by Ben Zackheim
He took a wide swing at my head and I ducked underneath it. I snapped back to my feet and put everything I had into my strike. I’d only get one chance. My swing missed by about four feet.
But Rebel’s landed.
I heard a small crack. The big guy screamed in pain. He kept swinging, clipped me, and knocked me against the cliff wall.
That’s when Rebel cast her stupid Music Spell. It played dramatic music during a fight in 360 degree surround sound. Super annoying. But it was always a good distraction in a pinch. She’d chosen Song of the Valkyries this time.
The song surrounded us. It became our soundtrack.
The attacker looked around, confused by the sound. Rebel latched onto his torso like a tick. She crawled over his shoulder and onto his back. She hugged him from behind, trying to get a choke-hold. But the guy was a pro. He folded his chin into his chest and then let loose with a nasty head butt with the back of his head. It sounded like the blow broke Rebel’s jaw. I knew that would piss her off even more. She hung on but I could tell she would lose her grip soon. I aimed the Glock at the guy’s legs and tried to snag Rebel’s attention. If I was going to take him out she’d have to be ready to jump clear as he fell over the edge.
Her eyes met mine and she smirked.
I fired at his groin. Bullseye. As usual.
He stopped fighting Rebel and snagged his boys in agony. She jumped from his back and rolled down the path. She teetered on the edge for a second. I ran for her, knocked into King Kong, and reached for Rebel’s outstretched hand.
I grabbed the edge of a rock and managed to stop our fall, but it wasn’t without consequences. My bleeding armpits now enjoyed the raw sting of a dislocated shoulder for company. The pain was beyond belief. My determination to not drop Rebel was the only thing keeping me conscious.
I felt her weight lighten. She’d found her foothold.
“Nice save,” she said.
“We’re even.”
She barked out a laugh from the gut. “You wish.”
I pulled her up. We collapsed on the stone and dirt and had about seven seconds to catch our breath before a woman’s scream broke through the wind.
The scream had come from the cliff above us.
I stood and reached out my hand. Rebel grabbed it and pulled herself to her feet.
“Run,” I said, and we did.
Chapter 3
When we got to the bend in the path, we could see a light coming from a cave in the cliff wall.
That was new.
“You’d better get up there,” I said.
Rebel cocked her head a bit to the right. “And have all the fun to myself? I don’t think so, Arkwright.”
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to climb that cliff, Rebel! My armpits are bleeding like one of your unsuccessful dates. These armpits won’t feel Old Spice for a year.”
Rebel sighed, unlashed something from her belt, and stuck it in my face. “Drink.”
My eyes focused on the thermos. Her thermos. The one she always filled with Skyler’s brew — a crap-brown magic syrup concoction that our old ex-teacher gave her for her birthdays. Once a year, Rebel got the chance to be as strong as a troll whenever she drank it. The last time she took advantage was to bounce some bouncers who kept blocking her from the bar she got banned from. She probably could have taken them on without the gunk, but she had a blast tossing them around like rag dolls.
I didn’t know she’d brought her stash with her on the mission.
“That shit can kill you,” I said.
“If the sword is up there, I want you to see it, Kane. Just drink it, you big baby!”
I grabbed it out of her hand just to wipe the fake exhaustion off of her face. I knew she was right. We had to finish the job. Plus, I’d always been curious what it would be like to have super strength. Skyler never gave me the potion. We hated each other. Well, I hated him and he usually forgot who I was.
I wasn’t kidding when I said it would kill me, though. The brew was made for Rebel, with a love that Skyler felt for her. He had no love lost for me, so I could imagine his potion unleashing his spite and guilt and jealousy out on my guts.
We’d see soon enough. Because I drank it down.
I drank deep.
I swallowed the greasy liquid and gagged enough to almost puke it up but Rebel shoved a hand over my mouth and lifted a finger into may face. “Don’t you barf up his hard work!” I nodded and she let go.
It happened almost immediately. Not only was I able to move my whole body within a couple of seconds, not only did I feel stupid-strong, not only did the whole world look weak and at my bidding, but to top it off I was as horny as a senior at prom.
“Okay,” I said, trying to contain my excitement. I didn’t want her to know just how much I was enjoying myself.
I stood up, brushed off my jacket, and examined the steep path ahead of us. It looked weak and puny. I ran. Rebel’s laugh followed me uphill.
I got to the cliff wall in two seconds.
Another scream erupted from above.
I crouched. I wanted to jump the rest of the way up. But a gentle, firm hand was laid on my shoulder. My partner had caught up with me. Her grin was gone. Now she threw her serious face at me.
“Remember,” Rebel said.
“Oh yeah, limited strength.” Neither of us knew when the potion would wear off, but it had a tendency to shut down at the worst possible time. So I might have jumped the whole way up and then found myself weak again. That would be bad. Skyler’s concoctions made the drinker headstrong but I was able to gather my wits, take a deep breath and start climbing.
It took one minute to get to the top but my pumped-up state of mind made it feel like a day. I ran to one edge of the cave opening and peeked in.
After a few of these treasure hunts I thought I’d seen everything.
I was wrong.
