Her breath caught in her throat. The thing in the greenish light was long and low to the ground, shiny black, and segmented like an armored centipede. It had six pairs of legs and short but powerful-looking mandibles that moved slowly back and forth as if the creature were tasting the air.
"Fewmet, hurry!" she shouted. She backed up until her shoulders touched the wall.
A horax made a feint toward her leg. Sara screamed and kicked at its head. The force of her blow sent it rolling back into the darkness. Chittering sounds echoed out of the silence and rattled around her head.
"Knight woman?" came the voice of the gully dwarf.
"No can find the ladders. Men move far away. Did find this." Something long and thin fell out of the sky and crashed at her feet, just barely missing her already battered head.
"What is it?" she yelled.
"Torch!" he answered proudly.
Sara swallowed her frustration. "Fewmet, I don't have any way to light it."
"It already lit. Just blow on it."
Cautiously she reached out and picked up the torch. One end was very hot and glowed a faint red as if the flame had just been banked.
The horax suddenly chittered, and two of the creatures charged at her from left and right. Sara did not have time to think. She blew frantically on the torch, then whirled the end outward toward the horax on her left. To her surprise and the horax's, the torch burst into bright yellow flame. The horax chittered in rage and fell back, its eyes blinded.
The light was so bright to Sara's eyes after the blackness of the ruin that for several moments she couldn't see either. The creature on her right scuttled under her desperately waving knife and fastened its mandibles on her ankle.
Sara shrieked a cry of mingled pain and rage. She whipped the knife around to an underhanded grip and drove the point downward toward the black shape she could barely see by her leg. Her stroke fell true and pierced the horax just behind one of its eyes. The terrible pressure on her ankle relaxed, and the creature slumped to the ground, mortally wounded.
Furiously she kicked it in the direction of the other horaxes. One of them grabbed the body and hauled it out of sight. The others fell back to regroup.
Slowly Sara's eyes grew accustomed to the change of light. The torch burned merrily in her hand, throwing a myriad of dancing shadows on the wall of the corridor. The horaxes remained out of sight, although she could still hear them chittering and scuffling just beyond the torchlight.
"Fewmet?" she called hopefully. "Can you find a rope?"
Silence met her query.
"Fewmet!" she bellowed again. To no avail. The night above remained quiet; the gully dwarf had left. Sara fought down a surge of panic. Maybe the gully dwarf had gone for help; maybe he was seeking for a ladder somewhere else. Surely he hadn't just taken off to look for a snack in some trash dump.
A strange sound burst out of the darkness where the horaxes lurked. A high-pitched humming sound reverberated along the corridor and vibrated down into the depths of the ruin. It lasted several seconds, stopped, and started again.
Sara shivered. The noise sounded too much like a signal.
The humming stopped, and a deep silence settled back over the lightless chambers. Then, far away, from somewhere deep within the old temple, came an answer.
The woman gasped. She dropped the torch and made a desperate leap upward toward safety. She managed to jam the blade of her knife into a crack in the wall above her head, and she hung there trying to find purchase for her feet. But the walls were smooth stone at her level, and her body, weakened from the blow to her head, could not muster the strength to make the sheer climb. The blade of her knife slipped loose, and she tumbled to the ground beside the torch. She lay still, sick and dizzy.
The horaxes seemed to sense her weakness. Three of them moved closer, clacking their mandibles.
Sara managed to stagger to her feet. Her ankle hurt like fury and her head was ringing. She picked up the torch and waved it at the creatures. "Get away!" she hissed.
They stopped just out of her reach, but they did not retreat. They had her pinned against the wall and they knew it. They simply waited, their round, black eyes watching her every move.
Sara waited, too, her knife in one hand, the torch in the other. Her eyes never left the shiny black horaxes.
Two sounds simultaneously registered in her throbbing head, a man's voice and the clatter of dozens of horax feet coming along the corridor.
"Is there anyone down there?" the man's voice yelled.
"Yes! I'm here! Hurry, please! They're coming!" she screamed.
"Sara Conby?" the man cried, amazed.
"Yes! Hurry! I need a rope!"
Shouts echoed down the crater. Someone called an order, and suddenly a rope snaked down. Before she could wonder how she would find the strength to tie it around her, another rope dropped down, and a man slithered to the ground beside her. He took one look at the horaxes, spat an oath, and grabbed Sara around the waist.
"Haul us up. Now!" he shouted.
The horaxes lunged forward. Sara threw her torch at the creatures and wrapped her arms around the man's chest. In the guttering torchlight, she realized she was face-to-face with Morham Targonne. The young knight grinned at her, and suddenly they were hoisted into the air.
Their bodies banged against the wall as they were dragged upward. Sara held on with all her remaining strength until she found herself lying on the path above the opening.
The knight chuckled. "You can let go now before you crush my armor."
Sara lay back on the dirt and gazed upward at the blessed sky. Dawn lit the eastern horizon with pale gray light, and the air was bitterly cold. A few snowflakes drifted down to land on her face. She smiled at the world. She had never seen anything so lovely.
A wizened face with a long beard blocked her vision, and Fewmet the gully dwarf looked worriedly down at her. "Knight woman all right? I find help."
For an answer, Sara threw her arms around him and hugged him, rags and all. Then the world whirled through her mind, and she slipped quietly into a peaceful darkness.
15
Derrick told Sara later she slept for thirty-six hours.
When she first woke up, she had no idea how much time had passed. She lay dreamily on her cot, tucked beneath a warm blanket, and let her senses gradually return. Daylight glimmered through the walls of her tent, and someone had kept a small fire burning in her brazier, where her teakettle gently simmered over the embers.
Memories of her night's activities returned with total clarity, and she wondered what time it was. Was she too late to stop Massard from going to the general? At that moment, she did not worry that he had. She made a vow that she would make Massard pay somehow for that horrible night in the temple ruins. He wasn't going to get away with what he did to her.
She lifted her head gingerly from the pillow and was relieved to see her skull was not going to split apart. The tent didn't spin around her and her stomach didn't rebel. A dull headache was all that remained. She sat up and rested on the edge of the cot for a minute, trying to decide if she wanted to find the latrine or go back to sleep.
Voices began to intrude on her peaceful solitude.
She stretched her muscles carefully, pulled on her boots, and climbed to her feet. The voices outside grew heated, and all of them were familiar. Her curiosity was piqued.
A large shadow lay across the entrance of her tent, and at that moment, a faint rumbling began to vibrate in the air.