The Bark of the Bog Owl (16 page)

It wasn’t long before even Arliss had reason to doubt the wisdom of their chosen path. As they made their way along the edge of the underground lake, the shore disappeared. Sheer cliffs dropped directly into the water on either side. Gustus stood at the very last bit of shoreline and scratched his head underneath his miner’s helmet. “All right, boys, we’re going to have to swim for it.” He had, at least, had the foresight to select for the mission only men who could swim, not a common skill among miners. “Everybody pull out your hardtack and eat what you can. I don’t know how far we’ll have to swim—I can’t see around this bend. You’re going to need your energy. Besides,” he continued, “you won’t be able to keep it dry, so you might as well eat it now rather than see it ruined.”

The men pulled the hard biscuits out of their packs and ate hungrily. “Cedric, Ernest,” Gustus continued, “can you swim with one hand and hold a torch with the other?” Both men said that they could.

“It won’t ruin the extra torches if they get wet,” observed Gustus. “We can shake most of the water out, and the pitch will burn in any case. But we can’t let the tinder get wet. Arliss, is that tinderbox still in your pack?”

“Yes sir,” the young miner answered.

“Take off your helmet, put the tinderbox on top of your head, and strap your helmet down tight over it, like this.” Gustus demonstrated with his own helmet and tinderbox.

“Aidan, you a strong swimmer?” asked the old miner.

“Yes sir, pretty strong.”

Gustus pulled a third tinderbox out of his pack and tossed it to Aidan. “Then you keep this one under your helmet. We’ve got to keep these tinderboxes dry. Do not, do
not, do not
let your heads go under.”

Aidan strapped the tinderbox under his helmet. He found it none too comfortable. By this time, Gustus had slid into the lake and was holding Cedric’s torch while Cedric got in. Aidan followed, then Arliss and the other two miners. The water was the exact same temperature as the air, but it felt a lot colder—miserably cold at first. Nevertheless, it was a relief to their sore feet to be relieved of the strain of walking on the stone and mud.

There was no telling how deep the water was, and Aidan tried not to imagine what sort of eyeless monsters might be lurking in its depths. He tried not to think about how such a creature might arise from a long sleep, awakened by the unfamiliar sound of six tasty Corenwalders thrashing around in his lake. And he refused to speculate as to how many miner-scouts such a creature could swallow in a single bite—or how many it would take to satisfy its long-dormant appetite.

He just swam, staying as close to his comrades as possible. The company had hoped that the sheer rock on either side of the lake would soon yield again to sloping
banks, but they were disappointed. The little halo of the dim torches revealed nothing but looming cliffs on either side.

They swam on in silence, clustered around the torches held aloft by Cedric and Ernest. They settled into a steady rhythm and seemed to be making decent time. But though nobody said anything, they all wondered how much farther they would have to swim—and how long they could go before reaching the point of exhaustion.

The silence was suddenly broken by a terrified yelp, which was immediately drowned out by the sound of violent splashing. Just as suddenly, it grew darker. Turning toward the sound, Aidan saw a flailing hand break the water’s surface, still clutching a doused torch. Then, in the gloomy light of the one remaining torch, Ernest’s face appeared, eyes bulging in panic, mouth wide in a desperate gasp, then disappeared again beneath the frothing water.

Clayton and Cedric swam to their old friend’s side, and the next time he came up for air, they each grabbed an arm. In the ensuing flurry, Cedric’s torch went under, too, and the party found itself in total blackness. Above the thrashing and splashing came the clear voice of Gustus: “Clayton! Cedric!”

“Sir!”

“Sir!”

“Do you have hold of Ernest?”

“We’ve got him,” Clayton’s voice came spluttering back, “but I don’t know how much longer.”

“Ernest?” called Gustus, struggling to stay calm.

He was answered by a spew of water, then the high, pained voice of Ernest: “It’s a cramp! Can’t swim!”

By this time, Aidan had swum to the near wall and found a narrow handhold. “I’m on the wall,” he called into the darkness. “Gustus, Arliss, let’s make a chain out to them.”

