There is nothing more valuable than knowing the ground on which you will fight; that one thing is worth a thousand men.


    The Campaign Journals of General Aurelius, volume I


    ?


    19th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    If Ismet hadn’t known what to look for, she wasn’t certain she would ever have found the drainage cut.  Even with a rough idea of where it must come out, downslope of the pass, it was too difficult to go directly to where it opened up.  Instead, she and her group combed the slope, searching for a stream.


    While Jabal Al Nusur was mostly made up of bare granite rock face, the lower slopes were covered in a smattering of low scrub: clumps of acacia, aloe, and desert rose concealed the rise and fall of the land.  Ismet and her men lit torches to see by, and concentrated on inspecting the vegetation.


    The brush disguised low seams in the slope, where mountain streams tumbled down over smooth, rounded rocks.  When they found a waterway, they tracked it back up the slope, searching for a source that was not natural.  They followed two streams up to the height of the pass, before Ismet called a halt.  She knew the drainage cut would have to come out lower.


    The third brook, however, spilled out of a metal grate set into the rock.


    “This is it,” Ismet said, splashing down into the water and crouching.  She put aside her hesitation: it wouldn’t be only her boots that got wet before this was all over, and she would have worse things than rust on her hands.  Ismet grasped the grate and yanked.


    She was no match for strength of a daemon, but the battle at Rocher de la Garde had brought her many Tithes.  Ismet’s muscles strained, and a flare of yellow power shot out from her heart along her limbs as she called on her Boons.  No mortal man could match the might of an Exarch, and certainly not an old, rusted steel grate.  The bolts which secured the metal into the granite of the mountain gave with a screech, and Ismet threw the grate aside.


    “Extinguish the torches,” she commanded.


    “But General,” one of the men asked.  “How will we see?”


    “We go in the dark,” she said.  “Unless you want to die down there, choking on smoke.”


    As if he wanted to prove he would not be a hindrance, Rayan ibn Aadil, the man with the wide shoulders, immediately ground the head of his torch down against the stones of the stream bed, quenching his flame in the water.  Then, he tossed it aside and glared at the other men.  In a rush, they followed his example, and Ismet smiled.


    “Good,” she said.  “Follow me, and be as quiet as you can.  We don’t want them to hear us coming.”


    Ismet had to get down on her hands and knees to get into the drainage cut, and the cold flowing water immediately soaked her hands, her legs from the knee down, and her boots.  She couldn’t help but shiver: everything seemed to have gotten colder without the sun, and even if her plan went exactly as she hoped, it would be hours before she could get herself into dry clothes and warm up next to a campfire.


    She splashed forward, and what dim light there had been from the stars and moon was quickly gone, leaving her in utter darkness.  It slowed her down, because she had to feel ahead with her hands, or risk hitting her head on the rock.  Ismet felt a hand on her boot, and pushed aside her initial annoyance at the contact.


    “My apologies, General,” the man behind her whispered.


    “No,” Ismet said.  “This is better.  Everyone keep a hand on the man in front of you.  It will help us stay together.  Rayan, were you able to get in?”


    “It was a tight fit,” the muscular soldier called up from all the way in the back of the line. “But I made it.  Just keep going, General.”


    And keep going she did.  It was miserable work: even with the increased physical resilience and endurance granted to her by the Angelus, Ismet quickly lost feeling in her cold fingers and toes.  They couldn’t move forward faster than a slow crawl, with her groping along at the front and everyone else bumping forward only after she did, like some giant human centipede or caterpillar.  There was no way to track time, or progress, save by counting the grates as they found them.


    Each time her hand reached forward into the black and found metal, Ismet would call back, “grate.”  The entire line would stop while she got a grip, the men lifting their hands up out of the water and stuffing them under their armpits to try to warm their fingers back up.  Not that she could see what they were doing, of course, but Ismet heard them whispering advice to each other while she worked.


    She started by feeling around each grate, to try to get a picture of it in her mind.  Ismet was worried that one of them would be too rusted and break when she pulled, so she tried to find the strongest bars on each grate.  Then, she gave it a yank.  The tough part was finding a place to put them once she had them dislodged: they took up valuable room, and she didn’t want her men cutting themselves on rusted metal as they passed.  In the end, she would feel around to try to get a sense of whether there was more room on the left or the right side of the cut, shove the grate sideways against the wall, and then call back what direction she’d left it on.


    Stolen story; please report.


    Then, their human chain would reestablish its links, with each person putting a hand forward to make contact with the one in front of them, and they would resume crawling ahead.  They were constantly making their way up, as well as into the mountain, and that made the work more difficult.  But the worst part was not anything physical at all.


    Ismet had never suffered from any particular fear of close spaces, or of the darkness, but deep beneath Jabal Al Nusur, it was difficult not to remember the entire weight of the mountain above them.  Just how stable was the drainage cut, anyway?  How much care had the miners really taken here?  If yanking a grate out of the stone caused a collapse, all of that rock above would come tumbling down on their bodies, grinding them to nothing but bloody paste.


    Perhaps worse was the nagging idea that, other than making sure the water was still draining, it was unlikely anyone had done any maintenance on the cut since it was first made.  What if there had already been a collapse?  The stone could have settled in such a way that water still flowed through, but their passage would be blocked.  The thought of having to repeat the entire journey, crawling backwards, was terrifying enough, but what if she got stuck?  What if she became trapped down here forever, until she starved to death in the dark?


