The assault team would hike to the cave together and then split into smaller squads. Paul, Rawl, and Elias would take the front gate. Dane and Bailus would hit the back. Mirela and Josie would seek out and seal up any flues or vents in the roof of the cave.
“These things have bodies like weasels,” Bailus said. “If we’re going to trap them down there, we’ll have to stop up every hole bigger than your fist.”
By late morning, their preparations were complete. They sat down for a final meal in the dining hall. It was a solemn assembly. The compound had been their home for only a few days, and a poor home and miserable days they had been. Even so, no one was quite ready to willingly bid farewell to a place they had spilled their blood to defend.
“I don’t know why,” Rawl said, “But I think I’ll miss this place.”
There was a certain sense of consensus in the silence which followed his remark. Owen spoke next. “I know what we need to do, but I know no one will like it.”
Dane looked up at him.
“We need to burn this place to the ground.”
“We can’t do that,” Paul said. “Half of us are buried out there. They died defending these walls.”
“They weren’t defending the walls,” Owen said softly. “They were defending us. And if our plan’s going to have any chance of succeeding, then we have to do everything we can to make this look like a full retreat.”
“I don’t see why we have to leave at all,” Pratt said. “Why not stay and defend it to the last man?”
“Because the colonists are depending on us,” Josie said.
“Josie’s right,” Dane said. “And so is Owen.”
After lunch they gathered all the kindling and tinder and branches they could and piled them against the walls. They took all the lamps in the compound and poured their oil on the brush piles.
As the flames climbed the walls and licked skyward, their small company stood in the little graveyard and paid their last respects to the fallen.
“I hate just leaving them here,” Rawl said as they moved towards the harbor. “I don’t want those monsters defiling their graves. They deserve to rest in peace.”
“That’s what I want, too,” Dane said, clapping him on the shoulder. “And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to let the whole island rest in peace.”
It was late afternoon before they boarded the ship, but Dane was pleased with this. There was light enough for their enemy to see them depart, but he did not want to get too far out before dark overtook them and offered them their chance to slip back in. They helped the wounded aboard and hauled Mirela’s donkey up the ramp and then shoved the ship fully into the water and shoved her prow towards the mouth of the harbor.
Will gave orders and the sail was unfurled. Dane nodded to Pratt and he took the tiller. Most of the crew stood astern, watching the smoke climb above the trees. The island was once again a wilderness; untamed and formidable, alien and forbidding.
Suddenly, a ball of fire reared skyward, followed by the sound of thunder. The flames had reached the powder room. They watched the explosion morph and dance against the pale sky in black and red and orange. The ball of fire deflated and dissipated back below the tree tops, but the flames and smoke continued to rise, erasing the only sense of security and belonging on the island they had ever known.
They would face the island again, in places utterly unknown, with nothing but what they carried with them in their hands and in their hearts.
Will and Pratt set them a course which put them in line with the western center of the island.
Those who could caught snatches of sleep. Hardly anyone talked. Some dreaded the night’s approach. Others thought it would never come.
Dane came back beside the boy, who stood with his hand in Molly’s at the stern. They were watching the island sink into the distance. Dane spread the most detailed map of Haven they had on the deck at the boy’s feet. The boy glanced at the map and then turned back to the island.
“I don’t want to bring this back up for you, but I need your help,” Dane said.
The boy did not look at him.
“I need to know where you were when the bad thing happened.”
The boy was so still and silent, Dane thought he had not heard him, even though they stood beside each other. Suddenly, he turned and knelt opposite Dane. He took in the map at a glance, placed his finger on the small circle that marked the settlement and ran it slowly along the length of the island. He stopped and tapped his finger at the end of the imaginary line. Then he took his place beside Molly once more and did not look at Dane again. Dane thanked him, folded the map, and walked away.
