Several of them shrieked and dropped their picks, and their panic sent waves through the rest like a flame under twigs. They ran from the tunnel, skidding in the rubble and pushing each other roughly to escape. But from what? Every sense in Hunting Wolf’s body had told him he was in the presence of a greater evil than he had imagined existed. But he could not identify its source or its nature. His nerves were singing with it. He was giddy in the ripples of its power. Within moments he had found himself alone in the darkened cave, hearing only his own hurried, sharp breathing and the dripping of water from the rocky walls. He knew the men would not be far away outside, that they would wait to see what would happen from their imagined sanctuary of the light. But their proximity was as nothing. They could not help him even were they at his side.

There was no sign of the creature. His eyes had strained on the crevice he’d watched it disappear behind, but there came no sound or movement. He’d prayed then for strength and guidance and had been answered by the soft brush of his guide’s wing on his neck, and its touch gave him vigour.

Then there was a noise. It was faint at first as Hunting Wolf strained to interpret it. A tiny, tinkling, brittle sound. He narrowed his eyes to its source. From the entrance a soft wind seemed to be blowing the small particles of icicle that littered the floor. Each morning the men smashed the icicles that formed on the roof overnight before they began work, leaving the floor scattered with the shards, where they lay frozen and unmelted until ground down by boots and metal. It was these glittering rods of ice that were now tumbling towards him, picking up speed as they came, yet he could feel no breath of wind to blow them. But they were moving. The pieces of ice bounced along in a fury to a point behind him in the tunnel. There was something hideously wrong with the way the ice was behaving. All through the tunnel there were smaller and lighter pieces of rock on the floor, yet they remained still, undisturbed by the breeze that seemed to be animating the ice. It was only the thin, sparkling wands of frozen spring-water that were moving. But he realized then that they were not being blown at all. They were being sucked. Sucked towards something. Something just behind him. He was aware of a crawling warning between his shoulderblades, a sensation that made him swallow back bile that was rising from his stomach in unnamed terror. The ice battered against his legs in its effort to reach its destination, making tiny cuts on his flesh as it flew. Its noise was hideous. A tinkling from Hell.