by Alex Archer
"Make sure you get plenty of water." Annja uncapped her canteen and drank. "Cold will leave you as dehydrated as heat."
Huangfu nodded and drank. Despite his exertions, he didn't look any the worse for wear. One of his shirt sleeves crept up and revealed the red, yellow and blue ink of a large tattoo. It had scales, so Annja guessed that it was a dragon or a fish. Self-consciously, he pulled his sleeve back down, looking at Annja.
She acted as if she hadn't seen the tattoo, but dark suspicions formed in her thoughts. She suddenly didn't feel as comfortable and confident as she had.
"Here?" Huangfu pointed at the ground in front of her.
Annja nodded, capped her canteen, and picked up her trenching tool.
"How deep, do you think?" Huangfu shoveled like a machine.
"A foot or two at least. This far into the forest, foliage and dead trees are going to compost and add to the humus layer. If you leave anything on the ground long enough, nature has a tendency to pull it deep and cover it over."
They dug rhythmically. The shovel blades bit into the earth and turned it easily.
Ban Zexu had suffered a harsh death that had mirrored the men who'd worked the Cooley Mine. Jealousy, fired by desperation, had turned the white miners against everyone else. Chinese and Mexican miners had become targets.
In 1875, little less than a year after the murder of the Cooley Mine workers, Ban Zexu and his small group of miners had been burned out, as well. The stories varied. Some said it was over a slight made by one of the Chinese miners, and others insisted it was over a woman. There was even a story that Ban Zexu and his friends had struck it rich, though no gold had ever turned up. Locked inside the building they'd lived in while working different claims, the Chinese miners had had no chance when the building had been torched.
As Annja worked, she tried not to think about that horrible death. Or about the tattoo she'd seen on Huangfu's arm. She still wasn't sure what that meant; only that Huangfu was more than he seemed, and that waiting for Bart to conduct a deeper background check might have been a good idea.
****
Late into the day and almost three feet down, the light was fading fast and Annja's certainty about her calculations was ebbing away as the dirt piled higher and higher. Suddenly her shovel struck burned wood. She saw the black coals stark against the lighter colored dirt.
Rotting wood would have been absorbed back into the earth. But the burned wood had been carbonized and would take longer to leach back into the soil and break down.
"Huangfu," Annja said.
He looked at her. Although he hadn't said anything, Annja had felt the wave of exasperation coming from him. He wasn't a man used to failure.
"We've found it." Annja pointed at the coals left from the fire over one hundred and thirty earlier. "We must go slowly now."
Huangfu nodded. "What about the belt plaque I showed you?"
Is that what this is really about? Annja knew she couldn't ask, but she was certain that retrieving the bones of his ancestor wasn't the man's real goal.
"If it's jade or steatite, it'll break easily. Just go slow."
Huangfu looked at the sky. "I would like to finish tonight."
So would I, Annja thought. "If it's possible, we will. But hurrying and ruining everything we might find isn't the answer."
Reluctantly, Huangfu nodded.
"Shovelful by shovelful. Feel your way into the ground, then shake it out so you can see anything you might have found. When we reach a body, we'll work with our hands." Annja showed him, slowly scooping up the earth and spreading it out across the hill she'd created.
Huangfu did as she directed, and they continued digging.
****
Forty minutes later, Huangfu found a body. "Here," he said. Excitement tightened his voice.
Tossing her shovel onto the dirt hill beside the hole she'd dug, Annja joined him. Enough light remained that they didn't need flashlights, but they would soon. The air was turning colder and their breath showed constantly.
Dropping to her knees, Annja looked at the rib cage Huangfu had uncovered. Carrion beetles had stripped the bones of flesh before the earth had claimed the body. Soot still stained the ivory.
Removing her digital camera from her backpack, Annja took several pictures. Huangfu stood by impatiently.
"We'll take pictures as we go," Annja explained as she replaced the camera in the backpack. "We can search through them later. They might help us discover if we missed anything."
