by Alex Archer
Derek shrugged. “Radio interference is nothing new up here. The landscape plays hell with radio signals.”
“But you got the text from the company via satellite yesterday, right?”
“Yes. But these guys have a standard CB in the truck they’re in.”
“Mr. Wainman.”
They both turned and saw Wishman standing there in the darkness. Annja frowned. He was awfully close to them. Had he been hiding in the darkness listening to their conversations? And if so, for how long? Annja hoped he hadn’t heard Derek plotting to get into the burial mound.
Derek kept his face from showing surprise. “Hello, Wishman.”
Wishman pointed behind him. “There will be a truck arriving in the next few minutes. I assume these are the men your company has sent.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Derek said.
“Nevertheless, they will arrive,” Wishman replied. And then he walked off into the darkness.
Derek glanced at Annja and then cleared his throat. “Well, I guess we’d better go and see about welcoming them to their new home.”
16
As Annja and Derek walked back through the trees, they could already hear the crunching tires of the truck as it drove in over the snow. The headlights bounced and waggled as it maneuvered down the bumpy path. Finally, the truck came to a stop and six men climbed out.
Derek strode over. “Which one of you is Hansen?”
A bulky man zipping up his coat raised his hand. “Here.”
Derek nodded and shook his hand. “Glad you guys arrived intact. I tried reaching you on the radio but I got nothing back.”
Hansen pointed at the truck. “Damned thing’s busted. Not good for anything except listening to static. Trust me, we’re damned glad to see the lot of you here. Time was we were getting worried about making it here in time to see where we were going. Any longer and they would have found us frozen solid somewhere out there.”
Derek nodded. “Hungry?”
“Famished. We left this morning and haven’t stopped but for gas.”
“I’m not sure where we’re going to be able to put you. The conditions are a little…rustic.”
Hansen shrugged. “No matter. We can crash on the floor tonight and get a shelter of our own started tomorrow. As long as you’ve got a fire going, with some coffee and food, we should be fine.”
“Good.” Derek smiled. “I’m guessing you’ll be in our lodge. Not sure the Araktak will take too kindly to you being in their shelter.”
“Sort of a sticky situation here, then, is it?”
Derek shrugged. “We’re on tenuous ground perhaps. We have a done deal with these people, but they want time to move their deceased to another area. Headquarters has gone back on that deal somewhat by bringing you guys out well ahead of time. It hasn’t gone over swimmingly with them.”
Hansen shrugged. “Can’t say I blame ’em. I’d be madder than hell if someone tried to change the rules on me midway through the game.” He spit a wad of tobacco on the ground. “Not to worry, Mr. Wainman. I’m sure once we get ourselves squared away, these Araktak guys will see me and the boys are pretty much the same as them. We just got a job to do is all.”
Annja raised an eyebrow. “That’s awfully enlightened of you to say.”
Hansen turned as if seeing Annja for the first time. “And just what did you say your name was there again, miss?”
“I didn’t,” Annja said.
Hansen tucked his chin and grinned. “Pardon me, then.”
Derek sighed. “This is Annja Creed, Hansen. She’s here on special assignment for the company. Her role is to conduct a search for any relics or lingering items that belong to the Araktak people. She’s to help them relocate the sanctity of this land to a new location.”
“Never heard of anyone relocating a burial ground,” Hansen said. “Of course, that don’t mean all that much. People got different ideas on doing things every damned day, right?” He guffawed once and then spit on the ground again.
Annja pointed at the sickly brown stain on the white snow. “You might want to watch out where you spit around here, it being sacred ground and all.”
Hansen looked mollified. “Oh, yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that, Mr. Wainman. Won’t happen again.”
“I appreciate that.” Derek pointed out the shelter amid the pines. “We’re in that lodge there.”
Hansen turned back to the five other men and waved them on. “Okay, fellas, let’s get our gear inside and rest up.” He glanced at Derek. “Where’s the chow?”
