Step by Step

Death In Harmony: Part Eleven of Twenty-Nine

Death In Harmony is the fifth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the eleventh chapter.

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This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

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Step by Step

The present: somewhere north of The Pit

The baby woke to be fed and changed twice during the night. The tumbled trees filtered the grey light of approaching dawn as Flin silently rose to check her traps. Nothing had disturbed them, no fresh meat. She collected the triggers to bundle and carry. Although it would save time when next they stopped, she knew the chances of catching anything would only really improve once they rested in one place for longer than a few hours.

They were ready to move before the sun broached the horizon, pools of inky shadow everywhere as they rejoined the trail.

Something was wrong. Flin sensed it immediately but, for a moment, she failed to work out what it was, her subconscious working hard, warning her of potential danger before her mind could filter the facts. She took another step, then halted.

She was walking in the footprints of someone wearing boots, the heels digging in deep, leaving clear indentation. Someone large, someone heavy, ahead of her. Whoever it was had walked the trail very recently; the edges of the tracks were sharp, no crumbling from the drying of the soil, plants remained pressed into the ground, with no time to spring back.

Flin peered ahead, but it was hard to see far, the forest quickly intruding on her line of sight. Her heart was pounding, memories of other times she had fled, other times she had not known which direction to run, other occasions fear had threatened to overwhelm, all flashing through her head.

Should she go on? Or should she turn back? What if this was someone else? Someone who might be an ally? What were the chances of that? What if it was one of her pursuers, perhaps ahead of the main party, and to turn around and go back would mean running straight into the group?

She also knew that if the prints belonged to one of her pursuers, then the man—and she was sure it was a man—would soon realise he had lost her trail, and turn around to pick it up again, or perhaps wait, concealed, see if he could ambush her.

Go on, or turn back? Neither option seemed wise, but they were all she had. Every tree and bush now harboured eyes and enemies, every twisting leaf a blade.

The forest was too thick, too trackless. The drop down the cliffs too precipitous. The bottom of the crater was still hidden in misty shadows, the sun yet to rise. She glanced down and was sure she saw a light, a brief flash, again in what she guessed was the centre of the depression then, like the first time she had seen the circle, it was gone.

Who, or what, could it be? Were they friendly? The question seemed moot, even if she wanted to descend, she had yet to find a safe way to do so.

As Flin agonised over her direction, the choice—as so often seemed to be the case in her life—was made for her. Not so much taken from her hands as ripped and thrown forcefully away.

A dog bayed, back down the trail, behind her, still far away but definitely the call of an animal with a scent.

‘Oh no, oh no!’

She started to run, then slowed to a loping step, eyes scanning ahead, looking at the ground, then at the brush around the trail. It would not do to run directly into a trap. She stopped and drew a ragged breath, eyes casting around, terror threatening to overwhelm. She sank to her knees, hand reaching up to take hold of a hair, twirl it, pull it free, then she paused, eyes widening. She released the strand and reached out in front of her.

The rope had originally been attached to a gigantic tree of some kind she did not know, huge branches and vines spreading, thick roots dropping, propping them up, but now it was enveloped within the bark, the knots hidden from view. The tree covered a vast area over, above, and around the trail, with some roots disappearing over the edge of the cliff. Flin had to touch the rope, to make sure it was real, that it was not simply a part of the tree itself.

Lichens and moss encrusted its surface, strands of twisted material escaping the thick whole where it had rotted away. It was certainly not safe to use.

She carefully looked over the edge and saw that the rope was attached to a creeper-enveloped rock pillar on the far side of a set of stone steps leading down. Below these, a smooth scar in the stone showed where others had been sheered away, long ago, before being replaced by rough wood, ancient and grey, bridging the gap to the next section of stone. It was impossible to see any further down, as the cliff bulged out, obscuring her view.

The dog bayed again, closer, much closer. Her pursuers were moving fast.

Flin ran on for a short distance, ensuring her prints were clear, scent carried away from the steps. It would not fool the hounds long, but it was all the time she had.

‘This is fucking stupid,’ she muttered, after carefully retracing her steps, ‘we may as well throw ourselves off.’

She lowered herself over the edge, gripping the rope tightly with hands, knees and ankles. The rough lichen and frayed material burned, but she kept going, ignoring the pain. She knew that the steps may not hold, she knew that the rope may snap, but she kept going.

There was no other choice: she had to keep going.

The first steps held.

