The two scouts returned while the camp was still half asleep, both men moving faster than the distance from the mine should have required. Harr noticed that before either of them spoke, men only hurried like that when something had gone terribly wrong or when they thought it was about to.

The younger scout spoke first. He was breathing too hard for a simple withdrawal.

"We made it to the first turn, stopped there like you told us."

His hands kept twitching as he talked, quick nervous motions that served no purpose. "There’s a noise inside the mine, its hard to explain. Like bats but really terrifying, it never stopped while we were there."

The older scout waited until the younger man finished. He spoke with more composure. "It was a continuous low frequency coming through the walls. We didn’t have visual contact and nothing advanced on our position."

Harr focused on the older scout first.

"Did the frequency change while you were waiting?"

"Once," the older scout said immediately. "It got louder, then lower again."

That was enough, the creature inside the gallery had detected them. Either vibration, sound, or some other response mechanism. The important thing was that the creatures reacted to presence.

Harr turned until he spotted Cete near the edge of camp.

"Hold the camp. Nobody enters the mine until I send the signal."

Cete gave one short nod with no argument.

Harr turned back toward the advance party. "Form up."

Fifteen men moved into position at the mine entrance without needing further instruction, the advance party already been discussed on the march in.

Torches went to the third and eighth positions so the light would travel both directions without blinding the men at the front, the pistol-carriers took lead position.

The mine swallowed the morning heat the instant they went inside through the shaft.

Rock and earth pressed close on both sides of the tunnel, barely five feet across, with mineral dampness trapped in the walls. The torchlight carved sharp shadows into the rock and left everything beyond the next turn buried in darkness.

The advance party slowed automatically. Whatever lived ahead had probably heard them enter the mine the moment they started walking.

One soldier muttered from farther back in the line, voice low.

"Smells like something’s been living down here a long time."

The man behind him snorted.

"It smells like shit, I’ll tell you that."

A few strained breaths of laughter started.

Harr raised his fist.

The party fell silent at once.

About thirty yards in, the tunnel began to widen. The ceiling climbed gradually as they approached the first bend. The walls pulled back a foot at a time, easing the tight pressure of the entrance passage.

The ceiling rose beyond the torch range, the light illuminating the lower stone clearly, then fading upward into shadow and finally complete darkness.

They rounded the bend and entered the gallery.

The space forced a tactical adjustment immediately. The advance party spread from column into a loose line because the walls finally allowed it.

The noise the scouts described was fully audible here now, it filled the air as a constant high clicking that sat somewhere between hearing and physical sensation. Harr felt it in his skull and chest at the same time.

The closest comparison really was bats. But bats didn’t gave this sense of danger.

The sound shifted without rhythm or sense. It rose, changed direction, layered over itself, and never fully stopped.

The smell had intensified as well.

Mord moved beside Harr on the left. His tone stayed flat, almost casual.

"Something’s up there."

Harr had already reached the same conclusion. The ceiling above the torchlight covered too much shadowed space. The upper gallery walls offered far more grip than the narrow entrance tunnel.

"Close up," he ordered.

The formation tightened immediately, pistol-carriers raised their weapons against the darkness ahead.

Then the ceiling moved.

The shadows detached from the stone all at once as multiple creatures released their grip simultaneously.

The clicking changed in the same instant. The pitch jumped upward into something close to a shriek before dropping back beneath the constant underlying frequency. The transition lasted barely a second, just enough for the Crawlers to enter the torchlight.

The first pistol fired before Harr could issue the order.

The nearest gunman had a Crawler dropping toward him from eight feet overhead. He fired the moment the creature came clear of the dark in reflex.

The blast inside enclosed stone was nothing like the training grounds. The concussion slammed through the advance party as physical force, punching through chest and ears together.

For two seconds nobody heard anything clearly beyond the ringing.

Voices cut through the noise anyway.

"Ceiling! Aim at the ceiling-" Beald shouted too loudly, volume driven by damaged hearing.

Grim jerked his head toward the shadows. "Where the fuck-"

"Left wall! Left wall-" another soldier yelled.

Harr raised his own voice hard enough to cut through the confusion.

"Fire on visual contact. Swords stand ready."

The first shot had hit cleanly. The iron ball punched through the Crawler between the second and third forward limbs and exited through the back of the body.

Every limb lost strength at once.

The creature dropped six feet and hit the gallery floor hard enough to shake stone dust loose.

It kept moving.

All eight limbs scraped against the floor in frantic motion while the clicking continued at a lower pitch. Harr counted automatically.

Four seconds before the limbs stopped.

A second Crawler came down the near wall, its limbs finding grip on sheer stone as easily as ground.

It hit the gallery floor still moving forward.

Eard stepped directly inside the creature’s forward reach before the limbs could close on him.

He drove his blade into the point where the elongated neck connected to the body. The resistance of the flesh caught him off guard and he had to force his entire weight behind the thrust.

The creature collapsed sideways.

As it fell, its wings spread fully for the first time.

The gallery suddenly felt much smaller.

At minimum the span stretched four feet to either side, leathery membrane pulled tight between elongated supports. The wings clearly weren’t built for confined tunnels.

A moment later the creature hit the floor and stopped moving.

A third Crawler took a pistol shot through the lower body. The ball tore through the abdomen and knocked it from the wall, but not completely free.

Two forward limbs caught the stone halfway down.

It hung there clicking at a higher pitch while the remaining limbs searched for ground toward the nearest soldier.

The soldier stepped under the creature and drove his sword upward through the damaged abdomen, using the pistol wound as an opening.

The remaining strength failed immediately.

The Crawler dropped.

Across the gallery, the rest of the pistol-carriers had already fired into descending shadows while swords intercepted anything that reached the floor alive.

Similar fights were breaking out across the entire space, steel striking hard body segments, boots scraping on stone, men shouting positions and warnings over the ringing in their ears.

Six Crawlers had dropped during the initial attack.

The advance party killed all six, bodies littered the gallery floor.

Then Grim shouted, "It’s got my arm-"

The rest dissolved into continuous profanity, but Harr extracted the information automatically. Grim was upright, still fighting and with the limb trapped.

One Crawler had descended lower than the others, beneath the gunfire, and managed to seize Grim’s forearm during the engagement.

Grim slammed his entire body weight sideways into the creature to break the grip. It released, but when he straightened his arm cracked and bent sideways.

On the far side of the formation, another Crawler had partially spread its wings inside the confined gallery.

The involuntary sweep struck a soldier across the torso and threw him into the wall hard enough to stagger him, and probably break some limbs.

Another man behind him had taken a creature limb strike across the shoulder deep enough to expose bone.

He was still fighting.

The clicking had grown louder.

Harr noticed that before he finished checking the wounded and counting bodies. The first attack wave was dead. The advance party had the gallery.

The mine was still very much alive.

The noise from the west spur and the deeper tunnels beyond the gallery wall was building instead of fading.

The torchlight couldn’t reach far enough to estimate numbers.

That was the next problem.