Sacred Ground

by Alex Archer

  Maybe Wishman was right, she concluded. Maybe Onur was the demon of this mountain and knew all the ways to confound travelers.

  She walked a little farther away from the camp, her boots light on the fresh snow. Carefully, she picked her way across the whitened landscape, searching for any signs that they might be coming under attack.

  But she found nothing. There were no footprints. There were no depressions in the snow where a man might have squatted to ready himself.

  Nothing.

  Annja was just about to turn back toward her camp when she thought she heard the noise again.

  Another scuff.

  She could feel her heart start to hammer away at the inside of her chest like a drum. The steady beat brought a surge of warmth to flush her skin with blood as it did the same to her muscles.

  But Annja didn’t move.

  I need to be sure, she thought. I don’t want to look like a hysterical fool crying wolf.

  One more time, she thought. That’s all I’ll need.

  But the sound didn’t come again. Annja cast a long look around at the walls looming over them. Any one of them could sport positions from which to attack, but to try to climb them in the darkness would have been sheer madness. And Annja would have died in the attempt anyway.

  She stalked back to the camp. It must be close to the time when Nyaktuk would take his turn at watch, she thought. She was suddenly gripped by the taste of cold that made her shiver. The thought of crawling back into a sleeping bag was a pleasant one.

  The camp loomed ahead. Annja made her way through the same footprints that marked her exit from camp and followed them back to the comfort of the overhang.

  She paused at the entrance of the camp and placed her hand against the massive boulder that shielded them from the night weather. Nice to find an unlikely ally out here in the midst of hell, she thought. And she patted the ancient stone with reverence. Her way, she supposed, of thanking it for its shelter.

  Annja ducked beneath the overhang and froze.

  The camp was deserted.

  Her spirits plummeted as she tore through the camp, but each sleeping bag was empty. Did they leave me here? she wondered. But just as quickly, she dismissed that idea when she saw that all three rifles were lying about the camp.

  She studied the ground and saw tracks that suggested all three had been dragged away.

  Annja shook her head. There was no way that any of them would have gone without a fight. So if they hadn’t fought, that meant that they had been subdued from the first moment of attack.

  But how?

  Annja felt certain she knew who was behind it. Derek and Hansen must have trusted their instincts or the whims of their dark masters to know that Wishman and his company were already on the mountain. They had acted first and scored a deep victory.

  Did they know that she was among the hunting party? There were only three rifles in the camp. And while there were four sleeping bags, Godwin had slept in Annja’s, leaving the fourth packed.

  Perhaps, she reasoned, they believe it was a trio that hunted them and not a quartet.

  She smiled, but there was no mirth in it. They may not have known that Annja was a part of the hunters right then.

  But soon enough, they would.

  33

  Annja considered what to do. Should she wait until morning, when she could see her way through the darkness? Or pursue them right now?

  She scanned the ground leading out of the makeshift camp. There were clear tracks in the snow that might be ruined if she waited until morning. Plus, she had no idea of how to get into the mountain even if she made it all the way to the pass.

  No, the answer was an easy one. She would follow them now.

  She left the camp the way it was. Annja figured that the distance would not be as far as she thought. Dragging captives was exhausting work for anyone. And anything over a few hundred yards would tax them to exhaustion.

  Perhaps there was a secret entrance that Wishman did not even know about. Perhaps it lurked close by.

  Time ran short and Annja crept out of the camp, following the tracks in the snow. She was more than acutely aware that she might well be walking into an ambush.

  The urge to take her sword out was great, but she reluctantly denied herself its security. The blade might catch light from the moon and in the darkness, that light might compromise her position.

  She would have to walk blind, content to follow the tracks that curved away from her around a bend on the trail. Annja slowed her gait and listened. She heard nothing to suggest a trap and walked on.

  Around the bend, the trail straightened again and the deep furrows in the snow led Annja on her way. She felt even more certain now that they did not know she was with the party. If they had suspected she was, they might have taken the time to conceal the tracks.

  Or at least leave someone behind to deal with Annja.

  But she saw no signs that they were hurrying. And the trenches were easy to follow as the incline increased. Annja felt her legs groan and complain as the renewed exertion taxed their muscle fibers again. It was too soon, they seemed to be saying. Too soon to be starting a hike again.

  But Annja’s mind forced compliance and her body responded. She’d been taxed to exhaustion before. She’d recovered in every instance. The price was a high one to pay and her recent two-day sleep proved that.

  Annja felt a blast of wind whip into her, making her lean into the side of the mountain for support. The snows whipped up a frothy frenzy of flakes that assaulted her face at every step.

  She kept her eyes focused on the ground, willing herself to step forward with each breath of ice she inhaled. The tracks kept her concentration although Annja tried her best to maintain some degree of alertness for the possibility of ambush. She doubted they would bother with it on this night. It genuinely seemed as if the ancient spirits were out and Wishman’s story came back with a fresh gusto. Annja fought back the fear she felt welling up within her soul and kept on the trail.

