A Scout's Lamp-Tally

aka the lamp-tally, what the lamps are for

A Marrow Lances scout's field-book, recovered deep in the Skritch Deep — his tally of the warren's lamps, curdling from bookkeeping into the understanding that got him killed: the light isn't for seeing.

A water-swollen field-book in a scout's tight shorthand, the last pages written by a failing lamp of his own. 'Counted the lamps again coming down. They should thin — goblin oil doesn't last and the deep rooms are where the loot is, so the lamps should crowd the loot. They don't. They crowd the THROAT above the bottom, thickest where there's nothing worth guarding, and past the throat, nothing. Goblins see in the dark better than I do. They are not lighting these for themselves.' Later, the hand less steady: 'It's a fence. The lamps are a fence. The whole warren keeps the deep lit not to see by but to draw a line — a ring of light the thing at the bottom won't cross. Every goblin down here is a lamplighter first and a raider second, and none of them will say why. I am going to put out one lamp at the throat and count how fast they relight it. If I'm right they'll—' The entry ends there. The book was found four floors down, past the throat, on the wrong side of the lamps.

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