    Ismet knew that Rayan must have it even worse.  Twice, the broad man called up that he was stuck, and everyone halted, waiting.  Long moments listening to the soldier grunt and pant, trying to wedge his way through, would pass.  Both times, Ismet heard cloth rip.  The second time Rayan got stuck, he cried out at the ripping, in pain.


    “Are you well?” she called back.


    “Scraped myself a bit,” he grumbled.  “It’s fine.  The blood makes it easier to get through.”  Somehow, they were lucky enough not to have to leave him behind.


    One of the other men, somewhere around the center of the line, finally broke.


    “I can’t breathe,” the voice came from behind her, and Ismet recognized the same kind of raw panic that had gripped men fleeing from the Sun Eater.  The soldier was gasping, nearly panting, so badly that she could hear it clearly up the line.


    “What’s your name, soldier,” Ismet called back.


    “Maaz,” the man choked out.


    “Brave man.”  She recognized the meaning.  “You have lived up to your name by coming with us this far.”


    “I’m not,” the man gasped.  “I can’t go on.  Can’t breathe.   Have to get out.”


    “You can’t go back,” Rayan told him gruffly.  “There’s no way past me through the tunnel.  You have to go forward.”


    “I can’t,” Maaz repeated.


    “Listen to me, Maaz,” Ismet said, as calmly and evenly as she could.  Now would be the worst possible time to let her own fear show, even if the soldier’s reaction was completely rational.  Not the time to think about how easy it would be for all of them to die down here, in the dark.  “Breathe with me.  In, slowly.  Fill your lungs.  And out.  In,” she said, then paused, to follow her own example.  “Then out.  There is enough air here for all of us.  Better?”


    “A little,” Maaz said.


    “Good.  In, out.  We have already passed the halfway point.”  It was a lie, but it was something everyone needed to hear, Ismet decided.  She would apologize to the Angelus in her prayers later.


    “We have?” Maaz asked, his voice as hopeful as a child’s.


    “The General knows what she’s doing,” Rayan said from behind.  “The Angelus guide her.”


    “That’s right,” Ismet said.  “And the Angelus will lead us out of this tunnel.  We are doing their will in this world.”  She hesitated for a moment, and then teased out an orange thread from her core, spooling it back to settle over the men behind her.  This was not a Boon that she used very often; as a soldier, she did not have occasion to.  But Eponoia was the Angelus of Mothers, and the Boons she granted reflected that.


    “Take comfort.  Take heart,” Ismet murmured, letting her power settle over the men under her command.  If this was working as the Angelus had explained to her, they would each be feeling an echo of the comfort they had once known as children, from their own mothers.  “The Angelus are with you.”


    The effect was gradual, but the orange thread that caressed each of the men let Ismet feel how their muscles relaxed, their breathing slowed.  The fear was receding.  Carefully, after a moment, Ismet withdrew the thread, and allowed the Boon to settle back into her heart.  “Can you continue, Maaz the Brave?” she asked.


    “I… I think I can,” Maaz said.  “Yes, General.  I’m ready.”


    “Good.”  Ismet crawled forward into the darkness.


    ?


    It turned out that there were three more grates, but if any of the men realized that she had lied to them earlier, they made no complaint.  Whether it was the hope of coming to the end of the tunnel soon, or the lingering taste of Epinoia’s power, Ismet could not have said, but there were no further delays.  The men followed her until she reached the final grate.


    Unlike the others, this one was fixed to the outside of the tunnel, and the edges of the metal grate overlapped the stone wall onto which it was secured.  Ismet could not pull the grate inward without breaking it entirely, or twisting it out of shape.  A daemon might have been able to do that, but such strength was beyond her.


    Instead, she punched forward.  The bolts set into the stone snapped off, and the grate flew out into the open air beyond, clattering on the stone so loudly that Ismet froze, certain they had been discovered.  Only after a long moment of silence passed did she crawl forward and find herself on the edge of a vast cistern.


    Ismet pulled herself to one side, so that the next man could pass, and sucked in deep breaths, shuddering.  It was still dark here, but there was an oil lamp burning on the wall of the corridor that led into the cistern.  The drainage cut was set at a level to keep the corridor from flooding, but the cistern itself dropped lower, filled with black water that would keep the men guarding the pass supplied with water indefinitely.  There was even a winch, rope and bucket for hauling water up out of the cistern.  The presence of the lit oil lamp suggested to her that soldiers came here often, either to fetch water, or on patrol.  They would have to be quick.


    As the others made their way out, Ismet drew her sword.  Maaz was second to last, and she clapped a hand on his shoulder once he was out.  “You did well,” she told him, and he ducked his head in embarrassment.


    Rayan, bringing up the rear, looked even worse than Ismet had guessed.  His clothes were torn in many places, and the skin beneath was scraped raw and bloody where he’d forced himself through the tight stone confines of the drainage cut.  “Don’t worry about me, General,” he said, drawing his own sword.  “You just lead the way.”


    “Follow me,” Ismet said, standing for the first time in hours, and set off up the corridor with her men close behind.