Chapter 42
The blood-freezing scream had barely finished cutting through the air and Brine was on his feet and looking around the clearing, or trying to look around the clearing. For some reason, his eyes refused to work.
Without thought, he quickly utilized his go-to-move for such occasions, a tried-and-true method he so tenderly referred to as the wrinkled-faced squint. When that failed to work, he went with a supplemental strategy he called the periphery-peek-and-rapidity-blink, which entailed looking out the corners of his eyes and blinking as quickly as he could.
If’n yeh don’t stop that squintin around, Reets had been so fond of telling him, you’ll end up wearin them peepers out.
And it seemed as though he had. The periphery-peek-and-rapidity-blink worked no better than the wrinkle-faced-squint. He had either gone completely blind (he’d always known that day would come) or it was just really, really dark in the clearing.
Without further consideration, he sent his fingers to his hip pouch and clawed open the drawstring, peeling out his last line of defense against the ails of visual impairment.
He could get away without the seeing lens during the day, seeing by colors and shapes and movement, but not at night. At night, blurry black shapes against blurry black background did him about as much good as sticking his head in a bucket. The seeing lens, however, distinguished shapes from background.
He placed the disc in his eye and squinted, but before he had time to inspect his surroundings, he heard the harried sound of footfalls beating the sands behind.
…thut-thut-thut…
He spun around and had a look through the lens, catching sight of two dark shapes streaking towards the eastern edge of the spur. They were humanoid in appearance, but otherwise featureless.
Brine might have thought them orcs, which were also humanoid in shape, except he could smell the stink of chewed vine about them and he could see they were traveling in tandem. Before retiring for the night, Ardose had vowed to flog the first man he caught moving by himself.
Brine watched them dissolving into the perpetual darkness and decided the scream must have come from the east. He couldn’t remember much about the cry (except that it had turned his blood cold and woke him from a dead sleep), but those men had been on watch at the time and would have heard it clearly.
He stared after the two men for a time, feeling mildly better about his situation, but also feeling that old familiar slap of panic. He bit at the inside of his lip as he thought, then decided it would probably be best to move closer to the rock spur, at least until the screaming ended and men returned to their posts.
It would best to get inside the cave, he thought, depressingly, but like Mums used to say, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
He directed the seeing lens at the place where he’d been seated and found Godfry to be the one exception in the mini-desert. Unlike the rest of the scrambling bodies, his teacher lay sprawled on his side and sleeping like the dead.
Brine squatted beside him and marveled at the feat. As they’d done on previous evening, Brine and his partner had avoided the numerous piles of animal waste by leaning against one another’s backs and laying their heads against the other man’s shoulder.
This method worked superbly for keeping the crap out of your hair, but it came up lacking when one of the two parties leapt to their feet. Godfry’s head must have slid from Brine’s shoulder and impacted the ground, but it certainly hadn’t disturbed him.
“Godfry,” Brine said, shaking his teacher gently by the shoulder, then remembering that the impact of the ground hadn’t woken him and giving him a more rigorous shove. “Godfry. Wake up.”
The violent shove, in coordination with the sound of his name, did the trick. Godfry sat up in the gloom and began to moan, then to ask nonsensical questions due either to his senility or the grogginess.
One of the questions was about Old Sam and whether or not he had passed, and Brine had to work to keep the sorrow out of his voice when next he spoke. He waited until Godfry sounded more coherent, then gave his arm a tug and said, “Come on. We’re moving.”
The shadow of Godfry’s head was still for a moment, then said, “Can’t have with a bit more sleep, can we?” His head appeared to pan about the clearing. “Still looks dark to me.”
“The hissing-thing’s come back,” Brine said, standing to his feet and keeping hold of the old man’s bird-bone hand. “We need to move to the rocks.”
“Rocks,” Godfry mimed, still not moving, but no longer sounding obstinate. “What rocks, now?”