‘Let’s go down, little one,’ she whispered, ‘we can do this. Slow and careful.’

Flin knew she could be heading down to her death, whether a quick and sudden end as she and the baby fell through the swirls of mists below, or a long and slow demise, starving, with potentially no way out, the high cliffs their prison walls.

Yet she also believed in fate and chance. Why else had she stopped precisely where the rope was? Sometimes, signs presented themselves in such a way as to be unavoidable, foolish not to consider. When the world threw her a raft to stop her drowning, she would be an idiot not to climb aboard.

She shook her head and carried on descending. Step by step, deeper and deeper.

As she travelled down the rockface, she could not help but remember walking down another flight of stairs years ago, not knowing where they would end, constantly wondering if her death waited at the foot, or followed from above.

The Past: below Youlbridge

Flin could still not make out the bottom. The stair had descended for what seemed an eternity and, with each step, she had carefully avoided any stone that looked too loose or worn, gingerly lowering her weight to the next, only breathing once more when it held.

She hoped that she had not lost the trail. She had seen no more corpses but, while it seemed odd that the way out was also down, there had been clear signs that people had passed this way, and recently.

The stairs ended in a small chamber. Rather than being a buried room or structure, this seemed more natural, or at least carved out of the bedrock, with a damp, sandy floor and uneven walls. Here and there, sooty marks absorbed her lantern light, showing where torches had once been extinguished against glistening, wet stone.

Flin carefully poured more fuel into the lantern and then fed and changed Kadan, bundling his soiled moss inside spare rags, rather than leaving it as a clear sign she had passed this way.

‘She says we should kill the woman, she’s seen too much. But we have to take the baby, always a use for a child, apparently.’

The sudden voices were descending the stairs above and, yet again, Flin swiftly pulled the shutter across the lantern, listening intently as she returned the fuel bottle to her pack.

‘I don’t want to know. Just want to get paid. Are you sure they went down here?’

‘No, but worth a check.’

‘Do we get a bonus if we find her?’

‘Doubt it, but we might lose something if we lose her.’

Flin had heard enough. She set off along a tunnel as fast as she could, picked at random from three, unable to do anything about the footprints she was leaving amongst the others in the sand. With luck, they would not be able to tell they were hers. At least two recent sets had moved in the same direction.

The further she moved along the tunnel, the dryer it became. The tracks became difficult to distinguish, the trail sloping slightly upward. When she came to the point where the tunnel was crossed by another, she could no longer tell which direction the other footprints had travelled.

She fought down a rising panic, stabbing pains and constricted breathing battling for prevalence in her chest. She bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood and dug her nails into palms already slick with fear sweat.

Kadan murmured, a contented sound to ease her own terror, to remind her of what was truly important, and she drew a deep breath and released the tension.

Trying to work out which direction was the correct one was impossible, so she chose the left-hand route, simply because it seemed to slope upward more steeply, and that had been the way she had initially hoped to travel, back up from the deep dark.

Ten paces in and she felt the floor move slightly. Her initial thought was that it was an earthquake, or she was about to fall into a shaft.

Instead, behind her came a horrific screech, as though she was pursued by the largest owl in the world. She felt the sound resonate inside her and stumbled forward, twisting, trying to stop herself falling, as she risked a glance back.

Five steps behind her a huge metal grate was descending, thick rust peeling and flaking as it did so, showering the tunnel with flying shards of sharp metal. She moved away, covering Kadan with her free arm, her other hand still holding bow, arrow, and lantern.

For one moment she tensed, ready to run forward and roll beneath the dropping metal lattice, but she knew it was too late. The weight and momentum meant it travelled faster to the floor, clanging, rebounding once, then settling to a halt with a sense of finality. A few more loose flakes of rusted metal fell loose, creating a strangely-pleasing popping, tinkling sound, followed by a deep, sudden silence.

Overhead, something reflected her lantern and she unshuttered it further and raised it. The time for stealth was gone; anyone following her would have heard the noise; they probably heard the noise in the streets high above, as it echoed and bounced from wall to wall, up through shafts and stairwells, through the earth itself. Flin’s ears were still ringing and she shook her head.

‘They probably heard the noise in Youlmouth,’ she said to Kadan.

Above her head, at least three times her height and reflecting her lantern, was a glass ceiling. Beyond, nothing but darkness.

‘Shit.’

She was in an old Maze.

‘Oh, shit.’

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