Month 1, Day 4, Afternoon
The torch had burned down past the rags and into the wood. The light reached about two steps in front of me now. Past that I couldn't see anything.
Basha had her arm across my chest. We'd stopped where the passage stopped. The walls were gone on both sides, the floor kept going, and the air was colder and wider here. I held the torch out ahead of both of us and it didn't find a wall.
Old Ben put his hand flat on the last bit of stone wall and held still. He breathed in through his nose. "Big," he said. "Air's moving in there."
Behind us the others were packed into the narrow part. Too many people, not enough room, somebody's elbow in my back. Rafi was counting under his breath. Three torches. Mine, and two more back in the line.
Something moved at the edge of the light.
It came up slow and stopped where the light ended, low to the ground. The joints all bent the wrong way. The head had no face on it and it turned side to side. There were more behind it. I stopped counting at six.
"They're not coming in," Antoine said.
"No," Nikita said.
"Aleks." Basha didn't look at me. "Light. On it."
Of course. I stepped out past her arm and pushed the torch at the one in front. It threw itself back, scrambled, and stopped again just past the light.
Nobody moved for a second. Then Rafi let his breath out. "Okay," he said. "Okay. Good."
"We knew that," Antoine said.
"Doesn't hurt to check," Rafi said.
Basha lifted her free hand and made a sign. The two back torches came up the line to the front. Three of us held them now, out and a little apart, and the light overlapped into one stretch with no dark in the middle. She pointed and we backed into it, shoulders almost touching, the fire on the outside and everyone else behind it.
The things came off the light. Not far. They went back a few steps and spread along the front of it, left and right, and stopped. Two of them walked back and forth at the edge.
"It holds," Rafi said. His spear was up. "It holds."
"Don't move the lights," Basha said.
For a few seconds nothing happened. Then they came, and they didn't come at the fire.
One went low on the right, down by the floor, in under the dwarf's torch where it didn't reach the next one. The dwarf brought the hammer down and caught it and it folded and got back up. One came at the elf woman from the side. She went down and two people caught her arms and dragged her back into the middle. Viktor swung at it, hard, and missed, and swung again, and missed.
Nikita put his spear through the one in front of him. It folded around the point and slid off and got back up, and he set the spear again and waited for the next one. He didn't say anything. Antoine fought without hurrying. He put the blade through one, stepped back, put it through the next, and his face didn't change once. The reptilian caught one across the forearm and kept his feet and kept swinging.
And one came at me.
The last time one of them came at me I'd thrown my arms over my face and gotten lucky. This time I shoved the torch into it. It screamed, high and short, and went over backward, and I kept the fire up between us. My hands were shaking. I closed them harder on the torch.
"They want the torches," Old Ben said. He moved the grass blade to the other side of his mouth.
He was right. The dwarf got shoved in the crush and his torch hit the floor and rolled, and that whole side went black. Two of them were through before it stopped moving. Somebody screamed and bit it off. Rafi got the torch off the stone and out front again and they came off the light, but we'd lost the spot. We were smaller now, packed in tighter. One of them had Jonas by the leg.
He kicked it and it let go. He pulled the leg in and shut his mouth and kept it shut. Jonas never keeps his mouth shut.
Rafi wasn't counting under his breath anymore. He was counting out loud, numbers with no order to them, dragging people back into the line by their collars.
"Hold the line," Basha said. Not loud. They held it.
Two more hit the front of the fire, pulled off it, and came back and hit it again. I watched where they went when they pulled off. Down. Low.
I looked at the floor. Every one that got through had come the same way. Low, along the ground, through the strip of dark where one torch's light ended and the next one hadn't started yet. Not through the fire. Around it.
I said it to Rafi. It came out in pieces. "They're getting in through the, the gaps. Down low. Where the lights don't touch."
Rafi looked at me for one second. "Where the lights don't touch."
"Yeah. Close those and there's no way in."
He didn't ask anything else. "Close the gaps," he said, loud, already shoving people into place. "Torches low, down by the floor, overlap them, I want them touching, no dark in between. Move."
It took a minute. People swore, the dwarf loudest. They brought the three torches down low and pushed them together until the light ran along the floor in one line with no break in it anywhere.
One of them tested it almost at once. It came in fast and low where two of the torches met. There was no gap there now. It hit the light and went over its own legs getting back out.
After that they stopped getting in.
They didn't leave. They walked the front of the light, back and forth, stopping where it ended. Jonas had his weight off the bad leg. The dwarf's torch was almost gone from lying on the floor. Nobody said it was over, because it wasn't.
Basha went down the line and counted us, a hand on each shoulder, fast. She reached the end and started back.
Mirae was already down next to the reptilian with a needle and thread out of her pouch, closing the cut on his arm. It ran from his elbow nearly to his wrist. He watched her work and didn't make a sound.
Nikita came up beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder, heavy, and left it there. "Good eye."
"It was the floor," I said. "Not my eye."
He almost smiled. Didn't, but it got close.
Somebody passed a water skin up the line. I took a mouthful. It was warm and tasted of the leather. I handed it to Jonas.
"Leg okay?"
"Still attached," Jonas said. "Checked twice."
The dwarf was shaking out the hand his torch had been in. "Lost a torch on that," he said. "Down to two and a stub."
"Then we don't waste them," Basha said.
Antoine had his blade clean already. "They can't get in," he said, to the line, not to Basha. "So we go."
"We hold," Basha said.
"For what."
She looked at the torches. The low one was nearly out. "How much fire."
"Hour," Rafi said. "Less."
"Nikita."
Nikita was watching the front of the light. "They're backing off," he said. "Push them."
Antoine looked at the rest of us when he said go. Nikita looked at the things. I kept out of it. It wasn't my call to make.
"Back up the stairs," the dwarf said. "We know that's clear."
"They're back there too," Nikita said.
The dwarf stopped talking.
"Forward," Basha said. "Slow. Lights touching." She looked at me. "His rule."
I looked at the floor and let that go past.
We went forward together, slow, the three torches low and touching at the front, the rest of us inside. The things came with us. They walked the front of the light and stopped when we stopped and moved when we moved. There were more of them now than when we'd started. One tried the line on the left, where it bent around a low rock, and Rafi pushed a torch into the gap before it got through. After that nobody let the line bend.
Then the floor changed under my boot.
I looked down. It wasn't rock anymore. It was flat, cut square, set block against block, with a straight seam running off between two of them.
The dwarf crouched and put his hand flat on it. "This is cut," he said. "Worked. Somebody made this floor."
Mirae crouched by the seam too. She put two fingers in it and ran them along the line and didn't say anything.
I held the torch up over my head. The light went up and didn't reach a ceiling. I turned with it. It didn't reach a wall, not ahead, not to either side. The floor under us was flat and fitted and it ran out past the light every way I pointed it.
Out past the front of the light, the things kept walking back and forth, where it ended.
The torch had burned down almost to my hand.
"Basha," I said. "The fire's almost out."
"I know," she said.
We kept walking.