shoulders felt as if his arms were being plucked from the sockets. Yet grimly he held on as Shannon hurled up in a rising arc out of the depths and to the far lip. The Elf cast loose from the line and plunged forward to the stone, falling with a roll and then springing nimbly to his feet.
Aloft, Borin gave a grunt of relief, and, dangling by the leather straps between his climbing harness and the embedded rock-nails, he extracted his skinned-knuckled hand from the jam-crack and massaged his shoulders, neck, and arms. After a moment, he began coiling the pendulum rope, drawing it upward into the shadows, preparatory to starting back th amp; way he had come.
Shannon called for a hammer and a rock-nail, and they were tossed over the abyss to him; the Elf drove the spike into a thin chink in the floor. At Silverleaf s command. Perry attached his soft and pliable ancient Elven-rope to a grapnel and threw it across to the Elf, who then wedged a tine of the hook into the eyelet of the nail, while the other end of the line was anchored to one of the iron post rings. At a gesture from Shannon, huge Ursor swung hand over hand and joined the Elf; though he was a giant, the Baerart was deft and graceful. Perry gasped at Ursor's deed, for the line was so slender and the Man so huge, and the Warrow feared that the rope would snap; but it was Elven-made, and Silverleaf had known that it would hold ten like Ursor.
Again Perry caught his breath and gritted his teem in fear for a companion's safety, for Lord Kian clambered down into the black abyss on the dangling bridge; while it swayed and jolted against the sheer wall, the Man hauled the far loose ends of the anchor ropes up out of the darkness and secured a light line to them. That done, he then climbed back up and out, bringing the line with him. Once oat, he used another of their grapnels to pitch the slender cord over to Ursor, who fetched the heavy anchor ropes up to the far side where he and Shannon ran them onto the ancient winch. Then, with a grinding claner of gears, Ursor began hoisting the bridge up out of the chasm, back toward its original position.
Up on the ceiling, Borin had worked his way to a place where, once again, he was above the Broad Shelf. Fixing a jam and ring in a crack, the Dwarf payed out a line; and slipping it through the snap-ring, he used the rope to free-rappel to the wide stone floor. With a flip of the wrist, he pulled the free end of the line through the ring above to come piling down. And as Anval coiled the rope, Borin removed the tackle with the remainder of the rock-nails and jams and snap rings and restored them all to his pack along with his ropes. As Borin closed his backpack, Ursor finished his task at the hoist: the bridge was once again in position, with the brake wedge in place. All the extra lines were untied and repacked. Then the rest of the Seven queued up to cross the gulf.
When Perry's turn came he clutched the hand ropes with all his might, for the Great Deep fell sheer and bottomless below him, and a cold chill rose up around him from out of its depths. He felt that the bouncing bridge would collapse again, and its swaying frightened him. He had been amazed at how casually Lord Kian had climbed down the bridge when it was dangling free and swinging beneath the undercut. He also felt that Ursor's hand- over-hand trip above the yawning chasm had taken unimaginable bravery and dexterity. And Borin up on the ceiling, hanging by narrow straps from small iron cubes or thin iron blades driven into crevices, or Shannon swinging by a slender line over those dreadful depths, well, it was all quite beyond Perry's courage and skill to do.
And now he was having trouble just putting one foot in front of another on a bouncing, swaying, narrow rope-and-board span above an endless fall into a gaping, black depth; and in his mind's eye he once again saw the Rucks plunging to their doom. Hey! This won't do, he thought, now don't you freeze in fear out here; after what all the others did, you've just got to cross over this awful black pit. And cross it he did, trembling and clutching, but moving ahead all the time. He was greatly relieved when he stumbled onto the other side, nearly falling to his knees when his feet came off the bounding span and met the hard, unyielding stone.
Last to cross was Delk, who strolled over as if the narrow bridge were a broad highway.
After retrieving the arrows from the dead Rucks, the Seven dragged the corpses to the lip and flung them into the Deep, pitching the Ruck weapons after. Perry threw a fallen torch into the gulf, and as it fell, a smoldering spark caught, and it burst into flame; and Perry watched its guttering light as it tumbled end over end. His sight followed it for what seemed to be an endless time as it slowly became a tiny speck, of luminance plummeting down and down, untjl it disappeared; whether it plunged beyond an outcropping to be seen no more, or fell at last into a stream at the bottom, or blew out, or simply became too small to see, Perry could not tell. He shuddered at the awful depths involved, unable to imagine their limits and not wanting to know. Again he drew back from the edge in fear.
