by Travis Smith
As Skuttler looked on, Boss took one last step backward from the slaughter befalling his men in front of him. The sandy earth disappeared beneath him. As he tumbled backward, the woven blanket gave way to reveal a massive hole in the ground. Boss vanished into the darkness below. His startled shouts echoed upward and decrescendoed as he fell. His scream halted with a gut-wrenching crunch when he hit the rocks below.
The outburst caused the guards nearest to pause and look back. Many of them noticed the newly revealed gorge and turned back to warn the others, but it was too late. The delay gave Patrick and his allies the edge they needed. They pushed forward as the mass of guards collectively crept backward. While those at the front of the pack dropped from fatal wounds, those privy to what was behind them were forced backward by the momentum of their crew. They were driven into the chasm and fell one-by-one into the dark cavern below. The unsuspecting guards in the middle turned at last to run in retreat, only to find their mates missing. Several more stumbled into the hole as they tried to find escape, and the last remaining few were struck down by arrows and bullets.
At last it was only Patrick’s party and Skuttler remaining. Three of the escaped prisoners had been caught in the guards’ inaccurate crossfire. Skuttler clutched Greggy to his chest and redoubled his grip on the gun.
“Hey, ratface!” Brandon called across the hole.
Patrick, Maria, and John walked around the hole and slowly approached. Ian was still kneeling nearby, his arms clutching his own head in dismay.
“St—stay the f—fuck back!” Skuttler called. “I’ll kill ’im!”
“Shoot him, and yer dead before his body hits the ground!” Brandon advised.
“See reason,” Patrick said in a calm voice. “Lay down your weapon, and we will discuss this.”
“It’s t—t—ten to one!” Skuttler spat. His tongue glided across his cracked upper lip.
“This weasel sees no reason!” Brandon called. “Shoot ’im now!”
Skuttler flung the old man’s limp body side to side, tilting his shield between Brandon’s group across the hole and the smaller trio approaching to his left. Greggy groaned in his grasp. Inching forward, Skuttler peered over the lip of the hole and into the darkness below. He saw corpses littering the stony cavern floor. Some had landed in the small sandy beach and appeared to be moving, mortally injured from the fall.
“Don’t consider it,” Brandon warned.
Skuttler’s eyes danced madly in the day’s fading light. Sweat poured from his mangy scalp and ran in rivulets down his pock-marked face. He advanced another step toward the hole, still clutching Greggy. The lying bastard boys repeated their warnings. He took one last glance behind him at the expansive desert before making up his mind. He’d never make it out there. He’d never talk his way out of this. His only hope lay below.
He dropped the old man and lunged into the black hole in the earth. He made no sound as he fell. Patrick and Ian shared a sigh of relief as Greggy slumped onto his hands and knees and looked up at them with a smile as the sound of a splash echoed up from the hole.
“The snake landed in water,” Brandon mused, chancing a cautious glance over the lip of the hole.
“There is plenty down there to do him in,” Patrick said.
Ian rushed to his brother’s side. “Greggy,” he called. “Greggy, you led him right to the trap!” Tears of relief spilled from Ian’s dark eyes and slid to the tip of his crooked nose. “You remembered?”
The old man smiled and pat his brother on the back. “Of course, brother,” he agreed.
Ian broke away from his embrace, enraptured. “You did? Greggy, did you remember?”
Gregoire smiled broadly. “Remember what?”
9
The Stranger enjoyed a prolonged rest after his gratifying meal with the kind fisherman. The man may have been the first he’d encountered along his journey who didn’t ask for his name. He didn’t ask details about his life. He didn’t offer unsolicited guidance. He’d merely seen a stranger in need and offered his time, his fare, and the coat upon his back.
