The important thing was that he was alive and, as best he could tell, without injury other than a long, jagged scrape on one of his legs. He ignored it for the moment, although he knew he could not let it go untreated or it would fester.
Getting to his feet, he took a long look around. You are home, he told himself. Home. He shivered, but it had nothing to do with the chill of the wind across his wet body. He could make out little beyond the beach, only a dark expanse that rose high above him. He frowned. Being as well-traveled as any of his kind among the Masters, who sent their Swords from place to place to compete, he had to confess that he had no idea where he was. It clearly was not the great hunting grounds from which he had escaped across the sea bridge. He had seen other places along the sea in his travels, but none that rose so high as to blot out the heavens.
Worrying about where he had landed could wait. A far more important task was before him: finding Valeria and Hercules. He hoped the others had survived, too, of course, but the fate of Valeria and the great hexatiger were at the heart of his fears.
And so he set forth, scouring the beach for any sign of the others. Every hundred yards he made a pile of rocks, which were plentiful, to mark his journey.
He had gone nearly a league, perhaps a bit more, and had seen no sign of his companions. He found no bodies, no debris from the boat, nothing. That only means you haven’t found them yet, he consoled himself over and over.
Karan had not gone ten steps after he had made the last marker when he saw a strange sea creature emerging from the water. He gripped his sword, in case the spawn of the water god should wish to vent its anger upon him.
But the creature now desperately struggling ashore was no child of the sea god, but was a god himself.
“Hercules!” Karan sprinted toward the great beast.
The hexatiger, who had been crawling on his belly from the surf, snapped his head toward Karan and gave out a pitiful mewling sound that tore at Karan’s heart.
Karan went to the great beast’s side and did what he could to help Hercules from the clutches of the sea. Hercules staggered and fell several times, but Karan refused to let him give in to exhaustion.
“You may not yet rest,” Karan gasped as he got behind Hercules, set his shoulder against the hexatiger’s rump, and pushed.
Hercules arose on quaking legs and took two steps forward before collapsing. Twice more did Karan get Hercules to take another step or two. But the final time the beast collapsed, he refused to get up. Instead, he laid his great head in the sand, panting with exhaustion.
Karan would have been content to leave him there to rest, but not knowing if the tide had yet to come in, Hercules could still be in danger of being swept back out to sea.
“I will be back,” Karan said, rubbing a hand gently along the fur between the beast’s eyes.
Then he set off away from the beach toward the trees he had glimpsed in the deep gloom of the inland stretch of the shore. He had seen such trees once before, but could not remember what they were called. He could, however, recall that if these trees were only found in the same part of his world where he had encountered them, he and any of the others who had survived were in greater peril than he otherwise would have believed.
Setting that grim thought aside, he drew his sword and cut the longest tendril that he could reach. Dragging it back to Hercules, he wrapped it around the hexatiger’s neck like a leafy rope. “Forgive me,” he said. Then he dug in his feet and pulled with all his might.
The big cat growled and yanked his head back, nearly sending Karan sprawling to his hands and knees. But Karan planted his feet again and pulled, “Hercules, come!”
Hercules’s growl turned to a whine, and he once again got to his feet. Taking trembling steps as Karan pulled on the vine, Hercules managed to make it past what Karan hoped was the high tide line before collapsing one final time.
Removing the vine and tossing it aside, Karan stroked the beast’s muzzle. “I am sorry,” he panted. Every muscle was quivering with the effort of leading the beast up the beach. Karan comforted Hercules until he was satisfied that the hexatiger wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, and that his own body had a chance to recover somewhat. Then he said, “I must find Valeria. I will be back as soon as I can.”
After making a larger cairn of rocks on the beach to mark where Hercules was, as the hexatiger was nearly impossible to spot in the darkness from near the water, Karan continued his search.
***
“Bugger all,” Septimus cursed as he and Marcus struggled from the water. Beside them, Haakon and Paulus staggered under the burden of an unconscious Pelonius. Seeing that Paulus was at the end of his strength, Septimus relieved him, taking one of Pelonius’s arms over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said to Haakon before throwing a fearful look back over his shoulder toward the water. “Quickly now.”
The barbarian grunted agreement, and the two of them carried the unconscious scribe until they had reached the tree line, where they carefully lay him down before collapsing themselves.
“This should be safe,” Marcus said. He, too, kept his eyes on the sea.
“Safe?” Septimus laughed, his voice tinged with hysteria. “Nowhere within a league of the sea is safe. Did you see that thing?”
“Of course I bloody saw it.” Marcus shuddered. He remembered all too well the dark shape that rose from the churning waters, and the huge jaw lined with countless rows of triangular white teeth that closed around the capsized boat right where Valeria and Hercules had been clinging to the hull, crushing the wood to splinters. Marcus had never heard tell of a fish so huge, so terrifying. He had been keeping an eye on Valeria from his perch near the keel when the thing came out of the water, opening a maw so big that he was sure he could have driven a chariot and a pair of horses down its throat. The attack had come so suddenly that he had not even had a chance to shout a warning to Valeria, who, together with Hercules, disappeared in a confused display of teeth, splashing water, and splintering wood. It had been the only time in his life when he had been utterly terrified, both for himself and, more so, for Valeria.
