Wolves.
They did not exist back home, but she had seen pictures. Tall and winter lean, the creatures growled, lips rippling, saliva gleaming on fangs.
The pair charged. Agarik raised his rifle and shot one, the boom thunderous as it echoed in the hallway. The ball struck the lead wolf in the shoulder, and it yipped in pain, but it kept running. Agarik fired his pistol, striking the second canine in the eye. This one faltered and flopped over, but the other kept racing toward them.
Tikaya backed outside and Agarik, needing time to reload, almost fell out beside her.
“Stay back,” he barked.
She ignored him and lunged forward to slam the door shut. A heartbeat later, the wolf crashed against the wood. It shuddered but held.
Agarik already had his ammo pouches open. With admirable calm, he poured powder down the muzzle of the rifle, rammed a cloth-wrapped ball home, and slipped a percussion cap on the nipple. The wolf slammed against the door two more times, then claws scrabbled at wood. Tikaya gripped the knife and wished she had a bow. On a whim, she yanked the hammer out of the skull.
The clawing at the door stopped.
“I bet it’s going around,” she said.
“Stay back,” Agarik repeated. “Stand against the wall.”
Rifle loaded, he stepped away from the building, ready to fire either direction. Tikaya put her back into the corner between the door and the pile of shoveled snow.
Even expecting the wolf, she was startled by how soon it ripped around a corner. Agarik did not flinch as it hurtled toward him. He lined up the shot and fired.
The ball struck the wolf in the chest, and it missed a step, but amazingly it did not stop. A craziness lit its yellow eyes as the beast launched itself at Agarik.
He had not had time to reload the pistol, so he could only swing the rifle like a club. The wolf twisted in the air, and Agarik merely clipped it. The beast’s fangs snapped inches from his neck. The snow hindered him, and he stumbled back against the wall.
Tikaya slashed at the wolf when it landed nearby, but it sprang again too quickly, and her blade sliced air. Agarik hammered it with the butt of the rifle, but the creature seemed not to feel pain. It readied itself to spring again.
Tikaya lifted the hammer, thinking she might get lucky if she threw it, but a new thought halted her. She turned her back to the fray and scrambled up the snow pile.
“Good idea,” Agarik called. “Stay up there until...” He grunted as he swung at the wolf again. “Until I finish this.”
Retreating was not Tikaya’s idea. She crawled through the snow near the edge of the roof until she could peer down upon the skirmish. The eaves sheltered Agarik, but the wolf, needing room to run and leap, kept moving in and out of the overhang’s shadow.
“Stay against the wall, and suck in your belly,” Tikaya called.
She leaned over and grabbed an icicle as thick as her upper arm. Even with the hammer it took several cracks to free it from the edge. The wolf leaped. She timed it, then released the ice spear.
Tikaya did not expect to hit the creature on the first try, but her aim proved true. The icicle bludgeoned the top of its gray-furred head.
Agarik sidestepped, and the wolf smashed against the wall and fell, unconscious. “Throw me the knife.”
She dropped it into the snow before climbing off the roof. Apparently taking no chances, Agarik sliced the beast’s throat.
“Ma’am?” He fished in his pouches to reload his weapons.
“Yes?”
“Marines are very fit. We do not have bellies.”
“My apologies.”
“Thank you for your help.” He lifted his fur cap and swiped away sweat as he looked back and forth from the roof to the wolf to her. “I wasn’t expecting you to, ah, to be able to...”
“You’re welcome.” Tikaya felt insulted that he was so shocked she had done something useful. She supposed she should appreciate his protectiveness, but she found herself missing Rias and the way he had assumed her competent enough to help. She snorted. Actually, he had assumed her a little too competent, but they had both survived, so she could not fault his decisions. “Are wolves always that difficult to kill?” was all she said.
“No.”
“I suspected not.”
“Let’s see what they were after.” Agarik led the way inside.
