Aleas did so, no easy manoeuvre with them both perched precariously on the ladder. He watched his master pass the crowbar on up to Ash, who was blocked from further progress by something solid spanning the shaft. Before long, chips of wood cascaded from above.
Aleas caught a fragment in his eye, and cursed as he blinked to clear it. For a moment his legs dangled freely.
'Aleas!' hissed his master in remonstration.
An entire plank of wood tumbled past then, bouncing off the side of the shaft as it disappeared beneath his feet. Two more followed, and then Ash was clambering up through the hole he had made, with Baracha following soon behind. Aleas, half blinded, pulled himself wearily up the final stretch. He grasped the edge of a jagged hole which had been hacked through the floor of a climbing box. Next moment, Baracha clutched him by the harness and heaved him right through, so that he hung there in his grasp, facing the big man, before his feet were set on the floor. He rubbed his afflicted eye, though that only served to make it worse. He could feel grime in his nostrils, sweat pouring from his skin.
The carriage was sealed with iron doors, a curved handle on either side obviously intended to slide them apart. Through them they could hear the muffled sound of bells ringing, and a voice barking orders.
Again, the crowbar failed to prise the doors open.
'Stuck fast,' gasped Baracha, while Ash studied a metal lever sprouting from one side of the cubicle. He pushed it up: the climbing box shuddered and rose by a centimetre. It clunked to a stop, then dropped back to its original position.
'We are not at the very top yet. This climbing box goes further.'
'So why doesn't it move?'
Ash stroked at a brass plate fixed immediately beneath the lever. All three peered closer, and saw that embedded in the plate were four brass tumblers, each stamped with a series of digits. Ash tried them with his thumb. They rotated, like tiny wheels on an axle, revealing different numbers as they moved.
'I've heard of this,' piped up Aleas. 'It's a number lock. You need to set the correct number on all four tumblers.'
Ash, thumbing through them, gave up with a wave of his hand. 'It would take a miracle to chance upon the correct sequence. I fear we are stuck.'
Even as he said this, the doors slid apart.
A dozen startled Acolytes stood blinking at the Rshun, who blinked back at them just as surprised.
Baracha, growling, grabbed the Acolyte closest to him and yanked him into the carriage. It broke the spell.
Ash and Aleas each grabbed a handle and began to close the doors, while the other Acolytes struggled to push their way through the narrowing gap. Fists crashed against Aleas' head, clawing hands grabbed for his hair.
Aleas strained against the handle while fending off an Acolyte; with blows impacting against his head, he saw glimpses of bared teeth, eyes widened in anger, a backdrop of bobbing heads and blades manoeuvring for an opportunity to strike. The doors were almost closed now. They were blocked by the shoulders and legs of a single Acolyte, who snorted through his nostrils at the effort of it, but still would not pull back.
'Arm yourself,' ordered Ash, as he wove his head back and forth from a lashing fist. The old man drew his blade at last as he jerked his head back from the point of a sword, and hacked down with his own. Blood shot into the climbing box, unreal, ghastly, bright.
Aleas struggled to draw his own steel. The sight in his left eye was bad – there was a splinter there for sure, which he could feel every time he blinked. He freed his blade and jabbed without aim.
Behind, he heard Baracha shouting at his captive. 'The number!' he was demanding.
'Push,' Ash encouraged the young apprentice, leaning into the effort. The door closed by another fraction.
More hands gripped at the closing edges. The Acolyte in the gap was either unconscious or dead, and those behind were using him now as both shield and leverage. Ash was meanwhile making a fine mess with the point of his blade. Blood jetted and pooled on the floor; Aleas slipped on it, fumbled to stay fixed to the door handle, dropped his sword in the process from his greasy hand. A burning pain slashed along one cheek, and he dodged his head aside, feeling wetness there. He tightened his grip against the door handle. and instinctively batted aside a blade he did not even see.
'Master!' he hollered, turning his head to the Alhazii.
Baracha had a hold of the man he was interrogating and was panting deeply only a millimetre from his face. The man was no Acolyte at all, but a priest of elderly years, with a bald pate and white hairs sprouting from his flaring nostrils.
'You'll get nothing, I tell you, nothing at all out of me.'
'No?' replied Baracha, as he hiked up the priest's robe and worked his hand beneath it.
Across from Aleas, Ash tumbled away from the door.
Aleas yelled as his hand lashed out to grab the suddenly vacated handle. The doors slipped wider again, allowing more shoulders and arms to gain leverage. Aleas roared for new strength, fought to keep the gap from widening any further. This is it, he thought, expecting a knife in his ribs at any instant. We never stood a chance.
The priest bumped against his back in his struggle with Baracha. 'Stop that,' the old man was shouting in a clipped accent.
'Master!' Aleas tried again. A face cursed at him, thrust so close he could smell the garlic on its breath. Above it, a length of wood was being forced between the doors, then someone else began to lever them open.
Baracha ignored him. 'The number, or I rip them right off of you.'
Ash was down; he was conscious, but moving as though drunk.
'Stop it!' shrilled the priest in a voice that verged on hysteria. Then he screamed with all his might.
'The number!' Baracha raged.
'Four-nine-four-one! Four-nine-four-one!' The priest's awful squeal filled the small space, and then it ceased abruptly. Aleas felt him slide down against his legs.
Baracha tossed something ragged and bloody to the floor. Bile rose in Aleas's throat. He didn't have time to linger on it, though, for a knife was snaking about his stomach, trying to find a way through all the gear slung about him.
Baracha leaned over Ash and thumbed the number lock on the door.
'Hurry,' Aleas growled.
'It doesn't work. The fool lied to me.'
'The lever! Push the bloody lever!'
With a shudder, the climbing box began to rise. Shouts of pain accompanied the sudden withdrawal of limbs from the doors, which did not move along with the carriage but fell away as they rose.
Aleas sagged back against one of the walls. He was sheeting sweat. Three gulps of air and then he pushed himself off the wall, and knelt down beside Ash.
'What's wrong with him?' Baracha asked.
Aleas saw the knife dangling from the old man's thigh, and inspected the gash. 'It's only a flesh wound,' he announced. Carefully, he drew the blade free. Ash gasped.
Baracha sniffed at the blade.
'Poison,' he said. 'Hurry boy, an antidote.'
Aleas gathered his wits. This was no time to fall apart.
He grabbed the medico hanging over his hip. 'Which one?'
'All of them.'
Aleas lifted all four vials of antidote and poured a few drops from each one between Ash's lips.
The climbing box clattered to a stop. Baracha jumped over to the new set of doors, grasped the handles to keep them closed. No one attempted to open them, though.
Aleas rubbed at his inflamed eye. He lifted the flask of water he carried and tilted his head back to wash it clear. He blinked, and repeated the treatment. It seemed to work. He then took a long drink.
'Rush oil,' Ash rasped from the floor.
Aleas knelt. He took a small clay pot from the medico, peeled off its paper stopper, dabbed some of the waxy cream on his finger, and smeared it on to Ash's lips.
