It stalked over her as she pushed herself backward to get away, but she had nowhere to go with the cliff behind her. The thing pushed itself up onto its legs and stretched out its wings. It was all sharp teeth and hissing.
I stumbled behind it. I was surprised it only stood four feet tall. It seemed so much bigger when it loomed over me. Standing, I had the leverage. I wrapped my hands around its neck and locked my fingers. With a jerk, I snatched it off the ground and spun where I stood. The thing squeaked like rusty door hinges. I let go as I completed a rotation. It flipped end over end, its wings flailing wildly in the air before it smashed into the cliff a few feet away from Aoife. It fell to the snow, tried to stand, staggered, and collapsed, dazed.
Aoife stared up at me, recognition finally showing in her eyes.
I tried to smile, not quite succeeding, and turned back to Seanna. I caught glimpses of her through the beating wings. A constant purple light surrounded her as the things attacked it with tooth and claw. Every time the light flared, the creatures beat their wings harder and slashed out with renewed effort.
I charged toward her. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do to help, but I had to do something.
“Stay back, you idiot.” Seanna’s voice came from somewhere in the commotion.
A weird thing happened then. Well, using weird as a relative term given the situation. I was lifted off my feet and tossed backward like a giant had picked me up by the scruff of my neck and flicked me. I landed and slid across the snow a few feet from Aoife. She was huddled against the cliff wall with her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them.
I opened my mouth to say something, but before it could come out, Aoife screamed and one of the things slammed into me. It knocked me backward in a tumble of flying limbs, fur, and snow. I thumped to the ground and I propped myself up on an elbow to find it at my feet. I pulled my foot back and slammed it into the long snout snapping at me. Chunks of snow flew from the bottom of my shoes as it flopped on its back and didn’t move.
I pushed myself to my feet, nearly slipped, and ran toward Seanna again. Flashes of purple exploded from the writhing ball of flying bat things. I reached into the commotion and grabbed a long, thin tail. I yanked one out of the knot and spun. I figured the same move as before would be just as affective. I flung it, but I was too far away. It caught air before it smashed into the ravine wall and soared out of sight.
I turned back to Seanna in time to see another launch itself at me with a hiss. It barreled into me. A sharp claw caught my forehead. I cried out as pain exploded above my brows. I swung an arm blindly, managing to catch the thing with an elbow before falling back into the snow. It fell on me, landing heavily on my chest. I felt something warm and wet well up on my forehead as I held out my arms, trying to keep it at bay. Blood leaked into my eyes and I squeezed them shut.
I felt it push its long neck toward me. The snout snapped with a click of teeth closer and closer to my face. Its breath smelled like dirty socks. I wedged both hands between us and pushed on its furry chest as hard as I could. To my surprise, the weight left my chest.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, panting like a dog. I scooped a handful of snow and slid it across my eyes. I pried them open, ignoring the sharp sting. Below me, blood stained the white snow a vivid red. More blood dripped from my forehead as I stared at it.
“Gaige!” Aoife yelled, but I could only watch, hypnotized by the blood drops that fell with increasing frequency. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Gaige, we have to…” she began. “Oh, man, that’s a lot of blood. You should, I don’t know, stick your face in the snow?”
“What?” I mumbled, my head swimming in confusion and pain. Is that really my blood dripping in the snow? There’s so much of it!
“Move.” Seanna’s voice cut through the haze. She pushed passed Aoife and stuck a piece of cloth against my forehead. Everything went dark. She held it with more pressure than I thought necessary, enough to cause stars to pop in my vision like mini supernovas in my eyeballs.
“Don’t push so hard,” I muttered. I was having a hard time thinking. Well, harder than before. And that’s saying a lot. “Where are they?”
“Shh.”
I took exception to being shushed, but Seanna let out a noise that sounded like a cross between an animal growling and a large tree creaking in the wind.
“What?” I raised a hand to move hers, but she pressed the cloth tighter against my forehead causing me to moan in pain.
“Gaige…” Aoife began.
