Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Krysty’s feeling of foreboding increased, but she put it down to the weather. The gales presaged a gathering storm, and it seemed likely that the gaps in the trail would turn the passage into a wind tunnel, with possibly fatal results. She knew that the rock passage would have to eventually give way to more open territory, and at least there they wouldn’t be trapped in a bottleneck when the storm broke.

  Jak, too, had feelings of imminent danger, but his were based on more than a doomie feeling. Since they had left the forest and the heat behind, he had been aware that they were being followed. Whoever, or whatever, was tracking them was expert, but few were as expert in the arts of hunting and concealment as Jak Lauren. The albino could hear movement coming from behind the crops of rock that comprised the broken walls of the passage. There were no voices, no vocal sounds at all, just the movement of feet on ice and snow, the occasional disturbance of gravel and small rocks that barely registered over the screaming of the gales, but could reach his highly attuned ears.

  He wasn’t sure if they were human or animal sounds, but he knew that they had started to track the companions once they had left the sanctity of the woodland slopes. They were bargaining on the fact that the noise of the winds, amplified by the natural acoustics of the passage, would make them completely inaudible. They had been getting closer for the past half hour, taking their time in gaining ground, choosing patience over speed so that they wouldn’t reveal themselves. But now they were right on top of the companions and it was time to act.

  To avoid suspicion—lest their predators be human rather than animal—Jak chose to move slowly, overtaking J.B. and moving up to confer with Ryan. He was almost level with the one-eyed man and about to speak when all hell broke loose.

  Dimly, at the back of his mind, Jak would wonder if his actions had precipitated events. But in real time, as it happened, there was no chance for him to do anything other than react.

  Above the noise of the winds he heard a rumbling that echoed along the passage before being whipped away on the air. It was enough for both Jak and Ryan to look up at the same moment to see a shower of rocks tumble from the peak of one crop, rushing toward them. The rocks appeared to move in slow motion, falling from the peak with almost agonizing slowness, as though the force of the gales was keeping them aloft. But when they parted company with the rest of the rock face, they raced down, growing larger within a second and seeming to fill the whole of Ryan’s vision. He felt a shove in his side and found himself tumbling to the left, catching his ankle and feeling it turn, thrusting out a hand to find the far wall that would stop him falling prone or hitting the rock wall with his unprotected head. He almost felt the rush of air as the rocks missed him by inches, crashing and splintering on the icy trail.

  Jak pushed Ryan, then threw himself to the right, narrowly avoiding being hit by flying boulders. He cannoned into J.B., who managed to catch him.

  “What—” the Armorer began before Jak cut him short.

  “Get Ryan—under attack,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath.

  J.B. left Jak and hurried to Ryan, who was scrambling to his feet, having landed on one knee. His combat pants were ripped and blood seeped from a superficial wound just below the kneecap. It hurt like hell now, and he knew it would soon stiffen up, but he had to keep going.

  “No accident,” he yelled at J.B. as the Armorer helped him to his feet.

  There was little need for any other comment: events were making such speculation redundant. The rock fall hadn’t blocked the trail, but up ahead a snowbank had been dislodged, and the white death poured down, blocking the way with a wall some eight or nine feet deep.

  “What the hell—” Mildred muttered.

  “Being hunted—with us some way,” Jak yelled over the noise, the need for discretion now gone.

  “Why didn’t they take us when we were in their ville?” Krysty asked. It was a reasonable question. Why would the Inuit wait?

  “Who says it’s them? Mebbe it’s someone else,” J.B. answered.

  “Doesn’t matter who the fuck it is,” Ryan snapped. “They’ve got us trapped while we’re in here. We need to get the hell out.”

  Looking back along the way they had already traveled, it became clear that their only option would be to head for a gap in the outcrops that led onto the plain. But that wasn’t inviting. Suddenly it became clear why whoever was hunting them had chosen that moment to begin the attack. Outside the passage, the plain was a churning maelstrom of ice and snow plucked from the surface, visibly tracing the conflicting currents of the crosswinds. The sky was heavy and dark with clouds that were about to burst and loose their sulfurous rains and snows upon the plain, a vicious storm that would give them no place to hide.

  “Fireblast, we can’t risk going out there. We’re gonna have to backtrack,” Ryan yelled.

  “But that’s exactly what they want!” Mildred exclaimed. “Why else take out the trail in front of us?”

  “Yeah, mebbe, but we don’t have a lot of choice,” Ryan yelled. “So we don’t go back like bastard animals to slaughter. We go back to hunt them down and chill them.”

  “Sounds good to me,” J.B. agreed.

  Ryan barked directions into the howling mouth of the encroaching storm, shouting himself hoarse to be heard as the conditions suddenly dipped. He and Jak would try to get up into the outcrops to track down the hunters responsible for the rock and snowfall while the rest of the companions would start to backtrack. They knew that moving out onto the plain was impossible now that the storm had arrived, but they were reluctant to go back as far as the forested areas, with their resultant threats, until they knew who was trying to direct them.

