The road ran only a short distance into a blind canyon. The canyon walls were smooth, the unmistakable signature of a rock quarry. Stacks of squared stone stood on the valley floor, lightly covered with snow. Large slabs of mountainside had fallen, and broken rock, some of it squared, lay in heaps at the margin of the valley. There were a few crude decaying wooden structures and a larger stone building with a partly collapsed roof at the very end of the road.
“Looks deserted enough,” said Floyd. “Let’s go.”
As Dave walked, his well-worn hiking boots clumping on the hard surface, he looked carefully at the cobblestones that made up the road.
A good deal of hard work went into this road. The stones fit closely together. You couldn’t fit a blade of grass between the joints!
Since no one came rushing out at their approach, Floyd gave the “OK” and they split up to search the ruins. Dave went into the dilapidated stone building. Climbing over piles of rubble, he slid his body over broken beams from the collapsed roof, which looked like broken ribs and slowly worked his way to the back corner of the building. He was about to go back when a patch of brown caught his eye. It looked like a piece of fabric. He reached his hand in between two sections of broken slate, but the fabric eluded his grasp. Using one of his crossbow bolts, he was able to snag a corner and pull it out. The cloth was brown vellum, heavily stained and badly weathered. In the dim light he could not make out any writing or figures, but decided to keep it for Floyd to examine. He carefully folded the swatch and put it into his pocket.
Dave heard Floyd calling to him from outside. He worked his way back to the doorway, and found the snow now falling so heavily, visibility was only a few feet. The dark clouds and heavy snowfall made it seem like twilight. He moved toward the sound of Floyd’s voice.
“We’ve seen enough,” said Floyd. “Let’s go back.”
“I found something,” said Dave.
“What did you find?” asked Floyd, peering up at the sky with a grimace.
Dave pulled the vellum out of his pocket and thrust it into Floyd’s hands. “I found a skin or something. It may be a message or a map.”
“I can’t make anything out in this light,” muttered Floyd, turning the vellum over in his hand. “Did it have anything on it?”
“Not that I could tell,” said Dave.
The distant howl of a wolf sounded.
Floyd gave it back. “We’ve got to go. We’ll look at it tonight at camp.”
With that, the two headed back to join Al and Stan who waited on the road. Together, they trudged back through the snow. This time they made directly for the others on the ridge since the snow had reduced visibility to such an extent that Floyd said he was no longer worried about being spotted from the road. As they climbed up to the ridge, they heard another wolf howl. By now, snow was collecting in knee-deep drifts.
Floyd steered them east, back down the valley, the way they had come. The party moved in single file, toiling through the deepening white, choosing bare, windblown sections of bedrock as their path whenever possible. Snow continued to fall, and soon a thick blanket covered the entire landscape, masking any terrain markers they might have recognized. Time and again, one of them would stumble into chest-deep snow filled depressions, where he would be forced to remain until the others could pull him out.
Their progress was painfully slow. Dave lost all track of time and wondered how far they had come after so much exertion.
Finally, when Dwight stumbled into a hole and all but disappeared from view, Floyd called out that he’d had enough. Pulling Dwight to safety, the group searched for his crossbow in the dim light, and then huddled by a large juniper—out of the howling wind—to talk.
“We’re going to have to stop,” said Floyd. “We need to get out of the snow. Let’s cut some of these junipers down and build a fire over by that cliff wall.” He pointed to a dark shadow to their right.
They struggled to the cliff wall, unloaded their packs, and began to gather branches from junipers and stunted pine trees growing in nearby thickets, while Floyd searched for shelter. The best they could do was a rock shelf about five feet wide and two feet off the ground. An overhanging cliff supporting two pine trees with low hanging branches provided some protection against the wind and the snow.
The needed firewood now gathered, they piled it in a circle about the rock face. The snow was drifting around their small dell and was already waist deep. They were trapped!
But the resinous wood caught easily, and they soon had a blazing fire going to boil some of the potatoes they had gathered the previous day. Remnants of a large grouse, which Dave had felled with a bolt from his crossbow at the campsite two nights before, rounded out the meal.
