The Dig (41 page)

But Wil snapped a hand in front of him to be silent. The hand curled shut, with one finger outstretched, and moved from Pwig to the sky where he had pointed. Half a breath later, an enormous ball of fire appeared at the tip of his finger, trailed across the sky, and disappeared in silence, all in an eyeblink.

All four had sucked in a sudden breath as they had watched the sky stripe’s split-second flight. But still it made no sound. Irin wondered if it somehow had missed the surface, but then they heard the rumble—very soft, but long and with a deep waver as if someone were humming. Was that it? Their city destroyed that quickly? Tillyt and Otillyt now dead, burnt to ash? The houses melted in a flash like lightning? Was Pret awake and watching it come to him? Did he make it to the hill so it would hit him first, as he had boasted?

The ground beneath them rumbled slightly, and small pieces fell from the edge of the cliff and bounced their way to the bottom.

“Was that it?” a new voice asked behind them. Irin turned and saw many heads, shielded from the sunlight by arms and clothing.

Irin and the other three moved away from the edge. Walking up to the man who had asked, Irin told him quietly, “Yes.”

The last living people of Pwin-T were understandably distraught. Most were unable to return to sleep, and Irin envied those who still slept. They wouldn’t know until they awoke, after sunset.

Looking back toward the sunrise side, he saw a giant cloud rising and growing in the distance—smoke from the fires, he supposed. He and Orin returned to the ball of green and lay there, unable to return to sleep.

After darkness finally arrived, Irin allowed people the time to let the event sink in. They would not travel this night, he decided, and he sent word around. The plateau was an acceptable place to sleep through another daylight.

The following night they packed up and resumed their journey. A sensation of numbness seemed to afflict one and all; no one moved quickly, but neither did anyone argue, and no complaints found their way to Irin. He understood that most had eaten little or nothing before they left, and he kept the pace leisurely.

The next four nights were difficult ones. During one, they encountered a rocky area where a mountain had apparently lost half of its peak, filling the lower lands with enormous boulders too difficult to pass with n’wips. Irin led them all the way back around a mountain to find a different way. Another night, a man broke his leg after slipping and rolling down a hill and had to be carried in a n’wip.

At the close of the fourth night since the destruction of Pwin-T, as people assembled to eat the last meal, Irin discovered that the dylt and k’yon were almost completely gone—no one had told him. After scolding the men he had placed in charge of the food supply, he pondered what to do. There was hardly enough even to feed the group tonight, let alone the next. And if they consumed everything, they would have no seeds to plant in a new food flat. As the sun rose on the other side of the mountain, Irin heard some new complaining of hunger. He told Orin to give half-portions of gwotl only, to save the dylt and k’yon and get everyone to sleep quickly.

When Orin asked him what he would do, he told her that he would take some men out during the daylight to scout for seeds, nuts, berries, or anything else they could find. They had filled up water bags at a mountain brook nearby; they would start their search there. He assembled his group of men, including Wil, leaving Pwig and Orin in charge of the group. He knew now that she could handle most problems much better than he himself could.

The eight men, all carrying cutters and with their k’yot tops turned backward, set off traversing around the mountain. Each carried food bags for gathering samples. If they found an appropriate food in good supply, Irin would send back hundreds of people the next night to gather all that they could pack into n’wips—at least he
hoped
there would be such a discovery.

Arriving at the foamy, rushing river, they surveyed the plants that bordered it. Wil pulled up a bush and sniffed its thick, twisted taproot. Nibbling off the tiny tip, he told Irin it was sweet, almost like gwotl nectar. But Irin said not to pull up more of the plants yet; thousands grew along the stream bank, and they could come back for more later.

“That is, if you don’t get foodrise in a short while,” Irin told him.

The men explored farther up the river, to a point where the sides were too steep to walk and they had to trudge through the water. Walking against the flow proved difficult, and they progressed slowly, wading through areas where the water almost reached their crotches. It was also very cold.

