Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Ryan had no idea what that meant. Something that the personality calling itself Jordan had dragged from its memory centuries before. But there was no mistaking the tone and emotion of the voice in which he spoke those words. Jordan was having doubts about the success of the holy mission.

  And, frankly, Ryan couldn’t blame him. For the thing that made the ville of Fairbanks appear impregnable was the wall that stretched around the perimeter, forming a ring that had only one way in and one way out. It was not the first time they had come across a ville that was protected in such a way. Indeed, for a larger ville that had been built from predark remains and had been established since people first began to crawl from the nukecaust, it was an obvious move. But there had never been a wall quite like this before.

  It had no sec posts. There was little need, as to try to scale it would prove to be impossible. The wall was partly constructed of rock hewn from the sides of the valley, and partly from huge blocks of ice that had been ripped from the land around. These rocks and ice blocks had been built into a construction that stood as high as some of the two-story buildings—perhaps forty feet, perhaps a little less, it was hard to judge when looking down into the valley—with jagged edges that would have given a plenitude of foot- and handholds if not for one simple precaution: when the wall had been built, it had been covered with water that had frozen into a layer of ice that now made the ascent of the defense nothing short of impossible. No doubt that, as the weather gradually chipped at the sheet ice, so it was replenished in those areas that the elements themselves didn’t refresh. It was a bold move of simple genius. Using the constant low temperature to furnish a defense that did away with the need for manpower.

  As for the only entrance, it consisted of a set of doors less than half the height of the wall, cobbled together from wood and metal sheeting. On each side was a tower with a covered crow’s nest atop that housed—as far as could be seen—two men per nest. The doors looked flimsy in comparison to the wall, but then they didn’t have to be strong. A force bottlenecked into attacking through this one spot would be easy pickings for both the sec men in the crow’s nest and for any armed citizens who waited patiently behind the last line of defense.

  Short of sending out parties to mine the wall, thus blowing great chunks from it to gain access, there was little that could be done to breach the defenses with any degree of success. As Ryan looked to his people, he could see that they felt the same way. Come to that, he could tell from the expression on Jordan’s face that he, too, shared those thoughts.

  But what was Thompson’s great plan? Did he have one?

  They had to find out. Ryan began to pull back from the lip of the valley. Unless the Fairbanks sec had sec scouts, they would be aware that the Inuit were coming, but not that they’d actually arrived. The downside to the ville’s splendid isolation was that such a scout party would be hard to send out covertly. It was reasonable to assume that they had some time in which to rest and form a strategy.

  So they’d better use that time wisely.

  FOLLOWING RYAN’S LEAD, Jordan pulled back with the rest of the companions and headed straight for the chief, who was seated in a small group that also contained McPhee and McIndoe as well as the sec chief’s trusted lieutenants. Jordan strode ahead of the companions and heatedly began to shout before he was upon them.

  “Ye did not tell me of the walls—like Edinburgh, like Jericho. Saints alive, man, do ye expect us to shout and the whole thing comes tumbling down upon the enemy?”

  Thompson said nothing. His expression betrayed little, but his frozen posture suggested he was taken aback by the sudden explosive anger of the stranger.

  It was McPhee who answered. “Surely the Almighty will guide you in this, as he will us,” he said carefully. “Should you not have your own plans?”

  “Plans!” the stranger roared. “How can I have plans when I had no idea what the damn town looked like until a few minutes ago? Ye people are the ones who live here—”

  “Then what about your mighty warriors?” McIndoe cut in. “Isn’t it time they proved their worth?”

  Ryan found it hard to keep a sardonic smile from tugging at the corners of his mouth. He had to admire the smoothness with which the sec chief had shifted the whole responsibility of the attack and put those he hated in the front line at the same time. It was just unfortunate for him that Ryan had a few ideas.

  “There is something we can do. If—and only if—you’ve got anything more than blasters in your armory.”

  “Yeah, like some more of that plas-ex,” J.B. added pointedly, having followed Ryan’s reasoning.