This time, no creatures attacked when they opened the door. The second wolf lay dead where Agarik had shot it. The drab green paint covering the wood walls and the gray tiles lining the floor could not camouflage the dark blood spatters staining the hallway.
They passed doors, some closed, some open to utilitarian offices. Each contained identical military-issue desks, chairs, and bookcases. Some offices appeared untouched, as if the men had simply stepped away to make a cup of tea. In others, toppled chairs and scattered papers suggested struggles had taken place.
Agarik stepped into a messy room to investigate, and Tikaya chose a tidy one across the hall. She peeked in cabinets and drawers, not sure what she sought. The cause of this madness, but what would that look like?
She paused before returning to the hallway. She tugged her glove off and ran a finger along a bookcase by the door.
“No dust,” she murmured.
That and the mostly cleared walkways outside implied things had been normal within the last week or two.
Tikaya returned to the hallway, passed an office where Agarik poked and clanked, and stopped before a closed door. Wood shavings dusting the floor drew her eye. Above them, claw marks ravaged the door and jamb.
Dread settled in the pit of Tikaya’s stomach. “Agarik? I think we want to check this one.”
Maybe it was cowardly, but she stepped aside when he walked out, gesturing for him to turn the knob. He took in the claw marks with a grim set to his jaw, then handed her the rifle.
“Uhm?” she asked, startled.
“Just in case,” Agarik said. “It’s loaded. Just point and pull the trigger if you have to.”
“I’ve never shot a—”
“If you can make a bull’s-eye with a bow and an icicle, you can shoot a firearm.” He withdrew his pistol, turned the knob, and pushed. The door bumped against something and only opened a couple inches. Pistol leading, he leaned against the door, shoving to open it further. Furniture inside scraped, and something tipped over with a crack. He peered inside. “Cursed ancestors.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Too gruesome for a woman. Wait here.”
He disappeared into the dim room, and she waffled, torn between wanting to know what was inside and not wanting to see it. Considering they had tramped past human skeletons and a frozen dead man together, she did not want to know what qualified as too gruesome.
A few bumps drew her curiosity, and she decided to force aside her squeamishness and go in. Before she could, Agarik opened the door again.
“Sorry, ma’am, but I need you to look at something.”
“It’s fine.”
Agarik lifted a hand first. “I want you to know... I know it won’t help anything and won’t make up for...” His gaze slipped off her eyes and settled on the wall past her shoulder. “I’m sorry I was the one to find you and let them know where to get you.” The words came out in a blurted jumble, as if he had been trying to work up the gumption to voice them for some time. “This isn’t your battle. It never was, and I hope...I hope you’re able to live through it and get home. Somehow.”
“Thank you, but don’t feel guilty on my behalf, please.” Tikaya rested the rifle butt on the floor and touched his arm. “If it hadn’t been you, I’m sure it would have been someone else. I knew when I helped my people decrypt those messages that there might be consequences someday. Nothing remotely like this entered my thoughts, but...” She steeled herself. “Show me your something.”
Agarik led her into an office with a broken barricade of chairs, bookcases, cabinets, and a desk cramping the area near the door. At first, she did not see the bodies, bu
t they were there, in the middle, around an odd black object, that appeared half box, half table with an utterly foreign set of symbols glowing red in the air above it. A pipe rose from one side, and six slender legs attached the construct to the floor. The dead were strewn about it. Blood stained everything, even the ceiling. For the first time since they arrived, she was thankful for the freezing temperatures. In her climate, the decomposition, the smell, would have been overpowering.
Following Agarik, Tikaya shuffled through the clutter. He obviously wanted her to examine the box, but she could not get there without stepping over bodies. Cuts and punctures desecrated them, far more than would have been needed to kill. A dagger protruded from one man’s burst eyeball. The whole macabre scene seemed too messy for the neat and efficient marines.
“I didn’t touch it,” Agarik said as she came even with the object. “I don’t have any idea what it is.”
