Jory raised both eyebrows. “Sorry,” he said after a long, awkward moment. “Not the sort of thing you’d want to be reminded of.”
“Hey, no worries,” Mal said automatically. He really wasn’t comfortable with the whole topic of conversation. Which was why it made bugger all sense when the next minute he blurted out, “It was crap for a bit, but it stopped when I got friendly with Dev. No one wanted to mess with him.”
Jory smiled. “He stood up for you?”
“Nah, it was more, people left me alone cos I was with him.”
It was stupid, cos it wasn’t even true. Well, it was, but it wasn’t the whole story. Yeah, hanging around with Dev had pretty much instantly made Mal, who’d been the weediest, swottiest eleven-year-old on the planet ten times cooler, but . . . Shit. No way was he telling Jory the other reason the bullies had laid off him.
“Gawen came up with a different method of dealing with it, I suspect,” Jory said, looking away again. “He’s never admitted it, but his school grades suddenly went right down last year. I think he was getting questions wrong on purpose in the hope that the less able children would like him.”
Mal closed his eyes briefly. Nail on the head or what? Fuck his life. “Yeah. I get that.” His voice came out rough.
Jory gave him a look that did weird things to Mal’s insides, and grasped his arm firmly.
Mal coughed. “Right. We going in, then?”
“If you’re ready.” Jory switched on his lamp and started to clamber into the hole. It was like watching the world’s buffest baby getting born in reverse.
Mal shook himself and switched on his own lamp.
“Careful on this bit,” Jory said.
“Don’t worry. I’m well careful, me.” Mal tried to lower himself into the gap the way he’d seen Jory do it, feetfirst and inching down a steep, uneven slope. He ended up sliding the last few feet on his arse. Jory held out a hand to help him up, which Mal didn’t take for a mo because he was so busy looking around.
There was enough light coming from above, and from their headlamps, to show him that they were in a rough tunnel that extended down into darkness. It was sort of man shaped. But bigger. Yeti shaped, maybe? The walls were greyish and uneven, and the floor was only mostly flat.
At least it was tall enough to stand upright, even for Jory. “Ready to go?” he asked.
Mal nodded, the light cast by his headlamp bobbing. “Yep. Lead on.”
Mal soon realised that following Jory down the tunnel with his headlamp on gave him a fantastic view of that Lycra-covered arse. Trouble was, he also realised he was going to have to be a lot more careful where he looked. Unless he wanted Jory to notice there was a big glowy spot parked permanently on his backside. He hoped he’d be able to remember to keep his eyes above the waist when Jory was facing him, or that’d be even worse.
Then again, there was that skintight T-shirt with his nips practically poking through the fabric . . . Maybe Mal had better keep his eyes above Jory’s neck. Or not look at him at all.
Right. Eyes on the ground. At least he’d be less likely to fall over anything like old brandy barrels, dead excise men, whatever. “Hey, you ever stumble across a load of blokes in armour snoring away under here?”
“Sadly, no. Nor any sleeping dragons.” Jory had turned to answer, and Mal’s headlamp showed a tiny smile on his face. “I did my best to find them. After a trip to Tintagel, where I got all fired up on Arthurian legend. God knows what I’d have done if I’d actually found Arthur and all his knights. I think I had some vague idea that they’d teach me how to be a knight, because of course when you wake up from centuries of slumber, your highest priority is going to be the tuition of small boys.”
Mal laughed. “Yeah, and you gotta ask yourself, if you wake ’em up, are they gonna be happy about it? We’re talking about heavily armed dudes here. And well-dodgy morals. Sod all that crap about chivalry.”
“Next you’ll be telling me you don’t approve of murder, rape, and incest.”
“Not exactly my three favourite things, no.” Coincidentally, Mal’s gaze went back to what was one of his favourite things right now. He got his comeuppance a moment later—he tripped and ended up grabbing hold of Jory’s shoulder to keep from face-planting on the tunnel floor. “Whoa—sorry mate.”
Jory’s hand briefly patted Mal’s where it lay on his shoulder. “My fault. I should have told you it gets a bit uneven around here.”
Mal remembered to let go of him. He was proud of that.
There was silence for a few minutes as they scrambled over a bloody great boulder in the middle of the path—if that was a bit uneven, what would Jory call a total cave-in? Mildly impassable or some shit?
Then the ceiling got low, and they had to walk bent over. “Oi, you sure you shouldn’t be wearing a hard hat and all?” he asked after the third time he’d grazed his helmet on sticky-out rocks.
“Ah . . . Well, I only had the one.” Jory’s voice sounded guilty as hell. “But strictly speaking, yes. Anyone from my old climbing club would be horrified. So if you ever meet them, please don’t tell.”
Huh. Not much chance of that, was there? Mal’s spirits dropped.
Jory was speaking again. “It’s just . . . I’ve been down here so many times. And there’s never been a cave-in in my memory.”
“So, what, we’re just about due one now?”
“If I said no, it’d be tempting fate, wouldn’t it? But fingers crossed.”
It felt like they were going down to the centre of the Earth. There wasn’t any light apart from their headlamps. And yeah, Mal was used to tunnels, but this was different. It was more .
