Monstrous Regiment (Discworld 31)

"Ah. Right. This is still small-picture stuff, is it?"

"Exactly, sir."

"Then may orders, Perks, are to proceed with speed and caution to release the prisoners."

"Well done, sir. We'll go through this... this - "

"Crypt," said Igorina, looking round.

The candle blew out.

Somewhere ahead of them, in darkness absolute and velvet-thick, stone moved on stone.

"I wonder why this passage was sealed up?" said the voice of Blouse.

"I think I've stopped wondering why it was sealed up in such a hurry," said Tonker.

"I wonder who tried to open it?" said Polly.

There was a crash of, as it might be, a heavy slab falling off an ornate tomb. It could have been half a dozen other things but, somehow, that was the image that sprang to rnind. The dead air moved a little.

"I don't want to worry anyone," said Shufti, "but I can hear the sound of sort of feet, sort of dragging."

Polly remembered the man lighting the candles. He'd dropped the bundle of matches into the brass saucer of the candlestick, hadn't he? Moving her hand slowly, she groped for them.

"If you didn't want to worry anyone," came the voice of Tonker from the dry, thick darkness, "why the hell did you just tell us that?"

Polly's fingers found a sliver of wood. She raised it to her nose, and sniffed the sulphurous smell.

"I've got one match," she said. "I'm going to try to light the candle again. Everyone look for a way out. Ready?"

She sidled to the invisible wall. Then she scratched the match down the stone, and yellow light filled the crypt.

Someone whimpered. Polly stared, candle forgotten. The match went out.

"O-kay," said the subdued voice of Tonker. "Walking dead people. So?"

"The one near the archway was the late General Puhloaver!" said Blouse. "I have his book on the art of defense!"

"Best not to ask him to autograph it, sir," said Polly, as the squad bunched together.

There was the whimpering again. It seemed to come from where Polly remembered Wazzer standing. She heard her praying. There were no words that she could make out, just a fierce and urgent whispering.

"Maybe these washing sticks can slow them down a bit?" Shufti quavered.

"More than being dead already?" said Igorina.

No, a voice whispered, and light filled the crypt.

It was barely brighter than a glowworm, but a single photon can do a lot of work in chthonic darkness. It rose above the kneeling Wazzer until it was woman height, because it was a woman.

Or, at least, it was the shadow of a woman. No, Polly saw, it was the light of a woman, a moving web of lines and highlights in which there came and went, like pictures in a fire, a female shape.

"Soldiers of Borogravia... attention!" said Wazzer. And underneath her reedy little tone was a shadow voice, a whisper that filled and refilled the long rooms.

Soldiers of Borogravia... attention!

Soldiers...