The floor promptly fell open under him, and he dropped from sight with a despairing shriek. His companion, straining to see, also made a misstep and fell from the narrow ledge along the wall to follow his friend into the pit.

‘Clever,’ Kurik said. He advanced to the brink of the gaping pit and raised his torch. ‘The bottom’s studded with sharpened stakes,’ he observed, looking down at the two men impaled below. ‘Let’s go back and tell the others. I think we’d better start watching where we put our feet.’

They returned to that torchlit main corridor as Ulath and Tynian joined them from the rear. Kurik tersely described the trap which had claimed the two Zemochs. He looked thoughtfully at the soldiers who had fallen here in the corridor and picked up one of their spears. ‘These weren’t Adus’s men.’

‘How do you know that?’ Kalten asked him.

‘Sir Bevier broke the spears of the ones who were with Adus. That means there are other soldiers here in the labyrinth – probably in small groups the same as this one. I’d guess that they’re here to lead us into traps in the side corridors.’

‘That’s very obliging of them,’ Ulath said.

‘I don’t follow your reasoning, Sir Ulath.’

‘There are traps in the maze, but we have soldiers around to spring them for us. All we have to do is catch them.’

‘One of those silver linings people talk about?’ Tynian asked.

‘You could say that, yes. The Zemochs we catch might not look at it that way, though.’

‘Are those soldiers behind us coming up very fast?’ Kurik asked him.

‘Not very.’

Kurik went back to the side corridor, holding his torch aloft. He was smiling grimly when he came back. ‘There are torch rings in the side passages the same as there are in this one,’ he told them. ‘Why don’t we move a few torches as we go along? We’ve been following the torches, and those soldiers have been following us. If the torches start leading them off into the side passages where the traps are, wouldn’t they sort of slow down a bit?’

‘I don’t know about them,’ Ulath said, ‘but I know I would.’

Chapter 28

Zemoch soldiers periodically charged out of side corridors, their faces bearing the hopeless expressions of men who considered themselves already dead. The ultimatum, ‘surrender or die’, however, opened an option to them the existence of which they had not even been aware. Most of them leaped at the chance to seize it. Their effusive gratitude waned, however, when they found that they were expected to take the lead.