'Never mind! Lead us down, damn you! I'm starting to blister everywhere! Hurry!'
All right. Why not? At the very least, it'll purchase us a few more moments. He slithered down into the pit. Behind him, voices, the scrabble of boots, the hissing of pain as flesh touched hot stone.
Faintly: 'How hot is that water in that pool? Boiling yet? No? Good, those with canteens and skins, fill 'em now-'
Into the crevasse… while the rat scurried down the canted, littered street, beneath a ceiling of packed rubble…
Bottle felt his body push through a fissure, then plunge downward, onto the low-ceilinged section of street. Rocks, mortar and potsherds under his hands, cutting, scraping as he scrabbled forward. Once walked, this avenue, in an age long past. Wagons had rattled here, horse-hoofs clumping, and there had been rich smells. Cooking from nearby homes, livestock being driven to the market squares. Kings and paupers, great mages and ambitious priests. All gone. Gone to dust.
The street sloped sharply, where cobbles had buckled, sagging down to fill a subterranean chamber – no, an old sewer, brick-lined, and it was into this channel his rat had crawled.
Pushing aside broken pieces of cobble, he pulled himself down into the shaft. Desiccated faeces in a thin, shallow bed beneath him, the husks of dead insects, carapaces crunching as he slithered along. A pale lizard, long as his forearm, fled in a whisper into a side crack. His forehead caught strands of spider's web, tough enough to halt him momentarily before audibly snapping. He felt something alight on his shoulder, race across his back, then leap off.
Behind him Bottle heard Cuttle coughing in the dust in his wake, as it swept over the sapper on the gusting wind. A child had been crying somewhere back there, but was now silent, only the sound of movement, gasps of effort. Just ahead, a section of the tunnel had fallen in.
The rat had found a way through, so he knew the barrier was not impassable. Reaching it, he began pulling away the rubble.
Smiles nudged the child ahead of her. 'Go on,' she murmured, 'keep going. Not far now.' She could still hear the girl's sniffles – not crying, not yet, anyway, just the dust, so much dust now, with those people crawling ahead. Behind her, small hands touched her blistered feet again and again, lancing vicious stabs of pain up her legs, but she bit back on it, making no outcry. Damned brat don't know any better, does he? And why they got such big eyes, looking up like that?
Like starving puppies. 'Keep crawling, little one. Not much farther…'
The child behind her, a boy, was helping Tavos Pond, whose face was wrapped in bloody bandages. Koryk was right behind them. Smiles could hear the half-Seti, going on and on with some kind of chant. Probably the only thing keeping the fool from deadly panic. He liked his open savannah, didn't he. Not cramped, twisting tunnels.
None of this bothered her. She'd known worse. Times, long ago, she'd lived in worse. You learned to only count on what's in reach, and so long as the way ahead stayed clear, there was still hope, still a chance.
If only this brat of a girl wouldn't keep stopping. Another nudge. 'Go on, lass. Not much more, you'll see…'
Gesler pulled himself along in pitch darkness, hearing Tulip's heavy grunts ahead of him, Crump's maddening singing behind him. The huge soldier whose bare feet Gesler's outstretched hands kept touching was having a hard time, and the sergeant could feel the smears of blood Tulip left behind as he squeezed and pulled himself through the narrow, twisting passage. Thick gasps, coughing – no, not coughing'Abyss take us, Tulip,' Gesler hissed, 'what's so funny?'
'Tickling,' the man called back. 'You. Keep. Tickling. My. Feet.'
'Just keep moving, you damned fool!'
Behind him, Crump's idiotic song continued.
'and I says oh I says them marsh trees got soft feet, and moss beards all the way down and they sway in the smelly breeze from that swamp water all yella'n brown oh we was in the froggy toady dawn belly-down in the leeches and collectin spawn 'cause when you give those worms a squeeze the blue pinky ropes come slimin downand don't they taste sweet! and don't they taste sweet! sweet as peat, oh yes sweet as peat-'
Gesler wanted to scream, like someone up ahead was doing. Scream, but he couldn't summon the breath – it was all too close, too fetid, the once cool sliding air rank with sweat, urine and Hood knew what else.
Truth's face kept coming back to him, rising in his mind like dread accusation. Gesler and Stormy, they'd pulled the recruit through so much since the damned rebellion. Kept him alive, showed him the ways of staying alive in this Hood-cursed world.
