Chapter Fourteen. The Tunnel.
Fourteen
The Tunnel.
As our only source of light licks and spits in the darkness, the agitated illumination brings the mercenary’s hard features and long black hair out of the void. In my fear, I nearly meet him in the eyes, and only the habit of a lifetime stops my gaze at his nose.
To the left of the torch’s empty bracket, there’s not only an ancient lever set into the sloppily mortared stone walling, but several lengths’ worth of dirt-encrusted pine boards that are taller than I am.
As the din out in the pub rises so much that we can hear the cacophony even in here, I imagine the angry villagers bursting into those private quarters and somehow sensing our presence.
Dropping the load I’m balancing at my feet, my hands reach forward without any command from my mind, and I grip the cold, corroded metal.
Murmuring some kind of prayer, even though I don’t know whether to the crescent moon or fate itself, I pull—
I get nowhere with the switch, and vacillate between feeling trapped and wanting to run out of this dank, oppressive chute and being utterly panicked that I can’t protect myself by locking us in.
As I try again, the mercenary’s free arm extends past my head.
His palm locks on to the handle below mine, and the way he pulls the thing down so easily galls me to my core.
A rumbling starts, like underground thunder that’s off in the distance. And as some kind of momentum is gathered, vibration comes up through the uneven dirt floor and dust wafts out from those pine boards beside us—
The broadsword enters my vision as the mercenary’s arm makes a bar across my chest. He yanks me back just as the wooden planks explode into splinters and an enormous stone disk rolls into place over the hidden entry with a roar and then a bone-shattering thud.
In the aftermath, my harsh breathing harmonizes with the hissing of the torch and the subtle rainfall of pine slivers and grit.
Mr. Lewis is right. The spring-loaded boulder is a barrier so total it’s a horizon.
There’s no getting over or around it, and certainly not through.
There will also be no moving the thing, not with the size and the way it’s set into a groove in the far wall. We are both protected … and trapped.
There’s no going back, not that retreat was an option anyway—
Abruptly, everything warm and firm and very male at my back registers. I jump forward with a squeak—and that’s when the muffled yelling grows even louder. Did they hear all that? Have they found the seam in the wall?
Putting my palm on the flat, cold stone, I glance back. “Will they hurt Mr. Lewis?”
“What do you care. He’s one of them.”
“He was … kind to me.”
“Oh, really? Looked like he was cutting loose a burden and glad about it as he locked you in here.” The mercenary shrugs. “Let’s get on with it, then. No reason to stand around.”
As he extends the torch out in front of him, the silhouette of his shoulders and head—and that broadsword in his hand—is as if the darkness before me has coalesced into a living form.
But I remind myself he’s a weapon under my control, and even though I don’t know what we will face, I’m certain of one thing:
I am not going to die in this tunnel. Maybe somewhere else, but not here, and not tonight.
With that resolve, I open the pack and find that everything, including the box, fits inside. As I sling the weight onto my back, the mercenary turns away to face whatever’s ahead of us.
“Wait.”
He turns his head to the side, his profile harsh as any predator’s. “What.”
“What’s your real name?” I feel an urgent need to know what it is, and when he remains silent, I press, “We need to be on cordial terms for the duration of this … journey.”
“Why’s that?” He slashes the broadsword with impatience. “Never mind. And I told you what you can call me.”
“Please. What’s your actual name.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a name—”
“Not me.”
He steps forward like he can handle anything we’ll encounter, and I have no choice but to draft in his wake or be left behind.
“I’ll call you Merc,” I announce as a downward slope starts under my slipper shoes and the air becomes dense with the smell of earth and mold. “‘Mercenary’ is too…”
Well, too close to the truth for me to constantly be reminded of it.
“Fill your boots.” Then he gives me his profile again, a half smile on his lips. “Sorrel.”
His strides are long and I have to hustle to keep up, especially as we bottom out and proceed at a much lower level.
Overhead, cracks in the arched ceiling leach cold water that dampens us and fills the puddles at our feet.
I feel as though I’m drawing soil itself into my nose and it’s turning to mud in the back of my throat—
A squeak and scurry introduce the rats that presently become our traveling companions, and I try not to notice their plump gray bodies and fleshy pink tails as they rush by us and evaporate into all I cannot see.
When there’s another angle of decline, I put my palm out to the wall to steady myself—and take it back.
