by Alex Archer
"Are you okay? Can you walk?"
There was no response.
He knew he hadn't imagined it. That meant the man was either too injured to respond or simply couldn't understand him.
Curran had no choice; he was going to have to go over to the injured man and take a look. He considered climbing astride the horse, but decided the effort required to get up and then back down again was probably too much for him. Instead, he got the horse moving slowly in the direction he wanted it, using the animal as a makeshift crutch for support as he hopped along on his good leg. When Curran was close enough, he pulled the horse to a stop and dropped down in the snow next to the wounded man.
He rolled the body over and discovered that it was the man who had saved him earlier, Tamarak.
The feathered shafts of two black arrows jutted from deep in the man's stomach and a sword blade had taken a bite out of the left side of his head. Given the barbed tips, Curran had no way of removing them. He'd been able to remove his own only because the arrowhead had come all the way through his flesh. These were embedded deep in the muscle. Pulling them out was likely to cause more damage than leaving them in. The best he could do was to make Tamarak as comfortable as possible and to stay with him until the end.
An end that could come faster than either of them wanted if they didn't find some shelter and protection from the cold.
He dragged the other man closer to the horse, where, to his surprise, the animal got down on its knees, allowing Curran to haul both himself and Tamarak's unconscious form onto the horse's back.
The beast climbed to its feet, and for the first time since the Naiman war party had been sighted, Curran felt optimistic about his chances for survival.
As if in answer, the wind swirled around him and the falling snow began to thicken. The storm was here to stay, apparently.
Curran took a moment to get his bearings and then turned the beast about to face the direction in which they had been fleeing. There were caves back in the pass itself and it was Curran's intention to hole up inside one for shelter from the storm.
He'd worry about how to get back to Karakorum in the morning.
First, they had to survive the night.
* * *
S EVERAL HOURS LATER Curran sat in a cave that was deep enough to filter out the winds howling outside. There had been a few sticks lying just inside the entrance. He combined them with some of the extra clothing from his pack, and made a small fire to keep them warm. It was still cold, though not as bad as it would have been had they been trapped outside. It would serve to keep them from freezing to death.
At least until the fuel ran out, he thought, and then just as quickly pushed the image away. The Lord will provide, he told himself. The Lord will provide.
At least we won't starve to death, Curran thought, with a glance at the corpse of his horse where it lay just within the entrance tunnel. The poor beast had collapsed after carrying so much weight through the freezing cold weather without rest. Curran hadn't yet managed to get up the nerve to start carving up the carcass. He didn't mind eating horseflesh. He'd been forced to do so during other missionary journeys he'd been on and it hadn't been all that bad. It was just that this particular horse had been instrumental in saving his life and it felt disrespectful to treat its remains in such a fashion.
Still, when the time came, Curran had little doubt that his reticence would quickly vanish. Starving to death wasn't on his list of endings to this saga.
The dead horse was proof of what they had endured to reach this point. The trail had been difficult to find without the Mongols to guide him. The ever-increasing fury of the storm had cut their already-slow pace to a crawl, as did the times that Curran lost his grip and toppled off his patient mount. Thankfully, the horse had traveled this way before, and when he finally stopped trying to control it and just gave it its head, it took him where he wanted to go.
With the help of the firelight, Curran had cleaned Tamarak's head wound and had broken off the jutting ends of the arrows to keep the wounded man from accidentally driving them deeper into his body.
After that, there wasn't anything to do but wait.
The snow had continued to fall and the entrance to the cave was half-covered from the heavy accumulation. Curran didn't mind, as it served to keep the heat from the fire trapped in the cave, warming him and his unconscious companion, while still allowing the smoke to escape.
Unable to sleep, Curran took out his worn leather journal and began to write, recording the events of the past several days in as much detail as possible to ensure that there was some record of what had happened to him should he not make it back to Karakorum. He'd been doing the same thing since his mission had started many months before, and what had once been an annoying chore had turned into a soothing balm for his spirit.
At the very least, it gave him something to think about other than the pain in his injured leg, he thought ruefully.
It wasn't long before Tamarak, delirious with fever and pain, began raving aloud. At first Curran ignored it, knowing there was little he could do for the man, but then something Tamarak said caught his attention and he listened more carefully.
What he heard amazed him.
If it was true, he was being given the secret of the ages!
I really need a miracle now, Lord, he prayed, as he turned to a clean page of his journal and began writing frantically, trying to get it all down just in case the good Father decided to deliver on his request.
2
Mexico
Annja Creed was knee-deep in sacrificial victims when the shooting started.
