Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [310]
A trickle of water, trembling with vermilion lights, ran suddenly past Philippa’s feet and dried up, hissing, on the hot stones. And Lymond, lifting his head, met Marthe’s gaze once more and said with gentle inflection, ‘And what a thing is an intelligent hermaphrodite bitch. I think we should get back. No one will try to leave yet. They’ll want to save the stuff in that room.’
And so they backed, coughing and choking; Kuzúm’s screaming face pressed on Philippa’s neck, and Philippa looked down again at an icy touch on her ankles and found the whole passage was running with water, which rose as she watched and soaked the hem of her dress. She turned and ran properly, back up the hill after the others, and in passing, looked and saw the opening from which the river was issuing.
It was the aperture on which Gilles and Marthe had been working, hauling down the barred timber and pressing open the door on a glittering cave, creaking and seething within. It was then that she realized that the right-hand wall of the long passage and of the short enclosed a warehouse of snow.
Now the bricks of the wall were red-hot. Water poured through the door-hatch, followed by glistening slush and half-dissolved floes thrust through the opening by the increasing pressure behind. The framework of the hatch suddenly burst and they drew back as the torrent increased in size, thin jets of spray playing like mist through the brickwork adjoining, the mortar melting in front of their eyes. Pierre Gilles said, in his most practical manner, ‘I should point out that if this wall collapses ahead of the other, the lower parts of the junction will be filled to the roof. It does not assist our escape.’
‘You mean,’ said Lymond, ‘you think we ought to run for it now?’ And as the old man’s beard twitched Lymond smiled in return and said, ‘I believe you are right. Jerott, take Marthe on your left. Míkál, will you take Philippa and Kuzúm? Then Archie and M. Gilles.… I’ll bring up the rear.’
They ran down the slope as the fires, hissing, were giving way to white clouds of steam mixed with smoke: clouds like windblown feathers and streamers of muslin, which hid and enfolded them as they reached the bright junction, the water high at their knees, and stumbled through and began to struggle on uphill, out of the wet.
There was no one to stop them. The treasure-chamber was half full of ice water, the green streams pouring down over the bright painted frescoes and stirring and nicking and gouging chariots and charioteers from their strong ancient beds. The caskets, floating a little, became waterlogged and sank unregarded as men fought for the rope, and the water, brimming faster and faster filled up the room. In the short passage it was now hard to hold to one’s footing: the men already out with their plunder floundered, blinded with smoke, their bows laid down, their burdens grasped in their arms. Onophrion, the blood from his groin marbling the flame-rippled water, struggled and shouted in vain to be set on his feet, to be carried, to be helped up the dry road to safety.
At first, seeing Lymond come out of the smoke, he thought his prayers had been answered. Then he saw who it was, and put up his hands as the sword went through his heart.
Jerott’s party heard the wall of the conduit collapse when they were far along the high passage, and a blast of hot air followed it, stirring their clothes and their hair. Then there was a greater