Hunt at World's End

by Gabriel Hunt

  The high priest advanced on Gabriel once more.

  A loud crack followed by a clatter of wooden boards drew both men’s attention. Joyce, apparently having decided they were hopelessly outnumbered, had kicked a hole in the latticed wooden wall at the back of the restaurant and she and Daniel were backing out through it, still blocking incoming blows with their shields. The shields were too large to fit through the hole, but they were perfect for covering it, and Joyce wedged them into place in front of the hole as they made their escape along the deck behind it.

  But the shields didn’t hold the swordsmen for long. One of them kicked them out of the way and plunged through the hole in pursuit while two others retrieved the bows and half-full quivers from their fallen comrades and let fly with new shots that carried over the lattice wall in deadly arcs.

  Gabriel and the high priest watched all this in the handful of instants it took and then looked back at each other. “It’s just you and me now,” Gabriel said. The high priest howled in rage and swung his staff at Gabriel’s head.

  Gabriel watched the point race toward him through the air. Timing his movement carefully—carefully!—he grabbed at the shaft as it neared, managing to get a grip just below the blade. He pivoted swiftly, drawing the high priest along with the staff. But the man was too savvy to be caught by the same trick twice. He let go of the staff before Gabriel could use it to drag him to the edge of the deck and over the railing. Gabriel had expected this. He punched backward with the butt end of the staff, knocking the man’s wind out of him with a firm blow to the belly. The high priest dropped to his knees gasping.

  It was tempting to finish him off. But some distance away Gabriel heard Joyce shouting as she continued fighting off the attackers. She needed help—that had to come first. Gabriel ran toward the hole in the lattice wall, crawled through, and then took stock of the scene before him. Some fifty feet away, Joyce and Daniel were huddled behind a couple of upended lounge chairs and the bowmen, who had somehow gotten to the other side of them, were letting fly with arrows. Gabriel lifted the high priest’s staff like a javelin and heaved it in the direction of the larger of the two bowmen. The man didn’t spot it sailing toward him until the instant before it buried itself in his chest. But as soon as he fell, one of the remaining swordsmen ran to take up his bow.

  At that moment, the aft stairwell door burst open, and three of the ship’s security guards ran out onto the deck, their guns drawn, shouting for everyone to freeze. The new bowman turned and reached for an arrow. The guards yelled at the cult members to drop their weapons. A pair of arrows shrieked through the air, piercing the torso of one guard and the neck of another. The third dropped to one knee and opened fire. Two white-robed men fell, and the others—few in number at last—pulled back. But one aimed and fired an arrow, and it found its mark. The third guard joined the first two in death.

  In the distance, Gabriel saw Joyce and Daniel duck down behind the lounge chairs again. Gabriel sprinted across the deck toward them, the Death’s Head Key bouncing heavily against his chest under his shirt. An arrow zipped past him, striking the wall behind the sundeck. He darted over, dodging with one arm up to protect his head, and dropped to the ground beside Joyce. He glanced over the top of the lounge chair. The high priest was on his feet again and striding toward the three remaining cult members, two of whom were loading their bows with fresh arrows. He had his staff in hand once more, its blade red with the blood of the man from whose chest he’d drawn it.

  “Something you need to know,” Gabriel said. “I’m out of bullets.”

  “I figured,” Joyce said, “from how little shooting you were doing.”

  The door leading to the stairwell was only forty feet behind them. Gabriel nodded toward it. “Think you can make it?” he whispered.

  “I think I can,” Joyce said. “I’m just not sure about Daniel.”

  “I’ll try,” Daniel said.

  They spun and ran for the door. Gabriel heard the twang of bowstrings, arrows cutting the air toward them. Gabriel pushed himself hard. They were almost there. Another bowstring twanged.

  “Gabriel, look out!” Daniel yelled. He rammed into Gabriel from behind, knocking him to one side. The arrow that had been headed squarely at Gabriel’s back stabbed into Daniel’s shoulder instead. His face instantly went pale. “I’m hit,” he said softly and fell to the deck.

  Joyce, almost at the door, skidded to a halt. She ran back.

