15

Quell considered all his options and ended up following the dog. It at least seemed to know where it was going. At each junction it would sway its head and sniff sharply through the slots of its nostrils. Then, decided, it would lumber on its way, its ponderous weight borne on four splay-toed feet. Quell didn’t know if the dog was just sniffing out and avoiding the priests and their servants or if the chambers beneath the Black Rock really were so sparsely populated that they could wander unchallenged. Twice he heard shouts and running feet, but laid eyes on no one.

The dog led him onwards and downwards, ignoring his sporadic attempts to talk to it. Quell didn’t expect it to answer him, but the Quinx talked to their sled dogs and he felt he should try.

“Do you have a name?” Quell limped along beside the dog; talking helped keep his mind from the sharp throbbing where the knife had been. “No? Maybe I should give you one then. How about Zox?” He was sure he’d heard one of the Quinx call their lead dog Zox. Though he supposed it could have been some sort of command . . . “Slow down a bit.” He had one hand clamped to his side. It helped a little but not much. “Qwella would have told me not to get up for a day, let alone walk, and instead you had me running!” Quell changed the hand holding his side. The pain got worse. “Though to be fair, if you hadn’t I would currently be an interesting stain on Valak’s walls.”

The one-sided muttered conversation went on as they made slow progress past areas that, judging by the higher density of hanging stars, saw more comings and goings. The dog led them along sloping passages, or laboriously shuffled its way down long stairways. The carved steps were often too small for its feet and from time to time it teetered like an avalanche waiting to happen, before somehow recovering itself and resuming its descent.

Several times they passed vertical shafts as wide as small rooms, each with metal cables hanging down the middle, descending from the darkness above to the darkness below. Quell judged these to be for raising and lowering goods or even people in cages, much as they had been brought up through the ice. The dog, despite seeming always to head downwards, paid scant attention to the shafts.

“Hold up.” It pained Quell as an Ictha to ask for a halt but he needed to rest. He set his back to the wall and slid down.

The dog kept on walking and in a moment of clarity Quell was able to reevaluate the situation. He’d thought the dog was leading him, but it seemed that instead he had simply been following it and it in turn had tolerated being followed. Quell’s backside hit the stone floor and he watched the dog plod heavily on towards the next turn of the tunnel.

“Leave me then!” he shouted after it. “I’ve been stabbed, you know.”

The dog lumbered out of sight.

“They would have looked after me and sent me home!” he shouted at the empty tunnel. “Only you had to go and break everything.”

Quell snapped his jaw shut on further complaint, ashamed of himself. The Ictha did not whine. They endured. He pressed a hand to his wound and stared at the wall before him, dimly lit by the light of a small caged star ten yards off.

A scrape and a thud drew his attention back to the tunnel turning. A blunt metal head edged into view and regarded him dolefully.

“So you are leading me!” Quell allowed himself a smile. The southerners always boasted that their dogs were both loyal and clever. This one at least appeared loyal. It came shuffling back to him. “Good boy.” Quell had decided it was a boy. It lowered its head to his injured side and the shutters across its nostrils flicked open. It drew in a sharp sniff. Then sat heavily.

Sleep took Quell without asking permission, sneaking up on him just as the cold can flank even the most vigilant of men. He dreamed of the endless ice and the eternal wind as he so often did, but Yaz was at his side as they walked into the long night, and the cold had no dominion over him.

“W-what . . . ?” Quell woke to the dog’s urgent nudging. The heavy metal head rolled him over, a shard of hurt reminding him of the absent knife. The tunnel seemed somehow smoky. Rolled onto his back, Quell saw that the smoke was in fact rock dust, sifting down from the ceiling above him. A sharp retort echoed back and forth as a large crack spread from one side of the rocky roof to the other.

Quell rolled back onto his front with an oath and scrambled away. Heartbeats later a chunk of stone hammered down where he had been lying. Then another, then lots more, and suddenly the whole roof fell. Quell continued on all fours as a black cloud of dust overtook him, a rolling, billowing mass that devoured the light. He held his breath and carried on with dogged determination.

The crash and rumble of rock fell to silence, broken only by the rattle of a few loose stones still falling and by the heavy scrape and thud of the iron hound, following close on Quell’s heels. Not too close, Quell hoped, as one of those metal paws could crush a man’s foot. The thought was enough to hasten his crawl. He drew breath as his chest began to demand air, breathing in through gritted teeth and a guarding hand.

Slowly the line of widely separated stars began to come back into view as the dust cloud settled. Quell turned to look back. A pile of broken rock nearly sealed the tunnel. The thinning dust revealed a black figure in front of the rubble mound. A big man, heavily muscled, though no gerant. Without warning the layer of dust coating him fell away, revealing pale flesh, dark hair, a thick black beard—a rarity, though Quell had heard beards were common among the more southern tribes. Two iron bands looped over his shoulders, crossing on his chest where a red star burned at the junction. Another glowed on the band about his head.

“You’ll be the runaway.” The newcomer wore the skins of a clansman and had the neck tattoos of an Axit child, though by his age an Axit should be marked from collarbone to cheek. The star’s red glow lit him from beneath, making something brutal of his features.

The dog made a slow turn to face him.

“You, I expected. What in the hells is that, though?” The man pointed at the dog.