  J.B. and Krysty led the charge back along the trail, with Mildred lagging behind to make sure that Doc followed. The old man seemed to be taking in what was happening, but the beatific smile that now seemed ever present on his face did little more than mask whatever may or may not be going on inside his head.

  Jak and Ryan began to scale the rock walls. Each handhold was like clutching ice, their skin sticking to the cold surface. Their fingers were numbed by the ice and wind, the toes of their boots slipping on the treacherous surfaces. It was difficult enough to ascend to the top, without the added burden of having to watch for any attack that may come from above.

  The fact that they were able to reach the top without confrontation was a sure sign that their unseen enemy had retreated. As they both stumbled onto the uneven surface that plateaued across the outcrops, they could see no one. The clear area in front of them was empty, but as Jak squinted into the swirling snows, he was sure that he could detect some movement on the lower levels of the foliage as the bushes and grasses were disturbed by their opponents. He directed Ryan’s attention with an outstretched arm, not wasting breath on words.

  Ryan acknowledged, and indicated that they should move toward the area, circling it so that they could come upon their attackers from the rear. Without a word, both men set off across the plateau as quickly as possible.

  Below, in the channel formed by the rocks, the other four companions were making their way back. J.B. had the mini-Uzi ready, set on rapid fire, and Krysty held her Smith & Wesson Model 640; but Mildred didn’t bother to unsheathe her ZKR. It was a precision weapon, and these were no conditions for her to fire; besides which, she had Doc to contend with. The old man was moving fairly quickly, but seemingly without a sense of urgency. Frankly, she didn’t want him to unsheathe his LeMat, as he was completely unpredictable in this state and there was no telling at who, or at what imaginings he may be tempted to fire. She hung back to guide him, and he seemed to be only too pleased to accept this. But they were falling behind Krysty and J.B., and she urged him to increase his pace.

  Ahead, the Armorer was squinting against the storm, wincing as the blasts of air and snow hit him broadside when he passed an opening onto the plains. Whoever was against them had timed their move to perfection, he had to admit. The only way for them to go now wa
s back toward the relative shelter and safety of the lower slopes, which offered their trackers plenty of cover.

  It was obvious that this was where they would go, and it was obvious that they now knew they were being tracked. From here on in, it was a matter of cat-and-mouse, and J.B. had an unpleasant feeling that he was one of the rodents.

  Back up on the plateau of rock that bled slowly into the lower slopes of the volcanic region, both Jak and Ryan were moving swiftly toward cover. They had no idea if they were being watched, but suspected that the tracking party’s attention would be focused on guiding the group in the passage exactly where they wanted them. They would notice two of the companions were missing, but could they afford the manpower to send back trackers to find them? Ryan was betting that they couldn’t.

  Both men felt a palpable relief when they crashed into the cover of trees and shrubs that started to pepper the lower slopes, their feet all the more sure as they hit earth rather than icy rock. The biting edge was taken off the cold, the winds broken by the canopy of foliage, enabling them to breathe a little more easily, to see a little more clearly.

  “Which way?” Ryan snapped as they came to a halt.

  Jak paused, his impassive face refusing to betray the intensity of his concentration. There was no movement to the north or west, but he could hear movement, detect the faintest of scents that told him that the trackers had moved through here recently, moving south and east, moving to intersect with the other companions as they reached the mouth of the passage where the trail led back into the tree line of the slopes.

  “There…there…” he said simply, indicating the direction. Ryan knew what the albino was thinking: it was an obvious move. These people either credited them with no intelligence, or had an innate confidence in the conditions leaving them with little option.

  “Let’s do it,” Ryan stated. “I’ll go clockwise, you counterclockwise. See how many there are, and how they’re spread, then meet at the mouth of the passage, fill in the others.”

  “What if they not want us meet up?” Jak asked.

  Ryan grinned. It was cold and without mirth. “They’ll want that. Right now they’re wondering where the fuck we are. They’ll be so relieved we’ve turned up and they’ve got us all in one place that they won’t wonder what we’ve been doing until it’s too late.”

  Something that may have been a smile, but more resembled a death’s-head grin, cut briefly across the albino’s face before he left Ryan and set off on the trek that would take him around the enemy, leaving Ryan to—for the briefest second—watch him go before taking off on his own course.

  This far down the slopes the covering foliage was much more sparse than he would have liked. It enabled him to move swiftly and with ease, but it also made it harder for him to conceal his considerable muscular bulk. Jak was more wiry than the Inuit—and Ryan was almost certain that these were their trackers—and of the same height. It would be relatively easy for him to conceal himself. Ryan, on the other hand, was taller and broader, and the lower slopes weren’t ideal conditions for stealth.

  The ground beneath him was sure of foot and he moved from scrub to scrub keeping close to the ground, the ferns and mosses disguising his footfalls, the low cover just about keeping him from view. He stopped periodically to take stock of his surroundings. He could hear very little above the howl of the wind—still incredibly loud, if reduced by cover—and his own labored breathing. There was no sign of Jak and certainly no sign of any trackers. From his vantage point he had an interrupted view of the passage shaped by the rock formations. It was easy to see the four companions moving backward toward the point where the passage bled into the forest trail, and he now understood how simple their progress had been for the trackers to follow.

