Mel saw Tanah and the guard, Black Pony, fighting back-to-back as well. Mel wanted to wail in terror as yet another of the sasq warriors fell under an avalanche of rat bodies. She had no time to watch the sasquatch die however, as a silver-furred rat lunged at her, foam speckling its bloody muzzle. She raised her knife defensively and was shocked to see the blade sink into the rat’s throat and out the back of its head. It hung there for a moment, skewered like a shish kabob, and then slithered to the floor at her feet. She turned as a howl of pain filled the air. It was Onio, fighting three rats at once and losing the battle. One rat seized Onio’s arm in its mouth and was worrying its way through the furs he wore to the vulnerable tendons and muscles of his arm.
Shrieking incoherently, Mel whirled around and, not knowing what else to do, hit the rat as hard as she could on the nose with the hilt of the knife. She saw its eyes go wide in pain. Then it dropped to the floor and scurried away into the shadows. A warm, bloody hand seized her arm and Onio shouted, “Mel, Wolf is in trouble!”
Wolf was down on the ground, kicking and screaming, locked in a mortal embrace with one of the biggest of the rats. He held the rats teeth away from his throat but the animal’s back legs were shredding through Wolf’s furs to the tender skin of his belly. Other rats were nipping at the sasq’s thighs, legs and feet as the biggest rat went for the kill. Blood was spreading in a pool around their fallen comrade.
Onio grabbed Mel’s hand and ran to his old friend’s side. He seized the fur on the rat’s neck with both hands but it was like grabbing a giant sack of wriggling snakes. The rat squirmed and bit, lunging at Onio’s face in fury. Mel let out a scream and plunged her blade into the animal’s back. The beast flew to the ground and ran in circles, whining and snapping ineffectually at the weapon. Wolf, although wounded and bleeding, rose to his feet and set to with his club, knocking the rats this way and that like bowling pins.
Tanah, Falling Waters and Black Pony were backing away from a line of advancing rats, some of which were bleeding and bruised but nevertheless determined to kill their quarry. Even as they watched, one of the rats gathered itself and sprang at the old sasq, Falling Waters. He shouted and held his long staff up in the air, but then a bright green, luminescent beam of light hit the rat mid-body, dicing it into two parts. The air turned red as the rats body fell to the ground with a squelching splat.
The after-image painted the inside of Mel’s eyes green and she heard Onio shout in alarm, even as another beam of light hit a group of rats threatening two sasq warriors who were pinned against the far wall. Suddenly, the rats dispersed, their rage and disappointment echoing back at the astonished sasquatches with chilling clarity. Still blinking against the brilliant spots of green super-imposed upon her ocular lenses, Mel saw an old bag of bones approaching. She almost screamed, thinking that an animated skeleton was coming now to haunt the waking nightmare her life had become.
“Star Brothers…you have come!” the old man muttered, waving a long pistol in the air and cackling.
The sasq exchanged glances and studied the specimen dubiously. It was an old Indian man dressed in traditional leather breechcloth, beads and nothing else. The braids on both sides of his head dragged on the floor, and were liberally sprinkled with clots of mud, twigs, feathers, spider webbing, and pieces of colorful but dingy cloth.
His toothless grin and bugged-out eyes made him appear a lunatic, and his whole body trembled spasmodically, as if he were in the throes of some eerie, ecstatic vision. He stared at them in amusement and then burst into a fit of giggles when Wolf stepped up, snatching the gleaming weapon out of his palsied hand.
“Who are you?” Wolf grunted. Mel watched the little old man stare up into the sasquatch’s face in confusion. She understood, suddenly, that the guard did not really speak at all. She heard his words telepathically, through the soul song, but the actual words were not vocalized except through a series of grunts, garbled vowels and high-pitched whistles. The sasquatches did not have functioning vocal chords!
She turned and stared at Onio, who gazed back at her with a half-smile on his face. “You did not know, Melody?” he asked.
Mel watched his lips move and shook her head. “No…all this time I thought the sasq were talking out loud. Do you….” she trailed off in embarrassment.
