“If you let the guns fire, we can’t get them through.”
Aren said it with the hatch rubble still grinding under his boots. Behind him, the four rescued wounded lay on litters beside the survey team. One had blood soaked through the fresh bandage at his thigh. Another kept looking toward the collapsed access as if the people inside might call again.
Marshal Cadrin looked past Aren to Battery Four’s signalman, waiting for an order. “How long to the shelter?”
Odran adjusted the sling around his injured shoulder. “If the north gallery is clear, forty minutes. If it isn’t, longer.”
“Can you tell me before you reach the guns?”
“No. The gallery runs under them.”
Cadrin’s gaze settled on the litter with the bleeding man. He had helped carry the wounded out. Now the battery crews waited for him to decide whether to keep their guns silent while the front remained exposed.
Aren’s numb right hand hung against his coat. He curled his left fingers around the shining sword’s grip, then let go. He needed his left arm for the litter poles.
“Hold until we signal from the shelter,” he said. “If we don’t make it, you’ll know the route isn’t clear.”
Cadrin frowned. “You’re asking me to leave a battery blind on your word.”
“I’m asking you to leave it quiet while wounded people cross underneath it. You saw the hatch. You saw what we pulled out.”
The marshal turned to the signalman. “One hold. Keep the guns trained, crews ready. No firing until the all-clear or my direct order.” He paused, then added, “If we see a threat on the line, I’ll make the call.”
The signalman repeated the order and ran. A moment later, the battery crews began the careful work of keeping their weapons ready without firing them.
Cadrin faced Aren again. “You get them there. You send the all-clear yourself.”
Aren nodded. The order wasn’t trust. It was still a chance.
They split the work. Two soldiers took each litter. The survey team carried braces, lamps, and their measured notes; Odran led with a short-handled pry bar tucked under his good arm. Esh walked beside the last litter, testing each step before the injured demon soldier put weight on it. Aren moved with the front pair, his left hand on the pole, his right arm kept close so it wouldn’t catch on the rock.
The quarry route narrowed where the hatch branch joined the old galleries. Odran pointed out the turns by marks cut low into the wall. Some had been scored over, then restored with fresher lines. Aren had seen the paired tallies before. Here, several had been crossed through and replaced with smaller counts.
Next
Can Aren and Odran adapt the narrow ore passage into a safe route for nine wounded before the distant guns shake the quarry’s supports loose?
“Probably,” Odran said. “Or deaths. We’ll know if there’s a record at the shelter.”
No one answered that. The litter-bearers kept moving.
At the first junction, a soldier from the survey team wanted to take the broader passage. Odran shook his head. “That one’s under the loose shelf. We’ll hear it before it comes down.” He tapped the wall beside the narrow route. “This was the cart way.”
“Was?” Aren asked.
“Stone’s buckling ahead. We’ll see.”
They heard it before they saw the break: a low, grinding complaint that shivered through the gallery. The passage opened onto a collapsed section where the roof had dropped in a slope of shale. A strip of darkness remained above it, too low for the litters.
Odran leaned in, checking the stones. “Could brace the top and clear enough for one litter at a time. The roof’s still moving.”
The wounded man with the bandaged thigh made a thin sound through his teeth. A dark line had spread down the cloth.
Aren set his litter pole against the wall. “How much room do you need?”
“Enough to drag the loose stone out without pulling the roof with it.” Odran shifted his injured shoulder, then winced. “I can do the first brace.”
“You can show us. I’ll place it.”
Odran looked at Aren’s right arm. Aren gave him no time to argue. He took the timber from the survey team and slid its end beneath the lowest stable ledge with his left hand. Two soldiers lifted the other end while Odran directed them a finger’s breadth at a time. The first brace caught. A scatter of shale rattled down and stopped against it.
They cleared a path just wide enough for the litters. The team moved one at a time, keeping their weight off the unstable slope. Aren stayed at the break until the final litter passed. When he shoved the brace clear with his left shoulder, the stone above it settled with a heavy, final scrape.
Odran stared back at the sealed gap. “That’ll hold long enough for nobody.”
“Then we don’t go back that way,” Aren said.
They pressed on.
The battery thunder reached them through the stone, muted but deep enough to tremble in the litter poles. No guns fired from Battery Four. The silence from that direction had a weight of its own; Aren imagined the crews waiting at their stations, watching their sights and holding their hands still. Cadrin had bought them passage, not safety.
At the old quarry’s lower turn, the gallery widened. A steel door stood open ahead, its hinges wrapped in strips of cloth to keep them from squealing. Someone had laid a plank across a crack in the floor. Beyond it, a lamp flickered behind a mesh screen.
Esh stepped forward first. “Shelter.”
Aren heard voices beyond the door: one calling numbers, another answering. Odran put his hand against the frame, then knocked twice. The voices stopped.
“Field team,” he called. “We’ve got wounded.”
The door swung inward. A woman in a stained apron stared at the mixed party, then at the litters. She had a tally slate in one hand and a short iron bar in the other.
“Four?” she asked.
“Four from the hatch,” Aren said. “How many here?”
“Nine.” She lowered the bar. “We were told the route was gone.”
“It nearly was.”
The shelter occupied a broad chamber under the old quarry, reinforced with timber and iron struts. Nine wounded lay on low cots along one wall. Human soldiers and demon troops shared blankets and water jars; two had their backs turned to each other, but both watched as the new litters came in. A medic moved down the row, counting faces and checking bandages.
The wounded man with the thigh injury clutched the litter rail. “My brother’s here,” he said. “Which one?”
A demon soldier on the nearest cot lifted his hand. The litter-bearers set their load down. The injured man’s face twisted, and the brother leaned across the narrow gap between them. Their hands met over the rail. Nobody offered a speech. The medic pushed a cup into the wounded man’s free hand and told him to drink before he tried to sit up.
Aren found himself looking at the tally slate. Names were arranged in two columns, then matched by arrows to a rough drawing of the quarry’s lower workings. Several names had been crossed out. Others had small marks beside them: moved, held, returned. No kingdom symbols. No unit designations. Only places where people had gone, and the places they were meant to reach next.
“Who keeps this?” he asked.
The woman in the apron tightened her grip on the slate. “Whoever’s here. We don’t have a clerk.”
Odran had gone to the far end of the chamber. “The lift’s down.”
A narrow cargo platform hung from a chain shaft there, tilted against its guide rails. Its counterweight had fallen crooked into a pit. The platform could barely be reached from the shelter floor.
“How do we get them out?” Aren asked.
“The surface lift’s finished,” Odran said. “There’s an ore passage around the shaft. It’ll take us north. Too tight for these litters, though.”
The medic turned from the cots. “They can’t walk.”
Aren looked at the nine waiting wounded. Then at the four they had carried in, each one delivered to a face that had been waiting for them. His shoulders ached from the litter pole. The sword at his hip pressed cold against his side. He flexed his numb right hand once and stopped when it gave him nothing.
“Show me the ore passage,” he said. “We’ll make the litters fit.”
Odran led him to a low opening beside the shaft. The passage beyond was just wide enough for a person to turn sideways. A fresh sprinkle of grit lay across the floor. Far overhead, the guns of the front began to speak again, and the quarry’s timber supports gave a faint answering shudder.
The woman raised her tally slate. “If you’re taking them out, I need to know which way they’re going.”
Aren looked into the narrow dark. Behind him, the medic was already gathering straps and blankets.