A hunter’s shadow darted by him. They were making him edgy.
Drip. Drip. The distant cubbyhole illuminated the head of a dyitzu as it came under the dripping water. Splat. . .
Arturus’ eyes went wide. He looked about to see how many of the shadows around him were devils and how many were his own men. Dyitzu fire sprang into existence, illuminating the room. The fireball was headed straight at him.
Wistan and Mabe came alive, their silenced pistol muzzles flashing. Arturus dropped to one knee, and leveled his rifle at the nearest of them. The fire passed over his right shoulder. He felt the heat stinging his cheek.
Don’t shoot too soon.
But he was ready. His finger on the trigger, his safety off. The dyitzu in his sights dropped, felled by three quickly fired bullets from Mabe’s gun.
The room became silent. Arturus looked about to make sure none of the enemies were moving.
Drip. Drip. Drip. . .
Galen moved amongst the devil corpses, making sure they were dead. For him, this involved slitting the dyitzu’s throats. Galen wouldn’t bother to check if they were alive or not beforehand, Arturus knew.
“Good shooting,” Aaron said.
Arturus nodded in agreement.
Dyitzu fire, having missed the hunters, clung to the walls, slowly burning away and keeping the room lit. Avery and Johnny Huang moved about the chamber, looking for more devils.
“I think we got them,” Johnny reported.
“Quietly, too,” Galen said. “We may be okay.”
He moved up to the pool where the water was collecting.
Drip. Drip. Drip. . .
The pool itself looked bloody. Arturus wondered if it was from the fiery lighting, or if a dyitzu had actually bled in there.
“I’ll be damned, Galen,” Aaron said. “You were right. A crack, right there in the hellstone.”
“Not from the settling, I don’t think,” Galen said. “It runs sideways. I’d think the cracks from the settling would be more likely to run with the grain.”
“What are you saying, that this crack is deliberate? Caused by someone?”
Galen shrugged. “Let’s spiral out from here. We may be close.”
“No way.” Avery crossed his arms. “If Julian had to come all this way each time he gathered our food, he’d be dead.”
Johnny Huang nodded.
“Not necessarily,” Galen said. “The boy was quick and quiet. I always wondered how he had become so adept. I think he may have been tested here, in the Carrion. Still, there is something to what you say. It’s not impossible that we are in the wrong place.”
Mabe and Wistan pushed more rounds into the clips of their pistols. The other hunters turned their safeties back on, but no one reslung their rifles.
They moved in steady circles, walking from room to room beneath the Carrion river. This time it was Arturus who stopped them. He heard the woman’s song again. That meant there was wind.
Julian would have heard it, too. I’m sure that’s how he found the weakness in the Carrion barrier.
There was a crawlway, nearly ten feet high, on one of the walls.
“If we had come through here,” Arturus said, pointing to the crawlway, “I doubt the dyitzu would have noticed us.”
Galen found a few handholds in the stone, and climbed up into the passage. He tossed down a rope, gripped it with both hands, and set his feet against the stone to help support it.
“Turi, first,” he said.
The hunters crawled up the rope, one by one. The crawlway was fairly wide and tall enough so that Arturus could stand up so long as he hunched his shoulders. There was no light in it whatsoever, though.
“Hand on each other’s backs,” Aaron ordered. “I want to make sure that everyone’s together.”
Arturus felt Galen grip him around his belt.
“Easy, son,” his father said. “Slowly forward.”
Arturus led them into the pitch black passage. His steps were short, both because Galen had him by the belt and because he couldn’t see where he was going. He ran the fingertips of his right hand along the stone. He reached out with his left periodically as well to make sure that he didn’t miss any branches.
I hope there’s no pit.
Galen did have his belt, however, and might be able to catch him should he fall.
Might.
The blackness was so complete that he could close his eyes and not notice much of a difference. He became aware of a blue splotch in his vision where he had first focused on a dyitzu fireball, and that was all he saw. At times he almost thought it something more than just an afterimage floating in front of him as the light seemed to dance, moving this way and that as he turned his head.
I’m getting tired. I need to rest.
His back and shoulders were sore from leading them all in this crouched position.
And I’m the short one. It must be worse for the others.
Her song became louder and louder before quieting suddenly. Then he saw a dim grey light coming from the end of the passageway.
“I see something,” he whispered back to Galen.
“Good,” Galen answered.
As Arturus moved forward he felt something crunch under his feet. He stopped the hunters and knelt to inspect it.
He held up what he had found into the dim light.
“Devilwheat,” Galen said.
Arturus smiled and then led them quickly down the tunnel, feeling Galen’s hand tugging at his belt every few steps. He could smell the wheat when he came to the tunnel’s edge.
The passageway became a high shelf in a dark grey room. The room itself wasn’t too large, maybe just a little more than fifty yards across, but it had more devilwheat growing in it than Arturus had ever seen before.
“Well, I guess this was the only place it could be,” Aaron said. “Close enough to the barrier, under the river. Good job, Galen.”
The shelf was nearly twenty feet tall, so Galen lowered a rope to help them down and braced himself by setting his feet against the stone. “This place might have been a harpy trap once.” He grunted as Arturus began going down the rope. “The wheat would attract people, and the harpies could have come in through here to kill them.”
