Jatal peered up from the path of blood. ‘We should not move on until we’ve secured this area.’
The princess slammed her sword home. ‘We have to link up with the Warleader and his troops in any case. And where in the name of the holy sun is everyone?’
‘The cowards have fled,’ Andanii’s captain put in, coming abreast of them.
Jatal studied the man. Did he really think it would be this easy? He raised a hand for patience. ‘We mustn’t wander willy-nilly like a lost wind searching. We’ll send out small scouting parties to locate them.’
Andanii’s clenched brows rose and for an instant Jatal thought he saw something like admiration touch her eyes. She gave a fierce nod. ‘Very good, Prince of the Hafinaj. Sound strategy.’ She waved to her captain, who bowed and jogged off.
‘This Warleader had better have an excellent excuse,’ she growled, hands on her armoured hips.
‘He will no doubt claim to have lost us in that maze.’
‘Yes. He shows a strong head,’ she said, grinning. ‘We’ll have to keep him on a shorter rope.’
Jatal answered the grin. Yes, the language of horse-breaking for their hired Warleader. The man seemed to have forgotten that he worked for them.
The sudden crash of metal and a man’s scream of agony made Jatal flinch. Andanii spun, sword drawn instantly. Their guards converged on a tall stone altar-like plinth where one figure towered over all — one of the Thaumaturgs’ armoured bodyguards, the yakshaka.
Even as the princess moved to close two guards blocked her way. From his raised position on the steps Jatal could see that this yakshaka had been in a fight: it wielded its great yataghan one-handed. Its other arm hung useless, its bright inset stones now smeared in dark wetness. Yet in just a few blows two of their men-at-arms had already fallen.
Yells of alarm now sounded to their rear. Jatal turned a slow circle: on every side the fearsome yakshaka had stepped ponderously from the cover of walls and open portals. They had been encircled. ‘Make for the exit!’ he bellowed. He urged one of Andanii’s guards to shuffle her onward.
And where was Gorot now when he needed him most? Organizing the main body!
‘This way, my nobles,’ the guard captain called, waving aside. Their party made for an open-sided building and onward to another alleyway. Andanii’s guards hurried them along between a series of cell-like stone buildings.
Here the noise and shouts of fighting echoed and re-echoed in a dull directionless roar. Jatal suspected that this captain had no idea where he was taking them — just that he was fleeing a potential slaughter. They stumbled into a tiny flagged yard enclosed on three sides.
‘Now which way?’ Andanii demanded.
The man did not respond. Instead, he directed one of the twelve guards to the way they had come. ‘Watch the entrance.’
‘You have no idea, have you?’
He turned to regard her. A small smile raised the edge of his mouth. ‘We will, ah, circle round, my princess.’
‘Captain!’ a guard called from a wall. This enclosure appeared to be a dormitory, open to the central shared space, complete with a fire-pit and a few pots. Jatal thought it perhaps servant’s quarters. Andanii and he crossed to the guard. Under the narrow stone roof lay scattered straw, covered here and there by thin blankets. The guard waved to a tiny opening where a stone staircase led down into darkness. The moist air emerging carried a repellent stink of rot.
‘Perhaps this is where everyone has gone,’ Jatal mused.
‘The serpents’ den,’ the captain snarled. A shouted alarm snapped everyone’s attention to their rear, where yakshaka now closed with their ponderous loud steps. Iron clashed as the guards blocked and slipped the first massive swings. ‘Nothing for it,’ the captain said, and waved down four men. Two of these were Jatal’s, and he gave his own assent to their questioning glances.
The captain invited Andanii onward. ‘My princess …’
Andanii shot him a glare as if determined not to betray any hint of disgust or dread. She drew her slim sabre and started down — even she had to turn sideways to manage the pit-like opening. The captain turned next to Jatal. ‘My lord?’
‘After you.’
‘I must organize the retreat.’
‘Then do so.’
The captain inclined his helmeted head just a touch, and Jatal was reminded that this man had spent his entire career skirmishing and raiding against him and his allies. ‘Wait here then, if you would … my lord.’
From the pit’s opening Jatal watched while the captain jogged to the line of defence. Four of their guards had fallen to the lumbering monstrosities and now the captain waved the rest into a retreating rearguard action, yielding ground towards the stairs.
Jatal waited until they had nearly reached him then hurried down into the dark and near solid stomach-gagging stink. Beneath, it was not so murky as it had seemed from above. Slim corridors lined with dressed stone led off in three directions. It seemed that slits and chutes cunningly hidden among the stonework allowed shafts of light from the Fallen One’s Chariot to play down among them. Andanii waited here with her two guards. Of the other two, Jatal’s, he saw no sign.
‘What now?’ she asked him again, her voice low and quite choked by the stench.
This time Jatal did not wonder about the motive behind her asking. He heard the clenched panic behind the words and felt it himself. With each choice, they’d been driven, or been foolish enough, to advance ever further into the Thaumaturgs’ embrace. Inwardly he was already of the conviction that none of them would escape here alive.
Andanii’s captain and the rest of the guards came crashing down the near-vertical stone stairs. Armour scraped the walls and bared swords rang and clashed. Heavy steps sounded above, but that was all. Jatal was certain there was no way such behemoths could manage what seemed a mere servants’ entrance.
‘We should move,’ Jatal answered Andanii at last. ‘They’ll know another way down.’
‘Yes,’ the captain added. He had seized a torch from a wall sconce, and now motioned aside with it. ‘This way looks to head back.’
Jatal did not dispute that, but he was sceptical that they would so easily negotiate this maze. He caught Andanii’s attention. ‘Where are the other two guards?’
She pointed. ‘They went to scout.’
‘We can’t leave them.’
The captain urged them on. ‘Come, Princess.’
Andanii had sheathed her sabre. ‘They will follow,’ she hissed, and set off to follow her guards.
For a moment Jatal stood motionless, alone, listening. What had been that fellow’s name? Oroth? Something like that. ‘Oroth!’ he called. ‘Myin-el? Can you hear me? We’re moving! Come back!’ He listened again but heard nothing distinct, only the breath of the damp air moving through the tunnels, and once again something like distant muted screams and yells.
Do not become separated from them! his dread howled. Cursing himself and Andanii, he set off to follow.
He found them soon enough, all jammed up together in a tunnel. He pushed his way to the fore. ‘What is it? Why aren’t you moving?’
Andanii and her captain did not answer; they did not have to. At their feet lay the corpse of a yakshaka guardian. Jatal’s first thought was that they had bested it, though he’d heard nothing of any struggle. Then, in the flickering golden light of the captain’s torch, he made out what held their attention: some sort of black fluid, thick and oozing, dripped from every joint of the armoured giant: at hips, elbows, shoulders and neck. The stench of putrefaction was overpowering. It physically drove Jatal to retreat a step. ‘Gods!’ He gagged, a hand at his mouth.
‘Not the work of our friends the mercenaries,’ the captain observed from behind a fold of cloth pressed to his face.
‘Then who?’
‘We’ll see,’ Andanii answered, and she strung her great bow, as tall as she. ‘I will go first. Captain, hold the light behind me.’