John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  Keemon’s freshness and tone rankled Bowman. “You have a damn gall, you bastard! That’s what you have. Say it, then go. The next time I see you, you’re a dead man.”

  The cop laughed. “Oh, no, really? I don’t think so, Convict.” He glanced behind Bowman and chuckled. Bowman followed the cop’s gaze. Fifty paces away, Caylen stood just out from the forest, her bow half drawn and pointing at Keemon. Bowman groaned inwardly. The cop had good reason to laugh; all the cards were in his hand, now. The Rory were in no shape to attack. Their fire had been mostly drawn, and what little ammunition those fit to fight had left, was needed for defence.

  Keemon looked back to Bowman. His eyes narrowed and he stopped smiling. “You’re in no position to threaten. That’s why I knew this would bring you.” He nodded at the white rag fluttering from the branch held in his right hand. Keemon’s grin came on again. “I’ve got you where I want you now, Convict!”

  Bowman sighed. “So, what’s your deal?” The question was superfluous. He knew what Keemon wanted. Either could have supplied the words to what the cop said next.

  “We head back to Dyall's Ford,” said Keemon. He crossed his arms, clasped them palm against his chest and smiled skyward in a beatific parody. “Just you and me.”

  It seemed to Bowman that his own voice belonged to someone else. He needed sleep. “What for?”

  Keemon spat on the ground. “You know what for!” He took a step closer. “You’re a weakling, Bowman. Don’t expect me to reason with you. I tell you what to do, and you fall in line. That’s how it goes. Hippy-trippy dickwits like you don’t get to choose. You just obey.”

  Bowman smiled drunkenly; it seemed humour at the cop’s arrogance was all he had left to fight with.

  Keemon snarled and leant forward. “Listen to me Bowman, listen like you never have: I can’t hold these Guards back for long. They gave me one chance to talk you around. Take it or die!”

  “I can’t give you what you’re asking for. I can’t go back whenever I want; it just happens.” Bowman realized this was somewhat untrue. The ball of light was always close, it seemed he could almost summon it at will. Sometimes it even showed up unbidden, and it almost always did so just prior to sleep. After that, the process was nearly automatic; he could only deny it with a supreme effort.

  Keemon shrugged. “In that case, you all die! That’s bad luck for me, and a downright shame for you. If I was in your boots, I think I’d have a shot at it.”

  “What about the Pack?” Bowman asked.

  “I don’t give a flying shit about the Pack! With one exception. The girl goes as hostage to Kasina Nabir. She can keep that one company.” He looked behind and pointed to the trussed figure of Rain Dog.

  “Why her?”

  Keemon’s characteristic leer returned. “She’s young; she’s pretty; she’s an Outlander. Three reasons for someone like you to feel protective.”

  Bowman looked beyond Keemon’s shoulder. The cop was right. The Kasina were edging forward. If there was a deal to be made here, it had to be done fast. He nodded. “Okay.” He gestured to the Guards and said, “Keep them at bay. I’ll put it to the Pack.” Then he turned towards the forest.

  ***

  Roop was dead. They’d covered his body with forest litter. As Bowman came up, Caylen turned from the burial. She brushed past Bowman, avoiding his gaze and dropping some seeds into a small pouch as she walked. Oyen looked helplessly after her. She stopped just before the forest line and glared out over the battlefield.

  Bowman elbowed emotion aside - for later, he told himself – and got straight down to outlining Keemon’s proposition. He talked to Yalnita and Oyen’s averted faces, hoping the practical Rory understood.

  “I’ll not leave Caylen, or you, for that matter!” Oyen said, “and I’ll not surrender, there must be another way…”

  Caylen sighed and turned back to face her brother. “There isn’t, Oyen, and you know it. We all know it.”

  She went up to Bowman, her arms crossed, and looked at him through wet eyes. “Come back for me, John. Soon. Promise!”

  Bowman replied with the only practical weapon he had left: intent.

  “Yes. I do promise, Caylen. I will!” He turned to the others. “I think I can persuade Keemon to take me back to Animarl. I’ll tell him I can only get him back to our old world from there, that it’s the only place I can make the process work. The journey there will give me time to think of something, maybe even kill him and get away, who knows. At any rate, I know Animarl better than he does. It puts the odds more in my favour to have him on my turf.”

