by Nathan Long
‘I don’t understand,’ Franz wailed.
‘I’ll explain it to you if we live,’ said Reiner. ‘Now run.’
They sprinted back toward where they had left the others. The Kurgan were too big to move quickly, and did not gain on them, but the hounds were faster than horses. Reiner could hear their baying coming closer and closer. At last he rounded a bend in the corridor and saw Pavel, Oskar, and Gustaf by the mine carts, standing guard over the slaves they had caught.
‘Run!’ called Reiner.
‘Up, you lot,’ growled Pavel to the slaves, prodding them with his spear. ‘Get moving.’
But when he and Oskar let them up the slaves ran toward Reiner and his companions. Reiner tried to stop one as she ran by, as did Franz, but the slaves dodged away from them and ran on, toward the hounds.
‘The fools,’ sobbed Franz.
The company squeezed past the mine carts. Screams of agony and animal snarls echoed from behind. Reiner felt a stab of self-loathing as he found himself hoping that the hounds would stop to eat the slaves that he had gone to such pains to free only moments earlier. This did not appear to be the case, for the baying and shouting continued to grow louder.
They rounded another bend and Giano fell sprawling over some loose rock. The lantern bounced out of his hand and smashed on the rail. The flame went out. Total darkness closed over them. They jumbled to a stop.
‘Myrmidia curse me!’ cried Giano.
‘No one move,’ said Reiner as the baying and running boots echoed ever closer. ‘All hold hands. If you are not holding a hand, speak up.’
He stretched out and took a rough hand. He had no idea who it was.
‘I stand alone,’ said Gustaf.
‘You certainly do, mate,’ said Hals.
Reiner reached toward Gustaf’s voice. ‘Take my hand.’
Gustaf’s soft fleshy hand batted at his, then caught it.
‘Hurry!’ wailed Oskar. ‘They’re coming!’
Reiner looked back. Far down the corridor, huge hound shadows bounded and swooped along the walls. Then the hounds themselves came into view, massive black silhouettes running ahead of the Chaos troops’ torches.
Reiner turned and ran, forgetting to give an order. There was no need. The rest ran with him, blind as bats, whimpering in their throats. They all knew it was useless to run, but it was impossible not to. Fear drove their legs, not thought—the primal instinct for flight in the face of certain death.
Reiner tripped over the rails, caught himself, and crowded against the wall to avoid the ties. He could hear Gustaf wheezing and stumbling behind him, and not twenty paces behind him, the panting and snarling of the hounds.
So this was it, Reiner thought. He was going to die, lost to all he loved and all who loved him, in a black tunnel under the Middle Mountains, eaten by monstrous hounds. The things he had yet to do crowded into his head, all the money he hadn’t yet won or spent, all the women he had yet to bed, books unread, the loves unloved. He found himself weeping with regret. It had all been so damned useless, the whole horrible journey—his whole life.
Franz shrieked from the back of the line. Ulf roared something incoherent and Reiner heard an impact and an animal yelp. He looked back, but there was little to see except leaping shadows and bobbing torches in the distance.
‘Franz?’
The boy’s answer was lost as, at the head of the line, Giano screamed. His scream was repeated by Pavel and Hals. And there was a sound of rattling pebbles and strange echoes. Reiner tried to halt before he ran into the hidden danger, but Gustaf, Ulf and Franz piled into him from behind, sending him flying forward again.
‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Something…’
His left foot came down on empty air. He yelled in surprise and threw his hands out, expecting to hit the tunnel floor face first. His hands touched nothing. There was nothing below him.
He was falling into a bottomless void.
THIRTEEN
All Is Not Entirely Lost
THE FALL WAS just long enough to allow Reiner to wonder how far down the bottom was, and to tense for the inevitable fatal bone-shattering, organ-exploding impact. But when it came at last it was less of a slam than a slide.
Not that it wasn’t painful.
Reiner’s first thought was that he was scraping against the cliff he was falling past, but the surface that was abrading his clothes was loose and crumbly and slid with him. It quickly turned into an almost perpendicular slope, made up of gravel, dirt and large rocks. Reiner caught one of these amidships and curled up in blinding pain. He began rolling and bouncing down the slope at breakneck speed, scraping and bashing his elbows and knees and shoulders. His brain bounced around in his head until he had no idea which way was up, if he was alive or dead, broken or whole. Only half conscious, he buried his head in his arms as the angle of the slope began to grow less acute and the speed of his fall to lessen.
