The Silent Isle

by Nicholas Anderson

  It was then the shriken came, birthed out of cracks in the ground. From high above, as though he were looking at a brilliantly detailed and colored map, Bailus saw the campfires of these human bands spread out before him. And one by one, as the shriken advanced, the fires were extinguished, like stars in a dying galaxy.

  They advanced until it seemed they outnumbered the humans and that Earth would have a new master. But humanity did not go willingly. The remaining tribes united under a woman who Bailus thought did not look unlike Mirela. They made a circle, standing shoulder to shoulder and back to back, and they stood against the darkness. Not just humans, but dogs and horses fought in their army; for Man, repenting in the dust and ashes of his former self, had begun to remember the land and its creatures and once more to make his peace with them. They fought in a field of golden grass that rose higher than the knees of the combatants. They fought until the grass was all trampled by their feet and matted with their blood. When it was over, the human leader lay dying, but the surviving shriken were fleeing far away with their pursuers on their heels.

  And then Bailus saw in living color what he had studied countless times in ink and parchment. He knew at once he was seeing Haven, not an image, but the island itself from above, the way a bird would see it. The image vanished and a being stood before him. The figure was like the silhouette of a man, but a silhouette of light instead of darkness. It had wings like an eagle’s, or perhaps what seemed like wings was really a wreath of flames which burned around it. Though it carried no weapon he could see, Bailus knew it was a warrior. It spoke to him with the voice of a man but more than a man: “This is now, and you are it.”

  ***

  Dane was seated around a campfire at sunrise with three others. Two were men, the other a boy. The boy seemed vaguely familiar. One of the men laid out four loaves of bread to toast on the stones by the fire. He turned them over once, then handed one each to the other man and the boy. They talked amongst themselves but ignored Dane. When they had finished their loaves, the first man tossed the fourth loaf to the boy and winked at him. Dane was offended until the second man, rising from the fire and crossing to retrieve his pack, stepped right through him. He flinched as the man’s knee swung towards his head, but the blow never came. He turned to see the man shoulder his pack and nod to the others.

  They could not see him.

  This realization came with a strong feeling he was seeing something that had already happened. They broke camp and began walking uphill. The first man ruffled the boy’s hair as he passed him. This man carried a shovel and a coil of rope over his shoulder. The other carried a pick and the ends of several torches protruded from his pack. The boy carried his own small pack with his bedroll tied to the top of it.

  There was an ease in their stride that suggested they took pleasure in the walking itself and that they were not moving towards anywhere in particular. Dane settled into the passivity of his role. The men seemed to be looking for something. Now and again, they would come upon caves. The men would stop, enter them, find them to be only shallow openings, and continue their climb. At one point they stopped on a bare, sloping stretch of rock and turned to look behind them. The view took Dane’s breath away. The land sloped steeply down on either side of them to the sea. Far in front of him and far below, Dane spotted a familiar U-shaped harbor. With a sinking feeling, he realized they were on Haven.

  The three continued to amble uphill, sometimes talking, sometimes walking in silence and listening to the birdsong. But a sense of dread slowly spread over Dane. He wanted some way to urge the men back down to the lowland.

  The walkers came upon a cave entrance which was different than any they had yet seen. It had three large rectangular openings standing side by side. They were doors opening onto eternal night – pitch black hung in their mouths. The men looked at each other and then the boy, they all nodded. The first man pulled out one of the torches and his tinder box. When the torch was lit, he led them through the center door. The air had a strange, cramped feel to it. Too warm and too close for the size of cave it seemed. The boy drew close to the man in front. Dane reached out a hand to draw him back but, of course, the hand passed right through him. The first man turned back towards the second and crinkled his nose, scenting the air. Dane sniffed and found his sense of smell was connected to the vision. The air held a faint smell of burning. The dread began to solidify into a weight in the pit of Dane’s stomach which made it hard to walk.

  “Go back,” he said. “Back.”

  The cave narrowed so that the men were forced to go in single file. The path continued downhill. The first man paused and ran the torchlight along the wall to his right. A rune was scratched there that he did not seem to understand; Dane recognized it only too well.

  “Go. Get out of here,” he shouted.

  The men made no notice of him. The feeling of impotence did not cause him to quiet down; it only made him scream louder.

  The first man continued to lead them down into the depths of the cavern. Dane redoubled his efforts to get their attention. Suddenly, the ceiling jumped out of the reach of their torch. The lead man paused. Dane sensed they had come into an open space. The man lifted his torch and Dane saw them. Too many to count. Clinging to the roof of the cave upside-down like so many bats. Their beaked heads were nestled against their chests. They seemed to be sleeping. The first man stumbled back in surprise and dropped his torch. It sputtered and flickered as it struck the stony floor but did not go out. Dane wanted to scream but found there was no breath in his lungs with which to do so. The man retrieved his torch and held it tentatively towards the roof once more. A subtle change had occurred in the time it took him to pick up the torch. The creatures still hung from the ceiling, but their heads were turned now and their eyes were open. And every eye was fixed on the intruders.

  There came a shrill, piercing scream and Dane was never sure whether it came from the creatures or the boy or the men or from him.

