The workmen found the elevator shaft at around midday the next day.

     Randall heard a shout and emerged from his tent to see all the workmen gathered together in one spot, looking down. He hurried over and to his delight he saw an area of darkness beneath the irregular patches of broken plasteel that still mostly blocked the entrance.

     "Quiet!" he shouted. The excited gossiping ceased and silence fell, broken only by the distant fluttering of tent flaps in the light breeze that was blowing across the abandoned farm. Randall crouched down, putting his ear close to the opening, and dropped a small fragment of plasteel into the darkness. There was silence at first, and he started counting, but he'd only reached two seconds before he heard the distant sound of it hitting something far below.

     "About thirty metres," he said with satisfaction. "This is the right place. I need the entrance completely uncovered as fast as possible."

     He backed away as the men returned to work, just as Jane, Loach and the aristocrats came over to join him. "Is that it?" said Duke Latimer.

     "It certainly is," said Randall, trying to contain an almost childlike excitement. "In the time of the Old Ones a large cabinet would be lifted up and down by cables. People used it to go to and from the basement."

     "I can almost smell the gold!" said Baron Tenby eagerly. "How much is down there, do you think?"

     "It was the most important gold repository in this part of the country," said Randall, the inventive lie coming to him easily. "So probably somewhere in the region of fifty thousand bars."

     "Bars?" said the Baron in confusion. Gold in Saxony was generally found only in the form of small, round coins. "How big is a bar?"

     About the size of a woman's shoe." He beckoned Jane forward and pointed down at her feet. "About that size."

     The four Barons stared at each other in disbelief, which gradually turned to wonder and excitement. Only Duke Latimer seemed unaffected, keeping a stern, calm demeanour. "Fifty thousand?" said Baron Tenby, seemingly unable to keep his eyes off Jane's feet. "Five thousand for me alone?"

     "Even the King himself doesn't have that much gold," said Baron Maddock, fingering his gown as if already imagining himself wearing something much finer and expensive. "Not half as much!"

     "There could be trouble," said a third Baron. "If the King finds out he'll say it's Crown property. He'll want to take it all."

     "Then we make sure he doesn't find out," replied Maddock.

     "That's treason, technically."

     "Not technically. It is treason, pure and simple." Maddock stared at the other Baron measuringly. "Perhaps you don't have the stomach for that."

     The other Baron stared around at the soldiers stationed around the periphery of the camp, alert for orcs. He swallowed nervously and ran a finger around the inside of his collar. "I'm in," he declared. "I'm in all the way."

     Duke Latimer remained alongside Randall while the Barons wandered back to their tents, whispering to each other excitedly. Latimer waited until they were safely out of earshot before turning to the former businessman. "So. Are you ready to tell me what's really down there?"

     "You don't believe the gold story then?"

     "Don't treat me like a simpleton. You could have come here anytime and excavated the place at your leisure. I'm sure you could have found some imaginative way to deal with the farmer and his family and then you would have had fifty thousand bars of gold all to yourself. No, you need us because you need our help to get down there quickly, before VIX finds out what you're up to. Right?"

     "There is indeed gold down there," said Randall, though. A lifetime of practice enabled him to lie with a perfectly straight face. "Just as much as I said there is. You're right, I would much rather have kept it all for myself, but there's a problem. It's possible that there are also working machines down there. I have no interest in them, but VIX might not believe that. I don't want Him smiting me with a bolt from heaven. I'd rather get a small fraction of the gold in relative safety than die trying to get all of it, and that's the truth. Believe it or not, it's up to you."

     Latimer stared at him, trying to read his face, and Randall stared back. "It's the truth!" insisted Randall. "Why would I lie?"

     "That's what I'm trying to figure out," replied the Duke. He gave the former businessman one last searching stare, then turned and walked away.

     "Problem?" asked Loach as he and Jane came to join Randall.

     "The good Duke is exactly as paranoid as a man in his position needs to be," Randall replied. "I can handle him."

       "Let's hope so," said the mob boss. "We really don't need any problems at this critical point in the proceedings."

     "There won't be."

     Loach frowned at him, but then he nodded. Then he went to have a word with his men.

☆☆☆

     Night was falling when the works foreman went to Duke Latimer to tell him that the elevator shaft had been cleared.

     Randall saw the noblemen going back to the dig site and put his half finished bowl of beans aside to join them. He arrived to find that the workmen had hammered a dozen wooden poles into the ground around the two metre wide rectangular pit. A rope had been strung between them, forming a barrier to keep anyone from falling in, and each pole had an oil lamp hanging from the top bathing the whole area in a ruddy orange light. It revealed the shaft to be lined with plasteel that had yellowed and cracked with age.

