by Alex Archer
Godwin gripped his rifle. It was never out of reach now. “Once we get onto the trail, we’ll have the leave the sledges here, huh?”
Nyaktuk nodded. “We will hide them for the return trip.” He shrugged. “If there is one.”
Annja glanced at Godwin, who had no reaction to that possibility. Annja frowned. She intended to come back, one way or another. The thought that this would be some sort of one-way ticket didn’t sit well with her. Of course, part of her wondered if the sword would even let her come to harm.
But every time she had tried to figure it out, the sword usually had its own ideas. So Annja gave up trying and watched as Wishman continued to poke among the giant boulders that littered the ground close to the base of the mountain.
After an hour spent scanning the ground, Wishman’s head finally poked out from behind a particularly large boulder and he waved them on. “It is here.”
Godwin wrestled the packs free of the sledge and they all took one on their back. Annja tightened the straps so her hips would take the majority of the weight. She moved over to where Wishman stood and looked.
He was in a small valley between two boulders. The smile on his face looked sheepish. “It has been many years since that fateful trip. I apologize for taking so long to find my way back to the trail.”
Godwin waved it off. “What matters is that we found it.” He looked up the mountain. “It is a gradual incline.”
Wishman nodded. “At first. The way for the first thousand feet of ascent is easy enough, even with the packs. From there we will have to be very careful. There are many dangers along the trail. Take your time and we will not hurry.”
Annja shielded her brow and looked up the mountain. Far up, she thought she could see some sort of overhang. “Is that the pass?”
Wishman followed her gaze and grunted. “That is the overhang where we huddled before my friend journeyed into the pass by himself.”
Annja looked at him. “You’re sure this is where Derek and Hansen have come?”
Wishman shook his head. “No. I am not. But the spirits have told me it is so. I must have faith that they would not lead me astray. The time for me to return to the place that haunts me is at last here.”
Godwin shifted under the weight of his pack. “Who wants to take the lead?”
Wishman stepped forward. “I have been here before. I will go first.”
Nyaktuk frowned. “Is that wise?”
“I know the ground,” Wishman said. “And with each step I will feel more familiar with it, whereas none of you have seen this place before.”
Nyaktuk bowed. “Very well.”
Godwin looked at Nyaktuk. “Do you want to follow him or bring up the rear of our train here?”
Nyaktuk considered the options and then said, “It may be better if I follow Wishman directly. If he stumbles, I can help him.”
“All right,” Godwin said. “After you, we’ll put Annja and then I will bring up the rear.” He looked at all of them individually. “If I yell for you to get down, please do it without hesitation. I will need to get a clear shot with the rifle.”
Wishman seemed as if he wanted to say something, but then thought better of it and merely nodded. Godwin gazed at him and then Nyaktuk. Unspoken words seemed to pass among them, but Annja could fathom none of it.
“Let’s get going,” Godwin said.
Annja fell into the line and watched as Wishman, who had also insisted on bearing the load of a pack on his back, led them up the start of the trail. As they walked, Annja grew more and more amazed that the trail was virtually invisible to anyone looking at the mountain. But she could see how mounds of dirt and rocks obscured the outside edge of the trail blending it in with the rest of the mountain. No wonder she hadn’t been able to see their way up from down at the base.
The snowfall increased as they climbed ever higher. Annja felt the wind stinging her face and she glanced back at Godwin several times searching for a smile to help keep her warm.
He had none to give. Godwin scanned the ground every minute or so. Otherwise, his eyes remained fixed well ahead of them, constantly roving over the landscape and above them as if he expected an ambush. His feet gripped the ground with certainty and there seemed no hesitation in his movements.
Annja was far less sure of her own footing and turned back to concentrating on where she placed her feet. Twice, she had almost rolled her ankle on loose stones that went skittering down the trail toward Godwin. His response was always the same. By the time the rocks reached him, he had directed his body out of the way and they flew past him oblivious to the man they might have otherwise struck.
Wishman kept up a good pace, pausing only every hour to gather his wits about him. Annja could see that the clouds overhead showed no signs of moving on, as if the peaks were a magnet for their presence.
As the slope of the trail increased, Annja felt the strain on her back and tried to adjust her load. She had started this trip feeling overly energized and was now starting to question how much juice she had in her cells.
She imagined the sword and felt a small drip of extra strength that propelled her up the slope a bit better. Behind her, Godwin’s footsteps were mere whispers in the afternoon air. His stealthy tread skirted the ice and rocks that now littered the pathway.
Annja stepped over them, careful of what she came down on. She knew that one misstep on a slippery patch of ice could pitch her headlong over the side of the mountain. She risked a look down and saw that they were now almost five hundred feet up.
The path seemed to corkscrew around part of the mountain. In other places it seemed to go straight up, carving chunks out of the mountain. There was no order to the trail, and Annja supposed that was yet another reason it was so difficult to pick out from far below.
They ate a late lunch of jerky. Annja felt her jaw muscles tighten as she worked the bits of dried meat. Wishman would not permit a fire and Godwin wouldn’t have allowed it either if anyone had suggested it.
