Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,506

would never, ever revisit. Given the choice. Fire, of course, so much fire. Shadowy figures dancing on all sides, dancing around him, in fact. Night, snapped at by flames, the drumming of feet, voices chanting in some barbaric, unknown language, and he could feel his soul responding, flaring, burgeoning as if summoned by some ritual.

At which point Gesler realized. They were dancing round a hearth. And he was looking out at them – from the very flame itself. No, he was the flame.

Oh Truth, you went and killed yourself. Damned fool.

Soldiers were awakening on all sides of the chamber – shouts and moans and a chorus of clunking urns.

This journey was not yet done. They would go on, and on, deeper and deeper, until the passage dead-ended, until the air ran out, until a mass of rubble shook loose and crushed them all.

Any way at all, please, except fire.

How long had they been down here? Bottle had no idea. Memories of open sky, of sunlight and the wind, were invitations to madness, so fierce was the torture of recalling all those things one took for granted. Now, the world was reduced to sharp fragments of brick, dust, cobwebs and darkness. Passages that twisted, climbed, dropped away. His hands were a battered, bloody mess from clawing through packed rubble.

And now, on a sharp down-slope, he had reached a place too small to get through. Feeling with his half-numbed hands, he tracked the edges. Some kind of cut cornerstone had sagged down at an angle from the ceiling. Its lowermost corner – barely two hand's-widths above the rutted, sandy floor – neatly bisected the passage.

Bottle settled his forehead against the gritty floor. Air still flowed past, a faint stirring now, nothing more than that. And water had run down this track, heading somewhere.

'What's wrong?' Cuttle asked behind him.

'We're blocked.'

Silence for a moment, then, 'Your rat gone ahead? Past the block?'

'Yes. It opens out again – there's an intersection of some kind ahead, a hole coming down from above, with air pulling down from it and straight into a pit in the floor. But, Cuttle – there's a big cut stone, no way to squeeze past it. I'm sorry. We have to go back—'

'To Hood we do, move aside if you can, I want to feel this for myself.'

It was not as easy as it sounded, and it was some time before the two men managed to swap positions. Bottle listened to the sapper muttering under his breath, then cursing.

'I told you—'

'Be quiet, I'm thinking. We could try and break it loose, only the whole ceiling might come down with it. No, but maybe we can dig under, into the floor here. Give me your knife.'

'I ain't got a knife any more. Lost it down a hole.'

'Then call back for one.'

'Cuttle—'

'You ain't giving up on us, Bottle. You can't. You either take us through or we're all dead.'

'Damn you,' Bottle hissed. 'Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe there's no way through? Why should there be? Rats are small – Hood, rats can live down here. Why should there be a tunnel big enough for us, some convenient route all the way out from under this damned city? To be honest, I'm amazed we've gotten this far. Look, we could go back, right to the temple – and dig our way out—'

'You're the one who doesn't understand, soldier. There's a mountain sitting over the hole we dropped into, a mountain that used to be the city's biggest temple. Dig out? Forget it. There's no going back, Bottle. Only forward; now get me a knife, damn you.'

Smiles drew out one of her throwing-knives and passed it up to the child ahead of her. Something told her that this was it – as far as they would go. Except maybe for the children. The call had come to send the urchins ahead. At the very least, then, they could to go on, find a way out. All this effort – somebody had better live through it.

Not that they'd get very far, not without Bottle. That spineless bastard – imagine, depending on him. The man who could see eye to eye with rats, lizards, spiders, fungi. Matching wits, and it was a tough battle, wasn't it just.

Still, he wasn't a bad sort – he'd taken half the load that day on the march, after that bitch of a captain revealed just how psychotic she really was. That had been generous of him. Strangely generous. But men