There was a wave of chatter in his mind, words he couldn’t quite make out. That meant that Ashd was communicating with one of the other vreki, their conversation far quicker and more complex than Koradan could follow.
Outside, the shouting intensified. Outside? Outside what? And how did he know that the voices wereoutside?
He heard a scuffling sound, then cursing. That was Sigmore’s voice. Good old Sigmore, always rushing into danger without thinking first. He should have stayed outside…
Oh, right. He was in a mine. Which had apparently just collapsed on him again. Koradan moaned, both from the ache spreading through his body and a curse at his own stupidity. No one who picked a fight with a mountain was ever going to come out the winner.
“Koradan! Are you alive? Talk to me, buddy.”
Stuck under a big pile of rock, he told Ashd. Thinking was far easier than talking right now. And Ashd would be passing the message along to Bel, who would tell Sigmore…
Hold on… when had Bel and Sigmore arrived? They hadn’t been here when Koradan had taken Paul into the mine. They must have come up after the two vreki had eaten their fill in the forest.
“Rodgard, can you get around to the right?” Sigmore said. “Can we lift this?” There was a round of muttering and groaning, then some of the weight lifted off his back. “Koradan? Come on, you fucker, Alfrix can’t have you yet.”
Koradan snorted out a laugh – perhaps inappropriately, given the circumstances, but Sigmore’s comment struck him as funny. “Can’t win a fight with the Destroyer,” he muttered. The ancient Chalandrian god was a stubborn bastard. “No more than you can win a fight with a mountain.”
“Yeah, well, this mountain is going to have to fight harder if it wants to keep you. On three. One, two,three!”
More of the weight lifted off his back, and Koradan could turn his head now, seeing Rodgard and Sigmore huddled in the tunnel, the pair of them smashed up against each other in the cramped space.
“Arix be praised, you’re alive. Is there enough space for you to wriggle out of there?”
He tried, and managed to slide sideways a little way, but that was as far as he got. “My boot’s stuck on something. I can’t get my leg out.”
Sigmore held up his lantern, and he spent a long moment peering back along the tunnel. “Nothing too big back there, from the looks of it. But we’re not going to be able to get past until this great slab is out of the way.”
“Can you drag it out of the tunnel?”
A moment of silence followed. “What do you think?” Sigmore asked Rodgard.
“It’d be a bloody hard job,” Rodgard said. “I think it’s small enough to fit out, but it’s damn heavy. And we’ve got basically no room to manoeuvre.”
Rope. Tie rock. I pull. Pull, pull, no more rock.
“Tie a rope around it and get Ashd to pull it out,” Koradan told them. “So long as it’s not going to destabilise anything else on its way out.”
“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“Or if not, I suppose I could just lie here forever and hope the mountain rots before I do.”
“Now there’s that flagrant optimism I’m so used to,” Rodgard said. “Fine, I’ll get a rope. Stay here, won’t you? Don’t go running off anywhere while I’m gone.” He crawled away down the tunnel, returning a minute later with a long rope. In the back of his mind, Koradan could feel Ashd’s satisfaction that they were making progress, as well as his apprehension at having to be very, very careful for his part of the job.
Once the rope was in place, Rodgard trailed the end of it out of the tunnel, and Koradan received a series of images and emotions from Ashd that told him the vreki was ready.
“You should head out as well,” Koradan told Sigmore. “There’s no telling if more of this might come down.”
“Fuck that,” Sigmore said. “You’ve told me how many times that you’d give your life for mine? You’ve got the brains of a sea urchin if you think I’m going to just walk away now to save my own hide.”
“There’s no point in both of us-”
“Stick it up your ass,Boss. You’re stuck with me.”
Koradan sighed, but he couldn’t help smiling a little. “Thank you, then.” He tuned in to Ashd, giving him as clear a picture as he could manage of the inside of the tunnel.Take up the slack in the rope. That’s it. Slowly now, just ease it forward…
It was a long and painstaking process. The fallen slab scraped along the bottom of the tunnel, and despite his insistence on staying with Koradan, Sigmore was forced to move ahead of the rock. There wasn’t enough width in the tunnel for him to get past it to Koradan’s side. It caught several times on snags in the tunnel, and each time Koradan told Ashd to wait, then Sigmore manoeuvred the slab left or right to let it run freely again. Eventually, both Sigmore and the rock disappeared around the corner of the tunnel, and Koradan was left alone. Soon afterwards, a cheer went up, and Koradan sent a mental inquiry to Ashd. In reply, he received a clear picture of the rock, out of the mine and being dragged away by several of the men.
Nice job,he said to Ashd.