Quell stood, feeling foolish for being on all fours beside the dog. He slapped at his skins but the dust clung and wouldn’t allow him the same escape that it had afforded the other man. “Who are you?”

“Kretar, soldier of the great army. Also the man who is bringing you back to Regulator Kazik. He has some questions for you about the death of a priest.”

“Kretar of the Broken?” Quell asked.

The man frowned and then shook his head as if there might still be dust in his hair. “Once upon a time, yes. But—”

“And of the Axit before that,” said Quell.

The big man nodded and slapped his barrel chest. “Always Axit!”

“So why are you serving the priests like a slave? Why are you so ready to fight another man’s war?”

Kretar frowned, then boomed with laughter. “They didn’t warn me you would fight with words.”

“I’m not fighting. I’m trying to help. The priests have done something to you.” Quell tapped his chest where the man wore a star. “They’ve made you their slave. You should leave this place. Go back to the Axit and tell them what you’ve seen. Shouldn’t your clan know what goes on here?”

Kretar scowled. “You think words can beat me, boy? You think you can mix my thoughts up?” He pounded his chest. “I am a soldier of the grand army!” He took a hide rope from his belt. “Come, give me your wrists.”

Quell took a step back. “How did you find me? How did you do . . . that?” He gestured down the tunnel.

Kretar grinned, showing many white teeth in the black of his beard. “Rock-work. I’m the best there is. Built a good few miles of these tunnels too. But the reason they wake me when there’s someone needing hunting is that I have a knack for it. I can see through walls. I know where everyone in this whole mountain is, friend. There’s no running from Kretar!”

Quell squared his shoulders, wishing his side didn’t ache so. “I guess that leaves fighting then.”

Kretar flicked out his fingers and a small stone shot from the ground to strike Quell just above the eye. Behind him several fist-sized chunks of rock rose, slowly rotating. “The Axit don’t fight for fun. We fight to win.” He advanced with long strides. “So, are you going to give me your wrists?”

Quell retreated several more steps. He wiped at his stinging forehead and his fingers came away bloody. He was tired of these people and their powers that made them unstoppable, like a force of nature. He narrowed his eyes. The Ictha endured nature’s worst and had done so for generations. “Take them.”

One of the floating rocks shot forward. Sailing past Kretar’s ear, aimed at Quell. A chunk large enough to shatter his skull. Quell barely had time to raise his arms. Something dark lunged upwards into the rock’s trajectory. The dog came down heavily on its front legs, fragments of stone falling around it.

“Impressive!” Kretar’s grin widened. He reached a hand towards the iron dog, then both hands, teeth gritted as he exerted himself.

The dog rose from the ground, its legs paddling as it sought the rock.

“Metal, stone, it’s all the same to me.” The words sounded strained. “He is a weight though. Enough to crush you with if you don’t give this up and surrender.” With a snarl of effort he swung the dog towards Quell. As he did so a bright line curled its way across the dog’s flat back. Quell had seen its like before.

Quell retreated further. “Do you know what you’re holding there, Kretar? That’s the most valuable artefact in Priest Valak’s collection, though he never really appreciated the fact. That’s a work of the Missing!”

Kretar’s brows rose but if he was further impressed he didn’t say so. “It’s not much good for fighting. No claws. No teeth.”

Quell shook his head. “I wasn’t fighting you with words, but the Missing will.”

Even as Quell spoke the first letter of Missing script completed itself on the dog’s back and another began to glow on its broad head. Immediately the dog started to sink towards the floor. Kretar strained to stop it, sweat springing up across his brow. With the addition of a completed second letter Kretar’s hold was sufficiently negated for the dog to crash down, landing heavily on all four feet.

Quell took his moment. He had endured, and now he would fight. He threw himself forward and dived at Kretar, taking the big man to the ground. They landed tangled together.

“That,” said Kretar, seizing Quell’s wrists, “was a mistake!” He grinned, showing bloody teeth and in his eyes the ferocity of the Axit.

Quell met the bigger man’s eyes and watched them widen in surprise as he forced first one arm down then the other. “The Ictha are a different breed.” Before Kretar could respond, Quell wrapped him in both arms and squeezed with all his strength until he heard the muffled crack of ribs and spine.

“If you can still throw rocks I would advise that you don’t.” He released the man and rolled away. “If the only way to stop you is to kill you, I will.”

Quell got to his knees, glancing at the iron dog and then at the rubble heap beneath the hole that Kretar had opened in the roof. He returned his attention to the man. “Tell me where Yaz is.”

Kretar only wheezed through blood-flecked lips, his gaze furious.

“They will get Qwella to make you well again. But she can’t heal death. So I ask again. Where is Yaz?”

Kretar managed to spit, but not very far; most of it fell back on his cheek.

Quell shrugged. He had never been very good at threats. And besides, it seemed likely that the man had only recently been woken from whatever sleep the priests kept their captives in while breaking their will. The chances were that he didn’t know who Yaz was, and with multiple fractures of the ribs even if he did know he would have a hard time explaining how to get there. Quell got to his feet. “Come on, dog.” He looked down at Kretar. “You fought well. I hope they find you soon. Tell Qwella I will try to make this right.” And with that he set off back towards the rubble pile, hoping that despite its appearance the dog could climb.