Derek pointed to the main lodge. “That’s where we have dinner, although it’s still a bit early. We ate rather after sunset last night.”
Hansen shrugged. “We can wait.”
Annja watched them troop off toward the shelter. “Our place isn’t exactly big enough for that bunch of brutes.”
“Brutes?”
Annja smirked. “Well, they are big guys.”
“They’re miners,” Derek said. “Different breed of men. What else would you call a person who willingly descends into the bowels of the earth in order to dig out its most precious treasures?”
“They’re like modern-day dwarves,” Annja said. “Except for the fact that those guys are pretty big.”
“I think they’d like the analogy,” Derek said. “To them, the pride is in doing their work and doing it well. The diamond miners of Canada are especially proud of what they do. They don’t have the black lung that plagues coal miners, but they do have their own health issues. Still, the promise of that shiny gem makes them work all the harder.”
“Even though at the end of the day the treasure goes to the company.”
Derek nodded. “True enough.”
There was a rush behind them and Nyaktuk led a small group hurrying along the trail. Annja spotted a litter and stepped forward. “What in the world?”
Nyaktuk held up his hand. “Your man got trapped partly under the ice. His foot got wrapped in a vine of some sort. We had to work to free him. But he is in trouble. He is too cold.”
They carried the litter past them and Annja could see Godwin’s bluish face in the dim light. Piles of clothes had been placed atop him while the other Araktak men walked behind and beside the litter almost nude.
Nyaktuk directed them into the main lodge. Annja and Derek rushed to follow.
Inside, the fire blazed and a wall of heat hit them upon entering. Wishman sat close by stoking the fire to greater heights and intensity than it had been during the feast.
Annja shook her head. How in the world did Wishman manage to be in so many places at almost the same time? They’d only seen him out in the woods a few minutes earlier and yet, here he was back at the fire in the main lodge, adding fuel and seemingly completely unconcerned with anything.
As soon as he saw Godwin’s face, however, he moved quickly. He bent closer to Godwin and listened to the scattered breaths that came from him. He looked at Nyaktuk and motioned for them to turn Godwin on his side.
“He has too much water in him. Until it is expelled I can do nothing to draw out the cold.”
The men turned Godwin over and Nyaktuk pelted Godwin’s back with his hard fists near the shoulder blades. The percussive strikes startled Godwin into a coughing fit that gave way to retching. Finally, he vomited a lot of water that splayed across the dirt floor of the lodge before being absorbed by the soil.
Wishman nodded. “Good. Turn him on his back once more.”
This time Wishman listened a second or two longer to Godwin’s breathing. He glanced up at Nyaktuk. “The water is gone. The cold remains. He must be warmed by the spirits.”
To Annja, this meant little, but Nyaktuk and the men seemed to understand implicitly. They moved Godwin closer to the fire and for the first time Annja noticed a small bed of dense pine boughs on the floor. Godwin’s body was lowered gently onto the boughs. Then the men piled their clothes on him again and waited.
Wishman took up a slender wooden pole and beg
an chanting in his own dialect. He sprinkled the air with bits of some powder and then tossed a few different herbs into the blazing hearth. Annja heard the snap and pop of several of them and a delicate scent oozed into the room.
Wishman’s voice sallied higher and lower, dancing over tones and rhythms of some ancient origin. Annja found the lull of the strange chanting irresistible. The perfume of herbs that hung in the air called out to her and she felt her eyelids droop before starting again to stay awake.
The fire blazed harder now despite the fact that no one had added any fuel to it or even stoked it. The flames seemed to reach out of the hearth itself toward Godwin’s prone figure. They licked toward the pine boughs and then for just an instant, seemed to touch Godwin’s body itself. Briefly, Annja could swear that the fire turned a different shade of yellow, but then she blinked and everything seemed to be back to normal.
