Ferro’s hand slapped down hard over his mouth, her nose not a foot from his. “Ssss,” she hissed softly, yellow eyes rolling upward, one long finger pointing towards the vaulted ceiling.
Logen felt his skin go prickling cold. He heard them now. Shanka. Scuffling and clattering, gibbering and squeaking to each other, up above their heads. He nodded, and slowly Ferro lifted her dirty hand away from his face.
He eased himself up out of the rubble, slow and stiff, trying to stay as quiet as possible, wincing all the while at the effort, dust running off his coat as he came up to his feet. He tested his limbs, waiting for the searing pain that would tell him he had broken his shoulder, or his leg, or his skull.
His coat was ripped and his elbow was skinned and throbbing, streaks of blood all down his forearm to his fingertips. When he put his fingers to his aching head he felt blood there, and underneath his jaw, where he cracked it on the ground. His mouth was salty with it. Must have bitten his tongue, yet again. It was a wonder the damn thing was still attached. One knee was painful, his neck was stiff, his ribs were a mass of bruises, but everything still moved. If he forced it to.
There was something wrapped round his hand. The torn sleeve of Luthar’s coat. He shook it off and let it drop in the rubble beside him. No use now. Not much use then. Ferro was at the far end of the hall, peering into an archway. Logen shambled up beside her, doing his grimacing best to keep silent.
“What about the others?” he whispered. Ferro shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe they got away?” he tried, hopefully. Ferro gave him a long, slow look, one black eyebrow raised, and Logen winced and squeezed his aching arm. She was right. The two of them were alive, for now. That was about as much luck as they could hope for, and it might be a while before they got any more.
“This way,” whispered Ferro, pointing into the darkness.
Logen peered into that black opening and his heart sank. He hated being underground. All that weight of stone and earth, pressing above, ready to fall. And they had no torch. Inky black, with hardly air to breathe, no notion of how far to go, or in what direction. He peered up nervously towards the vaulted stones above his head, and swallowed. Tunnels were places for Shanka or for the dead. Logen was neither one, and he didn’t much fancy meeting either down there. “You sure?”
“What, scared of the dark?”
“I’d rather be able to see, if I had the choice.”
“You see any choices?” sneered Ferro at him. “You can stay here, if you want. Maybe another pack of idiots will come wandering through in a hundred years. You’ll fit right in!”
Logen nodded, sucking sourly at his bloody gums. It seemed like a long time since the two of them had last been in a fix like this one, sliding across the dizzy rooftops of the Agriont, hunted by men in black masks. It seemed a long, hard time, but nothing much had changed. For all their riding together, and eating together, and facing death together, Ferro was still as bitter, and as angry, and as sore a pain in his arse as she had been when they first set out. He tried to be patient, really he did, but it was getting to be tiring.
“Do you have to?” he muttered, looking her right in one yellow eye.
“Have to what?”
“Be a cunt. Do you have to?”
She frowned at him for a moment, opened her mouth, paused, then shrugged her shoulders. “You should have let me fall.”
“Eh?” He’d been expecting some furious insult from her. Some stabbing at him with a finger, certainly, and possibly with a blade. That had sounded almost like regret. But if it had been, it didn’t last long.
“You should have let me fall, then I’d be on my own down here without you to get in my way!”
Logen snorted with disgust. There was no helping some people. “Let go of you? Don’t worry! Next time I will!”
“Good!” spat Ferro, stalking off into the tunnel, shadows quickly swallowing her. Logen felt a sudden stab of panic at the idea of being left alone.
“Wait!” he hissed, and hurried after.
The passageway sloped downwards, Ferro’s feet padding noiseless, Logen’s scraping in the dust, the last shreds of light gleaming on wet stone. He kept the fingertips of his left hand trailing along the wall, trying not to groan with each step at the pain in his bruised ribs, and his torn elbow, and his bloody jaw.
It grew darker, and darker yet. The walls and the floor became nothing but hints, then nothing at all. Ferro’s dirty shirt was a grey ghost, hovering in the dead air before him. A few weak-kneed steps further and it was gone. He waved his hand in front of his face. Not so much as a trace. Just inky, fizzing blackness.
He was buried. Buried in the darkness, alone. “Ferro, wait!”
“What?” He blundered into her in the dark, felt something shove him in the chest and nearly fell over backwards, staggering against the damp wall. “What the hell—”
“I can’t see anything!” he hissed, hearing his own voice full of panic. “I can’t… where are you?” He flailed at the air with his open hands, all sense of direction gone, his heart pounding, his stomach sick and heaving. What if she’d left him down there, the evil bitch? What if—
“Here.” He felt her hand catch hold of his and close round it, cool and reassuring. He heard her voice not far from his ear. “You think you can follow me without falling on your face, fool?”
“I… I think so.”
“Just try to keep quiet!” And he felt her move off, pulling him impatiently after her.
If only the old crew could’ve seen him now. Logen Ninefingers, the most feared man in the North, piss-wet frightened of the dark, clinging tight to the hand of a woman who hated him, like a child clinging to his mother’s tit. He might almost have laughed out loud. But he was scared the Shanka would hear.
Ninefingers’ big paw felt hot, clammy with fear. An unpleasant sensation, his sticky skin pressed tight against hers. Sickening, almost, but Ferro made herself hold on. She could hear his breathing, quick and snatched in the tight space, his clumsy footsteps stumbling after her.
It felt like only yesterday that the two of them were last in a fix like this one, hurtling down the lanes of the Agriont, sneaking through its darkened buildings, chased all the way. It felt like yesterday, but everything had changed.
Back then, he had seemed nothing but a threat. One more pink that she would have to keep her eye on. Ugly and strange, stupid and dangerous. Back then, he might easily have been the last man in the world she would have trusted. Now he might easily have been the only one. He had not let her fall, even though she had told him to. He had chosen to fall with her rather than let her go. Out there on the plain, he had said he would stick if she did.
Now he had proved it.
She looked over her shoulder, saw his pale face gawping in the dark, eyes wide but unseeing, free hand stretched out and feeling for the walls. She should have thanked him, maybe, for not letting her fall, but that would have been as good as admitting she needed the help. Help was for the weak, and the weak die, or are made slaves. Never hope for help and you can never be disappointed when it does not come. And Ferro had been disappointed often.
So instead of thanking him she dragged at his hand and nearly made him fall.
A glimmer of cold light was starting to creep back into the tunnel, the slightest glow at the edges of the rough stone blocks. “Can you see now?” she hissed over her shoulder.
“Yes.” She could hear the relief in his voice.
“Then you can let go,” she snapped, snatching her hand away and wiping it on the front of her shirt. She pressed on through the half-light, working her fingers and frowning down at them. It was an odd feeling.
Now that his hand was gone she almost missed it.
The light was growing brighter now, leaking into the passage from a narrow archway up ahead. She crept towards it, padding on the balls of her feet and peered round the corner. A great cavern opened out below them, its walls partly of smooth carved blocks, partly of natural stone, soaring up and bulging out in strange, melted formations, its ceiling lost in shadows. A shaft of light came down from high above, casting a long patch of brightness on the dusty stone floor. Three Shanka were gathered there in a clump, muttering and scratching over something on the floor, and all around them, piled in great heaps, as high as a man and higher to the very walls of the cave, were thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands, of bones.
“Shit,” breathed Logen, from just behind her. A skull grinned up at them from the corner of the arch. Human