At first, there was only a single gunshot, which was easy enough for her to ignore. After all, the sound of isolated gunfire was relatively common at a dig site this deep in the jungle. Someone fired off a weapon at least once a week. The reasons for doing so varied, but they usually had something to do with the local wildlife. Just last week, Martinez had found a twelve-foot python in his bed and had fired off four shots before he managed to hit the thing. A few days before that, the cook—a guy by the name of Evans—had used his shotgun to drive off the howler monkeys he'd caught raiding the food larder. The monkeys still managed to get away with the chocolate bars he'd been hording.
But when the first couple of shots were followed by an entire volley of gunfire from several different weapons, Annja knew something was seriously wrong.
For the past three weeks, Annja and the rest of the dig team working on behalf of the Bureau of Cultural Studies had been carefully excavating the ruins discovered at Teluamachee, about a hundred and fifty miles outside of Mexico City. A recent earthquake had cut a swath through the jungle, knocking down trees and natural earth formations with equal abandon, exposing a set of long forgotten ruins hidden in a narrow valley deep in the jungle. A scout for a local logging company had discovered the site and, thankfully, had enough respect and admiration of his heritage to report the location to the bureau rather than selling that information on the black market. The bureau wasted no time in assembling a team of experts—including Annja—asking them to come down and take a look at what they had found.
Annja had been in between assignments when the call had come in and she'd wasted no time in agreeing to join the team.
The main dig site consisted of a large three-story temple complex in the standard step pyramid formation, with several smaller buildings lining the east and west sides of the courtyard extending south from the base of the pyramid itself.
A few hundred yards to the west of the main structures was the site's cenote, a deep, water-filled sinkhole that the Mayans considered a link to the rain gods, or Chaacs. Sacrificial victims and precious objects had been tossed into the sacred well as offerings during the site's heyday as a way of protecting the populace and bringing good fortune. To the dig team's delight, the earthquake that had uncovered the primary dig site had also drained the cenote, exposing its secrets to the light of the sun for the first time in centuries.
It was important work, which was one of the reasons Annja had volunteered to do it, despite the ankle-deep puddles and stinking muck that covered the bottom of the cenote. From where she stood she could see the skeletal remains of at least five different individuals and more than a handful of ceremonial objects, such as knives, bowls and statuettes. The items they recovered from the cenote would probably tell them more about daily life at the site than the ruins themselves. It was like a window into the past, one she looked forward to peering through.
But right now she needed to forget about the past and focus on the present.
She looked up toward the rim of the cenote, expecting to see Arturo, her partner for the afternoon, peering over the edge and frantically signaling for her to come up, but there was no sign of him.
Had he run off? Gone for help? She didn't know. Thankfully, the rope she'd used to climb down into the hole was still where they had left it, hanging against the interior wall of the cenote. It was tied off at the top around a nearby tree trunk and so Arturo's help wasn't required for her to get back to the surface. It would have been helpful, but not necessary.
She slogged over to the far wall, being careful not to step on any of the remains scattered about her feet, and took hold of the rope. Planting one foot against the interior wall of the cenote, she began to pull herself up hand over hand, walking her feet upward as she went.
She hadn't gone more than a few steps up the wall when a shadow blotted out the light from the setting sun above. Startled, Annja looked up. She was just in time to see Arturo hurtling down toward her, his arms and legs flailing wildly, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Annja let go of the rope, dropped the few feet to the bottom of the cenote, and flattened herself against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible.
Arturo's body missed her by mere inches and then hit the bottom with a loud, mud-filled splash. His sightless eyes stared back at her, accusing. So, too, did the bullet hole in the center of his forehead that was leaking a thin stream of blood into the muddy water where he lay.
She could hear voices above, shouting in Spanish. She couldn't make out everything that was said, but the word cenote came through loud and clear a few times and she knew they were headed her way, either to see if Arturo had been alone or to be certain he was dead.
If they looked in and caught her here…
Annja didn't need to finish the thought to know she was in deep trouble. She had only seconds to find a place to hide. Any moment now someone was going to stick their head over the edge and see her.
Her chances of surviving for even a few minutes after that were slim to none.
Without hesitation she took a deep breath and threw herself down into the water at her feet, burrowing into the mud and muck beneath and throwing it over her body, trying to cover herself up as much as possible. There wasn't anywhere else she could hide. The dark fatigue pants and top she was wearing would help, she knew, as would the deep shadows accumulating with the close of day near the walls of the cenote itself. If she could just stay out of sight for a few moments, she might be all right.
For the time being, at least.
