Chương 134: 124. Dólos

I maintained the lower chambers without a lamp for fourteen years. By the sixth I had stopped carrying a lantern. The alignment marks were cut into the floor at my stride and my feet read them before my eyes could have. When my replacement arrived with a lantern, I watched him walk the same corridor and trip on the first mark. He could see the walls. He could not feel the floor. — Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 6th Century, Cappadocia Arthur set his heel against the nearest column drum and pushed.

The stone held without giving. It was good limestone, close-jointed, the drums stacked true and the fluting running clean from base to capital. Whatever had rebuilt this hall had understood vertical load. Somewhere ahead of them the scratching had stopped. He kept Breakwater up and his eyes on the darkness between the two rows of columns, where the ambient glow gave out a few metres in. The hall ran forwards past the reach of that light.

Two rows of columns flanked a nave roughly fifteen metres across, the fluted drums holding faint vertical lines of Ether along their surfaces, and between the columns on either side the darkness sat heavy and complete. They had felt the cold when they came through the doors. It was several degrees below the passage and still dropping. The smell came after it, the same animal reek as the den above, thicker down here for having nowhere to go.

Behind him Steve had Harrow up, though the light at the tip burned weaker than usual. He had spent most of himself on the door, and there had been no way for him to recover his reserves without letting the altar go cold. They had crossed with what he had left. There was no other trade to make.

"Two rows of cover between us and whatever is in the dark," Donna whispered.

"They will use it." Arthur counted to ten waiting for something to come at them. At fifteen nothing had. The silence had the quality of a room that has gone still because you walked into it. Then they came from both sides at once, and they came without a sound. Two broke from behind the fourth column on the left at a flat sprint, and Arthur had one second to read them. The forelimbs were longer than the wolves above, the gait lower and smoother, and they made no sound at all.

The pack in the outer chamber had snarled and crashed through loose rock. These came down the colonnade in silence. Their graft exceeds the outer specimens by a considerable margin, Archie said. The coordinated silence is not instinct.

"Steve, behind me. Donna, my left." Arthur set his feet and braced for the hit. It feinted at the shield, a half-lunge that pulled up short before he could answer it. While Arthur tried to reset his stance the second wolf went low towards his ankles. Arthur kicked out in reflex, caught the snout, and the wolf dived back into the dark between the columns. Then the hall was quiet again.

"Back," Arthur said.

"Back to the door. We need something behind us." They retreated in formation, Steve and Sarah close behind Arthur, and Donna scanning the darkness on either side.

"How many do you reckon are in here?" Steve whispered.

"Could be two. Could be twenty." Donna had Ravener in a low guard and her weight forwards on her toes.

"Keep your ears open."

"Steve, how long can you hold a flame for light?" A shadow came off their right before Steve could answer. Donna triggered Reflex Action on the movement and the technique bought her the interval she needed. Ravener met the animal across the forelegs and sheared into muscle, and before Donna could reset it had dived through the column line and vanished into the dark on the left.

"That was a third one," Sarah said.

"Different colour along the flank."

"If we cannot see them coming, we are dead." Arthur put his back to the slabs and looked at the darkness where three separate animals had vanished.

"New arrangement. Steve, this fight you are the light. Donna, keep Steve and Sarah standing. Sarah, use the ranged overload the moment you have a target that stays still. Anything in front of me or forty-five degrees either side is mine."

"Let there be light," Steve said, and brought the rod up. A flame the size of a fist bloomed off the tip. It threw the columns into hard relief and deepened the shadows.

"Not even close," Donna said.

"Larger." The flame swelled to the size of a football, and that had an effect. Arthur watched three sets of claws withdraw out of the new circle in three directions, unhurried about it. The light pushed outwards in a rough circle about six metres across. The four of them stood in the middle of the circle of light, and the hall beyond it might as well have been the bottom of the sea. They waited in the light for the wolves to come and be killed. The wolves declined.

"Right," Steve said, after a while.

"This is rather anticlimactic." Nothing moved for the better part of a minute. When Donna spoke her voice was flat and low, and Arthur understood she had already run the plan in her head and had not liked the ending.