By three o’clock, they had made their way up half of the mountain. The overhang that Annja had spotted from the base of the mountain still seemed to loom an impossible distance away.
Wishman caught her gaze and grunted with a vague grin. “It will not take us forever to reach it, even though it may seem like it. Things look different on this mountain. You will see when we get there.”
They stood with aching muscles and shouldered their packs again. Annja’s legs felt as if they had already borne the brunt of the trip and her quadriceps burned like molten iron. She refused to complain about it, though.
Godwin held a huddled conversation with Wishman only to return to his place at the end of the train, rifle always shouldered and at the ready.
Annja looked at him and he seemed to notice for the first time all day. He grinned and there, for an instant, was the old Godwin. “Sorry. How are you doing?”
“I’m tired,” Annja said. “This is a hell of a haul.”
He nodded. “It’s not easy, is it?”
“You don’t seem affected by it much.”
He shrugged. “I did a lot of climbing with my father when I was younger. I guess I’m sort of used to it by now.”
“You did a lot of mountain climbing?”
He nodded. “Mountains, hills, trees, buildings, whatever we could find to climb, we climbed.”
Annja smiled. “Well, it’s serving you well now.”
“If only that was the only skill I needed on this venture,” he said. But his voice was quieter and more of a mumble to himself than a statement to Annja. He looked at her and smiled again. “We should keep moving. Wishman has already started up again and we don’t want to lose him.”
Annja turned back to the trail. Wishman and Nyaktuk were a hundred yards farther on. She hastened to keep up and had to consciously slow herself from rushing when she almost slid off the side of the mountain. Only Godwin’s sudden hand on her back had saved her from certain death.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t worry that they’re ahead of us. It’s a straight shot for now and we can make up the distance easily. Just keep slogging along and we’ll cover it in no time.”
Annja nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that.”
“Forget it. I’m glad to be here.”
They walked for another two hours and as the gray clouds overhead turned a darker shade with the coming of night, they rounded a corner and Annja caught her breath. They had walked into a valley of sorts, with two parts of the mountain shooting up on either side of them, one the mountain itself and the other side sprouting up a hundred feet before it sloped back in the opposite direction. Overhead, a giant boulder formed an impromptu rooftop.
And Annja knew they had at last arrived at the place where Wishman and his friend had shared their final meal together.
32
A subdued hush fell upon all four of them as they went about preparing to rest. The gray daylight finally gave way to deepening blues that heralded the onset of night. The wind, which had been their torment throughout the day, fell away as they nestled under the massive boulder.
Annja tried a little levity to lighten things up by pointing at the rock that loomed a few feet over their heads. “You sure this thing won’t crush us tonight?”
But it fell on deaf ears. Not one of them broke a grin.
From the packs they drew out their sleeping bags while Nyaktuk and Wishman scavenged bits of bramble to make a small cooking fire. They leaned their packs up against one side of the rock to cover their fire from any eyes that might be ahead of them looking down from on high.
Snow still continued to fall, and the gentle white flakes that drifted slowly down only served to reinforce the dreaded sense of isolation that Annja had felt upon entering this nook in the mountain.
Still, she felt grateful for stopping. It had been a hard day of nonstop walking and the drain on her senses after having been so keen and alert for missteps had left her feeling empty. The food she ate, a reconstituted portion of the delicious stew they had eaten back at the burial mound camp, felt wonderful and warm and she ate greedily. The others did, too.
Finally, after the meal, Wishman huddled them all together and spoke in low tones that Annja could scarcely hear. “We are not far from Ragjik Pass. It is but another thousand yards ahead and the climb falls away to reveal level ground if the original directions my friend and I followed were accurate.” He hesitated a moment, looking into each of their eyes before he continued. “Sound is our biggest enemy now. I have little doubt that our prey rests beyond us in the pass.”
Annja held up her hand. “And what lies beyond the pass?”
Wishman didn’t blink. “Legends say that beyond the Pass lies the entrance to a massive cavern inside the mountain. That is where we will find Wainman and Hansen. There they are even now prepared to unleash yet another dark creature from its slumber.”
“Which entity?” Annja asked.
Wishman frowned. “I know it only by the name my people gave it aeons ago—Onur. He is an elemental god with a wrath as fierce as any, and this is his land we are said to be treading upon. As with the other dark gods, he demands sacrifice, in order to come into this plane.”
Annja frowned. “I don’t recall that Derek or Hansen sacrificed anyone back at the burial mound. How did they unlock that creature then?”
Godwin frowned. “It wasn’t them who sacrificed. It was you, Annja.”
She whirled. “Excuse me?”
Godwin held up his hand. “You had no idea you were doing it, of course, but that is exactly what Derek wanted. The two idiots who attacked us in the bar were working for him. Later, they chased us in the rig. And when you used your sword to cause them to sink beneath the ice river, I distinctly heard Derek chanting something. I thought it was a song at that time, but I know now that he was offering their souls to the creature at the burial mound.”
Annja sighed. “I thought you had to make the sacrifice at the location of the demon you wanted to bring on to this plane.” She shrugged. “Of course, I don’t exactly study the occult, so that information may be wrong.”
