Josie picked up her bow, checked the vent had been sealed, and ran to the next one. She was already too late. This hole was wider than the last and the shriken were pouring out of it two at a time. Two of them were already free but were still on all fours. Bubbling out of the ground like that, they looked like huge spiders or giant black ants. Josie wasted no time. She skidded to a stop not five paces from the mouth of the hole and launched bolt after bolt into the writhing mass of bodies. Her only advantage was she was too close and they were too many to miss.
Her bow felt significantly lighter when she forced herself to stop shooting. Half a dozen shriken lay in and out of the hole. Some of them were still moving, but only feebly. One crawled on all fours and seemed to be trying to get up. Josie kicked it so savagely in the neck it flipped over on its back and lay still.
Looking at the clogged hole, she wondered if the creatures had done her work for her. But she knew she couldn’t leave it like that. She also knew she’d never be able to get to the charge in time. Pulling the final charge from her pack (the other spare was with Mirela) she knelt on the corpses at the rim of the vent. Finding a narrow space between their bodies, she held the charge in place and lit the fuse. She forced herself to hold it until the fuse was half burnt, then let the charge drop and tucked and rolled. The blast came almost immediately, followed by a rumble of stones and a cloud of dust that filtered out around the bodies of the creatures.
Josie got to her feet and picked up her bow. For a moment, she stood panting. She heard footsteps behind her. Josie smiled. Mirela had had only five charges to light. Josie had hoped she would join her before the end. “Mirela,” she said, without turning, “Just one left.”
There was no answer.
Josie felt a chill begin in the pit of her stomach that climbed up her spine to the roots of her hair. Bringing her bow up and pumping it as she spun, she wheeled around.
The shriken stood, sickle in hand, not five feet from her. Josie leveled her bow at its chest and pulled the trigger. The cross’s arms snapped forward but nothing happened. Without taking her eyes off the creature Josie knew what was wrong. Her magazine had run dry.
The creature cocked its head at her, a curious, bird-like gesture. Then its arm shot out with such speed it was like a black blur in Josie’s vision. The crook of the sickle hooked around the arm of her bow and her weapon was jerked from her hands. Josie stumbled back. The shriken advanced on her, cocking its head now to the other side. Josie’s heel struck a stone and she sat down hard. The creature took a final step and raised its sickle.
A gray missile the size of a small barrel struck the creature from the side and drove it sideways. Josie heard the bones give as her rescuer broke the thing’s life upon the rocks. There was a croak and a snarl and then the shriken’s legs were twitching uselessly and something had pinned Josie against the rocks and was licking her face.
Dioji had come home.
***
“We have to act now,” Dane said. “Elias will be blowing his charge any minute.”
Bailus nodded, “Awaiting your orders, sir.”
They had been watching the sentries at the back door for nearly a quarter of an hour, but their enemies showed no signs of removing. Dane had been running through plans to deal with the guards but he did not like how any of his scenarios played out. One problem was one of the creatures might escape to warn the others. The other problem was he and Bailus might both be killed fighting them and there would be nobody to set the charges.
Dane turned to Bailus. “Can you take two at once?”
Bailus shrugged. “Probably not. But I can keep them busy for a little while.”
“Stay here,” Dane said. “I’m going to sneak around beside the one on top. When I’m in place, try to draw the other two out.”
Bailus nodded.
Dane slipped away, moving silently through the copse in the direction they had come. The tree cover allowed him to get slightly above and about twenty paces to the right of the guard which squatted over the door. Dane loaded his crossbow. As he crouched behind a tree and drew his bead on the creature, he heard Bailus do something he had never heard him do in his life. Call for help.
His voice sounded truly pathetic. As the pleas rose out of the stand of trees which hid Bailus, the guards in front of the gate began to stir. They looked at each other, then shifted their feet like nervous horses. They both moved a little ways out from the door. Dane kept his bow trained on their leader, for so he thought the top guard was, and watched the other two from the corner of his eye.