"We cannot stand next to the door and wait for Steve to run dry," she said.

"The way back is sealed and we have no idea how far the way forward runs. They are smart enough to know the light is keeping them out. They will wait until it goes down." She turned her head a fraction.

"We bait them. Arthur, break some stone. Fist-sized down to gravel. I need enough to scatter."

"What?"

"Just do it. I will explain while you work." Arthur shrugged and took the maul to the base of the nearest column. It turned out that whatever the Ether had done to this place stopped short of making the limestone proof against a Tempered maul swung by a man with thirty-four points of Strength. He knocked off two chunks of stone and pounded them down to gravel. Halfway through the second column he saw a snout come to the edge of the circle and probe the light. It withdrew the moment he brought Breakwater round.

Donna gathered the rubble up in both hands and walked it out to the edge of the lit floor, scattering it in a broad arc about three and a half metres out from where they stood.

"Care to explain what exactly we are doing?" Steve said, watching her lay gravel down like a woman salting a path.

"They know they cannot get to us while the light is up. So they will not come, and we cannot keep it burning forever." She straightened and dusted her palms.

"So we give them the opening they are waiting for."

"Go on," Arthur said.

"Steve drops the light. We stand in the dark and we listen. If they commit, the gravel tells us where they are, because a stalking animal of their size can be silent on dressed stone but not on loose gravel. On my mark Steve puts the light straight back up and we face what we face."

"Or we have our faces eaten," Steve said.

"Have you got a better idea?"

"I have not, but I want it on the record that this is mental. You want to stand in the dark and wait for predators to actually hunt us."

"I want them inside two and a half metres where I can reach them," Donna said.

"You were just complaining that they will not come close."

"I complain as a coping mechanism."

"Steve." Arthur kept his eyes on the dark.

"How fast can you bring the light back after the mark?"

"Instantly. Holding it is what drains me. Lighting it is nothing." Arthur looked into the darkness beyond the fading ring of firelight. The wolves were out there, patient, and this was a stalemate that would end when Steve's reserves ran out. Then it would end badly.

"We do it," he said.

"I hold front and right. Donna, left. Steve and Sarah stay behind me and stay quiet. Sarah, get ready to put down anything that gets past Donna or me." He shifted his grip on the maul.

"Steve, let it go on three." He counted, and on three the light went out. The ambient Ether-glow was all that remained, a faint luminescence in the stone that gave them perhaps a metre and a half of visibility. Sarah had a hand between Arthur's shoulder blades so he would know where she was without looking. Donna had dropped into a crouch and was absolutely still. Steve held the rod up with the tip dead, waiting. Stolen novel; please report. Nothing happened for a minute that felt more like ten.

Then the scratching started again, claws working on stone, somewhere out to the left and forward.

"Outside the gravel. Hold," Donna breathed. The party stood in the dark and listened to an unknown number of animals stalking them. Arthur realised that his own breathing was the loudest thing in the hall and made himself slow it. The scratching came again, closer now, and from a second direction on the left. Then a third point, further back, a sound like a claw testing a column drum. The dark was full of things moving towards them and he could not see any of them.

Then came the sound of small stones shifting under weight, a scatter of gravel kicked sideways by something heavy passing through the semicircle. Donna waited one heartbeat longer than Arthur could stand.

"Steve, now." The light came up and the ring was full of them. Two on the left, mid-stride and low, close enough that Donna was inside their charge before they had finished committing to it. Two more were square in front of Arthur, already airborne. The brightness caught wet teeth and the flat shine of their eyes, and Arthur had no time to be afraid of any of it. Donna burned Threshold Drive and went left as a flicker and an afterimage.

Arthur got Breakwater up and triggered Counterforce Plant, and both wolves hit the shield inside the same second. The impact came up his forearm and banked itself in the glowing lines. He let the top edge of the shield roll the first one off and down. It landed badly and scrambled for purchase on dressed stone, and that was the opening. The maul came down with the stored force. The blow folded the wolf into the floor and killed it where it lay. One.

