Something moved in the pile of rusted tools. Along with the blades of shovels and the heads of pickaxes, there was any number of other objects that had been ruined by the mountain’s decay. There were also bits and pieces of scrap that had been thrown there as the pile grew and became a garbage dump. Now the heap was even bigger because all the debris from the fire had been dumped here too. In amongst all this junk, something moved. It was a length of baling wire. It wriggled slowly like a worm through the red-brown building site of its world, every movement strained, as if the rigid wire were resisting its own motion.
The piece of wire nosed up against the blade of a trowel and painstakingly wrapped itself around the haft. Once it was satisfied with its grip, it crawled on, dragging the trowel with it. It crossed the path of another wriggling piece of wire, carrying a rusty bolt. They both continued on their courses. At one point, the trowel clanged against the burnt frame of a mine cart. The wire froze. Gradually, it slithered on, collecting more items – tools, nuts and bolts, hinges, brackets – criss-crossing over other snaking wires intent on their own searches.
* * * *
The remaining miners’ hut was the only habitable building left in the mining camp, so it had become the home for the officers. The miners and their possessions had been distributed between soldiers’ tents, the stores sheds, the workshops and the backs of two of the trucks. They had learned long ago not to complain about being second-class citizens – most of them were Sestinian, and it came with the territory.
Paternasse woke up on the hard, lumpy floor of a tent and stretched, rubbing his hands through his shock of grey hair. He groaned as his old body accused him of betrayal, weighing him down with all the aches and stiffness it could muster. He rolled over, looking blearily at the crack of light at the edge of the tent flap, seeing the familiar yellow-grey glow of dawn. His bunch always got to work at dawn, but with all the faffing about with the soldiers and that twisted priest of theirs, he knew they’d be making a late start. Besides, he had no heart for it today, so he stayed under the blankets, shifting his rolled-up coat to a more comfortable position under his head.
Halerus Jube, a miner who led one of the other teams, was sleeping next to him. He stirred, opened his crusty eyes and yawned through his beard.
‘I can’t be havin’ with this sleepin’ on the floor nonsense,’ his voice slurred.
‘Tem dah ta ah gug lawg’s and massas,’ Paternasse grunted back.
‘Put your damned teeth in, Jussek, I can’t understand a blessed word you’re sayin’.’
Paternasse reached over to a tin cup of water near his head, took a sip, swilling the water around his mouth to moisten his gums, then stuck his fingers in the cup and took out the false teeth, carved from bexemot bone. He put them in his mouth and worried them into place. His round, worn face had a terrible sunken look without them.
‘I said, “tell that to our good lords and masters”, dolt.’
‘Can’t be havin’ with them, neither.’
‘Oh, you’re a mornin’ person and no doubt.’
They both lay beneath their blankets, uncomfortable on the hard floor, but reluctant to face the chill morning. A footsoldier lay on the far side of Jube, snoring unevenly.
‘Can’t take much more of that snorin’,’ Paternasse groaned. ‘Might go and clear my bowels.’
‘There was absolutely no need to tell me that.’
* * * *
Nayalla and Mirkrin had spent the night searching around the camp, using all their stealth to avoid being spotted by the soldiers inside the compound or the wandering skacks outside. In the early hours of the morning, they found where Lorkrin and Taya had sneaked in a few days earlier, the children’s footprints still visible near a hole dug under the fence. The tracks were definitely old, but the two parents could not take the chance that the children had not found their way into the compound again. They decided to search inside. Once in, they lost the trail, but kept looking anyway.
In the first light of sunrise, they found tracks again outside the entrance to the middle tunnel, the one where the exorcism had been performed. Again, the tracks were old, but there were dozens of sets of footprints going in and out of the tunnel and finding a single trail would have been next to impossible.
‘It’s getting too light,’ Mirkrin said softly. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘Just a quick look,’ Nayalla urged him. ‘Just to the end of the tunnel. It won’t take long.’
‘We can’t even use a light,’ Mirkrin argued. ‘They’re not here.’
‘If you were them – out on your own – where would you be after what’s happened?’
Mirkrin shoulders heaved in surrender. She was right. They’d want to see how Absaleth had been conquered.