He and the others were thrown from the hull into the water, and he remembered with vivid clarity the enormous black, lifeless eye of the creature as it glided past him. Again, he thought of Karan, and conceded that perhaps the young man was right about gods that lived upon the Earth.
And perhaps those gods or his own had heard his silent selfish prayers to keep him safe from the beast. The great deadly fish, apparently sated with the lives that it had torn from Marcus’s soul, swam on and disappeared beneath the waves.
His training overriding his shock and guilt, he managed to gather together the other survivors. All of them shouted Valeria’s name until their voices were gone, but there was no answer, nor did Marcus really expect one. He tried to convince himself that his eyes had played a trick on him, that she and Hercules had simply been thrown into the water when the sea monster had attacked and would make their own way ashore. But the gruesome image continued to play over and over in his mind.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Septimus told him. “There was nothing you could have done. Just more work of the bloody gods.” He spat in the sand.
Marcus looked at his longtime friend. “She was my responsibility. Caesar put her in my care…” His voice cracked and he clamped his mouth shut. His eyes began to sting, and he pretended it was from the ocean spray.
“What are we going to do?” Paulus said. “She and Hercules could still…they could still be alive.”
They both turned to face the boy, who wore a defiant expression. “I saw her…” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he had seen. He didn’t have the heart to tell the boy and instead shook his head. “She’s gone.” Those words cut him deeper than any sword. He suddenly felt old, ancient as the first temples of Rome. But, even now, he couldn’t bring himself to completely give up. “We’ll search for her when the storm breaks. In the meantime, we rest.”
&
nbsp; Haakon asked, “And after that?”
“After that,” Marcus admitted, scanning the forbidding darkness that lay inland, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Karan’s search ended as the sand disappeared into a forbidding barrier of treacherous rocks that aeons before must have tumbled down from the escarpment above. He knew from experience that to try and cross such an obstacle in the dark, particularly when the rocks were wet, was to court disaster. The rocky spine disappeared upward into the gloom, meaning there was no easy way around it to see if Valeria or the others might be somewhere on the far side. He would have to wait until the storm broke before he had any chance of exploring further, and his mind shied away from the possibility that the sea had dashed them onto the rocks.
Dejected, he slowly trudged back the way he had come until he found Hercules. The big cat was still stretched out, exhausted, but at least now had enough strength to raise his head and grunt at Karan’s approach. The beast seemed to stare past Karan, as if he expected Valeria to be right behind him. When Hercules realized she wasn’t there, he slowly put his head back down to the sand.
“We will find her,” Karan vowed as he stroked Hercules on the neck. “I promise you. But first we must both regain our strength.” Then he curled up against the hexatiger and fell fast asleep.
When he awoke, the storm had moved on, although the sky remained a sullen gray and the wind still whipped spray from the whitecaps of the incoming waves. Karan got to his feet and did a series of slow, graceful stretches to help him focus his mind as he undid the kinks and stiffness of his body. As he finished the last move, he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings.
The beach was lined with thick jungle, which at first glance was not altogether unlike that surrounding The Wall and the now-destroyed castrum across the sea. But on closer inspection, it was far, far different. The most prevalent tree here was akin to a weeping willow, but could grow far taller and with much thicker foliage. The ground cover in between was a complex mix of ferns, grasses, and thorny vines. And in the darkest places were vividly colored mushrooms and toadstools, some of which were nearly as big as Hercules.
He shivered at the sight, for seeing everything together confirmed his fears of where they had landed. Of all the places in what the Romans called the Dark Lands for them to be cast ashore, this had to be the worst. He had to find Valeria and the others, soon, and try to find a way out of here.
Looking back in the direction where he had found the rocky barrier, he knew that there was no point in trying to go farther in that direction. The rocks were from a section of the face of the escarpment that had sloughed off and crumbled. Many of the rocks were just that, gray rocks, large and small. While he might have carefully navigated over those, he also saw shimmering black rocks among them: obsidian, much of which would be sharp as knives. Karan might be able to cross without injury — if he were very fortunate — but Hercules’s feet would be cut to shreds.
Turning the other direction, he was presented with a similar tableau. He was trapped on an isolated stretch of beach. His only options were to return to the sea, which he refused to even contemplate, and swim around the rocks, or to make the trek up the escarpment. Of course, he chose the latter course of action. He could only hope that Valeria and the others would come to the same conclusion.
Hercules, who seemed to understand that it was time to move onward, rose to his feet and shook his great body, sending a spray of sand-laden water in every direction, including at Karan.
Spitting the water and sand from his mouth and wiping it from his face, Karan managed a smile. Gods also have a sense of humor, he thought. “Come, Hercules,” he said, “let us find Valeria and the others.”