The second wolf came inside the arc of the maul while Arthur was committed to the swing. Its jaw closed on his left forearm above the wrist, and Arthur felt the teeth go through the muscle and the pressure of the bite bearing down towards bone. He brought the maul back and hit the wolf across the skull, but the angle was wrong and the blow glanced off the heavy ridge above the eye socket. The jaw did not let go. Sarah was there. She stepped in close and put her left hand flat against the wolf's neck.

The overload went through Knitbone and into the animal, and the effect was immediate and total. The matrix collapsed and everything downstream of it collapsed with it. The wolf's jaw went slack. Every muscle in its body seized at once and it hung rigid from Arthur's arm for a second before dropping. Arthur shook the dead jaw free and brought the maul down on its skull. Two. On the left it was already done.

Neither of the two that committed had been able to get clear of a woman moving at Threshold Drive speed inside two and a half metres. Donna had killed the first coming and the second going. Three and four. The last two broke and went back into the dark. Arthur stood in the ring with blood running down his hand and the light burning steady overhead. The semicircle of gravel around them was scattered now, the early-warning system having done its job.

"They will not come again," Donna said.

"Not into the light." They waited anyway. Two minutes of nothing.

"Steve," Donna said.

"Put the light out."

"I am sorry?"

"Put it out. Also sit down while you are at it. We need another way to find them, and burning Steve out is not it." The light went out and the darkness came flooding back. They stood in the hall, scanning the space and seeing nothing, and then Sarah said something that took a moment to register properly.

"I can see them." Arthur turned to look at her. She was staring out past his shoulder into the dark, and her focus was fixed on something he could not see.

"Say that again."

"I can see them." She lifted her chin slightly.

"Field Triage catalogues every Nadi-Matrix inside five metres. It finds the patients and it tells me which one is dying fastest. The new bracelets have expanded that range as well." Her hand found Arthur's sleeve and gripped it.

"When I overloaded that wolf the Nadi-Matrix lit up under my hand. In daylight you would never see it. In the dark it is visible."

"You are telling me," Steve said slowly, from the floor, "that you have had wolf radar the entire time."

"I am telling you the Matrix was reporting and nobody was reading it. Including me. Is this expected?" Sarah said it aloud, looking at the ceiling.

"Should I be able to see them at all?" Field Triage shows you Nadi-Matrix condition. Did the technique description mention that it was only effective for humans?

"Where are they," Donna said. Sarah went quiet, and Arthur watched her turn her head by small degrees, tracking something across the dark.

"One is on the left, about six, seven metres out. Circling us." She gave a pause.

"The other is coming from the right and it is bypassing you, Arthur. It is working around to come at Steve from behind the last column. It is also picking its way through the stone more carefully." She gave another, longer pause.

"I lose them when they go past seven, maybe eight metres. The left one just dropped off. He is back. They are pacing the edge of the ring." Arthur's grip tightened on the maul. He was blind. Donna was blind. Steve was blind and drained. Sarah was the only one of them who could see, and she was describing the positions of two predators in total darkness with the calm of a surgeon reading a scan.

"The one on the right is closer," Sarah said.

"About eight metres. It has stopped. It is waiting for the other one to get into position." Another pause.

"The one on the left is moving again. It is coming in."

"Donna, three steps left on Sarah's mark," Arthur said.

"I will take the right. Steve, light on Sarah's call."

"They are both closing," Sarah said.

"Right-side wolf is five metres. Left-side wolf is six. They are coming in together." Her voice did not change.

"Four metres. Three."

"Now." The flame lit the hall and Arthur saw the wolf on the right in the same instant it saw him. It was mid-lunge, two metres out, committed to a line that would have taken it past Arthur's shield side and into Steve. Arthur pivoted and brought the maul across in a flat arc that caught the wolf in the ribcage at full extension. The blow sent it sideways into a column drum and it hit the stone with a crack. Arthur stepped behind it and brought the maul down on its head before it could reset. Five.

Donna took the left one across the throat while it was still committed to a lunge at a target that had suddenly turned to meet it. It went down hard and did not get up. Six. The hall went quiet once again. Arthur stood with his back against a column and breathed, and let his heart come down from his throat, and counted six bodies twice to be sure.