Rawl dozed leaning against the gunwale beside Josie. He awoke to find her making scratches in her bolts with her knife. As he watched, she finished her work on one and placed it back in her quiver at her side. He pulled it out and found she had engraved the letter ‘N’ on it. He pulled out another. It bore a boxy ‘G’. She took them from him and placed them back in her quiver.
“Gwen, Nelly, Chloe,” he said.
She nodded as she focused her attention on the next bolt. He wrapped his hand around her knife hand and pulled it to him. “Why don’t you just tell me about them instead?” he said.
The sun set, sending a shimmer of radiant reflection over the surface of the sea. One moment, they were wrapped in light, the air and water all about them burning with it. The next moment, dark descended like a curtain. In the last of the twilight, they doused their lights and brought the ship around and pointed her prow, as best as they could guess with the help of Ashly and Lane and the map and their view of the dim hulk of the island, towards the beach.
They had been sailing away from the island for no more than two hours, but it seemed to take at least double that to get near enough to it once more to begin navigating towards the beach. Fortunately, they had a full moon to work with. The section of coast they were looking at was foreign to all of them and, even with the moonlight, its features were barely discernible in the dark. But judging by the way the island extended to either side of them, they guessed they were somewhere along the center of the western coast, which meant they had been driven a good ways south of their goal. Ashly and Lane agreed with this. Pratt brought the ship to port and began navigating up the coast, staying as close as he could to land without risking damage to the ship.
They were sailing against the wind and thus were forced to tack back and forth in order to keep moving forward. This took them farther out from the coast and then dangerously close to it again and again.
After an hour or so, they came to a place where the coast angled out towards them. They continued along it but slowly, for their line of travel now took them directly against the wind. But they were encouraged by this change in the coastline as they took it as a sign they were near the beach; for while the beach stood on the northwest side of the island, the harbor that led to it opened to the southwest.
They came around an outthrust lip of rock and suddenly they all saw it at once; the moonlight shining on the water of a broad inlet, and at the end of the inlet, the pale sand glowing dully in the moonlight.
Pratt brought the ship to starboard and guided it up the channel. Their cheer at having found the beach was replaced by the silence of the realization of what that meant. With no need for command or signal, as though governed by a single mind, the assault team gathered in the prow.
Here Dane faced a dilemma. Beaching the ship would create extra noise and might alert any nearby enemies to their presence. The team could slip silently over the side while the crew held the ship in the shallows but this ran the risk of wetting their powder. In the end, Dane ordered Pratt to beach the ship, deciding any hostiles in the neighborhood would, at any rate, be alerted to their presence soon enough. They would just have to take their chances.
Rawl voiced his support of this. “We have to protect the powder. And besides, I don’t think they hear all that well anyway. All that screaming and spe
aking straight into people’s heads wouldn’t do much for the ears.”
Dane nodded, remembering how easy it had been to sneak up behind the creatures in the woods the night Rem had been killed.
The ship drove up onto the beach with a sheering scrape-crunch of wood on sand. The assault team dropped over the side. The crew handed down their kegs and packs and the team walked well up the beach and set these on dry sand. Then they returned to the ship and helped the crew push it back into the water. The harbor waves resisted them, jostling the boat back against the sand, but they soon had it free.
“Get out now and get away,” Dane said to Pratt just before shoving the ship out to sea. And don’t come back in here till you see our signal.”
Pratt nodded and moved silently aft to the tiller.
The small group watched the boat sail out of the inlet. The drop-off had been so fast they had not even bothered to furl the sail.
“We’re on our own now,” Paul said.
“Still, in a way,” Rawl said, “it’s kind of nice knowing they’ll be OK regardless of what happens to us.”
Dane turned and led them silently back to the powder supply. They pulled the hoods of their cloaks over their heads. They wore no helmets or other armor, not wanting to advertise their presence with the shine of moonlight on metal. They carried no torches, for fear of the flames giving them away or setting off the powder they carried on their backs. The large moon was a blessing and a curse.