They continued around a bend in the stream until Nitt cried out. Irin turned to see him hopping about in the water, as if he were avoiding stepping on fire.

“What is it?” Irin shouted to him.

“Something in the water!” He kept dancing about and sloshed to the edge of the stream, pulling himself out and onto the steep bank.

The rest of the men’s eyes shot downward, and then another felt it, then two more, and they all began scrambling to get out of the water. Irin saw something long and silvery slide past him. He moved up onto a teetering rock, with only his feet still under the water, and tried to see more. Wil and the others were retreating to the banks, at once amused and uneasy about what this strange thing might be.

Irin balanced on the unstable rock and knelt down, cutter in hand. There it was again! This time he got a good look. It was very long, like a big lightstick, with two large wings spreading out at the bottom. When it moved, its body curved like a twisting rope.

“It was trying to bite my legs!” Nitt told him. “I could feel it through the k’yot bottom. Its mouth was strong, like a person’s hand.”

Irin poked his cutter into the water and spun it around. The rock beneath him rolled forward a little, and he had to arch his back and throw his arms behind him to keep from falling. It worked, and he steadied himself. Then, without warning, the rock rolled backward and he rolled with it, his head plunging beneath the cold water. His nose suddenly burned as he inhaled, and his arms floundered for something to pull himself up. His cutter fell from his hand, and his back struck the rock he had been standing on. The water was pushing him down the river. He was able to flip himself over and get a foot planted on the ground. His head broke through the surface, and he coughed and spat, hunched over and standing in water that was well over his knees.

Wil and another grabbed the back of his k’yot middle, pulling him up onto the bank. Shaking the water from his ears, he pulled his k’yot top away from his face and felt himself begin to laugh.

“Wil?” he said with a heavy sigh.

Wil said nothing, just touched Irin’s head.

“Did one of them try to bite you?” Nitt asked, fear still in his voice.

“No, I think the thrashing scared them away, but I lost my cutter in there.”

“You can have Nitt’s,” Dill joked. “He won’t use it anyway—he just runs.”

“And what did the rest of us do?” Wil replied. They all chuckled.

“Come on,” Irin cut in. “We have to keep moving. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m
very
awake now.”

Moving along the sloping bank, they heard a low rumbling somewhere up ahead. Around two more bends, they arrived at a wider area, where a waterfall dropped from high above them. In the distance a vast gorge appeared, surrounded by enormous cliff walls. Below them, the ground was wooded with tall trees, and ferns and deep-green moss seemed to cover the rock walls. The waterfall roared and pounded, making the ground tremble. They looked up, marveling at its power, trying to see the top through the misty air.

Irin took a few steps back and inhaled the moist air, hoping they would find another gorge like the one down there, but bigger. The beautiful green bowl beneath them looked very appealing, he knew, but it would never hold the houses and food flats for so many people, nor did it have an ample tree supply. He hoped that a larger one existed nearby so that he could return to this spot often with Orin.

There was a sudden lurch, and he felt his stomach rise as the ground beneath him disappeared. With a gasp, arms swinging wildly out in front of him, he watched the backs of his seven companions rise above him. One arm landed on hard ground, and his chin hit, slamming his jaw shut, teeth gnashing into his tongue. Blood spread across his mouth and down his throat, so that he could not shout. He choked and grappled for a hold on the smooth rock.

The others, still gawking at the noisy waterfall, had not even heard the collapse. Irin watched his hand sliding toward him and realized that this was it; the moment that Wil had envisioned: daylight, k’yot top backward, as he had said. Did Wil know right now? As his hand slid on the smooth, wet rock, his other unable to find purchase on the remains of the crumbling soil, he twisted his head and peered down below. A long drop. Sheer cliff. If one of the monstrous long-necked beasts should stand down there, its head would not reach nearly this high.

He felt his hand leave the wet, smooth stone, and the rough surface scratched his face; then the others disappeared from view and he slid down and away. He closed his eyes as he felt the fall truly begin. His fingers scratched the last few pebbles and clods of moist earth, and then he was all alone in the air, touching nothing. He tried to take a final deep breath, to let the smell of this place be the last thing he thought, when his head flew back and his body slammed against something hard. He felt something in his chest pop, relieving whatever had happened to his side in the fight with the screamers.