She kept one ear turned to the side, listening, and just as she suspected, she heard two voices talking together somewhere above her. An argument ensued for a moment, the voices rising and falling rapidly, and then they fell silent.
Annja didn't move from her place of concealment. She was unable to tell if they had left or not and didn't want to take the chance of being caught unexpectedly in the open.
Her caution saved her life.
Bullets suddenly thumped into Arturo's unmoving form and it took all she had for Annja not to flinch as the gunshots echoed around the enclosed confines of the cenote. The rope she'd intended to use to reach the surface was thrown down a few moments later. Laughter drifted down from above and then moved off until she couldn't hear it anymore.
Annja pulled herself out of the muck and took a deep breath, not only to fill her lungs with air but to keep her startled wits about her, as well. It wouldn't do anyone any good if she lost it now. There were too many people in the camp above who'd need her protection.
And that was precisely what she intended to do.
She reached out and placed her finger tips on Arturo's throat, checking for a pulse, wanting to be sure. She would have been highly surprised if he'd survived the fall, never mind the gunshot wound to the head, but stranger things had happened and she didn't want to leave without being certain.
In the end, it turned out to be wasted effort.
Arturo was dead.
Gently, she brushed the side of her palm down over his eyes, closing them, and then stood. A glance upward told her she was alone and she suspected it would remain that way. By now the handful of people working the dig site had either been rounded up or slaughtered as Arturo had. There was no reason for the assailants, whoever they were, to examine the cenote a second time unless they wanted to dredge the bottom for themselves.
She figured that wasn't too bloody likely, given the pile of artifacts that the team had already unearthed that were just sitting around in the research tent above.
Annja wasn't about to let the lack of a rope hinder her, either. Her colleagues were up above, friends who were clearly in trouble, and she'd go through hell and high water to get to them.
The walls of the cenote were formed from limestone and, thanks to the constant erosion of the water that had filled the hole, were pockmarked throughout, providing all sorts of hand- and footholds for those who knew how to use them.
Having done her fair share of rock climbing, Annja was one of those people.
She grabbed a hold and started climbing. She'd learned that those unfamiliar with the sport often tried to pull themselves upward using the strength of their arms alone. That causes lactic acid to quickly build up in their muscles, cramping them, and tiring the climber faster than necessary. Annja knew what was necessary. With more than a hundred feet of climbing to go, she had to be sure to conserve her energy, which meant using her hands primarily for balance and doing the majority of the work with her legs. She was careful where she put her hands and feet, knowing that the pockets of eroded rock might still be damp or even full of water. Without a rope, one slip could be fatal.
Slowly, carefully, she worked her way to the top.
Once there, she cautiously peeked over the lip of the cenote and then, not seeing anyone nearby, pulled herself up and onto solid ground.
As silent as a stalking cat, she rolled smoothly to her feet and slipped into the thick foliage of the nearby jungle. The sun had set during her assent of the sinkhole, something for which Annja was thankful. The darkness would provide additional cover for her as she moved through the dense undergrowth in the direction of the dig's main encampment.
3
She smelled him first. The thick odor of cheap cologne, unwashed human body and hand-rolled cigarettes clashed with the humid scent of the jungle around her and gave him away about half a moment before she blundered directly into him. Annja froze in place, waiting for her peripheral vision to pick him out in the gathering darkness.
He stood a few feet up the trail, his back to her. The rifle he carried was slung over his shoulder while his hands were busy in front of his body. The sound of liquid splashing in a thick stream against the broad leaves of the bushes in front of him reached her ears a second later and clued her in to what he was doing.
Taking a deep breath, she put her right hand into the otherwhere and drew her sword. Incredibly strong and unsurprisingly deadly, the a
ncient broadsword had once belonged to Joan of Arc, but when Annja had reunited the last of its pieces, it had become mysteriously bound to her in some kind of mystical fashion. She could summon it at will and release it back into the otherwhere when it was no longer needed. Reversing it in her grip so that the blade hung downward, she approached on silent feet. A quick snap of her wrist, the solid thunk of the pommel of her sword striking the back of the soldier's head, and then he was tumbling to the ground, his hands still on the zipper he'd been pulling shut when she'd struck.
Annja rolled him over, made sure he was unconscious and then took a good look.
The briefing they had received before arriving at the dig site had mentioned that members of a revolutionary group had been seen moving through the region, but Annja hadn't paid much attention to the warnings. In Mexico and most of Central America, insurgency was a way of life, and if they fell into a tizzy every single time a group was spotted by local villagers, nothing would ever get done.