The following morning, he sauntered along the winding path north of Mitten. The flame of urgency had dwindled down to mere coals. For the first time since the start of his quest, The Stranger felt wholly in control of his destiny. He felt a strange peace. His heart yearned for his wife and son, of course, but such time had passed that their fates had likely been as sealed as his own as he’d lain wasting in that cell. Thus far, his reckless ambition had accomplished naught but his own delay. More lives had been lost. More peril had befallen. He’d been warned what would transpire …
The canyon path through the Klippa Mountains came to an end. A turbulent waterway rushed past. The monsoon runoff raged with a force that promised The Stranger he would never be able to swim across. He glanced around to find a narrow ledge leading along the river’s edge. It led along the south-westerly-flowing water. To the north and east, in the direction The Stranger was heading, stood a stony impasse on either side of the river.
“Road leads only one direction from here,” The Stranger muttered, looking back over his shoulder.
The narrow path to his left led between a towering boulder and the river. On the other side of the water stood another tower of stone. They stood in parallel, river flowing through them, like two identical gate-keeper sentinels.
The Stranger recalled his fateful last evening in Krake, two guards standing before him atop the palisades.
It is my people or my family, his father spoke inside his memory.
“I’m not ready to be a leader …” The Stranger replied.
10
Patrick led the growing group north through the desert. As the sun descended beyond the horizon, they were able to make out another crowd on its way from the prison. Either Resin or Maldeive had regrouped and was now hot on their trail.
They travelled through the night without pause. When the sun rose above the horizon to their right, Patrick felt certain he would look back and see no pursuers, but he was incorrect. The guards were closer than they’d appeared the evening before.
“Let’s go!” he barked. “Faster now.”
“We’re in a fucking desert,” Brandon moaned. “Why must we be in a desert?”
“They’re gaining,” Patrick muttered to his friend, “and I don’t think we have enough ammunition to face them all.”
Brandon sighed. “So what do we do? No more grand plans?”
“I’m afraid I’ve no more schemes. Just don’t incite panic. We have to keep moving.”
The group continued in a rushed march through the desert. The arid sand gave way to packed dirt and then thin patches of mud. The horizon rolled out before them with a vastness that was staggering. Each time Patrick glanced back over his shoulder, the men in pursuit appeared nearer than ever before.
After hustling for much of the day, the expansive, flat horizon broke as they entered a more elevated terrain.
“We can’t go much more,” Ian sputtered through heaving breaths. “Greggy won’t survive this pace.”
Patrick fell back and placed an arm under one of Gregoire’s to aid him along. “Over this next ridge. If there’s a place to hide, it will be there.”
They crested the hill and saw little other than desert. The route to the left began to descend and form a shallow canyon that looked promising. To the right was only more of the same endless sea of sand and low-lying shrubbery. Patrick nodded his head toward the vague path that formed to the left.
“Won’t make it out that way, stranger,” a familiar voice spoke.
Patrick started and drew his weapon. He looked up to see The Stranger seated atop one of the low ridges.
“Unless ya got help from a friend,” he said with a wry grin.
11
“Ain’t no chance they went ’at way,” Resin growled as he and his crew approached the fork in the path. His eyes scanned the horizon. There were no shapes in the distance, and no landmarks for them to ha
ve hidden amongst.
They made their way along the path to the left. It descended and began to form a proper pathway as the desert to their right was lost from view beyond the growing ridge. The path snaked its way downward and entered a series of small canyons at the edge of the Klippa Mountains. There were no forks in the path, and there were no hidden caverns for the prisoners to have taken refuge in. Eventually a path broke off and led toward a small village lying outside Mitten. Resin weighed his options before sending a portion of his men into the village.
“Kill anybody ’t looks at ya foul. If ya find the pris’ners, try t’ keep ’em alive if ya can. Spare ’em boys. Their fates belong t’ me alone.”
As his crew entered the village, Resin and the remaining twenty continued along the canyon path. It meandered around a large lake where The Stranger had taken repose. Eventually the path narrowed and began to bottleneck down toward the river. The ridges on either side grew tall and treacherous. Ahead, the river raged between two towering rocks that stood tall above the canyon walls. Standing alone in the path and facing the approaching crowd was the boy.