He was just slowing to a stop, sliding down the mound, half buried in an avalanche of gravel, and thinking that he might possibly have survived, when a body dropped on his chest, crushing his ribs, and bounced away again, grunting. Reiner gasped, but couldn’t draw a breath. It felt as if his lungs were locked in a vice.
A second body, lighter, but bonier, landed on his face. A knee cracked him in the nose and blood flooded his mouth. He slid at last to a stop, sucking air and spitting blood. All around him weak voices moaned and cried in pain. There were lights dancing in the centre of his vision. At first he thought they were after effects of the fall, but then he realised that they were torches, about as far above him as the top of a castle wall. He would have sworn he had fallen much farther than that. The Kurgan were looking down into the void to see what had become of them. He thought he heard them laughing. He doubted they could see anything.
‘N…’ He tried to speak and failed. He hadn’t enough breath. After a moment he tried again. ‘No one… strike… a light. Wait.’
He heard a hacking chuckle from nearby. ‘No fear of that, captain,’ said Hals. ‘Dead men got no use for torches.’
After a moment the torches disappeared and they were left in total darkness.
‘Unfortunately,’ said Reiner at last, ‘we appear to still live. If you’ve your flint handy, Hals?’
‘Aye, captain.’
Reiner heard him shift around, then hiss in sudden pain. ‘Ah, Sigmar’s blood! I think I’ve bust my leg.’
‘Any more hurt?’ asked Reiner, though he was afraid to ask. ‘Pavel?’
There was a muffled reply, then a curse. ‘I’ve lost a bloody tooth.’
‘Oskar?’
‘I… I know not. I don’t feel much of anything.’
‘Franz? Did that monster get you?’
‘I… I’m fine.’
‘Ulf?’
There was no reply.
‘Ulf?’
Silence.
‘Just a moment, sir,’ said Hals. ‘Light’s on its way.’
Reiner resumed the roll call. ‘Gustaf?’
‘I’ve lost some skin, that’s all.’
‘That’s a relief. I hope you haven’t lost your kit.’
‘I have it.’
‘Giano?’
‘A rock, she cut me. I bleed a lot, I think.’
Light flashed as Hals struck sparks off his flint, followed by a steady glow as his tinder started. He touched it to a taper.
Reiner raised his head. His face felt twice as big as it ought to be, and twice as heavy. He looked around, squinting in the yellow light. The men were strewn like broken dolls at the base of a huge scree of gravel and loose rock that rose up into the darkness above them. This was obviously where the slaves dumped the waste rock they chipped away as they mined the ore. He looked at the men one by one.
Pavel was sitting up, holding his mouth, his fingers dripping blood. Hals was near him, holding aloft the candle. One of his legs was bent at an angle. Franz lay further down the slope, curled up and clutching his side. Reiner c
ouldn’t see the boy’s face, but he seemed to be trembling. Oskar lay flat on his back staring straight up. He held one of his arms against his chest. Gustaf was hunched over his pack, sorting out his supplies. His canvas jacket was ripped to shreds on his left side, as was the skin under it. He bled from a hundred minor lacerations. Giano sat, naked to the waist, pressing a cut in his thigh with his shirt. His arms, shoulders and chest were mottled with blossoming bruises. Reiner was certain that all of them looked just the same under their clothes. Ulf he found at last, at the edge of the candle light, a motionless mass lying on his side at the base of the mound.
‘Gustaf,’ said Reiner, lowering his head again. ‘Could you see if Master Urquart still lives.’
‘Aye.’
Gustaf made his way cautiously down the slope, slipping and sinking into the loose gravel. He bent over Ulf, touching his neck and chest, and peeling back his eyelids. ‘He lives,’ he said. ‘But he has struck his head. I don’t know when he will wake. It is possible he won’t.’
Reiner groaned. Just what they needed.
“Tis a miracle,’ said Pavel unclearly, as Gustaf climbed the slope again to Giano, who was bleeding the most. ‘All of us alive. Sigmar must be watching over us.’
