Arena

by Karen Hancock

  The people jolted free of their shock. Three-quarters of them ran to their things, tearing down tents and stuffing gear willy-nilly into their packs. The rest milled uneasily, arguing among themselves. Pierce, Whit, and John went to move the perimeter lines inward, and before they were done, Morgan’s followers were climbing out of the basin.

  Callie and LaTeisha were just setting the final perimeter pole into its relocated socket when a rain of quarrels flew down from the mountainside, zinging by like bullets and bouncing off the granite. One plunged through Ian’s breastplate into his heart. As he toppled backward, Callie dove for her SI and rolled behind a knoll.

  But the Trogs were well hidden in the rocks, difficult to see, impossible to aim at, and the perimeter lines needed to be on now. Crouching, she zigzagged through the tents toward the control box, the twilight flickering bright blue as her companions returned fire. She reached the box a step ahead of Pierce and found it swarming with red mites. As he covered her, she jerked them off with her bare hands, her efficiency compromised by the need to dodge their snapping pincers. Frustrated, she looked around for a stick and spied movement up the hill under the trees just as a line of Trogs burst from the copse. They carried clubs, scythelike blades, and heavy, studded maces.

  Pierce stepped in front of her, his steady fire dropping mutants one after the other. It made little difference. He yelled something at her, but she’d already abandoned the box, scrambling sideways, crablike, searching for cover and firing her SI continuously. With her friends screaming on every hand, and with crossbow quarrels plunging into one armored body after another, Callie could hardly control her rising panic. At length she found herself crouched behind a granite hummock, shaking violently and sucking in deep draughts of air as she sought the calm that would enable her to reactivate her belt.

  The sense of something bearing down upon her made her glance up just in time. Both her shots hit the attacking mutant, but as she rolled away, she knew she’d missed the kill spot and braced for the inevitable blow to come. Instead, a third beam drilled out of the darkness into its head, and the thing collapsed backward into the gloom.

  Another deep breath, and Callie shoved up, firing at the attackers coming in from the flank. Behind her Whit was shouting. Pierce answered from somewhere above. LaTeisha yelled for her to come back down, where a group of them were retreating around the lake.

  Callie squinted up the slope where Pierce had gone to ground behind a swell of rock, the flashes of his SI betraying his position. She waved Teish on and raced up the hill but was only halfway to Pierce’s position when two figures bore down upon her. Dropping to one knee, she took one out. The other crashed into her, slamming her backward onto the granite and exploding her world into a kaleidoscope of colored starbursts. She glimpsed something dark and smelly bending over her and kicked at what seemed to be its legs. It staggered back when she connected, and then a blue lance shot out of nowhere, blinding her yet again. When she regained her sight, the Trog was gone.

  She staggered upright, her helmet falling away in two pieces, as another score of mutants burst from the trees. Blue fire peppered them, originating from Pierce’s granite hummock. Hunching her shoulders, she sprinted toward him, quarrels zipping by her, and was still ten feet away when the outcropping exploded, slamming her to the ground and raining rock upon her.

  She lay gasping, pain stabbing her chest, a red haze filling her head. It took longer to recover this time, and when she finally pushed herself up, a fog of dust hung in the air and three lifeless figures sprawled on the slope above her. What had happened? Had the Trogs acquired grenades?

  Someone fired from a position upslope, aiming at the mutant flank as it engaged with Morgan’s group, now spread out along the rim to capitalize on higher ground. In daylight, they might have prevailed, but Trogs saw better at night than humans—even Changed humans—a fact Morgan evidently realized, for the flashes marking SI positions were retreating rapidly over the brow of the pass.

  Callie’s immediate periphery, meanwhile, had quieted. She ran to where Pierce hunkered on the slope behind a grassy hillock. As she dropped belly down beside him, his SI flashed, illuminating the dark form of a mutant as it crumpled to the ground. A few of its fellows ransacked the camp below and searched for the wounded, who would become their prisoners.

