lanterns tumbled through the air and went out, save for one whose slanting rays lit up a strip of the unnaturally smooth ground to the right.
‘What happened?’ yelled Orlyk. The heaped Cythonians were all shouting, yelling and trying to untangle themselves.
Tinyhead snapped the bows of the three archers over his knee, swept Tali up in one arm and ran over the piled guards. He stepped with a crunch onto Orlyk’s broad nose, twisted, and bolted onto the smooth expanse.
‘Go back!’ Tali cried. ‘You’ll fall through.’
The surface rocked, quaking under his massive feet like an ice floe on a pond. But it was not ice; she could feel the heat radiating up from underneath. He was running across the baked crust on a pool of scalding mud, and if it broke, as it surely must under Tinyhead’s weight, they would be cooked alive.
CHAPTER 41
‘Ged avter dem!’ howled Orlyk, blood belching from her mashed nose.
Lanterns were righted and their beams directed towards Tinyhead. Tali looked back as a lanky, big-footed fellow stepped onto the crusted mud. White circles ringed his eyes — he was sure he was going to die. But the crust did not crack. Feet that size would spread the load — a smaller load than Tinyhead plus Tali. He moved forwards, gingerly.
‘All ob you!’ screeched Orlyk. ‘Ib dey ged away, ve faze Libbing Blade.’
The rest of the guards moved onto the crust, then Orlyk hurled a black and yellow length at Tinyhead. Tali, helpless in his grip as he fleeted across the quaking surface, watched the death-lash spinning towards them. It could take off a limb in one flaring excruciation.
‘Left!’ she yelled in Tinyhead’s quivering ear.
He sprang two yards to the left, landing with a thump that shook the surface, and one foot broke through three inches of crust into steaming mud. He was heaving his foot out when the whirling death-lash struck the point he had sprang from and went off in yellow and black fire, blasting jagged chunks of crust and gouts of boiling mud everywhere.
Tali shrank into the shelter of Tinyhead’s torso. He was struck on the face and arms by chunks of crust and clots of boiling mud, though he showed no pain. The toadstool must still be numbing him. From the point of the blast the crust fractured like ice, one crack snaking towards Tinyhead, a bigger, broader crack zipping the way they had come.
‘Nod dogedder,’ yelled Orlyk, for the guards were moving in a mass. ‘Zpread out, zpread out!’
A line of cracks was sweeping towards Tinyhead, the crust breaking into angular pieces which would not have supported a child’s weight. He leapt sideways onto solid crust, though as he landed it cracked again.
‘Slide on it,’ said Tali in her Lady vi Torgrist voice. ‘Three inches of crust might take our weight if there’s no impact.’
Tinyhead knew when to obey. He slid his right foot forward one stride, took his weight on it with a creaking that cracked the crust around him but did not break through, then slid the other foot up and past it.
As the broad crack from the death-lash zigged and zagged in the direction of the guards, they scattered in all directions, two scrambling back towards the shore, the others sweeping out to Tinyhead’s right and left, then ahead, moving as fast as they could to cut him off.
They were twenty yards ahead now and coming together to form a line. Tinyhead was hesitating when the woman on the left-hand end of the line screamed, dropped her lantern and flung out her arms. The crust was cracking around her, for she was big and solid, and her small feet concentrated the load.
Had she kept moving she might have made it, but she froze as the overloaded crust cracked on all sides, leaving her on a mud floe only a yard across. It tilted, she threw her weight the other way and the floe split, dumping her into the mire. Steam gushed out as she slid down to chest level, floating in hot quick-mud with the consistency of glue. She struggled furiously but there was no solid ground below her, and nothing to take a grip on.
‘Help me,’ she said shrilly, but the other Cythonians dared not move her way.
Tinyhead slid a yard towards her, then another. Tali could hear each breath rasping into his lungs.
The woman threw out her hands towards him. ‘It’s burning, it’s burning!’
They were only yards away now. Her face was scarlet; she was in such agony that no human being could have passed her by … yet if Tinyhead tried to save her, he would surely fall through.
Tali checked on the other guards. They were moving carefully around the cracked area, closing the gap.
‘You can’t save her,’ Tali said. It was cruel, but nothing could be done.
Taking a firm grip on her, Tinyhead slid forwards another yard and stretched out his free arm. The woman caught his fingers, clinging desperately, and he slowly drew back, straining to lift her from the sucking mud without cracking the surface beneath him. Her chest came free, her waist. The exposed skin was raw, blistered, weeping.
Then she stuck at the hips. She gasped, ‘Pull harder,’ and began to flail about.
‘Don’t move,’ said Tinyhead, swinging her arm gently to try and break the suction.
‘It’s burning. Get me out!’ she howled.
Overcome by panic, she thrashed wildly, lost her grip and slid down into the hot mud again, and the crust cracked to pieces. Nothing could save her now.
Tali watched in helpless horror as Tinyhead carried her away, and she had to cover her ears to block out the screaming. The woman’s thrashing widened the cracks and one zipped towards the line of guards, who backpedalled hastily.
A burly fellow wearing red tasselled boots made a desperate bid for the edge of the pond and almost made it, moving so fleetly that he was off each breaking chunk of crust before it could collapse under him. But, only a few yards from safety, he made the mistake of lunging, trying to reach the edge in a single leap.
It was too much for the fragile crust. His feet broke through, he made a desperate tumbling drive for the edge but fell short and went in head-first. There was no scream, for he had plunged down to the waist. One beating arm broke the surface, his legs kicked furiously for half a minute, then flopped, lifeless, as his overheated brain expired.
Tinyhead, still sliding forwards and barely outrunning the spreading cracks, looked over his shoulder. The trapped woman was still now, her face the colour of a boiled lobster. Three more guards had also gone in and their desperate efforts to escape only sank them deeper. The heat would kill them in minutes, and then they would slowly cook.
‘Master,’ whispered Tinyhead, shaking his head from side to side as he slid on. What must it have cost him to put his master’s needs ahead of the lives of his own people? ‘Master, I will never fail you … but the price … the price is very high.’
Tali thought so too. Five more guards dead because she had dared to escape where no one else ever had. Where would it end? Her toes curled at the thought of such a death.
Orlyk, whose face and chest were drenched in blood, tossed another two death-lashes high and hard, trying to break through the crust and plunge Tinyhead in. One landed short, the other went over his head, but Tinyhead was adept at this game now. He found a smooth path to the left and soon they were out of range.
His foot struck a rough patch that was no longer crust, he stepped up onto indurated ground and all was solid underneath him. They were safe. By the time Orlyk’s remaining troops reached this point, he would have disappeared into the maze of the Seethings.
So the night proceeded, one step, then another and another. Tinyhead must have been exhausted but his grip on her never relaxed. Their passage through the Seethings was punctuated by his tormented cries to his