Onio smiled and nodded. “I can use speech; it’s the small human in my blood, I think. Stronger muscles here….” He touched the bruised fingermarks on his throat and winced. “Normally,” he added.
Feeling relieved and strangely happy about her discovery, Mel turned to watch the old man. He was sitting cross-legged on the rocky beach, and asked if the sasq had any victuals to share. Wolf rolled his eyes and, digging in his rucksack, produced some jerked venison. The old man grinned, gumming the meat vigorously and smacking his lips with delight.
Tanah was staring at the Indian with fear and hope sketched on the lines of her face. She moved toward him slowly, and when the old one saw her, he winked. “Little girl,” he said softly, “I see you prosper.”
Tanah blushed and whispered, “Flying Crow, is that you?” The Indian grinned, stood up, danced a little jig and cried, “Yes, Tonya, it is me…your old friend!”
Tanah bent down and gave the old man a gentle hug. The sasq warriors stared at the two of them in confusion. Tanah straightened and declared, “This man is not to be harmed. He is a friend to the sasquatch and a life-long friend to me.”
Wolf and two other sasq guards turned the old man’s weapon over in their hands. One of the sasquatches tried to poke a button on the handle when Flying Crow squawked, “Unless you want to blow yourself up, I would not touch that instrument any more than necessary!”
Wolf’s eyes got big and he handed the weapon over to the Indian, who calmly placed it in the tie-string of his breechcloth.
Wolf turned to Tanah and said, “Mighty queen, would you ask the old man what that weapon is and how he came to possess it?”
Tanah nodded and turned to Flying Crow. “Grandfather, Wolf wants to know how you came to own this strange weapon.” She paused and added, “And I want to know how you come to be here in the underworld, and how it is that you are still alive after all these years!” To Mel’s surprise, she saw tears running unchecked down the queen’s cheeks. Her eyes were huge and for just a moment, she looked like the small girl she once was.
Flying Crow grinned and said, “Well, this weapon was loaned to me by the star people… it is called a sting-ray and it is very powerful. I hope that you will return it for me?”
Tanah nodded, wordlessly, as he handed her the weapon. The old man resumed. “As for my being here, I was invited!” he laughed uproariously. “After so many years searching the heavens above for answers, I only needed to look at the ground beneath my feet!” He wiped tears of joy from his eyes.
“Tonya, the star people are here! They guide us and keep us safe! I have lived among them for many years. For a long time I stayed young and healthy. Now though, my soul grows weary. I came up to see Father Sun one more time before I die.”
“Die?” Tanah exclaimed. “Grandfather, no offence meant, but you were an old, old man when I first met you as a child! How old are you now?”
Flying Crow cackled, “I be…I forget, but I must be about one hundred seventy five years old now…tee-hee!” He walked up to the queen and took her strong hands in his frail ones. “Tonya, I am glad to see you well. I am also very proud of you.” He turned to look at her companions. “Stalwart and loyal soldiers since time immemorial.” Then, with great dignity, he bowed to the sasquatches, the significance of the gesture only slightly marred by the old man’s palsy. The sasquatches did not understand the Indian’s words and they stared at him in consternation, but Tanah, Onio and Mel bowed to him in return.
“Now,” Flying Crow clapped his hands together once, “I must be on my way. It’s a long climb, eh?” he chortled, and looking the queen in the eye, continued. “Follow the river to its root. Once there, you will find
a boat. Climb into the boat and it will take you to where you need to go. Go left and you will find the star people…go right and you will find your way out of the underworld and close to the king’s conclave.”
Flying Crow looked tired now…unutterably weary; still he mustered a smile for all of them. “Be wary, guards. There are strange things that abide along these dark waters…giants, freaks of nature, humanity’s castaways. Some of the forsaken that haunt these hallowed shores will not or cannot see the light, or the humor of the situation. They will try and kill you if they can!”
With those words, Flying Crow stood on trembling legs and began to hobble away the way they had come. He called out, “Goodbye, Star Brothers! Keep the little humans safe in your charge!”
