The Lost Army

by Christopher Golden

  “I’m sorry,” he said, directing his apology to Anastasia.

  “You couldn’t have known,” she said, trying to soothe him. And it worked, a little.

  “The tablet also says something about opening a doorway, or passage, made of black flame, or some such, perhaps a reference to sulphur?” Arun suggested.

  He shrugged, then. Obviously, that was as far as he’d gotten.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Professor,” Hellboy said. “I can’t read the Sunday funnies without a decoder ring. Just keep working at it. Whatever we learn from that slab of granite might save our lives.”

  Hellboy squinted in the noonday glare. He shielded his eyes a moment, and scanned the now nearly empty camp.

  “I guess it’s just the four of us,” he observed.

  “Four?” Anastasia asked.

  Hellboy pointed to the sack that jostled against his hip as he walked.

  “Don’t forget Lady Catherine,” he reminded her.

  Anastasia made a sickened face. “How could I?” she asked.

  “Here comes the Captain,” Arun noted, staring up from his work and across the barren camp at four figures approaching.

  The heat rippled the air above the sand, and sand stung Hellboy’s bare chest and back. The wind had picked up, and the flying grit had become more of a nuisance. He wondered if anyone had seen a weather forecast lately.

  “Can we do something for you, Captain?” Anastasia asked, as she stood and brushed off her pants.

  “I see the rest of your team has withdrawn,” Creaghan noted.

  The three MI5 agents who accompanied him stood silently by. Two of them Hellboy knew by name, Burke and Carruthers. Though, like Anastasia, he had trouble telling them apart. They both had curly brown hair and dark eyes. One was older and his hair had more grey in it, but Hellboy could never figure out which one it was.

  The third was a black man who was always quiet. Hellboy didn’t know if he had ever heard the man speak. Or even heard anyone else refer to him.

  “I instructed my team to return to London,” Anastasia explained.

  “Colonel Shapiro will be pleased,” Creaghan noted. “Meanwhile, where are the rest of you off to, now? Another expedition today?”

  Anastasia lifted her chin defiantly.

  “We’re going spelunking, if you must know, and you and your men are not invited,” she informed the Captain.

  “On the contrary,” Creaghan said pleasantly. “Agents Burke, Carruthers, and Meaney will be accompanying you. For security purposes, of course. None of you is well armed, and if I were to allow you to meet the same fate as Lady Catherine’s expedition, I would be terribly remiss in my duties.”

  “Great,” Hellboy mumbled. “Moe, Larry, and Shemp. We don’t even get Curly on our team.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Anastasia said with great suspicion. “While we appreciate your concern, and the accompaniment and protection of your men, why aren’t you joining us? Certainly you can’t hope to find the answers you seek right here in camp.”

  Creaghan raised an eyebrow. Hellboy suspected the man was surprised that Anastasia had not argued about bringing MI5 agents along with them. The Captain couldn’t know that had been part of their plan all along. They had no weapons other than Hellboy’s own gun. Three soldiers with SA-80’s could come in handy against undead Persian warriors, or whatever else they might find within those caves.

  “Since you’ve asked,” Creaghan finally replied, “I’ve determined that some of us need to remain behind to secure the camp against . . . outside interests.”

  “Do you mean Libyans, or Colonel Shapiro?” Anastasia asked.

  “I mean outside interests of any kind, Dr. Bransfield,” Creaghan answered. “In the meantime, as long as your instructions do not contravert the orders I myself have given to my men, I have commanded them to obey you.”

  “What a guy,” Hellboy said. “The question is, what are their orders from you?”

  Creaghan looked at him directly for the first time. The Captain smiled amicably. Which Hellboy knew meant the guy believed he was pulling one over on them. Good, Hellboy thought. Let him.

  “I’m sorry, Hellboy, but you don’t have the clearance for . . . ,” Creaghan replied, before Hellboy interrupted him.

  “I have the clearance for anything I want to know, Captain,” he said. “But don’t worry, I won’t push it. Besides, if I need to know anything, I can always ask Lady Catherine.”

