“It’s all right,” Estrada told him. “It’s not your fault. We’ll just have to let you set the pace.”
If she meant it to sound comforting, it hardly came out that way. Anyway, it was easier said than done. How exactly did twenty people match their speed to the giant crawling along behind them? Suddenly, Estrada’s insistence on bringing Saltlick was looking ludicrous indeed, and I could hear the rumblings of discontent from further up the line. The loyalty of the men supplied by Mounteban was doubtful enough already and this surely wasn’t helping.
The night wore on — or so I assumed. It was frightening how quickly even the memory of daylight, of a sky above, had vanished in favour of the conviction that this subterranean channel was all the world there was. After a while — minutes perhaps, a couple of hours, a day for all I knew — I muttered to Estrada’s back, “How far can it possibly be?”
“All the way beneath the western mountains,” she replied, without looking back.
“Which is…?”
“A long way.”
At least, thanks to Saltlick, I’d been able to recover my strength a little, and the added light of so many lanterns meant an opportunity to properly examine my surroundings. Alone, I’d thought the passage was blank-walled, little more than a mineshaft. Now I could see it was far more than that. The vertical supports were all of stone, and every one was patterned, in curious swirls and designs I could make no sense of.
I couldn’t believe that Pasaedan royalty had fashioned this sunless way, however desperate they might have been for an escape route. It was clear, though, from the clumsier workmanship, that the ceiling had been extended a good way upwards at some point. Had it not been, we would all have had to duck, and Saltlick couldn’t have moved at all.
The passage brought to mind the ancient tunnels behind Muena Palaiya where I’d first met Estrada — and I remembered the strange stories I’d heard over the years about those fathomless warrens. The deeper we travelled, the warmer the air became, and the more my nerves began to torment me. The final straw came when exits began to appear to either side, their arches too low for human traffic. What had Mounteban got us into?
“How do we even know which is the right way?” I asked Estrada, my voice a little tremulous.
Estrada showed me what she held in her hand, a map much like the designs of the palace I’d studied. This one, however, looked more like an abstract representation of a spider’s web. I assumed the dotted line running more or less straight across its middle was our route. Given how many opportunities to go wrong it offered the careless navigator, I couldn’t take much comfort from it.
I soon realised, though, that all we really needed to do was keep to the main tunnel, readily identified by its heightened ceiling. The answer to the side passages was simply to ignore them — even when odd shambling sounds seemed to drift from their mouths, or the splash of dripping water, or unidentifiable, musky odours. I tried to tell myself that with guardsmen and buccaneers in front of me and a giant behind, I was probably as safe as I could be anywhere.
As it turned out, however, it might have been better had our route been a little more intricate. Had that been the case, we might have stood a chance of losing the palace soldiers.
I was never sure what tipped Estrada off; whether it was some noise I’d missed or just a lucky guess. But out of nowhere she called another stop, and when the line had shuffled to a halt, sent word for the lanterns to be masked. It took me an effort of will not to protest. The thought of absolute darkness was almost more than I could bear. Only knowing how Estrada would ridicule me kept my mouth shut. Still, my heart sped up with every light that went suddenly black, until by the time there was only one distant glow left, it was hammering a tattoo in my ears. I held my breath, trying and failing to ready myself for that last plunge into total obscurity.
It took me the seconds my eyes needed to adjust to appreciate that total obscurity wasn’t what I was surrounded by. Deep gloom, certainly, but I could make out Estrada’s silhouette before me, and trace the border of my own outstretched hand. I turned and — seeing only the outline of Saltlick’s bulk — knelt down. Just visible between his legs, far back in the passage, was a dim glow, like a glint in the pupil of a mammoth eye. I couldn’t see movement, but that didn’t mean much; the slightest turn in the passage would be enough to hide our pursuers from view.
“They’re close,” I said, “and gaining.” I was surprised by how calm I sounded.
“We just need to keep our lead a little longer,” Estrada said. “I’m sure we’re nearly there. They can’t possibly follow us over open water.” Then, to the group at large she called, “All right… unmask the lanterns. Pick up the pace. They’ve found us.”
Pick up the pace — as if it were that easy. Saltlick had been travelling as fast as he could since the beginning, and I wasn’t about to let him fall behind again. What made it all the more excruciating was that, with our lanterns relit, there was no way to judge whether the palace troops were closing on us. Likely we’d only know when arrows or sword blows started raining upon Saltlick’s back — and given his resistance to complaining, perhaps not even then.
“Can’t you go a little faster?” Estrada asked him, though it was obvious he couldn’t.
Saltlick’s expression was pained beyond measure. He shook his head, and even that slight gesture brought dust shivering from the ceiling.
Estrada considered only briefly. Then she bellowed up the line, “Run, all of you! Prepare the boat… we’ll catch you up!”
We? Was Estrada’s plan that hacking their way through Saltlick and me would keep the palace guards occupied long enough for her and the others to make their escape? Right then, I’d have put nothing past her.
Soon the nearest lantern was only a distant glow, leaving us travelling in thick darkness. I was briefly amused, and then horrified, by the thought that if the next man in line got too far ahead we’d have to depend on our pursuers for light. However, even as the glimmer shrunk to nothing, I realised we were past the point of needing to rely on it. The walls were charcoal now, not black, and lightened ahead. Somewhere in that direction was natural light.
When the passage opened, finally, it was both sudden and dramatic: one moment the dark around us was the closeness of stone-chiselled walls, the next a cavernous space, the outlines of which I could barely distinguish. We’d come out in a huge cave, its domed ceiling descending to a distant line ahead, where it gave way to the faded blue of an early morning sky. We’d travelled through the entire night.
The shale beneath our feet ran down to a wooden jetty, and from that a wide pier extended towards the cavern’s distant mouth. The rest of the party were already upon the pier, and nearing its far end — where the means of our deliverance lay, chopping slightly in the creased grey water.
To call it a disappointment was an understatement. I’d feared that the boat might be absent, or left to rack and ruin beyond any hope of saving us.
It had never even crossed my mind to worry that there might be two of them.
CHAPTER FIVE
How had it not occurred to anyone? Of course there would be two boats. This was the Ans Pasaedan royal family. There was no way Panchetto could have fled a revolution with anything less than a boatload of servants; what would he have done if he needed his nails trimmed three days into the voyage and the Head Nail Trimmer wasn’t there to do it? Now that the evidence was before me, I was amazed he’d stopped at anything shy of a flotilla.
Of course, that didn’t mean I wasn’t cursing his name. One boat for us, one for our pursuers, and no hope of escape. Unless…
“Saltlick, could you sink that second boat? Punch a hole in its side or…”