“Get this damned thing off of me,” I said, sputtering.
“How?” Duma replied. “I can’t lift it. It’s gotta weigh six hundred pounds.”
“Help me roll it off…” I said, grunting and trying to rock so I could use the creature’s weight to shift it.
Normally, I could have lifted the bloody red blob by myself, but given my recent vacation at Club Fae, it took more effort to roll the Oni than I expected. It didn’t help that Duma only stood there.
“Thanks,” I said, finally getting back to my feet, realizing my sword had impaled it through its chest when it tackled me.
“What? Wait, you really wanted me to help?” Duma asked, his eyebrows tented on his forehead. “I figured you had it.” Helping me up, I could see him eyeing the dead creatures around us. “Wow, Tengu, huh? And an Oni.” He grimaced and jerked a bit when he recognized the ogre.
“Yeah. I also killed this freaky dog-thing,” I said, stretching and still trying to recover from being hammered by the Oni as I pulled my sword free from its torso. “Head of a monkey, body of a dog with huge catlike paws. Oh, and a snake for a tail. Freaky. Some kind of weird chimera.”
“Nue,” Duma replied matter-of-factly. “It dissolved into a black cloud when you killed it, right?”
“Ah, yeah,” I said.
“A Nue.” Duma held out his hands as if it were common knowledge and I were an idiot.
“Whatever. Let’s just go,” I replied.
“No kidding. Especially after you fired those shots and alerted every blabbermouth Yurei within a mile to our presence,” Duma said, taking off at a trot. “Oh, and the Oni there was the head of Hyakki Yako’s, Dai-Rin’s, little brother.”
And the hits just keep on coming…
Chapter 14
We landed our jump through the Ways into a cold, marshy field on the edge of an old-growth forest. It was the middle of the night, but the moonlight revealed several small mountain ranges along the skyline in the very near distance with one snowy peak off to the southwest. In the pale moonlight, I could see a break in the ridge leading to the summit directly to the south of it. The peak was around a mile high, though luckily, we were still too early for the first real snows of the season. There was nothing moving in the darkness.
“That pass should be Dyatlov, I think you call it,” Duma said, pointing at the break in the ridge. “And that peak is Kholat Syakhl.”
“So where is Indronivay’s place?”
“Dunno,” Duma replied. “Never been here before.”
“Well, if his place is supposed to be up there,” I said, pointing at the tallest peak, “I gotta believe he’d pick the most inaccessible face, and a place that afforded him controlled access.”
“Yeah, but he’d also want easy access to this point, here,” Duma said, hooking a thumb back at the portal through the Ways we came through. “It’s the only way in or out, except on foot or by dogsled in the winter.”
“If I really was the shooter, I might use that opening in the Ways as well. And so would a rogue fae,” I said. “But if I were a mundane human, I probably wouldn’t have access to it. I’d have to come in some other way. Thinking from a purely human perspective, I’d have hiked in on foot from another direction.”
“Yeah, but you’d have to cover miles through this crap,” Duma said, using his chin to point at the swamp we were standing in.
“Precisely, and probably not something Indronivay would ever expect. I’ll bet you anything that those hikers back in the ’50s were making for Dyatlov Pass and got too close. They probably encountered Indronivay or some of his goons by accident,” I said. “Plus, Elegast said the shot was from almost a mile away. There’s no way I’ll be able to determine a good sniper’s roost unless we get up there,” I said, ripping up a tuft of marsh grass and tossing it. “Dammit. I’ll still probably need satellite images, binos or a spotting scope, a rangefinder… hell, a GPS at the least.”
Duma started laughing. “I swear. How did you humans ever survive and manage to cross oceans before computers?”
He was right. I’ve been around since navigation involved stars and we determined time of day by the sun’s angle in the sky, and I was whining about not having a GPS. I had to laugh at myself. “Okay, okay… point taken. Let’s work with what we’ve got,” I said. “We need to find Indronivay’s stronghold on that peak and reverse-engineer the situation.”
For the sake of safety and speed, we waited at the edge of the forest until first light before beginning our trek across the swamp toward the peak. At one point before dawn, several creatures that sounded like wolves bayed back and forth, though they were clearly some distance away. Knowing Indronivay’s reputation, he could have employed wolves or some other creatures as watchdogs, which meant Duma and I had to remain alert as we covered the open ground to the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, we encountered nothing of consequence along the way and were able to travel efficiently even over the marshy ground.
The hike up the mountain slowed our progress considerably. Though it was only a few linear miles, the terrain was uneven and entirely uphill, though not a particularly complicated ascent. Plus, I really wanted to take my time as we went so that I could check for clues and stuff. My problem was that I was a great soldier and not a great detective.
Because I was still not operating at one hundred percent and checking everything that struck me as out of place, the climb took us a grueling four hours. We could have easily made the climb in under a half hour, even at altitude. Every time I stopped to examine something, Duma would grumble to himself. To make matters worse, I found nothing suspicious. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but since my life and who knows what else was on the line, I wasn’t about to half-ass anything.
