must be carefully conjured into life with handfuls of pine needles and sticks of fine-split kindling – and must not the wood be dry? And a ventilating draught provided for its enlivenment?
State it as a certainty: a bulky chunk of timber untainted by oils and paints will stand staunch against all but the greatest efforts to set it alight. Even when it burns, thick wood does not burn through quickly; not does it easily lose its strength, even though the surface be charred. Hence, as most doors are timber in bulk, your most learned experts in incendiarism advise that, should you be trapped in a burning building, your survival will be prolonged by closing the door against the blaze and mugging all cracks with damp cloth to ward against the infiltrations of smoke.
So it is next to useless to try to escape by burning a hole through a wooden door.
But Guest had forgotten this, or, like a starving man trying to keep himself alive by eating his shirt, had hoped that reality would alter its nature to accommodate his needs.
It did not.
By the time the prisoners had exhausted their small stock of expendable burnables (Bao Gahai's handkerchief, clogged with moist deposits of green and yellow snot; three packets of dried herbs extorted from Zozimus by threat; and a Book of Verbs which Guest Gulkan extracted from Sken-Pitilkin's possession after violent argument and then burnt with an expression of what looked suspiciously like satisfaction), the door manifested no conspicuous sign of injury, though its surface had been liberally smeared with soot.
Though Guest had found but little to burn, the burning had generated smoke and fumes in prodigious quantities. Despite the generous draughts which circulated within the cell, the air was still filled with the sour reeking smoke which had issued from Sken-Pitilkin's incinerated verbs, with the variously pleasant and unpleasant stinks of Zozimus's herbs, and with the scabrous fumes released by the incineration of Bao Gahai's handkerchief. Bao Gahai and Zelafona were both coughing, and had become exceedingly irritable; and Guest Gulkan's own temper had been in no wise improved by this debacle.
'This failed,' said Guest decisively. 'But other schemes and stratagems will not. There must be a way out!'
'Yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin wearily. 'Through the door. They will open it, in time, and drag us out. Thus we escape.'Sken-Pitilkin spoke for all, for everyone was in a mood to settle down and sleep. It was late; they were weary; and Guest Gulkan's prowlings were unsettling each and all to the point where they were quite unable to pretend to themselves that they were getting comfortable. But Guest, disregardful of his companions' comfort, decided to attack the bars guarding the sewer-hole built into the corner to the right of the window.
'Move aside,' said Guest to Glambrax, for the dwarf had settled himself by the sewer in order to be spared from involvement in the Weaponmaster's frenetic escape attempts.
'You're mad,' said Glambrax.
'Yes,' said Guest, taking the dwarf by the ear, 'and my madness oft expresses itself in the strangulation of dwarves.'
Then, having hauled Glambrax out of the way, the Weaponmaster attacked the sewer bars. Those bars were old, and, by dint of prodigious wrenching which almost ruptured his gut, Guest tore the iron away from the anchoring stone.
'Free!' said Guest.
'Free to spit,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'for there is no way we can crawl down a hole so small.'
Nor could they, for it was far too small to admit a normal human frame.
'Glambrax!' said Guest.
'It's too small for me, too,' said Glambrax.
And so it was. For Glambrax, though but a stumpy dwarf, had bulky shoulders and a full-sized head, and experiment soon proved that it was quite impossible for him to escape through such a hole even when he was being assisted by Guest Gulkan's boot. Besides, supposing he had, what then? The cold draught coming up from below suggested the sewer ran instantly out to the cliff-face, connecting with the limitless gulfs of the night air. Escape by sewer, like escape through the window, would offer nothing more than an improved view, or the chance of a brisk suicide.
'Still,' said Guest, wielding one of the iron bars he had torn from its imprisoning stone, 'we now have weapons.'
To demonstrate his point, he strode to the door and struck it a vicious blow with this stumpy little cosh. Iron hit timber; timber grunted; and iron exploded in a shower of rust. Guest looked in astonishment at the disintegrated ruins of his iron bar.
'That is a famously dangerous weapon, brother,' said Morsh Bataar, combing his fingers through his hair to remove fragments of rust, 'for you strike at one and hit a thousand.'
'I must have a weapon!' said Guest, throwing down the fragment of iron which yet remained in his fist.
'We have weapons in plenty,' said Sken-Pitilkin wearily. 'The weapons which we were born with. Teeth, nails, elbows, knees. All weapons in their way. But the greatest weapon in the human arsenal is intelligence. I suggest we use that greatest weapon now.'
'How?' said Guest.
'By going to sleep!' retorted Sken-Pitilkin.
At which the cell's single guttering lamp voluntarily and without encouragement extinguished itself, leaving them in darkness.
'There is still the ceiling,' said Guest.
'Yes, yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin, with visions of Guest pulling down an avalanche of unseated rock, stone and masonry upon his hapless fellow captives, 'and the ceiling will still be there on the morrow. Down, boy, and kennel!'
'You call me boy?' said Guest.
'I call you boy, dog, beast, fish, fowl and fool,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Now get to sleep! Lest the adults here loose patience with the frolics of your childhood.'
'I am no boy,' said Guest truculently. 'I am a war leader, a commander of generals.'
'A commander of generals, yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'And a supervisor of their vomit-eating competitions. Zozimus! Will you not help me reason this boy to sense? Zozimus! Zozimus, pox you!
Beasts and bitches! The thing's asleep!'
'So might we be,' said Bao Gahai acidly, 'were it not for an overly loud-voiced old fool of a tutor, who has not even such a modest gift as cookery at his command.'
One does not argue with a dralkosh. Not, at least, when one is caged with the thing in a small box of unescapable stone. So Hostaja Torsen Sken-Pitilkin settled himself on the stones of the cell and tried to go to sleep.
Silence, but for some smoke-inspired coughing from Glambrax and some snoring from Zozimus.
Then:
A skrittling-scratching, as if some creature with murderous talons was clawing the bulking timbers of the jailcell door.
'Guest!' said the hoarse voice of Bao Gahai.
'What?' said Guest Gulkan.
'I don't know what you're doing or what you hope to accomplish by it,' said Bao Gahai, 'but I adjure you to stop.'
'You adjure me, do you?' said Guest Gulkan, rigorously unimpressed. 'And who are you to adjure anything?'
'I am Bao Gahai,' said she venomously. 'You will not trifle with me. I am Bao Gahai, birthed nine thousand years before your daylight. I am Bao Gahai, Lord of Shadow, Commander of Darkness,
Invoker of Doom.'
'Very impressive,' said Guest, still unimpressed. 'How kind of you to coop together here with us ordinary mortals.'
Then he resumed his attack on the door. Scritch scritch!
Scratch scratch!
'Guest!' said Bao Gahai savagely.
'Yes?' said Guest.