They took a few more steps and then stopped. They looked at each other again. They looked back at the one above the gate. The leader nodded towards the sound of Bailus’s voice and one of them started towards the trees.
Bailus was an open battlefield kind of man; he liked to have elbow room when he fought. Seeing the creature commit to come to him, he stepped out of the woods to meet it. He held his hammer like a cane and moved forward in a stoop. The foremost creature looked back at the one on the door. The leader nodded and the creature sprang at Bailus.
The attacker swept its sickle sideways at the level of Bailus’s neck. Bailus ducked and brought up the handle of his hammer, catching the creature hard on the wrist as it completed the swing. The weapon flew from its hand. The creature sprang back and struck out with its flail. Bailus brought up his hammer, holding the long handle between his hands like a quarterstaff. The chain joint of the flail struck the haft of Bailus’s hammer. The swinging end clapped Bailus hard on the arm, but he thrust the hammer outward at the same time. The chain caught around the hammer haft as Bailus shoved forward and the flail was jerked from the shriken’s hand.
The creature dodged Bailus’s swing and turned and fled towards its companions. The second guard charged Bailus. Maybe Bailus could read Dane’s mind. Maybe he was just a crazy old fool. Whatever the reason, he hurled his hammer end over end like a hatchet. The spinning head of the hammer made an awful noise as it connected with the fleeing creature’s skull. At the moment of impact, Dane pulled the trigger. The leader slumped forward and tipped over the stone frame and landed on the threshold of the door. The final creature pulled up hard and turned for the gate. Dane burst from the trees. He slid down the side of the slope beside the door as the creature leapt over its dead leader and disappeared into the passage. Dane wrapped a hand around the standing stone jamb and swung into the dark doorway.
The creature was swifter and would have lost him in the dark if it had not looked back over its shoulder. It stumbled and even as it turned back to its course Dane threw himself on its back and drove it to the ground. The creature struggled horribly, with far greater strength than Dane would have guessed from its wiry limbs. Dane forced one hand under and around the beak and placed the other at the back of the thing’s skull. He made a sudden, twisting jerk and broke its neck.
Dane turned towards the entrance to see Bailus coming quickly on with both kegs and his hammer, the fuses and the slow match pinched in his teeth. For the first time since entering the tunnel, Dane looked around at his surroundings. The walls shone with moisture and the floor was damp and on one side of it a little stream trickled past. From further inside came the sound of dripping water. The passageway had the same long rectangular shape as the door. The walls and ceiling were roughly square and the rocks there had been scarred as though by chisels. On either side of the passage, wooden beams supported the roof at even intervals. Dane guessed this had served as an outlet for water seeping into the cave from above for time out of mind and that the shriken, on occupying the cave, had augmented the natural drain into the rear exit of their lair.
Dane and Bailus moved further into the tunnel. They came to a place where the beams were much closer together and held up many wooden planks against the ceiling and walls. Here they set their charges. As they wedged the barrels between two of the beams, the earth rolled like a sea beneath their feet. “That’s Elias,” Dane said as the rumbling reached the
m.
It took some time to roll out the fuse; Bailus carefully letting out loop after loop of the coiled material while Dane removed the lid of one of the barrels and secured the end of the fuse in the powder. While they were laying the fuse, two more rumbles reached their ears. “Good girls,” Dane said under his breath.
The fuse ended some 15 paces from the mouth of the cave. Dane took the slow match from Bailus. “Go on,” he said.
“I’d rather you let me light it, sir.”
“I’m faster. I’ll pass you on the way out.”
Bailus jogged for the opening and Dane touched the match to the fuse. The fire leapt along the length of cord with a sizzle. Dane ran for the exit. He threw himself against the hillside beside the door and covered his head with his arms.
Nothing happened.
Dane relaxed his face and exhaled but stayed in his defensive position and waited. Nothing. He sighed.