Zeroing in on Aidan’s voice, Gustus and Arliss found him and joined hands, Aidan anchored to the rock, Arliss in the middle, Gustus sweeping his free hand out into the darkness toward the sound of splashing. He grabbed an arm as it flailed by and tugged the whole mass of struggling, thrashing miners to safety.

Soon all six members of the party were clinging to the rock face. Out of immediate danger, Ernest was able to relax enough so that the cramp released its wrenching grip on his leg.

“Well, boys, what now?” It was Cedric’s voice.

The silence and the blackness pressed down like a weight as each member of the party waited for somebody else to answer.

Gustus finally spoke. “Ernest, how you doing?”

Ernest’s answer was indignant. “We ain’t turning back on my account, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

Another long pause bore down on them as Gustus thought things over. “No fire,” he said, half to himself, “and we’re not sure we’re going to be able to get any.”

“But that’s not much of a reason to turn back now,” offered Clayton. “If we got no fire, we don’t have much hope of making it back anyway.”

Cedric spoke up: “I say we just follow this wall until we find a getting-out place, or until we just can’t follow it no farther.”

They all agreed to Cedric’s plan. If they found a way
out of the lake and they could light their torches, the mission would go on. Otherwise, they would try to make their way back to the Corenwalder camp, one way or another.

So they continued their unlikely journey, half-swimming, feeling their way along a limestone wall in perfect darkness, calling to one another at frequent intervals to ensure that no one got separated from the party.

* * *

It was difficult to gauge time in the cave, where time was not measured by the movement of sun or stars, but by the nearly constant
drip … drip … drip
that gave shape to everything in the world beneath the world. The burning of torches had given the miner-scouts a rough idea of the time they had spent in the cave, but they had no idea how long they had been creeping along the rock wall in the darkness. It might have been a couple of hours. It might have been shorter or, for that matter, much longer.

Aidan was famished, growing weaker by the minute. It wasn’t only hunger and fatigue that drained him but the darkness itself, which seemed determined to swallow every spark of hope he could generate. His hands had grown soft from soaking in the water; the abrasive stone was painful to his fingertips. His helmet—or, more particularly, the tinderbox underneath his helmet—had grown especially irksome. He had even managed to swim blisters on his feet, the result of swimming in boots.

The whole group had grown sullen. The darkness had obviously done its work on the miner-scouts too. It
seemed an hour since anyone had spoken a word. Then, up at the front of the line, Gustus bellowed in pain, “Aaaargh! My knee!” In the darkness, the travelers all piled into one another, unaware that their leader had stopped, lodged against an outcropping of stone just below the water’s surface.

The old miner was more surprised than hurt by the collision, and he forgot all about the pain in his knee when he realized that the ledge became a gently sloping shelf rising out of the water and offering a dry surface to stand on. The whole party scrambled out of the water, rejoicing to be on dry land.

“Tinderboxes!” whooped Gustus. And before Aidan could even get his helmet off, he heard the
tchk … tchk …
tchk
of flint on steel.

“Shake a torch dry!” ordered Gustus, as he continued clicking away with the flint. The flying sparks were a welcome sight to eyes accustomed to total darkness. The tinder caught, then the fat lighter, and as Gustus scooped the burning splinter into Cedric’s torch, the miners dared to hope that their mission might be completed after all. Nestled in the still-damp fibers of the cane torch, the flame guttered and smoked, and Aidan felt his heart in his throat. But the pine pitch embedded in the stringy cane innards popped to light, and a little halo of light revealed that the stone they stood on was more than only a little shelf but a broad passageway where all six could walk abreast if they chose.

As Gustus was lighting a second torch, Arliss gave them the best news they had heard in many hours: The passage led south, back toward the Pyrthen camp.
Clayton clasped Arliss in a bear hug that lifted him off the ground: “Hurrah for the miner’s head!” he whooped.

Energized by their improved prospects, and also worried that their torches wouldn’t last, they made their way down the passage at a brisk pace, almost at a trot.

“How much fire we got left?” asked Ernest, who had long since recovered from his cramp.

“Let’s see …” said Gustus, stroking his beard. “We started with twenty pair. That was the seventh pair that you and Clayton lost in the water. These are the eighth pair. Two more pair after these, and we turn it around.”