  Oyen kicked the leaves at his feet. “Well, I’m still not leaving. I’ll stay and take my chances with you and Caylen!” After a moment he added, “if that’s alright, Yalnita?”

  The Huntress’s gaze never shifted from the bloody head she cradled in her arms. Regrais was by now barely conscious. She nodded vacantly.

  “Thank you, Oyen,” Bowman said. He looked at Regrais. “Yalnita, I don’t know what to do….”

  Her smile seemed crazy in the circumstances. “We’ll be alright, John Bowman. Just do as Caylen says. Come back quickly. And kill Keemon the first chance you get!” Without another word she stood up carrying Regrais, straightened, looked at each of them in turn, then strode behind a tree with her burden and vanished.

  ***

  Denaren raised a hand in front of Keemon and called the accompanying Guard detail to a halt. They stood just beyond effective shooting distance of the Rory bows and called the Pack out.

  As they came forward, Denaren surveyed them, counting. Three? He frowned. Where are the rest?

  “Is this all of you? Where’s the hairy-faced one, and the others?”

  “Dead. Or gone,” Bowman answered.

  Denaren’s frown furrowed deeper; he’d wanted to secure the entire Pack.

  “I am Captain Denaren, of the 22nd Royal Kasina Guard. Who am I speaking to?”

  “I’m John Bowman.”

  “Ah, yes, I thought so. The much-sought Outlander. May you prove to be worth the trouble. Now, as to the others, what do you mean, they’re gone?”

  “It was part of the deal. They’re free. Leave them alone, or that deal’s off.”

  “You’re in no position…”

  “Cool it, Denaren!” Keemon spat. “We’ve got what we came after. Let’s not waste any more time.” The cop turned to Bowman. “How do you do this ‘magic’ of yours?”

  “I have to be in Animarl. It’s the only place it seems to work.”

  Keemon scowled. “Bullshit, you’re stalling! Don’t try to buy time with a trip to Animarl, Bowman. I’m not gunna let you give me the slip, now.”

  “Look, think about it, Keemon. It makes sense: that’s where I came in.”

  Denaren considered the man’s statement. “Maybe he’s right, Keemon. That’s the place you first showed up, too, isn’t it? It seems like anywhere else you Outlanders appear you only make it as a Malform.”

  Keemon’s mouth twisted about as he thought. He nodded. “You could be right. Yeah, you could be. I’m not taking risks.”

  What on earth possessed me to say that? Denaren wondered. He’d really wanted to be rid of Keemon; now it seemed, he’d be escorting him back to Animarl.

  Still, as Keemon said, they’d got what they came for. The Outlander who somehow knew the way between the worlds. Now that could prove useful.

  And Denaren knew that he himself would have to be as close to the action as possible, to have any control over Keemon. Perhaps it was fate. Anyway, Animarl was his post for the foreseeable future, until the Rory could finally be brought to heel. Better to have the two Outlanders there, doing whatever they were going to do than possibly undermining him in Kasina Nabir.

  And as for this other vanquished Rory, the big one with the red-splotched face, he would accompany them to Animarl. That would split the hostages, ensuring their hold on Bowman in the event the woman was somehow freed en route to the Palace. Besides, something
about the man’s brooding eyes told Denaren that he was too dangerous to be let out of sight.

  He looked at Luclos. “It seems fortune smiles on you, Lieutenant. You’ll be escorting this one,” he nodded in Caylen’s direction, “and the one we captured earlier, to Kasina Nabir.” Then he frowned towards Animarl. “And I’ll be going back to that cursed cave mountain.”

  ***

  Chapter 20

  Two Dreams

  Despite Bowman and Oyen’s eager plotting, no opportunity to slip away from their Kasina escort occurred during the trip to Animarl. As soon as they arrived in the valley of the cave mountain, Keemon insisted Bowman ‘do his thing’. After all his stalling efforts failed, Bowman had no choice but to oblige.

  “Alright, come on then. Just you and me,” he said and took the cop to a grassy copse in the valley. After a cursory inspection, he grunted and looked at Keemon.