The slimy feel is more than I can bear, and makes me think of the cow innards that Mr. Cavenish brought with him into the pub.
As I rub my palm on my cloak, a tingling starts at my sternum, and my stomach flip-flops in the cradle of my pelvis. Then my throat closes as if it’s been taken in a grip.
Suffocating, my lips part and my breath goes in and out as if I’m running, the high whistle through my front teeth like a bird warning of a barn cat hiding in the hay.
My balance suffers as my feet abruptly go numb, and I collapse against the oozing wall.
Bracing my hands on my knees, I become a table with three legs as I try to keep from passing out—
Merc has to backtrack to put the torch to my hidden face. “What’s wrong with you.”
“Can’t … breathe—”
“Well, get that stupid hood off your head. It’s hot in here.”
“I-i-it is—no!” I jerk away as I feel him tugging. “No, no, no—”
I lock my hands over my head. “I can’t do this—I can’t breathe, I can’t—I can’t do this. I’ve got to go back, I can’t do—”
A grip locks on my biceps, and he gives me a shake. “Yes, you can—”
“N-n-no, I can’t! We need to go back—I’m going to die here!”
So much for the resolution that had seemed so hearty mere lengths ago.
Merc’s face thrusts into my own, and I squeeze my eyes shut to avoid his own. “We are going forward—”
“I can’t—”
“You can and you will because you have no choice.” His sharp voice echoes up and down the tunnel. “Stop this right now, and get walking. Only forward, never back!”
Merc pulls me forward and I’m so shocked that I forget the rioting sensations in my body. As he drags me along, I paddle at the puddles with my leather slippers, the cloak tangling around my legs.
“Let go of me—”
“Make me.”
“That’s unfair.” I yank at his hold. “You’re bigger than I am. Stronger. Harder—”
“Make me.”
“What are you—”
“You want me to let go?” He jerks me around and shoves the torch at my hand. “Lead on, and I will. But either you’re walking ahead of me or I’m dragging you behind. One of two is happening here, and that is your choice. But going back isn’t, and stopping here isn’t. What’s it going to be.”
Between one blink and the next, I see Mare defiled in the nest of the blankets I stole for her.
“This isn’t fair,” I choke out.
“What makes you think life is.” His words are edged with a savagery that draws my stare to the scar on his face. “Don’t be weak and stupid. Nothing is fair, no one is going to save you except yourself, and going back isn’t an option. So am I dragging you or are you stopping this right now.”
How has this all happened? I wonder. What am I doing here—
“I was orphaned,” I find myself repeating in a numb mumble. “… on the birthing bed. And left in the village square…”
“What way are we doing this. That is the only response required.”
I’m trembling so hard, my cloak is like the torch’s flame.
The whole of Anathos feels against me, from my village to this man who is yelling at me to the fate that has stripped me of everything, down even to those precious herbs and the cheap mementos I’d collected in my hovel under the stairs.
And then there is this supposed past of mine, of which I have no conscious knowledge—and don’t believe, no matter Mr. Lewis’s apparent conviction.
“I was orphaned, on the birthing bed,” I whisper as something prowls around my subconscious, something more threatening even than this tunnel or the hard, frustrated mercenary before me. “And left in the village square…”
“And you think that makes you special? We’re all abandoned the instant we’re born.”
“Why is fate so cruel.”
There’s a long pause, nothing but the sound of dripping water and the hiss and spit of the torch between us. Then his grim response: “You don’t know what cruelty is.”
I think of all the times I’ve been shunned, by all the villagers whose bairns I saved. Lifting my chin, I say with force, “You have no idea what I’ve endured. And that crowd wanted to kill me over a lie—”
“But they didn’t. So are you going to do the job for them after you got away?” Merc points over my shoulder with a jab. “You stop now and you might as well have marched into that square and let them set you afire back there.”
I open my mouth to respond, but all I have is a roar in between my ears and a pounding in my chest.
He drops his arm. “I was wrong.”
“A-about our arrangement?”
“No, there’s a third option.” He steps back. “I leave you here. I am not wasting my life on your weakness, no matter how much I want to fuck you.”
With that, he pivots away and starts walking again, taking his presence—and all the light we have—with him.
The darkness crashes into me as he rounds a bend and goes out of view.
I am alone in the tunnel.