“Sir,” said Leon who was one of the chosen ten. He looked extraordinarily young and nervous. “There is a wizard down there. And maybe a demon too.”
“You can trust in my magic,” said Master Severin.
Sardec unsheathed his truesilver blade. “And if that does not work, this will kill anything — wizard, demon or man,” he said.
“Too bad we don’t all have them then,” muttered Weasel so low that only Rik and the Barbarian could hear. Rik checked the elder signs hanging around his neck. He saw others doing the same; not all of them were men who had been chosen to go below.
The light of Sardec’s lantern pierced the gloom. The Lieutenant slouched low, too tall for corridors that had been built for shorter men. His blade glittered eerily in the light. His eyes were feverishly bright.
Look at him, thought Rik. He’s found a chance at glory, and he’s about to grab it with both hands, even if he has to get all of us killed to do it. Vosh was beside Sardec, looking very unhappy.
Master Severin produced a crystal from his pouch and muttered a spell. The runes along its sides flared brilliantly and then settled down to produce a steady even glow. The wizard took the crystal and placed it in a socket on a specially prepared wand. He walked forward softly. There was an aura of great weariness about him which did not reassure Rik at all. If tired men made mistakes, how much worse mistakes could be made by a tired Terrarch wizard?
Weasel was at the front, reluctantly studying the tracks for clues. The Barbarian was beside him, a pistol in one hand, his massive knife in the other. He moved warily, perfectly poised and controlled, and if Rik had not known of his terror of the supernatural and his fear of enclosed spaces, he would never have suspected them. The Barbarian was not too bright, but he was brave as a dragon.
Behind the leaders were Pigeon, and Leon, and then Rik himself, followed by the rest of the squad strung out in a straggling line. Every second man held a lit torch. The others held ready weapons. Behind Rik came Gunther, lanky Boot, Toadface, limping Hopper and Handsome Jan. Rik wished Gunther were not right behind him. The low monotone of the man’s constant prayers was getting on his nerves.
He had to admit that if ever there was a place that warranted prayer, this was it. The props overhead looked as if they had been recently placed by men who had not known a great deal about what they were doing, at least according to Hopper who, like the Sergeant, had been a miner in his time. Rik felt cramped by the low ceilings. He did not like the strange glyphs carved into the walls at odd intervals. They made his eyes hurt when he tried to follow their intricate web-like patterns. There was no surer sign that sorcery was at work.
He grasped his pistol tighter in one hand, and his bayonet in the other. There was no room to swing a rifle down here. Any fighting would be up close and personal. It was odd how hot it was when it was so cold outside. Already his shirt was clammy with sweat, and some of the men had loosened their tunics. He could see beads of sweat on Weasel’s bald pate. The poacher licked his lips, and Rik realised that his mouth must be dry too. There was dust in the air, he thought and something else. He was not sure what.
This would not be an attractive place to die, Rik thought. Not that there were any of those, unless, as the Barbarian claimed, it was in the arms of a Sorajan whore in the great Palace of a Thousand Pleasures in Sorrow, but this was a particularly unprepossessing one.
His thoughts drifted all too easily to demons and the Darkness in the shadowy gloom. Barely controlled fear churned in his stomach; fear of the dark, fear of the weight of the mountains pressing down, fear of demons, and wizards and whatever other unnatural things might lurk down here. Bad as the weather was up top, he suddenly wished he was there or back in the camp, or in the sooty alleys of Sorrow; anywhere but here.
Uran Ultar had numbered many demons among his servants, at least according to all the stories Rik had heard. Perhaps not all of them had been destroyed along with Achenar. He offered up a prayer and hoped that God was listening. It was strange. He had more or less rejected the concept of a good God the orphanage priests had beaten into him except when he was in danger. His old faith usually came back to him then or at least the hope that there was something behind it.
The corridors wound on downwards. At first he thought it was his imagination but then he began to notice that there was a faint glow emerging from the walls. He had thought that it was merely the reflected light of the lantern playing over crystal veins, but then he noticed as he looked back that there was an ever so faint glitter that never quite faded behind them. It was as if a layer of something overlaid the wall.
He looked back at Hopper. The former miner shook his head then rubbed his broken nose. The expression in his deep set eyes showed he had never seen anything like this before and more than a touch of fear. Rik was not reassured. He almost bumped into Leon before he noticed that they had stopped and were staring at another mystical sign carved into the wall. The Lieutenant studied it thoughtfully. Master Severin hunkered down beside it, nodding his head as if he had some clue as to what they were looking at. All Rik knew was that he did not like this one little bit.
“Protective rune of an odd sort,” Severin said.
“Why odd?” Sardec asked.
“Unusual. Not of any school I know. Could be a divinator or a ward but it has no halo.”
“You mean you did not sense it till you saw it?”
“Correct.”
“I think it’s safe to say our dark wizard knows we’re on his trail,” Sardec said. There were a few half- hearted chuckles but the atmosphere of fear only deepened.
They pushed on down.
“I wonder how deep this mine goes, Rik?” asked Leon.
“Perhaps all the way down to Hell,” said Gunther. Rik wished he would shut up. This was not the sort of talk he needed to hear.
“But the Light will shield the righteous,” Gunther added. “Are you righteous?”
“You’ll get my righteous boot up your arse, if you don’t shut up,” said the Barbarian from up front. It was a measure of the Lieutenant’s involvement in his own thoughts that he did not intervene.
The strange scent increased. It smelled vaguely of spices, of cinnamon as well as rotten meat. The Barbarian noted that there were odd scrape marks on the floors and then they entered a large chamber-like cave and stopped short.
“Why would a wizard come here?” Leon asked Rik in a tone that suggested he genuinely expected an answer. His voice echoed somewhat under the high domed ceiling. “Why did he brave the demons?”
“Perhaps you are asking the wrong question,” said Rik. “Perhaps he came here because there are demons.”
It made an awful sort of sense. It was the thing wizards were always supposed to be doing, communing with demons of the Pits in pursuit of forbidden wisdom. It reminded him of some of the things the Old Witch used to say back in Sorrow, about the Ancient Ones having knowledge that men would sell their souls for. Of course there were other things demons would barter for as well as souls. He thought of the missing people. Maybe the wizard they were after was making some sort of deal.
The Foragers all looked at each other uneasily and then at the Lieutenant and the wizard for guidance. Rik could tell they were all thinking of turning tail and running. He did not blame them. He was considering it himself. Fighting demons in this deep, dark and lonely place was not his idea of soldiering. The Lieutenant looked at them and smiled sardonically. He brandished his truesilver blade, making a couple of quick cuts in the air. He looked as if he would chop down the first man to run but he said; “There is no demon this won’t cut.”
“It is the blade of the righteous,” said Gunther, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. Well, there’s one man who won’t run, thought Rik, deciding that he would not run himself. Anywhere the Lieutenant could stay he could stay too.
“I am not afraid to fight demons,” said the Barbarian. His voice sounded a little shaky but he added. “What demon of this miserable wee land can compare to the Aer of my home?”
Suddenly the Lieutenant held up his hand for quiet. Rik did not need to be told why. He could hear it too. From somewhere up ahead came the sound of soft scuttling.
It looked like something had found them.
