Free Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly

unrest – or Kuo Min-tang ‘militia’ had been in the area within the past few days. Bandits might not feel up to taking on two British soldiers with Enfields – young Trooper Barclay had remained behind in the village with the horses – but those Enfields would appeal strongly to a larger band.
    The track ascended a rise of ground, then went down into what had been a level area in front of the Shi’h Liu mine entrance itself, perhaps a hundred yards in length, once given over to washing sheds, outbuildings, and slag heaps of waste rock. A ramp of rammed earth had been erected – who knew how long ago? – up to the cave mouth, which was a vast uneven oval set on its side, blue with shade in the yellowish rock of the hill’s steep shoulder. Seepage had turned the whole area into a sodden wasteland, weed-clogged, black with coal-dust, choked with cat-tails and sedges and, as Dr Bauer had said, rustling with rats.
    ‘The body lay here.’ Dr Bauer motioned to the nearest of the rock heaps, a few yards from the track where it first began to descend.
    ‘He was running back to the mine.’ Liao Ho put a hand on Chan the dog’s head. Asher let the missionary translate the little farmer’s words into German, for Karlebach’s benefit. ‘Shun and Shuo had torn his throat out, and he had clawed them in return. In the dark –’ he nodded toward the mine – ‘I saw the eyes of others, like the eyes of rats, but man-high. Rats were everywhere in the marsh, squeaking and running about.’
    ‘And was this near where your policeman saw them?’ Asher asked of Bauer, in German still.
    ‘No. Those were nearer the village, much nearer. No one comes this close to the mine in the twilight.’
    ‘You want to be careful, sir,’ warned Sergeant Willard as Asher picked his way around the worst of the pools toward the ramp that led up to the cave mouth. ‘This’s exactly the kind of place bandits’ll camp in . . .’
    Having neither German nor Chinese, the soldiers were under the impression that Asher and Karlebach were seeking a legend, rather like the yeti of the Himalayas: a belief Asher had been careful to foster by his replies to Willard’s questions en route. ‘Does it smell like there’s men hidden inside?’ he asked, and the sergeant’s gray-blue eyes narrowed.
    ‘It don’t smell natural, sir, and that’s a fact.’
    This was true. The latrine-stink of men camped together – and the smell of smoke that would drift up even from fires built far back in the tunnels – was absent, and there was certainly no sign that horses had been anywhere in the valley. But there was a smell of some kind, which raised the hair on the back of Asher’s neck.
    They climbed the ramp, the packed earth dimpled where track had been laid for the mine carts, but the iron rails and wooden ties alike long ago carried away by thrifty villagers. The outer cave was roughly the volume of the church in Wychford where Asher’s father had held his living, and was filled with the same soft grayish gloom. By the low narrow shape of the two tunnels that opened from one end of it, it was clear to Asher that the mining had been done in the old way: with picks, and the coal carried out in baskets on men’s backs. At the other end of the cave the floor had subsided into a sort of sinkhole, where a suggestion of water glimmered far below.
    Asher took the lantern from Sergeant Willard and lit it, and then walked to the nearer tunnel, six inches shorter than his own six-foot height and barely more than half that width.
    Gray rats scurried away into darkness. Turned back to look with eyes like tiny flame.
    The smell was stronger here, nauseating. Asher was aware of his heart pounding. Karlebach came to his side, his less-crippled hand curled on the trigger of the shotgun, the barrel resting lightly across his other wrist. The old man murmured, ‘Yes. They’re here.’
    Eighteen months ago, when Asher had traveled with the vampire Ysidro through the