When we finally got to the peak, nearly four thousand feet of elevation, the view was surprising. This was the highest point for miles and afforded an unobstructed view in every direction. It wasn’t much of a mountain by Rockies or Alps standards, but it was still impressive.
I had little doubt that Indronivay’s stronghold would be inside this mountain rather than a structure on it. Even hidden by glamours, hikers, skiers, and even planes, helicopters, or satellites might stumble across an exposed structure up here. Glamours wouldn’t impede me from seeing it if it were here, anyway. From our vantage point, we could see all of the surrounding area, but I still couldn’t figure out where on this rock the entrances to Indronivay’s place would have been. The southwestern and southeastern faces of this peak were much steeper and precarious, leading farther into the range. A second ridge split the north face, but the northeast face was gently sloping. I highly doubted someone like Indronivay would create an entrance on any of the easily accessible slopes. The northwestern face, however, was sheer and forbidding. Finally, something caught my eye as I surveyed the most difficult approaches again: a recent, but slight, rockslide beginning underneath an inaccessible ledge below our position. Nothing else we had seen so far on this mountain was as remotely disturbed as this was.
“Down there,” I said, pointing to it. “That rockslide. You think it’s possible that’s where Indronivay fell when he got shot?”
“More likely than anything else we’ve come across so far,” he replied. “It’s hard to tell from up here, but even I would need climbing gear to get down there, unless there’s a path we aren’t seeing somewhere.”
Duma was right. It was too dangerous to get to free-climbing, but the more I stared at it, the more I was convinced the slide wasn’t natural. After about thirty minutes of gazing at the slope below us, using the slide’s origin as the rough target area, I noticed a potential sniper’s roost on a third smaller ridge well below us, running north by northwest from where we stood. Even better, it appeared to be about the right distance from the summit, too—assuming that Indronivay wasn’t a mountain goat and there re
ally was an entrance up here somewhere.
“Got it,” I said to Duma, pointing toward the spot. “If that rock slide was Indronivay, then of everything I can see, that’s not only the best spot, it’s the only spot, unless the sniper was a spider. At least one entrance has to be somewhere on the rock face below us.”
We began our slow, precarious trek down to the ridge along the northwest face and then out along a northward-branching crest that eventually sloped down to the valley below, into a river. So far, we had seen no signs of life, except some deer on the far edges of the marsh. The closer we got to the spot I’d identified, the more it became clear that it was damn near inaccessible. Duma had no trouble working his way over the rocky terrain, and if I weren’t stronger and more agile than a normal man, I never would have made it without serious climbing gear and a monumental effort. Not to mention days to make the climb. The ridge, the one we’d crossed from the peak, and a smaller ridge extending northward from the peak itself formed a box canyon of sorts, creating a howling vortex of wind within. The last few hundred yards were so treacherous that the distance took us nearly two hours to traverse, mostly because I was tentative without climbing gear. All I could think about was the other bag Duma had brought for me and I’d oh-so-wisely left behind. Idiot. I hadn’t expected to be scaling the side of a mountain.
Once we reached the potential roost, the view back toward the peak below revealed several openings in the sheer rock face. They were like optical illusions—invisible from all but the right angle. I could see the entrances to at least six different caverns. Bingo! That made this spot ideal, except for the swirling wind and the treacherous terrain.
The distance to the nearest cavern had to be at least seven hundred yards, while the one above the rockslide was around a thousand. To make a shot up toward the peak of Kholat through the howling winds would have been a monumentally difficult task. I was good, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could make the shot, even given the right gear. I was pretty sure my buddy Frigate, one of the best snipers the Navy SEALs had ever seen, could pull it off, but he would have needed at least two people, maybe three, to make the ascent with his gear. That narrowed the list of possible shooters down to maybe half a dozen guys in the world, and they all would have needed help.
Unless Duma was right and the assassin wasn’t human at all. That was the disturbing part.
I could see no signs that anyone had ever been on this ledge before. None. And a pair of men, even experts, couldn’t completely cover their tracks on the side of a mountain. It was too warm for fresh snow to have fallen over the past few months, and I saw no evidence of recent rock falls from climbing activity, like I left behind. If the shooter was human, he was not only better than me, but neater, too. All ego aside—that wasn’t likely.
“Whatever did this wasn’t human,” I said finally. “There’s just no way.”
“Are you sure? Maybe it was a Spec Ops team,” Duma asked, throwing rocks off the ledge out of obvious boredom.
“Exactly why I say it wasn’t a human action. I know those groups; I was part of them for years. I did stuff exactly like this with them, and even the best would have left some evidence behind. Crap, even the most sophisticated intelligence agency operatives would have left some indication that someone was here. They probably could have covered up the shooting, but they couldn’t have wiped the environment this clean. It’s like we’re the first ones ever to step foot here, and you saw how difficult it was for me to get here.”
“So either this isn’t the sniper’s hole, or now you’re saying you believe my boogeyman story?” Duma said with amusement.
“I’m starting to, yeah.” The idea made me shudder.
After searching the small ledge in earnest for an hour, Duma and I began the arduous trek back down the mountain. It wasn’t as demanding for Duma as it was for me, and I kept imagining how hard it would have been for a normal human to make the climb with a rifle, spotting scope, and provisions, even with climbing gear. Whoever killed Indronivay was definitely not human.