Tanah shouted, “Thank you, Flying Crow. I…I love you!” As an afterthought, she asked, “Old man, what is the name of this river?”
Mel heard the old man chuckle from the shadows. “Why, this is the river Styx! Everyone knows that!”
Chapter 18
They got underway quickly, performing a hasty burial with more guards facing outward, spears poised, than inward to help sing the death song. They sprinkled the guard’s bodies with magic water, placed stones over the corpses and walked swiftly down the pebbled beach. Mel felt like a hundred beady little eyes bored holes through the back of her neck.
They walked along the river for many miles and Mel’s heart was lodged in her throat much of the way. Once, they saw a fire burning on their side of the river in the distance and smelled something hideous upon the smoke. It was the charnel stench of rotten meat. There was nowhere to go but forward so, advancing slowly, the sasq waded through the icy river to the other side. Then, to Mel’s absolute astonishment, the sasquatches allowed their skin and fur to fade into shadow. Mel remembered hearing about their chameleon-like abilities, but this was the first time she’d observed it firsthand.
The eight remaining full-blooded guards ranged in appearance from snowy white, to red, brown and black. Most of the skin beneath their fur-covered bodies was dark, but some of the fairer ones had skin as pale as Mel’s. During the transformation, the warrior’s flesh turned as dark as night. Onio possessed this talent as well, if not quite as much. His skin went from tan to the hue of darkened oak. Wordlessly, he gathered Mel in his arms and covered her up in the furs. Mel noticed Black Pony did the same with his queen, Tanah.
In single file, the sasq moved toward the firelight. There was a small open space in the fur wrapping that Mel could see and breathe through, and what she saw made her heart pound with dread. Three humans danced and gyrated around the licking flames. Their shadowed shapes threw ghastly silhouettes on the rock walls of the tunnel. In the fire’s glow, Mel saw three bodies hanging upside down by ropes tied around their ankles. Their captors sang, lunging in with their knives, and capered, slashing at the prisoner’s flesh.
Mel thought the prisoners were dead until one, a young woman, howled in agony, writhing against the ropes. The sasq warriors came to a stop and stared at their queen.
“Put me down, Pony,” she commanded, staring wordlessly at the torturers across the river’s water.
One by one, the dancing figures stopped and gazed open-mouthed at the suddenly visible sasquatches. “Kill them!” Tanah screamed, and the warriors let loose with their spears. Within seconds, the murderers lay dead on the rocky shore.
The troop waded across the river again. Tanah rushed to aid the injured prisoner but it was too late. Whatever strength allowed the woman to withstand her tormenters administrations had failed. She stared sightlessly into eternity, as her saviors gazed down at her ravaged body. The woman’s face, upper torso and thighs were crisscrossed with cut marks, as were the bodies of her fellow captives. One of the men had been dead long enough for maggots to form; they swelled in and out of his nostrils and tear ducts while enormous bluebottle flies landed and fed on the wriggling larvae. It was the most horrendous thing Mel had ever seen, and she turned away, gagging.
She heaved until her head ached and then climbed to her feet. Onio held a cup of water to her and said, “Drink it, Mel.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of a shaking hand and took a sip. “Tha…thank you. I’m sorry, Onio. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” She turned her back on the dead bodies and watched the sasq warriors study the remains of the slain captors.
Onio nodded. “I haven’t either, Mel. When called upon, the sasq can be brutal, but this kind of…of savagery, is an evil thing. I feel sick too.” Mel and Onio walked together toward the guards. Wolf turned toward them and said, “Look at these creatures, First Son.”
Onio looked down at one of the bodies and frowned. “Wolf, what am I seeing?”
The bodies held every appearance of being human, but Mel gasped and stepped back in fear. The three men didn’t have human skin, but flesh that heaved and jerked with blue, red and green threads. The threads seemed to be alive as they wove their way in and out of the men’s bodies. Two of the men were face down on the ground but one stared upward with open eyes. The threads wavered above the man’s rapidly drying eyeballs as if they sought more flesh, more blood, additional eyeballs to devour. Some of the threads turned toward them as they watched.
