The Spirit Ring (5 page)

      
He could hear Farel swallow. "I'll run for Master Entlebuch and get help," Farel said after a moment. "You go back and see what happened."

      
"All right." Thur turned and felt his way back down the tunnel. He could sense the whole weight of the mountain pressing overhead. The great support timbers could splinter like kindling if the mountain shifted further.
Cold earth will stop your mouth, grave digger....
He could not hear shouts or cries up ahead any more, only the snaky hiss of the water.

      
The tilted basket of ore, the lamp still burning atop it, came in sight. The water gushing from the wall flowed away down the tunnel. Thur took up the lamp and slipped and slid down the now-muddy tunnel floor. Near the bottom of the dug-out vein's curve, a sheet of water roiled. It stretched from Thur's feet across to where the roof of the tunnel dipped to meet it. No wonder he'd heard nothing. The men at the work face were cut off in an air pocket, the water seal blanketing their cries. Until the cunning water, pushing up through whatever fissures it could find, squeezed the pocket smaller and smaller....

      
A wet head broke the opaque shimmering surface, spat, and gulped air in a huge hooting gasp. A second head came up beside him. Anxiously, Thur reached out and helped the figures heave out of the water, the second clinging to the first.

      
The second man had a dazed look and a cut across his forehead that, mixing with the streaming water, seemed to be bleeding buckets. The first man's eyes were rolling white with fear.

      
"Are the others coming behind you?" Thur asked.

      
"I don't know," Matt, the first man, panted. "I think Niklaus was pinned in the rock fall."

      
"And Birs stayed with him?" Brave Birs. Braver than Thur, that was certain. If Thur's father had had such a brave workmate six years ago, he might be alive today.

      
Matt shook his head. "I thought he was coming with us. But he has the horrors about water. A hedge-witch once prophesied he was safe from all deaths but drowning. He won't even drink water, just ale."

      
The rising flood lapped at Thur's toes, and he stepped back. They all watched avidly, but no more heads popped up. The bleeding man swayed woozily.

      
"Best you walk him out before we have to carry him," Thur observed. "Help should be coming. I'll... stand watch, here. Tell them up above to keep the ventilation bellows pumping. Maybe it will help hold the water back in there or something."

      
Matt nodded and, supporting the injured man, staggered up the tunnel. Thur stood and watched the dark water rising. The longer they waited, the worse it would get, deeper and more difficult.
Ice water will put you out.
No other heads appeared. The water licked Thur's toes again, and again he stepped back. He muffled a tiny wail of dismay in the back of his throat, a squeak like the injured kobold's. Setting the lamp down on the floor several feet back up the tunnel, he turned and waded into the water.

      
The icy shock when it came up over his boots and hit his crotch took his breath away, but he pushed on till his feet left the floor. He breathed deeply, held it, turned, and began to shove himself along the inundated tunnel roof. Down, down... he could feel the pressure growing in his ears, even as they began to numb. Then up, thank God! It was all uphill from here. He pulled himself along faster. Unless there was no air pocket on the other side, in which case he—

      
His hand splashed through to unresisting air, then his head. He gasped as wildly as Matt had done. There was a little light; someone's oil lamp had stayed upright. His feet found solid ground, and he sloshed up onto dry stone. His
eyes
were cold, his scalp tingled, and his fingers were crooked numb claws. The orange-tinged air, chill as it was, seemed like a steam-house in contrast.

      
Birs was standing by the water's edge, sobbing. A struggling shape in the shadows on the floor near the rock face was Niklaus, swearing at him. The swearing paused. "Thur? Is that you?"

      
Thur knelt in the dimness beside Niklaus and felt for damages. The edge of a tilted slab pinned Niklaus's leg to the floor. The bone was shattered, the flesh pulpy and swelling beneath Thur's fingers. The slab was so damned
big
. Thur grabbed for a pick, scrabbled its point under the slab, and heaved. The rock barely shifted.

