The Sea Below

by William Meikle

  -Danny-

  "As I see it, our priorities remain the same," Danny began after they'd seen off the rabbit. They were sitting around their fire, smoking. "There may be no boats, and building one might not even be possible given what we've seen of the vegetation here. But I can see no other recourse but to try."

  "It is a chain of islands," Ed said. "There may be more tall turrets reaching to the roof farther down the archipelago. We need not traverse open water, at least not for too far."

  "Aye, lad, but we'd be doing it in the dark under yon burning area. Might be better just taking our chances with the serpents for at least we'd have a chance of seeing them coming."

  Stefan pointed to the well in the room's center.

  "What about down there? It may lead to deeper caverns?"

  "And it might just be what it appears to be; a black hole going nowhere. Too many mights for my liking. But first things first. We need more food, more water. I'm going out for a while; you should stay here."

  "What happened to not splitting up?" Ed said.

  "That was then. This place is defendable and away from any signs of trouble. Don't worry about me."

  Danny turned to Stefan.

  "I'd like to take Elsa though, if she'll come. She'll scare out a rabbit if there's one to be scared."

  Stefan agreed, although Danny saw that Ed was still skeptical.

  "There's no other option, lad," he said. "Besides, I've got the saber and my pistol. We've given yon monkeys plenty to think about, and I don't intend going anywhere near the forest. I'm going to spend an hour looking for rabbits and, if possible, water. I'll be back before you know it."

  He didn't wait for an answer; Danny was afraid the lad would talk him out of it, and even more afraid that he'd succeed.

  Elsa followed unbidden at his heel as Danny went out to the stairs. When he looped round to see the view down the far end of the island, he saw that their problems were about to get worse than just a lack of food and water; the fire had flared up again, insistent streams of tarry flame falling from the roof in a fiery waterfall. And this time the flames were taking hold in the forest on the slopes of the old volcano; it was only a matter of time before the whole island would be aflame. To make things worse, if that were possible, dark smoke was once again creeping across the roof of the cavern, sending the great bats swooping and shrieking in a frenzy. It was growing dimmer by the second.

  Danny gauged the risk of the spread of fire against their need for food and decided he should have maybe an hour's grace, enough time for Elsa to do her thing, enough time to find some water that didn't have the metallic taste of that in the ocean around them.

  Although neither will do us much good if we are to be roasted to death.

  By the time he reached the foot of the castle he realised that his estimate of an hour had been wildly optimistic. Flames snaked across the roof and had now reached previously unburned patches of vegetation above, causing a recurrence of falling ash that was already beginning to coat the ground like black snow.

  "Elsa, fetch me a rabbit," he said.

  The dog knew what was expected. She bounded away across the causeway to the rocky area beyond and her excited yips and barks told Danny she was on the hunt. Danny decided that a search for water wasn't going to be productive; the fall of ash was getting stronger by the minute and a wash of heat came on a breeze from the far end of the island. He looked across the open ground to find Elsa to call her back and saw that another problem had been added to the growing list; the forest of foliage was also now well alight across the whole width of the island. Driven out by the fire, the huge cat-beast loped across the open ground. Behind it, Danny saw spooked deer scattering and, beyond them, a troop of baboons several score strong chasing them down.

  It was the big cat that had him most worried though; it was heading Danny's way, coming at some speed.

  "Elsa, heel," he shouted. "To me, girl."

  He lost the big cat in a dip in the ground, then heard it, a roar that sounded like triumph.

  "Elsa!"

  He was about to head to the dog's defence when Elsa came up out of the same dip in the ground. She had a rabbit in her mouth and the big cat on her tail. By the time Danny drew his pistol and saber they had almost reached the far end of the causeway.

  "Come on, girl," he shouted. Elsa needed no encouragement; she was running full pelt, and the cat was mere yards behind her. Danny couldn't risk a shot. He was as likely as not to hit the dog. He retreated toward the stairs, hoping to get a clearer shot from higher up, but knew even as he moved that he wouldn't be given the time. Elsa was already halfway along the causeway and the big cat was closing in on her. He saw the cat tense, getting ready to pounce and knew it was now or never.

  Trusting his nerve and his eye, he raised the pistol, aimed and fired in one swift movement then had to leap backwards for the stairs as Elsa almost barrelled into him. Danny tripped, fell on his backside and just had time to get his saber up in front of him as the big cat leapt. The impact as it hit him drove Danny back against the stone, sending a flare of pain in his back that had him wondering whether it was broken. He felt the saber go in all the way to the hilt, felt heat as the beast's blood poured over his hand. The beast's body engulfed him totally in warm blackness. He heard Elsa barking somewhere in the distance but the blackness was getting deeper, the sounds fainter. He tried to bring his pistol to bear but his hand was trapped.

  The blackness called to him as the full weight of the beast fell over him.

  He went to it.

  -Ed-

  Stefan was first to react when a shot rang out from somewhere below them and was just ahead of Ed when they reached the top of the stairs. Ed had a blocked view of the foot of the stairwell, only enough to see Elsa worrying at the neck of what looked to be a dead big cat, but he heard the dismay in Stefan's wail.

  "Danny!"

