Ranger

by William Stacey

  "Not just dragons—are there beasts like that, or the hydra, or even a sand basilisk?"

  She smiled, her golden eyes shining with amusement. "There are no beasts like dragons, Alex the Ranger, but no, there are no sand basilisks or sand dragons… or any other species of dragon for that matter. Although there was such a creature once, but he died long ago." She shook her head. "No, no dragons. In fact, there aren't even any wyverns in the Char. They prefer the mountains, as do most winged beasts."

  "So nothing that can threaten a large armed group?"

  She laughed, a nearly mocking chortle. "Oh, I didn't say that. There are air elementals, very dangerous in groups. Giant scorpions, each larger than you. Jackal-were, rock-wights, and elder lamia—each of these beasts would devour you for your body's fluids. But manlings are not their typical prey, nor are the beasts particularly foolish enough to attack large groups like you. There are many other creatures that live in the deserts of Faerum, even in the Char—hare, coyotes, some species of hardy deer. These creatures are much preferable prey. No. If you and your warriors keep a watchful eye on your surroundings and avoid confrontations, particularly with the elder lamia—whatever you do, don't look them in the eye—then you should reach your destination. Should, I must say. This is the Char. The sun will be your greatest threat, not to mention the complete lack of water."

  Alex nodded. "Thank you, not just for the information, but for saving Huck's life. You've been a good friend."

  "Not all fae are like Queen Tuatha de Talinor, Alex the Ranger, or boggarts, either. Remember this. Some creatures are not always as they appear."

  "You're not a prisoner anymore, Veraxia. You don't have to come any farther."

  She smiled and shook her head. "Oh, you manlings are far too interesting to leave. I go where you go, for as long as you'll have me."

  Veraxia had been correct. As the sun rose, it became insanely hot, feeling as if they were marching through an oven. Soon, they had removed their helmets, trading them for floppy hats or even tying T-shirts over their mesh hoods.

  Alex ordered halts every hour, often stopping for twenty minutes or more. The section leaders were under order to observe their troops drink during the halts. It was tempting to preserve water in the desert, and in theory that might seem like a good idea, but it was a trap: by the time you realized you were at risk of becoming a heat casualty, it was too late. The only path lay in hydrating regularly whether you were thirsty or not.

  Now, four hours after sunrise, the sun beat upon them mercilessly. Fauna, both alien and oddly familiar, covered the desert, including tall cacti that were like saguaro but at least twenty feet tall. The bushes resembled mesquite but were oversized, taller than a man. Even the tumbleweeds that rolled past were strangely large. It felt as if he and the others had shrunk. They crossed long-dried-out riverbeds and ravines with crumbling sandy edges. Along the far horizon, the wind-worn rock formations looked like saucers balanced upon towers.

  Veraxia had been right about the animals as well. Alex and Leela found tracks showing a sizable population, although they saw few creatures, only small rodents and the occasional two-foot-tall hares. Birds flew overhead—also too large and resembling vultures—but they kept their distance. Then there were the flies, a never-ending torrent of buzzing insects, many of which bit if they found exposed skin. The team saw nothing that was an obvious threat, yet Veraxia insisted the predators were out there, no doubt keeping a distance from the strange new creatures invading their territory. For now.

  There was little sand, for which Alex was grateful, and no dunes, thank god. Crossing sand dunes was a nightmare. What grass they saw was burned white by the sun, but there were fields of oddly placed life, pink flowers blooming in patches for a kilometer or more, and sturdy bushes with bright-green leaves. It seemed the Char could support life. Then they hit the first salt plain, and he wondered if he had been wrong.

  The air became so thick with heat and salt fumes it was nearly unbearable. Those who had shemaghs or other scarves wrapped the cloth around their mouth and noses. Those who didn't suffered in silence. When they finally left the salt plain several kilometers later, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, although the sun continued to bake them. In the late afternoon, after marching all day, Alex ordered a long halt while he contemplated the route ahead. Despite the heat, he used his helmet's binocular vision to zoom in on the mesa, which was still twenty to twenty-five kilometers away. They should be there in a few hours, no more than five, and once the sun went down, the temperature would cool. But they had drunk most of their water getting here.

