Geomancer

'Please, no!' Tiaan whispered.

'I'll take care of her,' cried the bald man with the bloodlust in his eye.

Seizing him by the arm, the sergeant walked down toward the tunnels. 'Oh, let them have their fun! We might all be dead tomorrow.'

The remaining three threw her down on the stone. Tiaan struggled but they were too strong. Someone bound her hands. She screamed at the top of her voice. A rough hand went over her mouth.

'Hoy?' came an echoing cry from below. The sergeant ran toward the left-most of the five lower passages, to listen at the entrance.

'Hoy?' came the cry, once more.

'Yes?' said Numbl cautiously. Before long Gi-Had appeared, followed by a troop of ten soldiers, and a guide.

'How did you get here?' said Numbl in amazement.

'I would ask the same of you?'

Tiaan bit the hand, which jerked out of the way. She gasped for air.

'What's going on?' roared Gi-Had. 'I heard a woman scream.'

The soldiers let Tiaan go. She stood up. There was a mutter of conversation down below.

'You damn fools!' Gi-Had roared. 'That's Artisan Tiaan! If you've harmed her you'll be quartered by the perquisitor himself! Get down here.'

The soldiers trotted down, looking everywhere but at him.

'How were we supposed to know?' said the sergeant. 'Nobody told us you wanted her.'

'Tiksi cretins!' Gi-Had raged. 'So you just go around molesting every woman you meet, do you?'

None of them met his eyes.

'Bah!' cried Gi-Had. 'Get out of my way! Tiaan, I must – '

Before he could move there again came that tapping sound she had heard in her dreams.

The overseer's head whipped around. 'What's that? Sergeant, go and see.'

The entire group went still. Tiaan could hear Gi-Had's breath whistling in and out. No one spoke. Tap-tap-tap.

Numbl tiptoed from one entrance to another, trying to work out where the noise was coming from.

'I heard it before,' Tiaan called down.

'When?' cried Gi-Had.

'Quite a few hours ago.'

'It could be someone in the mine,' said Pelf.

'This mine's been abandoned for twenty years,' said Gi-Had. 'It was worked out when my father was still alive.'

'Could still be a prospector in there,' said the bald man who had wanted to kill her.

'Or a bear,' the sergeant conjectured, 'cracking open a goat's thigh bone.'

'I said shut up!' hissed Gi-Had. 'Gull, Dom, Hants, Ven-Koy, Thrawn! Stand at the tunnel entrances and listen. Everyone else, ready your weapons and take cover.'

Five of his soldiers went to their positions. 'It's probably nothing,' said Gi-Had, pacing back and across. Another tap.

'It came from here,' said stocky, white-haired Hants, an ugly man with pox scars and a cast in his left eye. He was standing at the entrance to the middle tunnel. 'Will I go and see?'

'Yes!' said Gi-Had. 'Hey, what's your name?' he asked the good-looking soldier.

'Pelf, surr!'

'You're a brave man, Pelf. Go with him.'

The two headed off, pitch-coated torches flaring. Tiaan flexed her bound hands, began to go down, then stopped. Everyone was as tense as wire. Gi-Had jammed a torch in a crack in the floor and stared into the third tunnel, tapping one boot. There was no further sound.

'Can you see their torches?' he asked.

'No!' said tall Gull, beside him.

'Neither can I,' Gi-Had muttered.

A scream reverberated out of the tunnel.

'What was that?' whispered Gull.

'More torches!' yelled Gi-Had, gesturing behind him. The soldiers crowded around.

'We'd better go help them,' said Gull, making no attempt to do so.

There came a thud, a shriek, and feet pounded down the tunnel. Pelf burst from the entrance, running without sword or torch. A continuous moan came from his open mouth.

'What is it, man?' yelled the sergeant. 'What's the matter with you?'

Pelf kept going. Gi-Had caught him by the shoulder, twisting him around. He shook him. 'Speak, damn you!'