     One of the workmen was lowering an oil lamp on the end of a long rope and everyone crowded round to watch it descend. The yellow glow revealed the sides of the shaft to be completely smooth and featureless except for a series of looped plasteel handholds in one side forming a ladder going down into the darkness. So long as they were still strong and secure it would make ascending and descending unexpectedly easy.

     When the oil lamp reached the bottom they saw that the floor of the shaft was covered by a layer of debris. There was no telling how deep it was, but there was the top of a door visible in the south wall above it. "That might be the first of several doors," said Loach. "The facility might have several basement levels."

     "But there'll be stairs between the levels," said Randall, almost shaking with feverish excitement. "I'm going down."

     "Best to wait until morning, don't you think?"

     "Why? It won't be any lighter down there in the morning."

     Loach smiled with a wry humour to concede the point. "Okay, but I'm coming with you. You might need help shifting some large bits of debris."

     Randall looked at him and Loach met his gaze, his eyes hard and narrow. With the nobles and the workmen so close around them neither man could say what they wanted to say, but the distrust was almost palpable as it flickered between them and Duke Latimer made note of it with growing concern. "I shall also go with you," he said. "With a couple of my men. Just in case there's heavy rubble to shift." He eyed Loach as he said it and the mob boss was unable to hide a faint smile of ironic humour.

     "Very well," said Randall, sharing a glance with Loach. "The five of us. I'll go first, shall I?" He didn't wait for a reply but sat on the edge of the shaft and swung his legs over the side. One foot found a rung and he tested its strength by gradually putting more and more weight in it. The rung felt solid, though, and with growing confidence he began to descend.

☆☆☆

     Emily saw the crowd of people gathered around the exposed elevator shaft, every eye focused on the five descending men, and decided that there would be no better time to infiltrate the camp.

     She had found a pair of sheep shears in the abandoned farm house in which she'd spent the night and had used it to hack away at her hair until it was as short as that of the workmen, although a little ragged. She had also taken off her expensive clothes and replaced them with a dirty smock she'd found in a cobwebbed shed. She'd had to shake a couple of spiders out of it and had apologised to them as they'd gone scuttling off onto the darkness. That, together with a tight bandage around her chest to squeeze her breasts flat, made her look enough like a man that she hoped to be able to sneak into the camp without arousing attention. Hopefully, the soldiers standing guard against orcs would merely think she had sneaked out of camp to answer a call of nature.

     Indeed, they paid her little attention as she walked confidently between them, giving the nearest of them a companionable nod. The soldier nodded back, then returned his attention to the darkness surrounding the camp, searching for any hint of movement that might reveal an approaching enemy. Emily thought he looked bored. All the orcs were gone, weren't they? After an incursion, whether they successfully destroyed a human city or not, the orcs always retreated back to their northern strongholds, not to return for several years, and there was no reason to think that this time would be any different. The soldiers were wasting their time, freezing their arses off in the cold, night air for no reason when they could be in one of their tents, playing cards around an oil heater, laughing and joking with their friends. Every one of them was counting the minutes until the change of shift, therefore, when they could swap places with one of their fellows back in the camp.

     The way to avoid attracting attention, Emily knew, was to walk purposefully towards something as if she had every right to be there. It was the intruder who was skulking and hiding who would be spotted and caught. She strode towards one of the tents, therefore, not caring who it belonged to, and ducked through the tent flap and out of sight.

     An off duty soldier sat up in his sleeping blankets, blinking blearily at her. "What?" he muttered sleepily. "What do you want?"

     His armour and weapons were piled untidily by the side of his cot. Emily snatched up a long dagger and threw herself at the soldier before he had time to react. The man had time to give a squawk of alarm before Emily's left hand fell hard over his mouth and the other hand thrust the knife between his ribs. The man died almost instantly.

     She froze and listened for any sign that the killing had been heard, but the camp remained quiet. "In your face, little miss Jesus freak," she muttered to herself. "No bomb this time." From somewhere outside came the sound of someone walking past. She tensed up, but whoever it was just kept walking, whistling a tune to himself.

     After a few minutes she relaxed and examined the man's armour. It looked to be about her size, and the buckles and straps could be adjusted to compensate for small variations in height and build. She slipped out of the smock, therefore, and began trying to figure out how to put it on.