  “We have some plas-ex,” McIndoe replied blandly, letting the implication drift past him.

  “Good. Then we may be able to get this attack going,” Ryan said. “If you’ve got the balls to help us.”

  “HOW THE HELL do I get myself into this kind of shit?” Mildred whispered.

  “How the hell do any of us get into this kind of shit?” Krysty murmured by way of reply.

  They had circled the perimeter of the valley and were now approaching the wall around the rear of Fairbanks, almost 180 degrees from where the majority of the Inuit rested, awaiting first light and the beginnings of an allout firefight. They had scrambled down the incline and kept low as they ran across the flat valley floor toward the wall, armed with plas-ex and detonators.

  They weren’t alone. Ryan’s plan had been simple and had quickly enthused both Jordan and the Inuit leader as a certain way to gain egress to the ville. McPhee had kept his own counsel, and in a sense Ryan didn’t blame him. It was a strategy, but it was in no way a certainty to obtain the desired result. It was a possible solution, and—perhaps more importantly for Ryan’s people—it would enable them to test the resolve of McIndoe and his sec force. Would they take this as a chance to try to eradicate the companions, or would they put that to one side and treat it as a chance to make their mission successful?

  If the former, then it would be one-on-one, and Ryan’s people could take on some of their enemy, sending a message to those who would try to take them out. If the latter, then it would mean that their attention was now focused on their primary objective. This being the case, it would possibly make it easier for the companions to snatch Doc and make their escape in the chaos that was sure to ensue.

  Either way, it would have a bearing on Ryan’s future strategy.

  So it was that five parties of two were armed with what J.B. estimated as enough plas-ex to blow holes in the wall, making points of entry and possibly weakening the structure enough to cause a chain of collapse around the circumference. This last would be difficult to achieve. J.B. had little more than a glimpse at a distance, and in the dark, on which to base any calculations. Any success would therefore be more luck than judgment, and any resulting collapses beyond the points of explosion a bonus.

  Mildred and Krysty were paired, while Jak and J.B. moved together. Ryan chose to go with McIndoe. It would give him a chance to sound out the sec chief. Four other Inuit sec warriors were paired.

  Each team was given enough plas-ex to cause the requisite damage, and instructed on where to place it on the wall. J.B. was surprised to find that Inuit had a large stock of explosives, which he could only attribute to stockpiling from the villes they had earlier decimated. If nothing else, it explained why the sec chief had been so free with the explosive he had used to try to blow them all the way to the farm. The fact that he was now revealing this to them did little to allay J.B.’s concerns, although he could understand Ryan’s tactic in trying to draw the hostile Inuit faction into the open, forcing them to either stand and fight or sublimate their hostility to the greater cause.

  Regardless, Ryan arranged it so that each Inuit pair was split by a pair comprised of his people, and he and McIndoe made the most difficult assault of all: that upon the front of the wall, having to plant plas-ex as near to the entrance as possible without detection. The one-eyed warrior reasoned that this would be the ad
vance that would determine how the Inuit sec man would play out the whole combat situation.

  So while he and the impassive Inuit advanced silently down the slope, trying to pick out the few brief respites of shadow offered by the contours of the steep slope as they descended quickly to the valley floor, the other parties set off around the lip of the valley and began their own descents. Ryan used his wrist chron to count off the start times for those who had the farthest to travel, trying as best he could to stagger the parties so that they would be planting their plas-ex and setting their detonators with as much synchronization as was possible.

  Mildred and Krysty, as the pair who had the farthest to go before beginning descent, had set off before any of the others, and by the time they were on the valley floor they were both beginning to feel the effects of the journey.

  They came upon the wall without being detected. They could sacrifice speed for stealth as there were no sentries on this darkened side, the night being accentuated by the shadow of the rock and ice.

  “Shit, I can see why they don’t bother guarding this,” Mildred breathed as she reached out to touch the surface of the wall. The ice covering the block construction was slick and beyond cold—it almost burned to touch.