Wishman’s chanting died down into a soft rhyming mumble of syllables and clucks from the back of his mouth. It reminded Annja of the language the bushmen of Africa spoke, but such a thing wasn’t possible.
Or was it?
Wishman’s voice finally died with a final stroke of the pole he carried and then the fire popped one last time.
Godwin’s eyes fluttered and he woke up.
Annja glanced at Derek but he only shrugged, seemingly as confused as she was by the entire ordeal.
Nyaktuk held a bottle of something to Godwin’s lips. “Drink this.”
Godwin drank from it and coughed instantly. Nyaktuk urged him to drink more and then at last, Godwin was able to do so without choking on it.
Wishman looked at Annja. “Your friend will be fine now, Friend of Bear. Have no more worry about this. Tomorrow he will be in good health again.”
“Thank you very much,” Annja said.
“It is part of the things that have to be done.” Wishman bowed his head once and then smiled at her. “Now you understand a little bit more about us.”
Godwin raised himself up on his elbows. “Sorry for the trouble.”
Derek waved his hand. “What happened?”
“They cut through the ice on the river and we went in. I ducked under and was trying to get my bearings when my foot touched something. Before I knew it, it felt like I was being pulled under. It was the strangest thing! I panicked and took in a lot of water. If these guys hadn’t been there, I would have been a goner.”
Godwin reached out to Nyaktuk. “Thank you and all of you for what you’ve done for me.”
Nyaktuk nodded solemnly and then, remembering that he and his men were without their clothes, scrambled to get some on because Annja was present.
She averted her eyes. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, guys, really.”
But they continued to dress and even Godwin managed to find the strength to do so quickly.
The door to the lodge opened as they were pulling on their pants. Hansen and his crew strode in and stopped short.
Hansen’s mouth dropped open. “What in the hell—?”
Derek held up his hand. “Hypothermia treatment. That’s all, Hansen.”
Hansen chewed his lip. “I’ve been around the cold a long time, but I ain’t seen nothing yet that means a guy’s got to get down to his birthday suit to help out another fellow who’s cold.”
Wishman frowned. “Then you haven’t seen all there is to see, young man, have you? These men bore your friend back here using their clothes to help keep him warm. If they had not done so, he should be dead by now.”
Hansen chewed his lip some more and finally nodded. “Well, I thank you for that. Just a bit weird opening the door and seeing what looked like an ass party happening, you know?”
Annja had to fight not to smile. “‘Ass party’?”
Hansen inclined his head. “Nothin’ but ass, Miss Creed.”
“Thanks for clarifying that.”
“You bet.”
Derek cleared his throat. “Wishman, these are the men from the company that I told you would be coming out here today. They will stay the night in our shelter and then tomorrow build one for themselves.”
Hansen nodded. “However, we’d be most thankful if we could partake in some food with you all. We haven’t had a bite all day and we’re starved.”
Wishman’s frown finally eased some and he nodded. “Very well. We will eat together and try to make sense of this situation as it has become. We do not wish to upset the company with whom we have bargained. But neither do we wish to see our ancestors defiled ahead of the time we were given to relocate them.”
Hansen held up his hand. “Mr. Wishman, if we do our job right, you won’t even know we’re here.”
“Very well.” Wishman nodded for the men to assemble the meal. “Come and join us and eat with us.”
Annja moved to Godwin’s side as he finished buttoning his shirt. “Are you really all right now?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so. Damned weird thing it was, though. ’Specially when they got me back here.”
Derek leaned closer. “Was that all some sort of big show for our benefit?”
Annja shook her head. “Didn’t seem to be. And the fact is, Godwin’s alive now as a result of something.”
“Yeah, but what? Not magic, was it?” Derek asked.
Annja shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m pretty skeptical about that kind of thing. But I have seen a lot of unexplained stuff in my travels.”
“How’s that one rank?” Derek asked.
“Right near the top,” Annja said.
