Henry licked his lips. Maybe if he went deeper in, it would be dark enough.
Taking care not to kick the bones, he moved on. After a few hesitant paces, he turned the corner and fumbled his way a little further along. It was definitely getting darker here. In fact, he would have judged it to be absolutely, utterly, completely dark. He raised the torch again and waved it wildly. Still nothing happened.
He waited for his eyes to adjust again, but they didn’t. The darkness pressed in on him like a velvet shroud. Should he go on? Henry had a vivid imagination and it presented him with a sudden, frightening picture. He was standing in the dark on the edge of a precipice. One more step and he would fall to his death. Fall to his death in the total darkness, bloody useless torch! Henry thought of Blue and took another step forward. He didn’t fall to his death, but he did realise he couldn’t go on like this much longer. There was no way he was going to find Blue underground in total darkness.
He reached out to feel the walls of his passage and discovered one of them had disappeared. The wall on the right was no longer there, or at least no longer within easy reach, which meant that the passage had widened, or opened into another cave (or fallen away into a precipice, his imagination told him) or otherwise changed the nature of his situation, almost certainly for the worse.
Henry froze and forced himself to think logically. Forget precipices and bears. While he knew he was in a passage, could feel he was in a passage, he could turn and feel his way back to the surface. But if the passage opened out into a cave and Henry stepped into that cave in pitch darkness and tried to explore that cave, he might not be able to find his way back. There might be other passages. He might get confused. Dammit, he would get confused – he knew what he was like. He would be lost in the darkness, unable to find his way out, for ever.
Not much good to Blue then.
The sensible thing, the only sensible thing, was to retrace his steps while he still could. This wasn’t abandoning Blue, not at all, wasn’t even thinking of abandoning Blue. This was common sense. He would turn, retrace his steps, find his way back out of the cave and ask the charno for another torch! The charno was bound to have one. It had all sorts of rubbish in that backpack. It had just given him a duff torch, that was all. It had to have a backup. And if it didn’t, maybe it would have a match, so he could light this torch and forget about the whole automatic bit. Retrace his steps, that was the thing.
In a moment of utter madness, Henry took one more step forward.
The torch in his hand flared fiercely, sending up a wave of heat that singed his hair. There were two faces only inches from his own, one looking down on him, the other looking up.
‘Yipes!’ Henry shrieked and jerked backwards. His heel caught on something and he fell, dropping the torch. It rolled across the rocky floor for a few feet, then stopped, but still burned brightly. In the flickering light he could see he had left his passageway and was lying on a broad ledge that overlooked another cavern. There were two things staring down at him. In utter panic, he tried to scramble away, scattering pebbles underneath his heels. Then he realised what the things were.
‘What are you doing here?’ shouted Henry furiously.
‘I am your Companion, En Ri,’ Lorquin said.
The charno, towering over him, nodded and said, ‘That’s right. He is your Companion.’
Henry scrambled to his feet. He’d skinned one elbow and his bottom hurt, ‘I told you to go home!’ he hissed at Lorquin. ‘I thought you had gone home. This is dangerous. This is very dangerous.’
‘That is why I must stay with you,’ Lorquin said.
He wanted to strangle the kid. He wanted to hug the kid. What did you do with somebody like Lorquin? He simply didn’t recognise the normal rules. In his frustration, Henry rounded on the charno. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you would wait outside.’
The charno shrugged. ‘Somebody has to carry your supplies.’
Henry knew when he was beaten. He picked up the torch. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what now?’
They looked at him expectantly.
‘You’re the leader,’ Lorquin said.
Ninety
Henry led from the middle, carrying his torch. The charno plodded after him, surprisingly quietly for a beast of its size, although the clicking of its claws on the rock floor was a bit of a distraction. Lorquin went ahead of them both, sniffing the air in an irritating manner.
‘What are you doing that for?’ Henry asked eventually.
‘Smelling the trail, En Ri,’ Lorquin explained.
Henry frowned. ‘You never did that before.’ Lorquin had taken him all over the desert, but it was all eyesight work: he had followed subtle signs.
‘It is not possible in the open,’ Lorquin said. ‘The wind carries off the scent, the sun burns it up. But inside is different. Scent lingers.’
Henry stopped. This was an interesting development and might be an important one. ‘What can you tell?’
Lorquin gave a small but eloquent shrug. ‘Several people have passed this way before. Two men together, but that was some time ago. And with them something strange I have not smelled before. Then -’
‘What sort of something strange?’ Henry interrupted. ‘An animal?’
‘Perhaps,’ Lorquin said, ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Go on,’ Henry urged. ‘What else?’
‘Yes, what else?’ said the charno, leaning over Henry’s shoulder.
‘More recently a woman; a young woman. She -’
Blue! It had to be Blue! How many more young women would you get wandering down here? ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ Henry exploded.
‘You asked me of other things, En Ri,’ Lorquin said mildly.
‘I want you to follow the woman’s scent,’ Henry said firmly in his leadership capacity. ‘That’s the one I want you to follow. You can forget about the others.’
‘That was the one I have been following,’ Lorquin said, ‘I thought it might be Blue, the woman you seek.’
‘Did she meet up with the others?’ the charno asked. Which was a very sensible question and Henry wished he’d thought of asking it.
Lorquin shook his head. ‘The trails are overlaid. If they met together, I have not found the place yet.’
‘Keep going,’ Henry told him.
Several minutes later, Henry said suddenly, ‘We’re going back the way we came.’
‘As did she,’ Lorquin said, ‘I can follow the scent only where it takes me.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Henry muttered.
‘He can follow the scent only where it takes him,’ echoed the charno.
‘Shut up, said Henry. The truth of it was he was feeling hugely uncomfortable. He wasn’t cut out for this. Lorquin, for all he was so young, was better equipped as a hero than Henry. He could follow trails, survive in the desert, find food when it was needed, kill draugrs… Even the charno would make a better hero than Henry. At least it could lift the hammer. But Henry was the one who was supposed to rescue Blue. And from what? He really had no idea what he was getting into. The Midgard Serpent business sounded like nonsense. Some sort of tribal superstition. How could Blue have gotten herself involved with a giant snake? Except that everybody else seemed to take the idea seriously. An idea occurred to him and he said quickly, ‘Lorquin. I don’t suppose you can smell this Midgard thing?’