Arturus slipped down the rest of the rope easily and regarded the devilwheat. It grew up from a raised woodstone floor in five foot tall stalks. The wheat was thick enough that it would be hard to walk through. Except for the outermost four or five feet of the room, it covered the entire floor. Huge cracks ran along the ceiling, water dripping from them in places.
Much of the devilwheat had been harvested already, leaving several almost bare patches of woodstone.
“This place is well tended to,” Galen said after he had climbed down, “and by more than Julian.”
Arturus and the Hunters began to walk around the field.
“Well, he sure as hell isn’t in here,” Aaron said.
“Could this place feed Harpsborough?” Avery asked, leaning against one wall.
“All of it, about,” Aaron answered. “If this is the place, then surely Julian was killed trying to make it here. Pressed his luck one too many times.”
“Likely,” Galen agreed.
“Johnny, what’s up with that exit?” Aaron called.
“Locked, sir. Steel door. We ain’t getting through there. Whoever else runs this place must have the key.”
Aaron nodded. “We shouldn’t stay here long, we may run into them.”
“Oh my,” Fitch said. “Julian may already have. Come look at this.”
They walked around the field to where Fitch was kneeling. There were a few splotches of dried blood.
“I’d bet it’s human,” Galen said. “Devil blood clots differently. Still, it’s hard to tell after it’s dried completely.”
“Can we be sure it’s Julian’s?”
Arturus looked at the wheat. It had been harvested on this side as well, but far less efficiently than elsewhere. Someone had
taken care to only remove every third stalk or so. Other stalks were broken here, making a path towards the center of the room. He followed through the wheat and found a bed of the flattened crop.
“Someone could have been waiting here, and ambushed him,” Arturus said.
Aaron came through the devilwheat after him. “Good eye, boy.”
Arturus looked to Galen. His father was also nodding. “I see no bullet scores. He may well have been taken alive.”
“Fuck him,” Patrick said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. This place is busted already.”
“Maybe.” Galen scratched his well trimmed beard. “That might be the wisest course of action. Julian is, after all, a boy who is quick of thought and loyal to Harpsborough. But I do not think that whoever owned this place is happy that we were taking their food. Perhaps their failure to kill him was an act of mercy. If that were the case then we should be safe returning to Harpsborough. But that is not the only possibility.”
“You think they’ll want revenge,” Aaron said.
“I left the Carrion with your First Citizen and Priest,” Galen went on, “and I can tell you that the men here are often a vengeful lot. Your village founders were wise to have left this place.”
“Vengeance would be a dangerous thing for them to pursue,” Aaron said. “They are surrounded by enemies. This place is crawling with devils. I’m amazed they can even survive.”
“Yet survive they can.” Galen stood up and looked towards the steel door. “And largely thanks to a place like this. They have no more precious resource.”
What does Galen want? Are his arguments real, or does he just want to convince them to save Julian.
“So now what?” Aaron asked, biting at his thumb nail. “We kill them and take back the boy?”
“No,” the word came unbidden from Arturus’ lips.
“No?” Johnny asked.
“We can’t kill them. We’ve stolen from them. That’s the extent of it. They’ve protected what’s theirs. We’d just escalate things.”
Galen grunted.
He approves.
“Look little man,” Fitch said, “this isn’t the time to occupy the moral high ground. They’ve got Julian. They’ve got this food. We need this food.”
“The hell we do,” Johnny said, “If the Citizens didn’t gorge themselves on meat the whole damn day—”
“Enough,” Aaron said. “We won’t fight against ourselves. Not here, at any rate. There’s time enough for that when we get home.”
“Alright.” Johnny held up his hands as if to keep Aaron from coming closer to him. “Fine. No problem. What’s the plan, sir? We ain’t going to last too much longer in here.”
Aaron crouched down by the wheat.
“Sir?”
“I’m thinking. Jesus Christ.”
Arturus moved over to Galen and tugged on his sleeve.
“What is it?” Galen whispered.
“I think I know the answer.”
“Then say it boy. Tell them all.”
Arturus nodded, and bit his lip.
They’ve always listened to me so far. But what if they think my idea’s stupid?
“We should trade for him,” Arturus suggested.
Fitch snorted. “Naïve little bastard, aren’t you?”
“Fresh eyes, fresh ideas,” Galen said. “The idea of working with a group out of the Carrion seems foreign to me, too. After all, I remember what these people were like. But if we offer them an easy way to get everything they want, they may capitulate.”
“And they’re not using all of their food, either,” Arturus said. “We could get Julian back and work out some agreement. We could trade them shells or something for devilwheat.”
“He’s got a point, Fitch,” Aaron said. “We should at least try to reason with them. What kind of people would we be if we didn’t?”
“Alive kind of people,” Fitch answered.
“You want to skip straight to the fighting? We can die there, too.”
“But then they don’t know we’re coming, sir.”
“Your points are valid, Fitch,” Galen said. “Now Aaron must weigh them.”
Aaron sat back on his haunches, covering his mouth with his hand.
I said it, and they didn’t think I was stupid.