“Don’ kill ’im,” Resin growled under his breath. A vengeful smile spread beneath his unkempt beard. “He’s mine.”
Resin’s men raised their weapons at Patrick as his eyes scanned the canyon walls. No ledges for an ambush in wait. No one stood on the distant banks of the river. Just jagged ridges leading to the sentinel rock towers at the river’s edge.
“Lost yer troop o’ villains?” Resin called.
“It’s me you want,” Patrick returned. He was unarmed, standing in the center of the path.
“Oh I wan’ more ’n jus’ yer head, boy,” Resin snarled back, “an’ yer gonna give me what’s mine.”
“I can point you to your daughter,” Patrick said, nonplussed by the stocky man leading a small army.
Resin’s smile broadened. “You dicker for yer life?”
“My life is my own to bargain,” Patrick said, “but I offer you a choice: your kin, or the stone.”
Resin’s eyes narrowed.
Patrick reached into his pocket and withdrew a small black stone with the familiar symbol upon it. “You’ll never have both.”
“I’ll cut yer eyes from yer very head an’ hang ’em from my daughter’s door,” Resin growled through gritted teeth, “lest she ever forget again who’s the one who watches after her.”
12
The Stranger stood atop the rocky tower on the near side of the river. As he looked down at the boy, a cold wind rushed by, heralding the coming of winter. His long, thick coat whipped around his knees. In the distance to the south, across the sweeping dunes and mesas, black smoke still spiraled into a sky that was clearing of the monsoon season’s clouds. Below him, on the back side of the sentinel rock, stood hordes of townspeople from Mitten and its outlying villages.
“You people owe me no debt,” he had said to them after travelling back from the river and gathering the townspeople before him. “You owe me neither food nor clothing nor shelter from the storms … yet many of you would sacrifice all that and more. That I now understand. Darkness has overtaken our lands, and perhaps I assumed its spread was ubiquitous. Perhaps I assumed this because it’s dug its nails into my own mind as well. I have killed. I have abandoned. I have lied. I have stolen. I have compromised myself in many ways, but I have not succumbed. Perhaps many of you have succumbed to its wearing allure, but I believe that most of you have not. Most of you are struggling to carry on with your lives. Have you compromised yourselves? Of course, but I believe most of you are suffering, just as I am suffering. You owe me no debt, this is true, but I implore you to join me in aid to your fellow countrymen. I implore you to suffer in silence no more.”
Resin’s men who went into the village would find no one, for The Stranger had marched the willing citizens back to the sentinel rocks and guided them carefully along the narrow path between the tower and the river. There, they were now lying in wait, armed with rocks and arrows and a few of the strange metallic flintlocks.
Resin growled an idle threat in the path below.
“Come and get them!” the boy shouted back.
The Stranger felt a wave of déjà vu wash over him as he glanced back down at the boy from the horizon. “William?” he called, confused.
As Resin’s men charged forward, a shot rang out. The Stranger could see it in his mind’s eye as it entered the boy’s skull and exited the other side.
“How did you get here?” he whispered as jets of blood gushed from the bullet’s exit wound.
Sad t’ say those mayn’t’ve been mere dreams, the old man whispered inside his head.
The Stranger shook his head and pushed away images of the nightmares he’d suffered in Eugene’s cellar. He looked back down at Patrick and saw that the shot had missed. They must have been mere dreams, for the boy had turned and run toward the river, just as they’d planned.
Patrick dashed nimbly up the jagged peaks of the canyon wall as it led toward the rocky tower at river’s edge. He leapt from one jutting ridge to the next. Resin shouted incomprehensible admonishments at his trigger-happy men as he and his crew broke into furious pursuit. Many of them stayed on the canyon ground, but a few struggled to follow the young boy’s upward route. Resin broke into a full gallop along the canyon path as Patrick reached the edge of the ridge.
“Where ya gonna go now, boy!” he shouted up at Patrick. “Can’t jump the whole river!”
