A muffled answer came back. “Four. One can’t walk.”
The timber brace shuddered. Dust sifted from the seam and scattered across the hatch’s steel face. Above them, Battery Four remained silent, but the gun foundation pressed down through the ceiling with the patient weight of a mountain.
Odran crouched beside the release bolts, his injured shoulder held stiff against his side. “We can get it open. The door’s jammed against the frame. But when it moves, this brace takes the load.”
Cadrin looked from the beam to the hairline crack running through the stone above it. “How long before that gives?”
“Could be an hour. Could be the next time somebody leans on it.” Odran tested the timber with his good hand. “We need the hatch to swing sideways. If it drops, it’ll take the beam with it.”
Aren flexed his right fingers. He felt the pull at his wrist, faint and far away, then nothing. His left hand closed around the iron bar instead.
“Tell me where you need the pressure,” he said.
Odran glanced at the bar, then at the brace. “Here. Keep the hatch from kicking in when I take the bolts out.”
Cadrin pointed two sappers toward the timber stack. “Build a second support under the lintel. Leave enough room for the door to move.” He turned to Aren. “If you see the stone start to shift, you call it. We back out.”
Aren set his boots against the hatch frame and wedged the bar where Odran showed him. The steel bit into his palm. Seraphine crouched opposite, ready with a wooden chock. Behind her, one of the sappers laid out the available props and frowned at the lengths.
“Too short,” he said.
“Use the litter poles,” Odran told him. “They’ll take a load if you bind them together.”
The sapper hesitated. Those poles had carried the wounded out of the refuge. Now they were the only braces long enough to hold the frame.
“Do it,” Cadrin said.
They lashed the poles together and drove them under the lintel. The first end skidded on grit. Aren felt the hatch push against his bar as the timber took the weight. His numb hand hung useless at his side; he pinned that arm against the stone and leaned through his left shoulder instead.
“Hold,” Odran said. “I’m taking the upper bolt.”
He fitted a short wrench to the bolt and leaned on it. His shoulder trembled. The bolt turned a fraction, then stuck.
Aren shifted his feet for better purchase. The bar bucked. Seraphine planted the chock beneath the edge.
Next
Can Aren get Cadrin to hold Battery Four silent long enough to guide the rescued wounded and survey team to the North Shelter, where others remain trapped?
The timber cracked. Everyone froze as the sound travelled up into the foundation. From overhead came the faint scrape of stone grinding against stone.
Cadrin raised a hand. “Stop.”
The scrape faded. Dust continued to fall, finer now, drifting over the sappers’ sleeves.
“We’ve changed the load,” Odran said. “If we close it again, it may jam for good.”
“And if we open it?” Seraphine asked.
“Then the poles and that beam have to carry it until the wounded are through.” He watched the seam. “The door’s not the heaviest thing above us.”
Behind the hatch, someone coughed. A second voice said, “Please.”
Aren looked at the narrow gap. Beyond it, the trapped wounded had no room to help themselves. The brace had already started to split.
“Take the next bolt,” he said. “We keep the door moving and put the chock in as it goes.”
Cadrin’s gaze settled on him. “You’re sure?”
“No. It’s still the way through.”
The marshal’s jaw tightened. Then he nodded to Odran. “Proceed.”
Odran worked at the lower bolt. His injured shoulder wouldn’t let him wrench with both hands, so Aren held the tool steady while Odran turned it in short, grinding movements. Seraphine drove the chock deeper each time the hatch shifted.
Aren’s left arm began to shake. The numbness in his right had crept above the wrist, a dark pressure beneath his sleeve. He pushed his elbow harder against the stone and kept the bar set.
The lower bolt came free.
“Now,” Odran said.
They lifted together. The hatch dragged sideways a handspan, then stopped against something inside. Odran peered into the opening.
“Litter handle,” he said. “They’ve got one jammed against it.”
“Can you reach it?”
“Not from here.”
Aren lowered the bar into the gap. “I can move it.”
He leaned in, working by touch. His left hand found the wooden handle and pushed. It scraped along the floor. A person on the other side grunted with effort, and the obstruction slid clear.
The hatch swung wide enough for one body at a time.
Seraphine crawled through first, carrying a lantern. She came back guiding an old medic whose sleeve was soaked dark at the elbow. Behind him, a demon soldier lay on a narrow litter, jaw clenched as the sappers dragged him over the sill. Two more wounded followed: a human with a splinted leg and a demon with a bandage wrapped around his brow.
Cadrin took the litter’s front end himself. He didn’t look to the soldiers for permission before lifting.
“Careful of the leg,” the medic said. “He’s still got feeling in it.”
“We have him,” Cadrin answered.
The nearest sapper stared at the demon on the litter. Then he moved to help with the next one.
Aren stepped back to clear space. The saved lives did not make the shaking brace sturdier. Odran had already turned back toward the hatch.
“We need to close it before the frame shifts,” he said. “We can’t leave this access open under the battery.”
The medic pressed a cloth against his own elbow and looked up. “There are more at the North Shelter. Under the old quarry. We were meant to bring these four there after the guns stopped.”
“Who sent you?” Cadrin asked.
The medic gave him a tired, guarded look. “The people who were trying to get them out.”
Aren glanced at the wounded around him. The human with the splinted leg had reached across the litter to keep the demon soldier’s hand from slipping off its edge. Their fingers were knotted together, each grip too weak to look deliberate. Still, neither let go.
Odran found a battered board fixed inside the hatch recess. Its slate face was scratched with arrows and tally marks. The last leg of the route was marked in blunt lettering: NORTH SHELTER — OLD QUARRY. Beneath it, someone had added a line of names, some written in human hands, some in the angular script Aren had seen at the northern stations.
Cadrin read the board, then the medic’s face. “How many are still there?”
“I don’t know. We left before dawn. There were more than we could carry.” The medic swallowed and glanced toward the hatch. “Some haven’t been moved in days.”
The brace snapped.
Odran shoved Aren clear. The hatch slammed back against its frame. The paired litter poles buckled, and stone crashed into the passage behind them, sealing the opening in a roaring fall of dust.
Seraphine covered the medic as grit swept through the chamber. Cadrin stood between the wounded and the collapse, one arm raised over the splinted man. The sound rolled away into the galleries.
When the dust thinned, the hatch was buried beneath a mound of broken stone. The sappers’ spare props lay bent or split. The route they had entered by remained open, but getting back through it with the wounded would take time.
Odran tested his injured shoulder and winced. “That access is gone.”
Cadrin looked to the board, still fixed to a bent strip of metal they had carried out. “The North Shelter is under the old quarry. Can you guide us there?”
The medic nodded once. “There’s another route. It’s narrow, and it crosses a gallery you’ve been firing over.”
Cadrin’s eyes went to Aren. Beyond the chamber, the guns remained silent. Above them, men were waiting for orders and the wounded were waiting for a place beyond the reach of the next shot.
Aren looked at the battered slate and the names scored into it. “We need to get there before the batteries resume.”
Cadrin folded the board under his arm. “Then I have to keep them silent.”