The men strapped their kegs onto their backs and the women hefted their packs. Each of them kept their weapons at hand. Dane bore an iron pry-bar in addition to his bow. Mirela carried a pick. Elias used his spear shaft as a walking stick.
“How are we supposed to see where we’re going?” Paul said.
“That’s the easy part,” Dane said. “We just keep going up.” The boy’s indication on the map had confirmed what he’d suspected from his vision; the shriken’s cave was at the very peak of the island.
The island rose steep and trackless behind the beach and they had to help one another make their way through the thick brush and up the inclines until they got the hang of walking in the dark with the heavy packs. As they moved off the beach into the trees, drums began to throb in the hills overhead.
“You think that means they’ve spotted us?” Paul said.
“It doesn’t matter what it means,” Dane said. “We can’t go back. All we can do is keep moving forward.”
XXVIII
Warren
At first light they halted. While the others ate a cold meal around the powder kegs, Dane moved a little ways off and started a small fire. This took considerable effort in the pre-dawn damp, but his patience and his careful keeping of his tinder box were eventually rewarded. From the fire, he lit a half dozen or so slow matches, braided lengths of hemp rope and cypress bark treated with glue so as to burn slowly but continuously. The slow matches held their fire in tiny smoldering embers in their tips. They could be handled roughly without the worry of the spark going out and they were less likely to set off the powder prematurely than the naked flame of a torch. They were ideal for the job. He knew they were getting close to their destination and they would have no chance to light a fire once there. They had to carry the ability to ignite the powder onto the battlefield with them.
He returned to the group and gave each of them a slow match. It was a solemn communion, that last meal together in the dim forest. Receiving the spark-bearers, they realized up till that point their talk about destroying the shriken warren had been nothing more than that. But now they had all they needed to accomplish it and they were uncomfortably close to their goal. The power to rend the world and remake it went with them.
As he shouldered his keg-pack, Dane looked out from the rocky ledge at the view below them. He was surprised at how high they had climbed. The mountain rose about them like a castle carved by giants or the gods themselves. Before him, the sea spread out like an infinite moat, or like an endless plain of liquid green.
He led them forward. He could tell by the plants they were getting close. The trees were no longer the tall majestic spruces and oaks of the lower places. Here at the crown, the trees were stunted and twisted, as though they lived constantly in a searing wind. There were also thornbushes of a kind he had never noticed in the lowlands. Though in his vision he had approached the crest from the south and not the west, the trees had looked the same. He passed a bird-skull totem set just above eye-level between the forking branches of one ruined tree. He hardly noticed it.
The thornbushes, scanty as they were, caught and tore at their clothing and slowed them down. Dane knew if they worked around to the east they would come upon the clear step-like path of layered rock he had traversed with the men in his vision. This path would be free of obstructing plants and lead them directly to the front gate. But Dane did not want to lead them into the open. He suspected the drums, which continued to pulse occasionally, may be a call to assembly instead of an alarm. And if there were any shriken responding from those watching the settlement down below, they would be moving along that path on their way to the caves.
With every climb they made, Dane thought it was the last, but every time they reached the brow, they found the slope continued on. Finally, they came in sight of what they had sought. It was a long, low dome of jagged rock, sitting atop the island like a ruined crown. Grass and scraggly bushes grew in some places on the stony plateau and a few stunted trees.
Dane led them around to the south-east, always keeping a screen of bushes between his party and the rocky dome. Finally, the southern end of the dome came in sight and there, seated in its center, facing out over the rest of the island, was the main gate of the caves. The three empty stone doorways stood exactly as Dane’s vision had shown them. There were no shriken in sight, but the booming of the drums beat out from the open gateway.
Dane found Elias and the twins a good place to hunker down in the brush where they could keep an eye on the gate. He looked at the sun’s position, then back to Elias. “Can you lie low here for an hour?”
