They didn’t fall, Hilemore reminded himself. They may still be alive down there. Living souls can be rescued.
Very carefully, he crouched and unslung his pack from his shoulders, undoing the straps by feel. It took a few moments fumbling to find the lantern and several more to light it, his impatience sending a succession of matches into the void before he finally touched a flame to the wick. He cast the glow about, crouching to illuminate as much of the shaft as possible, though of course the bottom remained far out of reach. Hilemore began to call out, hearing only the echo of his own voice, when the walkway shuddered beneath him. The tremor possessed sufficient violence to send him sprawling, his torso hanging over the edge of the void before he managed to lever himself to safety.
The shaking seemed to increase as he regained his feet, arms held out wide to maintain balance. The perilousness of his position was underlined by a sudden and very loud crack from above, accompanied by a cascade of falling dust. Hilemore didn’t hesitate, keenly honed instincts acquired over the course of years at sea left little doubt in his mind that it was time to run.
He sprinted along the walkway, managing not to stumble as the tremor continued. As he reached the passage there came the thudding boom of something very large and very heavy impacting on the walkway. Hilemore paused for a second to turn, catching a glimpse of a huge slab tottering on the edge of the walkway for a second before tumbling into the shaft. Living souls can be rescued, he thought, teeth clenched in impotent fury.
Another violent shudder convinced him that this wasn’t the time to indulge his guilt. He turned and raced along the passage, scrambling up the piled rubble and spending several frantic seconds navigating the gap Clay had created before tumbling out the other side. He fell repeatedly as he ran, the surface beneath his feet shifting with increasing energy. Finally he came to the great cog-like door, finding the rope still dangling from the narrow aperture they had used to gain entry. He cast the lantern aside and gripped the rope, hauling himself up as fast as the shaking would allow. Reaching the aperture and beginning to clamber out, managing to poke his head into the freezing air before another violent heave loosened his grip and he found himself slipping back inside.
“Captain!” Steelfine’s meaty hand clamped onto Hilemore’s forearm with a near-crushing force. The Islander heaved him through the opening, shouting with the effort, and Hilemore found himself lying winded at the bottom of the bowl-shaped crevasse they had blasted into the ice.
“Sir?” Steelfine crouched at his side as Hilemore dragged air into his lungs, momentarily unable to speak. The ice was shuddering too, he noticed, the energy released in the spire communicated to the surrounding sheet. He started at a sharp crack near by, gaze jerking towards the sight of a fissure opening in the ice a few feet from where he lay, white powder exploding upwards as the fissure snaked away. More cracks sounded all around, powdered ice rising in curtains to catch a rainbow from the sunlight.
“We . . .” Hilemore choked, forced more air into his lungs and got to his feet. “We have to get clear!”
They scrambled free of the crevasse and ran for the camp, Hilemore waving at the fur-covered figures rushing to meet him. “Back! Get back!”
“Where’s my daughter!” Braddon Torcreek demanded as Hilemore made the camp. He ignored the Contractor, ordering the men to pile supplies on the sleds. His instinct was to order them to run, get away from this place as fast as possible. But without supplies they wouldn’t last a day on the ice, regardless of what happened here. “Get your harnesses on! Quickly! “
“My daughter!” Braddon repeated, grabbing hold of Hilemore’s arm and jerking him around. “My nephew. Where are they?”
Hilemore stared into the man’s eyes, seeing fevered desperation and a burden of guilt that perhaps outweighed his own. “I believe them to be lost,” he told the Contractor simply, tone as gentle as urgency allowed. “I’m sorry.”
He tore his arm free and began to buckle on one of the harnesses. “We’re heading north with all speed!” he called out to the men scrambling to follow suit. “No stopping until—”
His words were drowned by another series of cracks, louder and more numerous than before. For a second all was rendered white by the upsurge of powder and when it cleared Hilemore saw that the ice-sheet had fragmented. A complex matrix of cracks expanded out from the spire in all directions, as far as he could see. Tall geysers of vapour ascended from the widest cracks, one close enough to engulf one of his crew, a rifleman who had stood beside him at the Battle of the Strait. Hilemore watched in wretched fascination as the man was swallowed by the geyser, his screams brief but still terrible to hear. When the vapour cleared Hilemore could see the crewman’s scalded red features amidst the swaddle of his furs before he fell into the crevasse left in the geyser’s wake. Steam, Hilemore realised. It’s not being shattered, it’s being melted.
The ice beneath them pitched like the deck of a ship in heavy seas, sending the entire party from their feet. Hilemore watched as another man, one of the cook’s assistants, slid across the angled surface, mitten-clad hands scrabbling and failing to find purchase on the ice before he slipped over the edge. Hilemore and the rest of the party might well have joined him had the ice not righted itself, heaving back and forth before settling into a more sedate rhythm.
Hilemore got unsteadily to his feet, gazing around at their refashioned surroundings. The sheet was now a dense collection of flat-topped icebergs, drifting in apparent haphazard fashion dictated by the currents of the churned and steaming sea below. He watched as the berg they stood on began to shrink, chunks of ice falling away as the heated ocean gnawed at its edges. All the surviving members of the party clustered together in the centre of the berg, piling supplies and warily eyeing their quickly diminishing platform.
Braddon was the one exception. The Longrifles’ captain stood close to the berg’s edge, staring down at the roiling waters below in indifferent stillness. Skaggerhill and Preacher rushed forward to drag him back seconds before the patch of ice he stood on sublimed into the sea. Braddon shook off their restraining hands and slumped down amidst the mess of upturned sleds and disordered supplies, his face a picture in abject grief.
“Skipper,” Hilemore heard Scrimshine say in a tremulous whisper. He turned, following the smuggler’s pointed finger to find that the spire had begun to break apart. The great monolith’s pointed summit came loose amidst an explosion of dust as cracks appeared all over the spire’s surface. It fell to pieces all at once, great jagged slabs of material shattering yet more ice as they toppled into the sea, producing a series of tall waves that threatened to capsize their refuge. Then it was gone, vanished within the space of a few seconds, leaving them alone and adrift in a shattered world.