  And then, in front of her, she saw the pass. There was no sign that this was the place, but somehow, she knew. The side of another mountain, unseen until now, sprang up alongside the trail Annja walked. The sheer face of it was a stark contrast to the craggy face of Annja’s mountain.

  And the trail went right between the two giants as if it had been flossed through by someone’s unseen enormous hand.

  Ragjik Pass.

  Annja bent her head to withstand the sudden massive blast of wind that charged into her like a bull. The pass acted like a giant wind tunnel, funneling and accelerating the already impressive wind gusts that haunted the peaks. Annja bent herself almost parallel to the ground and managed to take another few steps forward.

  What lay beyond the pass? She shielded her eyes and tried to see. But then she realized that the ferocious wind was already destroying the tracks she was following.

  I need to keep moving or I’ll be lost, she thought. She bent farther and willed her legs to keep moving. On and on she walked, until at last, the second mountain fell back away from the first and Annja moved out of the pass.

  The wind abated slightly, but was still a force to be reckoned with. Annja’s eyes never left the ground and she could see the tracks better now.

  The trail curved and kept winding up the mountain. Over the wind, she thought she heard sounds. They were distant but distinct. Voices? Annja paused and then felt certain she heard someone talking.

  She squatted down on the trail and tried to peer through the snowy dark. Ahead, the trail took on a more vertical climb.

  The noises she’d heard suddenly stopped. Silence returned to the area and Annja rose and kept walking.

  The ground swooped upward and Annja bent forward again, trying to use other muscles to help her aching legs. But each step relied on her feet to keep moving and Annja sucked in breaths to try to keep the muscles replenished with fuel they could burn.

  Her heart thundered in her chest, pumping furio
usly to keep up with the demand. She had to find the destination soon or else she would need to rest and recover out here, not exactly the best idea given the harsh conditions.

  The tracks suddenly changed.

  Instead of deep furrows showing the way, there was a mass of footprints that showed the captives must have regained consciousness and were now walking on their own. Annja frowned. That probably made their captors happy.

  Annja bent once to study the tracks. She could only count three distinct impressions among the mass of overlapping tracks. She knew there would be more than three of them, but given the narrow trail and the snowy conditions, discerning three was a challenge enough.

  She slowed her pace. For every step she took, she rested a few seconds, trying her best to regulate her inhalations so she could keep moving without collapsing to the ground, where she would most likely die.

  The ground continued to slope upward, forcing Annja to bend forward some more, resting her hands on the tops of her thighs. She was sweating, strangely enough, and that sharpened her mind, aware of how dangerous that was.

  Sweating in these conditions would bring about hypothermia that much quicker. As she sweated, it would freeze, thereby accelerating the reduction of her body temperature. If she didn’t get out of this mess soon, she was going to die.

  Annja forced herself to keep walking. Ahead, she could see that the trail seemed to level off and almost disappear.

  Was the climb over? Was this the top of the mountain? She didn’t know. From her vantage point on the trail, she couldn’t see anything except clouds and snow. The wind continued to whip around her and snowflakes felt like tiny lances of ice.

  Her face felt shrunken and tight. She was certain that the ice had caused several cuts, but even blood refused to flow in these damnable environs. Annja took another breath and then stepped up and the trail suddenly leveled off.

  She paused and went down to one knee. Around her, she could feel the immense mountain watching her. It had tested her to the extreme limits of her endurance, and only the anger that flowed in her blood had kept her alive this long.

  But Annja was dangerously spent. She closed her eyes and tried to draw some energy from the sword. She opened her eyes and felt the hilt of the sword in her hands.

  She looked around quickly, fearful that she would be seen, and returned the sword.

  Annja searched the ground. She could see the tracks in the snow, but then they simply stopped.

  She scanned the walls of rock around her. This was it. There had to be some type of entrance into the mountain itself. This was where they had taken Godwin and the others.

  All Annja had to do was find a way inside.

  Annja’s gloved hand brushed snow from the rock face and probed each nook and cranny for some sort of sign that it would open to the interior of the mountain.

  It took her fifteen minutes to find it, but at last her fingers traced their way along a narrow indentation that formed the crude outline of a doorway. Annja traced it until she had the entire dimensions outlined in her mind.

  But how did it open?

  She stepped back from the doorway and studied how it was formed in the rock. Did it slide inward and then to the side? Or was it hinged somehow? Perhaps it just moved aside on unseen runners.

  Annja tried pushing at it until she collapsed against the wall, heaving for breath. It didn’t make sense. The climb up to this point had been a massive effort. Why make the door that much harder to get into? There had to be a simpler method for opening it.

  Plus, with the extra burden of captives, there had to be a release mechanism.

  Annja crouched down and studied the base of the doorway. It seemed to bleed right into the trail itself, but then her eyes caught a glimpse of ground that had been scarred free of snow and ice. It almost looked as if the rock slid back on a track.