“Stay back!” Tanah barked, “I don’t know what mischief this is, but I do not want my warriors to play any part of it,” She hesitated for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. “It goes against our beliefs, but I don’t think we should try and bury these creatures, or their poor victims. Stay as far back as you can and set the fire alight. Maybe a conflagration will burn these foul humors away.”
A few minutes later as they continued down the rocky shoreline, Mel heard a whooshing sound. Whatever the medics poured on the flames had caught, painting the whole area in an incandescent glare. She paused, trying in vain to think of a prayer for the dead. Onio placed a hand on her upper arm, “Best not to dwell on what we witnessed this day, Mel. The sasquatches believe that positive energy expands in relation to our thoughts…negative energy does too,” Looking back, the young sasq sighed. “Pity them…all of them, I think…but do not think overlong on what you saw. My people and I have heard of this sickness…those strange threads. It is not of our world. Some of the wise ones claim it is the web of alien spiders, others say it is flesh made machine. Either way, those people came too close to what they didn’t understand and paid the ultimate price.” Grabbing her hand, he said, “Come Mel, let’s walk.”
They walked with the others for another two or three miles. Stopping once, Mel stifled a scream as gigantic spiders scurried across the ceiling. The monstrous arachnids stopped for a moment and seemed to weigh the idea of attacking the sasquatches, but scuttled away and squeezed into a crevasse and out of sight. “What is this place, Onio?” she muttered as they resumed their journey.
Onio shook his head in silence but Wolf answered. “Many of the elders believe that this place is what used to be the planet’s surface, before the giant rocks appeared out of the heavens and smashed into the Earth’s crust, extinguishing everything that survived the blast. Some of the wise ones say that this is a world within a world, complete with its own sun and stars. Regardless, it is not a place we should linger overlong,” he finished with a snort of disgust.
Mel noticed that the river was growing narrower. When they first started down its pebbled shoreline the water spanned a distance of fifty feet or more. Now a body could jump across with a few mighty bounds. The sasq stopped and gazed at a small boat that lay at anchor by a tiny dry dock. Tanah stared at it in dubious speculation. Mel thought that even one sasq warrior would swamp the boat, much less the whole troupe.
Mel looked around in bewilderment. What was it the old Indian said; go right to find the king’s Conclave and go left to find the aliens? Mel didn’t want to find the aliens! She wanted to go up, out of these ghastly tunnels. She wanted to breathe fresh air again and see her old familiar sun, not some new inner-worldly sun that had no business lurking inside
her planet!
However, how were you supposed to go right? The river ended here and the walls were solid…unbroken in their stony continuity. A well-traveled path lay to their left and through Onio’s ear’s Mel could hear the sound of rushing water. She saw Tanah confer with two of the forward guards, who nodded obediently and walked down the path. A few moments later, the guards returned. They looked agitated and their huge arms gestured dramatically.
Tanah turned around and walked to where Mel and her companions stood watching. “My guards tell me that there appears to have been a rock-slide. The path leading to the left and down is clear, but the right hand trail is blocked. I believe that there are other paths further down the trail that will lead us upward. I know that, with time, the mighty sasq could clear an opening in the rocks, but time is the one thing we don’t have. What do you think, Pony…Wolf?”
Wolf glanced uneasily at the left pathway and shrugged, “I agree. I don’t like it, Tanah, but I agree.”
Pony gave a solemn nod as well. The bandage over his damaged eye was gone now and Mel marveled anew at the healing properties of the magic waters. She assumed, when she first saw the guards injury, that he would lose the eye to the cougars scratch. However, two days later, the flesh around the socket was pink and the eyeball itself seemed to be functioning perfectly.
Tanah turned to the other sasq warriors and said, “Take water and meat now, my warriors. Relieve yourselves, if necessary, but don’t go alone. We leave in half a span.” Turning to Mel she said, “Girl, come with me, please.”
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