With one last sweeping look. Lord Kian saw that all overt' evidence of the battle was gone. 'I think no one will discover that we were here. Even the blood is cleaned up well enough so that only close inspection wilt show that any was spilled. The Spawn simply will be presented with the mystery of a missing company, and some guards that disappeared. Gnar may think that they deserted. The main evidence of our passage lies in the unguessed depths of the Great Deep.'
'Not all,' grunted Borin. 'The rock-nails and jams are in
place on the wall and roof. But they are small and dark and
should go unnoticed. Even if discovered, mayhap the Squam
will think them an old dead end, for they go nowhere.'
'Let us be gone, then,' declared Lord Kian, 'for we can do no more here, and we must away ere we are discovered. — Perry.'
With the Warrow in the lead next to Anval, they started at a jog trot toward the black gape of the second tunnel on the right. Dwarf-lanterns were slightly unhooded and cast narrow phosphorescent beams to dimly light the way. The Seven entered the dark passage and started up the first of several flights of stairs that would lead to the Hall of the Gravenarch. Suddenly Shannon hissed, 'Quiet! Shield the lights. Rupt below.' The Elf s sharper hearing had detected the tramp of Rucken boots.
The lanterns were hooded and the company stood quietly, poised on the steps. Down at the entrance of the corridor, they saw reflected torchlight flicker by, and they heard the heavy tread of Spawn heading for the bridge. The companions had started just in time; it had taken seven full hours to get from Dawn-Gate to these steps, but fortunately for the Squad die band of maggot-folk now tramping to the bridge had come too late to thwart this initial thrust.
After the Spaunen passed, the companions started up the stairway once again, coming quickly to the top and continuing down the passageway. They ignored the side corridors and went on for nearly a mile and a half, climbing six flights of steps separated by long stretches of level cavern. They came to the base of the seventh flight, but the way was barred by large blocks of broken stone amid piles of rubble. ' It is as I feared,' said Perry. 'The Raven Book teils that the roof collapsed when Brega sundered the keystone of the Gravenarch and nearly lost his life. We must now attempt to find a way up to the Sixth Rise above Gate 1-evel and come to a place where! again recognize the way. In this search a Dwarf should lead.'
Delk Steelshank was chosen to go first, for in his youth he had apprenticed to a Tunnelmaster before he finally turned to the craft of gatemaking. He studied Perry's map with Anval and Borin, and then led them down two flights of steps to the first westbound tunnel; they strode along it for a half mile, coming to a corridor to the right with steps bearing upward. They climbed up the flight, and a level cross-passage bored away in both directions. Ahead they could see another flight of stairs going on up. They mounted these, then went ahead and up another flight. 'Here, we are on the Sixth Rise, and near to the point where we were blocked,' announced Delk, and Anval and Borin grunted in agreement. 'Now it is merely a matter of closing the course to come to the other side of the blockage-or of coming upon something Friend Perry can reconcile with the Brega Path.'
Hsst!' shushed Shannon, whose keen hearing again proved sharper than that of Dwarf, Man, or Warrow. 'I hear another company of Rupt. They tramp nigh.'
The comrades looked back down the way they had come and couid see the faint flicker of far-off torchlight bearing in their direction.
'This way-quickly,' whispered Delk, and they bolted down a side corridor curving 'round to the east and south. Quietly they went, as swiftly as they could, the faint glow of their lanterns showing the way. They came to an opening on their left. They were about to pass it by.when more torchlight could be seen ahead of them. 'We have no choice,' hissed Delk. 'There are Squam before us and Squam behind. Into this room.'
Hurriedly, they stepped into a narrow, long chamber. A great pile of fallen stone blocked most of the room, ramping upward from the center to the unseen, distant wall, and there was no way out except the one door they had come through. They were trapped!
The Seven ranged themselves along the near wall.as the boots tramped closer. The Dwarf-lanterns were
