“If those tracks are fresh, the passage may already be closing behind whoever made them.”
Aren said it before Cadrin could order the survey team back. The marshal looked from the dark opening to the narrow line of prints disappearing into it. Loose grit sifted from the ceiling and stippled the dust around their boots.
“Your evidence says the route is unstable,” Cadrin replied. “The same evidence says the branch is unverified. I will not send a team into a collapse for a guess.”
Odran crouched at the opening, his injured shoulder held close. He had spent the walk back from the upper gallery explaining what could be learned from the rubble without touching it. Now he pointed at the wall beside the tracks.
“Someone put a brace here after the last fall. See the wedge marks? The stones settled against it. If we crawl under that lip, we keep the weight on the brace. The prints are on the same side.”
Cadrin studied the marks. “And if the brace slips?”
“Then the first person through gets trapped. We can shore it from this side.” Odran straightened carefully. “I can show you where.”
“You are not carrying anything.”
“I can still point.”
Cadrin looked to the sappers waiting behind them. Their faces held the rigid patience of soldiers who had already watched one section of the route give way. None stepped forward. The no-fire order protected only accesses the team had verified. If they found another connected gallery, the guns above it could still be firing into its ceiling.
Seraphine had been tracing the branch on the map with one finger. “We have paired tallies from several galleries. If this passage joins them, the delay matters. Someone may be waiting for an opening we don’t know is here.”
“Or it may be a natural crack,” Cadrin said.
Aren looked at the footprints. One dragged at the heel. A second set followed close behind, then turned back at the mouth of the passage. Fresh dust had softened their edges, but not erased them.
“Whoever went in came back out,” Aren said. “The tracks going in are heavier. They carried something.”
Cadrin glanced at him. “You want me to bet lives on that?”
Aren’s numb right hand hung useless by his side. He had brought it along anyway, the black mark disappearing beneath his collar. He could not make the passage safer by insisting. “I want you to decide what you need to know before you can protect the route.”
For a moment, the only sound was the slow fall of grit.
Next
With Battery Four silent and wounded trapped behind the hatch, can Aren and Odran open it without bringing the gun foundation down on them?
Cadrin turned to his sappers. “Short survey. Odran guides from the front, but he carries nothing. Two sappers brace the lip. Vale and Orlan follow me. No one crosses a second obstruction until I see it. We mark every turn and withdraw at the first movement in the ceiling.”
Aren saw Odran’s jaw tighten at the restrictions, then ease when Cadrin handed him the lead position. The sapper took the lantern from a soldier with his good hand.
They entered one at a time.
The passage narrowed until Aren had to turn his shoulders to get through. His left hand brushed the stone for balance. The right would not tell him whether he was touching rock or empty air. Behind him, Seraphine kept the map tucked under one arm and passed it back whenever the lantern light revealed a turn.
The brace held. Odran tapped each stone before they moved beneath it, listening for a hollow response. Twice he had the team stop while a sapper wedged timber under a sagging ledge. Each time, the delay cost them minutes and left the air thicker with dust.
At the first fork, the tracks split. One set continued ahead, the dragged heel turning toward the left branch. The other had doubled back toward the entrance.
“Two went in,” Odran said. “One came out alone.”
He traced a shallow groove in the floor. “They used a handcart. Something heavy enough to bite the stone.”
Seraphine leaned close to the wall. A scratched mark sat above the fork: three short lines beside a longer one. It matched a symbol they had seen beside the paired tallies in the upper gallery.
“The route is marked,” she said. “Someone maintained this.”
“Someone did,” Cadrin said. “It doesn’t tell us whether they’re still here.”
They followed the dragged groove. The passage sloped down, then leveled beneath a section of the front where distant cannon fire shook dust loose from the ceiling. Each report made Aren’s teeth meet. Odran halted at the next bend and pressed his palm to the wall.
“Wait for the vibration to pass.”
The guns fired again. Stone shivered against Aren’s hand. Afterward, the silence carried a faint metallic rattle ahead.
Odran’s expression hardened. “That’s a loose support. We don’t go under it.”
He pointed to a narrow side channel that curved around the sagging section. The tracks had taken it. Cadrin ordered the sappers to mark the dangerous stretch and keep the team away from its center. They squeezed through the side channel in single file, with one sapper holding the timber brace steady until the last person passed.
Then the passage opened into a cramped chamber. Iron struts ran through its ceiling, bolted into old stone. A line of soot marked the upper wall. Beyond it, through a narrow seam, came the muffled report of a gun.
Aren looked up. “We’re beneath the battery.”
“Which one?” Cadrin asked.
Odran pointed to the struts. “The fourth. That’s the foundation pattern.” He walked to the far side of the chamber, avoiding the loose handcart and its snapped wheel. “The branch ends here.”
A steel hatch filled the end wall. Its wheel had been turned recently; grease gleamed on the handle where the dust had been wiped away. A strip of bloodied cloth was caught at the lower edge. Beside it, someone had scratched a fresh tally into the stone.
Seraphine stepped nearer. “This is being used now.”
Cadrin examined the hatch without touching it. “If we open it, we may weaken the foundation. If we leave it, whoever is on the other side stays there.”
A cannon fired overhead.
The iron struts jumped. The hatch wheel rattled against its housing, and a sprinkle of grit fell over the bloodied cloth.
Aren reached for it with his left hand. He stopped before touching the metal. His right arm remained numb, but the pressure in his black mark had sharpened with each gun report. He did not know whether it was warning him about the hatch or the firing above them.
“Cadrin,” Seraphine said. “We need the battery quiet before anyone tries that wheel.”
The marshal’s eyes stayed on the struts. “A firing pause leaves the ridge without support.”
“One gun,” Odran said. “Long enough to see whether this chamber settles.”
Cadrin turned to the sapper. “You’re sure it’s the fourth?”
“I built foundations like this before the front moved north. I’m sure.”
The next shot was already loading somewhere above. Cadrin looked at the hatch again, then took the signal slate from his lieutenant and wrote the order himself: cease fire at Battery Four until further notice. The route beneath its foundation was occupied; no gun was to resume without his authorization.
The lieutenant read the message twice. “Marshal, the forward line—”
“Send it.”
The slate went back toward the upper gallery. Cadrin gave the order without raising his voice, but every sapper in the chamber heard it. One of them stared at the hatch, then at the marshal, as if revising how much uncertainty he was willing to trust Cadrin with.
They waited.
A final shot boomed overhead. The struts groaned. Then the vibration passed, and the chamber held.
Cadrin crouched beside the hatch. “One knock. No signal we can’t explain.”
Aren looked at the blood on the cloth. He struck the metal once with the heel of his left hand.
For several seconds, nothing answered. The sappers shifted their weight, careful not to scrape their boots. Seraphine kept her eyes on the seam.
Then came a reply from the other side.
“Have the guns stopped?” a voice called through the iron. It sounded strained and close. “There are wounded in here.”
Cadrin met Aren’s eyes. The battery was silent; the team had found the branch and someone beyond it. Now the hatch stood between them and the cost of opening the route.
Odran reached for the wheel with his good hand. “We’ll need the sappers on the braces before we turn it.”