The entrance was small, but the cave was huge. It was man-made. Its walls were chiseled away with thousands of tiny slashes and dents. It must have taken a lot of people a lot of time to finish.
There was a flickering light glowing bright from the rear of the cave.
It took my eyes a few seconds to make out what was causing the flicker.
The room was filled with dozens of massive hanging banners.
They drifted gently back and forth, scraping against the dirt floor.
What they were attached to? Who knows. I couldn’t see the ceiling. It was so high that the light didn’t reach it. The tops of the banners just disappeared into the darkness. The smell in the cave was pleasantly musty, like a house filled with old Persian rugs. Each one was covered in its own ornate symbols, woven into the fabric with incredible detail.
The confused expression on Rebel’s face said it all. A wind blew from behind us and made the banners sway back, almost as if they were getting ready to rush ahead and attack us.
It was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that was getting ready to…
A woman’s scream bounced off the walls.
“That way,” we both said pointing to the left.
We moved together, walking toward a red banner with hundreds of black star-like symbols woven into it. I lifted the Glock and aimed at one of the stars. Just gut instinct. Rebel ran her fingernails over the stone wall. The sound was so grating it almost made me pull the trigger.
“Will you please not do that?” I pleaded.
“It’s my call sign.”
“I know it’s your call sign. I’m asking you to please find another damn call sign.”
She frowned at me and almost said something, but a sound from behind the banner distracted her. It was another grating noise. Like feet on dirt, or…
A woman stumbled past the banner and fell against the stone wall. Her throat had been cut. A wheezing sound escaped what was left of her neck.
I didn’t run to her. It was probably a trap. It reminded me of our Amsterdam mission.
But, of course, Rebel ran to he
r. She didn’t really learn from her mistakes. Which was good for me because being my partner was probably her biggest one.
The poor woman grabbed Rebel’s shoulder and pulled her down slowly. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a hiss. She died, eyes open and terrified.
Rebel peeled the woman’s hand off of her. She found a piece of paper in her grasp.
“What is it?” I asked.
She unfolded the paper and her eyes went wide. She put a finger to her lips.
I knew that look. I held my breath.
He came from behind a banner on the other side of the cave. He probably wanted to surprise us. He almost did. But we surprised him instead.
He took a shot at Rebel who dodged it easily. He forecast his aim with a dramatic, untrained flourish. He turned the gun on me. I got off a shot that hit him in the shoulder. He grunted and ducked behind the closest banner.
Rebel and I made eye contact. She nodded.
We had one last trick up our sleeve and we were ready to play it.
Chapter 4
I leaped onto the nearby wall first.
Rebel sprinted and jumped onto the opposite wall. Our potion-powered fingers grabbed onto the chisel marks easily. We climbed up into the darkness like a couple of fine-looking insects.
When I was high enough to be covered in shadow I glanced down.
There were armed guards behind every row of banners. Eight in all. They wore the same outfits the guys on the cliff wore. Guardians of the Sword. They’d be as ruthless, too. I’m sure the woman with the slashed neck would agree.
I felt the first sign of my power fading when a pinky slipped off of the stone. By my estimate, I had about one more minute until I was a normal guy with normal strength hanging by nine fingernails 100 feet above guys who wanted to kill me.
I held on tight with one hand, grabbed the firearm with the other, and took out the first Guardian with a headshot.
I’d thought the echo would give me cover.
I was wrong.
The seven remaining guardians laid down a ridiculous blanket of lead. We didn’t have time to take them all out. We needed to end this now.
So, as bullets splattered the stone all around us, Rebel and I dropped our Sparks.
These are not nice weapons, but they were Spirit-approved and useful in a pinch, and we were in a damn pinch.
The projectiles burst in the air and sent cracks of lightning through the cave. A deadly indoor lightning storm surrounded us.
Screams hit the stone walls like bullets and faded to silence. We heard bodies hit the ground with dull thumps. The air was charged and everything below us smoked.
The smell of fried flesh is not an easy one to get used to. Yeah, it smells like any other burnt meat but just the knowledge that it’s human meat makes it tough to keep your lunch down. Luckily, I was running on one meal in the last 36 hours and it was holding onto my guts like a pro.
“You okay?” I yelled over to Rebel.
“Yeah. You?”
“Crispy. Suddenly vegetarian.”
“I know what you mean.”
The Sparks were spell-weapons, also known as Speps. They didn’t impact us, just as all spells have no effect on the caster. The way Rebel explained it, was that it’s kind of like smelling your own breath or tickling yourself. When it comes from your own body it has a built in blind spot. Makes sense in a world that otherwise defies sense. Magic is Rebel’s thing, not mine.
I scurried down as I felt the strength drain from my muscles. I dropped to the ground from ten feet up. Frankly, I was bummed. I wanted more. I tried to tamp down the urge. The last thing I needed was an addiction to Skyler’s product. Who knows how he’d use that against me?
Rebel dropped down and walked to me cautiously.
“What did the paper in her hand say?” I asked quietly. It was part out of respect for the dead and part stay-low-in-case-there-were-more.