17
In the darkness, Annja slept, exhausted by the day’s efforts. Her breathing issued smoothly in and out of the black night as the camp lay wrapped in the cold of the land that surrounded them. Every now and again, the gales would cause part of the shelter to flutter in time to the rise and fall of the wind before once again allowing silence to drape itself over the shelter.
Annja’s muscles relaxed in time to her breathing, sinking her consciousness ever lower to a state of complete rest. She stayed there, allowing her mind to drift along the dreamscape of swirled memories, vivid imaginings and a cloaked sense of what the future might hold in store for her.
She slept surrounded by an ocean of snores sent forth from the blowholes of the miners who camped on the floor. They’d spent several hours feasting on the meal laid out by the Araktak. Contrary to the discomfort Annja expected the miners to feel when they saw the assortment of game the Araktak ate, the miners embraced the game-filled diet, eating their fill while simultaneously listening as the Araktak warriors regaled them with stories of great hunts, elusive prey and a great narwhal that had become for them, at least for a time, a kind of Moby Dick.
The miners, in turn, told the Araktak fantastic stories of their adventures deep with the earth, spinning tales of passages suddenly collapsing, the rush for fresh air, the panic that ensued and the darkness.
Always, it came back to the darkness.
Their eyes shone as they told of the friends they’d lost to the darkness. To the hardened miners, it was almost like a beast kept at bay only with the help of light. As long as the electricity remained on, the beast was stayed.
But the few who had been trapped during a cave-in and lived to tell the tale spoke of the darkness and its hunger for souls. It preyed on the fear of being robbed of sight. It lapped at the minds of those buried alive, wondering if their rescue would ever come. More than a few had been driven insane by the relentless assault of the darkness on the minds of otherwise sane men.
In the end, Hansen had produced several bottles of Canadian whiskey and passed them around. They had all imbibed the liquid fire, and Annja herself had felt the shivers of the terror that had been sneaking into her own mind felled by the strong drink.
Hansen hefted the bottle at last and spoke only a few words. “To them who walk forever under us.”
His men had murmured their agreement and to her surprise, the Araktak had echoed Hansen’s solemn salute.
A
nnja had glanced at Derek, who had chosen not to drink the whiskey, and shot him a look. He only shrugged and then excused himself, saying he was already tired.
The miners and the Araktak men stayed up late. Godwin and Annja found themselves increasingly cut out of the bond that was forming between the hardened Inuit warriors and the oversize dwarves of deep earth.
Annja helped Godwin back to the shelter and got him into his bed. He still shivered occasionally and as Annja tucked the blankets in around him, he had grabbed her hand.
“I thought I was gone,” he said.
Annja nodded. “You almost were. They saved you.”
He nodded. “I wonder if that means they’ll accept me.”
Annja shrugged. “I have no idea. But I wouldn’t rush right out again and try to die again. They might pick up on your scheme.” She smiled at him. “Get some rest. We’ve still got a lot of work to get through tomorrow. And knowing them, they’ll expect you at peak condition for it.”
“Thanks.”
Annja crawled to her own bed, noting that Derek was already snoring softly on his side. She frowned. What made him so tired?
But the whiskey had dulled her own senses and as Annja lay deep in the folds of her bedding, she succumbed to the onslaught of sleep. She lengthened her breathing, allowed her eyes to roll back slightly in her head and soon enough was fast asleep.
Until now.
Something sparked inside the dream state she resided in. A brief flash poked out of the muddled land of dreams, pinpoint in its delivery, jabbing her almost fully awake immediately.
But Annja had long ago learned not to sit bolt upright with open eyes. Instead, she stayed perfectly still, keeping her breathing rhythm exactly the same as it had been.
Was she in trouble?
She opened her eyes slowly, accepting the limitations in the almost total darkness of the shelter and the night.
A sudden brief blast of cold wind stole into the shelter and then vanished. Around her, the bodies of the miners shifted in subconscious response, but then returned to normal.
Except for Annja.