S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

And the Dúnedain leaders were grouped around one of those, unmistakable from the sketches at the briefing. Ingolf came up and went down on one knee; the others were too, or making like snakes on their bellies-this was only a hundred yards from the wall, although when you looked back you saw that there was artfully arranged dead ground most of the way to the river. Cole Salander was there, and Alyssa Larsson, neither of whom he’d expected to see alive again, deep down. And a man he didn’t recognize, in Boise’s Special Forces summer camouflage uniform. That wasn’t part of the plan; the two were supposed to guide the assault force in by themselves.

As he came close he heard Alleyne Loring say something in Sindarin, his mellifluous aristo-English accent obvious even through the alien syllables. The only other one like it Ingolf had ever heard was Alleyne’s elderly father, and it had made some old books he’d read make more sense. Alyssa answered abruptly and in English:

“Yes, of course they’re trustworthy, Uncle Alleyne-that’s why they sent both of us, to show that we’re not under threat. Now, are we going to do this?”

“You’re not, we are, Pilot Officer,” Loring said. “Salander, you’re with. . Mary, Ritva, Ingolf, Ian. John, feed a link in after them.”

“Lead it in, more like,” the big man said imperturbably in his soft burring accent that rendered more like as murr loik .

Loring nodded. “Confirm that all’s well on the other end and relay the code.”

Alyssa didn’t complain, though even in the darkness he thought he could see she’d like to.

In the soup again, Ingolf thought. Christ, the things I do. .

The hidden door was cleverly concealed; an aluminum slab had random pieces of rock and brick fixed to it, and enough soil to grow honest-to-goodness plants, all cunningly arranged to overlap the opening. A counterweighted lever system opened it from within.

Mary flashed Ingolf a thumbs-up as she followed her sister in; all he could see was an indistinct flash of one blue eye behind her mask. She made the same gesture to Alyssa, who was a cousin-daughter of her mother’s brother-and got the purse-lipped glare and elevated middle finger of resentment as she passed. Alyssa mouthed something silently; no way of telling what, but something along the lines of you big blond horse wouldn’t have surprised him.

Fred Thurston had described the tunnel concisely, and Ingolf’s hands and feet found the metal rungs set into the concrete wall without trouble.

“Go,” he said softly, as Ian landed beside him.

His voice fell into the void with the flatness of still enclosed air. The near-absolute dark grew worse still as the five went forward, each guiding themselves with a hand on the wall. The scent of damp concrete and old stagnant water was strong in the chilly air, and occasionally his boots made a tack sound in a shallow film of it as they slanted downward towards the bottom of the tunnel’s curve. It was probably some sort of pre-Change engineering work mostly, and he could almost feel the monstrous weight of the city wall above. Perhaps it went by an old building’s foundations that were taking the weight. He certainly hoped so.

There must be drainage, but it was far from perfect, and the film of water turned to a shallow puddle when they reached the bottom. He could feel it when the floor started to climb again, you always could, especially when you were in full gear-even a slope invisible to the eye was all too obvious to the legs. Everyone drew a weapon, mostly daggers; Ingolf thought of his bowie and decided on the tomahawk he kept tucked through a loop at the back of his belt. If it came to it, he wanted something handy in close quarters, and the light axe had stood him in good stead before.

Knife-fights in the dark, in a cave. Wouldn’t that be a treat, not knowing who you were hitting. Christ, the things I do. .

The tunnel was fairly broad, enough for three men to move abreast and high enough that he could only just touch the top with the poll of his belt-axe when he put an arm up. In the darkness it was impossible to tell whether it was pre-Change, or something the elder Thurston had installed to have up his sleeve. Apparently the workmen hadn’t talked, his elder son hadn’t told anyone before he died, and the secret remained safe with the younger. That would end tonight, one way or another.

From what Fred said, his dad arranged this when his grip on Boise was still shaky and kept it close because it might turn out handy. It’s doable for the numbers we have planned, but it’s still going to be tight, he thought, as they came to a halt as much by instinct as anything else.

Cole Salander tapped out a sequence somewhere in the blackness ahead, softly, knuckle on solid-sounding metal. There was a breath of warmer air and. . not exactly light, but not-quite-total darkness. Then a small glimpse of genuine light above them, a beam from a bull’s-eye lantern, the dull gleam of roughened piping set in the wall for climbing, and a voice:

“Up here, and quick. There are Cutters on the roof three stories up, so keep it quiet.”

Oh, joy, Ingolf thought. We’ve got enemy ass right over our heads ready to dump on us. This night just gets better and better. Christ, the things I do. .

Mary and Ritva went up first, climbing with the light silent grace of cats. Ian Kovalevsky followed, and then Ingolf, noting in passing that the trapdoor was a solid block of concrete with a square of worn old-style synthetic glued to its top. That would overlap onto the surface beyond, concealing any line, and the trap itself was beveled in all around the edge, fitting into a similar circuit in the floor. A counterweighted lever mechanism raised it; the thing was four feet on a side, and far too heavy to lift by hand. A splendid little asset, now being expended for its one and only use, fulfilling the purpose for which it had been made.

They were in a walk-in closet as they came out; that gave onto a smallish room that had probably been an office once, though probably not now since it had neither gaslights nor an exterior window. Beyond the frosted-glass cubicle was a sense of shadowy gloom around them, and concrete pillars; what had been something called a parking garage before the Change, and warehouse space since, the old openings in the walls bricked up to keep out weather. He’d seen the same done elsewhere, since the ramps between the floors were perfect for moving loads around.

“I’m Captain Wellman, Special Forces. This is it?” a man a bit older than Ingolf said, as the two women checked the situation outside and then turned to whisper a code word down the way they’d come; he had Captain’s bars, the same sort as a lot of the National Guard insignia in the Midwest, likewise derived from the old American army.

“Ingolf Vogeler, Captain Wellman,” Ingolf said softly, sketching a salute after he sheathed his weapon.

Carrying an axe to your first conversation was tactless. He could see that the Boisean officer recognized the name, if not his face. It was a little disconcerting how often that was happening these days. He’d been well known at home in Readstown, of course, but he’d been the Sheriff’s son there. And anyway, Readstown was a very small puddle to be a bullfrog in, and over the wandering years since then he’d gotten used to being just another stranger to everyone except the people he was working with. In Montival he was one of the people who’d been on the Quest, Ingolf the Wanderer according to some bards he’d like to strangle. A certain degree of fame had its drawbacks, and he made a mental note to figure the likelihood of being known into his calculations.