  “This’ll do, I guess.”

  Keemon’s eyes lit up. “Okay, okay, let’s go, Convict!”

  “Just shut up and let me get on with it!” Bowman replied.

  He was worried. He’d world travelled enough times now to know the drill regarding the actual journey. He simply had no control over that. It was the invocation of the magic that sent him between the worlds that was the problem. Although he knew he only needed a little silence in which to sink into the kind of mental stillness that summoned the ball of light, he’d never actually had to purposely perform the act. It had just happened, as for example when he would begin the final slide into sleep’s paralysis.

  He wasn’t even sure if Keemon would be swept along with him in the event the process proved successful. How was he going to make that work?

  He lay down, spreadeagled on his back in the long grass, and closed his eyes. Slowly he quietened his breathing. In the background, he could hear Keemon pacing. “Sit down and be quiet!” he commanded. Keemon sat.

  “You’ll have to hang on to some part of my clothing” he ventured to the cop. It was a guess; Bowman still couldn’t see how it would work, but that felt right.

  Keemon shrugged, slid over and grabbed an arm of the Rory tunic Bowman wore.

  One by one Bowman mentally turned off the various parts of his body. Hands, legs, arms, torso, neck and lastly head gradually became numb. He slowed his breathing further to where it only just kept him conscious, and he became a pinpoint of disembodied mind adrift in a black universe. As he floated off in that void, the familiar ball of light grew in his inner vision, and he let it grow until it consumed him. A short period of roaring sound followed, then his bodily awareness returned momentarily as he rocked with intense vibrations. As the vibrations passed he felt the final jerk of his spirit body quitting its earthly double, and he was away, free, drifting through a brilliantly lit, timeless dimension in which every entity formed from his thoughts. Is that a tree/cloud/mountain? he’d think and tree/cloud/mountain would appear as he thought it. All the worlds of possibility were now at his disposal. Thinking of Dyall’s Ford, he mentally intoned the word ‘Home’ and the light-speed of his transportation blurred every sense of sight and sound.

  ***

  On arrival in their old world, Keemon hand-cuffed Bowman to a tree. “So you don’t get lost,” the cop laughed and made for town. Bowman’s “Where are you going?” went unanswered. He looked about him.

  It was obvious by the landmarks that they’d come down in the same field he’d arrived in last time. But something was different, something wrong. The grass was higher than regularly cropped farm pasture ever got, and it choked with thistle and other banes of the man on the land. This had once been prime agricultural property, he warned Keemon. But the cop just shrugged it off.

  “I know where I’m going, Convict. Don’t worry your little rat brain about that.” He shoved Bowman and left. It was somewhere around midday; the sun was high.

  Bowman baked in the warm day, and thought about Oyen, left behind as hostage in Animarl. Even that resourceful Rory would have trouble escaping from Kasina guards. Still, it didn’t bear worrying about, given the way things would almost certainly change in Bowman’s absence. How many damned years will pass while I’m away this time? he wondered.

  By the time Keemon returned, all the day’s remnant light filtered through trees on the Western horizon. Bowman croaked for water.

  “You bastard, I’m sunburnt!”

  Keemon gave him a drink. “You’ll live. In the meantime, I’ve managed to make a few connections.” His triumphant leer returned.

  “Great!” said Bowman. The glorious water resurrected his throat. “You’ve made some new mates. Who are they, Ghengis Khan? Attila the Hun?”

  Keemon took the opportunity to punch Bowman hard, just once, in the stomach, while he was still restrained by the cuffs. Then he shoved up face to face with the wheezing man. “Cut the shit, Bowman! It’s gunna take all my concentration from now on. I’m fucked if I’ll let your whining stuff me around!” He untied him.

  They left hurriedly in the failing light, running parallel to the road that led from town. Charred patches along the bitumen spoke of battle; burnt out trucks nosed into the verge on either side.

  They travelled in silence. Soon Keemon cut through a field of towering gorse and blackberry, following rough tunnels in the wild growth. Inside an hour they walked into a clearing before a forested hill. At the bottom of the hill a creeklet ran, and just above it on the far bank two men stood either side of a cave entrance. They were heavily armed, and challenged the newcomers on sight.

