Under Fragile Stone (33 page)

‘I’m deeply sorry, Aunt Eldrith,’ Ludditch muttered in trembling voice. Then, to his men: ‘Boys, this hasn’t worked out. If we’re going to triumph today, we’re goin’ to have to pay a terrible price. That Orgarth’s still in there and we have to get him out o’ there before he finds his way home. Now, if we’re goin’ to serve ’im up for the priest here, we’re goin’ to have to catch him right quick. Are yuh with me, boys?!’

There was a chorus of raucous yells.

‘Then let’s get in there an’ take some hides!’

In a massive rush, the Reisenicks charged the entrance of the cave. Behind them, they left their aged and crippled relatives, still cowering in the backs of the trucks.

20
A V
EIN OF
I
RON
O
RE

The Myunans dug with feverish haste, pulling at the stone debris until their fingers were bruised and bleeding. Rug had led them up the steadily shrinking passage, only to find it blocked by a cave-in. Their family and the miners were trapped beneath it. Even as he had said it, another earth tremor had run through the rock and he had fallen to the ground, huddled up in agony.

Taya and Lorkrin were close to tears as they dug. To have come all this way and survived so much, only to find their parents buried like this was more than they could bear.

‘Can’t…can’t you do something?’ Taya looked at Rug, her voice broken by sobs.

Rug did not answer. He rolled onto his side and groaned.

‘It’s limestone,’ Emos told her as he hauled a large rock aside. ‘He can’t affect limestone. Come on, keep going. They could still be alive.’

They found a space at the top of the pile and made it bigger. Taya crawled up into it and slunched, squeezing in.

‘Ma? Pa?’ she cried. ‘Can you hear me?’

There was no reply. She dragged herself further in.

‘Ma! Pa!’

From ahead of her came a muffled reply. Rocks were pulled away and a hand reached out of the darkness. It was her father’s. 

‘We’re here, love,’ a distant voice said. ‘We’re all right.’

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 insides 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.