"Jerry! Jerry!" screamed Liz, watching in horror from the crumbling edge as the rod in the gauntleted man's hands had grown, widening and raising the stone slab out of the bridge, and crushing it into the vast dim beams.
Someone pulled her back. "We've got to run, Liz. There are more of those goons coming." Lamont pointed. Sure enough, running along a sort of balustrade-ledge were another group of the Norse warriors she'd tipped off the ladder.
Liz found it hard to care. They'd been through such a lot... and... and... she was just getting know him and love him for all his crazy habits. She was vaguely aware that she was being hustled along, and that Lamont was crying too. Jerry and Lamont had been close friends a lot longer than she'd known him. A now ex-maintenance man was not the most likely of friends for a visiting professor of mythology, but that was Jerry.
She swallowed. That had been Jerry. So blind to ordinary things that he saw right through to the person on the inside. Okay, capable of wearing his pants back to front, but what was that to someone of his quality?
She sniffed angrily. Damn fool! She should have been at the back, not him.
"There are more of them that way," said someone.
"Quick, in through here. There's a staircase."
There was. But it was not designed for humans. The steps were one and a half times too high, forcing Liz to try and concentrate on actual circumstance or tumble headlong down the stairs onto everyone else.
When she got down into the gloomy cavernous room her first thought was that they had strayed into some kind of Norse giant's torture chamber. Then she realized it just smelled that way, and that the implements could just as easily belong in a giant's kitchen. One without much house-pride... or any idea of hygiene. The floor was ankle deep in slushy stuff that she didn't want to think about too much.
There was bellowing from up the stairs. And more, answering bellows coming from outside.
Someone said "psst!" from calf height. Looking down, Liz saw a very black face in the ruddy fire-light from the ox-roasting size open range. It wasn't the sort of black face to inspire any confidence, with a big warty nose, snaggled teeth, and a lot of black, wild hair. But the owner of the face was beckoning.
"Svart," he said looking at the Jackson family. And then some more Norse that was above Liz's ability to guess.
"What's he saying?"
"I only get one word, but I think he wants you to go in there because you're black," said Liz. "Like him."
"In," said Marie, pushing children forward. "I can't run any more. And he does look as black as the ace of spades. If that gets us help, I'm not too proud to accept it."
The gap was narrow and the space inside, dark. It seemed to be dusty and full of hard lumps of stuff.
"It smells like coal," said someone.
"Hush," said someone else.
Outside, they could hear the clatter of searchers. They waited silently in the utter darkness of a giant coal-cellar.
The wait gave Liz time to reflect and to regret. To cry too, in the darkness. She didn't have very long though, because a little hand found hers. "Come," it whispered. "Mom says."
The tunnel was dark and narrow, and hot. It came out at a river, near a dock beneath the cliff. The broad, cold green-water river was rimmed with ice. The water bobbed with the heads of swimmers, many of whom were as black and furry as their guide. He pointed and dived in.
"Do we swim it, Lamont?" said Emmitt, looking doubtful
Lamont felt the water. "No way," he said. "It's like Lake Michigan in midwinter. Those guys might be able to swim in this and live, but I don't think we could."
Liz leaned down and felt. Sure enough, it was finger-numbing cold. The bitter wind made it worse when she took her fingers out. "I agree. That's hypothermia material, and you'd be too cold to swim in it. I'm not sure if you'd die of cold or drown first. We'll have to find some other way."
"But... where?" asked Marie. "I don't think we could find our way back down that tunnel without that little hairy guy to guide us. He might have been as ugly as my old boss, but he sure knew those tunnels and got us out of a jam. I saw someone even opened that coal-hatch, just when we were leaving."
"I guess we'll just have to try," said Lamont. "We can't stay here for very long, it's too cold. At least it was warm in there. Come on, everybody, take hands."
Liz found herself walking back into the dark little tunnel holding Neoptolemeus' hand and one of these moronic PSA agents. She desperately wanted Jerry's hand, but his body would be back in Chicago now. That thought was enough to start her crying again. You never knew how much you needed someone, until they weren't around to be told how much you needed them.
It soon became apparent that they needed a guide down there, too. They ran into several dead-ends and had to reverse back down one passage and try another. It was as black as pitch, and hot and seemingly airless. Liz was beginning to wonder if they'd ever get anywhere, except lost forever, when there was a gleam of firelight ahead.
This time they really had come out into the torture chamber. What was worse was that there was nothing much they could do for the two wretches in the barred cells. Lamont looked grim, and looked around at the tools. He found a file intended for sharpening the tools of the horrible trade, and a crowbar, and passed them through the bars to the astounded looking creatures trapped there.
"We don't know if they've searched down here, and I'm getting the kids away from this place. But you can get away down there," he said, pointing to the trap-door they'd come through.
He got a gabble of amazed Norse in return. The language was Germanic enough to sound familiar to Liz without being intelligible. But pointing at the knives set next to the rack was clear enough. She passed them each one, feeling sullied just by the touch. Going up the winding stair out of here might be more risky but at least it felt cleaner. And it wasn't just filth underfoot that she was talking about.
They found themselves in a familiar looking passage. Sure enough, it was the one leading to the alcove with the ladder. And there were voices again, coming towards them. It felt almost as if they were trapped in some kind of horrible repeating cycle. "Up the ladder again," she said.