  If that mesa didn't hold Deep Terlingas and dwarven help, they'd likely die in this inferno. And it would be Alex's fault. He removed his helmet and went to find Martinez and give the order to keep going. There was no other choice.

  Time stretched on for Alex and the soldiers, and movement became a matter of placing one foot in front of the other. Dust covered everyone, even getting beneath their MR suits and irritating their skin. Grit stuck in Alex's throat, leaving a constant taste of copper. At one point, Leela began to sway, and he ordered another break and personally watched her drink. She smiled bravely, too weak to talk. And on they went. The mesa, much closer now, shimmered with heat.

  Impossibly, the sun finally set, setting the horizon ablaze with the most beautiful sunset Alex had ever seen, a thousand shades of red and pink. He stood in place, staring at it in awe. Leela leaned against him and wrapped her arm around his waist. "Well… what are we waiting for?"

  "Just enjoying the sunset with my wife," he said, his lips chapped.

  It took three more hours and another salt flat to cross before the weary Strike Force soldiers finally reached the base of the mesa. Then it took another half hour to find the boulder-strewn gorge that led up to the summit. But they had made it.

  The cloaked mage-scout sent to spy upon the manlings in Terlissandia's absence hauled on the reins of her wyvern, sending the dragonling into a gradual turn. Far below, the manlings had reached the strange flat mountain they had been marching toward. She did not understand why they had marched here, but by all accounts, manlings were stunningly stupid creatures. But such questions were of no concern to her, a lowly mage-scout. She turned her mount southwest and flew to meet the army that was already through the pass in the Spine of the Serpent. Whatever the manlings sought here, they'd die on that flat rock.

  39

  "I figured as much," said Ylra, resting on her rifle as she surveyed the gorge. "It is a path and wide enough for a wagon, but you'd never know it."

  Alex agreed. From a distance, the gorge looked natural, filled with fallen boulders and rocks and tall steep cliffs on either side, but it was a trick. When you were closer, you saw the work that had gone into making it look natural, but a traversable path wound its way up through the rocks and debris. "I'd say we found the right mesa."

  "What do you want to do, sir?" Martinez asked. Since Huck's injury, the first sergeant split his time between checking on her and acting as Alex's unofficial shadow.

  "My people will be aware of us by now," said Ylra. "I'm surprised they haven't challenged us already."

  "You think they're watching us?" Alex asked, his gaze scanning the high ground. The moment they entered that gorge, they'd be vulnerable.

  She grunted and spat upon the rocks. "I'm sure they're watching us. My concern is that they'll challenge us by rolling boulders over us then coming down to examine the smears."

  "We in danger?" Leela asked.

  Ylra snorted, a mocking smile on her lips. "Course we're in danger. This is the last dwarven settlement in Faerum. They'll be a bit… testy. Why do you suppose I'm standing in front, so they can see me? On the other hand, they have no way of knowing if I'm under the influence of a grimworm…" She pouted, grinding her teeth as she considered the gorge. "I'd probably kill us first then apologize later if it were a mistake."

  "Okay," said Alex with a weary sigh. "Everyone's tired and could use a brea
ther, anyhow. Let's do this, First Sergeant. I'm going up with Ylra—"

  "I'm coming too," said Leela.

  "And my wife," Alex continued. "We'll scout out the summit and see if we can't make contact without getting"—he glanced at Ylra—"boulders rolled over us."

  Ylra pursed her lips and shrugged, as if it were perfectly sensible advice. "Hey, anything's possible, and they haven't killed us yet."

  "Maybe I should come," said Martinez.

  Alex shook his head. "Not just yet. I don't want to spook them—and for God's sake, keep Veraxia out of sight. Have everyone drink water and eat something. Change socks, and have Specialist Flannors examine their feet. After a day like today, we will have walking wounded."

  "Yes, sir. How long?"

  Alex studied the boulder-strewn path. "Give us an hour, then come get us."

  Martinez, his face like the rocks surrounding them, nodded.