Annja slipped her gloved hands around the bones and gently began disinterring them. She placed them carefully beside the hole, keeping them together as she found them.
Huangfu watched her. "Do these bones belong only to one man?"
"So far." Finding the pelvis, Annja headed in the other direction, searching for the skull. More bones created a skeleton on the ground.
"I can help."
"Keep the bones in order as we find them." Annja handed over the collarbone.
"Why?"
"We'll learn more if we do. How many people were in here. Maybe who they were. If we post this on the Internet, we might find others who are looking for lost family members. Information works best if it's keep neat and arranged."
Annja found the skull and lifted it free of the earth. "Your ancestor might have escaped that night."
"According to the journal that came into my possession that did not happen. Ban Zexu died here."
"Judging from the roundness of this skull, and the arched profile, and widely spaced round eye sockets, this person was of Mongoloid decent."
"Chinese?"
"That's one possibility. Pathology isn't an exact science when it comes to race. We can identify the three different racial characteristics of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid."
Annja handed Huangfu the skull, noting that the man took it without hesitation. That wasn't a normal reaction for most people when they were confronted with such a situation. She knew beginner archaeologists who took years to get over the queasiness of handling dead bones fresh from a dig.
Huangfu placed the skull at the top of the skeleton they were building.
Annja continued digging, going back toward the pelvis now. Noting the narrowness of the pelvis and the sciatic notch that allowed the sciatic nerve and others to go on through to the leg, she also knew the remains were male. Pathology was more exact about sex and age.
Below the pelvis there was a leather bag that hadn't yet rotted away. But her attention was riveted on the rectangular shape she'd spotted. Even with the gloves and though the rectangular shape looked more like a clod or a rock, she knew what it was.
Excitement filled her as always. Every discovery she'd made affected her the same way. She hoped that would never change.
"Is that the plaque?" Huangfu asked.
"I think so." Annja breathed out and started brushing dirt from the piece. With the shadows in the hole they'd dug, she couldn't clearly see the piece, but she saw enough of it to note the stylized tiger poised with its ears flattened to its head and one clawed paw raised to strike. Scythian art stylings, picked up by some of the people they traded with – including the Chinese, often showed fierce animals.
"Let me see," her client said.
Annja was loath to let go of the prize. The memory of the tattoo hidden on Huangfu's arm disturbed her thoughts and took away some of the joy of discovery.
The unmistakable ratcheting of a rifle bolt seating a round in the chamber caused Annja and Huangfu to freeze. Glancing up toward the sound, Annja saw three armed men emerge from the gathering darkness.
Chapter 2
All three of the men looked scruffy. Patched jeans, hoodies, dirty boots and coats clothed them and lent them the sameness of a predatory pack. They were young, barely into their twenties.
But old enough to point a gun at you, Annja thought as she remained frozen. Looking into their eyes, she noticed how red and glassy they were. It wasn't a huge leap of logic to guess that they
were under the influence of something. In the thin cold air, she smelled the acrid odor of marijuana and the cloying stink of horse sweat.
Beside her, Huangfu shifted slightly, just enough to get his footing and redistribute his weight. The three young men didn't notice.
"I told you I saw somebody out here, Dylan." The speaker was the thickest of the three. He carried the extra weight around his middle, looking like a football player gone to seed.
Dylan was bearded and had kinky black hair that looked like he hadn't brushed it since he was a teenager. He aimed the rifle in his arms with grim authority, pointing it at Huangfu.
"Shut up, Beef," Dylan said. "I can see them. I got eyes."
"Do you think they've been out to the patch?" the third young man asked.
"Shut up, Neville," Dylan ordered, then spat foul curses. "I swear, neither one of you has any sense."
Annja looked at the semiautomatic Beef carried and the revolver Neville held. She'd been in similar situations of late. She was afraid she was starting to get used to life-threatening situations.