  So what if they were already at the mouth of the passage? They had to know that was where the others were headed.

  Why were they doing this? It nagged at him. It would have been easy to mount an attack and chill the companions as they traversed the trail. It would be easy to do this when they reached the mouth. And yet chilling them didn’t seem to be the objective. They were being directed. But where, and why? He had a notion that it was back to the Inuit settlement. In which case, why had Thompson and his people allowed them to leave in the first place?

  The whole thing made no sense as yet. But what did sense matter when the first priority was to get the drop on their opponents and to assume the superior position, to be in control instead of being directed.

  Ryan took to his toes once more, careering through the sparse undergrowth, the Steyr in his hands, primed to fire. He didn’t want to initiate a firefight—not before the safety of the others had been secured—but he was ready if the trackers had other ideas.

  Jak, meanwhile, had made a much swifter progress, even though he had a greater distance to cover. The small, wiry albino youth found cover easily and skipped over tracts of open space without a thought. He treated this as though it were a hunt and the opponents were animal rather than human. Unconsciously clicking into the frame of mind that had made him such a good hunter, he stopped thinking and acted on his instinct and his senses. Picking out small sounds from the maelstrom of noise that constituted a storm, even in this relatively protected area, he could tell that the tracking party wasn’t near. Therefore he could move freely for the moment, exercising speed over caution. He had no scent of human that he could pick from the animal musk around: human smell was sharper, more pungent than that of other mammals, sweat trapped in the clothing souring over time and making it penetrate the sense more than the free-flowing odors of wolf or bear.

  As with Ryan, Jak was able to see how clearly they had been exposed as they’d followed the trade trail. Part of his mind was appalled at how open they had been, a lesson to be digested later. But right now he had to insure that there was to be a later. He slowed as he hit a denser growth of forest. Partly because he would have to exercise caution now to insure that he stayed silent and betrayed no sign of his presence. Partly because he had picked up the slightest change in the makeup of the surrounding noise, the constitution of the forest smell. There were people around here, well-concealed but not so much that they could deceive him.

  Jak slowed to a crawl. He knew he was approaching the intersection of the forest trail and the beginnings of the rock passage. Now he would be the hunter and their hunters become the hunted.

  He caught his first glimpse of their trackers: two men swathed in fur and hide, conferring by gesture as they overlooked the four companions making their way back along the path. He recognized one of them as McIndoe, the Inuit hunter they had journeyed out with. He was seemingly in charge of this expedition, as well, as he dismissed the other with a final gesture and sent him scurrying off to his destination.

  Jak considered chilling the bastard. His hand was stayed by the knowledge that one small noise, one notion that the hunters were under attack, and the four companions were a sitting target. Besides which, the Inuit didn’t seem as though they had, at this stage, a hostile intent. McIndoe had his Sharps over his shoulder, and the man he had sent away was also carrying just the one blaster, and this over his shoulder.

  Maybe Ryan was right. Maybe they should just go along with this for now, see what it meant.

  McIndoe had no notion of how close he had come to buying the farm as Jak left him, following the other Inuit hunter at a distance. The man was a messenger of sorts, as he traveled back along the parallel to the rock-enclosed trail, alerting four of his fellows that they should pull back. Jak returned with them. They had no idea he was here, and he could have easily taken them out before they had a chance to react or to locate the source of the attack. But once again he stayed his hand. He would play the long game, this time.

  Ryan had, by this time, located some Inuit of his own, his suspicions confirmed. He had almost run into the messenger who scouted this area of the hunting party, only just avoiding a collision that would have given the game away. Both men were too stealthy
for their own good, but fortunately the one-eyed warrior had been that bit more alert. The Inuit hunter had no notion there was anyone else in the forest, and had been too relaxed to hear the sounds of movement. Ryan watched him pass from cover, before following as the messenger rounded up the rest of the party. They were headed back to the intersection of rock wall and forest.

  Would this be the moment when they chose to attack?

  Ryan followed at a distance and watched as the Inuit party made its rendezvous, assembling on either side of the forest trail. They were about three hundred yards into the forest, and as he looked back he could see the four companions coming close to the mouth of the rock passage.

  The Inuit had to know that he and Jak were missing from the party, so why hadn’t they tried to do anything about it? None of it made sense to him, but he knew that their options were limited. The best he could do for now was to go along with what was happening and get back to his people.

  Jak had obviously had the same idea, for as Ryan dropped onto the trail, J.B. whirling and very nearly loosing a hail of Uzi fire at him, Jak appeared at his back.

  “Dark night,” the Armorer cursed, “you should have called, Ryan. I nearly—”

  “But you didn’t,” Ryan interrupted. “Listen, there’s something strange going on here.” He filled in the four companions on what had occurred since he had left them, and then listened while Jak told a similar story. The six of them had halted just short of the intersection and yet they had drawn no fire—or even interest—from those who had directed them back to this point.

  “What the hell do we do now?” J.B. asked. “We can’t try to go back.”