ETHER ABSORBED: +3, 900 (6 KILLS) INTEGRATION: 6, 617 / 3, 968 LEVEL UP: LEVEL 22 INTEGRATION: 2, 649 / 4, 224 ATTRIBUTE POINTS AVAILABLE: 3 SARAH INTEGRATION: 7, 103 / 3, 712 LEVEL UP: LEVEL 21 INTEGRATION: 3, 391 / 3, 968 ATTRIBUTE POINTS AVAILABLE: 3"Sit. Arm out," Sarah said.

"It is not that bad."

"You are dripping on my boot." She had her hands on the forearm before he could construct an argument.

"Puncture wounds. None of them through the radial artery, which is lucky. Muscle is torn but no fracture." The warm light gathered under her palms and ran into the arm.

"The muscle damage will knit over the next hour. Do not test the grip until I tell you."

"Yes, Doctor." Arthur gave her a smile.

"Steve?"

"Steve is drained, not injured. His reserve is somewhere near the floor but it will refill on its own if he stops drawing on it." She looked back at Steve, who was sitting with his eyes closed and Harrow across his lap.

"All he needs is time." Donna motioned Sarah to come with her once she was done with Arthur.

"Keep the Triage running," she whispered.

"I want to check how far this passage goes. Stop the moment you see movement." Arthur and Steve waited to knit and fill respectively. The women were back in fifteen minutes.

"The passage runs for another forty metres or so and ends at stairs. Going down." Donna sat down with Sarah and motioned at the wolf that had bitten Arthur.

"We had them wrong from the first second," she said.

"We set up to meet a charge because that is what the ones upstairs did. These never had any intention of charging. They probed us three times, worked out that we could make light, and then they sat down and waited for the light to go out." She put a boot under the dead animal's jaw and turned the head.

"They were not hunting us. They were rationing us."

"These were glass cannons," Steve said. Sarah looked at him quizzically.

"Gaming term. A glass cannon is someone who can dish out a lot of damage but can't take any. Like a mage or rogue who can't take a hit," Steve explained.

"High Dexterity. Next to no Constitution."

"And now you know why I advised you to put points in Constitution," Donna said.

"Nagged, the word is nagged," Steve replied. Sarah went from body to body probing for cores.

"Cores on all six," she said, dropping six cores into Steve's pouch.

"None low grade."

"Must be the Ether Density," Steve said. • •"We need to spend some time recovering. Might as well allocate," Arthur said.

"I am not keen on walking down this corridor with points in my pocket." Arthur put one into Strength and one into Constitution without thinking about either. That was what he had done at every level since London, and the arm currently knitting itself under Sarah's hands was an argument for more of both. The third went into Acuity. The level up and the attribute allocation had a visible effect on his knitting forearm.

"Acuity," he said.

"Need to bring this up to fifteen like Dexterity." Steve opened one eye and looked at him.

"Your Acuity is eleven. I have forty-two and I am moved to tears."

"It is a start." Donna spread hers, one into Dexterity, one into Strength, one into Constitution, and said her reasoning in one line without being asked for it.

"I hit that first one clean across the forelegs and it walked away. Fast is not enough. Fast has to land." Steve took two into Acuity and one into Resonance, and sat looking at the numbers for a moment.

"Forty-four," he said.

"I am six off fifty."

"You are not dumping all six points from the next two levels into Acuity," Donna warned. Sarah put two into Acuity and one into Resonance as well, which was not what any of them expected from her, and she explained it before Steve could ask.

"Field Triage does not drain reserves when used in bursts. But I might have to keep it going." She closed her hand and opened it again.

"If I am the eyes now, then the eyes have to last longer than the fight does." Nobody had an argument for that one either, and the allocation closed there. • • At the far end of the hall, past the last pair of columns, the floor gave way to a staircase. The stair was cut into the bedrock. The treads curved down to the right, disappearing below the floor line into the dark. The stone was worn. The treads had been walked on by heavy things going up and coming down, and the wear was fresh.

The Ether Density below is higher than anything you have come across so far. If I were you I would be very careful.