      
"Birs, help me!" Thur demanded, but Birs wept on as though he neither saw nor heard, so lost in his own imagined damnation he was missing the real one going on behind his back. Thur went round and shook him by the shoulders, at first gently, then hard. "Witless, wake up!" he shouted into Birs's face.

      
Birs didn't stop crying, but he did start moving. With pick, shovel, a bar, and stones shoved in so as to hold each heave's grunting progress, they raised the slab. Niklaus screamed as the blood rushed back into his leg, but still managed to jerk free and roll away.

      
"The water's still rising," said Thur.

      
"It was foretold!" wailed Birs.

      
Thur's hands clenched as he loomed over the man. "The hedge-witch told truth. Your fate
is
drowning. I'll hold your head under myself if you don't help me!"

      
"You tell him, Thur," gasped Niklaus from the floor.

      
Birs cringed away, his terror dwindling to a suppressed whine.

      
"Take Niklaus's other arm. There's naught to do but hold your breath and push yourself along. The other two both made it."

      
They dragged Niklaus into the water and waded out. Thur pushed off with his feet and started under. Flailing, with a panicked cry, Birs retreated.

      
No help for it. Tugging Niklaus, who at least had sense to claw the wall with his free arm and help push, Thur kept going. The heat was sucked faster this time from his aching flesh and bones. When they broke the surface again, Niklaus's eyes had rolled back in shock.

      
But Master Entlebuch and Farel were waiting, with two other men. The team of three quickly laid Niklaus on a blanket and started away with him.

      
"Anyone left?" Master Entlebuch asked.

      
"Birs," Thur wheezed, his body racked with shudders.

      
"Is he hurt?"

      
"No. But he's all in a twist through terror of the water because of some fool fortune-telling."

      
"Can you swim back and get him out?

      
"He could get himself out, if he would." Thur's woolen hood, tunic, and leggings were saturated, sagging and leaden with their burden of water, a dead weight on his body. Irked to distraction by it, he pulled the dripping hood off over his head like a horse collar and let it fall with a sodden splat.

      
The mountain groaned again. The thick support timbers skirled like bagpipes, followed by a hail of tiny popping noises from within the wood.

      
“It's going to go." Master Entlebuch's voice rose taut. "We've got to clear this tunnel
now
."

      
Muting his own inner wail, Thur turned and waded in for the third time. His growing numbness almost mitigated the cold. His head was pounding, strange red lace swirling before his tight-shut eyes, before he felt his way to air again. When he fought up out of the water this time, the stony beach in the air pocket had shrunk to a mere yard. Birs was crouched there, praying, or at any rate crying, "God, God, God, God...." He reminded Thur of a sheep bleating.

      
"Come on!" yelled Thur. "We'll be buried here!"

      
"I'll drown!" shrieked Birs.

      
"Not today, you won't," snarled Thur, and clipped him hard across the jaw with his bunched fist. Rather to Thur's surprise, Birs bounced off the wall and fell dazed at the single blow. It was the first time Thur had hit anyone with his new man's strength, not in a boys' scrambling puppy-fight. Birs's jaw looked strangely off-centered. No help for it now. Thur clamped Birs's head under his arm and dragged him into the freezing water.

      
Even dazed, Birs struggled against Thur's grip as their heads went under. Thur clamped it tighter, heaved and pushed. His lungs labored and pulsed against the seal of his mouth. He let a little air out; he couldn't help it.
Ice water will put you out...
but not today, not today, not today.
God save me for hanging.

      
He surfaced to air and confusion. The black was pitch-absolute. Master Entlebuch was gone. And he'd taken the lamp with him. Thur's free arm waved, disoriented, seeking wall or floor or roof or any guide. He thumped at last into the wall, stoving his reaching fingers. His feet found the sloping floor. He was cramped, bent like a bow from the cold and with knots in his legs and arms that felt like walnuts. Out of the water with his burden. Birs was choking and sputtering, therefore alive and undrowned. Thur was afraid to let go of him in the dark, even when Birs rolled over and vomited about a quart of swallowed water into Thur's lap. Thur struggled to his feet and began march-dragging Birs up the tunnel.