“Shh,” Seanna hissed again.
I settled on just lifting the loose piece of cloth that hung over my face. The blood in my eyes and the blinding sun that still hung onto daytime somewhere over the cliffs waged an epic battle over which could blind me with the most pain. I blinked rapidly, letting tears clear my vision. I lifted my head to Seanna and followed her gaze up the side of the cliff to a dark figure silhouetted at the top.
“This is our mountain. You are not welcome, Ashling ,” it called down to us with a deep, booming voice.
7
The Jo-Shar
Tears mixed with blood to streak down my cheeks. I blinked and struggled to stand, but pain lanced through my head, threatening me with unconsciousness. I tried to push past it, but my knees buckled and I collapsed.
The blood-covered snow reminded me of a time when I was a kid. It was a rainy day with the kind of rain that fell in sheets and drenched everything within seconds. I had plans to have friends over to play, but the likelihood of that happening was bleak to my devastated nine-year-old brain. Imagine my excitement when Mom said they could still come over and we could play inside. They did and we did. Somebody thought hide-and-seek was a great indoor game, so we played. When the seeker found me in my brilliant hiding spot behind the couch, I jumped up to make a run for home base. Instead of a marvelous escape, I cracked my head on the windowsill. By the time the bleeding stopped, the living room, hallway, and bathroom looked like a murder scene from a TV crime drama.
The snow around me was starting to look a lot like my house did that day. Head wounds are bleeders. Graphically so.
I had a hard time grasping exactly what was happening. Half blind in pain, cold, and confusion, I wondered how life could spiral out of control in a matter of moments like a runaway tank hell-bent on smashing everything I knew into tiny pieces. It felt like that tank had run over my face while it was at it.
Several of the bat-like things were scattered around. They lay motionless, dead with arrows protruding from their bodies. I pulled my gaze up the cliffs, blinking rapidly. More dark figures appeared as silhouettes one by one until six total stood like gargoyles gazing down on us.
“This is your mountain, but the gate does not belong to you,” Seanna replied to the first who had spoken.
There was a moment of silence. I lowered my watering eyes and pressed my palms into them in an attempt to alleviate the sting. I pushed hard until darkness, inhabited by multicolored squiggles, engulfed my vision. I pressed so hard they hurt and when I removed my hands; it took several long moments for my vision to return. I don’t know what I’d thought I’d accomplish, but the only thing I succeeded in was making my eye sockets hurt.
The dark forms dropped from the edges, landing with thumps in the packed snow. Three of the large men approached from in front of us. Three more closed in from behind, effectively pinching us in with nowhere to go. My stomach twisted itself into a knot of fear. The attack of the bat things happened so quick I didn’t have time to be scared, but these dudes moved toward us with agonizing deliberateness. I had plenty of time to imagine all the things they might do to us.
Aoife moved closer to me, obviously feeling the same fear. I wondered exactly how I was supposed to protect her if that was her thinking. Maybe I could have threatened to bleed on them.
All six dudes sported beards of varying lengths, and they were bundled in thick animal-skin clothing with colors ranging from gray to brown. T
hey were all huge, burly, and carrying various weapons I had only seen in movies or as reproductions at the park when the medieval club met twice a month during the summer. Three had small, thick bows. They were lowered, but arrows were nocked and ready. Two carried short staves with a deadly sharp blade on the end that curved into a crescent moon. The biggest guy with the longest beard carried what looked like a wickedly curved hatchet. He stepped forward to speak.
“This gate is closed. Your business is not here.”
“The gate is open,” Seanna replied.
“What speak you of, Ashling? The gate is closed years.” He held up three meaty, rough fingers.
“Fool!” Seanna spat.
Weapons rattled as the six men shifted, ready to defend their honor against the insult. Seanna let go of the cloth on my head. It stuck there and stood out straight. She clenched a hand and I noticed a wooden ring encircling her index finger. It had two small points that jutted up like mountain peaks. I could have sworn it glowed purple but couldn’t be sure with my uneven eyesight.