* * * *
Paternasse’s team gathered in front of the mouth of the mine, gazing up at the mountain and then down into the black depths of the tunnel. The hole did not have the same menace that it had exuded the day before. Something had changed, but it was not for the good. Today, the hole had the air of a grave about it.
They marched down the tunnel, Paternasse running his fingers along the stone, brushing over the timbers that shored up the walls and ceiling. It felt wrong, this ground. It felt dead. They’ve driven the soul from it, he thought to himself.
The air in the tunnel was chilly and damp, and water dripped down the walls. The further in they went, the colder it got. Their headlamps and lanterns shone on the gleaming, dull, grey stone, but did little to lift the gloom about the place. Above the sound of their footsteps and the cart’s wheels on the rails, Noogan started whistling.
Paternasse hawked and spat out some of his lung’s store of dust, lifting his hand to the wall again. The place gave him the shivers now. His hand brushed across a warm, dry section of stone. He stopped, looked at where his fingers were touching the wall and up into a pair of eyes. He slammed his elbow into the rock at chest height and a figure grunted and leaned out from the wall.
‘Myunans!’ he bellowed, grabbing hold of the shape-shifter.
Mirkrin got one hand free and landed a blow across the older man’s face, knocking his helmet off, but the miner held on. Nayalla got an arm around Paternasse’s neck and pulled him backwards, all three of them toppling over. The other miners were around them now, some laying in with kicks and punches on the Myunans, the rest just hurling abuse.
Nobody noticed the first tremor.
The second one was bigger and dust fell from the roof of the tunnel. The miners froze. Paternasse pushed Mirkrin away. A third shudder ran through the ground and suddenly every miner was pushing past the fight and running up the tunnel. Mirkrin grabbed Nayalla’s hand and they took off after them. The Myunans were light on their feet, faster than the Sestinians and had overtaken half the pack when there was a bone-shaking crack and the wooden supports ahead of them gave way. The roof collapsed in a cloud of stone shards and dust. One of the miners was caught under the falling rock, his scream cut off almost instantly.
‘Back!’ Paternasse yelled. ‘Get back down the tunnel!’
They all turned and started running, coughing and gagging in the dust-filled air. Another section of roof came crashing down behind them and two more men were swallowed beneath it. The noise was horrendous. Mirkrin pushed Nayalla ahead of him, his eyes darting up to the wooden beams above him, trying to gauge their strength in the bouncing, jerky light of the remaining miners’ headlamps. He heard wood splitting, the air pressure changed and with a desperate cry, he shoved his wife forward as the roof crashed down around him. He was trapped; in a final effort, he slunched and shut his mind to the pain as his world crushed in on him.
* * * *
The men started digging as soon as they were sure the tremors had stopped. They waved Nayalla back, telling her this was best left to them. She was sobbing, distraught at the sight of the mound of rubble that had buried her husband. Another of the miners had been caught too, leaving three to dig desperately, in the slim hope that some of their friends might still be alive. They had pulled neckerchiefs over their noses and mouths to protect against the dust and Nayalla pulled a cloth from her pack and did the same. The air was thick with it, making the thin light from the two headlamps and the single lantern seem even weaker still.
Paternasse and Noogan hoisted a slab of stone aside, and then Paternasse called through a small gap between two more chunks of rock.
‘Shout if you can hear us! Can anybody hear us?’
There was no reply. Nayalla slumped to the ground in despair.
‘Can anybody hear us?’ Paternasse yelled again, his voice cracking. ‘It’s Jussek! Shout out if you can hear this!’
He stopped and put his ear to the gap to listen.
‘I can hear something,’ he told them. ‘I can hear breathing. Help me move this.’
Noogan got on the other side of the piece of stone that Paternasse was gripping and they hauled it aside. Sticking out from under the slab behind it were four fingertips. Nayalla gasped.
‘Mirkrin!’
‘He can’t be alive under that,’ Paternasse stared aghast at the massive boulder that lay on top of the Myunan.
‘I can hear him breathing, Jussek,’ Noogan said.
‘We need something to lever it up,’ Dalegin, the third man, spoke up. ‘He’s not going to be breathing much longer with that sittin’ on top of ’im.’