‘If Sigmar was watching over us,’ said Hals dryly as he lit a torch from the taper, ‘he wouldn’t have let us fall off the cursed cliff in the first place.’
‘If your hammer god care one bit of damn for us,’ spat Giano, ‘he not let us take this fooling mission.’
‘I can’t work here,’ said Gustaf. He had tied off Giano’s gash, but his kit was sliding away down the slope, and he was sunk in almost to his knees. ‘We must find somewhere flat.’
With a groan Reiner sat up and looked around as Hals’s torch flared to life and the others began slowly and painfully to stand. The hole they had fallen into was a natural crevasse, deep and wide, that wandered off into darkness to their left and right. The hill of gravel they lay on spread out in a semi-circle across an uneven mud floor that made Reiner think water ran through the chasm occasionally. He was wondering if one direction was better than the other when he noticed that there was a circular opening in the opposite wall of the crevasse. More decisions. Which way was best?
Then he remembered that he had Veirt’s compass, taken from his dead body, in his belt pouch. He took it out and frowned at it. South pointed almost directly at the circular opening. ‘Try in there,’ he said, pointing to it.
Pavel began helping Hals down the slope, arms over each other’s shoulder, both of them hissing and grunting in pain. Reiner felt as bad as they sounded. His ribs ached with every breath, and every joint seemed to have its own separate and particular pain. He and Giano opened a blanket and rolled Ulfs supine body onto it, then, with Gustaf’s help, they pulled the blanket and Ulf down to the floor.
Oskar and Franz brought up the rear, Oskar holding his left arm with his right, Franz clutching his ribs and crabbing along, almost bent double. His jacket was torn at the back, and his breeks, below it, were turning black with blood.
‘Lad,’ said Reiner. ‘Are you certain you’re well?’
‘It’s nothing,’ the boy grunted between clenched teeth. ‘Nothing.’
Dragging Ulf across the dried mud floor took quite an effort and Reiner’s ribs and muscles complained mightily, but it got easier once they entered the tunnel. Though crudely worked, it was almost perfectly circular, and the floor was worn smooth from what must have been centuries of traffic. Adding to the slickness was a hard, oily coating that covered everything like a glaze. It was as if the whole tunnel had been varnished. Reiner was repulsed by the feel of it, yet it made pulling Ulf almost effortless.
Giano sniffed suspiciously. ‘Smell of ratmen.’
Reiner chuckled. ‘Don’t be a fool, man. Ratmen are a myth.’
‘Is not true. They live.’
Pavel smirked back over his shoulder. ‘Giant rats that talk? Come on, Tilean. What do y’take us for?’
Giano pulled himself up, insulted. ‘They live, I tell you. My whole village they kill. My mama and papa. Come out of ground and kill everybodies. I have swear vengeance upon them.’
‘Bit difficult, seeing as they don’t exist.’
Giano sniffed. ‘Men of Empire think they know everythings.’
‘Captain,’ called Hals. ‘Found a room of sorts. Might do for a surgery.’
He was sticking his torch into a round opening in the tunnel wall. Letting go of Ulf’s makeshift stretcher, Reiner joined him and looked in. The hole opened into a round, curve-walled chamber with eight smaller chambers branching off it like the fingers of a glove. Reiner took the torch from Hals and stepped in. A chill ran up his spine. At some time in the past the chamber had been occupied, though by who or what he couldn’t say. The walls were carved with jagged, geometric reliefs that Reiner could make neither head nor tail of. A few warped wooden shelves leaned against them, with a scattering of cracked clay jugs and bowls upon them. Reiner poked the torch into each of the eight chambers. They were small and nearly circular, the floors calf deep in scraps of cloth and straw. Reiner wrinkled his nose. They smelled of dust and animal musk. The whole place gave him an uneasy feeling, but it was dry and flat and there appeared to be no danger.
‘Excellent,’ he said with more enthusiasm than he felt. He waved the others forward. ‘Come on, in we go.’
Pavel and Hals limped in first, followed by Gustaf and Giano, dragging Ulf. Giano grimaced. ‘You see. Ratmen. We find nest.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Reiner. ‘Anybody could have made these holes.’
‘Looks more like orc work,’ said Gustaf, toeing aside a broken jug. ‘Crude stuff.’
Pavel and Hals exchanged a nervous look.