  Pierce tugged her backward. Quietly they retreated up the hill to a grove of wind-sculpted spruce. In the pass above the basin, Morgan’s combat line had disappeared, but occasional distant flashes told Callie the fight continued.

  Abruptly four Trogs clambered over the ruined rock in front of them. Silhouetted against the pale backdrop of the basin and lake, they milled around, grunting and laughing. Hidden beneath the prickly evergreen, Callie felt Pierce’s fingers bite into her arm, warning her not to move. As the mutants poked and prodded at her dead—or stunned— companions, she barely breathed. Two of them picked up bodies and went back down, but the other pair turned to the mountain, facing Pierce and Callie. They seemed to look right through the twisted branches into Callie’s eyes. Any minute she expected them to lift their crossbows and shoot, or else charge up the hill and rip them from their hiding place. One stepped toward them, muttering.

  Then rough voices from down in the camp claimed their attention. They turned, one yelled a reply, and both went back down.

  The sounds of their passage soon silenced, but Callie knew better than to be impatient. Moments dragged by. Her forearm ached where Pierce still gripped it. A branch poked into her hip. Her hand beneath the SI had gone to sleep, and her head throbbed where it had struck the granite. No more flickerings showed in the pass now. Trogs moved around them occasionally, the ground thumping with their passage, their guttural voices echoing in the night, but more and more, the sounds grew distant and finally dwindled to silence.

  At length Pierce released her arm, told her to stay put, and eased out of their sanctuary. He returned with a pack, two parkas, and a new helmet. Wordlessly she slipped on the helmet, then the parka. Pierce donned the pack and they set off. Darting from one group of spruce to the next, they ascended the mountain. Eventually they ran out of trees, and with the starlight reflecting brightly off the pale granite surrounding them, Callie felt horribly exposed. But if the Trogs were aware of them, they didn’t appear to be following.

  According to the manual, mutants avoided heights. Not only was the mountain daylight too strong for their sensitive eyes, but their rapid metabolisms and increased brain tissue also made them susceptible to severe bouts of altitude sickness in the thin air. Perhaps the risk was not worth the capture of just two people. Especially when they had so many on lower ground to chase.

  Callie’s headache worsened, but they couldn’t stop to dig out the med kit, so she endured, counting her steps as she trudged after Pierce. They crossed a small moraine, passed a row of stunted spruce clinging to the banks of a lakelet, then climbed across more granite domes. Through it all, the wind never died, varying from a stiff breeze to a gale that nearly plucked them off the mountain.

  At length Pierce suggested they go to ground. Though Callie’s heart pounded from exertion and her breath burned in her throat, her fingers and toes were numb from the cold. Even with the parka, the thought of huddling under some rock did not appeal to her. If they kept walking, at least they’d stay warm.

  “But the slope’s getting steeper,” Pierce said. “We need to see where we’re going or we’ll fall.”

  She acquiesced without further protest.

  They found a hollow under a fallen slab that was roomy enough for them and the pack. Animals had nested here in the past. One corner was lined with a mattress of dried plants—thick stems with fuzzy leaves, wide-bladed grasses, and an occasional dried flower. The insulation extended along the back of the space, some of it stuffed into the chinks where the slab rested on support rocks.

  Pierce left, and Callie stripped off the stiff, rubbery breastplate of her armor, then redonned the parka, shivering from ju
st that brief exposure. She stood the neoprenelike plate in the opening to block the wind, braced it with her helmet, then dug out the med kit, muttering heartfelt blessings on her companion when she found it. She gulped down two red pain pills as he returned with a pan of snow. While he set up the stove, she went to relieve herself.

  When she returned he had the field lamp lit, the water boiling, and was dumping chocolate pudding mix into their aluminum cups. As she maneuvered into the back of the chamber, he set up the pack frame and his own breastplate in the doorway alongside hers. Already the hollow was much warmer than the outside air.