* * * *
Mirkrin was barely conscious. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. He tried moving, but he couldn’t do that either. He could breathe in thin, tight gasps of air, but it was as if something was holding his lungs closed. The memory of what had happened came slowly back to him. He had been caught under a cave-in. The reason he wasn’t dead was because he was Myunan. His body had been squashed by the rocks, but he could not be broken or crushed nearly as easily as a human could. There had been enough space under and between the lumps of debris that fell on him to let his malleable body make space for his brain and his lungs and the other, more vulnerable bits of him that could not be flattened out quite so much as the rest of his body.
Along with the memory came the pain. Every inch of him was under unbearable pressure. He felt it most in his head and his chest – the terrifying, helpless feeling of being trapped, knowing most of his body had been reduced to a thin skin, the hard edges of the rocks piercing right through in places. He tried to scream the pain away, but he could barely breathe. Myunans could go some time without air, but he was buried beneath a mountain of rock. Nayalla was probably nearby, suffering the same fate. Nobody was coming to get them out. He tried to scream again; his thoughts faded away from him and he surrendered to unconsciousness.
* * * *
They used the split end of a broken support timber to prise the slab a hand’s width off the ground, and then wedged it with other rocks. Sliding the shore further under, all three men got their shoulders under the other end of their lever and roared as they heaved it upwards. Nayalla crawled in under the precariously raised boulder and carefully peeled her husband from the ground, quickly checking to see if any part of him had been torn away, relieved to find that it hadn’t. She dragged him out and clear of the three miners. The strain showing on their faces, they eased the boulder to the ground again.
Then they stood back in shock at the sight of Mirkrin’s body. Apart from the odd lump here and there, he was flattened beyond recognition. There were bloody holes in some places where his flesh had been pierced under the irresistible pressure of the rocks and when he was laid flat, he covered the floor of the tunnel from one side to the other.
‘We were too late,’ Noogan shook his head and sat down shakily.
Nayalla stroked the mat of hair that had been her husband’s head.
‘Mirkrin? Can you hear me, my love? You’re free, I know you’re alive – please Mirkrin, tell me you can hear me.’
There came a ragged gasp of air and the fingers of his right hand twitched. The miners stared in amazement as the crushed Myunan started to contract, hauling the overstretched muscles of his body into their normal form. Mirkrin’s head and chest expanded first. He drew in a gasp of air and screamed. His body continued to regain its shape, but it was going to take time. He was injured and in pain, his elasticity damaged by the pressure of the rock. Nayalla stayed kneeling by his side, murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.
The miners stepped around him and got to work again, pulling aside the moveable stones and digging dust and debris out with their picks and shovels. But they soon hit more of the larger boulders and had to give up. They were going to have to wait for the rescue teams to dig through from the other side with heavy lifting gear. Noogan and Dalegin sat down to watch Mirkrin’s recovery, and grieve for the friends they had lost. Paternasse picked up the lantern and took stock of the situation.
They had enough oil to last them into the night, and methylated spirit for the lamps on their helmets. Walking down the tunnel to check their supplies, his heart sank as he found another pile of rubble down near the end. The cart lay somewhere underneath. He sat down and pulled the neckerchief from his mouth, rubbing the dust off his face and wiping his running nose. He hawked and spat a knot of phlegm from his throat. Then he pressed a finger against one side of his nose and snorted a lump of snot from one nostril, and then changed sides to clear the other. Their first problem was air. If the top end of the tunnel was completely closed off, they would be dead in two or three days. If they had enough air, then their next problem was water. The cave-in had filled at least forty paces of tunnel, probably more. That could be a few days’ digging for the rescue teams, more if there were a lot of those big slabs to move and he knew that those lads would be working flat out. But he and the others would be suffering the first real effects of thirst long before they were freed.
But these were not his biggest worries. Paternasse had been buried three times in his life, and had been on the other side of cave-ins more times than he wanted to count. His biggest worry was the tremors. Because tremors never travelled alone; they always brought company. There could be more and that meant that they could still get buried and that the rescue teams would be in danger too. The shakes bothered him for another reason. Earthquakes happened in certain areas. Places just didn’t start getting them all of a sudden, and this land had no history of them. What did that mean? He shook his head, it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that another one could bring the mountain down on them.
Cave-ins too, created their own instability. If a section of rock fell downwards, it changed the structure of the ground above it and around it – one cave-in could cause more. This mine had turned into a death-trap. Cotch-Baumen would be considering all this, and the loss of potential time and profits. And Paternasse could not escape the conclusion that if he were in the Provinchus’s place, he would write this tunnel off, and them with it.
