There was a draught, a tiny current of air, and so this Strom Irvil wasn’t as incapacitated as he wanted to think. Off we went, stumbling and clattering over the uneven floor. The torches lost the rocky wall at our backs, and showed nothing ahead. In darkness, rock underfoot, the torches flaring their orange hair, we staggered on.
Eventually we reached the far wall and squeezed through a crack where air flowed, and came into another cavern, and crossed that. We might spend a dozen lifetimes down there, creeping through the tunnels and struggling across caverns.
“Up!” growled Strom Irvil. “We must go up!”
San Pundhri glanced up, not squinting. Irvil bellowed.
“Zaydo, you useless yetch! Find a way up! By Havil the Green, what a straw scarecrow I’m lumbered with in you, brainless onker!”
I was about to let out a fluent torrent of abuse, when Pundhri cut in quickly.
“You use hard words on your slave, strom. He has done well so far. Can we not—”
“No! Not until we are out of this infernal hellhole.”
I walked across to the wall and a Sybli maiden carried a torch, which was near to expiring, and we looked at the fissures within the rock. One or two looked promising. Once we had broken our way back into the mine workings we ought to find it easier going. I reached back for the torch. The Sybli handed it to me, smiling her silly, naïve, endearing Sybli smile, and I eased sideways along the gray stone, the torch picking out veins and spiracles of crystal. Along I went, the torch thrust ahead. The flames flickered, so there was some kind of draught here. The rock pressed against my back. There was barely room before my chest to move my arms. The way tended up.
The ground shook.
The walls moved.
The solid rock groaned as though the very stone labored in agony from unimaginable pressure. Chips of stone flaked off and fell, unheard in that world-shaking rumble. The walls closed together. Arm up holding the torch, arm down levering on, one leg flexed, the other contorted awkwardly, I stopped moving, pinned. Fast fixed within the vise of stone, I could not budge. The jaws of the world snapped on me, closer and closer. I felt my ribcage bending. The torch glared full upon a single glittering drop of green. The drop of poison at the tip of a thin proboscis oozed from the slot beside my head. The yenalk showed as a flat outline, the dust glittering upon his shell. It inched forward along its fissure, aiming at me, aiming that poison-tipped sword straight at my eye.
Strom Irvil Berates Zaydo
The pantheons of Kregen contain many and many an imp and devil, ghastly each in its own fashion. In that moment trapped in the slot, with the world collapsing around me, unable to move, and with a poison-tipped sting hovering before my eye, I fancy I felt more than a few of those devils gibbering and clawing at me.
“By Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased left eyeball!” I said. I did not move. I dare not move. I could not move. And I, Dray Prescot, was like to have my own personal disgusting diseased left eyeball, and damned quick, at that.
The rumbling subterranean convulsions of the earthquake persisted. The strongest desire to run obsessed me, and I could not move. All around me the stone trembled. I daresay it did not tremble as much as did I.
Sweat rolled off me. I blinked. That single blink might be enough to trigger the yenalk into an attack, into a savage lunged thrust of his sting clear through my eyeball...
He did not move.
I felt the sweat chill on me. The damned thing was as jammed fast as was I!
The world convulsed again and the rock squeezed.
The yenalk squashed. His two soup-plate shells crunched together. His insides squeezed out.
I could not turn my head fully away, and I did not shut my eyes. The disgusting mess slipped and slithered over the face of the wall trapping me. The yenalk was squashed as flat as a bug under a boot heel. Was it my turn next?
The stink in there, highly unpleasant, was no worse than that of some of the slave bagnios I’ve inhabited from time to time.
Whatever seismological disturbance was going on, whatever planetary gut-rumbling encompassed me, I could not know; its effects I could know and experience. The rock’s slipping movement pressed on me. I felt my ribs crunching. My eyes must have been standing out on stalks. I felt all the blood in me clashing and colliding, and I breathed small, and there came one last pressure which pressed the last gasp from me — and the walls folded back. A hand’s-breadth, they moved away, shrieking as rock splintered. Dust and debris rained on me. A chunk of sharp-edged stone cracked against my shoulder. And then I was free.
I felt my knees giving way.
The torch shook and orange lights quivered, shadows pirouetted like the encroaching demons of darkness.
