over the bank towards the river. He lost his footing almost immediately
and they went down together, rolling end over end, but thirty feet down
there was a spur of rock the size of a house. As they came up against
the upper side of it, it broke their fall.
They were half-sturined, but Nicholas dragged Royan to her feet and
guided her into the lee of the rock wall.
'Mere was a cut-back here, and they crept into it and crouched flat.
Pressing themselves hard against the wall, they both held their breath
as the first chunk of cliff came bounding and bouncing down towards them
like a gigantic rubber ball, picking up speed with gravity, until it
smashed in to their shelter with a force that made the solid rock
against which they were cringing vibrate and resound like a cathedral
bell, and the hurtling missile leaped high over their heads, spinning
massively in flight before it dropped into the river. It raised a tidal
wave from the surface that broke like storm surf on both banks.
This was merely the forerunner of the maelstrom that now poured over
them. It seemed that half the mountain was falling upon them. As each
slab crashed into their shelter daggers and splinters burst from its
leading edges, filling the air they breathed with fine white dust and
the sulphurous stink of sparking flint. This immense cascade flew over
their heads or piled up in front of their shelter, and loose chips and
pebbles rained down upon them.
Nicholas crawled over the top of Royan, and covered her with his body. A
stone struck the side of his head a lancing blow that made his ears
ring, but he gritted his teeth and fought the impulse to lift his head
and look up.
He felt something warm and ticklish snaking through the short hairs
behind his right ear. It crept down his cheek like a living thing, and
it was only when it reached the corner of his mouth and he tasted the
metallic salt that he realized it was a trickle of blood.
The fine talcum dust powdered them and irritated their throats, so that
they coughed and choked in the uproar.
The dust seeped into their eyes, and they were forced to clench their
lids and keep them tightly shut.
One mass of rock the size of a wagon sprang high in the air and then
fell back close beside where they lay. The impact made the earth jump so
violently that Royan, with Nicholas's weight on top of her, was struck
in the belly and diaphragm with a force that drove the wind from her
lungs, and she thought that her ribs had been crushed.
Then gradually the downpouring of earth and rock began to subside. The
breath-stopping impact of great boulders into their shelter became less
frequent: The fine dust they were breathing began to settle. The
rumbling and roaring let up gradually, until the only sound was the slip
and slide of settling earth and rock and the burble of the river below
them.
Warily, Nicholas at last lifted his head and tried to blink the dust off
his eyelashes. Royan stiffed under him, and he crawled back to let her
sit up. They stared at each other. Their faces were caked into kabuki
masks with the antimony-white dust, and their hair was powdered like the
