ingrained with dirt. His fingernails were mostly black from impacts during battle. His huge hands wore the hardy skin of sixty years of toil.
'Of course you are!' said Saark brightly. He grinned, and slapped Kell on the back. 'But don't worry, old horse! I won't hold it against you! As you say, I've worked with worse tools.'
Kell lifted Nienna onto the bobbing wooden raft, and then held out his hand for Myriam, who stepped lightly aboard. The raft bobbed. It looked far from safe. Kell glanced at Saark's beaming face, then stepped on himself. It took his weight, and he placed a hand on the low, makeshift tiller he'd fashioned from the lid of an old cherrywood chest. The raft began to drift from the shore.
'Hey, what about me?' snapped Saark, suddenly. His eyes went wide.
'Better jump for it, laddie.'
'Hey, wait, I thought, I mean…'
'Didn't think you'd want to touch my dirty peasant's paws,' grinned Kell. The gap was two feet distant now, and the current started to turn the raft. 'Better be quick, when the current gets us you'll never make it.'
Saark took a step back, and with an inelegant squawk, leapt for the raft. He hit the edge, and scrabbled for a moment, one leg sinking into the ice-chilled waters to the thigh. Then Myriam grabbed him, and hauled him onto the rough-lashed planks where he lay, gazing up, panting.
'You would have left me,' he said.
'Don't be silly,' smiled Kell.
'You would. I know you would.'
'Well, maybe one day you'll learn your lesson,' said Kell.
Saark pushed himself up. 'And what lesson's that?'
'You never bite the hand that feeds.'
The current caught the raft, and with a rapid acceleration they were slammed along the cavern and disappeared rapidly into a narrow, blackened tunnel. To Saark, it felt as though they were being sucked down into the Chaos Halls themselves…
Cold air hit them. They were plunged into total darkness. The raft moved forward swiftly, rocking occasionally, and Saark found himself sitting very, very still. Fear of water was not something that had ever really occurred to him; he had only ever really been on the Royal Barge on Lake Katashinka, and even then he'd always been drunk. Now, however, a cold sobriety had him in its fist and every little rock, or shift, every turn and dip and rise made his stomach flip over, and injected him with a sudden nausea and need to be sick. A white pallor invaded his face, but because of the gloom nobody realised his fear.
They seemed to slow for a while, travelling down narrow tunnels, and then emerged into a huge cavern. Fluorescent lodes glinted in the walls, lighting their way, and ice gleamed on rocks and stalagmites.
They plunged into darkness again.
'Does anybody feel sick?' said Saark in a small voice.
'You big girl,' snapped Kell. He was concentrating hard, attempting to feel the flow of the river, to anticipate – in the Stygian black – whether they were being pulled toward the rows of harsh, jagged rocks, like gnashing teeth, which lined the way.
'No, no, really, I feel incredibly queasy.'
'It'll be your wound,' said Myriam, not unkindly. She crossed to Saark, and took his hands. 'Here. Let me soothe you.'
'Yeah, I bet you will,' said Nienna, voice small.
'No, honestly, I feel really…' Saark scrambled to the edge of the raft, and threw up noisily over the side. He vomited for a while, and there was an embarrassed silence, and finally Saark sat up.
'How you feeling?' growled Kell.
'That was your fault.'
' My fault? How, in the name of Bhu Vanesh's bollocks, did you come to that conclusion?'
'It's your boat control, isn't it? You're all over the place, man!' He turned to Nienna and Myriam, little more than ethereal white blobs in the dark. 'I'm sorry, ladies, to lose my equilibrium in such a way. I'm sure you must feel queasy as well.'
'Not I,' said Myriam.
'Nor I,' said Nienna, eyes flashing daggers. 'Maybe you've been sucking on something you shouldn't?' She flashed a glance to Myriam, but it was lost in the gloom, in the surge and sway of the raft.
'Something's coming,' said Kell.
'What do you mean, 'something's coming'? What can possibly 'be coming' out here?' But even as Saark was spouting his vomit-stinking words, they hit a sudden dip and the raft fell several feet, splashing with a slap onto a swirl of churning water; Kell fought with the makeshift tiller, which gave a crack and came off in his hands. He stared at Myriam.
'That's not good,' she said.
'You idiot!' screamed Saark. 'You're supposed to be steering the damn thing! Now you've broken it! You bloody idiot! What the hell are you doing?'
'I'm not doing anything,' snapped Kell. 'This whole game is out of my damn control. But I'll tell you what I will do if you keep blaming me for freaks of nature, you freak of nature, I'll be steering your big fat stupid face into the current of my fucking fist.'
'No need to be like that,' said Saark primly – as they hit another sudden dip, and the raft tipped madly and Saark rolled towards the edge, squawking like an infant. 'Wah!' he screamed, and Myriam launched after him, grabbing hold and dragging him back without ceremony.
'Get hold of something!' she hissed, and retracted her claws. Then the pain hit Saark, as he realised her vachine claws had saved him by hooking into his thigh muscle.
He screamed again. 'You punctured me! You grabbed my bloody muscle! Are you addled on Fisher's Weed? Devoid of your better judgement? Are you insane? Look, I'm bleeding, I've got blood all over my pants, there's blood everywhere, on my pants, and everything!'
'There'll be more soon,' muttered Kell. But they hit another drop, and as water washed over them and they clung to the raft for dear life, so it began to turn and rock, and drop into choppy troughs flecked white with foam. A roaring came to their senses. It was loud, and vicious sounding.
'That sounds like a waterfall,' said Saark, carefully.
'So it does, lad,' snapped Kell.
'You know that shack back there? You remember how it was never used?'
'I suppose I understand, now,' said Kell.
Saark turned his moaning on Myriam. 'I thought you said you knew this path?'
'No. I said I could guide us out.'
'What, and dropping us off an underground waterfall is getting us out, is it? Am I truly surrounded by idiots?'
Myriam gripped him. Her vachine fangs flashed. 'Listen, Saark, I never said I'd been this way before. Only that I knew of tunnels which led out from the Black Pike Mountains. If you're so damn perfect, you paddle us back up the fucking river!'
'Wait,' said Nienna, and her voice was soft. She held up a hand. 'Listen.'
They listened, and heard the roar of fast-approaching falls.
'I hear my imminent death approaching,' whimpered Saark, eventually.
'Can't you hear the cracking?'
'Great! A rock-fall as well! Wonders will never cease!'
'No. It's ice,' said Nienna.
'Well,' beamed Saark, 'that's just fine and dandy. Helps us out of our predicament nicely, and with all manner of- HOLY JANGIR FIELDS LOOK AT THAT BASTARD!' It was a black band of nothing and it was scrolling swiftly towards the adventurers on the raft, rimed with an edge of sparkling white ice and dropping dropping into a cold vast nothingness filled with blackness and steam…