Pelf choked and a clot of slobber ran into his beard. 'A band of lyrinx. We walked right into them.'

'How many?' said Gi-Had.

'What's happened to Hants?' yelled Numbl.

'He's dead. It bit his head right off. He kept walking, like a slaughtered rooster. The brains squirted…' Pelf vomited on his boots.

Gi-Had blanched but stood his ground. 'There's fifteen of us, and the guide. How many of them, Pelf?'

'Three, that I saw.' His downy jaw quivered.

The soldiers moved uneasily. 'Not good odds,' said the sergeant. 'Reckon we'd best retreat while we can. And maybe send someone on ahead to warn the manufactory. Just in case,' he added in a low voice, 'if you take my meaning.'

'Good idea. Rusp, go with the guide. Run, and don't stop for anything.'

Rusp, a man as wide as he was high, said, 'Think I'd be more use here, surr.'

'Maybe you're right. Gull -'

'I'll go,' said Pelf. 'We can take the woman too. Get her out of the way.'

A chill ran all the way down Tiaan's back.

'Get to your post, Pelf!' said Gi-Had. 'I'll not leave her in your hands. I'll be looking to you to lead the defence, since you showed such courage with an unarmed woman.'

Gull and the guide, an ancient miner Tiaan had met once or twice, by the name of Hurny, hurried off. The soldiers moved into a semicircle around the mouth of the third tunnel.

Tiaan did not rate their chances highly, or her own. She began to rasp her bonds on an edge of stone, since she could not reach her knife. It was hard work, for the marble tended to wear away before the fibres did. She had not made much progress when a noise shocked the soldiers rigid. It was a sharp clack, like an armoured foot striking a pebble.

'They're coming!' hissed Gi-Had.

The soldiers jammed their torches into whatever crevices and hollows they could find. The advance guard presented their javelins. Those on the wings of the semicircle held out swords. They looked like a bunch of terrified youths. Two, armed with crossbows, moved back.

Another noise, like the skittering of a stone across the floor. The javelins wavered, dipped then firmed. Fourteen pairs of eyes stared at the black opening. Tiaan rasped her bonds furiously.

Without warning a dark creature erupted from the tunnel to the left of the middle one. Another lyrinx came out of the right tunnel. They hurled themselves through the swordsmen and attacked the javelin-armed soldiers from behind. Three were dead before they could get their weapons into position. The fourth impaled a lyrinx in its armoured thigh, then his spear was broken, and he with it.

'To me!' roared Gi-Had, standing at the front with the sergeant. 'Archers, fire!'

The crossbows fired over the heads of the soldiers. A green-crested lyrinx fell, shot through the eye. Another was pierced in one mighty shoulder, though it shrugged at the injury and kept fighting. The creature was powerfully armoured there.

Four swordsmen were still on their feet, and Gi-Had. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their swords weaving, while the archers struggled to reload their clumsy weapons. A third lyrinx hurtled out of the middle tunnel. The soldiers had their backs to him and three fell without ever knowing why. The sergeant and Gi-Had fought on.

One archer fired again. The third lyrinx, which was smaller than the others, clawed at the back of its neck. It recovered, bounded across the cavern and took out both archers with single blows. A bolt shot vertically from the other crossbow, shattering a stalactite to pieces and raining down shards of limestone on the creature. A large piece struck it on the head, felling it. The second lyrinx had disembowelled Numbl, but was skewered between the thigh plates by Gi-Had. Purple blood gurgled out. Gi-Had feinted, ducked, darted to one side and ran for the tunnel that led back to the hedron mine. The lyrinx went after him, limping badly.

In all her life Tiaan had never seen such bloodshed and brutality. Everywhere she looked, men were thrashing, moaning, dying. She gave a last rasp of her bonds and they parted. She crept down to the battlefield. Twelve soldiers lay on the floor. Ten were dead, no question of it, and the others had not long to live.