  Hellboy patted the heavy sack which hung at his hip, and Creaghan’s eyes widened. His lip curled in disgust, but he said nothing. The paranormal created new rules for any situation. Creaghan had obviously realized that, or he never would have allowed them to carry Lady Catherine’s head around in such a manner.

  “Good luck,” Creaghan said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  —

  There were more than two dozen caves in the oasis hillside. In teams of two, they searched them all. Most of them, even the largest, went in no more than twenty feet and then ended either in a small cavern dwelling or a simple dead end. There were markings on the walls, some in the same odd glyph language that was inscribed upon the tablet Hellboy had discovered in the lake.

  Three of the caves, each a distance from the others, did not end so simply. These they determined to investigate as a group. One wound quite deeply into the hillside before the passage was blocked by a cave-in. Hellboy believed it had been intentionally blocked, as the mountain of rubble barring their path did not appear to have come from the ceiling of the cave.

  A second tunnel led up through the hillside and ended abruptly where it opened into a huge cavern. The ground fell away into a darkness so profound that their three high-powered flashlights combined could not cut it deep enough to see the bottom or the other side.

  Finally, two hours after beginning their search, they entered the last cave.

  “This has got to be it,” one of the MI5 men declared, and Hellboy noted that the man’s voice had more hope than certainty in it.

  But after several minutes of following the winding tunnel down through hard-packed earth and stone, and into the very foundation of the desert, they arrived, once more, at a dead end.

  “Well,” Anastasia said as they flashed their lights around the cavern. “What next?”

  Hellboy shrugged. It just didn’t feel right to him. If there was some passage underwater through the caves, it only made sense that there must be some passage from aboveground as well. He tried to remember what Lady Catherine had said.

  “Come on,” Arun said. “It’s getting kind of cramped in here. I feel . . . strange. My body aches.”

  “Wait,” Hellboy said.

  He untied the top of the sack that held Lady Catherine’s head, reached in, and pulled the lifeless thing out by its hair.

  “Jesus, that’s disgusting,” Agent Meaney hissed.

  “It’s blasphemous is what it is,” added one of the others, Burke or Carruthers.

  Hellboy held up the decapitated woman’s head so that he could look into her eyes. “Lady Catherine?” he prompted. “Lady Catherine, we need your help, now. We’re trying to avenge you, but we’re not having a heck of a lot of luck here. Any suggestions?”

  There was no response.

  “Thank you,” Hellboy said. “You’ve been helpful.”

  He turned to the others. “The head isn’t helping. I guess we should go back.”

  “Avenge us?” a weary voice said.

  “Bloody hell!” one of the agents shouted.

  Hellboy lifted the head and shined his flashlight at Lady Catherine’s face. Her eyes, now open, winced at the glare.

  “Lady Catherine?” Anastasia began.

  “Who are you?” Lady Catherine asked. Now that she was talking again, fresh blood dripped from the shattered vertebrae that hung from her ragged neck stump.

  “Dr. Anastasia Bransfield, madame, at your service,” she replied.

  “Ah, yes, Dr. Bransfield,” Lady Catherine sigh
ed, and her eyes seemed to die again for a moment, staring off, unmoving, into nothing. Then she coughed slightly, and a bit of blood drooled out the side of her mouth. There were insects in it, some kind of sand chiggers or something, Hellboy thought.

  In the darkness of the cave, he heard one of the MI5 men retching.

  “I’d . . . forgotten,” Lady Catherine said. “Will you avenge us, those of us who died in that oasis clearing?”

  “We’re trying, Lady Catherine,” Anastasia replied. “But we need more information. We’re in the caves now, the caves that I believe were used to bring you all to Hazred’s domain. But we can’t find our way in. We’ve searched them all and . . .”

  “The entrance is near,” Lady Catherine said, and her eyes rolled back in her head, revealing white pulsing orbs lined with red veins as her face was lined with slashes. “I remember now, just a bit. We walked through the wall, as if we were already ghosts. Dead and gone. But we were alive then, so alive and radiant and . . . oh, you must destroy him. Destroy the sorceror.”

  Then Lady Catherine was gone.

  “Looks like our oracle is less help than expected,” Hellboy said. “Now I wish I’d left the head back in Creaghan’s tent.”