We’d made it to the bottom of the ridge and begun heading for a small river when a harsh, high-pitched bark split the air. Intensified by the surrounding rock walls, the sound nearly forced us both to our knees as we covered our ears. The reverberation only served to prolong my deafness, but being temporarily unable to hear over the ringing in my ears didn’t bother me half as much as finding out what might have made the noise. It sounded vaguely like the howls we’d heard when we arrived, only much more intense and a whole lot closer. Cu Sith calls were devastating up close, but the bark was a far more focused, piercing, and guttural howl. I regained most of my composure and was just recovering my sense of hearing when the same distant baying rang out almost like a response to the deafening screech.
Duma grabbed my shoulder and shouted something I couldn’t make out, but he was pointing back toward the portal we’d used to get here. I nodded, and we both took off running. Duma didn’t slow down for me. He had a thing about dogs that stemmed from the circumstances surrounding our first meeting and my subsequent saving of him and his brother from Cu Sith.
The ringing in my ears started to die down as I ran, but our gate to the Ways was easily another few miles out, and it was all open, albeit swampy, ground in front of us. Against my better judgement, I decided to break a cardinal rule about retreating during a firefight: don’t stop to check your six until you’re under cover. I glanced back to see a sleek dark-gray doglike animal about the size of an elk barreling toward me like a freight train less than a few hundred yards out across the swamp. In front of me, Duma zigzagged through the tall grass as fast as he could run. Less than a hundred yards ahead, he was still a long way from the jump point. As fast as the gray thing was, if I didn’t do something stupid—and do it quickly—neither of us would make it.
I made a hard left turn and headed for the little river, hoping the thing would follow me. Call it luck, either good or bad, but it locked on to me—and managed to catch up quickly when it extended a massive pair of wings and took flight. Wings!
I had no idea how shallow the river was, but I hoped that I could use the geography to my advantage or that it would at least allow me to do something other than run like a chicken with its head cut off.
The river was little more than a creek at this point of the season, but its steep banks offered a large enough drop that I could take cover as the screeching thing flew over. I had one chance.
I dove toward the creek, tucking into a roll right before I hit the icy water, and came up on the other side in a crouch. Before I could take another breath, the winged creature sailed over the narrow riverbed, traveling far too fast to stop. Up close, I could see it was a winged wolf—a really freaking big one. For the moment, I was too preoccupied to see what Duma was doing.
I pulled my swords and stayed crouched along the creek’s edge. On the bank above me, the beast bayed then huffed loudly. I could hear it sniffing, so I knew it was close. I eased up to my feet and slowly stepped back into the stream until the ice-cold water reached mid-calf. Then I whistled as if I were calling a family dog.
Instantly, the giant winged wolf—easily three times the size of a normal wolf, with the wingspan of a small plane—saw me and let out a growl that rumbled in my chest twenty yards away. Folding the massive feathered gray-black wings back along its body, the creature ran forward a few yards then jumped, lunging with its massive jaws agape.
Unfortunately, the wolf attacked so quickly, I didn’t think I would get a clean shot off with my sidearms, and with its size, I didn’t know if a nine-millimeter or even a .45 caliber bullet would do much anyway. Normally, in a dog attack, my first reaction would be to present my arm for it to bite, then grapple with it. This thing was too big for that type of tactic. Instead, I presented my right sword as if it were my arm then dodged to my right to get out of the way of the leaping fur-and-feat
her freight train.
The creature’s massive jaws grabbed at the blade as I ducked out of the way, and the momentum jerked the sword from my hand—but not before the sword almost severed the dog’s head in half at the jaw, causing it to stumble into a skid that took it into the marshy grass on the other side of the riverbank.
I jumped up and chased it, stabbing it with my remaining blade between its immense shoulders without seeing if it was already dead or not. I didn’t want it to suffer needlessly. Only the pommel was visible, sticking out under its ear. I pulled the sword free from the creature’s mangled maw.
While I was trying to figure out what the thing was, movement in the periphery of my vision caught my attention. Another wolf-thing was flying in low across the marsh, directly toward Duma, who was wildly gesturing for me to do something. Even over the several hundred yards between us I could see the wavy outline of the slit in the fabric of the normal world. The Telluric Pathways shimmered behind him. The wolf-thing was coming from the forest line well to the north, so it still had a few miles to go. Although, at the speed it was flying, it wouldn’t take long to cover the distance.
I tried to determine where I would most likely intercept the creature if I took off at full speed then ran for that spot. I wouldn’t make it all the way to Duma—the creature was too fast. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Hitting it would be like a car T-boning a semi. Sure, the truck driver would know he’d been hit, but the car would be crushed in the process. So be it.
Suddenly, Duma angled straight toward me, drawing the creature into a head-on collision course with me. I stopped dead and ducked into the thigh-high grass, hoping that Duma would run right past me with the creature in hot pursuit, too focused on Duma to bother with me.
Chaos Unbound (The Metis Files Book 2) Page 11