“It has a symbol on it.” She held it up for me to see. It was a circle with a single line slashing through it.
“Let’s look for the symbol on the banners,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just a hunch. Don’t touch the banners, though. They could be rigged.”
She started checking for the slashed circle symbol, but I got distracted by the smoking body of a Guardian. I needed to know who we were up against.
He was covered in black cloth just like the rest of them. But he also had a white mask on - no nose or mouth, with slits for eyes. I pulled it off and turned away. I forgot about the fried eyeballs part.
“Anything?” Rebel asked.
“Nothing I want to talk about, no. You?”
“These tapestries have thousands of tiny symbols on them. They’d be beautiful if they weren't annoying the hell out of me. They’re definitely hiding something.”
I smiled and yanked on the guard’s cloak to see if he was concealing any clues underneath. He wore clothes that appeared local, glasses in his shirt’s chest pocket, and two daggers in his belt.
A Russian Vityaz-SN submachine gun lay near his open hand.
Then I spotted something interesting. He had an image of a sword tattooed on his neck. The ink of the blade wrapped around his neck and the tip was drawn to look like it was embedded into his chin. One small, dark blue blood-drop tat fell upward from his chin, as if crawling into his mouth.
“He’s got a tattoo of the sword,” I said.
“Seriously?” Rebel ran across the cave, caution to the wind. She stood over me wide-eyed and looked down. The shit-eating grin on her face was probably on mine too.
Sure, we’d been searching for it for the last year. But even with all the sacrifice and loss and sleepless nights — we still had a hard time comprehending it.
Rebel said what I was thinking, and with all the weight of history in every word. “I can’t believe it. It’s real. Excalibur is real.”
Chapter 5
In Rebel’s excitement, she almost pushed past the closest banner.
“NO!” I screamed as I reached for her. She stopped short.
I marched up to her and pulled her back a few steps.
“Stay!”
“Fuck you.”
I tossed a stone at the banner she’d almost pushed aside. We heard a loud crack from above us and backed up a little further.
A boulder dropped from the darkness and slammed into the ground right where she would have been standing.
I shot her a look.
“Still, fuck you,” she said.
“That is why I want to look for the circle symbol on the banners,” I said, pointing to the paper. “My bet is that the banners that have the symbol will be the safe path through. It was the dead woman’s guide to avoid this trap.”
“The dead guys, too,” she added. “Fine. Sorry. I got carried away”
After a few minutes of searching we found a banner with the symbol just left of center. There were thousands of them, but they were hidden well because they were tiny. From a distance, they looked like a straight thin line. But if you examined the designs on the banner closer you saw that they were made up of tiny markings. Tiny markings just like the symbol on the slip of paper. I didn’t understand how the weavers were able to craft something so small and detailed. Magic, probably.
We peeked around the banner and spotted another body on the ground, again decked out in black with a mask. I checked to make sure he was dead. His cooked hands held two pistols. PL-15s. Russian again. If these thugs were local then they definitely had outside help arming themselves. Good guns.
I borrowed them.
After three more lines of banners we could tell that the light source was behind the next and final cloth barrier.
“Take your gun,” I said. “You may need it.” I held out her pistol. The one I’d borrowed earlier.
She smiled and held up her death-tipped fingers. “I’m good.”
She clacked the nails together like she does when she’s showing off. Cr
eeps me out every time.
We moved through the last banner together. It flapped back in place behind us. I expected to see a spotlight of some kind back there. The light was just that bright. But instead we saw a brightly lit tunnel, a long tunnel, sloping downhill to a room about a hundred yards away.
Whatever was lighting the cave up was down there. Waiting.
“You think that’s the sword’s glow?” Rebel asked. We think alike sometimes.
“Hope not. Or we’ll have a hell of a time getting it through customs.” She snickered and nudged her elbow into my ribs.
“Oooooo,” she cooed. “Look at that.” She put her hand up and caught the intense light on her nails. “That’s some serious grit, right there, Kane.” Her smile was quickly killed by a frown. She was either really angry at the tunnel’s ceiling, or she saw something up there that she didn’t like. “Oh, shit.”
“What, oh shit?” I asked, looking where she looked. “Don’t oh, shit unless there’s shit about to… Oh shit.”
I spotted the huge, growing crack that had formed in the tunnel ceiling.
A rumble shook our feet and then our eardrums.
“Oh, shit!” I repeated, louder this time in case Rebel hadn’t heard me the first time.
The cave was about to come down on our heads. A split second later, the walls began to shudder and a crack formed in the ground beneath our feet.
We had a choice. We could run back and get the hell out of there. Or we could run into the light and probably be trapped forever.
We took one look into each others’ eyes and we ran for the light.
There really was no other choice. This was our last chance to get Excalibur. We needed that treasure. We couldn’t fail this time.
As we got closer, the light got brighter. We squinted. The debris falling on our heads got bigger.
We ran faster.
I reached back and grabbed her hand until we ran side-by-side. If this was the end then I didn’t want either of us to feel alone.
The second I thought I couldn’t handle the intense light anymore, it went out. Poof. Just like that. We jumped from the collapsing tunnel together and landed hard.