Garth eyed him with some concern. “Maximilian, er, Prince…” Garth had still not quite worked out what to call the prince.
Maximilian paused from rubbing a light oil into his arms and shoulders. “Call me Maximilian, Garth,” he said with a grin. “You of all people owe me no title.”
“Ah, yes, well…Maximilian. Are you sure that I’m the best person to act as your companion down the Veins? I would have thought that one of the guards…someone familiar with weapons…”
Maximilian ran his hands back through his hair, binding it in a short tail in the nape of his neck. “I need a friend at my back, Garth. Not someone shouting terse instructions about how to swing a sword.”
Garth’s eyes slipped to the long sword lying in its scabbard on the table. “Maximilian,” he said quietly, “can you use that?”
Maximilian sobered, and his hands dropped loosely to his sides. “It’s been years, Garth. Years, and at fourteen I’d only just begun my training with the long sword.” A wry expression crossed his face. “I wish Cavor had chosen mine-picks to fight with.”
Despite his concerns, Garth broke into laughter. “I doubt he even knows what one is, Maximilian. He’s probably no idea how the prisoners worried the gloam from the rock-face.”
Maximilian stepped over to the table and picked the weapon belt up, holding it in his hands for a long moment before buckling it about his hips. Then, without any apparent effort, he lifted the heavy sword and scabbard and slipped them into place. “Cavor will soon find out more about the Veins than he ever would have wished,” he observed.
Garth eyed him, sober now. Even dressed only in a pair of breeches, Maximilian looked every inch the king. His aquiline face was composed, almost grave, and his bearing proud. His skin glowed ivory in the soft light of the room, the blue-engraved Manteceros rippling across his right upper arm and catching the glints in his blue-black hair. Despite Maximilian’s years apart from the sword, he appeared to move at one with the weapon.
Without knowing why he did it, Garth offered Maximilian his hand. The prince grasped it with both of his, and their eyes met.
“You have my faith,” Garth whispered, letting his Touch burn fiercely through his hand, “and my belief.” There was no healing in that Touch, only pure emotion, and Maximilian’s eyes misted.
“I know it,” he replied, “and it is why I chose you for my companion. To have faith at my back today is more than I could ask for.”
For a moment longer they stood, then both let their hands drop, slightly self-conscious at the emotion each had revealed to the other.
“Well,” Maximilian said, “shall we go?”
Garth gave him a confident grin and waved that he should precede him through the door, but privately he wondered how Maximilian felt about going back beneath the hanging wall. Then he shook his head, and followed Maximilian out the door. For Maximilian to go back beneath the hanging wall demonstrated a courage that Garth found almost impossible to comprehend.
They met at noon by the main shaft. It was a bright and sunny day, yet the greyness of the Veins so pervaded the air that it seemed cool and dreary. At a distance of fifty or sixty paces stood guards and soldiers at stiff attention; behind them thousands upon thousands of the ordinary folk of Escator.
All were quiet and solemn.
Garth and Ravenna walked quietly behind Maximilian—Vorstus and Joseph were waiting at the first ring of soldiers. They shared a nervous glance—where was the Manteceros?
Cavor, waiting by the shaft, didn’t care. He had almost forgotten the Manteceros and its annoying insistence on administering its curious ordeal. All Cavor wanted, all he had on his mind, was that finally he was going to run Maximilian through with his sword. And then, he knew, knew, that his mark would never trouble him again.
He grinned coldly at Maximilian as he, the Baxtor youth and that curiously beautiful girl stepped underneath the ironwork surmounting the shaft—what’s the fool thinking of, dressing only in breeches? Cavor almost laughed. This was going to be easier than he thought.
“Summon the cage,” he said tersely, and behind him Egalion, dressed only in a short tunic and breeches himself, nodded to Jack, who stood by the controls.
Garth ran his eyes over Jack. He was newly stooped, and fresh scars littered his body; the guard avoided his eyes and threw a lever.