  Keemon put his hands palm up at them. “I’m here to see Boyle.”

  One of the men took a step forward, scowled and demanded, “Let’s know who you are you, first!”

  Keemon ground his teeth a moment, then took a breath and let it all go again, just as he’d done with Denaren. “Just say the man he made a deal with this afternoon is here,” he looked at Bowman, “with his part of the bargain.”

  ***

  Bowman sat back from the morning meal and looked around. Another day, another cave, he thought. Hell, if this is Tuesday, I must be in Animarl! Laughter hollow as the space he sat in, left him.

  “Our guest is easily amused,” a tall man standing next to Keemon said. Keemon glared at Bowman. The tall man walked over to the fire in the centre of the cavern. The people crouched around it with their hands held to the flame made room for him. Bowman's laughter subsided as he took in his new hosts. In the few short hours he’d been in their company, he’d managed to glean enough details of their miserable existence for shame to silence him now.

  A dozen families lived in this cave. Most had no shoes, and all wrapped around them scraps scavenged from a life that had ceased to mean much: tattered business clothes or jeans, army great coats with here and there a neat, round hole.

  Here, in what had been an outlying rural district of Dyall's Ford, the day was full of dangerous scrutiny from battered aircraft and anarchic foot patrols. At night, the forest peace was torn by howls of once-domestic dogs, the meanest surviving discards of a decaying civilization. This time, Bowman noted, the world he’d once known had really gone to Hell.

  He couldn’t hold the gaze of the gaunt-faced children. Their eyes had tracked his spoon from mouth to plate, mouth to plate. He wasn’t all that hungry, really. Well, not that hungry. He held the plate out to them. They scuttled into dark corners. The plate had been piled high, and Bowman wondered what the reason for such a sacrifice could be. That tall one, Boyle; Keemon had been in his ear. Something had transpired, a deal had been struck, out of Bowman’s hearing.

  “You alright Bowman, not losing it are you?” The cop had appeared at Bowman's side.

  “Yeah, Yeah, I'm fine, Keemon.”

  “Just try to keep the laughter down. You won't win any friends here, coming over crazy like that. These people risked a lot to get what we came here for. Let's try and be good guests, while we need them.”

  “And you Keemon, what did you risk?”

  A short
laugh. “You know better than to ask. I risk nothing, Bowman, nothing! Not here, at least. Back in Kasina Nabir though, that's a different story. What I can accomplish there, now that’s worth a little gamble. With the sort of ordnance Boyle's men have, we'll make quite an entrance in the Palace!”

  “Does the word megalomaniac mean anything to you, Keemon?”

  “Yeah, it means your smart mouth needs slapping!”

  Bowman started to get up. “Don’t push your luck. I’m not tied to a tree now!”

  Keemon pushed him back down. “Alright, take it easy! Look, Bowman, we’re in a stressful situation here. Let’s not blow it. When we take this lot back,” he gestured to a cache of guns and ammunition off to one side of the cavern, “we'll own a whole world, dammit!”

  “You’ll need more than a few guns. And trained men to pull their triggers!”

  “Ah, see, now you’re thinking! You’re right, of course. We have to find men we can trust, smart men, and train them. And we’ll need to make more than one trip.”

  Bowman groaned. “You’re mad! And I’m not coming back here again. The deal was one trip, Keemon. Use it wisely.”

  Something secretive ran across the cop’s face. It could have been the ghost of a smile, but Bowman couldn’t pick it, so fast was the emotion that flushed it out of hiding brought back into check.

  Then Keemon let his public smile, the one that set people at ease, show. “Sure I will, don’t worry about it. Just leave that part to me. You only have to get us back. We both have our own job to do, Convict. So what do you say we cut the crap and get ready for return to the Land of Plenty?”

  Bowman shook his head and went back to eating. Keemon chuckled and left him to get back to the fire's warmth. He passed Boyle on the way. The outlaw leader made a beeline for Bowman and settled down beside him.

  “So you’re the Pathfinder, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Keemon says you know the way to Animarl.”

  Bowman started. “Animarl! What the Hell do you know about Animarl?”