He spat again, getting to his feet and stretching his aching back. They would have to salvage what they could from the cart, dig out anything useful that might have survived. He stood motionless for a moment. There was the faintest hint of a different smell in the air. Picking up the lantern, he held it up towards the pile of rubble at the end of the tunnel. He climbed up and found a small gap between the top of the debris and the ceiling, just large enough to squeeze through.
Pushing the light in first, he scraped his head and shoulders through and discovered a crawlspace over the top of the pile. The scent was a little stronger here. He shuffled along it and saw that the wall at the end of the tunnel had split. There was a crack running down from the roof and there was empty space on the other side. It was too narrow to get the lantern through, but the light told him enough. There was a cave through there, and there was a faint smell of cool, stale air coming in from that cave. They might have another way out.
Noogan’s voice carried down to him, calling him and he wriggled backwards out into the tunnel again.
‘It’s the lads!’ Noogan said to him as he walked up towards them. ‘Jube and the other lads are diggin’ in from the other side, I can hear ’em. We’re going to be all right!’
‘Jussek!’ a faint voice called. ‘You there?’
‘Aye!’ Paternasse shouted back through a crack in the rubble. ‘You’ve a beautiful voice, Jube, never appreciated it before!’
‘Well hold on in there, old man. You’ll see I’ve got a face to match!’
‘I’m desperate, lad, not blind!’ Paternasse roared back joyously.
‘Who’s alive in there?’
‘Me and Noogan and Dalegin. And two Myunans too!’
‘Myunans?’ the distant voice called back. ‘What are they doin’ in there?’
Paternasse frowned and looked back at the shape-shifters. The question hadn’t even occurred to him.
‘We were looking for our children,’ Nayalla supplied, quietly.
‘Lookin’ for their young ’uns!’ Paternasse called out. ‘Get their people down here. They might be of some use an’ all. Listen, Jube, I found a cave at the end of the tunnel. There might be another way in!’
‘We’ll have a look. Hang in there, you old fart. We’ll get you out of there!’
In the quiet that followed, they heard the distant bite of steel against stone, and if they had ever heard a more wonderful sound, none of them could recall it.
* * * *
Emos led the small group across a verdant meadow, Taya and Lorkrin listening to Draegar as he told them one of his dramatic stories with typical modesty.
‘… so I took on the four of them single-handed, armed with nothing but a monoclid’s jawbone and my wits! Those jankbats were fierce, with razor-sharp wings twice the width of my outspread arms, their tongues lined with teeth and their tentacles bristling with claws, and me trapped on the side of an erupting volcano! It was a close thing, but …’
Draegar halted in mid-sentence. The rumble from the direction of the mining camp made them all look up. They could not see it from where they stood, but there was no mistaking the source of the sound.
‘What now?’ Emos muttered.
After waiting for a while to see if there would be any more developments, they continued walking and Draegar took up where he left off.
‘Those jankbats almost had me, but I managed to smack one of them over the side of the head with the jawbone and it crashed to the ground. I cut it a bit with its own claws, rubbing its blood over me, and then I hauled it onto my back and walked around holding its wings out and flapping them. That confused the other jankbats. It was as if I had disappeared. Their eyesight is poor, and the blood was telling their sense of smell that I was one of them. They flew off, thinking their prey had escaped and was further down the side of the volcano …’
‘Someone’s coming,’ Emos interrupted.
Draegar paused impatiently. They were walking downhill towards a road. They were in plain view and Emos considered moving into cover, but the vehicle growling along the road was a mining truck, with only two men in the cab. They seemed to be in a rush.
‘Let’s see what’s going on,’ Lorkrin suggested.
Against his better judgement, Emos nodded. He was curious too.
They hailed the truck, half expecting the miners to ignore them, because of their Myunan markings. But the vehicle skidded to a halt.
‘What’s happened at the mine?’ Emos asked. ‘Sounded like a cave-in.’
‘Aye,’ one of the men said. ‘A bad one. We’re making for Ungreth. They’ve got guides there who know the land. We can still talk to the fellows trapped down the mine. They say they found a cave, might be another way into the mine. What about you? Do you know of any entrances to caves on Absaleth?’