  Gabriel looked around for some way to draw the cult members’ attention away from them. His gaze fell on the bodies of the security guards slumped by the wall. Their guns lay on the floor beside them. Gabriel ran for them. As he’d hoped, the bowmen turned to follow him, taking their aim off Joyce and Daniel. Arrows pursued him across the deck. One slashed his back, slicing his shirt and drawing a hot line of pain across his shoulder blades, but he kept moving. He dropped to the deck and slid across it like he was sliding into home plate. As he fetched up against the dead guards’ bodies, he grabbed one of their guns in each hand. Turning back, he squeezed the triggers repeatedly, blasting bullet after bullet at the cultists. White robes burst into red, skull masks cracked and shattered, bows dropped from their hands. When the smoke cleared, only the high priest was left standing—and he broke and made a run for it.

  Gabriel fired at him but the man was already too far and the shot went wide. Gabriel considered giving chase—but Daniel needed help. He ran over to Joyce instead.

  “Don’t worry about us,” she shouted. “Get that bastard!”

  At the far end of the deck, Gabriel saw the high priest spiraling down a metal staircase between decks. Gabriel grabbed the railing at the edge of the top deck and jumped over it, dropping twenty feet to the deck below. He landed on his feet, rolled off the impact, then sprang up and sprinted for the stairwell. The high priest was already on the next level down. Gabriel chased him down two more flights before the high priest burst through the door to the main deck. Gabriel followed a moment later, only to find the deck empty. He looked both ways, saw the door to the ballroom swinging shut, and ran for it. He grabbed it just before it closed and slipped inside.

  The enormous room was dark except for flickering pinpoints of light thrown along the walls by the mirrored ball rotating on the ceiling. The stage, the dance floor and the small tables surrounding it were all empty. Everyone must have been sent back to their rooms after word spread of the attack. He looked around, but there was no sign of the high priest. Gabriel stepped deeper into the ballroom, chilled equally by the strong air-conditioning and the utter silence. The high priest could be anywhere. He could be directly behind Gabriel, getting ready to launch an attack…

  Movement caught his eye, the flutter of a dark curtain draped over the wall. Gabriel ran toward it, threw back the curtain. No one was there, only an emergency exit. He hit the panic bar and shoved the door open. Beyond it was a long hallway that extended to either side. He ran down both directions to the end before finally admitting to himself that he’d lost the man. The high priest was probably off the ship by now.

  He returned to the stairwell and encountered Joyce helping Daniel down the stairs.

  “What happened?” Joyce asked.

  Gabriel shook his head. “He got away.” Daniel was still pale and had a gloss of sweat on his forehead, but the arrow was gone from his shoulder, replaced with a wide circle of blood on his shirt. “How’s he doing?”

  “I’m okay,” Daniel said, though his unsteady voice suggested otherwise. “The arrow didn’t go in very deep…Joyce was able to pull it out.”

  “Arrows like this hurt like hell coming out,” Gabriel said. “I know from experience.”

  “Yes, hell’s a fair approximation,” Daniel said, wincing, “of what it feels like to have a…a sharp piece of metal torn out of your flesh.”

  Gabriel took the bulk of Daniel’s weight off Joyce’s shoulder and helped him down the rest of the stairs and out into the hallway that led to their cabins. “It was a f
oolish thing to do, jumping in front of an arrow like that.”

  “Trust me, I have no intention of ever doing it again,” Daniel said.

  “But it probably did save my life,” Gabriel said. “I owe you one.”

  “How about you pay me back by declaring house arrest over?” Daniel said.

  Gabriel exchanged a glance with Joyce.

  “Done,” Gabriel said. “But let’s make one more stop in your cabin. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. I know a thing or two about treating arrow wounds.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Daniel shook his head. “I can’t believe I actually got shot with an arrow. By a millennia-old death cult!”

  “That’ll pack them in at your next lecture,” Joyce said.

  Daniel looked up at Gabriel. “Is it always like this for you?”

  “No,” he said. “Sometimes the death cults are only centuries-old.”