  Then he woke up.

  ***

  The first thing everyone noticed on coming out of their respective experiences was that Pratt was crying. He was not sobbing, but sniffling, and tears ran down both cheeks.

  “What is it, Pratt?” Leech asked. “Is it your arm?”

  Pratt could only nod.

  “I’m sorry,” Leech said, “But all we’ve got for pain is whiskey.”

  “It’s not the pain,” Pratt said shakily, “It’s not the pain.” He began to struggle with his sling.

  Leech rose to his feet. “Pratt, what’s wrong?”

  “Get this off me,” he said. “Get it off me.”

  Leech untied the knot at the back of Pratt’s neck which held the sling. He slipped it gently down and off his arm.

  Pratt began tearing at the bandages that held his splint.

  “Pratt, stop,” Leech said. “You shouldn’t move your arm.”

  “You mean like this?” Pratt said. He had loosened the splint enough to be able to move his arm at the elbow. He twisted it in circles. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew it.” He began to cry harder than ever.

  Everyone assumed it would be hours before he’d pull himself together enough to explain what was going on, but he blubbered through his tears. “She came. She came to me. The same Woman Elias saw in his dream. Don’t ask me how I know it was Her. I just do. She took hold of my arm and Her touch was like fire. It spread over my whole arm. I felt so hot I thought I was dying. I felt my bones melt like gold in a furnace and I felt them flow back together. And then the heat slowly faded away and left me with this tingly feeling like when your arm falls asleep. And when I thought to look, She was already gone. But I knew, I just knew, I was whole again.”

  It took them a while to get over Pratt’s healing, but once they did, they all shared their own stories. All of them had seen or felt something. Some of them were pleased and comforted. Others were troubled. Bailus shared what he called the “generally relevant” parts of his vision, but seemed neithe
r particularly pleased nor troubled. Dane sensed he was holding something back, that something in his vision had struck him as deeply personal and that he wanted to mull over it and savor it for a time on his own.

  Josie was among the most troubled. She had seen her sister and brother-in-law walking in a green field. She called out to them, but like in Dane’s dream, they seemed not to hear her. She tried to follow them, and though they were only walking, they moved further and further away with every step they took. What troubled her most about the vision was that her nieces had not been present.

  Dane shared last. He told his vision as he had seen it, but he had come to understand it better as he listened to the others. “I have to find a way to stop them,” he said. “In the morning, you’ll all return home on the ship. But I must stay.”

  “And why do you think you should have all the fun?” Bailus asked.

  “Because,” Dane said, “It’s my fault. This is all my family’s fault. Those men were searching for places to start new mines on my father’s orders. His greed for ore drove them on. His greed awoke the shriken.”

  “And what do you expect to do on your own?” Paul asked.

  “I’ll seal them in their caves. I’ll use the blasting powder. I’ll seal myself down there with them if I have to.”

  “You can’t do it alone,” Bailus said. “If the cave is their city, it’s bound to have a rear entrance. And any cave of that size is sure to have flues, fissures in the rocks above.”

  “This is my family’s wrong to right,” Dane said. “I have asked more of each of you than I ever should have, and now I give you my final order: Go home.”

  “No, sir,” Josie said.

  “Excuse me?” Dane said.

  “You heard me just fine,” she said. “All I wanted in coming here was to be reunited with my sister; or, if that were not possible, to give her a proper burial. But if I am to be denied even that, at least give me the chance to bury some of these bastards.”

  Bailus rose. “Well, I think that settles it. We’ll be tagging along with you, even if it’s just me and the young lady.”

  “And how far do you think you’ll get?” Mirela asked. “You don’t even know where you’re going.”

  Dane looked at her. “I didn’t expect you of all people to talk that way.”

  “I’m only talking sense,” she said. “If you’re going to do this, then you need our help. All of us. You lead us, but we’ll be right behind you.”

  “But she’s right, we don’t know where we’re going,” Paul said. “We can’t waste time blundering about the island looking for a place we’ve never been.”

  “You’re right,” Dane said. “We’ve never been there. But he has.” He nodded towards the boy asleep on Molly’s lap.

  “But even if we know where we’re going,” Rawl said, “It’ll likely take more than a day to hike there. We won’t survive a night in the woods. And even if they have fallen back, they’ll have plenty of warning if we plan on hoofing it from here.”

  “So we won’t start out from here,” Dane said. “We’ll use the ship; use it in a way they could never imagine. Forsythe said there was a beach on the northwest side of the island. He said the highest ground of the island is directly above it. If I had to bet, I’d say that’s their home. Tomorrow morning we load the ship and set sail for the mainland. As soon as we’re out of sight of the island, we’ll double back to the beach under cover of darkness. That might give us enough time to sneak up on them. They’d never expect us to be so foolish as to return for a frontal assault on their turf after we’d made a clean break.”

  “But what about the man on the beach?” Josie asked.

  “What man?” Paul said.

  “The body we found. What if there’re other colonists still alive. We can’t risk sealing them down there with shriken.”

  “Well then it’s hopeless,” Pratt said. “We’d never be able to launch a rescue raid inside their caves. Our only chance is to seal off their escapes before they know we’re there.”