  “Bastard to climb, all right,” Krysty commented, “but more to the point, how the hell do we get the plas-ex into the wall?”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me that,” Mildred whispered. She stepped back and looked up at the towering construction. About five feet above her head, a patch of ice had cracked and fallen, leaving a crevice between rock and ice block that could hold a charge. The problem would be gaining the height. Climbing the rock would be impossible. Only one thing for it. “How strong you feeling, girl?” Mildred asked.

  Krysty followed her eyes up to the point in the rock. “Why me? Why can’t I be the one who places the charge?”

  “’Cause I’ve got no Gaia power to call on if you dislocate my shoulder?” Mildred queried with a grin. “Besides, I called it first.”

  “Can’t argue with that, can I?” Krysty murmured wryly. She dropped to one knee and Mildred clambered onto her shoulders. Steadying the pair of them, Krysty carefully climbed to her feet and advanced slowly, planting her legs apart in front of the wall to try to spread the weight and balance.

  When Mildred felt that Krysty was solid, she carefully raised herself, one foot at a time, until she was no longer kneeling, but standing on Krysty’s shoulders. She tried to balance speed with the desire to avoid causing Krysty pain—discomfort was an inevitability—and winced on her friend’s behalf as she felt the woman’s shoulder muscles tense beneath her boots and heard Krysty’s breathing grow more labored.

  Ultimately, it was simply a fact that Krysty was taller and had a more developed musculature than Mildred. It made sense for the smaller woman to plant the plas-ex. But this didn’t prevent a twinge of guilt as she fumbled for the gap between the rock and ice, wasting precious seconds. She gently prodded the pliable plas-ex into the gap, then set the detonator before placing it in the explosive.

  It was tempting to jump down and spare Krysty another second of agony, but she was aware that one wrong landing could make things harder. A turned, sprained or broken ankle at this point would really screw things. So she lowered herself carefully, Krysty’s hands reaching up to guide her down.

  “How the hell could you get fat on the slop we’ve been eating lately?” Krysty gasped with as much good humor as she could muster.

  “Just my age, I guess,” Mildred returned. She looked along the curve of the wall. “Doesn’t look like the tribe is interested in getting rid of us right now. I just hope they’ve got their charges planted.”

  “More than we have,” Krysty said, dropping onto one knee. “Think we can make enough of an impression down here to get the second charge planted well enough?”

  “Just do our best.” Mildred shrugged, joining her.

  They chipped out a small section of the ice at the foot of the wall, using a knife given them by Jak to dig out the hard earth underneath the overlap of ice and levering up a section, almost snapping the blade before the ice cracked enough to give them a small hole at the bottom. Some of the charge would blow out into the earth rather than into the rock and ice, but there wasn’t the time to make a further impression. They would have to hope that this blast, combined with that of the higher charge, would be enough to have the desired effect.

  Charges now planted, the two women made their way back across the valley floor, keeping a steady pace. They needed to be swift, but the efforts of planting the charges had taken a toll and the ascent up the steep valley side would take no little effort. The rock and ice were slippery underfoot, with little to assist them on their passage to the top. Muscles in their calves and thighs burned with the effort of climbing such a sheer incline at such speed. It was with relief that they made the top, pausing for only a second to catch their breath before starting the long haul back to the Inuit camp.

  At least they hadn’t been attacked by rogue Inuit. Ryan had sent them the farthest, despite the extra effort, as he reasoned that the rear of the wall would be the safest spot. J.B. and Jak had taken an area that could still, at a pinch, be seen from the crow’s nests. This demanded more caution and the greater stealth skills of the albino youth and the Armorer. Like Mildred and Krysty, they had found the most difficult part of the task was actually finding somewhere in the ice wall that would take the charges.

  Once they had placed them, they had little problem in getting back to the base camp, where Jordan was waiting anxiously for them, flanked by Thompson and McPhee, who was now finding it hard to mask his skepticism about the whole attack.