"What're you doing out here?" Dylan demanded.
"We're archaeologists." Annja gestured to the bones gathered at the side of the hole. "We were sent here to find these bodies."
Beef walked away from the other two, closing in on the bones. He kicked the skull with the toe of his boot and sent it rolling a few feet away.
"Cool." Beef grinned and went after the skull. "Think I'll put this in my room. Get some black light action going on this. Candles for the eyes. It'll look awesome."
"Why are you out here looking for skeletons?" Dylan asked.
Beef picked up the skull, hooking his fingers through the eye sockets and his thumb through the mouth. He mimed swinging it like a bowling ball, then laughed uproariously.
Annja kept her voice calm and soft. "These people were Chinese. Their families found out they were murdered here and want them back." She felt another slight shift in Huangfu's stance, aware of it only because she'd been involved in martial arts for years.
"That's all you're doing out here?" Dylan asked.
"Yes."
"You aren't, like, police?" Neville looked suspicious.
"No."
"That was a dumb question." Beef snorted derisively.
Neville looked irritated. "Why? All I asked was if they were police."
"Well, for one, they could lie to you."
"Uh-uh. Police have got to tell the truth."
Beef cursed and juggled the skull in one hand. "Dude, I don't know what planet you're from, but my brother is a cop, and they can lie to everybody. Ain't no law against lying for police."
Neville shook his head. "That don't seem right. I mean, a police guy has gotta tell you he's a police guy."
"And two," Beef went on, "now they know we got a reason to worry about police up here." He looked at Dylan. "We gotta kill 'em now, dude. They've seen our faces. Anybody finds out we're growing pot up here, we're gonna go to prison this time."
Dylan didn't say anything for a minute. Then he shrugged. "They already dug the hole, I guess. Kill the guy first." The rifle shifted to center over Huangfu's chest.
Unable to stand by while the man was killed, Annja surged up from the hole. Controlling the fear that vibrated within her, she stayed low, diving toward Dylan because she believed the other two would fire their weapons after he did. Catching Dylan around the waist in a flying tackle, she spilled to the ground with the young man in a tangle of arms and legs as the rifle went off.
Three other reports cracked almost simultaneously, all of them different timbers.
Rolling, Annja came up in a crouch, taking in the scene before her in disbelief. Beef collapsed only a few feet away, his face covered in blood. Huangfu, low to the ground and in motion, held a small black pistol in his fist. The weapon cracked, spitting fire twice more.
Neville staggered back, gazing down at his chest in astonishment. Two tiny flowers blossomed bloodred over his heart. "Very uncool, dude." Then he dropped, sprawling across the ground.
Stunned, Annja didn't notice Dylan's kick until his foot was only inches from her face. By then it was too late to avoid the blow. She twisted her head in an effort to deflect the impact and succeeded, but the side of her face suddenly felt like it was on fire and her vision turned blurry for a moment.
Dylan was cursing and scrabbling for a pistol in the waistband of his pants when Huangfu took aim and fired again. Two bullets caught Dylan in the chest, staggering him but not knocking him down. He brought his pistol up in both hands and fired.
The bullet sheared a tree branch only inches from Huangfu's head. The loud detonation filled the ridge for a moment, but it relented when Huangfu fired three times in a rapid string of explosions.
Huangfu pointed the pistol at Annja as Dylan's knees buckled and he fell face first onto the ground.
Time slowed for Annja as she tried to assess what had happened. Huangfu had acted only to save them. Having the gun he'd obviously carried on his person might offer some legal challenges, but it wasn't anything that a good lawyer couldn't work out. If the young men had been worried about further criminal charges putting them in prison, that meant they had a criminal history of some sort. And there was no denying the weapons they'd brought. But Annja knew she was in grave danger.
She moved, trusting her instincts and not trying to reason through the improbable situation. Huangfu had killed the three young men and he was going to kill her, as well. She dodged behind the nearest tree. A bullet tore bark from the trunk and spewed splinters across her cheek.