“Fuse must have gone out,” Bailus said, sitting up beside him.
“Give it another minute.” Dane didn’t fancy the idea of stepping inside again and reaching the kegs at the same time the flame did.
“We don’t have a minute,” Bailus said, and he darted around Dane and through the opening.
***
While Josie was being cornered by the shriken, Mirela had problems of her own. Her fourth and fifth charges lay only twenty paces from each other, separated by a big boulder. She blew the fourth and rounded the boulder at a run. She stopped short. Standing just upon the rim of her fifth flue was the vulture-headed shaman. He simply stood there, looking right at her as if he’d sensed her coming. As if he’d been waiting for her. The creature carried a staff with a curved blade at one end that reminded Mirela of a scythe. He shifted his stance, swinging the staff into both hands, and stepped towards her. Mirela’s hand went to her knife. But suddenly, her vision changed and it was as if she were seeing on two planes at once. In one, the shriken moved towards her and her hand clasped on her knife hilt. In the other, the Lady in white stood before her and Mirela’s hand closed not on her knife hilt but around the horn.
“Drink, Child.”
Mirela began to laugh. It was a dry, awkward sound at first and she felt silly doing it, regardless of whose presence she was really in. But the Lady began to laugh with her and her laughter grew in volume and depth and power.
Soon she was like a little girl being tickled, staggering about and waving her arms aimlessly. She paused, trying to get her breath, and leaned forward with her hands on her knees but laughed all the harder. She straightened up and threw back her head and laughed.
She was still embarrassed and she thought her own behavior wildly inappropriate, but then she found herself laughing even at that. She thought there was some way she should feel about the creature before her but she couldn’t remember what that was.
Meanwhile, the shriken was not motionless. When Mirela first began to laugh, it advanced on her as it had before. But as her laughter grew, it staggered and faltered as though coming up against an invisible wall. Mirela staggered around and the thing stopped moving altogether. Then something queer began to happen. The shaman began to shake. It began with its hands and spread up its arms and then over its whole body. Soon its legs were shaking so hard it could barely stand. It gave one final convulsive shrug and fell face forward to the ground and never moved again.
***
Josie dropped to her knees before the final hole. The crevasse dropped down smoothly for four feet to the ledge where she had placed the charge. Lying flat, she leaned her shoulder into the opening as much as she could and extended her arm. She worked more of herself into the hole until the other side of the rim pressed against her back. She stretched out with the slow match. Its tip stopped two inches from the top of the fuse. Working the match carefully in her hand, Josie maneuvered it until she held the very end of it pinched between her index and middle fingers. She wiggled it back and forth, trying to make contact with the fuse. Dioji nosed his snout into one side of the opening, throwing his bark and snarl into its depths. She had just touched the two together when the match slipped from between her fingers, rolled off the sack of powder, across the ledge, and disappeared down the shaft. Josie pounded her fist on the rock in frustration. As her anger subsided, it was replaced by grief, and guilt. She had failed. She had let everyone down. She felt like crying. Dioji nuzzled her neck and whined.
She heard running footsteps behind her and whirled to face them. Mirela ran towards her; slow match in one hand, knife in the other. She slid to a stop beside Josie.
“Trouble?”
“I dropped my match.”
“Get clear,” Mirela said.
“Wait,” said Josie. She twisted a branch off a nearby thornbush and, taking Mirela’s match, impaled it securely on one of the thorns at the tip. She did not have to stretch this time. Guiding the match with shaking hands, she touched its tip to the fuse. Sparks crackled from the end of the fuse and then the flame raced along its length.
The two women dove for the dirt and buried their faces in their arms as their last charge exploded behind them.
***
“It’s not the fuse,” Bailus said, crouching over the barrels as Dane approached. “Look, it’s burned clear to the powder.”
“How’s that?”
Bailus shrugged. “Maybe it’s too wet in here. Maybe it’s just a bad batch.”