The great cat rumbled his assent. As if reading the young warrior’s mind, Hercules strode toward the waiting jungle, with Karan right behind him.
***
“Why do the gods make things like this?” Paulus hissed as he carefully extracted an arm from the grip of one of the ubiquitous and uniquely painful thorn-covered vines that seemed to be everywhere in the jungle. “I wish I still had my armor and shield!”
Septimus snorted. “If you’d been wearing all that when the boat capsized, you wouldn’t be here to complain, boy. It’s nothing but a scratch.”
“One scratch I wouldn’t mind,” Paulus shot back, “but I must have a hundred by now, and I think those thorns have some kind of venom in them. All the scratches look like they’re infected.”
“He’s right.” Pelonius, who rode on a makeshift stretcher that the other men took turns carrying, examined a sample of a vine that he had sliced from one of the plants. The hardy scribe was still in terrible shape and in a great deal of pain, but he had regained consciousness and remained lucid. He examined the hooked thorns. At the tip of each glistened a tiny drop of clear, viscous liquid. “Try your best to avoid them.”
The others laughed. “That would be like the Senate turning down a chest of gold,” Septimus said just before hissing as another thorn raked one of his legs. “It’s impossible.”
“So why do the gods make things like this?” Paulus persisted. “What good can something like these vines possibly be?”
“It is not our place to understand their will,” Pelonius told him. “That is why they are gods, and we are mere mortals.”
Septimus, who was holding up the rear of the stretcher, grumbled something under his breath. Paulus snickered.
At the head of the stretcher, Marcus said nothing, but was focused on staying in the center of the narrow path Haakon was clearing for them. With a sword in each hand, the barbarian chopped and hacked at the insidious vines and dense ferns. He could do little, however, to clear away the ground vines that lay hidden under the smaller ferns and other plants that covered the jungle floor. Thin and close to the ground, the ground vines — which, gods be praised, did not have thorns — were insanely strong and caught the men’s feet, tripping them. To complicate things, the ground itself was mushy and gave under their step, and everything was still slick with the rain from the storm. Worse, the slope was becoming more and more difficult to negotiate as they rose along the face of the escarpment. They had started their journey moving directly uphill, straight toward the top, but soon had been forced to continue their climb by using switchbacks, at least when the vines catching their feet didn’t send them tumbling to the ground.
All in all, every step forward was an exercise in misery, and doubly so for those carrying Pelonius. He had, in typical fashion, demanded to be left on the beach, claiming that he would be too heavy a burden. But the others had ignored his protests and had toted him along, anyway.
At first, they had called out for Valeria, but had received no answer. After a while, they called out less frequently, and finally stopped. Exhaustion played a part, but there was also something deeply unnerving about the jungle itself that made silence, shameful as it might be in light of their desire to find the girl, a virtue.
Blowing out a breath, Marcus tried to shake the disquieting feeling from his mind along with the sweat from his eyes. While the temperature was moderate, the air was humid as could be, and sweat ran from his pores in rivulets. Looking beyond Haakon’s bulk, all he could see was dense and denser green. Even the sky was blocked by the strange vine trees, some of which rose to astonishing heights of perhaps two or three hundred feet. But every once in a while, even through that thick canopy, he caught a glimpse of the top of the escarpment, which seemed to touch the very clouds.
We have a long way to go, he thought unhappily. Lowering his eyes, he slowly plodded onward.
***
Valeria awoke from a troubled sleep. It took her a moment to recall where she was. She felt groggy, lethargic, which was totally unlike her. Even when very tired, she typically snapped awake.
With a moan, she opened her eyes to the gloom that surrounded her. The rain had stopped, and it was definitely lighter out than it had been the previous
night. Then she realized that she was within the protective shelter of the vine tree.
Vaguely annoyed at the fog that refused to lift from her brain, she tried to get up from where she had curled against the tree. With a jolt of fear that blasted away the lethargy, she found she couldn’t. She was bound to the tree as if someone had tied her to it with rope. Looking down at her hands, she yelped. Vines had encircled them and were in the process of slowly winding their way up her arms, and everywhere they went the flesh was bruised. The same was true for her feet and legs, and more tendrils were encircling her torso. Some had even begun wrapping themselves around her neck.
Looking more closely at the vines, she saw that they were pulsing, very slowly. With the fingers of one hand, she managed to pry loose part of a vine from her opposite forearm. A thin trickle of blood ran down her skin.
Then she saw what was hanging among the vines higher up in the tree: the desiccated bodies of several animals. A rabbit the size of a small dog, a snake as long as Hercules, and what looked like an elk, as best she could tell from what little remained of it, all hung suspended by webs of tendrils. Beyond the obvious bodies were other oddly shaped lumps where the tendrils had completely enclosed their victims. The lumps got smaller the higher up they were in the tree as the tendrils entirely consumed their prey, bones and all.
Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands Page 31