The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,156

which was that they knowed the tunnel was blocked and that we was gonna have to turn around and walk back to them, or else starve in the dark.

By and by, though, I seen a kind of a bright dot up ahead. It didn’t look like nothing at first. I didn’t know for sure but that it was something my eyes was making because they was so sick of the darkness. But it got bigger with each step I took.

“Ursala…” I says.

“I see it. Keep walking.”

That was not easy for me to do. But then the light got bright enough for us to see the ground at our feet, and we commenced to run. Well, Ursala was running anyway. My leg was hurting bad now, and the dizziness was growing on me. What I was doing was more of a hop and a stumble with every now and then a run in between.

Seeing the light put my worst fears to rest, but it brung a new one. Suppose Senlas was right? Suppose this was the world that was lost and there was some angry angels waiting for us there that would be angry with us for not bringing him? I knowed it was nonsense, but I already told you he had got himself into my head. I guess there was enough of him there still to make me doubt.

But when we come out at last, blinking our eyes at the light, we wasn’t anywhere that was strange or different. The tracks run on between high stone walls, the same way they did on the other side of the mountain.

We was out, and we was free.

The trouble we had got now was that there was no climbing them walls. We had got to keep going along the tracks, and the going was hard. Weeds and wild growth of all kinds was in our way, and though we didn’t need to fear being choked or trapped or et as we would of been in Summer, yet there was stings and spikes and poison burrs enough to be wary of. There was no running now, but just picking our way and hoping we would soon come to a gap in the wall or a place where the slope got shallow enough to climb.

“I got to stop soon,” I says to Ursala between gulps of breath. “I don’t hardly got no wind left in me.”

“Wait until we’re out of sight of the tunnel,” Ursala said. She looked back over her shoulder. A frown come on her face, and she stopped.

I looked where she was looking. I didn’t see nothing at first. Just the side of the mountain and the top of the tunnel’s opening, which on this side was a big curved arch like the ones in the wall of the broken house back in Mythen Rood. There wasn’t nobody coming along the tracks behind us, nor the weeds wasn’t waving like they would if there was people moving through them.

Up above though, on the side of the mountain, there was maybe six or seven people running fast. I couldn’t tell if they was Senlas’s people from this distance, but it was plain to see they was following us. And though they was a long way back, they was making much better speed.

I licked my lips, and found they was dry as dust. “We better run,” I said.

“Yes,” Ursala says. “We better had.”

We run as best we could, but we didn’t have much running left in us. Up ahead, the stone walls went on and on, it seemed like for ever.

My leg was like a block of steeped wood now, that wouldn’t bend and didn’t have no feeling except for a numbness. Numbness was better than pain, but it wasn’t much good for keeping any kind of a pace. Ursala kept running on ahead, then waiting for me to come.

And every time we looked back, them people behind us was closer. They wasn’t on the side of the mountain any more. They had come down onto the stone wall that was on the right side of us. There had got to be a trail up there, and I bet it was a lot clearer than what we was passing through.

“You go ahead,” I says to Ursala. “I’ll follow as I can.”

She didn’t do it though. She took my arm and put it over her shoulders, so I could borrow some of her strength and maybe her speed too, and like that we went limping