Arturus bit his lip again.
It’s not about me, it’s about my idea. We need to do the right thing.
“It’s clear to me what Father Klein would say,” Aaron said finally.
“Who gives a fuck about that windbag?” Fitch all but shouted, stopping himself before continuing in a lower voice. “He wants us to appease God, but God’s not even here. Our souls are still at stake, Aaron, but they’re not up for judgment. Not anymore. If we die here it only gets worse. There’s no point in dying for a moral.”
Aaron looked at him fiercely. “That’s blasphemy, friend. Have you been feeding the Infidel Friend lately?”
“Aaron, you’re right that what he says seems godless,” Galen broke in. “But you have to admit that Fitch’s argument is pragmatic.”
“You agree with him?”
“No, but his words are correct and need to be weighed. We can’t just call them blasphemy and ignore them. It’s our lives, our souls, that are on the line here.”
Fitch nodded. “But you disagree with me, nonetheless.”
“Nonetheless.”
“Why?”
Galen glanced at Arturus before speaking, and gave him a smile. “We’ve forgot what we’re fighting, I think. We’ve had it so good for so long that we think the devils are the enemy. Or that the men of the Carrion are the enemy. Hell wants us to be evil. Its every stone has been laid to make us lose our way as human beings. Your founders, Michael and Klein, are from here. They remember it. It’s Hell that we are fighting, more so than anything else.”
Fitch wrinkled his nose. “Alright, let’s meet these guys.”
Aaron nodded.
“Then we kill them,” Fitch said.
Aaron snorted. “Should we wait for them here?”
“If they come through that door, I know they’ll shoot us,” Avery said.
Aaron looked to Galen. “Can you take us back around, to the other side of this door?”
“I can.”
“They must be close, the Carrion people.”
“They must.”
“Take us round.”
Galen walked back towards the crawlway and was preparing himself to climb up it when he stopped suddenly. He ran his fingers over a symbol that had been carved there in the rock. “Well, lad,” Galen whispered to Arturus, “no one can tell you that your heart was in the wrong place.”
Galen found finger holds in the stone which no normal man could ever use, pulled himself upwards along the wall, and then climbed into the crawlway. Then he dropped the rope down.
Arturus grabbed it and looked at the symbol.
It had been carved by humans, certainly. It was in the shape of a bull’s head.
Galen knows what that means.
Galen’s words were an itch in Arturus’ mind as they climbed back out of the crawlway. His father dropped down behind them last, coiling the rope quickly.
Galen had come from the Carrion, Arturus knew. He had survived that time like only a few in Harpsborough had. Could it be that Galen knew what tribe used that symbol? Did he know that they wouldn’t be willing to trade for Julian? But Galen couldn’t be certain of this, or he would have told the group that Fitch was right after all.
Of course he can’t know for sure.
Harpsborough had a new leader now and an almost entirely different set of villagers. The Carrion was so dangerous that people here would probably live shorter, not longer, than those in Harpsborough. It was very possible that this tribe, perhaps once unfriendly, might now be benevolent.
Maybe.
But how long ago was that? How many years since then? Ten years? Twenty?
Did I come from the Carrion?
They moved back through the dark underbelly of the river. Arturus made sure not to look at the bright cubbyholes in order to keep as much of his dark vision as possible.
Drip. Drip. Drip. . .
The thoughts stirred up other curiosities in his mind. Questions which he had begged Rick to tell him without ever having received satisfactory answers.
Where was I born? Are either of you my blood father? Who was my mother?
The answers had all been non-answers. He had been born in Hell. Both Rick and Galen were his fathers. The only questions Rick had tried to answer at all were the ones about his mother. “She was a wonderful and beautiful woman,” Rick had told him. “You are lucky to be related to such a lady.”
Drip. Drip. Drip. . .
But Rick would say no more, and he had only said that much, Arturus knew, because he had wanted to answer those questions so very badly.
Soon I will be their peer. I will demand they tell me.
Galen shouldered his rifle and fired without waiting for Wistan or Mabe’s silencers. The report of the rifle shocked Arturus. The flash from Galen’s muzzle illuminated the reasons why he’d loosed a bullet. In what little of the next room was visible through the hallway, Arturus could see a mass of dyitzu—perhaps even outnumbering the group they’d seen by the river.
Walls of dyitzu fire came tumbling in through the passageway. Arturus dropped into a crouch behind a grave mound for cover, drawing his pistol and firing twice down the corridor as he did so.
Some of the fireballs were disturbed by his bullets. The fluid centers of the fire splattered across the wall, burning in the hallway and slowly dripping down to the floor.
The rest of the hunters followed Arturus’ lead, jumping for cover. Johnny and Kyle landed behind the same mound that Arturus had. For a moment both the hunters and dyitzu sat quietly. The low sound of the flames left over from the dyitzu’s first volley was all Arturus could hear. Kyle pulled out his M-24 and set it on the mound. He looked carefully along the sights.
The silence was broken by his shot.
In the other room a dyitzu screamed. Arturus heard the sound of Kyle’s shell casing skittering across the stone floor.
“Fuck ‘em up, Kyle!” Johnny shouted.
Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) Page 26