She didn't break stride, plunging deeper into the forest surrounding Volcanoville. The sun was setting to the west, steeping the forest in darkness. She headed in that direction, knowing the long shadows and the loss of depth perception against the fading brightness would make her a harder target.
More shots rang out behind her. Bullets cut through the trees, ricocheting from thick limbs and trunks, and cutting small branches free.
Taking brief respite in a hollow between two large fir trees dug in tight against the hillside, Annja realized she was still holding the items from the dig site. She shoved the belt plaque into the leather pouch, then tied the pouch to her belt. Metal clicked inside and she guessed that some of the contents were coins. The cold ate into her, but she knew the adrenaline and fear coiling through her increased her vulnerability to it.
The forest continued to darken and the shadows deepened.
Annja listened for footsteps but didn't hear any. Either Huangfu wasn't moving, or –
The man suddenly appeared out of the darkness with the pistol in his hand.
Annja made herself stay put and trust the shadows. Any movement would make her visible.
Huangfu stopped beside a tree. His breath puffed out in front of him. He lifted his left hand and Annja saw that he was holding a satellite phone. He pressed a number.
I'll bet that's not 911. A sinking sensation coiled through Annja's stomach. She was a long way from help.
After finishing a short conversation in which he did all the talking, Huangfu put the phone away. "Miss Creed." His call echoed in the forest.
Annja let her breath out, knowing she had to keep breathing in order to keep from hyperventilating. Her fight or flight instinct surged madly, but she kept it in check.
"Miss Creed, you should come out." Huangfu started walking again. "There's been a mistake. I'm not going to hurt you."
Annja watched the man moving carefully through the forest. He took advantage of cover and stayed within the shadows. She thought he moved like a military special forces soldier. She hadn't been around those men often in her life, but there had been occasion at some dig sites to talk to them. Many ex-soldiers had moved into security work.
"I panicked," Huangfu said. Three more steps and he vanished into the trees.
Annja didn't feel comforted by his disappearance. At least while she could still see him she knew where he was. She listened inte
ntly, but Huangfu was more silent than the wind blowing through the budding tree limbs and the fir trees.
Taking a moment, remembering the bodies of the three young men back at the dig site, Annja reached for her sword. She felt the grip against her palm, then pulled it from the otherwhere.
Annja had found the last piece of the sword while in France, but she hadn't known what it was then. Roux, who claimed to be over five hundred years old, had spent those years tracking down the pieces of Joan of Arc's sword. He'd stolen the last piece from Annja in France, but it hadn't been until she had touched all the pieces that it once again became whole.
Roux claimed that the sword brought a legacy with it, unfinished business that Joan was supposed to have been given the chance to do. Annja didn't know if she believed that, but she did know that her life had changed after the sword had come into her possession.
In the stillness of the night, she considered her options. People knew she and Huangfu had come out to Volcanoville – park rangers and a handful of Georgetown residents. But they might not think anything was amiss until morning. Perhaps not even then.
You're going to have to save yourself, she resolved. She hated the thought of leaving her backpack behind. Her notebook computer had a lot of information – pictures, as well as writing she'd done – that she hadn't yet backed up.
Nearly all of the information on Ban Zexu was on the notebook computer. All of the recent information was, as well as pictures of Huangfu. Bart had a couple, but those might not be enough to help find the man if he succeeded in killing her.
She had a satellite phone in her backpack. All she had to do was grab the backpack – at least the phone – and stay hidden in the forest long enough to call for help.
She took a quick breath, concentrating on the sure weight of the sword in her hand.
Annja moved out of her hiding spot reluctantly, then headed back up the hillside. She stayed within the brush, using every available scrap of it for cover. Her eyes swept her surroundings for Huangfu.
Thankfully, her backpack was out of the way, at the edge of the tree line. In the brush only a few feet from the backpack, she squatted to survey the ground.