Page 134 of The Simurgh

‘Speaking of birds, where is that damned raven?’ Pitch lifted his free hand, brightening the flame. ‘Or is she just leading us deeper into the bowels of the cockaigne?’

The cave was actually not so much a cave as a long tunnel with varying degrees of width. Where the goddess had attacked had been in a particularly bloated section but the space was narrowing now, and the force of the water more disconcerting.

Pitch neither expected nor received a reply from Silas’s whose head was bobbing forward in a disconcerting way. ‘Are you still with me?’ Pitch shook him gently.

The ankou grunted, pointing forward.

‘Yes, yes,’ Pitch said. ‘We’re still following her, but our flying rat has not bothered to reappear for some time.’

The current struck at Pitch’s back, and his feet were lifted from the slimy bottom.

‘Shit.’

Large and immovable as he was, Silas too was lifted. They were swept along at a rapid pace.

‘Hold onto me, Pitch.’

It must have been an agonising move with all his split flesh but Silas dropped his arm to wrap about Pitch’s waist, clamping them together. Cold, dirty water splashed up Pitch’s nostrils, making him cough and splutter, his eyes burning. The water swirled and frothed, and whirlpools pulled them back and forth as all the while the push forward continued. Pitch kept a few fingertips of fire alight, but pressed as he was against the ankou his view was mostly of Silas’s garish wounds.

Pitch teetered between letting go to save the ankou pain, and holding on even tighter for fear of separation.

He kicked out, finding no trace of the bottom now. The top of his head brushed something hard, strands of his hair snagging and tearing free. And Silas too made a noise of discomfort.

‘Roof,’ he grunted.

And was right. They whisked along, dangerously near to the craggy ceiling. They were running out of space where air could thrive.

Gods, were theyactuallygoing to drown? Was that seriously to be their fate after all this fucking misery?

Pitch let the flame brighten, expanding the reach of its light. Up ahead were fangs of rock, three of them jutting down into the flow. There was only passable space between two of them, to aim for the wrong channel would see them slam into the stone. Silas was quickly becoming a deadweight in his arms, the ankou had no capacity to follow orders, or avoid knocking himself senseless.

Pitch quickly changed tack. He was not going to seek to avoid the rock formations. He’d use them instead.

‘Try to hold on to me, Silas. I have an idea.’

No reply came. But if he was unconscious at least it meant Pitch could hold him a little less tenderly.

The fangs of rock were fast approaching. Pitch worked with the whirlpool action of the water and got himself into as much of a position as this hastily thrown together idea could fetch.

He had his back to the rock when he struck it, Silas safely held in front of him, away from the impact.

The sudden halt of bodies did not slow the water, it continued in its insistence on shoving up Pitch’s nose, but he’d done what he intended. He’d wedged them in the smaller gap between the two stalactite-like formations.

Next step was trickier, and with the force of the water flowing around them, might well be done naked, their trousers the last casualty before they themselves were. But it was exactly that extreme force that Pitch relied on for the next part of his slightly ridiculous plan. He eyed the roof, which was not hard to do considering he was almost pressed up against it. Even in that momentary pause the water rose up to claim more of the narrow gap of breathing space.

After ensuring Silas’s head was tilted away from the heat and light, Pitch balled the flame in his hand, letting it built, letting it burn, until the oranges and reds turned white-hot. The water pounded him against the stone, his bones rattling, his head tilted up to gasp in the very last scrap of air left to him. With teeth clenched, and a prayer to all the gods of luck said, he thrust his hand against the rock above. And sent white hot molten fury at the crust, like the pulse of magma from the volcano.

And just as those tunnels of lava were formed in Arcadia, so they would be here. Pitch’s flame erupted through the layers of rock, tearing a hole in the earth to set them free. He scoured it wide, wide enough for a Nephilm.

The pressure of the rampaging floodwaters propelled them upwards, into the newly formed tunnel. Pitch secured his legs around Silas who made no sound, no movement. The ankou was a huge dragging weight that Pitch gladly bore.

They rose, the waters taking them higher.

Pitch craned his neck, marvelling at how this entire spur-of-the-moment plan may actually work. He knew when the flame found the surface with the hissing of the rain against the fire, the hint of white steam billowing. Pitch deadened the daemonic blaze, and sure enough it was rain that came down to greet him.

‘Shit, I don’t believe it, it’s worked, Silas!’ Pitch laughed, mad as a hatter, and squinted up into the rainfall.

The ankou was silent.