Heaven's Gate

by Toby Bennett

  Only one man had died and been left in the desert, so far, the suicidal madman who Rugan had seen slashing the water skins. Unfortunately the priest had noticed that something was wrong too late, by the time he raised the alarm the water was gone. The man confessed and was dealt with accordingly but that had not changed their predicament, they were past Limit and four days away from the line and any hope of renewing their supply. Rugan had argued that they were no more than two days from the fugitives and that there would be water enough to be had from them, besides as Rugan correctly pointed out, seventy men probably wouldn’t make it through four days under the desert sun and there was too much at stake not to take the risk. It was near the end of the second day now and last night Leedon had been able to see the camp fires of Tenichi’s forty men. He’d sworn, as he sat huddled in the cold, surrounded by his sickened men that they would take the Pardoner’s water and make him walk back to the line.

  Now it seemed that the time for that retribution had come, Rugan assured him that even though Lillian and her group had not lit a fire and given themselves away, they were struggling to keep a few hours lead on the Pardoner and his party.

  “We ride through the night,” the General says, recovering from his heat induced malaise.

  “It would be best to set up an ambush, if we do it right, we can ensure that we capture the girl and none of the others escape.”

  Rugan agrees. “Are you sure you have the strength for a final push though?” Rugan does not particularly care whether the General answers in the affirmative or not, the rest of the troop is his and he would just as soon kill the man if he refuses to go on. However, some part of the lich can not help but be fascinated by the General’s continued survival. What drove the man beyond the limits of all the rest of the men he had brought? The General seems to keep his body going with the same will that Rugan used to animate the men and horses around them, making a lie of everything that Rugan believes about the weakness of the flesh.

  “I will do what I must,” the General answers ignoring the misgivingings, he has about his own strength or that of the men. “If they can endure this then how can I do less? Besides if we do not we will die.” Thus murmurs the last living man in the company, urging his dead horse to the head of the column.

  *

  At first glance Silversnow seems as bleak and featureless as the rest of the desert. Wind blasted stone stands all around the sight like some natural amphitheatre, eroded into the side of a diminutive mountain. Centuries have caked the sight with grit and sand, making the whole place indistinguishable from any other stand of stones or atoll in the desert. Inside the high rock walls, there are mounds of sand marking ancient ruins, mounds that seem unremarkable until one notices the twisted metal that protrudes from many of these apparently natural structures. Here and there centuries of accumulated dust and stone have fallen away to reveal collapsed walls and the gleaming metal, scoured by wind and stand that lies beneath.

  “I still don’t see why they call the place ‘Silversnow’,” Lillian comments, having satisfied herself that at least some of the partially buried structures are man made.

  “Over there,” Blake answers, indicating two monoliths that stand before them like ruined gateposts. Lillian urges her horse forward with a click of her tongue against her teeth and stares up at one of the thick columns. Even up close they seem unremarkable, until she notices movement beneath the sandstone surface. Lillian blinks, unable to believe that the strange movement is not some trick of tired eyes but once she has noticed it, there is no way not to see that the whole column is undulating with strange patterns of black and white.

  She dismounts and walks still closer, reaching out a hand to touch the gravelly surface but before her fingers can connect Blake calls out a warning.

  “Lillian no!”

  She pulls her hand back and turns to face him, “Why? Is it dangerous?”

  “Yes, they have been known to kill those who touch them and I cannot take that risk.”

  “How can stone kill?”

  “How does stone move or shine?”

  “It shines?”

  “You can’t notice it as well now but when it gets dark, the silver falling through the pillars will glow. You can see it, even a long way off.”

  “Hence Silversnow?”

  “Precisely.”

  “What kind of stone is it?”

  “I don’t know, I have come here several times, since this place seems to be somehow linked to the Gate, but I have never been able to penetrate its secrets. All I know is that these columns do not form the Gate, I am not even sure that they are stone at their heart I think the sand has encased something else and turned hard over a long time but since to touch them is to risk death it is not a mystery we can solve.”

  “You think the Gates are here?”

  “Most sources would seem to suggest that but as I say, I have never been able to find anything. I do not think that Yorick chose this place to meet at random, I only hope that he has more insight and feels inclined to share.”

  “Well where is this great prophet then?” Aden asks irritably, “I don’t think that those Inquisitors are more than a few hours behind us and I don’t want to wait here for them to catch up.”

  “He is Strigoi, he will not come before dark.” Blake shrugs.

  “So we just sit out here waiting to get caught in the meantime?”

  “That’s about the size of it unless you have a deck of cards on you.”

  “How reassuring, jokes! Now I guess we can at least die laughing.”

  “I don’t see what good being miserable about it would do.” Blake answers softly, “Besides what’s death to you? You believe that you’ll just end, simple as that.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.”

  “What’s the difference between sooner and later?” Blake asks.

  “Good food, good drink and a few more memories.” Aden answers at the same time as dismounting to join them, “but I’ve come this far to meet this Yorick and there seem to be few better places to go at the moment.”