  “Don’t be such a pessimist,” Anastasia said. “She said the entrance was near. Let’s look around again.”

  “They ‘walked through the wall,’” Arun noted. “We’re assuming she doesn’t mean literally. So if there wasn’t magic involved, perhaps there’s some kind of passage.”

  Hellboy had excellent vision. Despite the cave’s dim flashlight illumination, he could see that Arun was sweating profusely. The man looked awful, sickly.

  “Are you all right, Professor?” he asked.

  Arun jumped as if he’d been goosed.

  “What? Oh, yes, yes. I’m fine. A little stuffy in here is all.”

  “Do you want to go back outside?” Anastasia asked. “One of the others can accompany you.”

  Arun glanced over at Burke, Carruthers, and Meaney, who were standing in the corner looking rather lost, and shook his head.

  “Right, then,” Anastasia announced. “Let’s look around. Spread out and do a circuit of the cavern, sticking close to the walls. Run a hand along the stone and examine it carefully.”

  The six of them fanned out around the circumference of the cavern. Hellboy estimated that it was roughly twenty feet in diameter in most areas, and a little wider where the tunnel they had followed opened into the cavern. The ceiling was about twelve feet from the floor, and he had already taken a good look at it to be certain there were no obvious openings.

  Hellboy ran his left hand along the stone wall and focused his flashlight on it a foot or so at a time. Every step he took, the click of his hooves echoed eerily within the cavern. It was a hollow, inhuman sound that he had to keep reminding himself originated with him. He had become so used to the sound that it did not normally even register to him. But in such a small, enclosed space, and with that horrible echo, he could not escape it.

  Self-consciously, he wondered if it bothered the others half as much as it was bothering him. After a moment’s consideration, he forced the thought away and concentrated on the task at hand.

  He had covered several feet of cave without any luck, and began to think they were going to strike out.

  “Here,” Agent Meaney said. “Over here, have a look at this.”

  Hellboy pointed his flashlight at the man’s face; shadows reflected obsidian on his dark skin.

  “Where?” Anastasia asked, as they all converged in the corner where Meaney stood.

  “Right here,” he said, pointing to a depression in the rock wall that none of them had noticed before.

  “Is it some trick door or something, then, Paul?” one of the other agents asked Meaney.

  “Can you not see it, then?” Meaney asked. “It’s an optical illusion. Look.”

  Meaney walked straight into the recessed corner of the cavern and the wall seemed, for a moment, to bend around him. Then he had passed through, and it was clear.

  “My God,” Anastasia gasped. “Could that be a natural formation, do you think? Could nature have formed such a perfect illusion?”

  Hellboy studied the wall closely. Or rather, the walls. There was an opening from floor to ceiling, a passage right in front of them. It was a shadowy corner of the cavern, so that at first it had only seemed to be a natural depression in the wall. They would have noticed it sooner, but the passage was only about five feet deep, with a large stone obelisk standing at the end, as if someone had cut a huge door in the wall and shoved it backwards. If one walked into the gap and stepped forward to the recessed stone, there were openings to the left and right leading out of the cavern.

  “Let’s go,” was Hellboy’s only reply. The day was passing quickly outside, and he wanted to investigate as much as possible before the others grew too tired to function properly. Already he had serious concerns about Professor Lahiri. He wondered whether he ought to have left the man behind.

  “Which way?” Burke asked. Or it might have been Carruthers.

  “Agent Meaney, Hellboy, and I will go left,” Anastasia decided. “You two take Professor Lahiri and go right. We all walk fifty paces, then turn around and report back. At that point, we’ll decide upon one path or the other.”

  “No!” Arun snapped.

  Hellboy stared at him. They all did. The professor was behaving more and more oddly.

  “What’s wrong, Arun?” Anastasia asked. “Come on, man, if you’ve got claustrophobia or something, now is the time to tell me.”

  “I just think I should go with you,” Arun said, his voice almost a whimper. “You might need me.”

  Anastasia frowned. “I’m a big girl,” she said. “I can take care of myself. Besides, Arun, we’re going to meet back here in just a few minutes. Why don’t you restrain yourself until then.”