  He’d unrolled the single sleeping bag he’d been able to salvage from the campsite and one of the light plastic sheets that were the Arena’s version of space blankets, reserving the latter for himself and leaving the bag for Callie. She considered arguing with him about it, but only briefly. She’d probably be colder than he, anyway, and the plastic sheet was plenty warm.

  As she settled in her corner, Pierce poured hot water into the cup and handed it to her with a spoon, then served himself. She would have prepared tea, but the chocolate was better—hot, thick, and fragrant. They ate without speaking and when they finished he made the tea, too, pouring it into the used cups. As she sipped the calming brew he removed the pot from the stove, turned the dial to its lowest setting, and laid the device on its side. Its red coil pointed toward them, radiating heat directly into their faces. It felt wonderful, but Callie disliked the glowing head’s proximity to the dried grass. As she drew breath to mention it, he pushed the grass aside.

  Now, with nothing left to do, he sat staring at the coil. The pain pills had done their job. Callie’s headache had eased to an ignorable background throb. She’d been eyeing a gash on Pierce’s forehead ever since they’d stopped, and now she said, “That cut on your face is still bleeding. You want me to look at it?”

  He touched the trickling blood, frowning as if he hadn’t noticed it. “I’ll do it.”

  “It might need stitches. At least a butterfly bandage.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  He dug through the pack and pulled out a coil of turquoise rope, then the med kit and a sock. As he set up a pan lid for a mirror and dipped the sock in some of the warm water, Callie said, “That’s a climbing rope.”

  “Yeah.” He surveyed his face in the lid, tilted his head to see the cut, and daubed at the blood.

  “So we’re not going back down to the valley?”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “What if I did?”

  He stopped what he was doing and studied his reflection. “Then I guess we’d have to go down.” Annoyance colored his voice. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “You think there’s a way over this mountain?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hugged her knees, frowning. “What does the map say?”

  “You tell me. You drew it.”

  “I don’t remember. We were planning to go down the valley.”

  “Well, unfortunately, memory’s all we’ve got.” He set the sock aside and grabbed a tube of antibiotic.

  She gaped at him. “You don’t have the map?”

  “They ransacked the camp, remember? And it wasn’t like I had a lot of time.”

  “You don’t have a map and you’re planning to. . . ?”

  He put the tube down and finally looked at her. “You want to go back?” Anger, frustration, and a vein of despair warred in his expression. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing now, too?”

  “No! I mean, yes. I mean—I thought you did. But now—everything’s changed.”

  “You’re darned right everything’s changed.” Savagely he tore open one of the butterfly bandages and turned back to his reflection in the pan lid. “I don’t think it could be much more changed. Or much worse.”

  He taped the cut with two butterflies, then sat looking into the pan lid. After a time he sighed. “So what do you want to do?”

  “Go back. Find some of the others. They didn’t all go with Morgan.”

  “Is that objectivity or fear speaking?”

  “We don’t have the map, Pierce. We don’t know if we can get over this mountain.”

  “I think we can. In fact, I think this might be the way we were supposed to come all along. The map wouldn’t have helped anyway. There wasn’t much about the mountains. Besides the Trogs won’t be bothering us up—”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Well, there’s a lot less of them up here than down there.” He packed up the med kit.

  “But what if there are others who got away? Whit or Teish.”

  He did not answer at first, but when he did, the angry edge had left his voice. “How would we know which way they went? I’d never be able to track them over all this rock. Besides we’re supposed to go to the Cauldron, and they know where it is as well as we do.”

  “What if they’ve been captured?”

  He stared at the kit in his hands for a long time before he spoke. “Then they’ll be brought to the Cauldron, and we can rescue them there.”

  “The Cauldron? You think the Trogs are—”

  “The Tohvani don’t want us to reach that slit. Of course it will be guarded.” He slid the med kit into the pack. “In the morning I’ll go up with the binoculars and see if I can see anyone, any sign. Then we can—”

  A deep thumping reverberated through the ground, cutting him off. They both went rigid, listening to the wind’s thin whine.

