out another noise, low and rough, rising and falling.
'What is it?' Miller looked like a ghost in the twilight.
Mallory knew what it sounded like, and he could tell that Daniels and Gardener thought the same: breathing.
At their backs, darkness drew close to the horizon.
The path wound amongst the barriers until they were presented with a pit that hadn't been visible before. They knew instantly it was what they had been working towards. It stood alone, large and round where the others had been ragged holes torn from the turf and soil; its sides sloped down, but it was positioned so that the fading light allowed them to see the eighteen or so feet to the bottom where five dark holes indicated branching tunnels. More bleached skulls had been carefully placed around the perimeter, all looking out. Next to it, two tree branches had been strapped together with brambles in the shape of a tilting cross, a marker, and from it hung the tattered remnants of some kind of pelt.
'Oh Lord, I have a horrible feeling about this,' Miller muttered.
'That makes two of us,' Gardener said in a low, gruff voice that didn't draw attention to itself.
'If he's anywhere, he'll be down there,' Hipgrave noted. He peered into the depths, then spied something. 'Here!' He proudly showed them a shiny cuff link.
'There you go again,' Mallory said.
Hipgrave drew himself up in a bid to imbue himself with some gravitas. 'OK, Mallory, you'd better go down, check it out-'
'You can't send him down there!' Miller protested. 'Not alone!'
'We're not going to risk all of us.' Hipgrave's demeanour left no doubt that he had made his mind up; it was pointless Mallory arguing. 'The sooner he gets down there, the sooner we can all get out of here.'
Steeling himself, Mallory stepped over the edge and skidded down the slope in jerks. At the bottom it was cold and there was an unpleasant smell of decomposition drifting from one of the tunnels. He looked around: no footprints anywhere; there was no point mentioning it to Hipgrave — he'd long since given up listening to reason. The knights were all peering over the edge, their faces white. They all looked human, their emotions clear — apprehension, bravery, compassion, contempt — and he couldn't help thinking back to the glimpsed face of the cleric and the gulf between the two.
He moved around the tunnel entrances, trying to decide which one to explore, though he had no intention of venturing in too far. He could no longer hear what he had thought of as breathing. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Or perhaps it was simply holding its breath, waiting for him to draw near. He looked back up. Hipgrave gestured vehemently for him to press on.
'Bastard,' he said under his breath.
He went around the tunnels again, listening, peering into the dark, smelling the air currents that came from them for any clue. Eventually, he chose one at random and edged his way in, his sword held out in front of him. With the fading light, the dark within became impenetrable after a matter of feet. The tunnel was small — his head brushed the ceiling and barely a quarter of an inch of space lay beyond his shoulders on either side — and the claustrophobia was palpable. Caught in there, he wouldn't stand much chance of getting out alive. He brushed the packed earth of the ceiling, afraid of a collapse. If Hipgrave wanted to investigate further, he'd have to do it properly, with a team and lights and supports.
Returning to the foot of the pit, he attempted to convey this information to Hipgrave in sign language, but if the captain understood he wasn't having any of it. He jabbed a finger in the direction of another tunnel. Cursing, louder this time, Mallory turned back.
The shape erupted out of one of the tunnels, hitting him like a wrecking ball. He went flying on to his back, seeing stars. He could hear the others yelling something, urging him to get up, get out, and then there was a tremendous weight on his chest and a sickening blast of hot, foul breath on his face. Slowly, his scrambled thoughts coalesced and he realised he was looking up into something that swirled with brilliant flecks, like a distant galaxy hanging in the cold void. They were eyes, he presumed, though he couldn't be sure, and if there was any human intelligence there he saw no sign of it.
Time locked, sealing him in that moment of connection with a presence he couldn't begin to comprehend; it was his only world, alien and terrifying.
But then the bubble burst and everything rushed in with an unbearable frenzy. The thing on him became a whirlwind; limbs lashed (he couldn't be sure if they were arms or legs or tentacles or something else), their sharpness tearing through his clothes, his skin. Desperately, he kicked and scrambled to free himself. Sickening sounds burst around him, at times high-pitched, then a low bass rumble, moving off the register; hot wetness suffused his clothing.
It lasted for only a few seconds and then the thing was away from him, bounding out of the pit with a single leap. Shattered by the attack, with blood seeping from him and the pain only just making its way to his brain, he was vaguely aware of the others yelling. Someone was shouting, 'Attack! Attack!' over and over again. Someone else was urging them to scatter. A crashing and splintering as the barriers were torn up was followed by a scream of agony, suddenly cut off.
Mallory's consciousness returned with a lurch. However badly wounded he was — and he didn't want to begin to check — he knew he had to get out of there quickly before the thing returned. He threw himself to his feet only to feel his legs turn to jelly, pitching him back down on to the ground. His head spun; nausea turned his stomach upside down. With a tremendous effort, he managed to find enough equilibrium to get him to the side of the pit, where he hauled himself up on his hands and knees.
At the surface it was as unbearably dark as it had been at the bottom. Night had fallen, the thick cloud cover obscuring all moonlight. It made the sounds even worse: cries off in the blackness, panicked, pained, the terrible thrashing of something enormous and unimaginably wild moving too fast for its size.
One thought surfacing above all others: We were led here, to find this.
Briefly, he wondered what he was going to do, but there was no way out apart from the way he had come in. It was all he could do to pick out the path amongst the rubble of the smashed branches and torn bramble. He had taken some sharp blows to the head and it felt as if concussion was coming on fast. Every time he moved he lost more blood; he could feel it running into his trousers, puddling in his boots. It made him light-headed, broke his thought processes even more, so that he could only really concentrate on the here and now: getting out of there as quickly as possible.
He lurched along the path, desperately trying to keep his balance so he didn't plunge into one of the other pits, while at the same time continually wiping the stinging blood from his eyes. There was more frantic movement ahead, running, the sound of boots on grass, more crashing.
He blacked out briefly, waking to find himself face-down in the mud.
Somewhere there were screams. It felt like a nightmare, as if he wasn't really there at all, merely watching himself going through inexplicable motions from a vantage point deep inside his head. Why was he trying to escape? Why was he there? What was moving just beyond his perception? And then the image of the fire in the dark, urging him to go forwards, not back.
Pulling himself to his feet once more, the brambles tore at his hands. One of the jagged branch-spikes ripped through his trousers into his calf. Away to his left he heard whimpering, instantly drowned out by the wind. 'Miller?' he called out feebly.
Before he could turn in search, there was another explosion of movement as the hunting thing launched itself from the periphery of his field of vision. He ducked just in time, but he felt it pass only inches over him to crash into the barriers ten feet to his left. He scrambled on, almost slipped into another pit, caught himself with his legs dangling over the abyss. More movement, more running, sounds bursting from periods of silence like explosions on a battlefield. His foot kicked something that bounced a few feet ahead of him: a severed hand, now caked in mud. It was impossible to tell which knight it belonged to, but the sight of it filled him with a deep dread, and he knew he would never be able to shake the image of it lying there, like discarded rubbish.
Somehow, he found himself near the display of skulls that marked the boundary, and then he was out, crossing the hill-fort, tripping over the holes in the turf, sliding down the ditches. He could barely walk, barely think. No one else was around, and he couldn't help believing they were all dead.
He was too weak to walk far. He went down the hillside head over heels, ricocheting off tree trunks, crashing through bushes that ripped at his skin and hair, using his body weight to keep the roll going as die only way to put