  Alex led Ylra and his wife up the gorge, and they used their helmets' night-vision mode to scan the path ahead of them. He said nothing, but the longer they went unchallenged, the more his concern grew. Alex had lived a soldier's life and didn't believe in premonitions or bad feelings, but sometimes the subconscious mind noticed clues that the conscious mind missed and sent subtle warnings, what others considered hunches. He didn't feel like they were being watched. He felt alone.

  From far away, a wolf—or a creature like a wolf—howled at the moons. Moments later, others took up the cry, a song of the night. Okay, maybe not entirely alone.

  By the time they reached the summit, his heart was pounding beneath his armor, and his legs were rubber. It had been a long, tiring day. He scanned the mesa's top from right to left, the unusual pattern helping him to pan slowly and focus on the details. From below, the mesa resembled a flat table, but up close, it was much more rock strewn and irregular. The crater, a half kilometer wide and about a hundred meters deep at its center, sat in the center of the mesa. What are the chances, Alex wondered, that a meteorite would strike here of all places while missing the surrounding desert? It was a one-in-a-million chance.

  "There's a path into the crater," said Ylra.

  "Dwarven made?" he asked.

  She nodded, her face grim.

  Alex followed her gaze. She was right. A path led to the base of the crater. He used his visor's binocular mode to zoom in on the far side. "There's a… looks like an opening, a crack in the rocks but natural like a cave."

  "It's not," Ylra answered bluntly.

  "No, I imagine not. Let's go."

  They took the path down into the crater, following it to the cave entrance. They stood before the irregular opening in the rocks, which was maybe five feet wide and seven tall. There was a passage on the other side.

  "This isn't right," Ylra hissed. "We don't leave entrances unattended."

  "Could… your people have moved on?" Alex asked. "Maybe they found this red-star metal and moved elsewhere."

  "I don't know." She stared ahead of her. "Anything is possible… I guess."

  "That's not it," Leela whispered.

  "What?" Alex asked.

  "I don't think they found this anti-magic meteorite they were looking for. Or if they did, they didn't move it."

  "Why?"

  "Because I can't channel anymore or even sense mana."

  "Really?" he asked, a prickling at the base of his scalp.

  "I don't like this," Leela said.

  "Let's go," he said, stepping forward into the cave entrance.

  Once they were past the fake natural rock walls, the passage became a perfectly round tunnel with wide smooth walls. Stone steps led down. There was no ambient light to amplify, so Alex switched on the light on his Tac rifle and played it ahead of them. The stairs led down a considerable distance before reaching another wide circular passage. Everything is circular, Alex realized. Even the stairs follow a circular passage. Do dwarves have a thing for circles?

  The round tunnel led on, twisting back on itself several times before spilling out into a vast open space several hundred feet wide, an eight-sided chamber with smooth rock walls. Burned-out torches sat cold in iron braziers. At the far end of the room, facing them, were two large iron doors with geometric patterns carved into them. Each door was at least twenty feet high and ten feet wide. A single stone dais, two feet tall, stood to the side of the doors, with a small metal hammer resting atop it.

  Ylra stood before the dais and picked up the hammer. "Here goes nothing." She struck the top of the dais. A single dull thud reverberated across the vast chamber.

  "That wasn't that loud," Leela said.

  "It would be on the other side of those doors," Ylra answered. She struck again and again.

  Silence settled over them.

  "Okay," said Alex. "That's enough knocking."

  "We can't just leave," Ylra said in exasperation.

  "Not going to."

  "So what are you going to do?" Leela asked.

  "I'm done being subtle. I'm going to set C-4 charges on those doors."

  The Strike Force moved to the summit, and Martinez supervised the defenses, keeping an observation post at the top of the gorge. The others set up shelter within the cave entrance, where it was cooler and they'd be sheltered from the sun when dawn arrived. While this was taking place, Alex, with the sole surviving combat engineer helping him, set the C-4 charges to the seam of one of the double doors. Ylra helped him, showing them where the door would be weakest, where the hinges were hidden on the other side. They couldn't damage the doors—they just didn't have enough C-4—but if they blew off the hinges, the door would fall—Alex hoped.

  The engineer played out the det cord, walking it back up the passage, then attached it to the primer. Nearby, ready for action, waited a section of soldiers, with Ylra and Leela just beside them.

