Wish You Were Here by Tom Holt

where?
    â€˜Chief!’
    â€˜So help me, Twist, just as soon as there’s enough room I’m going to wring your bloody—’
    â€˜Light, Chief. Straight ahead. Can you see it?’
    â€˜Damnit, yes!’
    â€˜It’s the sort of white twinkly stuff, there, just a bit to the left of where I’m—’
    â€˜Thank you, Twist, I have seen daylight before. Like when you’re standing sideways on and I look through your ear.’
    â€˜Chief?’
    â€˜Forget it. Get a move on, will you? Let’s get out of here, for pity’s sake.’
    A few anxious moments later Captain Hat scrambled out of a hole in the ground, looked round to make sure the coast was clear and hauled himself to his feet. His knees hurt; or, to be more accurate, his knees hurt most.
    â€˜OK, lads,’ he called back down the tunnel, ‘it’s all right. Come on out, we’re—’
    He froze, and in consequence was butted in the rear by a procession of crawling, mole-like smugglers. He didn’t seem to notice them.
    â€˜â€”Right back where we started,’ he concluded quietly. ‘Goddamnit, we’ve come round in a bloody circle.’ He rubbed his eyes, opened them and looked again. ‘Hey,’ he murmured, ‘that’s crazy. Could’ve sworn we went in a straight line. Anyway, no sign of the frogs. Hurry up, people, we don’t want to be standing out in the open like a lot of garden gnomes. Is that the lot? OK, let’s move.’
    They moved. Around them, the undergrowth popped and crackled, for all the world as if it was sniggering at them. They began to feel uncomfortable.
    â€˜No,’ said Hat at last, as they passed the same tree for the fifth time. ‘I refuse to believe we’re lost.There’s got to be some simple reason.’ He peered through the branches of the trees at the lake, no more than a couple of hundred yards away as the crow, having fallen off its perch, slithers. Put him two hundred yards from Lake Chicopee and Hat would know where he was with his eyes shut, his ears stopped up, his nose and mouth blocked with clay and his hands and feet encased in concrete. All right, he’d be dead within a minute, but at least he’d know exactly where he was. He could easily picture himself losing his way on the back of his hand, but not here.
    But . . .
    â€˜North-west,’ he muttered. ‘We haven’t tried north-west yet. Come on, you lot.’
    â€˜Chief.’
    Hat closed his eyes again. Give me strength, he prayed; not very much of it, just as much as it takes to throttle Mr Snedge will do just splendidly. ‘Well, Snedge?’ he said sweetly. ‘And what can I do for you?’
    â€˜Isn’t that them Vikings over there, Chief? You know, the ones whose boat keeps sinking?’
    Hat followed the line indicated by Snedge’s grubby finger, and saw eight or nine bedraggled figures squelching up out of the lake below them. He recognised them all, though he wasn’t sure what they thought they were doing on land. It was a big day for surprises, evidently.
    â€˜What I thought was, Chief, maybe we could ask them.’
    Hat shook his head. ‘Don’t think so,’ he replied.
    â€˜Oh. Why not?’
    â€˜Don’t think we’re terribly popular with them, Snedge. Not since we nicked their lifeboat.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    Hat narrowed his eyes. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘usually they drown. This time, apparently, they haven’t.’
    â€˜Well, then. Maybe they wouldn’t mind us asking.’
    â€˜They’re still sopping wet, Snedge,’ Hat replied thoughtfully. ‘I mean, they didn’t row their way to shore all nice and dry. I expect that when the time came and they started abandoning ship and they went to find the lifeboat, they still went through that good old where-is-it-I-don’t-know-who-saw-it-last? routine.’ He looked up at an