by A. Sparrow
Chapter 18: Hunted
The shriek touches off some deep trigger, rooted in instinct, urging me to run. But I stay put, staring into the hills, feeling naked and vulnerable.
“What was that?” I say, adrenalin pumping.
“Settle down,” says Sabonis, though he too looks nervous. “I'm not sure … but it sounded like a monkey.”
Two figures race across the slopes. I point.
“Up there,” I say.
One man carries a dead monkey, dangling limp. They chase the rest of a small troop of monkeys across the ash and scrub,
“Hunters,” says Sabonis. “Keep walking. Just ignore them.”
“Squatters?”
“Not in those heights. Fringers maybe,” says Sabonis. “Don’t stare! Just keep on walking.”
But I keep glancing back. And I see one of the hunters lay a hand on his companion’s arm. They break off their pursuit of the monkeys and keep pace with us over a parallel track.
“Told you not to stare!” says Sabonis, staring. The men are swaddled in baggy, brown clothes that disguise their shape. They pull long, curved sticks from bundles on their back, split up and trot down the hill, not directly at us, but angling off to either flank.
“Shit,” says Sabonis. “They got long bows, and they're stringing them up. Look at 'em stalk us. Like we’re a couple of monkeys.”
“Who are they?” An odd little ripple squirms out of my stomach and into my chest.
Sabonis veers towards the sea. “Come on!”
The men in brown, instantly pick up their pace. Sabonis trots like an old bear, waddling from side to side. I jog alongside him, startled anew by the width of my hips; the unfamiliar geometry of my female legs.
I glance back and see one of our pursuers crouch and draw his bow.
“He's gonna shoot!” I say.
“We're out of range,” says Sabonis. “No way can he reach us.”
A feathered shaft nearly three feet long comes whistling past and cracks against a rock. Shards of obsidian prick my shins.
My legs pummel the lava with renewed purpose, leaving Sabonis behind. I hear him puffing beside me as he too reaches a new level of locomotion.
One pursuer takes an angle that threatens to cut us off. Sabonis sees this and turns, angling back towards the Loch. The other pursuer is on track to head us off before we can reach the Rift.
Something hard and heavy thuds against my back and knocks me down. I skid across the ledge into a pocket of soft ash. Sabonis yanks me back to my feet.
A rock the size of a clementine ricochets off the ground and bounces high over our heads.
“Keep running!”
One of the men whirls a sling over his head, sending projectiles out way with alarming accuracy. Another arrow misses us high.
We reach a saddle where a little vale opens up, cutting shoreward through the cliffs onto a narrow strip of beach. Sabonis heads straight for the beach. We enjoy a brief respite from the barrage as we move down slope and out of our pursuers' line of sight.
Brick-sized chunks of pumice pave the floor of the vale. They clink when they knock together. I notice stickiness on my right foot. I am leaving a tell-tale connect-the-dot trail of blood with every other stride. I try not to think about it. I feel no pain.
“Can you swim?” says Sabonis as we hit sand and pound across the beach. It strikes me as an odd question to ask someone who had just floated across an ocean.
Sabonis points across a wide bay to a hazy peninsula of golden dunes and green hills. The seas look rough. A series of mountainous swells are preparing to roll in.
A rock comes hurtling overhead, signaling that our intermission was over. We turn and see the man with the sling on the cliff above the vale.
An arrow slashes through my wind-billowed cloak and impales the black sand. I see the bow man standing in the vale.
“Scratch that,” says Sabonis. “Let’s get under the cliffs”
He snatches the shaft out of the sand as he double back towards the rocks. The arrowhead is hooked and barbed, with an x-shaped cross-section. As we run, another arrow skips off the top of a dune and spatters us with sand.
We reach a mass of stony rubble and turn away from the vale. Waves have undercut the basalt. Columns have collapsed, creating a tangle of catwalks. The overhang screens us from view from the sling wielder above us. The bow man has yet to reach the beach.
Marco picks his way through the collapsed basalt with the surety of one who had gone this way a thousand times before. The swells we spotted earlier crash ashore and consume the beach. Rank after rank over larger swells are about to follow. A wave explodes on the dunes and drenches us.
“Man, this isn't right,” says Sabonis. “Tides don't come in this fast. We're going to have to take the high road.”
He leaps at a shoulder-high shelf of limpet-encrusted basalt, throws one leg over the top and hauls himself up. He leans over to help me and his sturdy grip on my wrist is the only thing that keeps the breaking surf from sweeping me away.
We clamber along fractures on the side of the bluffs, out of reach of the waves. The stone is slick with slime. We choose our footfalls carefully.
“Least they can’t follow along the beach,” says Sabonis. “Must be storm waves. There’s a pounder brewing somewhere out there.”
I see only fog beyond the bay. I concentrate my wits on keeping my feet on the face of the cliff. I peek back. The sling-wielder has climbed the wall of the wall of the vale and is clambering after us, but his precarious position prevents him from using his sling for the time being. I bump into Sabonis’ backside.
“Quickly!” I say. “We’re being followed.”
“Hold your horses,” says Sabonis. “I’m going as fast I can without dumping us in the drink.” The face of the bluff curves ahead of us taking us out of our pursuer’s line of sight. There’s no sign of the bow man.
Progress is slow, hindered by the rugged, pocked surface—a messy layer cake of lava and pumice and basalt. Rotten pumice crumbles like Styrofoam under our feet. Waves meet rock twenty yards below us, smothering us with splash and spray. The water has risen and swallowed the beaches. The sea below is a dizzying blur of whirlpools and clashing currents.
