'Well,' Samlor said after consideration, 'I don't think my first look at this place had better be after dark. There'll be a watchman or the like, I suppose ... but we'll deal with that when we find it. I -' he paused and looked straight at the younger man instead of continuing to eye the harbour. 'We agreed that your pay would be the full story when I had it to tell ... and you'll have that. But it may be I won't be talking much after tonight, so take this,' his clenched hand brushed Hort's flexed to empty into the other's palm, 'and take my friendship. You've - acted as a man in this thing, and you have neither blood nor honour to drive you to it.'
'One thing more,' said the youth. 'The Beysib - the Setmur clan, I mean - are real sailors, and they know their fishing, too ... But there are things they don't know about the harbourages here, around Sanctuary. I don't think they know that there's a tunnel through the east headland of the cove they've chosen for whatever they're going to do.' Hort managed a tight smile. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The risk he was taking by getting involved with the stranger was very real, though most of the specific dangers were more nebulous to him than they were to Samlor. 'One end of the tunnel opens under the corniche of the headland. You can row right into it at high tide. And when you lift the slab at the other end, you're in the temple itself.'
Hort's coda had drawn from his listener all the awed pleasure that a story well told could bring. The local man stood up, strengthened by the respect of a strong man. 'May your gods lead you well, sir,' Hort said, squeezing the Cirdonian's hand in leave-taking. 'I look forward to hearing your story.'
The youth strode out of the cantina with a flourish and a nod to the other patrons. Samlor shook his head. In a world that seemed filled with sharks and stonefish, Hort's bright courage was as admirable as it was rare.
To say that Samlor felt like an idiot was to understate matters. It was the only choice he could come up with at short notice, however, and which did not involve others. At this juncture, the Cirdonian was not willing to involve others.
He had rented a mule cart. It had provided a less noticeable method of scouting the cove than a horse would have done. The cart had also transported the punt he had bought to the nearest launching place to the headland that he could find. The roadstead on which Sanctuary was built was edged mostly by swamps, but the less-sheltered shore to the west had been carved away by storms. The limestone corniche rose ten to fifty feet above the sea, either sheer or with an outward batter. A lookout on the upper rim could often not see a vessel inshore but beneath him. That was to Samlor's advantage; but the punt, the only craft the Cirdonian felt competent to navigate, was utterly unsuited to the ocean.
Needs must when the devil drives. Samlor's great shoulders braced the pole against the cliff face, not the shelving bottom. Foam echoed back from the rocks and balanced the surge that had tried to sweep him inward with it. In that moment of stasis, Samlor shot the punt forward another twenty feet. Then the surf was on him again, his muscles flexing on the ten-foot pole as they transferred the sea's power to the rock, again and again.
Samlor had launched the punt at sunset. By now, he had no feeling for time nor for the distance he had yet to struggle across to his once-glimpsed goal. He had a pair of short oars lashed to the forward thwart, but they would have been totally useless for keeping him off this hungry shore. Samlor was a strong man, and determined; but the sea was stronger, and the fire in Samlor's shoulders was beginning to make him fear that the sea was more determined as well.
Instead of spewing back at him, the next wave continued to be drawn into the rock. It became a long tongue, glowing with microorganisms. Samlor had reached the tunnel mouth while he had barely enough consciousness to be aware of the fact.
Even that was not the end of the struggle. The softer parts ofth& rock had been worn away into edges that could have gobbled the skiff like a duckling caught by a turtle. Samlor let the next surge carry him in to the depth of his pole. The phosphorescence limned a line of bronze hand-holds set into the stone. The powerful Cirdonian dropped his pole into the boat to snatch a grip with both hands. He held it for three racking breaths before he could find the strength to drag the punt fully aground, further up the tunnel.
The tunnel was unlighted. Even the plankton cast up by the spray illuminated little more than the surfaces to which it clung. Samlor spent his first several minutes ashore striking a spark from flint and steel into the tinder he carried in a wax-plugged tube. At first his fingers seemed as little under his control as the fibres of the wooden pole they had clutched so fiercely. Conscious direction returned to them the fine motor control they would need later in the night.
By the time a spark brightened with yellow flame instead of cooling into oblivion, Samlor's mind was at work again as well. His shoulders still ached while the blood leached fatigue poisons out of his muscles. He had been more tired than this before, however. The very respite from wave-battering increased the Cirdonian's strength.
With the tinder aflame, Samlor lighted the candle of his dark lantern. Then, carrying a ten-gallon cask under one arm and the lantern in the other hand, he began to walk up the gently rising tunnel. The lantern's shutter was open, and its horn lens threw an oval of light before him.
The tunnel was not spacious, but a man of Samlor's modest height could walk safely in it by hunching only a little in his strides. He could not imagine who had cut the passage through the rock, or why. Scraps - a buckle, a broken knife; a boot even - suggested that the smugglers used it. Samlor could imagine few circumstances, however, in which it would pay smugglers to off-load beneath the surf-hammered corniche rather than in the shelter of the cove. For them, the tunnel might be useful storage; but the smugglers had not built it, and in all likelihood they had as little knowledge of its intended purpose as Samlor did, or Hort.
Samlor set down the cask at what he estimated was the halfway point along the tunnel. The cask had been an awkward burden in the narrow confines, and its weight of a talent or more was as much as a porter would be expected to carry for even a moderate distance. Because it used muscles in a way that the punt had not, however, the hundred yards Samlor had carried the cask were almost
relaxing.
The only thing certain about the escape he hoped to make in a few hours was that he would have very little time. Now the Cir-donian set the cask on end and drew his fighting knife. The blade was double-edged and a foot long. It was stout enough at the cross-hilt to take the shock of a sword and was sharpened to edges that would hold as they cut bronze, rather than something that its owner could shave with. Samlor had razors for shaving. The knife was a
different sort of tool.
He set the point at the centre of one of the end-staves, using his left hand to keep the weapon upright. The butt cap was bronze, flat on top, and a perfect surface for Samlor to hammer with the heel of his right hand. The blade hummed. The beechwood cracked and sagged away from the point. Working the knife loose, Samlor then punched across the grain of the other four end staves as well. The line of perforations did not quite open the cask, but they would permit him to smash his heel through the weakened boards quickly
when the need arose.
He was more aware than before of the lantern's hot shell as he paced the rest of the tunnel's length. He could hear someone above him when he reached the end of the tunnel. The susurrus could have been anything, wind-driven twigs as easily as the slippers of a guard on the floor above. There was a sharper sound to punctuate that whispering, however; a spear grounded as the man paused, or the tip of a bow. The stone conducted sounds very well, but it conducted them so well that Samlor could not get a precise fix on where the guard was in relation to the trap door. For that matter, the caravan-master had no idea of how well the upward-pivoting door was concealed. It might very well flop open in the centre of the room above.