  "Well, sir. That's the best we can hope for," said the engineer, holding the primer in his hands. "Even got a bit of C-4 left. Give me the word, sir."

  Alex met Ylra's eyes and nodded. "Do it."

  "Fire in the hole!" the engineer announced as he energized the primer.

  A thunderous roar shook the walls, sending pebbles and dust flying around them, obscuring all sight.

  When the dust cleared, Alex led the soldiers back into the room. Smoke drifted through the air, and Alex scanned his flashlight, using its powerful beam to cut through the dust and smoke. The other soldiers did the same.

  A single metal door hung crooked against the other, and a four-foot space lay open beneath it—a path to Deep Terlingas.

  Alex approached the door. If it shifted and fell on him, they'd have to scrape up what was left.

  "Hey, sir," one soldier said nervously. "Bad idea."

  "Stay there," Alex ordered, slipping closer to the opening. "Everybody hang back."

  It was a terrible idea, Alex knew, but he had to check. Ylra and Leela followed right behind him despite his order. The women in his life rarely listened to him at the best of times.

  Alex shone his light through the gap. Two towers and a stone wall faced him on the other side of the doorway, but behind the wall, he could just make out stone buildings and streets, a vast underground settlement built out of the rock walls. Wagons and mining equipment littered the abandoned narrow streets. There were no dwarves.

  40

  Sharon Ireland woke in a filthy dungeon cell with three women kneeling over her. Two of the women were middle-aged, and the third was younger, in her late teens. One of the older women, her hair streaked with gray, was dabbing at Sharon's face with a wet cloth. Sharon scurried back but stopped when she ran up against the wall behind her. The cell was small, with walls built of stone and rusty iron bars. Through the bars, she saw other cells and a much larger chamber lit by torchlight. Spiders the size of dimes crawled across the walls.

  The three women facing her froze. The one holding the wet cloth said something in a foreign language that sounded Slavic. Sharon shivered in the cold and realized she was wearing nothing m
ore than a filthy, flimsy shift, ripped and so worn, you could see right through it. A moment later, she realized it wasn't the only thing she was wearing: leg irons connected by a foot of rusty chain were on both ankles. She'd be able to shuffle forward but not run.

  "Who are you?" she asked, her heart pounding against her rib cage. "Where am I?"

  The last thing she remembered was that dark-elf woman appearing before her and the… God, what was that disgusting bat thing? Her fingers flew up to her neck, which was still painfully sore to the touch, and she traced fresh wounds there and on her face that felt like deep scratches and bruising. Her glasses were gone, so anything over fifteen feet away was a blur. "Where are my patients?" she asked in quiet fear.

  "You are doctor… yes?" the young woman asked. She couldn't have been over seventeen or eighteen, with long brown hair and huge eyes. She was dressed like the other women, in patched-together farm clothing, and spoke with a distinct Eastern European accent.

  "I… yes, I am a doctor."

  "You is American, Yankee?"

  "What? No, I'm Canadian. Sharon. Dr. Sharon Ireland. Who are you? Where are we?"

  "We are Russian. I am Anzhelika, but others name me Angel." She pointed to her chest. She wore a threadbare T-shirt displaying a rainbow-colored unicorn, but the unicorn had seen better days and was fading away. Then she motioned to the other women. "This is Vera. This is Galina. Vera…" She paused, pointing to the elderly woman holding the wet cloth. "Was being nurse back home before… before the end of world. Good nurse but no doctor."

  Sharon's eyes darted about, her confusion a fog in her skull. Fear hit her like icy water when she saw the bloody instruments on a wooden table in the larger chamber. Torture chamber! I'm in a torture chamber! A loud, deep groan came from one of the other cells, and she jumped to her feet and swayed as if she were just waking up from the world's biggest hangover. Angel rushed to her side and helped steady her before she fell. Sharon gripped the bars and peered through them to the cell where someone had groaned. In the shadows of the cell, she could just make out the nude form of Kargin lying on his belly, with… something attached to his back. Her blood ran cold when she realized it was a huge furry centipede, a foot long, its head buried in the base of Kargin's spine. Blood ran down his back where the centipede's clawed legs pierced his skin, and Kargin cried out in agony once more.