Our path is as tortuous as a stock market chart. We move up and down the face, never forcing the issue, letting the mountain decide which way it wants us to go.
We remain under overhangs, but I am more anxious now than when we were under fire, with no idea of where or when our pursuers might spring out. A shower of pebbles and dust sifts down just ahead of us, answering my fears.
“Step careful,” says Sabonis. “Don’t knock any shit off the ledge. We want to keep them guessing.”
But that proves impossible. The cliff only gets trickier to traverse as we go along. The stone is so friable and loose, we inevitably trigger slides that send masses of rubble splashing into the ocean.
My adrenalin is in full surge, but why? No sea could drown me. No arrow could slay me. Why should I care? What did I fear? I couldn’t be death. How worse could it be, becoming a Shade? How many times did a person have to die before they were out of the game?
“Tricky spot ahead,” says Sabonis.
A booming sound increases in volume as we pick our way along. It has the brittle resonance of thunder, but rounder at the edges. The roar reverberates. The stone trembles beneath my fingers.
We edge around a protruding, refrigerator-sized knob of lava and the source of this liquid thunder comes into view. A narrow chasm slices deeply into the flank of the volcano. Huge waves barrel far up the crevasse and explode into a huge bowl undercutting the walls. Between swells the water churns and swirls like a whirlpool before gushing back out.
“The tide shouldn’t be in this far,” says Sabonis. “This time of day we should be able to walk across.”
“What do we do?” I say.
The noise is so bad, Sabonis doesn’t hear me. He just gawks at the s
cene below us.
Voices filter down from the bluff top directly above us.
“Either Mr. Slingshot went back up to his friend,” says Sabonis. “Or we got more company.” He hugs the cliff face, inches his way around and enters the chasm. “Follow me.”
The ledges are narrow and dripping with spray. The walls of the chasm shake like an earthquake with every blast of wave. My stomach churns nearly as much as the waters below. My head nearly swims off my shoulders.
The chasm cuts deeply, a quarter mile or more, but the space between the walls narrows, the deeper we penetrate. A hundred yards in, a boulder is wedged like a bridge, but it barely touches either wall. It looks precarious.
Seeing that boulder makes me feel better about our chances, until a brown-hooded figure comes rappelling down beside it.
I point. “There … th-there!”
“I see him,” says Sabonis, calmly.
“What do we do?”
Directly across from us a table-sized ledge juts out from the opposite wall of the crevasse, cutting the gap to about six feet. Without a word, Sabonis plants one foot on a knob of basalt and leaps, landing on both feet just inches in from the lip of the table. He skitters on some loose stones and falls on his butt, barely catching himself from rolling into the crevasse.
As the brown-hooded man swings closer to the boulder bridge, I stare at Sabonis across the chasm.
“I … I can't do that,” I shout.
“Course you can,” says Sabonis, ducking around a protruding ledge. “And you’d better do it quick.”
The hooded man reaches the bridge. He kneels, extricating himself from the rope twisting around one thigh. A bow and quiver rides high on his back.
“Come on!” says Sabonis.
I look down at the confusion of water and foam.
“You go ahead without me,” I say. “I’m not a good jumper.”
“Get your ass over here now!”
I figure, would I rather drown or have two Klansmen wannabes butcher me like a monkey? Yes, I am already dead, but that detail doesn’t seem to matter to my gut.
I look at the knob that Sabonis used, look at the shelf and I jump, closing my eyes midway across the chasm. I land, as light-footed as a cat well onto the shelf, just in time to see Sabonis impaled in the collarbone by an arrow.
“Aah, fuck!” he screams, clutching the feathered shaft in his neck. Another arrow comes for me and careens off the wall where my chest had been a moment before. I scramble along the ledge behind Sabonis. He’s trying to work his way out of the chasm toward the sea. He takes his bloody hand away from his neck and a crimson stain spreads down his muslin shirt trumping all the other stains that cover it like marbled paper. I help him along, supporting him when he falters.
The arrow scrapes against the bluff. Sabonis groans. Sabonis braces his feet and frees both hands to snap the shaft. He tries to back out the obsidian head but it won’t budge.
He continues on. For the moment, the protruding ledge protects us, but the brown shirts will get back their line of sight as we move out from behind it.
The tumult below is all chaos and foam, like a mad washing machine. Another arrow skips harmlessly off the chasm wall and out to sea. We are exposed again. Sabonis clambers frantically along the wall like a terrified crab. He keeps picking at the arrow.
“Leave it in for now,” I say. “It'll bleed too much.”
“Fuck you,” he says, his face scrunching in pain.
The hooded man crosses the boulder bridge and follows after us.
Sabonis stops fussing with the arrow. He fishes a blade out of his waistband. It is clear and crystalline and splits the light like a prism.
“Step around me,” he says.
“Just go!” I say, pushing at his chest.
“Let go of me. I can take him.”
“We don't need to,” I say. “We can just run.”
He tries to climb around me. I grab his arm to restrain him. He shrugs me off, grunts and jabs me with his elbow, knocking me off my foothold. I slide into the chasm.
“Shit!”
He tries to reach for me and loses his balance. I slip until my foot wedges in a crack. Sabonis falls past me. His stunned eyes lock onto mine as he plunges into the sea and disappears into the white churn.
I dangle and watch the brown shirt approach me. Do I want to be carved into sweet meat or drown? I choose to join Sabonis. As I let go, the wind blows the brown hood back. Long black hair spills out. A hand reaches out to me. I recognize that face. It is Alecto. Her eyes seem as startled as Sabonis’ as I fall. My feet knife into the water and the world disappears in a mass of bubbles and froth.