“Sir,” he said, lifting the pickaxe. At least with nobody around him he could get a proper swing at the obstruction. He turned back and heaved the pick at a spot to the side of where the spade had baulked, briefly imagining that he was swinging it at the back of the young captain’s head. He hauled the pick out, twisted it to present the flat blade rather than the spike towards the face, found a slightly different position and swung hard again.
You developed a feel for what was going on at the end of a shovel or a pick, you started to gain an insight into the just-hidden depths in front of you, after a while. There was another jarring strike to add to all the others that had run up through his hands into his arms and back over the year he’d been down here, but he sensed the slightly flattened blade make a sort of double strike inside the face, sliding between two rocks, or into a cleft in a single more massive rock. That felt hollow, he thought, but dismissed the idea.
He had leverage now, a degree of purchase. He strained at the worn-smooth handle of the pick. Something grated inside the face and the weak light from his helmet lamp showed a stretch of dirt face as long as his forearm and tall as his head hinging out towards him. Dirt and pebbles slumped about his knees. What fell out of the hole was a piece of dressed stonework, and beyond was a rectangular hole and a damp darkness, a dirt-free inky absence from which a thin cold wind issued, smelling of old, cold stone.
The great castle, the besieged fortress, stood over the broad plain on a carpet of ground-hugging mist, like something unreal.
Vatueil remembered his dreams. In his dreams the castle truly was not real, or not there, or genuinely did float above the plain, by magic or some technology unknown to him, and so they burrowed on for ever, never finding its base, tunnelling on without cease through the killing muggy warmth and sweat-mist of their own exhalations in an eternal agony of purposeless striving. He had never mentioned these dreams to anybody, unsure who amongst his comrades he could really trust and judging that if word of these nightmares got back to his superiors they might be deemed treacherous, implying that their labours were pointless, doomed to failure.
The castle sat on a spur of rock, an island of stone jutting above the flood plain of the great meandering river. The castle itself was formidable enough; the cliffs that surrounded it made it close to impregnable. Still, it had to be taken, they’d been told. After nearly a year of trying to starve the garrison into surrender, it had been judged, two years or more ago, that the only way to take the stronghold was to get a great siege engine close in to the rocky outcrop. Enormous machines had been constructed of wood and metal and manoeuvred towards the castle on a specially built road. The machines could hurl rocks or fizzing metal bombs the weight of ten men many hundreds of strides across the plain, but there was a problem: to get them close enough to the castle meant coming within range of the fortress’s own great war machine, a giant trebuchet mounted on the single massive circular tower dominating the citadel.
With its own range increased by virtue of its elevation, the castle’s engine dominated the plain for nearly two thousand strides about the base of the rock; all attempts to move siege engines to within range had been met with a hail of rocks from the fortress’s trebuchet, resulting in smashed machines and dead men. The engineers had been forced to concede that constructing a machine of their own powerful enough to remain out of range of the castle’s war engine while still being able to hit the fortress was probably impossible.
So they would tunnel to near the castle rock, open a pit and construct a small but powerful siege engine there under the noses of the castle’s garrison, and, supposedly, under the angle at which the castle’s trebuchet could fire. There were rumours that this absurd machine would be a sort of self-firing bomb device, some sort of explosive contraption that would throw itself into the air, up past the cliff and against the castle walls, detonating there. Nobody really believed these rumours, though the slightly more plausible idea of constructing a sufficiently powerful wooden catapult or trebuchet in a pit excavated at the end of a tunnel seemed just as fanciful and idiotic.
Perhaps they were expected to tunnel up inside the castle rock when they got to it, burrowing up through solid stone, or maybe they were meant to place a gigantic bomb against the base of the rock; these seemed no less absurd and pointless as tactics. Maybe the high command, immeasurably distant from this far (and, if rumour was to believed, increasingly irrelevant) front, had been misinformed regarding the nature of the castle’s foundations, and – thinking that the fortress’s walls rested on the plain itself – had ordered the mining as a matter of course, imagining that the walls could be sapped conventionally, and nobody nearer to the reality of the situation had thought, or dared, to tell them that this was impossible. But then who knew how the high commanders thought?
Vatueil put one fist to the small of his back as he stood looking out to the distant fortress. He was trying to stand up straight. It was getting harder to do so each day, which was unfortunate, as slouching was looked on unfavourably by officers, especially by the young junior captain who seemed to have taken such a dislike to him.
Vatueil looked about at the litter of grey-brown tents which made up the camp. Above, the clouds looked washed out, the sun hidden behind a grey, dully glowing patch over the more distant of the two ranges of hills that defined the broad plain.
“Stand up straight, Vatueil,” the junior captain told him, emerging from the major’s tent. The junior captain was dressed in his best uniform. He’d had Vatueil put on his best gear too, not that his best was very good. “Well, don’t malinger here all day; get in there and don’t take for ever about it. This doesn’t get you off anything, you know; don’t go thinking that. You’ve still got a shift to finish. Hurry up!” The junior captain clouted Vatueil about the ear, dislodging his forage cap. Vatueil bent to retrieve it and the young captain kicked his behind, propelling him through the flap and into the tent.