  Annja stood and searched over the top of the doorway and then felt something out of the ordinary. A piece of twisted metal jutted out of the rock. Annja stood on tiptoe and looked at it. The aged metal had to have been ancient and of some special ore to withstand the conditions up here on the mountain.

  Annja summoned her sword and then pressed the metal.

  A grumble sounded from the mountain as if it was upset that Annja had succeeded in finding a way inside. But the rock slid back to reveal a dark opening just wide enough to permit one body to pass through.

  Annja took a breath and stepped inside.

  The rock slid back a second later, almost catching her as it did so. She jumped forward and held her sword aloft.

  She could make out that the cavern led into a tunnel of some type that seemed to descend into the mountain. Annja leaned against the wall of the mountain, willing herself to catch her breath. Just holding her sword made her feel better.

  No noises reached her ears, although the sound of melting snow dripped all around her. The air temperature was at least forty degrees now, a welcome change to the blizzardlike conditions outside on the mountain’s exterior.

  Time to move.

  Annja crept over to the tunnel entrance. She studied the terrain. The pathway was dry rock, pockmarked with enough depressions to ensure she wouldn’t slip on it and tumble to her death.

  On either side of the path, the ground fell away for thousands of feet. That was the quick way down, she reasoned.

  The tunnel opened farther ahead and Annja thought she could pick up some degree of ambient light. But from what, she had no idea.

  She moved forward, slowly. The last thing Annja wanted was to announce her presence before she was ready.

  She moved down the tunnel and then out onto a type of stairway. She blinked and immediately put her sword away.

  Up ahead of her she could see something moving.

  Squinting in the dim light, she could make out the two torches that cast light over Derek and Hansen.

  With them were Godwin, Wishman and Nyaktuk.

  Everyone looked angry.

  34

  Annja crouched in the darkness on the stone stairs that led down toward some point far below. There was no way she could attack right now. The stairs were only wide enough to permit one person at a time, and any attempt she made would likely result in the death of Godwin, Wishman or Nyaktuk.

  Instead, Annja trailed them down the steps, using the ambient light from their torches to help find her way. The flames appeared like small fiery orbs dancing as they descended ever farther into the bowels of the mountain. Annja couldn’t help but wonder when they would stop. Wherever it was, she hoped it was flat ground that she could fight on without worry.

  Her breathing had calmed and the more she descended the stairs, the better she felt. Her time on the mountain had drained her, but she could feel her strength starting to return. Her pulse throbbed a steady beat, and she knew that when the fight came, she would be ready.

  Around her, the walls of the mountain rose, and the whole place reminded Annja of a pumpkin carved for Halloween with its guts scraped out. The mountain actually seemed hollow, and once again, Annja thought about the dwarves of modern men who toiled away in the mines and deep caverns beneath such places.

  Who was the demon Onur and what was his history? Annja had never heard the name in all her travels or studies. Still, she wasn’t that surprised. There were many things that had been lost over time—traces of culture, whole languages and the religious and spiritual customs of countless tribes and ethnicities. Just because she hadn’t heard of Onur, it didn’t mean he didn’t exist. Or that he wasn’t a very dangerous foe if allowed to come onto this plane. She knew that wasn’t the most rational thought but nothing made sense anymore.

  The party ahead of her seemed to pause on the stairs. Annja froze in place, tensed and waiting for them to continue on. Had they spotted her?

  But then she heard them urging Wishman to move faster. She couldn’t hear their exact words, but the urgency in their voices was evident even at this distance. Most likely the trip had been hard on
the old man and he was in need of rest.

  If Hansen and Derek had their way, Wishman would be at rest soon enough—terminal rest.

  She moved again as the party continued down the steps. Annja was getting closer to them. She was only one person whereas they had five and could not travel as fast.

  Gradually, Annja carefully picked her way down the stairs. She remained in a semisquat position.

  She believed that there was no way for them to see her unless they looked at her at the wrong moment and caught a glimpse of her movement. She watched them closely and whenever they paused, so did she.

  Their scuffles and footfalls rebounded and echoed in the great cavernous passage. Annja had to be especially careful now as she drew ever closer. One mistimed step would alert them and then her element of surprise would be lost.

  Right now, that was her most precious weapon.

  And if I blow it, she thought, they’ll all be dead.

  At last, Hansen and Derek led them off the stairs and their torches were level. Annja stayed where she was, still two hundred feet above them, perched like a great jungle cat.

  She could hear Derek’s voice. “Everyone in good shape?” He laughed. “Well, good, we’re so happy about that.”

  Godwin seemed to be eyeing him. Derek thrust his face at him. “Something you’d like to say?”

  Godwin paused and then his words made Annja’s hairs stand on end. “I will enjoy seeing you die.”

  Derek leaned back and laughed. “You first, my friend. And when I drive my blade into your heart, I will feast on your blood.”

  Godwin was silent and Annja wanted to jump right then and there, but a sudden movement caused her to stop. Another torch came into the flat area from somewhere unseen. There must have been another tunnel that connected to the cavern.

  “All is ready.”