  They turned the corner and Gabriel froze as they saw the cabin doors. The door to Daniel’s cabin was shut tight, but the door to his and Joyce’s was slightly ajar, its edge chipped and bent near the lock. He handed Daniel back off to Joyce and whispered, “Stay here.”

  He pushed the door open slowly, switched on the light. The room had been tossed: the closet door was open, the drawers pulled out of the dresser, the sheets stripped from the bed. He saw Joyce’s backpack lying open on the floor. He picked it up and looked inside.

  “Damn it!”

  “What’s wrong?” Joyce asked, from the doorway.

  “They’re gone,” Gabriel said, waving the empty backpack at her. “The Star, the map, the Eye, all of it.” He’d been a fool. The attack had been a diversion. The cult’s true objectives had been sitting unguarded in his cabin all along.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Daniel said. “That’s not good at all.”

  Vassily watched as Arkady undid the ropes mooring their boat to the African Princess. The young man had done well, locating the interlopers’ room and then stealing the sacred relics. But the two of them were the only ones who remained out of an attack force of more than a dozen. And if Arkady had been with them on deck, he would surely be as dead as the others. The interlopers, this Gabriel Hunt and the other two (Who was that fat old man? Vassily wondered), had fought more bravely—and more effectively—than Vassily had anticipated. He’d expected to return not only with the Star and one of the Eyes of Teshub, but also with their heads for proud display and subsequent flensing and use in worship. That they were still alive vexed him. Ulikummis would not be happy with him for letting them live.

  Arkady started the engine, moving the ketch forward along the length of the cruise ship.

  “When we reach shore, you must contact the African sect, Arkady,” Vassily ordered. “Tell them we need more warriors.”

  “Yes, High Priest. How many will you require?”

  “All of them,” Vassily said.

  Chapter 22

  The jeep’s tires kicked up clouds of dust as it rattled and bumped over the uneven terrain of the desert. To make better time, Gabriel avoided the salt flats and the more verdant areas of the Kalahari, not wanting to be slowed down by traffic, safari tours or any of the native San villages. Massive, spiderlike baobab trees rose up every few hundred yards like sentinels amid the ocean of sand. The dry brush that poked out of the dunes scratched at the underside of the jeep as they raced over it while dust-colored meerkats poked their heads curiously out of their burrows to watch them pass. In the seat next to him, Joyce was buckled in, but only loosely so she could twist around to face Daniel in back. They were reviewing the only information they had left: the notes and coordinates he’d written down back in Veda’s house when they’d identified the location of the third Eye. As the jeep bounded over a low dune, the equipment in the back clattered.

  The flight from Madagascar to Botswana had been quick and, compared to the events on the African Princess, painless. They’d managed to duck into a cab at the pier and go straight to the airport, evading the local police who wanted to keep all the passengers for questioning about the cult’s attack. A few hours later, their plane had touched down at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gabarone. They’d rented the jeep at the airport counter after the clerk had assured them it could handle off-road driving in the desert, though nearly bouncing out of the driver’s seat each time they raced over a dune, Gabriel wasn’t so sure they hadn’t been sold a bill of goods. They’d also purchased a wide range of equipment from a local store that clearly catered mainly to hobbyists on holiday who liked to go digging in the desert. The salesman had been surprised to hear fluent Tswana coming from an American and, when Gabriel explained their bona fides, had shown them to the section of the store for professionals. Daniel and Joyce had picked out a haul that included shovels, a pickaxe, a pair of metal buckets, binoculars, lanterns, surveying tools, and more, while Gabriel had sought out a different aisle, the one where they sold bullets.

  In the backseat of the jeep, Daniel consulted a pocket compass. “It shouldn’t be much farther now,” he shouted over the rattle of the vehicle. “Keep going straight.”

  Gabriel swerved around a wide baobab tree, then righted their course. He called back to Daniel: “Just let me know when we’re—”

  “Now!” Daniel shouted.

  “Now?”

  “Yes!”

  Gabriel slammed on the brakes and swung the steering wheel hard around. A dust cloud surrounded the jeep for a moment, then settled. From his seat he saw only rolling dunes and small, brittle tufts of shrubbery. “Are you sure this is the place?” It looked utterly desolate, as empty and featureless as any of the landscape they’d been passing through for the better part of two hours.