  Slowly Pierce reached for his SLuB while Callie turned off the field lamp, leaving only the red glow of the stove’s coil. The thumping came again, rapid, rhythmic, as of running steps. With their daylight-sensitive eyes, if the mutants were going to do any tracking, now would be the time for it.

  A chill skipped up Callie’s spine, as if she had brushed up against something cold and evil. Again she felt that sense of malevolence, stalking her. She glanced at Pierce. “Can you. . . ?” she whispered. “Are they. . . ?”

  He nodded and turned off the stove. The red light faded to darkness. The coil ticked erratically. Outside, the wind keened, and down the mountain the thumping sounded again, definitely coming closer.

  CHAPTER

  20

  They sat very still, listening. A fine sweat broke out on Callie’s brow. The SLuB thrummed against her palm. She reached down to check her belt, then recalled she had taken it off. An eruption of snorts and thundering footfalls made them both flinch, and the sounds halted right outside their hideaway.

  “Mountain goats,” Pierce whispered.

  As the musky smell enveloped them she knew he was right. Goats were the only mountain creatures big enough to make those kinds of noises. But they sounded spooked, and she gripped her weapon tightly, knowing her first shot would have to be a good one if the Trogs found their hiding spot.

  Gradually, though, the sense of malevolent presence faded. Outside, the goats grunted and rustled as if bedding down. Finally, Pierce put his SLuB aside and pulled the plastic blanket around him. “They’re gone,” he said. “The goats must have obliterated our scent trail.”

  “So we should be thankful for this stench?”

  A smile twitched his lips as he settled. “I’d bathe in it if I thought it would keep the Trogs away.”

  Morning dawned cold and foggy. Though Callie’s headache had abated, the back of her skull was tender, and she was stiff and sore and bruised in a hundred places. They breakfasted on hot tea and cold biscuits, peering out of their hollow at the seven white goats that had saved them last night. There were five adults and two kids, their coats long and silken, the adults sporting short pearlescent horns. Against the foggy background, they seemed as insubstantial as wraiths and flew up the slopes in alarm when Callie and Pierce stepped out among them.

  With visibility cut to thirty feet, Pierce scrapped his plan to use the binoculars, but he went down the slope a bit to look around and returned with confirmation that Trogs had ind
eed been in the area last night. After his news, Callie was not so eager to go back to the valley, especially when they couldn’t see anything.

  They followed a game trail over the ridge and along the trickling runoff of yet another alpine lake. An oblong of reflective pewter, the lake was bounded by steep granite walls on one side and a forty-five-degree slope of crusted snow on the other. Pierce tackled the snowy slope without hesitation, following a path cut by the goats, which were now traveling ahead of them just at the edge of sight. The path wound some fifty feet above the lake, and Callie could not help observing that a fall would take her right into the icy water, where the shock of cold would drive the breath from her lungs and paralyze her limbs. Her legs trembled, and she blanked the image before fear unhinged her. One step at a time, she told herself. One solid step at a time.

  Carefully she kicked into the snow, testing each purchase before she committed to it. Pierce was sitting at the field’s edge when she caught up, and though she was ready to rest, he sprang up as soon as she joined him and started off again. Sighing, she followed.

  A basin curved behind the lake, ringed by ragged peaks on all but one side. At the gap, a crescent of snow arced beneath a low cliff, which the goats were already climbing. Some had stopped to watch, as if waiting for the humans to catch up. By the time Callie and Pierce reached the cliff base, the mists had closed to a ten-foot pocket of visibility that Callie welcomed heartily. If she had to climb, she’d rather not see what lay below her.

  A sharp crack from behind brought them both around.

  “Was that rocks hitting together?” Pierce murmured.

  “I heard a thumping,” she said, glancing at him. “More goats, maybe?”

  “Could be.”

  But as they continued, she realized if the Trogs were going to track anyone into the heights by day, these foggy conditions were ideal.