‘Help!’ came a distant cry. ‘Please … help me. Oh please, please.’ It sounded like a child.
Flangers turned that way, searching the darkness.
‘No, Sergeant,’ said Flydd, laying a hand on his arm. ‘If we stop to render aid to one, all may fail.’
‘But it’s a kid, surr,’ Flangers said in a choked voice.
‘I know,’ Flydd said gently, ‘but we must go on.’ He looked left, then right. Then left again. ‘Bloody Muss! I don’t know which way.’
‘Left,’ Klarm said without hesitation.
No one asked how he knew. At the far end they clambered up a pile of rubble two storeys tall, over a precariously founded stone arch and onto a bridge formed by a crumbling stretch of lath and plaster ceiling that had fallen from somewhere above. It spanned a chasm at least three storeys deep. Something flickered redly in the depths, though there was no smoke.
‘I don’t think that’s going to support our weight,’ said the biggest and heaviest of the soldiers. ‘Better look for another way.’
‘We haven’t time,’ said Flydd. ‘It looks solid enough. A couple of beams are holding it. Just tread carefully.’
‘That’s all right for you,’ Irisis grumbled. ‘You don’t weigh more than a cupful of fleas.’
‘I’d better go first then, in case you fall and carry the lot with you,’ said Flydd callously. He stepped out onto the bridge, which was mottled white and black in the moonlight, the black patches barely distinguishable from the holes.
Klarm followed, stepping confidently. Nish went after him, trying to place his feet precisely where the dwarf’s had gone, though it was awkward owing to the greater length of his stride. Four steps out from the edge, his right foot went through a patch of plaster. Nish tried to scramble back but was too far off-balance. He fell forwards, his left knee punched a hole through more plaster and he fell. He threw his arms out and managed to hook the left over the supporting beam.
‘Help!’ he roared, but the others were well back and Flydd five or six steps ahead.
Nish was flailing desperately, the weight inexorably straightening his arm, when Klarm sprang, landed with his stumpy legs straddling the two beams and caught Nish by the collar. Legs spread-eagled like a gymnast, Klarm strained until his eyes stood out of his head.
Nish knew the little man couldn’t do it. The beams slipped, Klarm wobbled back and forth and threw out his free arm to balance himself.
Flydd took a step towards them. More plaster crumbled.
‘Don’t move!’ cried Klarm.
Flydd froze. Klarm bellowed like a buffalo. His face and neck had gone purple and there was a bead of saliva on his lower lip. His arm trembled; then, with agonising slowness, he lifted Nish’s dead weight a fraction.
‘Reach up with your right foot, lad,’ he said after he’d raised Nish a couple of hand-spans. ‘You’ll have to take the strain. I’m not tall enough to lift you all the way, and if the beams slip again we’re both gone.’
Nish felt for the beam, stretching sideways and up, but his calf muscles knotted. He couldn’t allow them to cramp. He eased back, stretched again and his foot touched the side of the beam.
‘You’ll have to get your foot on top,’ said Klarm, the sinews in his neck standing out like cords. ‘Push sideways and you’ll force the beam away – and I’m already doing the splits.’
Up, up Nish reached. The beam slipped again and he saw the agonised expression on Klarm’s face as he was forced to stretch even further. Nish hooked his heel over the top of the beam, took a little of the strain and, almost miraculously, the beam came back towards him. He levered, Klarm lifted and with a heave and a shudder Nish was on the beam, clinging to it with his legs dangling down either side.
He was drenched in sweat, his heart hammering, and his knees had turned to rubber. Nish looked back at the silent group. No miracle at all. Irisis and Flangers had linked arms around the beams, taken the strain and pulled them together.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.
Klarm extended a hand and lifted Nish to his feet. Nish wobbled after him, this time stepping exactly where the little man had and, ten or twelve steps later, reached the other side. He turned to watch the rest of the party.
‘What’s that funny smell?’ said Irisis when she was halfway across. She stopped to sniff the air, no more troubled by the crossing than if she’d been walking down a path.
‘I can’t smell anything,’ grunted Flangers as he edged his way after her, looking green.
‘It’s a sweet, gassy odour.’ Irisis took another breath. ‘Not unpleasant.’
‘Round here, nice smells can mask … other things,’ said Klarm, kneading the muscles of his calves. ‘I’d not breathe too deeply if I were you.’
‘Muss did say to follow our noses,’ said Irisis.
‘And you know what I think about his advice.’ He sniffed the air. ‘It’s coming from that direction.’
They went along a narrow service hall, relatively free of debris, then up a steep, straight staircase that ran on for three floors. In several places the steps were covered in rubble or broken plaster, and further up by a large, intricately carved soapstone cabinet that had fallen on a stout, muscular woman with closely cropped grey hair. Blood trickled down the steps from the back of her head.
‘She’s dead,’ said Flydd after a cursory examination. ‘Was she carrying it to a place of safety?’
‘Stealing it in the confusion, more likely,’ said Klarm, ‘else she’d have had someone to help her.’
‘It’s hard to see how she could have hoped to profit from it. She could hardly carry it through the mountains.’
‘People don’t always act rationally in a disaster.’
‘I’ll bet the scrutators did,’ said Flydd, moving around the dead woman and up. ‘They’ll have a refuge somewhere in here.’
‘I doubt if any hiding place could be proof against what’s happened here,’ said Klarm. ‘The force that sliced Nennifer up and rearranged it came from outside our three dimensions.’
‘Where are all the people?’ said Nish.
‘Probably sucked through a dimensional wormhole into the void,’ speculated Irisis gloomily. ‘Like we’re going to be before too long.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Flydd. ‘They would have fled through the rear doors and windows. If they’ve any sense they’ll be in the air-dreadnought yard around the back. Even if the walls collapse, it’s sheltered from the wind and they can make fires there.’
‘Getting back to the amplimet,’ said Klarm, ‘how are we supposed to master it without Yggur or Malien?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flydd.
‘Seems as though we came all this way without a proper plan and we still don’t have one.’
‘There’s no point to having a plan, since we don’t know what we’re going to find.’
Klarm looked unconvinced. The statement did nothing for Nish’s confidence either. ‘It’s awfully quiet,’ he said. The creaking had stopped, the cries for help faded long ago. There was no sound but the distant wind.
They kept climbing, only to be confronted by an appalling stench on the fourth floor.
‘Slowly now,’ said Flydd.
The air was hot up here. Klarm pressed open an iron door with a fingertip, and reeled back. If the smell had been bad lower down, it was revolting here, and the walls were covered with a greasy film of soot.
‘It smells like burnt meat, or leather. Or hair.’
‘Perhaps all three,’ said Flydd, crumpling a corner of his cloak in his fist and breathing through it.
Nish pulled his sleeve down and held it over his nose, which didn’t help much since the cloth stank of vomit. He glanced at Irisis, who looked green.
‘What do you think has happened?’ he whispered.
‘Be quiet,’ hissed Flydd.
Irisis allowed him to move ahead, then said out of the corner of her mouth, ‘The scrutators aren’t roasting us a welcome dinner.’