  Then they were both bounding down the stairs, uncaring of the fact that a single slip might send them tumbling in a mess of broken bones. The shepherd reached the bottom just ahead of Ed and it was only then they saw a bloodied, outstretched leg poking out from under the body of the beast.

  "Help me!" Stefan shouted, and began heaving at the carcass. It took both of them to roll the dead weight aside and more time to get Elsa to back off, which she finally did, but only to stand six feet off, growling deep in her throat.

  Danny lay on the bottom step. His eyes were open but glazed and there was no sign of movement.

  "Is he dead?" Ed whispered.

  "I hope not, my friend."

  When Stefan bent to check, Ed finally noticed that the cavern had darkened considerably and when a falling ember made him blink, he thought to look up.

  The whole roof above them was a carpet of black smoke interlaced with snaking flame. Black ash fell like snow.

  "Stefan?" Ed said, almost afraid to ask.

  "He lives," the shepherd said. "But I cannot tell if his back is broken. If we move him, we might kill him anyway."

  Ed pointed up at the flames.

  "If we do not, we may all be dead soon anyway. At least up top we have some degree of shelter."

  Stefan looked up, then down at Danny.

  "I hope I am doing right by you, my friend," he said. He bent and, with a strength that belied his stature, hefted the old soldier over his shoulder.

  "Fetch the weapons," Stefan said. "He may yet still have need of them."

  Both pistol and saber lay in a large pool of rapidly congealing blood and were sticky to the touch. Ed wiped them off on his shirtsleeve and followed the shepherd back up the stairs. Elsa came at their back, carrying a dead rabbit proudly in her jaws.

  By the time they arrived at the topmost chamber, Stefan was breathing heavily and the black ash was falling in a curtain to carpet the stairs. The air inside the chamber tasted warm and burnt but once inside they were, as Ed had hoped, protected from most of the falling embers.

  Stefan lay Danny down on the floor and
at that the old soldier groaned and his eyelids flickered. He still didn't wake but Ed took it as a sign that it was more of a possibility than he'd thought minutes earlier. Ed lay Danny's pistol and saber on the floor beside the prone man, not knowing what else to do with them. When Stefan poured some water from the skin, Danny's lips opened to take it, another good sign, but he hadn't moved a muscle below his neck since being lifted and Ed was starting to have serious worries about a debilitating back injury.

  Stefan turned to Ed.

  "Watch the stairs, lad. The big cat is dead but there might be other things out there seeking such shelter as this place provides."

  Ed drew his pistol and went to the doorway. There could be a horde of baboons climbing the stairs right now and he'd never be able to tell; the black fall of ash obscured everything more than a yard outside the door. The air was noticeably warmer here too, hot and dry in his throat, so much so that he could only take it for a minute before having to retreat back inside. Once there he noticed that there was a cool breeze coming up from the well in the chamber's center.

  "We should go down," he said, turning to address Stefan. "We can at least avoid being roasted."

  "That is a good idea, lad," the shepherd replied. "But moving Danny more than we have already is risking too much. Let us wait to see how he fares when he wakes."

  "If he wakes," Ed thought, but didn't say. Neither of them were ready to hear that.

  Ed stood as close to the doorway as he dared, trying to peer out into the gloom. Darkness was gathering fast, a blackness laced with intermittent flares of red. It looked like the whole cavern beyond the boundaries of their small chamber was aflame.

  Ed heard a ripping tear and turned to see Stefan making a makeshift firebrand from pieces of his shirt and one of the timber shards from the old doorway they used as kindling.

  The attack came as soon as his head was turned.

  A baboon launched itself through the ash fall and leapt directly for Ed's face, teeth bared and talons reaching. Ed was so taken aback he had no time to react, but luckily Elsa's reflexes proved faster. She too leapt and knocked the monkey out of the air mere inches from Ed's face. She had it pinned to the ground and its throat ripped out while Ed was still reaching for his pistol.

  Lucky for him that he did so, for a second baboon came out of the ashfall, at ground level this time on all fours but coming on fast, heading, not for Ed but for where Elsa worried at the corpse of the first. Ed's first shot took the beast in the throat, sending warm blood flying. That was the cue to bring on frenzied screaming from out in the darkness on the stairs.

  Ed sent three more quick shots out the open doorway. Stefan came to stand beside him, a firebrand in one hand, Danny's pistol in the other.

  "Steady, young friend," the shepherd said. "We cannot allow them to get in here; they would overrun us."

  Another baboon leapt at waist height from the darkness; Ed saw that its fur was scorched and burned from falling embers of ash. That was all he had time to notice before Stefan put a bullet in its brain and it fell in the doorway at their feet.

  "They're burning alive out there."

  "Better out there than in here," Danny said from behind them. He turned to see the old soldier push himself to his feet by leaning on his saber. Danny looked at the flame-flecked darkness beyond the door, then down into the black depths of the well.

  "Do you still think there's something down there, lad?"

  "Do we have any choice?" Ed replied, pointing at the doorway and the inferno beyond.

