Despite herself, Riona snorted. "You'd be filled with arrows and rifle shot before we made it halfway to the top. And then the charr would get to shoot at you on the way down."
Kranxx's lantern's light cast deep shadows on the asura's face. "The Ebon Vanguard built this place to stand against the charr forever," he said. "They drew on the experience Ascalon accumulated during the construction of the Northern Wall, and they've had over two hundred years of keeping the charr out of the city to help them figure out where the weak parts are and what they need to do to keep them plugged."
"Then how have you noticed something they haven't?" asked Dougal.
Kranxx allowed himself a chuckle. "Because I'm asura, and they're human. They think in terms of reiterations. They build something that they hope will stand, then they shore it up the best they can in the places they get wrong. People with brains think not in terms of single bits, like walls, but in terms of systems-especially interlocking systems and how they work together. The thing that lets Ebonhawke survive isn't the wall or the Vanguard. It's the asura gate. Without that, the charr would have been able to starve the humans out of here long ago. With it, the humans have managed a record-breaking stand against a truly determined foe."
"Granted," said Ember, whose hair bristled at the mention of her people's failure to wipe this settlement from Ascalon. "Many charr believe that Ebonhawke is impregnable, and taking it a waste of effort better spent elsewhere. The strongest dissenters are among the Iron Legion. This is why they have taken over the siege."
"And with their machines, they might someday manage to do it," said Riona, louder than she needed to. "One more reason we must work for this truce."
"Breaking down a wall isn't all that challenging, children," said Kranxx. "It just requires the right machines, and the charr have developed many crude but effective machines that could manage it. The trick is getting those machines into the right places. The Vanguard has gotten extremely good at keeping the charr from reaching those places."
Gullik hefted the iron hatch again and it rose another couple inches. The darkness beyond it gaped like an open, infected wound.
"So, why do we have to go down there, again?" asked Dougal.
"Because there's one spot in the wall that the Vanguard rarely watches and the charr don't attack: the sewage exit. Ebonhawke mostly gets its water from streams that flow down into it from the mountains, and they tap an underground river with a few deep wells. But they also need to get rid of all the waste they generate. Otherwise, the city would eventually be overwhelmed with it."
Even under her fur, Ember seemed to be turning a little green.
"The honey wagons dump the waste into a few well-positioned central depositories, each of which sits downstream from the wells and the point at which they divert some of the mountain streams into the sewer's main tunnel. The diverted water then carries the refuse under the city until it spills out of the far side of the mountain a couple hundred yards away from the wall."
Dougal's stomach turned. "You're kidding," he said, although he knew the asura wasn't.
The asura smiled. "The charr can't stand the smell. Every now and then, the Vanguard sends someone up to check out the sewage tunnel's exit, but he finds it locked up tight, and that's a good enough excuse for them to forget about it. The Vanguard isn't made up of complete idiots. They know about the sewage exit, of course, and they've secured it fairly well against attacks-from the outside."
"But not from the inside!" said Gullik, who had finally lifted the iron hatch and stood there, splay-legged, holding it up. "By the Snow Leopard's lazy tail, this just might work!"
"Might work? Of course it will work. It's foolproof!" He scanned the faces of the others. "It has to be when you're working with fools."
Ember growled at the asura, who let out a nervous laugh. "Present company partially excepted, of course."
"Then we have to go," said Riona. "And now, before the guards are done with Kranxx's foolishness and organize a proper search."
The set of her jaw told him everything Dougal needed to know. She hadn't lost an iota of her determination. She would do anything to see her mission through.
Dougal pointed into the darkness beyond the iron door that Kranxx had opened. A wrought-iron ladder disappeared into the abyss below.
"Let's get it over with."
The descent was interminable, and Dougal wondered how deep the original sewers ran in Ebonhawke. Gullik went last, securing the now-unlocked iron hatch behind them with what the norn probably thought was stealth but, to the others in the narrow vertical passage, sounded like the toll of a dead man's bell.
At the bottom of the ladder Kranxx handed his lantern to Gullik, then reached into his pack and pulled out and unlimbered a long pole made up of several hinged sections with a hook on one end. He shoved the other end into a pole-width pocket sewn into the back of his pack, then dug out and hung a glowing blue rock from the end of the hook. He shouldered the pack again so that the rock hung above him, about five feet off the ground, lighting his way, and he led them into the sewer.
Killeen followed right after Kranxx, peering at everything she saw in repulsed fascination. Dougal and Riona followed behind Killeen, with Ember after them and Gullik hunkering along in the rear, his head and shoulders held down tight to keep from scraping against the tunnel's ceiling.
The tunnel had been cut straight out of the side of the mountain, then covered over with fitted stones. Wooden trusses held up most of the roof, although in spots it had caved in or begun to sag. Far less care had been taken with these tunnels than with the elaborate underground structures in Divinity's Reach. Dougal supposed that had been determined by what each had been designed for. Here in Ebonhawke, they didn't have enough space for a graveyard: they burned their dead and watched the smoke from the fire carry their spirits off to the Mists.
At first, the floor of the tunnel was flat and dry, just like the passages that Dougal and Riona had been caught in as kids; but Dougal could hear the sound of running water up ahead. They soon came to a T with another tunnel. A wide stream ran through a deep notch cut into the left of this, leaving just enough space on the right for a human to walk.
The stench did not improve. It was awful.
"Wolf's nose!" Gullik said. "This smells worse than the latrines I had to muck out as a young warrior in the Battle of the Burning Pass."
Dougal peered into the filthy waters and tried to ignore the things he saw floating downstream. Mountain streams ran as clear as the rain, but the surface of this muck was so opaque, he could not discern its depths.
Kranxx led the way along the right-hand side of the stream, where a narrow walkway was perched over the flow. He could walk normally. Killeen, Riona, and Dougal had to follow more slowly, edging along. For Ember and Gullik, there would be no other choice than to wade through the edges of the muck.
And suddenly Ember stopped.
"Not a chance," the charr said, her voice filled with revulsion. "There has to be another way."
"We've already been over this," Kranxx said, calling back down the tunnel. His voice echoed off the slick masonry that lined the walls.
"I cannot-" Ember bit her tongue and swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.
"You are a brave and powerful warrior from a proud and magnificent people," Gullik said. "You have the strength to do this, and I will be there with you."
After a moment of trying to steel herself, Ember held out her hands instead. "Take off these chains," she said.
Riona shook her head. "Not until we are away from Ebonhawke. What if the Vanguard found us with you unchained?"
"I am not going to forge my way through that filth while bound in chains." Ember's tone made it clear that this point was not negotiable.