The large man stood with his feet spread and the hatchet held loosely in his hand. I had no doubt the man could sever a head from its body with one swipe.
“You heathens need to get out of your huts more often. The gate has stood open for years.” Seanna looked at the man with scorn.
The large man stepped closer, towering over Seanna. The top of her head barely came to his chest. His massive size was enough of a threat, without the very sharp ax held casually at his side. “You do well to learn to hold a tongue, girl, on my mountain,” the man growled.
“You would do well to open your eyes to what’s going on around you,” Seanna retorted. “The gate is right under your overgrown nose and you don’t notice who slips in and out of it. I’m surprised you noticed us. It must have been the attraction of your next meal that brought you here.” She waved a hand toward the dead bat-like things.
The man clinched the hatchet tighter. I tensed, sure the behemoth would start swinging at any moment. Instead, his eyes slid from Seanna to Aoife and me, then back.
“Move aside and we’ll be off your mountain,” Seanna said.
He didn’t budge. “Who are they? They are not of Alisundi .”
“None to concern yourself with, Jo-Shar . Let us pass in peace.”
The large man ignored her and turned to me for an answer. “Who are you?”
I blinked up at him. From my kneeling position, it was a lot like looking up to the top of a mountain—a very tall mountain with a very sharp weapon. I tried hard to get my brain to work properly, but it wouldn’t fire on all cylinders. Blood pumped from my rapidly beating heart, causing confusion and fear. I felt an incoherent stutter bubbling up to my lips before Seanna stepped between us.
“Let us pass,” she repeated, her voice strained.
In a move surprisingly fast for a man his size, he swiped her aside, sending her tumbling into the snow. An animalistic rage flared inside me like a flash of lit gunpowder. Sure, I didn’t know Seanna, and I was pretty sure she was responsible for the situation we were in, but I reacted without thinking. I surged to my feet, ignoring the pain in my head, and rushed the big man. In spite of the long reach to his face, I took a swing. The massive man blocked the blow with his forearm. He redirected his hand and gripped my jaw, bringing my rush to an effective halt.
“Hey!” Aoife cried. She stood but made no further move.
The other large men had not even twitched.
The man bent over me, looking in my watering eyes. Brains work in funny ways sometimes. At that moment, I couldn’t have formulated a thought that would have allowed me to utter my own name. The only thing that came to my mind was the smell of the man’s breath. It smelled faintly of carrots. I would have expected the meaty, rank breath of a man whose diet was mostly carnivorous in nature.
“The Touch you have about you,” he said.
Seanna climbed to her feet and grabbed the man’s wrist. “Let him go.” The ring on her finger flashed.
The tone in her voice surprised me, harsh and menacing, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the man gripping my face like he was testing overripe tomatoes at the supermarket. He examined me through narrowed, cloudy eyes. A thin, pink film covered them.
The man ignored Seanna. “You are a Gatekeeper?”
“I…” I wasn’t sure what to say.
He pulled me closer. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. The man’s skin was deeply tanned and leathery. Heavy lines streaked out from around his eyes, which were a deep green with lines of red streaking the whites. “Did open you the gate?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Seanna said, still gripping his wrist. “He wasn’t the Gatekeeper when it opened. He’s just a pup.”
A pup? That’s what she called me. A pup! Speak, boy, speak. Woof.
The huge man turned his eyes to Seanna’s hand on his wrist, eyeing the ring on her finger, and then looked at Seanna. “If insult me again, will shove your lifeless body through the gate and force the little pup to close it one or another way.”
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that he meant it. I saw it in the depths of the large man’s bloodshot eyes. He wouldn’t spare a second thought on it once it was done.
Seanna kept ahold of his wrist. “He didn’t open it,” she insisted.
His eyes slid from her to me and back. “He did not?”
“No.”
“Then he and his woman may go back to where from they came and close gate.”
“What?” I said. “She’s not my woman.”
“I’m not his woman,” Aoife said at the same time.