Wishman nodded. “If Derek is powerful enough, he can give over those souls how he sees fit. And since they were evil men to begin with, in Wainman’s employ, then he had the right to offer them up, according to the old ways.”
Great, Annja thought. Here I was thinking I was saving the day and instead, I end up facilitating the destruction at the burial mound. Way to go, ace.
Wishman’s hand rested on Annja’s. “You could not have known at the time what you were doing. No fault lies with you.”
She frowned. “Yeah, well, I’m not feeling good about it. And what about here? Who will they have to sacrifice here to call forth this demon?”
“I imagine they will use one of us,” Wishman said.
Annja looked at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “They will know by now that we hunt them. And they would most certainly expect us to, given the damage they caused back at the burial site. They know that Araktak law dictates their pursuit and that justice be wrought upon the criminals. I think they’ll use that to their advantage.”
“They know we’re coming,” Annja said. “Wonderful.”
“Well, perhaps they don’t know you or Godwin here,” Wishman said. “But they know that I would come along with Nyaktuk. Since we are both the Araktak who would have to follow this through to the end.”
Annja leaned back against on the packs. “So, we start for the pass in the morning?”
Wishman nodded. “It is too late to try for it now. We need every bit of light to aid us in our quest if we are to be successful. The wind and the snow will fall hard tonight and the way will grow even more treacherous by the morning. So sleep well and be prepared for the coming day.”
With that, Wishman rolled himself into his sleeping bag and started to snooze. Annja watched him sleep and looked at Nyaktuk.
“Is all of that true?”
Nyaktuk nodded. “If Wishman says it is true, then it must be so. I have studied with him a very long time and know of his ways. He must ready himself for tomorrow now. Not only because of what we three will face, but also what he must face. And I feel that what he will face may well be worse than our own destinies, joined though they are.”
Annja slumped down some more. “Who wants first watch?”
Godwin shifted. “I’ll take it. You guys get some sleep. I’ll wake you first, Annja, and then Nyaktuk.”
She nodded. She rolled into her sleeping bag and, despite the frozen ground beneath her, she descended into her dream world. Her limbs relaxed and the knots of tension that had wound themselves throughout the course of the day slowly untied. She yawned once and then drifted off into a perfectly dreamless sleep.
GODWIN NUDGED her awake. Annja wanted to moan but she remembered that Wishman had insisted on as much silence as possible. Reluctantly, she got out of her sleeping bag and took up her position where Godwin had been sitting for the past three hours.
He slid into Annja’s sleeping bag, grateful for the heat that remained there, and instantly fell asleep.
Annja watched him doze and smiled. He was the one bright spot of this trip, although she still questioned exactly what his motives were. He seemed even more driven the closer they drew to the pass, almost as if he was the one with the karmic debt to repay and not Wishman.
Annja looked out at the terrain. The moonless night kept everything hidden under a blanket of darkness. No stars shone through the clouds and the only bit of ambient light came from the snowdrifts that continued to build up around them. Annja heard the flakes falling and had to pinch her thigh to keep her eyes from drooping back into the slumber she’d just woken from.
Her eyes sought to pierce the pervasive darkness, but she could see little beyond the realm of their small huddle. They had scattered the cooking fire as soon as they were done making their meal earlier. In the blackest of night, the flames, small tho
ugh they were, would have been a magnet for anyone keeping watch on the approach to the pass.
Annja sighed. She’d been in combat many times and the one thing she always relied on was the element of surprise. Now, according to Wishman, that was already compromised. Derek and Hansen knew that they were coming. That meant their enemies would take great pains to attack before they could get into proper position.
Annja shook her head. It somehow violated everything she’d learned about defending herself and protecting others. If it was up to her, she might have suggested they travel back down the mountain, head home and maybe take up the chase some other time.
But she also knew that Wishman had a destiny to fulfill and the time for fulfilling it seemed to be now.
Would have been nice to be consulted first, she thought with a wry grin. At least then she might have known better what she was getting herself into.
Godwin’s form rose and fell in time with the other men. There seemed a languid, relaxed danger about him as he dozed. But somehow, Annja knew that if trouble arose, he would spring to her side in a flash, ready with his rifle or the knife she’d seen him attach to his belt.
She’d asked him about it, but he’d drawn his jacket on over it before she could see much of the detail. From what she saw, it looked long and deadly.
Annja shifted her position and then heard the noise.
She froze.
Was she imagining it? She let her jaw relax and tried in vain to again pick up the sound she’d heard, but nothing reached her ears. It had been there, though; she felt sure of it. Just the briefest scuff out of time with the rest of the ambient noises that surrounded them.
And now it was gone.
Was someone headed down here to attack them?
Annja frowned. She could wake any of them to help her, but what if it was just a false alarm?
She rose from her spot and, using all of her skill at remaining quiet, crept out from under the boulder. She scanned the area above them, but could see nothing beyond the snowflakes that continued to drift down. They’d been beautiful before, but now they were an annoyance that clouded her vision. Every time Annja thought she saw something that needed closer scrutiny, the snowflakes fell into her eyes, making that impossible.