  “We have to try, even if it’s suicide,” Josie said. “We can’t just abandon them because we think it’s impossible.”

  Everyone fell silent. They were at an impasse. Dane felt somehow sure there had to be a way out of this debacle, but he was groping for it in the dark.

  “No,” he said suddenly.

  Everyone turned to him.

  “No,” he repeated. “The way they reacted to the presence of men in their caves. Their caves are sacred to them, a sanctuary. The shriken despise us, but they fear us also. I do not think they would take humans into their caves, not even as captives.”

  “But where else would they hold them?” Josie asked.

  Elias made a clicking noise with his tongue. Everyone turned to him. “The trophy hall,” he said. “The hollow floor.”

  Dane looked at him with dawning realization and horror. “They were right under our feet.”

  XXVII

  The Crooked Mile

  The next morning came much too soon. The men and women of the expedition tried to sleep for the few hours that remained in the night, but sleep eluded them. They lay awake in silence, thinking about what tomorrow and the day after would bring. All of them had slept little in the past week and this was their shortest night yet, but at first light they were up and about, knowing that every minute of daylight counted.

  The plan itself was simple. Load the ship, set sail for the mainland, double back to the beach under cover of darkness and drop off the assault team. The ship would depart again and wait the signal fire of the assault team if it should be successful. But Dane knew simple plans had a way of complicating themselves when they were put into action.

  It had been a relatively straightforward thing to divide his remaining people between assault team and ship’s crew. He had made his choice, indeed it seemed he had no choice, and Mirela and Bailus would never leave him. Josie wouldn’t look her last upon the island until she’d taken every chance she had to rescue her family or avenge them. Rawl wouldn’t leave Josie. Paul wouldn’t leave Rawl. Elias seemed to view this final journey to the heart of the island as some kind of spiritual pilgrimage. There was no talking him out of it. Most of the others were too wounded to even consider joining them. Ashly Almast and Lane Townsby, two of the men who had circled the island with Forsythe, would be indispensible as navigators and deck hands. They joked they both had missing pieces but made a full set of fingers and toes between them. Leech would care for the wounded. Molly would care for the boy. Dane’s trouble was with Pratt.

  “Sir,” Pratt said. “I’d be ashamed not to go with you.”

  “You found a ship. You found a captain,” Dane said. “My word stands. You have your ticket home.”

  “I was joking.”

  “I wasn’t. You’ve done more than your of share of fighting already.”

  “We’ve all done more than our share. But every other man who can walk is walking in with you.”

  “Then I need more healthy bodies to man the ship,” Dane said. “Even with you in top shape, they’ll barely be able to keep her afloat. Thatcher’s captain. I need you to be his steersman.”

  “I’ve never acted as steersman, not even in a drill.”

  “I know. But I know you can do it. Your job will be as dangerous as ours and every bit as important.”

  Pratt eventually conceded. As he watched him walk away, Dane noted the change in his men. That Pratt would volunteer, adamantly, for danger. That Paul would be man enough to walk away from a fight – but also man enough to walk into a fight that he could walk away from. Dane hoped a few of them at least would live long enough to make use of the ways these past few days had altered them.

  Josie also was giving him trouble. “We need to rescue the captives first,” she told him for the tenth time.

  “That’s no good,” he said. “The shriken will know the moment we breach their shrine. We’d never make it to the caves, much less back to the ship.”

&n
bsp; “But if the shriken are guarding the prisoners, they’ll kill them as soon as we attack the caves.”

  “That’s a risk we have to take,” Dane said. “It’s double or nothing. We have very little chance as it is, but we’ll have no chance at all if we don’t deal with the shriken at the caves first.”

  “But if we free the captives you’ll have more soldiers.”

  “Numbers don’t count for anything now,” Dane said. “Our only hope lies in surprise. Hitting them hard and fast and damming them up inside their holes.”

  “How much of this food are we packing?” Rawl called from the door of the cellar.

  “Just enough to get us to the mainland,” Dane answered as he passed, Josie still tailing him.

  “We pack it all,” Josie said.

  Dane turned to her.

  “We don’t know how many we’re going to rescue. But we can bet they’ll be hungry and we should be prepared for anything.”

  Dane studied her face for a moment. Was this merely her way of staving off the inevitable disappointment? Was she really hoping, or only coping? He turned to Rawl. “Very well; load it up.”

  The dock had been destroyed in the fire and there were no boats for ferrying goods to the ship, so they beached the ship and set ramps on the sides and loaded it directly.

  While the others loaded the ship, Mirela, Elias, and Bailus inventoried their arsenal. There was far more blasting powder than they could carry, but they were determined to carry as much of it as they could. They selected smaller kegs, one for each of the men, and fitted them with rope straps at both ends so they could be borne on the back. They made fuses by coating cotton strings in a slurry of powder and glue. The strings they wrapped in paper and coated the paper with wax.

  Mirela secured two large backpacks for her and Josie. She cut the sleeves off all the spare pairs of pants and shirts she could find. She tied off one end with twine, filled the tube with powder, inserted a fuse, and tied up the other end.