RUIN
Scene 50
Voices from far up the portal shaft. Turtuz listened. A call, and an answer from further up. They were close. His mind raced. With four of them, he might be able to come out at them himself, but the squad would have to come one by one, and the Hounds would cut them to pieces in turn. He dropped back down, and whispered, “Let’s wait and listen before we try to confront them. We can’t all hit them at once coming up the shaft.”
“But they’ll get away!” Mentrianos spoke more loudly, and Terrenci shushed him.
Turtuz shouted, ”Quiet!” From many rungs above them, a chaotic chatter and clatter built into screams and gunshots lasting no more than a minute. An explosion echoed down. All went silent. “I’ll see what’s happened and get right back to you,” he told the squad officer and the others. Don’t follow me, and stay quiet.” And he climbed like a shadow, away up the shaft before anyone could say a word.
The climb was long, and he was getting tired. He poked his head up out of the shaft a little at a time into a silent space of butchery and death.
The woman Hound, her face swollen and purple, lay dead, her hands both still knotted around her knives. The man Hound, both arms gone below the elbows, had bled out into a dark pool. One of his arms had been severed by teeth, the other cauterized into a stump by flame or detonation. A smoking heap of ashes raised fumes into the air, enough to make Turtuz gag and retch. Except for two bullet pockmarks, the portal’s pedestal stood intact, wreathed in a stratus of dark smog.
“Help me.” From across the chamber, a voice gasped. Through the fumes, Turtuz made out two human figures, one dead with its skull broken open, the other curling in agony around what seemed a wooden spike through his midsection. There was no sign of Derizan or anyone in his party.
Turtuz dropped down the shaft a few steps, partly to escape the stench of death. As if following him, the fume-laden air formed a downward current past him. He called out, “There’s only one survivor, wounded badly. You can come up, but the stink is terrible. This man needs treatment and questioning.”
He went back up to the survivor. “Who are you? We’ll treat you, but you have to tell us what happened and why you’re here.”
The man shuddered, cried out in pain, and said, “Bunjaian. I’m just Bunjaian. I’m… I was chasing a deserter. Help me.” His eyes rolled back as he went limp.