“Step it up, boys,” called Arliss. “No time to waste!”

They were almost running now down the broad corridor, and they sang their high-spirited caving song:

The ninth pair of torches was burning when Arliss noticed something odd on the ceiling above them. It looked like a twisted mass of gigantic snakes spiraling out thirty feet or more, branching and intertwining. Arliss nudged Aidan and pointed upward. “Tree roots,” he observed. “We must be getting near the surface.”

Cedric looked up too. “That’s not a little tree either,” he observed. “Look at the size of those roots.”

Aidan stopped short. “We’re in the middle of a plain. There aren’t many trees.”

“Not that size anyway,” offered Arliss.

“There are a few big pine trees and a few big cedars.”

Gustus craned his neck to study the root system. “I’ve tunneled under many a pine tree. Those aren’t pine roots. Not cedar either. That’s a hardwood.”

“A hardwood!” shouted Arliss excitedly. “There ain’t but one big hardwood within eyeshot of camp. That’s the live oak the giant used to stand by every afternoon.”

“So we’re …” Aidan began.

“We’re standing underneath the Pyrthen camp!” shouted Gustus. “We’re almost there!”

“And not a minute too soon,” observed Clayton as the torch in his hand guttered out. They lit a tenth pair of torches—their last before they would have to turn back— and pressed on.

Five minutes later, the passageway narrowed to a tight crevice. Gustus held his torch to the crevice and tried to peer through. He looked down at his broad chest and shook his head. He turned sideways and leaned into the crack. He groaned and pushed with his legs, but it was clear to everyone that there was no use.

“You’d have to be an eel to get through that hole,” he sighed dejectedly. “We’ve come so far.” His voice cracked with emotion. He buried his head in his hands. “So far …”

Aidan stepped up to the crevice. “Sir?” he asked. “Gustus? Mind if I give it a try?”

Gustus looked up. His wet eyes glistened in the torchlight. “Sure, son,” he answered, trying to smile. “That’s why we brought you, isn’t it? To squeeze into spots where old fat miners can’t go.”

Aidan sidled into the crack, a torch in his lead hand, his pack swung around to his trailing shoulder. It was a tight fit. It grew tighter as he progressed through the crevice. As the walls closed in, he could feel panic rising in his gorge. He heard Arliss’s voice behind him: “If you’re stuck, breathe out. Don’t hold your breath.”

It went against his instincts, but Aidan did as Arliss said; Arliss did, after all, have the miner’s head. He blew out steadily and felt his chest contract just enough to dislodge him. Then, before he realized what had happened, he popped through to the other side. To his surprise, Arliss was right behind him.

“Thought I’d have a look too,” Arliss explained.

“How in the world did you get through?” asked Aidan, for though Arliss was the skinniest of the miners, he was still bigger than Aidan.

“One more bite of hardtack, and I couldn’t have made it,” grinned Arliss.

Where they stood, the cave broadened again. They were facing due west.

“Do you smell that?” asked Arliss. Since they had gone underground, they had smelled nothing but that damp, earthy smell. Now, for the first time, they smelled something else, and this aroma was unmistakable. It was the sharp, sweet, smoky smell that drifted over when the Pyrthens fired their thunder-tubes.

From the other side of the crevice came the voice of Gustus. “Arliss? Aidan? What do you see?”

Arliss called back through the crack, “I think we’ve made it! We can smell the smoke of the Pyrthen thunder-tubes, and we have a broad tunnel leading west.” Aidan
and Arliss heard the sounds of celebration on the other side of the crevice. But the celebration quickly subsided, and the miner-scouts were talking business again.

“Fresh torch!” called Cedric, and Aidan noticed that his own torch was getting close to the end too. That would be the eleventh pair—the end of the road.

Gustus’s voice came calling through the crevice. “Come on back, boys!”

Arliss looked at Aidan in horror. To have come so close just to turn around!

They heard Gustus speaking to his comrades. He had shaken off the gloom he felt when he had gotten stuck at the mouth of the crevice. “Limestone’s soft. And it breaks off in pretty big chunks. We should be able to cut a path big enough for a troop of lightly armed soldiers in a matter of hours.