Inside, he collected himself, straightened, and was shown where to stand in front of the board of officers.
“Conscript Vatueil, number—” he began.
“We don’t need to know your number, conscript,” one of the two majors told him. There were three senior captains and a colonel present too; an important gathering. “Just tell us what happened.”
He briefly related prising the rock away from the face, sticking his head through the hole and smelling that strange, cave-like darkness, hearing and seeing the water running in the channel beneath, then wriggling back to tell the junior captain and the others. He kept his gaze fixed somewhere above the colonel’s head, looking down only once. The officers nodded, looked bored. A subaltern took notes on a writing pad. “Dismissed,” the more senior major told Vatueil.
He half turned to go, then turned back. “Permission to speak further, sir,” he said, glancing at the colonel and then the major who’d just spoken.
The major looked at him. “What?”
He straightened as best he could, stared above the colonel’s head again. “It occurred to me the conduit might contribute to the castle’s water supply, sir.”
“You’re not here to think, conscript,” the major said, though not unkindly.
“No,” the colonel said, speaking for the first time. “That occurred to me, too.”
“It’s still a long way, sir,” the junior major said.
“We’ve poisoned all the nearer sources,” the colonel told him. “To no obvious effect. And it is from the direction of the nearer hills.” Vatueil risked nodding at this, to show he had thought this too.
“With their many springs,” the senior major said to the colonel, apparently sharing some private joke.
The colonel looked at Vatueil through narrowed eyes. “You were with the Cavalry once, weren’t you, conscript?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rank?”
“Captain of Mount, sir.”
There was a pause. The colonel filled it himself. “And?”
“Insubor
dination, sir.”
“Down to conscript tunneller? You must have been spectacularly insubordinate.”
“So it was adjudged, sir.”
There was a grunt that might have been laughter. At the colonel’s instigation the offisorial heads were brought together. There was some muttering, then the more senior major said, “There will shortly be a small exploratory force sent along the water tunnel, conscript. Perhaps you might care to be on it.”
“I’ll do as ordered, sir.”
“The men will be hand-picked, though volunteers.”
Vatueil drew himself up as straight as he could, his back complaining. “I volunteer, sir.”
“Good man. You might need a crossbow as well as a shovel.”
“I can handle both, sir.”
“Report to the senior duty officer. Dismissed.”
The calf-deep water was cold, swirling round his boots and seeping into them. He was fourth man back from the lead, lamp extinguished. Only the lead man had a lit lamp, and that was turned down as low as it would go. The water tunnel was oval shaped, just too broad to touch both sides at the same time with outstretched arms. It was nearly as tall as a man; you had to walk with head lowered but it was easy enough after so long being bent double.
The air was good; better than in the mining tunnel. It had flowed gently into their faces as they’d stood in the water, ready to move off from the breach leading from the mining tunnel. The twenty men in the detail moved down the partially filled pipe as quietly as they could, wary of traps or guards. They were led by a fairly old, sensible-seeming captain and a very keen young subaltern. There were two other tunnellers as well as himself, both more powerful than he though with less combat experience. Like him they carried picks, spades, bows and short swords; the larger of the two also carried a pry bar slung across his broad back.
These two men had been chosen by the young junior captain. He had not been happy that Vatueil was being allowed to go on the exploration of the water tunnel while he himself was not. Vatueil expected further unsubtle persecution when he returned. If he returned.
They came to a place where the tunnel narrowed and horizontal iron bars ran across the channel, set at heights that meant they had to clamber over them one at a time. Then came a section where the floor of the tunnel angled down, and they had to brace themselves two-by-two, each with a hand on one wall, to stop themselves from slipping on the slimy surface under the water. The tunnel all but levelled out again after that, then another set of bars in a narrow section appeared out of the gloom, again followed by another downward sloped section.
He had not dreamed this, he realised as he walked. This was easier than anything he had imagined in his nightmares, or – as it felt – that they had imagined for him. They might stroll all the rest of the way to the castle without having to dig another spadeful. Though, of course, the way might be blocked, or guarded, or might not lead to the castle after all. And yet the water was here, in this carefully constructed tunnel, and where else would it be going on this otherwise near deserted plain if not to the castle? Guards or traps were more likely, though even then the castle was so old that perhaps those within just drew the water unthinkingly from a deep, seemingly unpoisonable well and knew nothing of the system that brought it to them. Better to assume that they did know, though, and that they or the water tunnel’s original designers and builders would have set up some sort of defence against enemies making their way down it. He started to think about what he would put in place if he had been in charge of such matters.
His thoughts were interrupted when he collided softly with the back of the man in front. The man behind him piled into his back, too, and so on down the line as they came to a halt, almost without a sound.