  At first Hellboy assumed this was just another example of Arun’s infatuation with Anastasia. But then another, more disturbing thought entered his mind. Hooves clacking on stone, he stepped over to where Arun stood with the MI5 agents.

  “Listen, Professor,” he said, “if you’ve translated more of that tablet, you’d better say so. If we’re in danger . . . or at least, any more danger than we already know, you’d be a fool not to say so. Not to mention pissing me off. You’re at risk here, too. So what do you say? Got anything you want to share?”

  “Not at all,” Arun said stiffly, his old self again for a moment. “Why, the very suggestion is an insult.”

  “Okay, then, let’s move on, shall we?” Anastasia asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

  Hellboy took the lead on his side, and one of the MI5 agents led the other group. They set out at the same time. About twelve paces into their tunnel, Hellboy held up a hand and motioned for Meaney and Anastasia to stop. There was a green glow ahead that he found very familiar. He had seen it before, underwater.

  And far off in the tunnel, he thought he heard an odd singsong melody that might have been that weird noise he’d heard in the lake that reminded him of whale song.

  “Careful now,” he said, and moved on.

  His flashlight cut the darkness, but barely. It illuminated a path in front of them scarcely three feet wide. A few more paces and he began to notice that the tunnel seemed to have a small luminescence of its own. A green, sickly glow.

  Then he stopped. Several feet ahead, the tunnel ended. Or rather, the ceiling did. The cave path opened up to the right and above, becoming a rocky ledge along a sheer cliff.

  “What on Earth is that glow?” Anastasia asked softly.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Hellboy replied. “But it damn sure isn’t Kryptonite.”

  A scream cut the darkness behind them, then voices, shouting, and the pounding echo of footfalls. Without a word, Agent Meaney set off back down the tunnel the way they’d come. Anastasia and Hellboy followed.

  “Meaney, look out for that big . . . ,
” Hellboy began to say.

  But Meaney was not stupid. Though he had no flashlight of his own, he instinctively sidestepped the obelisk in their path and dodged into the cave. He was already around it and starting down the right-hand leg of the tunnel before Hellboy cleared the huge stone.

  He stopped in his tracks. Meaney stood over Arun, who was crumpled up on the ground, hysterical. One of the other two agents leaned against the tunnel wall, heaving in great gasps of air from having run in terror.

  “What happened?” Meaney demanded.

  “It’s Burke, Paul,” the other agent said. “He’s dead.”

  “What?” Hellboy asked. “How in the hell did that . . .” He stomped past them and started down the tunnel. Agent Carruthers grabbed his arm.

  “No, sir, don’t go down there,” Carruthers said. “Or, at least, keep your flashlight aimed at the ground. Where it starts to slope, even gently, don’t take another step.”

  It occurred to Hellboy that now he knew which man was which. But it had been a horrible way to learn to tell them apart. Carruthers was alive, and Burke was dead. Their former similarity didn’t seem quite so amusing anymore.

  Hellboy started down the tunnel, training his flashlight on the stone floor in front of him. A dozen or so paces later, the path did indeed begin to slope just a bit. Heeding Carruthers’ warning, he stopped there.

  “What is it?” Anastasia asked, and Hellboy was slightly startled. He’d been so focused on where he was going that he had paid little attention to other noises in the tunnel.

  Now he stopped and listened carefully. Other than human sounds, the clearing of a throat, the scuffing of a boot sole, knuckles cracking, he heard absolutely nothing. Except there was something else. Something moving. The sound of . . . friction?

  Hellboy held the end of his flashlight between his teeth. The light bounced along the walls as he searched through the many large pockets of his belt for the one thing that might be useful to him at that very moment.

  “Hellboy?” Anastasia asked. “What are you looking for?”

  He ignored her. Had he responded with the flashlight between his gritted teeth, the words would have come out as grunts anyway. After several frustrating moments, the fingers of his left hand brushed a long, thin stick that was his objective. Grimly, he removed it from his pocket. Hellboy hated to waste it. It might have come in very handy later. But a man was dead, and he deserved to have people know how he had died.