Deep in the yawning shaft at their feet came an answering rumble, then a frightful screeching as the cage rushed towards the surface. Garth forgot Jack and looked anxiously at Maximilian. The prince’s face and body was apparently relaxed, but Garth thought he could see some tightness about his eyes.
The screeching increased, and now seemed overlaid by some ghostly wailing. Fennon Furst, who neither Garth nor Ravenna had noticed to this point, emerged from behind an iron strut. His red hair was oiled down so tightly it clung to his skull in a shining cap. “Welcome home, 859!” he jeered.
Maximilian could not help a flinch spasm across his face, and Cavor roared with confident laughter. “This time I will make damn sure you won’t escape, pretender!”
Cavor had been forced to shout to make his voice heard above the impending arrival of the cage, and the instant that he had finished the cage crashed into the iron framework. Above their heads massive wheels ground reluctantly to a halt, and great chains twisted and shrieked with the shock of the cage’s arrival.
With the cage had arrived the dreadful sulphurous stench of the Veins; it hung about the cage like a fog.
Garth shuddered, and wondered how Maximilian could bear it.
Furst stepped forward and swung open the door, then stepped back in hasty shock.
Standing inside the cage was the Manteceros, its face wrapped in an expression recalling the darkness below.
Ravenna stepped gracefully inside the cage and stroked the creature’s nose. “Skip, trip, my pretty man,” she smiled, and the Manteceros’ face lightened slightly.
“It is time,” it said, shifting its eyes to those waiting outside. “Finally, it is time.”
“More than time,” Cavor said roughly, and pushed past the Manteceros into the cage. Egalion, then Maximilian, Garth and Furst—who announced loudly that he would operate the machinery and wait with the cage, crowded into the small space.
Ravenna found herself squeezed between the thick, rusty wire netting walls and Cavor, and she suppressed a grimace of distaste as the man pressed against her body even more than he had to.
Then the doors closed, and the silent group plummeted to their fate.
Furst let the cage descend, not to Section 205, where Garth had expected them to go, but to a section several levels lower. As soon as they stepped out of the cage—Furst remaining behind—he realised why. The initial cavern, then the tunnels opening off it, were much higher and wider than those of Section 205.
Here the combatants would have room to move; to swing their swords.
“Are you ready, pretender?” Cavor asked belligerently, a note of tension creeping into his voice. He could hardly believe the stench of this forsaken hole in the ground.
Maximilian stared at him a moment. “Not here,” he said calmly. “In the Veins, Cavor, not in their foyer.” He set off without a backward glance down one of tunnels, forcing the others to follow him.
The Manteceros, Ravenna at its shoulder, brought up the rear.
As they went Garth was shocked, deeply shocked, to realise that men still laboured down the Veins. Surely Furst could have called a halt to work for this one day?
But apparently Furst was committed to meeting his quota of gloam, and challenge or no challenge, the men still worked and died silently and hopelessly. Successive gangs watched silently, their bodies hunched, their eyes devoid of any expression or any hope, as the strange procession passed them by.
Ignoring the gangs he passed, Maximilian walked until the party was deep into the tunnel. Gloom surrounded them, torches sputtered fitfully but cast little light, and the blackness of the tunnel walls reached out hungrily for those who dared to pass within it.
“Here,” he said eventually, some minutes after they’d passed a group of prisoners huddled against the floor of the tunnel in an infrequent and inadequate break from their labour.
Cavor glanced about. If he had any doubts then they did not show from his face—barely visible in the pressing shadow. “As good a place to die as any other, pretender. Are you ready?”
Cavor’s sword rattled out of his scabbard, and Maximilian drew his to meet him. Egalion and Garth hastily moved back two or three paces behind their respective combatants.
“Gentlemen,” said the Manteceros, ignoring the danger and taking a shuffling step forward. “There is still time to reconsider this ridiculous duel. A simple tale will suffice to determine who—”