Symbols formed neat rows on one side of the black box, and giddiness replaced the nausea in her stomach. They were familiar in style, probably from the same language as the glyphs on the rubbings, but arranged individually instead of in groupings. Each symbol marked an indention. In the center of the box top, a red light smaller than her pinkie nail glowed, projecting a set of symbols above.
Tikaya eased around for a better look, but her boot bumped a wood stick. Not a stick, the shaft of a shovel. It and a pickaxe lay on the floor near smashed tiles. The subfloor was torn up, with exposed dirt beneath. With a jolt, she realized the contraption’s ‘legs’ stuck through the floor and into the earth.
“How the...”
“Looks like these men were trying to dig it out,” Agarik said. “Probably wanted to get rid of it.”
“Yes, but how would its legs have plunged through the floor and anchored down there to start with?”
His parka rustled as he removed his cap and rubbed a hand through his short hair. “I don’t know. Magic?”
Tikaya turned her attention to the symbols again. She poked one, indenting it; it glowed red and a larger version appeared in the air with a ball spinning around it. The originally displayed image disappeared in favor of the new one. “Er.” She had best be careful; this had probably all started with some idiot pressing buttons.
She glanced at Agarik, afraid he would chastise her for touching things, but he nodded encouragingly. Dear Akahe, he thought she could figure it out and fix things.
Underneath the box, she found a couple groupings of the more traditional symbols engraved in the cool black surface. She recognized a few from the rubbings. So, this might be writing. Directions? For operating the device?
In the air above, the symbol she had pressed faded and the original diagram returned. She poked the button again, then stabbed a couple others. They all appeared in the air. Something reminiscent of an equals sign formed between two while others dangled individually. Waiting. When she did not touch anything for a moment, the symbols faded, replaced again by the original.
“Numbers?” Tikaya wondered, though some two hundred symbols were there. She knew of one ancient language that had used a base forty math system instead of the nearly ubiquitous base ten most of the modern world preferred, but nobody had two hundred different numbers. “Numbers and mathematical symbols?”
“Eh?” Agarik asked.
“If that’s what these are, then maybe operating the device involves punching in different combinations to create... I don’t know. Equations for something?” Tikaya rubbed her jaw. “But how would that relate to whatever this device is doing to negatively affect the town? I don’t know. Maybe I’m all wrong here. What do you think?”
“Uhm.” Agarik’s eyes were so blank he appeared hypnotized.
“Agarik, I don’t mean to insult you, but can you see if Rias is here yet and bring him?”
Relief flashed across his face, but he hesitated. “I shouldn’t leave you alone.”
“I’ve got your rifle. I’ll be fine.”
“My orders are—”
“I know, Agarik, but I need to stay here, and figure this out, and if it’s math-related, Rias could help. Please find him.”
After another long hesitation, he sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Though she had told him to go, she felt uneasy once she was alone. At least her irritability had disappeared. Agarik’s had, too, she realized. Despite his lack of understanding, he had been calm and patient while she mulled over the strange artifact. Maybe the device was the thing responsible for people acting oddly, and maybe, in her random symbol touching, she had cut off whatever it was doing or emitting. She snorted self-deprecatingly. If it had been that simple the dead men on the floor would have figured it out before the end. Besides, thinking back, she had felt that return to normalcy before she started touching things, perhaps even out in the hallway.
She stretched and walked to the window, intending to open it and let some air in. Maybe she should have asked Agarik to drag the bodies out before leaving. Someone had nailed a couple boards across the window. So much for fresh air. Maybe she could still open it a bit.
A scream echoed from the building next door. Tikaya froze, her hand on the window lock. She drew back. Maybe she would leave it shut after all.
She dug a chalkboard out from behind a toppled filing cabinet. It was hard not to look at the bodies, but she could not remove the device to study elsewhere. The men had apparently tried to do that and failed.
Tikaya copied the writing from the bottom of the device and circled spots where the lone symbols on the side of the box appeared in the groupings. If they were numbers... No, she better not assume that yet. Just because something reminded her of an equals sign in her language did not mean anything.