Emos knew the area as well as anybody. He looked at Draegar. The Parsinor shrugged. The miners had dug their own hole. Let them lie in it. The guides in Ungreth might help, but there was no way the Noranians would allow a Myunan to get involved.
‘There are no cave mouths on Absaleth,’ he told them. ‘But there is a system of caves that stretches in from the other side of the mountain range, on Reisenick territory. There’s a chance they might reach in as far as the mountain. It’s a two-to three-day journey to the entrance, but there are people in Ungreth who can help you find it. It’s blocked off. You’ll need to move a massive stone to get in.’
‘You know the way?’ the driver asked. ‘Will you show us?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Emos waved him on.
‘Shouldn’t you help them?’ Taya asked quietly. Lorkrin nodded in agreement.
‘Look, there’s two of your kind trapped down there as well,’ the driver pleaded.
‘A likely story,’ Draegar snorted.
‘There is! A couple – names’re Murkin and Nalla or somethin’ like that. They were lookin’ for their young ’uns down there. Said they were missing.’
Emos stared at him, Lorkrin and Taya’s faces dropped. A sudden sense of dread came over them, and they looked up at Emos in desperation. His face did not give them much hope.
‘Make room up on that contraption,’ Draegar barked at the men. ‘And get it turned around. We’re wasting time standing here!’
* * * *
Forward-Batterer Cullum was stout, some would even say big-boned. No one would actually say he was fat unless he was out of earshot, as Cullum was also a prize-fighter of some renown. His success in this particular field came largely from the false sense of security his protruding belly offered his opponents, shortly before his quick, hard, meaty fists pummelled them into unconsciousness.
His language skills were somewhat less developed. So when a pair of Gabbit women approached the gate of the compound with a donkey pulling a cart full of rubbish and shouted some gibberish up at him, he instinctively looked around for someone else to do the talking. The other two soldiers on watch at the gate were equally bewildered and just shrugged at him.
‘Gutt ye eny uld lumps fur dumpin’, hardhide?’ the taller of the women called up again.
Cullum stood staring down helplessly at the pair. Known as dog-people by those who avoided or ignored them, Gabbits were itinerants. Moving from place to place in small communities, they salvaged the rubbish of towns and cities and made use of it for their own purposes. The two women had mottled pink and yellow skin, and were shorter and thinner than the average human. They had tiny heads, half the size of a normal skull. Their clothes were patchwork affairs, held together with buttons for easy rearrangement. They had their own singsong language that few could understand.
‘Does anybody here speak dog-tongue?!’ Cullum roared at a group of miners in the yard.
Halerus Jube came up the steps into the watchtower. He peered down at the two women, who were standing hands on hips, waiting for a sign of comprehension.
‘They’re here for the scrap,’ Jube told the soldiers. ‘They’re Gabbits, lads – what did you think they wanted?’
He leaned over the rail.
‘Goofurnuffin’ stuff seek ye?’
‘Aye,’ the taller woman replied. ‘Takin out for makin’ back to mother. Hardhide here typically nearside of thickendom, not hawkin’ the talk.’
Jube laughed and waved them in.
‘What was she saying?’ Cullum asked suspiciously.
‘Just sayin’ she wanted to take the junk away and make use of it – and she complimented you on your gentlemanly manner.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
The two women had been to the camp before, so they made their way straight over to the pile of scrap with their donkey and cart. Despite the rusted junk, there were plenty of rich pickings for an inventive Gabbit; but when the two women tried to pull the choice bits out, they found the heap of metal waste was impossibly tangled with baling wire.
‘Unweavin’ be work for busy-handed scamps,’ the tall one said impatiently. ‘Pack back to the village this all, and set the pets on it.’
The short one nodded; better to bring the whole lot with them back to the village and let the children untangle it, leaving their mothers to more important work. With some struggle, they dragged the mess of rusted and discarded scrap up onto the back of the cart. It did not seem to want to go, but eventually they managed it. Then they sifted through the rest of the heap and took some other bits and pieces of clothes, wood and glass and anything else they could use. With the cart full, they led the donkey back to the gate – ignoring the dark looks from the fat guard – and left the compound, taking the road west towards the hills where their tribe had set up their village.