He felt his legs still dangling, and when he opened his eyes, Nitt’s voice was shouting “Irin!” right in his face. Irin’s eyes grew wider still as he saw that Nitt’s k’yot-covered face was sliding with him. He didn’t know that Irin was
supposed
to die here. He shouldn’t have tried to stop him; now he, too, would perish. Nitt’s hands clutched at the back of Irin’s k’yot middle, and he was shouting more things at Irin: to hold on, to grab him, not to worry. They stopped dropping, and Irin realized that someone must be holding Nitt’s legs. He glanced up but could not see anyone else. Of course not—they would fall as well.

Irin wished that Nitt would just let him go. They apparently had a good hold of him and could probably raise him back up if not for Irin’s added weight. Irin’s ears began to function again, and for the first time he truly heard Nitt’s words.

“Reach up! Hold on to my middle! I am going to grab my cutter and put it in the wall!”

Irin threw his hand up and grasped the k’yot tightly, not quite understanding the logic but going along with it all the same. What good would a cutter wedged in the collapsing rock do? Nitt released one of his hands, and Irin felt himself drop a little more. The fear had reentered him, and he began to grow angry that he hadn’t been allowed to fall and die while he had found peace a moment ago. Now he was thinking there might actually be a chance to survive, and again he was terrified of falling. What would it feel like when he hit?

Nitt’s hand disappeared above and came back down with a cutter. They both looked at it as Nitt slammed it into the wall. But it had slid too easily into the mud, and Nitt pulled it back out.

“What are you trying to do?” Irin shouted at him.

“I’ll get it strong in the wall, and then they’ll give me more cutters to make handholds for you to climb up!”

Irin felt his arm burning with exhaustion. Looking at Nitt’s eyes, he spoke calmly, “Listen to me. You’re a good man for trying, but you need to let me go. Let them pull you up.”

Nitt’s faceless k’yot top said no, and he tried to jab the cutter into another spot. Irin heard another of the men above shout, “Hurry!… Too slippery on these rocks!”

That was it, Irin decided. He looked up as Nitt pulled the blade out of the wall the second time. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath as he opened the hand holding Nitt’s k’yot. He dropped down more and felt Nitt’s other clutching hand give way. With a groan, Nitt tried to improve his grip, but the k’yot slipped from his fingers.

“No!” he heard Nitt scream, and he felt himself fall for only a second before his body lurched forward again, his head once more banging against the rocks. He opened his eyes and, through the filter of his k’yot, could see both Nitt’s hands. They were gripping the wall and not touching him at all.

Nitt turned back and shouted, “Give me another! I’ve got him!”

Irin looked down and saw the cutter. It was stabbed through his k’yot middle and stuck deep into a section of rock. Nitt had done it! He still dangled precariously, but he certainly wasn’t falling. Nitt’s face disappeared as they pulled him back up.

In Nitt’s place, Wil’s face appeared just over the ledge. He had removed his k’yot top altogether and squinted at Irin. His face drooped with somber despair.

“Not this time, either, Wil?” Irin called to him. “How many times must I practice dying before the real thing?” he joked.

Beyond Wil, Irin heard one of the men shout at another to go back for rope. Wil glanced out of Irin’s sight and then looked back down at him.

“No… this is it, Irin. Just close your eyes.”

And then Irin felt it. The k’yot was ripping. Nitt had stabbed it in the cliff with the edge up, and it was cutting the threads! His body lurched down, tearing it farther. And then only the knife and a small piece of k’yot stuck to the cliff while Irin’s body flipped backward. He felt his hand grab for the cutter handle, and his fingers, as if acting on their own, wrapped tightly around it. As his body dropped straight down, his arm became fully outstretched, yanking at his elbow and shoulder for but an instant before he felt the hilt break away from the blade.