Time bled past, the chalk clacking on the board the only sound in the building. Infrequently, gunshots in the distance interrupted. She found herself squinting at the chalkboard and realized twilight had come. The glowing symbols gave off some light, and she worried it would be visible through the windows.
A crunch sounded in the snow outside. She halted her work, chalk poised in the air. More crunches. Footsteps on her side of the building.
Tikaya eased past the bodies and grabbed Agarik’s rifle. She wished he had left powder and balls too. One shot was all she had if someone attacked her, one shot with a weapon she had never used before.
She cracked the door. Deep shadows lurked in the hall, and she barely made out the dead wolf. At one end, the door thumped and banged in the breeze.
Shots fired beyond that door, and she jumped. “Stop—what—” someone cried. Then screams of pain and aggressive yells followed. A lot of them. Her mind conjured the imagine of a wolf pack chasing after its wounded prey. Not Agarik, she prayed.
“Where’s the woman?” someone yelled.
Tikaya swallowed and closed the door. The voices still penetrated the walls.
“Find the woman!”
Someone cackled, and graphic descriptions of what could be done with ‘the woman’ followed.
Tikaya forced herself to return to the device. The same set of symbols glowed crimson in the air, taunting her.
There was an answer here; she just had to figure it out before time ran out.
9
A boom rattled windows, shook the earth, and knocked Tikaya’s chalkboard on the floor. Rias’s group must have arrived, though she could not imagine him flinging blasting sticks wantonly.
Chalk still in hand, she ran to the window to peer between the sloppily nailed boards and through the frosted panes. Darkness had fallen, but flames burned in a building down the hill. Two figures with rifles ran through the light before turning down an alley.
She shivered, wishing for warmth in the office. The already frigid temperature had dropped noticeably after the sun had set.
Footsteps sounded at the end of the hallway.
Tikaya lunged for the rifle, but caught her heel on the downed chalkboard and skidded to her backside with a noisy thud. Great. If they hadn’t known where she w
as before, they knew now.
She scrambled to her feet and grabbed the rifle. She hopped over the bodies and slid into the shadows thickening the corner across from the door.
Finger on the trigger, butt pressed into her shoulder, cheek against the stock, Tikaya waited. In the stillness, she could feel her heart pounding in her ears. The footsteps thudded closer, the steady pace of someone jogging.
The door bumped against the furniture barricade, eliciting a surprised grunt that sounded familiar.
“Rias?” Tikaya hazarded before she could think better. What if he was as crazy as everyone else out there seemed to be?
“Tikaya!”
Rias burst into the room, bringing lantern light with him. He did not seem to notice the artifact or bodies; he searched until he spotted her in the corner, started forward, but stopped, gaze dropping to her weapon. He was missing his cap, his hair stuck up in places, and blood trickled from a gash on his temple. A cutlass was strapped across his back, two bulges in his parka suggested pistols, and he carried a rifle as well as the lantern.
“Are you...you?” Tikaya asked.
“I’m not murdering people and trying to kick the ore out of everyone’s cart if that’s what you’re asking. Just a little—” Rias cocked his head, almost like a dog listening. “Actually, it’s strange but I feel normal in here.”
Tikaya lowered her rifle. “Yes, I think the device creates some kind of normalcy field around it, probably so the operator isn’t affected by whatever it’s emitting that’s causing everyone to be on edge.”
“On edge, that’s an understatement.”
Rias closed the door and hopped over the upturned furniture. Tikaya joined him in the middle, intending to show him the device, but he dropped his rifle on a desk and wrapped her in a hug. Surprised, she found herself crushed against his chest. There was a desperate fierceness to the grip, but she managed to get one arm around to his back to return the embrace.
“I’m relieved you’re not hurt or...” Emotion thickened his voice.
Beginnings: Five Heroic Fantasy Adventure Novels Page 25