“They weren’t expecting scouts,” Dagan guessed. Even if they had been, they wouldn’t have known what that meant. “Innan, watch the fight; Kajja, eyes on the dark with me. Yell if we need to move.”
Blood slid down Dagan’s hand, dripping from his fingers onto the wet stone. He ducked to wipe it on an assassin’s shirt. As he stood, someone barreled into him from behind; he whirled and caught Jak in both arms, keeping him on his feet, then gasped at the long, wet, red gash across Jak’s right eye and cheek.
“Fuck, thanks.” Jak shrugged him off but wavered on his own two feet. Gareth and Hen had already taken his place in the line, pushing the guards back inch by inch.
“Kajja!” Dagan handed Jak off to her, afraid to take his eyes off the darkness, lest a stream of new assassins should pour out of it. He yanked at his own shirt without looking, until a sleeve pulled off, and handed it to her. “Pressure on the wound.”
Kajja said, “Fuck—Jak. Jak, wake up!”
“Awake,” he protested. “One eye fucked, the other has blood in it. Ow, fire and stone, that stings!”
Piret staggered backward into Innan, who propped her up from behind. Dagan tried to focus on the darkness; as far as he could tell, most of the guards were still standing, being better armored than the assassins. But if one assassin crept out of the dark unseen, they’d all be fucked. Again, Dagan opened his senses up and began sorting information like he’d been taught, a form of active meditation. In a few moments, he had the balance of it, senses tuned to the new situation, less immediate concerns in the background: the clanging of steel, shouts of pain, Kajja babbling at Jak as he bled all over her.
Finally, the hall went quiet, just the sobbing of one of the guards on the ground and pleading from the one called Silja. “Stop, stop, stop, Piret! By all the burning hells, where did you find these fighters?!”
Dagan allowed his focus to slip briefly. Glanced at Kajja, one bloody hand pressed to the reddening makeshift bandage over Jak’s face. At Innan, who sat on their knees, fingertips pressed into the stone floor, gaze relaxed, breathing steady. And then at Hen, who had blood in his hair, down one side of his face, soaking his collar. When he locked eyes with Dagan, he reached up and touched the thin, wet wound at his hairline. “Ow. When did that happen?”
Dagan shuddered with the near-overwhelming urge to run to him, clean him up, kiss him and wrap him in blankets.
But they were out of time.
Of the few guards still alive, only those two were moving or making noise, so Dagan assumed the rest weren’t a problem for now. “We should keep moving,” he reminded the others as they inspected wounds and tied the guards’ hands. “We can’t take them with us.”
“They need to see,” Piret replied, her face splashed with blood, her eyes and hair wild. “We were almost them.”
Dagan tried to argue, but Hen jerked the sobbing guard to his feet while Gareth finished tying him.
The hall seemed to slide downhill suddenly, and Dagan wondered if he’d been bleeding out this whole time and hadn’t even noticed.
“What in the burning hells?” Kajja grabbed Dagan’s leg with her free hand, the other still pressing into Jak’s wound.
And then, when he spotted Innan, pale-faced and concentrating on the floor, Dagan understood: The hall wasn’t sliding, but something in the earth and stone below or around them was.
The rocking stopped, and Innan’s eyes opened. They swooned and leaned back against the wall. “The way is open. Just ahead. I’ll be there—just give me a moment.”
“I’ll stay with them,” Kajja said, reaching out for Innan.
Jak struggled to sit up while Kajja was distracted. “I’m fine. The other eye still works.”
“Dagan, stay with them,” Bartolo said, already stepping over guard bodies.
“No,” he said immediately. “No, we should all stick together. We can’t afford to get separated down here.”
“Almost there,” Innan muttered. “Just around the corner. There’s a hole in the wall. Be careful—it goes way down, underneath. So far down.”
“Dagan’s right,” Hen said, crouching beside Jak. “Dags, grab Innan. I’ll get Jak. Let’s move.”
Jak tried to shake him off, but eventually allowed Hen to help him to his feet and secure him with an arm around his waist. He turned white as he got to his feet, so perhaps realized the wisdom of leaning on the very large man trying to help him. Meanwhile, Dagan pulled Innan up by both hands, then handed them the bow and quiver off his back. Innan put these on their back instead, and Dagan got down on his knees before them. “Arms around my neck,” he said.
Innan obliged, falling forward into him, then wrapping their legs around his waist as Dagan stood. Innan was taller than Dagan but nowhere near as solid or heavy; he could carry them for miles, this way. Bartolo and Gareth moved ahead, with Piret limping after.
“Piret, where are you hurt?” Dagan asked.
“It’s nothing. No time now,” she snapped.
There was no point arguing; she was right, anyhow. Outside the torchlit hall, a huge hole gaped in the stone wall, like a hungry black mouth. Beyond it, only more darkness, thick and seemingly impenetrable.
A booming voice ripped through Dagan’s mind—through the tunnel? Or was it all in his head? “No need to break my door, children. I would have opened it for you, had I known you were coming.” It was like hot metal, still glowing from the forge, sliding through his brain. Dagan tasted sharp, warm blood, smelled it, felt it.
“What in all the fucking fires?!” Silja shuddered, and the sound of water dribbling on stone came from her feet.
The only wonder was that they weren’t all pissing their pants, really.
“The master,” Kajja said, stepping out in front of the others.
Hen reached for her, but she was too quick, and he was weighed down; she darted through the opening in the wall, pale, delicate fingers trailing across the jagged stone almost lovingly. All he could do was shout, “Kajja!” after her and drag Jak through the hole too.
At once, everyone else rushed to follow. Bartolo, ever the responsible one, grabbed one of the torches off the wall and thrust another at Gareth, so that when they all emerged into the cavern beyond, their eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom.
“Enter, children,” said the voice, still at the exact same volume and with the exact same slicing, metallic tone to it. “None of you carry my blood, so I assume you’ve come on your own.”
“As opposed to?” Kajja asked quietly, drifting toward the voice smoothly, her figure shrinking into the edges of their light. She’d been screaming in terror only moments ago, but now she was almost calm, or at least entranced, somehow.
“As opposed to being an offering from my people. My priests. My City. They know better than to send me useless blood.”
Dagan shivered, and Innan groaned against his back. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong,” they whispered into his ear.
That much, he knew. The cavern was taking shape around them now, its high ceiling dripping with natural formations that glittered in the torchlight as Gareth and Bartolo passed beneath them. Whether they were sparkling stones or crystals, Dagan couldn’t tell. Silja and the other guard were the last two to spill through the hole Innan had torn in the wall; they lingered near it, limping and struggling with their too-tight bonds.