  Blake responds to the mutant’s fatalism with a rare smile, but his humour is forced. They have no choice but to wait for Yorick, if they are to have the book and find the Gate. It would do no good to tell them that he smells the sent of old death all around them, that somewhere, higher up in the rocks which surround them, the dead are waiting.

  *

  From his hiding place in the rocks above Rugan watches the three companions pass through the two columns of Silversnow. He had planned to give the order to attack just as soon as they were trapped in the semicircle of rock surrounding the ruins. With one way out, not even the Pilgrim would be able to cut through so many undead. Then he had heard them talking and realized he must wait. The secret they had managed to keep from him up till now was finally revealed, the girl did not have the book and that changed things. One more mouse in his trap shouldn’t change anything, even if it were a Strigoi.

  Rugan spares a glance for the man lying unconscious beside him, the General had made it to the shade of the hills against all odds and life still burned in him, when it should long since have left. Yet Rugan cannot bring himself to end the man’s life, he knows that it is nothing more than the memory of an emotion, a shade of the fondness that he had felt for Angus but it is all he can feel now. His master had ordered him to lead the General to his death but he did not have to act beyond that. Let the General sleep and let the Strigoi come, the lich decides he will deal with them all and kill the girl, he had no more use for her now, a lich has no use for politics. He’ll take the book, then the Strigoi wll never find their Gate.

  It should all be very easy, Silversnow offered the perfect conditions for an ambush. He can sense that the dead troopers have already taken up their positions to his left and right, using the memory of the skills they had possed in life and the power they have gained in death to set the trap. Rugan had had some doubts when his prey had spent so long
before entering the ruins, despite all his precautions there was no predicting what Captain Blake’s unnatural senses might detect. It is too late for him to notice that something is amiss now, though. The sharp shooters are already training their weapons on the two men and the girl, ready to dispatch them at a word; some of his other soldiers had buried themselves under the loose sand at the entrance to the ancient town. Unaffected as they are by the electrical discharges of the two columns, they had been close enough that Lillian had even stepped on them several times, without noticing. Rugan is satisfied that there is time to wait for dark Tenichi is too far behind and taking things too slowly, the dead can maintain their vigil without tiring and without help or outside intervention, neither the girl or the book have any chance of escaping his ambush.

  *

  Nathaniel Teneichi still manages to maintain some remnant of his perfection, even in the scalding hell of the desert, a pair of glasses, their lenses dark tinted, reduce the glare of the desert in his sensitive eyes and despite his discomfort, the top button of the immaculate dress uniform, that he has adopted in favour of the less practical Pardoner’s robes, has still not been undone. His men, all veterans and well supplied, are also doing their best to defy the desert. Until now they have been sparing their horses and keeping them well supplied with water, borne by the slower but more resilient gritters. Part of Nathaniel both envied and marveled at the oversized insects; black and smooth the bugs seemed to be the only thing unaffected by the terrible conditions. Even their slow pace, which could seem frustrating at times, was ideally suited to the desert so that the fugitives lead had been slowly eaten up by the constant necessity for them to rest their overworked horses. Out in the desert the slow moving gritters and the water they carried represented a decisive advantage.

  Ahead of them, only a few miles away were the rocks that sheltered the ruins of Silversnow and it seemed that it was there that the fugitives were heading, according to the trackers. It made sense, the Chief Pardoner thought to himself, the place was antique perhaps even as old as the Citadel, its origins as lost as those of the line. It was as likely a place as he could imagine to be linked to the old secrets of the Gate. It briefly crosses his mind to accelerate the pace but he reminds himself that he will arrive at the ruins soon enough. The horses that he had seen in Silverstop would be near dead by now and the Pilgrim would not be able to find enough water out here to save them. If he saved his horses, he would be able to simply scoop up the beleaguered wretches where they fell. It was preferable that way, if it came to a fight the girl might get harmed. The Pardoner casts a glance out at the sand for any sign of the help his master had promised, his warnings on the use of the scroll in his saddle bags in anything but an emergency had been dire. Nathaniel did not like to speculate what kind of mechanism his master might have made that warranted such caution and he did not want to find out. Far better to just let nature take its course, time is his ally here, his prey has no where to go.

  ‘Unless,’ a thought not quite his own echoes in his mind, ‘unless they beat you to it and find the Gate.’ The thought is like ice water, despite the heat. Nathaniel does not stop to think why such a doubt would suddenly arise or why he should so suddenly change his strategy. Ever since his master claimed him, his mind has not been quite his own, it was hard to tell what were his own ideas and what was the result of prompting by his distant patron. Indeed he no longer even tried, if it was his master’s wish that he move faster, then he would move faster. That same simple obedience also prevents him from ever wondering if it is possible that anyone else might slip thoughts into his ever open mind.