“He cannot,” Seanna said over us. “His world is in the danger, but rest assured, we will return in a fortnight and close the gate.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I am to believing the words of an Ashling?”
“I expect you to believe the words of a Nashashir .”
He snorted. “What is a Nashashir to we, Ashling? Still…” He turned his attention back to me. “We have always been of respect of a Keeper of the gate. This one reminds me much of the previous,” he added on the side. “Still, trespass cannot be ignored. Will be for Elder to decide your fate if will not go back. Come with, no fight.”
I glanced at Seanna. Her face was like stone, completely unreadable besides the strain in the hallows of her cheeks and the danger in her eyes like a wolf backed into a corner.
The large man dropped me and barked out a noise that sent the other men into motion. They shouldered their weapons and retrieved spent arrows from the bodies of the bat things, all but ignoring us. I watched the flurry of activity, holding my arms tight against my body.
The large man turned back to me. “My name be Niklas of the Jo-Shar. The protection of our mountain lies with the Gatekeeper and his companions until the Elder determines the fate.”
“Th-thank you,” I stuttered, not sure what else to say. “I think.” A flash of sharp pain lanced across my forehead and I winced, sucking in a breath through my teeth.
“Are you okay?” Aoife asked. Her voice shook.
“Yeah, just a flesh wound,” I joked. What an odd time for Monty Python to pop into my head.
“Let us go,” Niklas stated.
One of the men jogged down a path through the ravine. Niklas followed at a slower pace. The other four men formed a semicircle around Aoife, Seanna, and me, leaving no doubt we were supposed to follow him. After a moment of hesitation, Seanna began walking.
I bent to retrieve the cloak that had slipped from Aoife’s shoulders during the fight with the bat things. I held it out to her, but one of the men stepped forward, pulling the cloak from his back.
“You keep,” he mumbled to me, sounding a lot like he had a mouth full of marbles. He was much younger than Niklas. His face, though rough from a hard life on a snow-capped mountain, wasn’t marked with lines of life and his beard only came down to his collarbone.
Aoife looked between the two of us before accepting
the man’s cloak. He bore his teeth in what I thought might have been a smile. His teeth were startling white and straight.
I shrugged and pulled Seanna’s cloak over my shoulders. None of them offered her a cloak and she didn’t act like she needed one.
***
We traveled in silence, picking our way through the snow and around boulders. The path grew narrower as we went, at times causing us to turn sideways to squeeze between two boulders or ravine walls. My feet sunk into the snow past my ankles with every step. It seeped into my shoes, soaked my socks, and made my toes painfully cold. I wiggled them inside my shoes, wondering how soon frostbite would settle in and cause serious damage.
After a while, my heart stopped hammering away inside my chest. Don’t get me wrong, I was still scared stupid, but there’s nothing like the monotony of walking…just walking to deaden the initial fear. I figured if they were going to kill us, they would have. Right?
Aoife, who stumbled every couple steps, fared worse than me. She had never been a fan of cold weather and snow. Since her family had moved to Colorado from Southern California, she had never grown used to the cold Rocky Mountain winters. Where she came from, a cold winter day meant wearing longer shorts. She often talked about those first few years of her life like a ninety-year-old remembering the carefree days of her childhood.
I kept a hand on her arm, pretty sure I was the only thing keeping her from tumbling face first into the snow every third step. She trembled and shivered in my grip.
Seanna, on the other hand, moved with grace and purpose. Her footsteps fell light, barely making indentations in the snow. She walked with her head up and back straight, unaffected by the cold in spite of wearing only jeans and a sweatshirt, the same as Aoife. There was no wasted movement in her step. Watching her made me feel like a wounded wildebeest stumbling along with a pack of hyenas on its back.
“She has n-no b-butt.”
I realized I was watching Seanna walk and turned to find Aoife looking at me, eyes gold tinted inside the hood over her head. I’m not going to lie—they were starting to freak me out a little bit. I wanted to look closer to see if she was wearing contacts that changed colors or something, but the thought of getting that close to those oddly colored eyes just gave me the willies.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 7