Elias nodded and Dane continued. “We don’t know how far it is to the other side; we don’t even know what we’re looking for. But we’ll move as quickly as we can. Have your charges set to blow in an hour. When we hear yours go, we’ll light ours – we’ll just hope we have them in place by then.”
They laid all unnecessary items, including the pick and pry-bar, in the brush behind Elias’s group. Dane slapped Elias on the shoulder. “Good luck. We’ll regroup here when we’re done.”
Rawl and Paul nodded to him as he motioned for the others to follow him, and they slipped away the way they had come.
Dane led them forward at a crouch, skirting around the west side of the cave-rock. The heavy keg on his back made it difficult to move stealthily, and after a few minutes of moving in a crouch his legs were aching. He ignored the pain and pressed on.
He had no idea how long the barrow-like roof of the cave was so he was unsure when they were halfway across it. But they came to a point where the mound seemed to peak slightly and he guessed this for the rough center. A little ways after that, they came to a dry streambed that cut down the side of the hill. The bed was shallow but yellow grasses and scrub brush grew waist high about it.
He paused and squatted down in the rocky bed. Mirela and Josie sat on their haunches before him. He pointed up the length of the bed. “Stay in cover here and work your way up the side of the slope. You have the hardest job of any of us. The boys back there have one thing to blow; with luck, Bailus and I will only have one exit to plug. But there’s no telling how many crannies and rat holes you’ll have to stop up. You’ll have to seek them out and plant your charges beforehand so they’re all ready to blow as soon as you hear Elias’s go off. But be careful. My guess is you’ll be kind of exposed up there. Use all the cover you can and don’t take unnecessary risks.”
Josie nodded and started working her way up the streambed. Mirela’s face was s
till turned towards him. Dane looked into her eyes. He tilted her chin up and leaned forward to kiss her, but she put a finger to his lips. “This isn’t goodbye,” she said. Then she had turned and followed Josie and her bulky pack was all he could see of her.
Dane nodded to Bailus and they started forward again. They came upon a cliff which dropped away beneath them and were forced to make their way along the brow of it, skirting closer to the side of the cave-mound than they would have liked. They made it around to the northeast side of the hill without finding any other entrance. Dane was at first optimistic. “Maybe they only have one entrance,” he told Bailus. “We could go back and help the girls.”
Bailus shook his head. “Nothing that intelligent would make a home without a back door. We have to keep looking.”
They worked their way half-way around the east side of the mound, taking speed over stealth now in their worry that Elias’s group would be blasting the front gate soon. The east side of the mound was smoother than the west, just a gentle grassy sward, and there was certainly no other exit there.
The two men hunkered down in the brush. The day was warming up and they were both sweating. Dane wiped his brow and drained his canteen. “If Elias blows his charge before we can set ours, even if he is successful, the shriken will just stream out the back door and all of this will be for nothing.”
Bailus only nodded.
“We can’t do this alone,” Dane said.
Suddenly, the drums began to beat again. The sound was coming from the north, from the way they had just come. The two men looked at each other, wondering what this could mean. “We didn’t miss anything,” Dane said. “There was no door there.”
Bailus rose and silently began to move back the way they had come. Dane dropped his canteen and followed him.
They returned to the edge of the cliff, the face of which skirted the entire northern side of the mound. Bailus hesitated on the brink. Dane joined him and cocked his head. There was no mistaking it. The sound was coming from below them. Dane skirted along the edge of the drop-off, trying to spot the source of the sound. Bailus, who was right beside him, suddenly put his hand on Dane’s chest and pulled him back. Dane glanced at him but Bailus pointed down over the ledge. Dane peeked over the brow, trying to spot what Bailus was pointing at. Rocks, trees, rocks, bushes. Nothing. Then he saw it and wondered how he had missed it. A hundred feet down but literally directly beneath their feet, so that if Dane’s foot had dislodged a stone it would have struck it on the head, a shriken crouched on a large flat stone.
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