“Let’s have a look at your find,” said Floyd after dinner.
“Find?” queried Stan.
“Yeah, Dave found a scrap of vellum. Maybe it has something on it.”
Dave pulled it out and looked at the vellum in the firelight. There may have been some faint lines on it at one time, but he could barely make anything out. He passed it around. Stan said he thought it was a useless scrap, while others thought they recognized a map or some characters, but when pressed they could not agree on what they saw.
“You’re Rorschaching a bunch of stains,” scoffed Stan.
Floyd gave the vellum back to Dave. “Keep it in a safe place. I can’t help but feel that this is valuable.”
Dave pulled his waterproof money belt out from under his shirt. He took out the picture of his family, his most precious possession. The picture always gave him a pang of homesickness. He carefully folded the vellum, placed it beside the picture in the money belt and then fastened it around his waist. The others settled in for the night. Al took the end of the shelf, leaving a gap for him next to Glenn. Dave squeezed himself between his two friends despite Glenn’s grumpy protestations, and soon fell asleep.
__________
Dave woke early the next morning as a drop of water dripped off the cliff, full onto his face. He looked around, memories of the previous night flooding back. A shaft of bright sunlight broke through the snow-clad tree branches of their hollow and played against the cliff wall. He stood up and tried to look out, but the snowdrift surrounding their hollow was too high. Dave shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight and looked up. Blue sky. Then he looked at the rock face, dubiously.
I’m going to have to beat this thing sometime.
Taking a deep breath, he put his foot into a crevice and began to climb away from the snow-enshrouded hollow. The wind had been so violent during the night that the cliff side had been completely scoured of snow.
Move my hand; move my foot. Remember, always three solid holds, and I’ll be all right.
He inched his way up. Although he knew this was a technically easy climb, when he reached a ledge about twenty feet up, he was shaking so badly he had to stop.
Sitting with his back to the cliff, his feet pulled up against his chest, Dave looked to the east. The snow was very deep. Only the tops of the taller junipers showed through, like miniature Christmas trees.
The sun was well above the horizon, and the green of the conifer forest far to the east could be seen in the distance. He looked back the way they had come. Motion up the valley, toward the crest of the pass, caught his eye. A tiny dot—black against the white snow—was moving in their direction. Dave watched for some time as it moved, then hesitated, and then moved again, but always in their direction. He periodically lost sight of it as it disappeared behind clumps of juniper. As the thing came closer, rounding a patch of junipers, Dave saw that it was a large, long-legged wolf-like creature, padding along with its head down, as if snuffling for a trail with its long, narrow muzzle.
Dave called down to Floyd. “Floyd, there seems to be a very large wolf of some sort approaching our camp.”
Dave’s call woke Floyd out of a sound sleep, and it took him a few seconds to realize that Dave’s voice was not coming from their
camp but from the cliff above him. “Where is it?” asked Floyd.
“It’s about 200 yards northwest of us.”
As Dave called out, the wolf stopped and looked in his direction. It looked intently at the cliff face for some time. Finally, it spotted Dave up in the rocks. Then the wolf settled on its haunches and let out a series of ear piercing howls. These were soon answered by howls echoing from farther up the valley. In a few minutes, Dave saw a distant group of brown and black dots appear above the crest of the pass and move in their direction.
“I don’t like the looks of this, Floyd. That wolf has summoned company. They look like they mean trouble, since they’re not backing away.”
“All right, Dave. I’ll come up and have a look,” said Floyd, who at the sound of the howls appeared to be thoroughly awake.
“Bring up a rope and my binoculars, please,” said Dave. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
In a less than a minute, Floyd had also climbed to Dave’s perch. The lone wolf still sat on its haunches, eying them intently.
Much nearer now, the binoculars revealed ten more wolves bounding through the snow.
“Let’s get everyone up here until we’re sure we know what’s going on,” said Floyd.