By Zair! That had been a narrow one!
A narrow one... No, believe me, I didn’t laugh; not just then, anyway.
After that a few more crashings and hangings, with the passageway splitting asunder with a shriek of a banshee, all came as anticlimaxes. I hauled myself around to go back to the others and bumped into Strom Irvil.
His bandage hung all lopsided. He was panting and his lion face was flushed with high blood pressure and consummate anger.
“What are you coming back for, you rascal! Running for it, are you! Get on. The ceiling nearly fell on us out there while you were safe in here.”
There was nothing to say. I’d have my laugh later.
Creeping along and following the heaven-sent draught of air, we wormed our way through the passageways and so came out into the ancient mine workings. Here many thick pillars upheld the roof. The lanterns were lit and we pressed on as fast as we could. The people babbled away, scenting escape from these dolorous caverns. Two more earth tremors hit; but they caused us no damage, only alarm that the pillars might collapse and the ceiling fall in. Nothing like that happened and, passing a toppled statue of Havil the Green, smothered in dust and gouged by falling rocks, we began the ascent to the surface.
“I do not think that shrine will ever be used again,” observed Pundhri, toiling along near me.
Much as this sage interested me, because the Star Lords wished him preserved, this was not the time or place to prosecute inquiries. So I just said: “There are many shrines on the surface of the world better suited than those stuffed away in dark holes in the ground.”
We jostled along, climbing, and Pundhri looked back as Strom Irvil bellowed in his impatient way for me to give him assistance over a patch of splintered rocks. His bandage was unwinding. Putting a hand under his left armpit I hoisted him up. His booted feet scrabbled on rocks. He pitched forward and I held him from falling. The bandage slid down over an ear and eye.
He roared.
“Fool! Onker! Useless ninny! Oh, why am I plagued with rubbish like you? May Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor look down in mercy upon me. Onker!”
Pundhri started to say, “The slave Zaydo does not merit—”
Strom Irvil thrashed around, trying to shove the black and yellow bandage straight, trying to shrug away from my grip, trying to get his boots onto a flat space in the splinters. “I know what he merits! I know! By all the Devils of the Pines! And I’ll give it to him when we’re out of this infernal hellhole!”
When I let him go he did not fall down. In truth, I had assisted him, as was patently obvious. I said nothing.
We all wended on, and Irvil breathed his stertorous lion-man snorts, and every now and again he would favor me with a baleful glare. At the time I was quite looking forward to getting out of here myself. I would enjoy being given my just merits from Strom Irvil, as I might return his...
His tawny mane was dark-tipped, his body of a deep brown, quite unlike the golden mane and hide of Rees, who was the Trylon of the Golden Wind, aptly named estates. The wind blew Rees’s land away into that deadly golden wind, and I wondered if he was still as rich as he had been, if he still lived, he and Chido, who were boon companions, Bladesmen, rufflers of the Sacred Quarter in Ruathytu, capital of this enemy Empire of Hamal.
My thoughts took a somber turn. When I dealt with mad Empress Thyllis, as I would, and knocked over her foul and insane ambitions to extend the conquests of Hamal far beyond the country’s logical limits, would I encounter Rees and Chido? They were touchy on matters of honor. They fought for Hamal. I fought for Vallia, and the two empires were locked in mortal combat. I could never slay Rees or Chido, even though they were supposed to be enemies, because they were comrades, valued friends, a part of the joy of life.
And, even more than Rees and Chido, what of Tyfar? Prince Tyfar of Hamal, who was a blade comrade, and who did not know that I was a Vallian — and because our two countries were at war was his foeman — what of Tyfar? My daughter Jaezila and Tyfar, for all their buffoonery and slanging matches, were deeply in love. I knew that. If Tyfar declared for Thyllis, could I fight him? Could I go up against him with naked steel in my fist? Of course not.
Then I tripped over an outcrop of rock and fell on my nose, and Strom Irvil bellowed out, and I was back in these damned caverns. I sneezed as the dust bit, and stood up, and bashed the dust off, and so stumbled on. If Irvil went up against me fighting for Hamal, I might yet joy in teaching him that Vallians had learned the arts of soldiering.
