Page 111 of The Bright and Hungry Future of Hawks

When he’d fallen, he had landed on his own bergen, quite surprised to be alive and apparently uninjured. Balanced precariously, though, when Ben had then tumbled down on top of him, one of Aleksey’s legs had just buckled over the side of the sack and had snapped right through. It was singularly the most painful thing he had ever experienced.

“Give me a minute, Ben, and you can help me to stand on my good leg and then you can try the climb. It is a good idea.”

Nothing.

He never liked his apologies being ignored. Ben could be tricky like that, sometimes not getting that an innocuous, throwaway comment was actually him saying sorry for something. Given the situation they were in, the situation he’d got them in entirely by his own idiocy, he tried again.

“Iamsorry, by the way.”

A chin came to rest on his shoulder, stubble rasping his. “I know you are.”

Aleksey pursed his lips considering this reply and eventually muttered, “You always addyou’re always sorrywhen you say that.”

Ben’s only reply, after a brief hesitation, was to turn his head and kiss Aleksey’s ear. It appeared to Aleksey that this was a considerable cessation of hostilities and a great deal more than he deserved.

“I can’t hear the dogs. I think they’ve gone for help.”

“Ben, I did not even know where I was. How could they possibly find their way back? Or think to do so?”

“Rads will…” Ben trailed off, obviously realising that Radulf was in fact blind, and as much as they enjoyed the thought of him secretly being able to see very well, they both knew he couldn’t. “He’ll be able to follow our scent home.”

“It’s snowing. The ground will be covered.”

“Someone will spot them! Pick them up.”

“And then what, Ben? They can’t fucking tell someone we’re down here, can they? Rads will not leave us, Benjamin. You know that. He will die up there in the snow, waiting for us to emerge from this fucking hole, which we will not. PB is a pure-bred Siberian husky worth thousands of pounds. I do not think he will be left roaming Dartmoor on his own for long when he discovers his charge is dead and his humans have abandoned him.”

Ben suddenly roused and said with a more hopeful tone, “What have you got in that pack? Anything useful?” He pulled it closer and in the dark began to rummage through it. He pulled out Aleksey’s sleeping bag and, unzipping it, spread it over them both. When he got to the stove, he took the proffered lighter and there was just enough gas left to get it going. It was a tiny, feeble blue flame, which they both knew would not last more than a few minutes. They’d already used it to brew tea twice.

With the faint illumination, they could both now see what Ben had felt, and Aleksey knew anyway—a jagged shard from his tibia was protruding through his ripped jeans.

Aleksey closed his eyes and turned his face away.

* * *

Chapter 62

Four Months Before April

Ben could not even imagine the pain that Nikolas must be in. It seemed as though he too felt an echo of the agony, transmitted from the shivering body in his arms, and it clouded his thoughts for a while, confused his planning. He still had no doubt he could climb out, but he had then envisioned Nikolas following him using the same method, with him propped securely at the top assisting with the rope. This injury changed everything. When he got out, he would have to go for help, and this would obviously leave Nikolas alone, freezing, and very badly hurt in the dark.

But Ben had an ulterior motive for wanting to attempt his climb, and he was caught between this desperate need and the agonising knowledge that he would have to leave Nikolas. His claustrophobia was suffocating him. It was only the presence of Nikolas’s body, tightly pressed to his chest, which was stopping him moaning in fear. He’d never experienced anything like it.

He would leave Nikolas with the sleeping bag and sitting on the bergen for insulation, and he would be back with help in…an hour? Two? He didn’t know where they were either, and it had been snowing, and it would now be dark, but all of this would be as nothing when he reached freedom. They were on Dartmoor, in Devon, in England; remote, yes, but never far from lanes or small, isolated farms.

But the thought that obsessed him and fought against his urgent need to flee this tight darkness was a vision of himself falling. What if he slipped and was injured, too? He would doom them both to slow, extremely unpleasant deaths. He had one shot at it, and that one climb had to work. But the longer he stayed in the enclosing darkness, the more he felt his courage waning. It was sapping his ability to think. And it was getting increasingly cold. Even under the sleeping bag, pressed close with Nikolas for warmth, he could feel Nikolas’s shivering increasing. Nikolas was going into shock. He wished he’d never lit the fucking stove and allowed him to see what he must have already known. He twiddled the little key to turn off the gas, and they were left in complete darkness once more. He shut his eyes to the encroaching walls. It was easier that way.

“We’re in a tin mine, by the way. I remembered why I sort of recognised the place.”

Ben snapped open his eyes. He’d dozed off for a moment.

“A what?”

“I think we are at, well under, Birch Tor. There are notorious mines all over this area which just open up and cave in occasionally. That was possibly not a sheep fence after all. I did wonder why the sign was triangular.”

“Does your brain have a sort of delayed-useful function? You remember things well after they can be of any fucking help to anyone?”

“It’s rather amusing in a way, Ben.Heowns all this land. He was sued once by someone whose dog fell into one of the holes.”

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