  Like Mildred and Krysty, they had encountered no problem with the Inuit sec men who had been dispatched at the same time, and figured as their distaff companions that the Inuit would save any attempts to be rid of them until the full-scale attack took place. Indeed, when they returned, they found that one of the Inuit teams had already returned. Before too long, the second Inuit team joined them, with Mildred and Krysty not far behind.

  “Did ye do the job well?” Jordan asked each of them as they arrived.

  “Did the job—have to wait to see how well,” J.B. answered for all of them.

  There was only one pair who hadn’t yet returned. The companions exchanged wondering glances. What was going on? Ryan and McIndoe had the least distance to cover. What was keeping them?

  THE DESCENT TO THE VALLEY floor had been painfully slow. With the Inuit camp enough distance back to insure that even the sheltered fires wouldn’t cast enough of a glow to be picked up by the Fairbanks sentries, the last thing that the advancing pair wished to do would be to alert the men in the crow’s nests by their own lack of caution. There was little that could be used as cover, and both men were frustrated by the lack of time as they reached the floor of the valley. In many ways, this presented the same problem magnified. The glow of light from the ville spread over the low gates and out across the valley floor.

  There were, however, advantages to this. Beyond the cone of light, the contrast with this and the darkness was greater, which gave them some space in which to maneuver; and the sounds of the ville that also spilled out into the valley could possibly be so loud to the ears of the sentries as to make anything on the outside hard to detect.

  Ryan’s plan was simple. Each man took a parcel of plas-ex and ran—on each side of the cone of light—until he reached the wall. Once there, he found a way to plant the explosive by a pivotal point—a hinge, say—of the door, then get the hell back to rendezvous at the point on which they now stood.

  McIndoe eyed Ryan suspiciously, as though mentally checking through the plan for any possible catch that may leave him exposed. He could find none, but still he paused. Ryan wondered if the sec chief was trying to work out a way in which he could entrap his foe and yet get away himself.

  “Listen, you stupe bastard,” Ryan snarled, patience now gone, “I know y
ou tried to chill us, and I know you don’t want us here. But what do you want more—for your mission to succeed or to get rid of us? If we’re still standing at the end of the firefight, then we sort this out. Until then, we’re pulling in the same direction because neither of us wants to buy the farm. Does that make sense to you?”

  If the Inuit was surprised by Ryan’s sudden cold statement of fact, he wouldn’t betray his feelings. Instead he considered the words, then nodded briefly. “Okay. I tell my men. Until we all last ones standing, then we don’t waste energy trying to chill you. But after…”

  “Good enough for me,” Ryan snapped. “Now let’s get this done.”

  The two men parted company. Ryan’s instincts told him that he could trust the Inuit sec chief so far. The battle for Fairbanks, now they were here, was the greater target. It was one factor less to consider. Now he could only hope that none of the Inuit on the explosives parties had been given prior orders to try to surreptitiously wipe out Jak and J.B., or Mildred and Krysty.

  But there was little time to worry about that right now. Using the darkness along the perimeters of the light cone, and the cover of the noise, Ryan had soon made the wall. He discovered the almost glasslike ice covering and cursed to himself as he searched for cracks. He dare not try to force an opening, as he could see the men in the crow’s nest from where he was standing. He edged closer to the wood and metal doors.

  Here was opportunity. The roughly hewn doors were ill-fitting, and where panels of wood and metal had been joined together were seams large enough for plas-ex charges. The hinged sections were also poorly fitting, gaps appearing between door and wall.

  His problem was to fit the plas-ex and detonator without being overheard or spotted by the sec men who hovered less than several feet above him. Despite the extreme cold he could feel the sweat gather in the small of his back and trickle down his forehead, stinging in his good eye and slipping beneath the patch into the puckered and empty socket, as he worked the plas-ex into the gaps, priming the detonator. He kept looking up, almost able to smell the musk of body heat and animal skin from the guards above him. He was sure that he had to be visible in the light, at least partially. Certainly, as he looked across the twenty-foot divide that was the double-door span, he could see McIndoe working feverishly at his own task.