  The baboons' barking and yelping from outside spoke more now of pain than of anger, and finally their flight and fear of the flames overcame their reluctance to face the men's gunfire. Four of them came through the door at once, a blackened, smouldering vision of hell's teeth and fangs. Ed took one, Stefan another, the third tripped on its fallen comrades and had Elsa at its throat before it could rise, and Danny, obviously hampered by the injury to his back, still had enough of his old soldier's instincts to step forward and skewer the fourth with his saber.

  The heat from the doorway was getting more intense by the second. The skin at Ed's cheeks tightened.

  "If we're going, best do it now while we have a chance," he said.

  Danny responded by kicking their discarded packs down the well. He took his pistol from Stefan and pointed down into the dark.

  "Stefan and Elsa lead the way, then you, lad. I'll be right behind you, so no slacking."

  Ed followed the bobbing light of the shepherd's firebrand down into the dark.

  -Danny-

  The cold air in the well provided welcome respite from the stifling heat above but it proved to be perilous going underfoot, the steps once again having been built for a longer gait than Danny possessed. Every footstep brought a new jarring pain in his bruised back and his neck strained with the effort of continually looking back up the stairwell to ensure no fresh attacks from the baboons.

  As the size of the aperture above seemed to dwindle, so too did it take on an ever-more red hue, and waves of heat from above vied with colder air coming up from below. Slowly but surely the heat was winning; Danny was raising a sweat.

  He took another look back and saw a humanoid, six-limbed figure outlined against a fiery background up above. He fired two shots and the baboon fell away, but it had still been alive which concerned Danny mightily.

  "Faster, lads," he called out. "We're not out of this yet."

  He had to up his own speed to keep up as Stefan's firebrand bobbed downwards ahead, then almost ran into Ed when the shepherd stopped. He saw the man bend and lift one of their packs from where it lay on the steps, then they were descending again as the heat from above washed over them.

  Danny had no time to give any thought to looking up for they were almost running now, bounding down into blackness with no thought of tripping in an attempt to outrun the inferno they'd left behind.

  "We must be near the bottom," Ed said. "Unless I've lost count of the steps."

  "What makes you think there is a bottom, lad?" Danny said, panting in the heat. "We haven't found the other packs yet; they're still somewhere below us."

  That fact was solidified in their minds minutes later when Ed called out again.

  "That's it. We've definitely come down farther than we went up on the outside."

  They were also, finally, starting to descend faster than the heat from above and Danny felt a most welcome cold breeze on his face once again.

  "This air is coming from somewhere," he said. "Let us hope it is hospitable."

  The descent became a personal hell for Danny. Despite the fact that they appeared to have escaped the roasting hell above, every step downward was a battle with pain. Danny had once marched most of a day with a fractured leg; this descent was giving that a run for its money as the worst walk of his life. It felt like crushed glass was being pushed into every muscle from his instep to his shoulders and it was all he could do to refrain from crying out as waves of pain washed through him, threatening to send him back into a deeper darkness than that in which they descended. He was almost happy when Stefan called out from below.

  "I think this is as far as we go."

  Seconds later Danny joined the others in what appeared to be the bottom of the stairwell.

  It opened out into a wide chamber, cathedral-like given the echoes coming from around them. Stefan's firebrand only allowed them a circle of light a few yards in diameter. All else was pitch-black, with no sign of windows.

  "Yon breeze is still coming from somewhere," Danny said. "Let's follow our noses."

  By studying the effect of the breeze on the firebrand they were able to pick a direction. They found the rest of their packs almost immediately, but Danny was unable to get his onto his back.

  "Rest, friend," Stefan said, hefting two packs. "I will manage for a while."

  Danny followed, feeling every day of his age, while Ed took charge of the brand and led them across a smooth expanse of stone floor that was
clearly built, not naturally formed.

  They found the source of the colder breeze within minutes.

  It originated from an area of stone wall three yards wide and several yards high, drilled with hand-sized holes at six-inch intervals across its width some eight feet off the ground. The breeze was coming through these holes, but if it was indeed a door there did not appear to be any mechanism with which to open it.

  "End of the line," Danny said, and slid to the ground to sit with his back to the door. He got out the makings of a cigarette and started to roll, wondering whether this might be the last time he ever performed the almost automatic task.

  Ed, to his credit, wasn't ready to give up. He began to inspect the walls on either side of the door, holding the brand close to the rock face.

  "There are more of those figures here," he said. "Many more. It means something, I'm sure it does."

  "It means we're done for, lad," Danny said. "Here, sit down and have a smoke with me."

  Ed wasn't listening. He moved farther away, leaving the others in darkness.

  "Hey, there's something here," the younger man called out seconds later. "You need to see this."

  "I really don't, you know," Danny replied, then groaned when Stefan helped him to his feet and more pain lanced up and down his back. He half-walked, half-staggered over to where Ed had bent over something sitting between the floor and the wall.

  At first Danny took it for the skeleton of a man, albeit a singularly large one. Then he saw the extra arms, two of which were holding onto what Danny took to be a circular box, similar to a lady's hatbox. Something about it had Ed excited, and it took several seconds for them to get the lad's meaning.

  "Don't you see?" Ed said, but in truth Danny didn't see much of anything at all, and that only served to animate Ed even more.