  “According to the map,” Daniel replied, “yes. It should be about three meters ahead of us.”

  Gabriel opened the door and stepped out onto the sand. The afternoon sun beat down hard on his head and shoulders. Behind him, Daniel and Joyce got out of the jeep, shielded their eyes and looked around.

  “I admit it doesn’t look very promising,” Daniel said.

  “To be fair, the other sites didn’t look promising either,” Gabriel said.

  Her brow beading with sweat from the oppressive heat, Joyce took off the shirt she wore over her tanktop and tossed it in the jeep. She circled to the rear, opened the hatchback and pulled out an armful of shovels. “I suppose it would’ve been too much to ask for the gemstone to be out in the open, just this once,” she said. She put the shovels down and went back for the pickaxe and buckets.

  Daniel walked out across the flat expanse of sand, rubbing at the bandage on his injured shoulder. He read the compass every few feet and checked it against his notes. “Think of it,” he said. “I’ve studied the legend of the Three Eyes of Teshub for decades, as many others have. But unlike, say, El Dorado or Atlantis or any number of legends that aren’t true—”

  “Don’t be so sure about El Dorado,” Gabriel muttered.

  “What?” Daniel asked.

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “I’m just thinking it’s remarkable that after studying this legend for so long I’ve held one of the actual Eyes of Teshub in my hands. They’re real. They’re not a fantasy or a made-up story or the invention of some bard drunk on kumis. And now we’re standing where the third and final Eye has rested for thousands of years. Buried by eons of wind and sand. It’s extraordinary.”

  Gabriel shielded his eyes and looked up at the sun. They’d already lost half the day getting here. Grissom could be anywhere. If they were lucky, he hadn’t figured out the location of the third gemstone and was still tooling around Turkey looking for them. Unfortunately, that had never been Gabriel’s kind of luck.

  “Did any of your studies suggest how far down it might be?” he asked. “We may not have a lot of time to dig.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Who can say? There’s a small village of mastaba tombs in the shadow of the Pyramid of Cheops. They were buried in the desert for millenni
a before anyone found them. And do you know how far they had to dig? Just fifteen feet. In the desert, the wind is always changing and the sand is always shifting. What’s buried hundreds of feet down one year might be so near the surface the next that a mild sandstorm could unearth it. We just have to hope this is a good year.” He stopped walking and pointed at the sand at his feet. “Here.” He stuffed his notes in his pocket, grabbed the pickaxe and used it to draw an X in the sand. “This is where we start.”

  The sun crawled across the desert sky as Gabriel and Joyce dug. Daniel, his shoulder still sore from the arrow wound, worked on maintaining the pit walls instead, using a shovel and bucket to move the sand away from the ditch so it wouldn’t slide back in and fill up again.

  It was backbreaking work. Rivulets of sweat flowed along Gabriel’s back, chest, neck and forehead. They paused occasionally to swig from the gallon jugs of bottled water they’d picked up in town, then got back to work. All the while, the baking sun kept at them mercilessly. They’d dug ten feet down by the time the heat broke and the sun started to dip toward the horizon.

  Gabriel grabbed a water bottle and lifted it to his parched lips. As he took a swallow and bent to replace the bottle on the ground, he felt the Death’s Head Key twitch where it lay against his chest. He looked down and saw it pressing against his shirt. Reaching into his collar for the leather strap around his neck, he pulled the key out and held it over the pit. Instead of hanging straight down it trembled at the end of the strap, hanging at a ten-degree angle. Joyce and Daniel stared at it. “We’re close,” he told them.

  They resumed digging. The farther down they got, the more the Death’s Head Key strained against its strap. Up above them, Daniel rubbed his hands together, though whether it was with excitement or anxiety, Gabriel couldn’t say. Probably a bit of both—Gabriel was certainly feeling both himself.

  Gabriel drove the edge of his shovel into the wall of sand before him, and it struck something hard. Something the metal blade of the shovel struck with a ringing clank.