‘Only orcs?’ said Hals dryly. ‘That’s a relief.’
‘Can you no see?’ asked Giano, pointing at the walls. ‘Look. Rat faces. Rat bodies.’
Reiner looked at the reliefs again as Franz and Oskar entered. The designs might have been rat heads with wide-set eyes and sharp fangs, but they were so abstract and poorly carved that they might have been anything.
He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Orcs or ratmen, whoever lived here is long gone.’ He stuck his torch upright in the mouth of an unbroken urn and turned to Gustaf. ‘Surgeon, what do you need of us?’ He was trying his best to be bright and efficient like a good captain should, but his head ached abominably and his stomach was churning from all the blood that ran from his nose down the back of his throat.
Gustaf left Ulf on his blanket in the centre of the floor and opened his kit. ‘Decide who is most injured. I will work from worst to least. If someone can break down these shelves for splints it would be a help. And if someone can sacrifice a shirt, I am running short of bandages.’
‘I think Franz must be seen to first,’ said Reiner. ‘He is losing blood.’
‘No!’ said the boy, white-lipped. ‘I am fine. I can attend to myself.’ He limped hurriedly to one of the little chambers and disappeared inside.
‘Come back here, you little brat,’ barked Reiner. ‘You are in no way fine.’ With a grunt of annoyance he followed the boy into the room.
Franz was bracing himself against the wall with one trembling arm, his head bowed to his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he pressed his left elbow against his side. The cloth of his shirt made a wet, squelching sound. ‘Get out!’ he gasped. ‘Leave me be.’
Reiner glared at him. ‘Don’t be a fool, lad. You’re grievously injured. You must let Gustaf have a look at you.’
‘No,’ whimpered Franz. ‘He… he mustn’t. No one…’
‘But lad, you…’
The boy’s knees gave way and he slid down the wall to sprawl on the floor.
‘Curse it,’ said Reiner. He returned to the main chamber. ‘Surgeon, the boy’s collapsed.’
Gustaf rose from examining Oskar’s wrist. ‘I’ll see to him.’ As he passed Reiner, he raised an eyebrow. ‘Your nose is on
sideways, captain. I believe you’ve broken it.’
Reiner raised his hand to his face. ‘Ah. That would explain why my head feels as big as a melon.’
‘I’ll set it momentarily,’ said the surgeon. ‘In the meantime, if you could rip your shirt into strips.’ He ducked into the small chamber with his kit.
Reiner joined the others on the floor and took off his jerkin and shirt. The air in the chamber was stuffy, but much warmer than that in the mine. It was almost comfortable. Hals was sawing at his spear with his dagger, trying to fashion it into a crutch. Giano was breaking the shelves into usable lengths. Oskar rocked back and forth, holding his arm. Pavel was pressing a rag of shirt against his mouth. His upper lip was split to his nose and bleeding freely.
He grinned at Reiner, showing red teeth. ‘And I didn’t think I could get any uglier.’
‘Maybe y’ll lose the other eye,’ said Hals. ‘So y’won’t have to look at yerself.’
Pavel chuckled. ‘I can only hope.’
After a short time Gustaf returned. Reiner thought there was something odd about his expression, a suppressed smirk possibly, but the surgeon always looked like he was stifling an evil thought, so he couldn’t be sure.
‘How’s the boy,’ Reiner asked.
Gustaf’s smirk broadened for a moment, then disappeared. ‘He sleeps. I gave him a draught. He was clawed along the ribs by the hound, then a sharp stone became lodged in the wound during the fall. Very painful. I removed the stone and bound the wound. He will be weak for a while, but he will live.’ He snorted. ‘If any of us do.’
‘Brave little fool,’ said Reiner with grudging respect. ‘He tries too hard to be hard.’
‘Yes,’ said Gustaf, then crossed to Pavel and took out a needle and thread.
Just as he crouched down, Ulf suddenly jack-knifed into a sitting position, flailing and roaring. ‘The beasts! The beasts!’ He clubbed Gustaf and Oskar with his wild swings. The others edged away from him.
Reiner stood. ‘Ulf! Urquart! Calm yourself. The hounds are gone.’
Ulfs fists slowed and he blinked around him. ‘What…?’
‘We fell. You don’t remember?’