They hauled it up and jammed it half-way again, and crept down the passage past the snorer. He was still at it. Liz didn't even look. But Ella tugged hard at her sleeve. "You've got to come look," said the child in a whisper.
She did, not out of any real desire to, but just to oblige the kid. Ella normally talked nineteen to the dozen, with her twin filling in the other nineteen, on the occasions that Liz had met them before the incident. Liz wondered briefly, sadly, if Jerry and she had ever had kids... what would they have been like? Morose Emmitt? Sparky little Ty?
And then she saw.
The huge sleeper was still there, but the stone chair had fallen over and a hole—a shallow foxhole—was revealed where it had been standing. And on the floor lay a Hoplite helmet and something that made her heart leap like a klipspringer on amphetamines. The torn sleeve of that ratty old jacket of Jerry's.
No blood. Just a piece of torn fabric, and, now that she looked... one shoe. Jerry's.
It had to have gotten here after the incident on the bridge. Had to!
Ignoring the sleeper, she went into the room. Looking around there was a lot of old straw on the floor, and the mark of a human hand in the snow-drift next to the window.
It all came together now in a wild surge of hope. Impossible! But it had to be. He must have come here... through the roof! She found words were just too difficult. But she hugged Ella so hard the poor child probably had difficulty breathing.
Lamont and the others bundled into the room too. "Can we get out of the window? They're coming from both sides."
Liz looked. "Yes. The ledge is a bit narrow, but we can."
She vaulted out to prove it, nearly choked on her hooked shoulder-bag strap, then almost fell over the cliff yanking it free, and still couldn't stop smiling, especially at seeing the footprints in the drifted snow outside the window. Whatever had happened to Jerry, he had been alive, well after she thought him dead. Hope was like a wild fountain inside her, as she helped Ella down and was pushed aside by young Ty. He didn't need help! How old did she think he was?
More out of a desire to see where Jerry had come from than any other reason, Liz led them off, following the occasional footmarks. They seemed to go in threes for some reason. Not very straight threes. But that was a left and there a right sole pattern. Despite herself Liz started to sing "Oh, my soul is on the line..."
Lamont caught up and shook her, his face worried. "What's up, Liz?"
She pointed at the footmarks in the snow. "Jerry. He didn't get killed, Lamont. He got away, somehow."
A huge smile split Lamont's face. "Well, I'll be dipped... uh," he looked at his kids. "Are you sure those are his prints?"
Liz nodded. "His jacket sleeve and shoe were in the room with the sleeper, and a Greek helmet. No blood. He might have been killed since then, but he didn't die when I thought he had. He may be a captive... he may be dead. But he wasn't. He wasn't!"
Lamont gave her a squeeze. "He's quite a man, that. Makes good puns. Even sings better than you do."
Liz laughed a little unevenly. "Everybody sings better than I do. And there is no such thing as a good pun." She smiled, feeling rather weak with the aftermath of the emotion-storm. "So what do we do now? I really can't think straight."
"That's a first," said Lamont.
"Well, it is the first time I've admitted it, anyway," said Liz.
Lamont stuck his chest out, plainly also infected by the relief. "You just leave it to a sensible man to sort things out, li'l woman," he said, with suitable condescension. "We men know how to do these things. Let me show you how it's done."
He turned to his wife. "Hey, Marie. Where do we go now?"
She shrugged, looking a little puzzled. "I guess a bit further away, Lamont. Even if it is cold out here, those locals weren't jumping into that damn river for a wash."
"We all look like we could use one of those. But at least it isn't snowing right now."
"At least you have an advantage, being black," said Liz.
Lamont laughed. "Liz, right now, you are too."
Liz couldn't see her own face but to judge by her hands that was probably accurate. "So do we just go on, Marie?"
"Yeah."
So they did. They wound up skirting a low cliff-top until they came out at some scree, and then into a shallow valley. Looking back they could see the that the hall they'd come from looked exactly like a hill—except with a huge chimney, spewing black smoke across the landscape.
"If we go over the next crest we can watch it, without being seen. We might have to go back if it gets any colder, later," said Lamont.
Looking at Marie, Liz wondered just how easy that was going to be. But she caught that look, and shook her head, just as Liz was about to open her mouth. Well, they could always use those two PSA jerks who were following them like lost sheep. There was no real cover out here, and if there were places to look out from the Norse giant's hill-fort they simply had to be seen. Being coal-dust blackened from head to toe made them stand out against the snowy patches, and the burnished carapaces of the PSA men didn't help either.
* * *
The far hill-crest was further than it looked. By the time they got there, they were all panting and tired. Just over the ridge-line, out of direct sight of the smoke-spewing hill, they flopped down.
Liz found a rock to rest her back against. Now that she'd come this far, she wanted to go back and look for Jerry. It was dangerous there, true, but, looking down the valley they were now above...
She grabbed Lamont's shoulder. Marie was lying with her head on his lap. Liz pointed.
There was a black cave-maw near the bottom of the valley.... A steaming maw. Something was emerging from it. Something scaly and gleaming in the weak sunlight. Something enormous.
She'd seen dragons before, but Smitar and Bitar didn't look like this thing. It was three times their size, for a start.
"I think we just stay very very still," said Marie, putting a restraining hand on her youngest son.
On the whole, that seemed like a very good idea, especially as a party of Norsemen in their chain-mail had just come into view below, in the valley beneath the hill with the smokestack.