“A gate?” the subaltern whispered. Looking ahead, over the shoulder of the man in front, Vatueil could just make out a broad grating filling the tunnel ahead. The single lamp was turned up a little. The water sieved itself between thick bars of what appeared to be iron. There was more whispering between the captain and the subaltern.
The tunnellers were called forward and were confronted by the grating. It was locked shut against a stout, vertical iron stanchion immediately behind. It looked like it was designed to hinge back towards them and then up towards the ceiling. A strange arrangement, Vatueil thought. All three tunnellers were ordered to light their lamps, the better to inspect the lock. It was about the size of a clenched fist, the chain securing it made of links thick as a little finger. It looked rusted, but only slightly.
One of the other tunnellers lifted his pickaxe, testing his swing and where the point might strike to break the lock.
“That will be noisy, sir,” Vatueil whispered. “The sound will travel a long way down the tunnel.”
“What do you suggest, bite it?” the younger officer asked him.
“Try to lever it off with the pry bar, sir,” he said.
The senior officer nodded. “All right.”
The tunneller with the pry bar brought it over his shoulder and wedged it under the lock while Vatueil and the other miner held it out from the grating, angling it just so to increase the effect, then, once their comrade had taken the strain, joining him to pull hard on the end of the bar. They strained for a few moments to no effect beyond a faint creaking sound. They relaxed, then pulled again. With a dull snap and a loud clank the lock gave way, sending the three of them falling backwards into the water in a clattering tangle. The chain rattled down into the water to join them.
“Scarcely quiet,” the subaltern muttered.
They picked themselves up, sorted themselves out. “No sticks or branches or anything against it,” one of the other men said, nodding at the foot of the grating.
“Settling pool further back,” another suggested.
Through the grating, Vatueil could see what looked like stony blocks in the path the water took beyond, like square narrow stepping stones filling the base of the tunnel. Why would you put those there, he wondered.
“Ready to raise it?” the captain said.
“Sir,” the two tunnellers said together, taking a side each, arms thrust into the dark water to pull at the foot of the grating.
“Heave, lads,” the officer told them.
They pulled, and with a dull scraping noise the grating hinged slowly up. They shifted their grip as it rose and pushed it towards the ceiling.
Vatueil saw something move on the ceiling, just behind the slowly moving grille. “Wait a moment,” he said, perhaps too quietly. In any event, nobody seemed to take any notice.
Something – some things, each big as a man’s head – fell, one glinting in the lamp light, from the ceiling. They smashed on the edges of the raised blocks beneath and dark liquid came pouring out of them as their jagged remains vanished into the moving water. It was only then that the men hauling up the grating stopped; too late. “What was that?” somebody asked. The water around the blocks, where the liquid had entered, was bubbling and fuming, sending great grey bubbles of gas to the surface of the water, where they burst, producing thick white fumes. The gas was rising quickly into the air, starting to obscure what view there might have been down the tunnel beyond.
“It’s just …” somebody started, then their voice trailed away.
“Back, lads,” the captain said as the fumes drifted closer.
“That might be—”
“Back, lads, back.”
Vatueil heard water sloshing as some of them started to move away.
The pale fog now almost filled the place where the grating had been. The men nearest it, the two tunnellers, stood back, letting go of the grille; it crashed down into the water. One of them took a step back. The other seemed transfixed by the sight, remaining close enough to sniff the milky grey cloud; he started coughing immediately, doubling up, hands on knees. His lowered head met a long silky strand of the gas at waist level, and he wheezed suddenly, standing up and coughing again and again. He turned and waved down the tunnel, then
seemed to have a seizure. He fell to his knees, clutching at his throat, eyes wide. His breath rattled in his throat. The other tunneller moved towards him but was waved away. The fellow slumped back against the wall of the tunnel, eyes closing. A couple of the other men, also now near to the advancing cloud, started to cough as well.
Almost as one, they started to run, suddenly pounding down the tunnel, slipping and sliding and falling, the surface underfoot that had supported slow and steady steps with barely a slip turning to something like ice as they tried to run through the calf-deep water; a couple of them pushed past Vatueil, who had not yet moved.
We will never get past the narrow places with the bars, he thought. We won’t even make it up the slopes before them, he realised. The cloud was flowing up the tunnel at a moderate walking pace. It was already at his knees, rising to his groin. He had taken a deep breath as soon as he’d seen the dirty looking bubbles rising out of the water. He let it out, took another one now.
Some of the others were shouting and screaming as they ran away up the tunnel, though the principal noise was a frenzied splashing. The cloud of gas enveloped Vatueil. He clamped his hand over his mouth and nose. Even so, he could smell something sharp, choking. His eyes began to sting, his nose to run.
The grating would be too heavy, he thought. He stooped, felt for it, then with an effort he would not have believed himself capable of, lifted it in one movement and swung himself beneath it, stumbling through the water beyond as he let the grille go. His boots crunched on shattered pieces of glass under the surface of the water. He remembered to lift his feet for the blocks the bottles had smashed on.
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