“What are those things?” asked Dave. “They look like wolves but they’re much bigger than I would have imagined.” He fastened the rope to a rock projection, and the others climbed up onto the ledge, carrying their backpacks. Al had packed up Dave’s gear, fastened Dave’s pack to the rope, and then followed the pack up the rock face, climbing as nimbly as a mountain goat. By the time everyone was safely on the ledge, the other wolves, yapping, howling, and snarling, had joined the alpha wolf.
After a few minutes, the yapping stopped and the pack began warily to approach the camp in the hollow. The approach of the wolves gave everyone a good chance to examine the beasts at close range.
Floyd exclaimed, “Those monstrosities must weigh at least 200 or 300 pounds. Look at the size of their paws—they’re like pillows!”
The creatures were enormous! Some were black and some brown, but all had the long-legged appearance of wolves, with massive, long narrow jaws that looked as if they could easily fasten onto a basketball. Approaching the deserted camp, their red eyes stared hungrily at the explorers perched on the ledge, out of reach.
The beasts broke through the hollow bubble of snow into the camp. While the other wolves snuffled around the site, the pack leader stayed about forty feet away. It circled the camp, glaring continually at the ten travelers, watching their every move. Dave felt a shudder as the obvious malevolence of the creatures washed over him. Dwight raised his crossbow to shoot one of the beasts, but Floyd quietly put his hand on his crossbow and lowered it.
“Let’s wait before we start shooting,” said Floyd. “We don’t yet know what we’re dealing with here. The last thing I need is a wounded wolf to worry about.”
The wolves, having satisfied themselves with searching the camp, easily jumped out of the hollow, back onto the top of the snow, to rejoin their leader. Yapping and snarling, they milled about. Finally the leader let out a sequence of growls, and the wolves split into two groups. One group headed east along the cliff, while the other headed west. The leader, however, retreated another 100 yards, and then once again sat on its haunches. Floyd handed Dave the binoculars.
“Keep an eye on it! I’m going to climb a little higher to look around.”
Dave watched the beast intently with his binoculars. It was licking its paws unconcernedly. However, as Dave continued to watch, it seemed to him that this deliberate grooming by the beast was a sham. He caught a gleam of the beast’s eyes every few seconds. It appeared to be checking to be sure they had not moved.
“This isn’t good, Floyd. That beast is watching us!”
“I agree with you, Dave; I also don’t like the look of this,” said Floyd from a ledge another twenty feet up. “Even though the other wolves have gone, I’d rather not chance a visit by that guy by climbing back down to the camp. Besides, with the snow up to our waists, we’d be sitting ducks. Let’s work our way along the cliff until we’ve put a good distance between us and that monstrosity.”
“Where have the other wolves gone, I wonder?” muttered Dave. He scanned up and down with the binoculars but couldn’t see a trace of them. That was odd, mighty odd! The other men, having begun to climb, were too busy looking for the next handhold to attempt an answer.
Reluctantly, Dave put the binoculars into his pack and looked grimly at the rock face. How am I ever going to manage this?
A rope snaked down from above. “You have a heavy pack,” called Al. “Tie the rope on and let me give you a hand.”
Dave tied the rope on and felt much more confident than he had before. He climbed up to the next ledge, then followed Al and the others.
Trying to traverse the cliff face was difficult, but they were able to climb to a ledge that ran due east across the rock. This ledge climbed slightly, ending abruptly after a few hundred paces. They searched for another ledge and again continued on for a time. Doggedly scrambling forward in this laborious manner, they covered about a mile.
The going had been so slow it was early afternoon when they came upon their first major obstacle. A field of broken rock that had obviously slid off the mountainside sometime in the past blocked their path. They saw no sign of the wolves, or lupi, as Al had named them, so they took a brief rest for lunch.
Lunch over; Floyd roused them to cross the rockslide. Dave felt a growing sense of danger and cautiously unlimbered and armed his crossbow. Picking their way among the rocks, they had progressed about 300 yards—and were just rounding the corner of a house-sized boulder—when the wolf pack struck.