  With a cry the Chief Pardoner sets heels to his horse, causing the rest of the troop to surge forward and leaving the gritters and their handlers chocking on the dust. Only those left behind have any chance to notice the wake of sand shifting after them as something fast and powerful moves in the depths of the earth, following the galloping horsemen. The men fail to notice the shift in the sand though since the gritters, who are attuned to such things on an instinctive level suddenly refuse to move, their handlers are too busy trying to shift the insects frozen forms, to observe the wave of sand sliding towards the ruined city. Somewhere, in whatever passes for a mind in the petrified insects’ nervous system, there is the realization that the retreating sand does not represent the hunting Antlion that they had at first feared but on the heels of that knowledge, comes the instinct that whatever it is is infinitely more dangerous then even their most feared predator.

  *

  The sun is close to setting when General Leedon feels the thunder of hooves through the rocks, with an effort of pure will he pulls back his swollen eyelids and turns bloodshot eyes on the rocks around him. Just to his left a trooper is lying flat, his rifle poking between the rocks, Leedon would assume that he was dead, if it were not for the fact that he is clearly aiming through the sight of his weapon. The General opens cracked lips to ask the soldier for a report, when to his horror, one of the black carrion birds alights close to the sniper’s face and drives its beak into his eye. Only the complete lack of moisture in the General’s throat stops him from screaming, the sniper however makes no sound, he simply waves the bird and its mouthful of flesh away and maintains his position aiming down into the ruins beneath them. Unable to believe what he has just seen, the General crawls closer only to see that this in not the first time that the bird or one of its fellows has attacked the undead soldier, the eye not sighting along the rifle is a tattered hollow of torn tissue and drying fluid. Leedon recoils in horror, standing up on trembling legs and letting out a strangled cry.

  Further up the ridge Rugan redirects his attention from the unexpected arrival of Tenichi and his men. There is no missing the figure of the General running down the hill, he is either too exhausted or too panicked to keep down to avoid the gunmen in the hills around him and the weapons in the hands of the three fugitives waiting in the ruins.

  “Cursed! We are cursed!” The General calls out in a thin voice that carries an unnatural resonance in the amphitheatre of stone. The man was near delirious with deprivation, when they arrived, the shock of realizing that he is surrounded by the undead must be driving him near madness. Rugan quietly laments the fact that he had allowed himself to be distracted by Tenichi’s arrival. It was only a remembered fondness that had stopped him simply ending Angus’s life and now he would have to do it anyway, a thin smile touches Rugan’s lips as he gives the mental command to start shooting. Of all people the dead should be the first to understand inevitability.

  Bullets tear through the ruins drawing sparks and explosions of dust, the ping and whistle of ricochets bouncing from the rock walls fills the air, resonating in the amphitheatre of stone. Quicker than the undead can bring their guns to bear, Samuel scoops up Lillian and throws them both down behind the junction of two half buried walls. Bullets smash against their low shelter from every side, not giving them any chance to move or return fire. In the space between the two columns that mark the entrance to the ruins the sand begins to churn as twenty or so corpses rise from the depths and lope forward, towards the pinned down fugitives. In the shadow of the rocks all around them, coupled with the darkness before moon rise, the two columns glow with a pale ever shifting light, that plays over the dusty corpses, turning them into silver edged shades. Only Blake is aware of this new danger; Aden is pressed behind another low ruined wall, too focused on trying to find a target in the rocks above, the eye in the centre of his forehead is more sensitive in the dark, but without his other two eyes to support his more sensitive organ, he is finding it hard to aim at any of the many flashes emanating from the rise above.

  He has not yet spotted the corpses loping towards them but one thing does catch the mutants strained attention, the General in more fear for his soul than his mortality is still staggering down the rocks, from the look of him Aden doubts if he could stop his headlong flight if he wanted to. There can barely be enough strength in his body to do more than put one
foot in front of the other, bullets wiz and explode all around the fleeing man, yet somehow he always seems to pass through the barrage, unscathed. This goes on until the General is almost on top of the prone mutant’s hiding place, when suddenly the Generals left shoulder rocks under the impact of a bullet. It is only a minor hit that passes straight through the skin on the outside of the shoulder, in a healthy man it would be little more than a flesh wound but its effect on the General’s weakened body is devastating.

  Angus tips forward, helplessly like a bag of gain thrown carelessly to the floor. All around him he can hear the sounds of gunfire, pinning the fugitives down, giving the shambling dead time to reach them. How long had he lived with these sounds? He blacks out momentarily and finds himself once more signaling the charge at Golifany. How many dead men might lay claim to him for that or the battles that went before? Had he been doing Gods work? There was no doubt in the General’s mind that it was Rugan who had turned his men. He had accepted that Rugan’s uncanny ability to find the fugitives was a blessing from God but what he had seen on the hillside made him re-evaluate that, God could not sanction such a dreadful company and Christ himself could not forgive it. Had Rugan been pure once, his conscience demands or had the priest always used him?

  How many dead men would wait for him if that were true.

  Suddenly there is pain! Not a bullet, a tearing pain as a hand locks around his wrist and starts to drag him, heedless of his damaged shoulder. Each quick jerk drags him back to consciousness until the General opens his eyes and finds himself staring up into a face that seems familiar, even in the darkness. The third eye reflecting the dim light of the silver posts is most of the reason for his easy recognition, “Aden Scott?” he gasps, “it can’t be, I must still be delirious.”