reaching the three branching tunnels and treading carefully down the last tunnel to the cave entrance. As he went, he changed his colours to meld in with the surroundings. There, just before the corner where the passage turned in to the cavern, Draegar, Khassiel and Cullum were making a last stand against the Reisenicks.
The clansmen were having to climb over their own dead and injured to reach the defenders. The fight was close and brutal, with Draegar standing in the centre, dealing death in quick, accurate strokes of his sword and the two Noranians covering his sides. The corner in the passage meant the Reisenicks had to get close before they saw their opponents, so they could not use their blowpipes. Khassiel had swapped her crossbow for her short sword and was proving she was equally skilled with both. Cullum, too, had switched to the close-quarters weapon and was wielding his blade with battle-crazed fury.
‘Wow,’ Lorkrin gasped.
Emos turned in annoyance and saw both the children and their parents standing behind him, also in camouflage, all with their knives drawn.
‘When I said wait there …’
‘It’s our fight too,’ Nayalla cut him short. ‘We’re not getting stuck back in those caves again. The children can stay back here, but we’re keeping them close.’
Emos nodded.
Taya and Lorkrin watched their father, mother and uncle shed their camouflage and march down the tunnel to join the fight.
‘I’m not staying here,’ Lorkrin said defiantly.
‘Yes, you bloody are,’ his sister retorted.
Lorkrin looked up at the cave roof, which was making alarming, grinding noises.
‘The miners,’ Taya said urgently.
They sprinted back to where Noogan and Paternasse were lying beyond the junction. Noogan was trying to get to his feet, looking anxiously at the ceiling as dust and fragments of rock showered down around him. Paternasse had passed out.
‘Things are a bit mad up at the entrance,’ Taya told the young miner. ‘But I don’t think we can wait around. Can you walk?’
‘I can bloody well hop if I have to. Can you help me with Jussek?’
‘You hop along,’ Lorkrin replied. ‘We’ll take him.’
Noogan watched with weary amusement as the two children hoisted Paternasse up into a sitting position, then each sucked their stomach right in to create a cradle to support an upper arm, which they then slunched down around. With the weight of his upper body hung on their hips, they proceeded to haul the old man down the passageway. Noogan chuckled and hobbled along after them.
* * * *
The beast had won. Rug was thrown to the ground and he grunted with the impact as the creature tore his thick layers of clothes open. He was surprised to find that it did not hurt when it plunged its jaws into his chest and tried to pull his insid
es out. Instead, the monster squealed in pain and stumbled backwards, spitting blood. Rug looked down at what the creature had uncovered.
His insides were a tangled mass of rusted metal. Old mining tools, barbed wire, steel cable, even nuts, bolts and nails were woven together to form his gangly body. The beast had dragged some of it out, but it did not hurt in the least. Not like the pain he was feeling from the land going insane outside the mountain. The scarf fell away and he put his hands to his face. Two pieces of broken glass sat where his eyes should have been. His nose was a folded hinge, his jaws made from rusted riding stirrups. He sat up and gathered in his metal guts as best he could, tucking them into his torn clothes and fastening what was left of the buttons.
Standing up, he stared at the creature, which glared balefully back at him. He noticed it had some nails caught in its gums and teeth.
‘I’m going to make sure those really hurt,’ he told it.
The monster backed away, then turned and ran. Rug watched it go, in the last light of the flames. When the light went out, he realised he could still see. He corrected himself, he did not need to see. The world shook around him and he steadied himself against the wall. The release of the krundengrond was tearing the land apart. It was time for him to go home.
He strode back up the tunnel to where the cave-in had trapped the Myunans and their friends. There he climbed up the pile of debris and crawled through to the flat slab of limestone that had protected the survivors. In the cavity it had left in the wall, he reached in and found what he knew would be there. A vein of iron ore. This was where, millions of years ago, when Absaleth lay at the bottom of the sea, the ridge of limestone mountains had formed against its side. He remembered it well. This was where the limestone ended and the iron began. He felt its hard, cold texture under his fingers. Rug’s body slumped onto the rocky debris, the rusted metal beneath his clothes suddenly lifeless and still.
* * * *
The Reisenicks had withdrawn to rethink their plan of attack. More than a score of their number were dead, and nearly two dozen others badly wounded. Draegar leaned wearily against the wall and closed his eyes. Cullum flopped to the floor, exhausted. The Myunans, their eyes extended like a snail’s, peered around the corner to keep watch.
‘Something’s got to give,’ Cullum wheezed, pulling off his helmet and wiping his brow. ‘We can’t keep this up forever.’
He looked towards Khassiel and saw that she was trying to unbuckle her armour. Her face was deathly pale and blood was pooling on the ground by her side.
‘Khass?’
‘Damned, double-jointed freak got a blade into me,’ she gasped.
Cullum scrambled forward and helped her take off the ornacrid shell, pulling up her tunic to look at the wound. His expression told her all she needed to know.
‘Ah, bowels,’ she moaned.
Emos knelt by her side. The flow of blood was already slowing, but he pressed his hand against the wound.
‘You’ll make it,’ he said to her, urgently. ‘You’ll be all right.’
‘He’s right,’ Cullum reassured her. ‘It’s not too bad.’
‘Don’t be so bloody soft,’ she grunted. And then she died, her last breath a hollow gurgle.
They all stared at her limp body in morbid silence.
Lorkrin and Taya crouched further down the tunnel, at a safe distance from the fighting, but close enough to watch the Noranian die. For the first time, they wondered if they would get out of the cave alive. The rock was continuing to tremble around them and in the darkness beyond the light of their lantern, they heard masses of stone collapsing into the tunnels.
‘We have to get outside,’ Nayalla breathed.
