Moments later, Martan stopped. "Listen!" he whispered urgently.
Gawain cocked his head, and this time he too thought he heard a distant ringing, iron striking rock. But there was no telling from which direction the sound had originated. It echoed eerily, bouncing off countless rock walls, travelling countless tunnels.
"Tooling." Martan said, so quietly Gawain barely heard. "Best be hushed, Serre, what we hears, so can they, whoever they be. And dwarves they ain't, from the sound o' the tooling."
Gawain stepped forward, and shone his lamp down and around. They seemed to standing on a broad expanse of flat rock, and then Martan tilted Gawain's arm up, so the beam from lamp lanced skyward. He could not see the cave roof.
"How high?" Gawain gasped.
"Dunno. Never seen it. Stay close to me…" and with that Martan led Gawain forward. Forty paces, and the rock floor ahead of them disappeared into blackness. "The rip."
They eased forward, and then lay down, sliding close to the edge. A wind, cold and chill, ran the length of the chasm. Gawain played his lamp beam around, but could see neither the bottom nor the far side of the great gash in the world.
"Listen." Martan prompted, and picked up a rock, and dropped it over the edge. Nothing.
Gawain counted a hundred heartbeats. Still no sound.
"How far you reckon you can chuck one of them arrers of yours?" Martan asked.
"Just for distance? Maybe three hundred and fifty paces, perhaps a bit more."
"Give it a try. Listen for the sound of it striking rock."
They backed away from the edge, and stood. Gawain threw open his cloak, strung an arrow, and hurled it into the darkness. The snapping of the bowstring as it released the shaft echoed sharp and faded, and they listened for the sound of the arrow striking. Nothing.
"You know what a grappinbow is?" Martan asked.
"No."
"It's a kind of crossbow. Big, 'eavy. Use 'em for bridgework in outworld. Idea is, you fire a girt big bolt, with a rope tied to it. Launch it across a river gorge, to make the startin's of a rope bridge. It'll fire a normal bolt a good thousand paces. I 'eard tell, from the old miner who led me down here when I was your age, they'd brung one down with 'em once. Fired a bolt yonder. Heard no strike. Can you imagine?"
"In truth? A thousand paces?"
Martan shrugged. "Dunno. Can't see any miner worth a spit dragging a grappinbow all the way down 'ere just to do that. See, if there ain't no-one on the other side to fetch up the rope, no point using it to try and build a bridge, is there? But we proved today, that rip's more'n three-fifty of your giant's paces across. More'n that deep, too."
"Which way does it run?"
"East to west, same as the Teeth above."
"How do you know?"
Martan shrugged. "I'm fifty years a miner, near as spit. East is yonder. West that way….Listen!"
More tooling sounds, and then Martan hissed "Stay here!" before hurrying, with alarming speed, to the edge of the chasm.
There, he flung himself down, hanging his head over the edge. Gawain waited, tense, standing in the middle of his lamp's small pool of light, watching the dwarf as he cocked his head this way and that.
Finally, after an age, the miner drew back from the precipice, stood, and hurried back to Gawain.
"Definitely 'uman workin's. From the west."
"From the west? Are you sure? How can you tell?"
"From the west. I'm sure. I'm fifty years a miner."
"Where in the west?"
"The rip itself, or very near its edge I should say. Maybe five mile, maybe ten, difficult to tell with the winds."
"Then after we've slept, we'll follow the rip to the source of the sounds."
"Can't Serre."
"Why not?"
"Buttress and rockfall, maybe five 'undred o' my paces that way. No chance digging through, no way o' climbing over."
"In truth?"
"In truth. When I were your age, I were of a mind to walk the rip, see if I could find oresign exposed by nature."
Gawain sighed, and sank to the ground. "We have to discover the source of those sounds. It may be that the Ramoths have somehow bridged the chasm. It may be the route through the Teeth to Morloch himself."
"Then, Serre, rest well. For when we've slept, we've to retrace our steps back to that first rest chamber, and take that tunnel as was worked by 'umans after all."
Gawain groaned, disgusted. "I though you said it petered out after ten miles?"
"So it does." Martan grunted, settling down and unpacking his blankets. "But there's other shafts lead off it, and more from them that leads to the rip. The route we took was the quickest to get here, from where we started."
Gawain spread his blankets, and took the remains of his first cake of frak from his pack. There was perhaps an eighth of it left. They must have been weeks in the tunnels already.
"Sorry yer disappointed, Serre." Martan said sincerely, "But as I said, this is the Teeth. 'Ard rock, and pain."
"Aye." Gawain sighed, settling down on his blankets, his back protesting. "Hard rock, and pain."
21. The Nest
Were it not for Gawain's stone heart and the constant reminder of Raheen strapped across his shoulder, he could very easily have given up, and returned to Threlland, and the slaying of Ramoth emissaries.
But hard rock and pain were not the sole prerogatives of the Teeth. Hard rock and pain resided in Gawain's chest, and they fortified him as he and the old miner retraced their route back to the chamber where they'd first rested so long ago. After sleep, they set off down the 'fresh worked' tunnel, and again the world was reduced to the claustrophobic confines illuminated by their glowstone lamps.
Martan protested not once, and Gawain's respect for dwarves knew no bounds. He could not imagine a lifetime spent thus, let alone with the added agonies of hammering passages through this unrelenting stone and finding no reward for the effort. On the contrary, Martan seemed positively to thrive and revel in the confined spaces and the damp atmosphere.
From time to time, the old dwarf would pause, and let out a little chuckle, and shake his head. When prompted, he would tell an amusing tale about this miner or that, and what had happened while cutting this particular section or that tunnel yonder. It kept their spirits up, and bound them closer together.
Gawain was, he knew, completely lost. Should anything befall his companion, then death by starvation awaited the young man. He'd never find his way out again, not in a lifetime of trying. No wonder Martan had politely declined the notion of assisting Allazar in drawing a map, and Gawain felt slightly foolish on recalling the suggestion.
During one of their rest periods in a small chamber, Gawain had remarked how sprightly and sure-footed Martan was, for all his years. He couldn't believe the old man had been denied the mines in Threlland through age. This drew an astonished look from the elderly miner.
"When the time comes you can't cut ten times yer length in a day, what good are you to anyone?"
Gawain shook his head sadly, and with awe. He doubted he himself could cut half his own length in a day, in this unyielding rock. Threlland hills were softer, Martan had explained gently, hoping that Gawain wouldn't feel too dreadfully inadequate that humans were so inept underground.
Gawain had long given up attempting to measure time, and instead measured their progress by rest-chambers and the rate at which his frak was diminishing. Martan had said not to worry, he would tell Gawain when it was time to return to Threlland, if they found no sign of the Ramoths.
But they did. Tooling sounds began to echo faintly, and then they grew louder. Still the tunnels were dwarfcut, but here and there, in the rest-chambers, they found an increasing number of signs that humans had attempted to heighten the walls for easier access. The tooling sounds grew louder still, and Martan grew nervous, closing the shutter on his glowstone lamp so that barely a glimmer lit the way ahead. Gawain shut his down completely, following Martan by sound alone until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.