Patrick reached the edge of the ridge and dove headlong off. He fell down toward the raging waters.
“After ’im!” Resin belted. “Dive in there an’ drown that rat!”
But Patrick seized a long length of rope that The Stranger had affixed to the side of the rocky tower. He fell, and the rope pulled him in a wide-swinging arc just over the surface of the water. As Resin’s men tumbled and splashed into the river, Patrick swung around to the downstream side of the sentinel rocks. He stumbled only minutely upon landing, but he was back on his feet, gun drawn and aimed at the guards who were now floating by below.
Bullets, stones, and arrows rained down atop the men as they bellowed and sputtered by in the river’s current. The Mitten townspeople stood at least fifty strong alongside Brandon, Jake, Maria, Robert, and John on the blind side of the towering rocks. Resin and his crew could not find traction within the rushing waters, and their slain corpses were swept swiftly downstream.
Patrick watched intently as Resin himself splashed by. The pair locked eyes for a moment as Patrick peered down the long barrel of his gun. Resin splashed and curled his lip in a sour snarl. He allowed his head to submerge and disappear under the frothy water, but Patrick traced his trajectory and fired a single shot into the depths. The last he saw of Resin was a cloud of bright red blood appear in the water before it was carried along with the current.
13
The frothy white foam atop the river turns to red as it winds through the Klippa canyons and slows toward its estuary. The calmer waters have turned deep red with the blood carried from far upstream. As the sun hurries down out of the new winter sky, the first corpse splashes down from the flowing waters into the calm basin below. Behind it, nearly twenty others follow.
The Cave:
Part 5
T he Stranger and Christopher stood frozen in place as the door opened to reveal an unfamiliar man before them. The man cautiously stepped out of the doorway. He was young and heavy-set, about the same age as Christopher.
“Who the hell are you?” Christopher asked.
The man looked around timidly. “Wh—what is this place?” he asked.
“Bad news, my guy. Pretty sure it’s Hell, but the jury’s still out with this one.” He cocked his thumb at The Stranger.
The man’s face twisted as he fought bitter tears. He fell to his knees and bowed his head.
Christopher ignored him and walked past him to the door from which he’d emerged. “What’s in here? It’s just a dead end? It’s
like some closet? How did you even get here?”
“I don’t know!” the man sobbed, still on his knees.
Christopher locked eyes with The Stranger and shook his head. He rolled his own eyes and twirled a finger by his ear behind the man’s back.
“Why, Lord?” he wept. “Why have you forsaken me here? I was forever devout.”
“Oh, boy,” Christopher muttered. “Look, man, we’re all upset about it, you know? We all got bamboozled somehow. Guess that’s your God for you.”
The man ignored him and continued to speak to himself on his knees. “What have I done to earn a lifetime of suffering and torment?”
“Dude, we’re not that bad. At its worst, it’s just been boring so far. It’s not really dangerous or anything.”
As he spoke, a deep rift grew in the cave’s floor. It cracked and elongated before deepening and separating the cavern into two halves. The man on his knees started and attempted to stand up, but as he did, the entirety of one side of the cave collapsed into an infinite abyss. Christopher and The Stranger jumped backward away from the ledge that had just formed, but the man they’d just met was not so lucky. One leg fell into the abyss, and the weight and surprise of it dragged his body along. He managed to grab the edge of the floor and cling to it.
“Help!” he screamed as the entire cavern quaked with the catastrophic disruption.
Christopher leapt forward and seized the man’s wrists. “I got you,” he promised. He strained as he attempted to pull the man back up, but he was too heavy, and Christopher’s build was thin and dainty. He turned toward The Stranger to call for help.
Should we even help this whiny schmuck? he thought before opening his mouth. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the ledge where he was squatting crumbled and sank downward toward the infinite black below. He let go of the man and twisted around to try and gain footing. As the man dropped, Christopher felt his feet leave the solid ground from beneath him.