      
The ladder at the lower shaft proved a nightmarish barrier as Thur tried to shove his dizzied workmate up it. He shouted threats and encouragement up at Birs.

      
"Move! Move! Move your hands! Move your feet!" His own fingers were numb to the point of paralysis, crippled claws. Then from the tunnel below them came an almost rhythmic series of splintering cracks, and a thunderous rending crash. Birs's boots vanished from before Thur's nose—
He's fallen
, was Thur's first panicked thought. Then pebbles pattered down on his head from Birs's mad scramble out the top of the shaft.
No, he's recovered.
Thur scrambled too, and ran like a crouching rabbit after he heaved himself into the upper tunnel.

      
He added his hollering to Birs's muffled screams when they reached the lift shaft. It seemed to take forever before the ore bucket descended. Thur stuffed Birs into it and took to the ladder. He almost blacked out, halfway up, but the gray light overhead drew him up like the silver promise of heaven. Henzi was unloading Birs when Thur arrived. Thur stood in the lift shed, his hands braced on his knees, lungs pumping like bellows.

      
"Didn't you bring out any of the tools?" Master Entlebuch asked him anxiously.

      
Thur stared at him like a dumb ox, stupefied. Birs, once on his feet, mumbled something unintelligible but distinctly hostile in tone, swung a punch at Thur, missed, and fell over. Outside the lift shed door, spring sleet was hissing slantwise down the wind.

      
"I want to go home," Thur said.

*****

Incoherent from the cold, he reached his cottage at last. His mother took one horrified look, stripped him of his freezing garments, stuffed him into her own bed between two feather mattresses with hot stones, plied him with steaming barley water sweetened with honey, and never asked after tools or even his missing hood. Even so it took him two full hours to stop shivering, racking shudders like an ague. He gave her a jerky and truncated account of his day that nevertheless left her face drawn and lips compressed. She never left him till his teeth stopped chattering.

      
When his steadying voice at last reassured her of his probable survival, she went across the room to the mantle over the fireplace and came back with a piece of paper that crackled as she unfolded it. "Here, Thur. This came this morning from your brother Uri. He has found you a fine opportunity."

      
Uri, still after him to take up the mercenary's pike? The letter's red wax seal was already broken by their apprehensive mother, who greeted every rare communication with suppressed terror, of news of disease, inflamed wounds, amputation, loss of money at play, or disastrous betrothal to some whorish camp follower, all the hazards of a soldier's life.

      
It wasn't exactly the risks of a soldier's trade that repelled Thur. All life was a hazard. And he'd be willing enough to make swords. He'd seen Milanese armorers' work that had taken his breath away. But to then take that work of art and stick it into a live man... no. He vented a long-suffering sigh and took the paper.

      
A curious shock ran up his arm. His fingers warmed. As he read, his weariness dropped away, and he sat up. Not soldiering after all. His eyes raced faster over the phrases. ...
apprentice to the Duke's goldsmith and master mage... marvelous bronze underway for my lord Duke... needs a strong, smart lad... opportunity....

      
Thur stroked the paper. The sun would be warm now on the southern slopes of the pass into Montefoglia. In the summer the sun would blaze like a furnace mouth. He licked his lips. "What do you think?" he asked his mother.

      
She took a brave breath. "I think you should go. Before that devilish mountain eats you as it ate your father."

      
"You'd be alone."

      
"Your uncle will look after me. I'd rather have you safe in Montefoglia than up in that vile mine every day. If Uri wanted you for a soldier, it would be different. You know how I hated it when he went for a mercenary. So often the boys come back, if they come back at all, either broken and sick, or turned strange and hard and cruel. But this, now..."

      
Thur turned the letter over. "Does the master mage realize I have no turn for sorcery?"