A huge black lupus raced among the smaller boulders, bounded onto a large rock, and leaped onto Floyd, who was in the lead. Floyd just had time to turn his back and duck as he was bowled over by the beast. Dave, who was second in line, reacted quickly, shooting his crossbow bolt into the chest of the wolf at point-blank range. The beast roared and reared up from Floyd’s back, pawing the air.
At that same moment, four other creatures raced around the back of the huge boulder and attacked from the rear, leaping onto the backs of the travelers and snapping at their necks. The lead lupus stumbled as a rock shifted under its weight, giving the men just enough time to react before the beasts’ weight drove them to the ground.
Al had his sword out in a moment. He rushed at the nearest lupus and thrust the weapon as deep as it would go into the neck of the beast. In doing so, he interrupted its efforts to tear the backpack off its victim, who had wedged himself into a gap between two rocks. The wolf snarled, twisted and tore the sword from Al’s grasp. Al tried desperately to free his rifle as the lupus reared back and gathered itself for another spring. The leap never came. The wolf sank to the ground—its carotid artery severed—in a pool of its own blood, which welled in a red torrent around the sword’s hilt.
Three of the men, transfixed with terror, were screaming, unable to react. Brandon pulled out his sword and thrust it deep into the neck of a third wolf.
“Use your crossbows!” Dave shouted, and rushed two wolves attacking Kyle Jensen. The nearest wolf released its prey, and gathered itself for a leap at Dave, but lost its footing on the bloodstained rock and fell short. Dave hacked at its forelimb, cutting the tendon. The beast lunged forward, at Dave’s arm. A rifle cracked, and the bullet tore a gaping hole in the wolf’s chest. Two more shots rang out.
Dave turned, looking for other attackers. Four lupi were down. The fifth was racing away, pursued by crossbow bolts, which scattered harmlessly among the rocks. Floyd fired one last bullet after the fleeing beast, and then stood watching for any further attack.
Adrenaline rush subsiding, the extent of the carnage assailed Dave’s senses. Kyle Jensen was dead; a massive bite to his throat had nearly severed his head. The rest were unwounded but shaken. Several of the backpacks were shredded.
“Dave, here, take my rifle and cover that approach around the boulder,” said Floyd, woodenly rubbing his aching shoulder, as he indicated the side of the boulder where the lupus had fled. “Al, you take the front approach.”
It was late afternoon. The group wrapped Kyle’s mangled body in his sleeping bag and first carried, then hoisted it with ropes, to a sloping scree-covered shelf. Digging a shallow grave, they buried him, and then built a cairn of rocks over the site. Al made a small wooden cross, which he stuck into the mound. After washing off the gore and cleaning their weapons in a stream, they were too exhausted to continue, and spent the night huddled on a ledge overlooking the fresh grave.
The noise of dislodged rocks clattering down the mountainside below woke them, but because of the overcast night, they could not see anything in the deep shadows. Sleeping fitfully, they were awakened again later by the noise of snarling and howling.
The next morning, the sun came out and the weather warmed up considerably. The cairn directly below was undisturbed. But much further down the carcasses of the dead lupi that had been at the battle scene were gone. They could see no sign of the other wolves.
Gloom continued to plague the group; they concurred the wilderness had taken on a terrifying aspect, as if a park had turned out to be a coliseum and they were the Christian victims in a spectacle of sacrifice. They agreed no one had slept well, and they ate their food in silence, with none of the cheerful banter that usually characterized their meals. Dave felt as if his world had changed forever. He relived the agonizing moments of combat, and was tormented by the image of the lifeless body of his comrade, soggy with congealing blood.
He was, however, no longer as afraid of climbing as he had been when they first took to the mountainside. The horror of the killing and the repetitive climbing had dulled the fear that had almost paralyzed him at first.
After breakfast, Floyd broke the silence. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say those wolves, or lupi, if you will, hit us with a planned, coordinated attack.”
“Why do you say ‘if I didn’t know better’?” said Al. “This is a new world, and we really don’t know what to expect. Just because wolves and dogs never showed this kind of intelligence on earth doesn’t mean it can’t happen here.”
The Halcyon Dislocation Page 11