Last to Rise(51)

My stomach rumbled again, more a growl this time, loud enough that it echoed off the walls of the tunnel mouth.



“Rojan,” Pasha whispered, “we’re supposed to be being quiet —” but then his own stomach growled as though in challenge to mine.



I clenched my teeth and told my belly to shut up before it got me killed. “Let’s just hurry up and be done with this. Maybe steal the food on the way back, all right?”



“Yeah.” He shut his eyes as though he wished he could shut his nose too, cracked a finger and set about trying to see who might be about, who we needed to avoid or overcome.



We waited, and drooled, for a while until the gunshots started – Malaki had arranged for a bit of distraction for us, a small sortie of snipers, his best men with guns. Lise had managed to up the range on a few of the guns, but the Storad didn’t know that, so their lights hadn’t been dimmed and men stood out clearly against cooking fires and lamps. Bullets pinged off rocks down near the outer gates, a couple of men screamed like Namrat had just bitten their balls, and we had a nice bit of chaos to work with.



I’ve worked out since that Dench’s inquisitor’s helm wasn’t just a protection against a sudden sword or a whack over the head. It was also a protection against certain kinds of magic. More specifically, Pasha couldn’t hear anything of what went on inside one. He wouldn’t even know the wearer was there, as had happened once before. It seemed Dench had shown the Storad just how it did that so that they could incorporate it into their own design – hence Pasha not hearing the guys in the original tunnel too well. This guard, however, had something a bit extra – an exact replica of Dench’s helmet – and he had been placed – among others, we later found out – outside where Dench thought the tunnels were, which he had, naturally given his understated efficiency and ability to scare the crap out of anyone who took his orders, mostly found.



I poked my head out of the tunnel and was trying to think clearly rather than gawp at being really, truly Outside and in the nearby presence of food that might even taste of something, when a heavily accented voice to one side said, “Rojan Dizon, I assume?”



My heart nearly had a prolapse, which wasn’t helped by the sight of the gun in the man’s hand pointed right at my head. Worse, it didn’t look like a usual gun but more complicated, which probably meant it was more efficient at killing people. The helm didn’t help much – styled like Namrat’s head, all teeth and voracious hunger with blank eyes that seemed to judge me.



“And Pasha too, I’m reliably informed. Yes, that’s it. Over here where I can see you, hands out. No twisting anything. Dench has warned me all about you. Now, if Jake comes any closer —”



At which point I was glad I’d won the argument about the cantankerous Halina. Two sick wet cracks, a hiss of pain, and the guard lifted off the ground before he slammed into a boulder behind him. The smack dislodged the gun in his hand, but not before it let off a wild shot that made Pasha and me duck as it whizzed over our heads and punched into a scree of rocks.



Pasha grabbed the gun before the guard could react, but he couldn’t stop the shout. I grabbed Halina as she stared down in surprise at the stunned guard and, with Pasha behind, we ducked through a crack and between two tents precariously erected in the lee of some house-sized boulders. Not a moment too soon, either. A welter of footsteps as men came running over rocks, hoarse shouts that sounded like gargling with gravel, Dench’s name the only word I could understand. Maybe the only one I needed to. The plan had gone tits up before it was properly started. I’m not sure why I expected anything else.



We’d have been done for then, I have no doubt, if the snipers at our gates hadn’t started taking pot-shots at the nicely grouped men nearby. Bullets pinged off boulders, slammed through a man’s shoulder so that he twirled round and fell in a shower of blood. Everything seemed to happen both too fast and too slow, and my stomach tied itself in knots.



There was only one way out of this, and that was through it.



Cold sweat made my hand clammy as I grabbed Halina’s arm and we darted through the tents before anyone could organise themselves enough to try to find us. We’d planned – all right, hoped like hell – to have ten minutes of chaos to work with. Long enough to find a handy little hole to hide in, for me to rearrange the engine of the infernal machine that loomed by the camp, and then get the hell out. Instead of the ten minutes we’d hoped for, the way it looked now we had about two minutes, if we were lucky. Then we had all the time in the world to get killed, because I couldn’t see us getting back to the tunnel as things were. Why the hell had I suggested this? Sometimes my own stupidity surprises even me.