‘Right,’ Cullum muttered, as he used Khassiel’s helmet to cover her face. ‘Let us know when they surrender.’
Suddenly, a jolt passed through the ground and moments later, a section of the roof crashed in, sending a cloud of dust over them. They all stared upwards in desperation. Cracks snaked out across the stone ceiling, dust raining down in light sprinkles like the first leaks in a dam about to burst.
‘Oh, no,’ Nayalla whispered.
‘Go!’ Draegar bellowed, picking up Paternasse’s inert body and charging out of the tunnel. The Noranians followed close behind.
Taya and Lorkrin grabbed Noogan and half-led, half-dragged him over the Reisenick bodies and around the corner. Mirkrin and Nayalla stumbled out after them, frantically trying to get ahead of their children. Behind them, the tunnel collapsed with a tremendous roar of breaking stone.
The Reisenicks were waiting. Draegar was ensnared in a net, ropes winding around him to bind it closed, the clansmen falling on him and beating him with rocks. Cullum was caught too, and thrown to the floor, struggling violently to cut through the mesh before their blades finished him off. Mirkrin and Nayalla were knocked off their feet by three snarling men, falling under their attackers, and fighting back wildly as they tried to reach their children.
Lorkrin and Taya scrambled forwards, still trying to support Noogan. They stopped short when Ludditch stepped in front of them. He smiled grimly and raised his knife.
‘Your uncle’s goin’ tuh see your insides before I take his skin!’
The Myunans’ fear turned to disbelief when they saw the blade. Rust was crawling up the steel like a swarm of ants. Ludditch saw their faces and glanced down at his weapon. He dropped it in shock and as it hit the floor, it shattered into pieces, corroded right through.
Around them, the Reisenicks were finding their knives disintegrating in their hands and they cried out in fright.
‘Ludditch,’ someone near the door shouted. ‘The old folk are caught!’
He grabbed the two Myunans by the necks, pulling them away from Noogan, and dragged them with him to the doorway. They punched and kicked, scratched and bit him, but he paid them no mind. When they reached the entrance, they were stunned by what they saw.
The land was erupting outside the cave. The last light of evening was fading, but even so, they could see that most of the trees on the slope had disappeared, the ground where they had stood churning like a stormy sea. The clay of the clearing was breaking apart. Harsq’s disciples were backing towards the cave, staring in abject terror as the edge of the krundengrond crept closer and closer, the clay pulling asunder and writhing with a force that cracked stones and swallowed everything that stood upon it. The wagons were being dragged down into the ground and torn apart.
On the back of the largest truck, Harsq stood with the old Reisenicks, his hands raised in the air. They had been cut off, the krundengrond coming up from beneath them; there was nowhere to run, even if their stiff, arthritic legs could have carried them.
‘The blessed ground will not harm us!’ he intoned. ‘We need only pray to the almighty Brask and he will protect us. The land is our ally, our friend. There is nothing to fear if we all pray together!’
The wagon sank lower in the earth, its wheels buckled and disappeared with the tortured sound of rending metal. A lantern fell from the side, but instead of smashing, it disappeared into the ground with barely a burst of flame. Ludditch’s aged relatives screamed and held each other as the vehicle tipped to one side.
‘Have no fear!’ Harsq shouted to them. ‘We must all pray and Brask will deliver salvation. Pray to Brask for your lives!’
His voice was faltering, his face drenched in sweat. Ludditch ran out as far as the edge of the krundengrond, hauling the two struggling Myunans with him, a despairing moan escaping from his lips. His father was on that wagon.
‘Pappy!’ he wailed. ‘Pappy, hold on!’
But the wagon’s back broke, the chassis was ripped apart and the two halves tilted into the air. Harsq tumbled over the side and hit the ground. It came up to embrace him and with a shriek he was gone. Two more men fell in and were swallowed whole by the churning earth. Ludditch watched as his father slipped down the upturned flatbed and rolled, flailing into the krundengrond. The last lantern on the
truck went out and the vehicle was plunged into shadow. They could hear the others on board calling desperately for help. Ludditch let out a sob and shoved Taya and Lorkrin aside, launching himself out over the seething ground. He managed one step, then another. By the third, he was caught and was being pulled in. He reached out for where his father had fallen and howled into the evening sky with grief.
And then the earth around him went still. He heaved sobbing breaths, putting his hands down to push against the ground, which was up to his waist, solid and motionless. The krundengrond was losing its force. The violence of the earth receded into the darkness, stillness settling over the ground and the noise gradually dropping away to silence. In the eerie quiet that followed, Taya and Lorkrin walked out past where the Reisenick chieftain stood, his legs embedded in the ground. They gazed around them. Lorkrin jumped up and down as Taya looked at her feet, twisting her toes in the clay. The krundengrond was gone.
Many of the old folk were still alive on the wood-and-metal island that was all that remained of the wagon. They called out fearfully for their kin. Seeing the two Myunans walking safely on the earth, the Reisenicks rushed out to their family, helping them down and hugging and kissing them passionately.
‘He made it, then,’ Taya said.
Lorkrin nodded. Rug had found his way home.
EPILOGUE
The Reisenicks made no more trouble for the Myunans and their friends, leaving them alone to tend their wounds. Cullum was able to retrieve Khassiel’s body from beneath the rubble and insisted on burying her alone. He marked the grave with her crossbow. They all paid their respects and then turned their attention to making camp, none of them fit for anything but sleep.
It was some time before any of the Reisenicks bothered to dig Ludditch out. He stood there, staring at the ground, not saying a word, until Spiroe came over with a shovel and sourly freed his legs. The Reisenicks set out for home on foot as the moon came up, the younger men supporting or carrying their aged relatives, others bearing their dead and injured on makeshift stretchers. Ludditch followed behind, unable to endure the bitter, hateful stares of his clan.