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as Matt had done. There was a little light; someone's oil lamp had stayed upright. His feet found solid ground, and he sloshed up onto dry stone. His eyes were cold, his scalp tingled, and his fingers were crooked numb claws. The orange-tinged air, chill as it was, seemed like a steam-house in contrast.
           Birs was standing by the water's edge, sobbing. A struggling shape in the shadows on the floor near the rock face was Niklaus, swearing at him. The swearing paused. "Thur? Is that you?"
           Thur knelt in the dimness beside Niklaus and felt for damages. The edge of a tilted slab pinned Niklaus's leg to the floor. The bone was shattered, the flesh pulpy and swelling beneath Thur's fingers. The slab was so damned big . Thur grabbed for a pick, scrabbled its point under the slab, and heaved. The rock barely shifted.
           "Birs, help me!" Thur demanded, but Birs wept on as though he neither saw nor heard, so lost in his own imagined damnation he was missing the real one going on behind his back. Thur went round and shook him by the shoulders, at first gently, then hard. "Witless, wake up!" he shouted into Birs's face.
           Birs didn't stop crying, but he did start moving. With pick, shovel, a bar, and stones shoved in so as to hold each heave's grunting progress, they raised the slab. Niklaus screamed as the blood rushed back into his leg, but still managed to jerk free and roll away.
           "The water's still rising," said Thur.
           "It was foretold!" wailed Birs.
           Thur's hands clenched as he loomed over the man. "The hedge-witch told truth. Your fate is drowning. I'll hold your head under myself if you don't help me!"
           "You tell him, Thur," gasped Niklaus from the floor.
           Birs cringed away, his terror dwindling to a suppressed whine.
           "Take Niklaus's other arm. There's naught to do but hold your breath and push yourself along. The other two both made it."
           They dragged Niklaus into the water and waded out. Thur pushed off with his feet and started under. Flailing, with a panicked cry, Birs retreated.
           No help for it. Tugging Niklaus, who at least had sense to claw the wall with his free arm and help push, Thur kept going. The heat was sucked faster this time from his aching flesh and bones. When they broke the surface again, Niklaus's eyes had rolled back in shock.
           But Master Entlebuch and Farel were waiting, with two other men. The team of three quickly laid Niklaus on a blanket and started away with him.
           "Anyone left?" Master Entlebuch asked.
           "Birs," Thur wheezed, his body racked with shudders.
           "Is he hurt?"
           "No. But he's all in a twist through terror of the water because of some fool fortune-telling."
           "Can you swim back and get him out?
           "He could get himself out, if he would." Thur's woolen hood, tunic, and leggings were saturated, sagging and leaden with their burden of water, a dead weight on his body. Irked to distraction by it, he pulled the dripping hood off over his head like a horse collar and let it fall with a sodden splat.
           The mountain groaned again. The thick support timbers skirled like bagpipes, followed by a hail of tiny popping noises from within the wood.
           “It's going to go." Master Entlebuch's voice rose taut. "We've got to clear this tunnel now ."
           Muting his own inner wail, Thur turned and waded in for the third time. His growing numbness almost mitigated the cold. His head was pounding, strange red lace swirling before his tight-shut eyes, before he felt his way to air again. When he fought up out of the water this time, the stony beach in the air pocket had shrunk to a mere yard. Birs was crouched there, praying, or at any rate crying, "God, God, God, God...." He reminded Thur of a sheep bleating.
           "Come on!" yelled Thur.