Dane swore. “So what do we do now?”
“We part ways, old friend,” Bailus said.
“What?”
Bailus stood slowly; his right hand gripped the haft of his hammer near the head. “I told you once this stuff was the future of warfare. I said it would leave no room for the courage and skill of men. I guess I was wrong about both. At least for today, and that’s all that matters for me.”
Screams echoed out of the darkness at the further end of the tunnel. Bailus shifted his hammer to his left hand and held his right out to Dane. “It’s been my pleasure to serve you, sir.”
“Come on, Bailus, we don’t have time for this,” Dane said. He pried the stopper out of the bottom barrel with his knife and stuck the slow match into the little cascade of powder that poured out. There was a crackle of sparks and nothing more.
“You’re wasting your time, sir,” Bailus said. “Something’s been telling me it would be like this ever since I had my vision. The people who lived long ago, they had weapons far greater than these. Weapons to turn cities into plains of ash. But those weapons weren’t what survived the wars they wrought with them. The people were. In those days, as in the times before, as in these times, it was the courage of mankind that made the difference. Not just of mankind, but of the individual women and men. It was their choices that changed things. Now it’s my time and my choice. Go, sir. Go and live your life. Love your woman. Your time will come but not here, not now. And I ask that you don’t take my time from me.”
“This mission was my idea,” Dane said. “It’s mine to see through.”
“With all respect, sir, you can’t do this. No one but me can. I may not be half the man I once was, but of all the men your father sent out here, I’m still the strongest. Maybe he knew what he was doing in assigning me to your crew. Or maybe Someone else had Her hand in it. At any rate, I’m here now.”
Dane began to back away. The whole thing seemed somehow preordained, as though Bailus was merely taking his place in a much greater drama. He nodded. He knew Bailus was right. He could have ordered him out. Bailus might have obeyed him. But his respect for the man forbade him from giving such an order. He could have stayed, but he knew this was something Bailus had to do alone. In a way, the path which waited for him was more difficult than Bailus’s path. Dane suddenly surged forward and took Bailus’s right hand with his and clasped his left arm around Bailus’s shoulder and pulled him to him. “There were never men like you,” he said. “There were never soldiers like you.”
“And there were never friends like you, my lord,” Bail
us said.
Dane slapped Bailus on the shoulder as he pulled away. “Go to it.”
Dane walked back towards the door of light that stood at the mouth of the tunnel. He heard Bailus’s first blow fall. Then the second, accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. He did not look back. The third blow fell and with it came a slither of earth. The screams of the shriken mounted behind him.
Bailus destroyed the two beams that bordered their barrels in half a dozen swings of his hammer. The roof sagged above his head. He turned to the opposite posts. The third beam was stouter than the first two and Bailus did not break it. He battered the top end of it till it tore free and fell clattering on the floor. A shower of earth fell on his head and shoulders. He turned to the final pillar. His body was tingling all over. There was a mist in his eyes, not of sorrow, though not of joy either. At least not like any joy he had ever known. It was a holy feeling, he could say that much. A strange holy feeling, at once silent and exultant. The screams of the creatures were closer than ever now, but he hardly heard them.
The fourth post was as stout as the third. His blows fell at the base and the top of the beam, but it would not budge. Its ends were sunken too deeply in the earth. A strange sensation surged through him. He knew in that moment that every ounce of his strength, every bit of muscle and grit and bone, was a gift, had been knit into him with precision and purpose. His blow fell squarely on the center of the beam, but it threw his hammer back at him. The force of the blow ran down the haft and shook his arms. There was a searing pain in his side and a spreading warmth there and he knew he’d torn his wound open again. He repeated the blow, landing it half a dozen times in the same place. On the final time, the beam yielded a little, splintering on the far side. He looked behind him. Scurrying shapes, darker than the pitch black of the tunnel, surged towards him. He knew he had time only for one more swing.
The Silent Isle Page 34