Then I checked my wandering thoughts. Irvil said he came from Thothangir, right in the south of the continent of Havilfar. He was a kregoinye and worked for the Star Lords. There was no reason why he should fight for Hamal.
Then the confounded giant spiders descended on us.
On glistering lines they dropped from the shadows, bulbous, hairy, many-legged, a nightmare rain of heavy bodies and spindled serrated legs.
“What?” Irvil’s lion face charged with passion. “What?”
“Pundhri!” I yelled. The people panicked. They ran screaming every which way, falling staggering into one another, flailing uselessly with weak arms. The moment was ugly and horrific and fraught with greater peril for us than even these monstrous spiders could bring. If Pundhri died... Thothangir at least was on Kregen. I would be banished back to Earth, sent packing through the gulfs between the stars and left to moulder away in a despair far more horrible than that caused by any stupid giant spiders.
Directly ahead and some twenty paces off the jagged round opening of a tunnel offered some protection. People were running for the opening, crying and screaming. Some fell and the bodies of the spiders descended on them, bloating, stingers driving deep, legs folding and closing in.
“Pundhri!” I shouted again. Irvil glared madly at me. Snatching up a chunk of rock I poised and hurled. The missile smashed into the fat body of a spider about to drop onto Pundhri’s head. The bloated thing burst. Pundhri moved away, not shouting, his bearded face still calm, still serene. No doubt what happened to him, he believed, happened because it was ordained. That might be so. But the Star Lords thought differently.
“Get him into the tunnel!”
Irvil had the sense to grab at the sage who allowed himself to be led off. Irvil, at that, showed up well, for his bandage at last tumbled off. The wound in his head looked a mess. It was genuine. The blood had caked around the gash and no doubt some of his scalp was pulled off with the bandage. He took no notice now he was in action and there was work to do. He hauled Pundhri off, and his free hand flailed the stump of sword over their heads. The Star Lords do not choose lightly when they select kregoinyes to work for them; this blowhard strom was a fighting man.
Also, he was damned uncivil to his servants.
Spiders swung on their threads, slicing into the rabble. They were, of course, no concern of mine. All the same, there was no question of running off and leaving them. Hurled rocks proved effective, if the aim was good, and ahlnim lads joined in, joyful to expand their chests and knowing they did not break the tenets of their race. I saw a Dunder grab a spider and squash it in his arms, between his arms and chest, before the sting had time to pierce him.
“Well done! Keep them off! Into the tunnel!”
Of course, there might be more spiders, other horrors, in this tunnel...
“Zaydo! Onker!”
Irvil stood in the opening of the tunnel and although he for the moment blocked ingress of anybody else, that did not discommode him. “Catch!”
The flung sword spun end over end toward me.
Pundhri stood close to Irvil and just before they moved back to allow the press to run, crying and wailing, into safety, they watched me. There was no time to lose, no time to playact. The spiders were now crowding in, and rocks were proving useless. The stump sword spun through the air. I took it cleanly by the hilt, slapped it across and then hacked a swinging spider in half. All those motions were merely one continuous flow of action.
Shadows deepened as the lanterns and torches were carried toward the tunnel. A few people were dead and past help; but we dragged more away and so, angrily, we backed up to the tunnel mouth. The broken sword reeked with spider ichor. One or two of the stronger men with me were all for staying and bashing spiders flat with rocks. They were accustomed to being humiliated and maltreated in ordinary life; now they tasted a little of the other side, albeit against hairy giant spiders, and it got into their blood. I had to stop this, stop it cleanly, for it displeased me. Not for these poor folk, not for the spiders, no, not for those reasons...
“The tunnel is clear,” shouted Irvil above the din. “Come on, Zaydo, do! Move yourself!”
“Notor,” said Pundhri, which is the Hamalese way of addressing a lord. “Notor, the slave fought well with the broken sword.”
“Well, and why not? It was my sword, was it not?”
You had to laugh at old Strom Irvil. Everything was perfectly logical to him in his universe.
Shouts rose from the people who had gone ahead along the tunnel, telling us they had broken a way through. Irvil glared at me. “And mind you clean the sword properly, Zaydo. There is one thing I will not abide in my body slaves, dirty habits.”