The Spring Between Us

Chapter 61: The Mine Collapse

The soldier did not reach the tank.

Sten saw him turn and Sten was off the porch steps and across the yard before the man had taken five paces, and Berik came from the other side, and the soldier stopped with his hand still on his belt and said, "I am going to the pump. The pump is not working. The pipe is knocking and the men in the shed have sent for me."

"The pump is not your concern tonight," Sten said. "Stand still and put your hands where I can see them."

The soldier put his hands up. Sten took the knife off his belt and turned him round and walked him to the fence and put two warriors on him.

"The pump," I said. "Which pump?"

"The one at the assay shed," the soldier said. "The pipe is knocking and the men in the shed say the tank is getting hot."

Hank was beside me.

"Hot," he said. "The tank is hot."

"It is a lead tank with radium in it and it has been sitting in the sun all day." I looked at the cart. "Owen. The men in the shed. How many?"

"Four on the night shift."

"Get them out of that shed." I turned to Sten. "Put a cordon round the assay shed and do not let any man or wolf inside it. And get the town back from the gate. If that tank is getting hot there is a thing in it that can hurt a wolf who stands too close."

Sten went. The hall doors were open and the clerk was still standing on the steps with his gavel and the packs were half in and half out of the yard, and I stood in the middle of it with the cart and the tank and said, "The hearing is adjourned. Everybody out of the yard."

Silas came out of the hall.

"Luna," he said. "You do not have the authority to adjourn a Council hearing."

"The tank is getting hot and the shed is full of radium and I am not going to stand in a yard and argue about authority while the town is at the gate." I turned to the yard. "Everybody back. Past the fence. Now."

The yard moved. The packs went back past the fence and the town went with them, and the clerk took his gavel and his papers and went down the steps and did not look at Silas. The soldiers along the fence did not move.

Then the ground shook.

It was not a big shake. It was a small one, a single jolt, like a heavy cart going over a stone, and the tank on the cart rocked and the horses threw their heads up and somewhere in the rock under the yard there was a sound, a deep grinding sound, and then it stopped.

"That was the mine," Owen said. "That was the north face."

"There are men in the north face," the soldier said. "The night shift. Six of them."

Sten was at the gate. "Luna. The tunnel mouth is caved. There are men shouting inside it."

I was running before he finished. I went through the gate and round the side of the hall to the mine road, and the mine road went up the slope to the north face where the tunnel mouth was, and the tunnel mouth was a black hole in the rock with a heap of broken stone in front of it and dust coming out of it and a sound from behind the stone.

Cal was at the mouth of the tunnel with four men and a lantern.

"Luna," he said. "It came down thirty feet in. There are six men behind it and one of them is hurt and they cannot get out."

"Dig," I said.

We dug. There was a pick and a crowbar and two shovels and there were twenty wolves and forty men and no one had to be told what to do. Cal went in first with the lantern and got down on his knees in the rubble and pulled the stone out with his hands, and I went in beside him and pulled it out with mine, and the dust came down and the roof above us made a sound like a drum and nobody stopped.

It took an hour. We got a gap open at the top of the rubble and Cal put his lantern through it and shouted, and a voice came back from behind the stone, thin and far away.

"There is one of them hurt bad," Cal said. "He has a beam on his leg."

"Can you get him out?"

"I can get him out if I can get through." Cal got his shoulders into the gap and pulled himself through. "Luna. The roof above the gap is loose. I need you to hold the beam while I pull him."

"Cal."

"I have got him." Cal's voice came back through the gap. "I have got his arms. Hold the beam."

I held the beam. It was a baulk of timber the thickness of my waist and it was cracked across the middle and it was holding up the roof above the gap, and I got my shoulder under the c***k and my hands on either side of it and set my feet.

Then the roof came down again.

It came down over the gap and it took Cal with it. The dust came up in a wall and I was on my knees with the beam on my shoulder and the gap gone and the lantern out and the whole tunnel dark.

"Cal," I said.

Nothing.

"Cal."

There was dust in my mouth and in my eyes and my shoulder was on fire and the beam above me was creaking, and I put my hands into the rubble and pulled and the rubble moved and I pulled again.

And then Hank was there.

He came out of the dust with a lantern in one hand and his coat off and he was beside me with his hands in the rubble and his shoulder against mine and he said, "Where is he?"

"Behind the beam. The gap is under the beam."

Hank put his lantern down and got his hands into the gap and pulled one stone and then another and the rubble moved and a boot came through and then a leg and then Cal.

Cal was grey with dust and his eyes were shut and there was blood on his forehead and he was not breathing.

Hank got him out and laid him on the floor of the tunnel and put his hand on his chest and put his ear to his mouth and then he got his hand on Cal's jaw and pulled it open and put his mouth on Cal's and breathed into him.

I knelt there with the beam on my shoulder and the dust coming down and Hank's hands on Cal's chest and the tunnel full of men and lanterns, and I did not move and I did not say anything and I did not let go of the beam.

Hank breathed into Cal again and then again and then put his hands on his chest and pushed, and Cal coughed.

He coughed and his eyes came open and he said, "Luna. The beam."

"The beam is holding," I said. "Lie still."

They carried Cal out and they carried the hurt man out behind him and they brought the rest of the six out one by one through the gap we had made, and the last of them came out just before the roof came down the rest of the way and filled the tunnel mouth with rock.

The tunnel was gone. Six men were out and one of them had a broken leg and Cal had a cut on his head and there was blood on his face and he was sitting on the ground outside the tunnel mouth with a blanket round his shoulders and Mira's hands on his head.

I stood in front of the tunnel with the dust on my face and my shoulder not working very well and the whole of the north face caved in, and Hank came and stood beside me.

"You held the beam," he said.

"I held the beam."

"You were under a beam in a collapsing tunnel and you did not let go."

"Cal was under it." I looked at him. "You put your mouth on his mouth and your hands on his chest and you brought him back."

"I have done it before. In the mine at my own pack. It is a thing every Alpha learns."

"It is a thing every Alpha learns." I looked at the crowd outside the tunnel and the packs and the town and the doctor and the soldiers and Silas standing at the back of it with his hat in his hands. "Then every wolf in this canyon has just seen the Alpha of the Çöl pack put his mouth on a Kızıltaş wolf and bring him back, and every wolf in this canyon has just seen the Luna hold a beam up with her shoulder so that a Kızıltaş wolf could get out." I put my hand on his arm. "And that, Hank, is a better argument than any paper in that hall."

He looked at me.

"At sundown," I said. "The hall is open and the packs are in it and the tank is in the yard and the tunnel has come down. And I am going to walk into that hall with the dust on my face and the mark on my arm and I am going to tell them the hearing is over and the Council can write whatever it likes."

Cal was calling from the ground.

"Luna," he said. His voice was thin. "Luna. Something is wrong with me. My hands are wrong."

I went to him. Mira was holding his hands and his hands were shaking and the bones of them had begun to move.

"He is shifting," Mira said. "Luna. The boy is shifting and he has never shifted before and he is doing it now, in the middle of a crowd, with a head wound and a broken tunnel behind him."

She looked up at me.

"What do I do?"