“Right over here,” Brine said, giving the old man’s hand a yank, and reminding himself that Amontus had used love to change the minds of his dissenters. “We aren’t moving very far, but we have to move. That bole-beast is on the move again.”
“Bole-beast,” Godfry said, sounding unsure as he pulled down hard on Brine’s hand and leveredhimself to his feet. “Now, does old Bal know about thi—”
“Yes. Yes, he knows. He knows all about it.” Brine’s tone was completely absent of the love and understanding used by the Great Prophet. “Come on.”
Godfry was on his feet, but pulling against his student’s hand. “Here, now,” he said. “Where’s my walking stick? I have my…,” he trailed off, his bushy head turning this way and that, “…I have my book here, but I don’t seem…”
Not daring to grope about the dung piles with his bare hands, Brine kicked about with his feet—one hand keeping a firm grip on his teacher as he did so—and finally met with something long and hard and rolling.
“Here,” he said, retrieving the stick and thrusting it in to Godfry’s chest. “Are we good, now? Can we go?” Without waiting for an answer (or a repeat of yesterday afternoon’s escapade), he started after the rock spur.
Godfry followed for a handful of steps, compliant for the most part, then said, “Sam’s Boy.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it we’re going?”
Brine unclenched his jaw and said, “Over by the rocks.”
More of that seemingly compliant silence ensued, followed by, “And where is it we’ll find these ro—”
“Just up ahead,” Brine said, speaking curtly. “You can’t see them, but they’re there. It’s just…,” now it was his turn to trail off in thought, “…it’s just darker tonight, for…for some reason.”
Godfry let out a low, mind-rumbling, “Hmm,” but said no more.
Brine lowered his head to the dry lumps of crap he felt beneath his sandals. Everything down there, especially in the region of his feet, was a blank sheet of stygian. He lifted his head and looked around the clearing, struck once again by the almost subterranean darkness that had settled over the Harriun.
Last night, and just before falling asleep on this night, there had been more starlight than this. He remembered seeing Balthus by the cave, the pair of Lathians to either side, the two archers keeping watch from high upon the jut. He couldn’t see any of that now.
He tipped back his head and directed the monocle at the sky, looking for the moon and stars that had been there when he and Godfry had retired for the day. It didn’t take long to realize those celestial beauties were noticeably absent, and although he was no astronomer—astronomy being a discipline too closely related to the forbidden witchcraft of astrology—he was aware that the moon waxed and waned over a cycle of days. The stars, likewise, did not light out in the middle of the night like a band of gypsy merchants.
It has to be cloud cover, he decided, and lowered his head, thinking that if it were cloud cover (which it had to be), it was the irony of all ironies. Since leaving the Desert of the F’kari over a week ago, he’d seen only a handful of puffy white stragglers hanging in the sky. Cloud cover, he thought again, a shiver of nerves traveling his spine.
The word cover swelled in his mind’s eye and began to burn like smoldering coals, and behind it the memory of Balthus and Ardose arguing about the Lathians inability to t
ake the cover away from the hissing-thing. First it used the boles, then the spur itself…
…and now the darkness.
Brine stopped where he was and let Godfry amble into him. He still couldn’t see the jut of basalt sticking up from the sands, but he wasn’t thinking about the jut right now. He was thinking about the hissing-thing, imagining the creature as it crouched among the boles and waited for the clouds to roll out like thick black tarps across the white pinpricks in the sky.
He darted his eyes about the stones he could not see and tried to remember how far they’d been from the cave entrance. If ever they were in need of shelter (despite what Balthus thought), now was the time.
He pulled Godfry towards him and turned to face the vast plane of sand and the line of boles in the distance, neither of which registered in the pervasive gloom.
“Let’s sit here,” he said, brushing at the ground with his sandals and clearing a poop-free area for them to sit. They sat and leaned into each other’s backs. Godfry tilted his head onto Brine’s shoulder.
To the east of the spur, the mutter of heated voices mixed with thud of running boots and the clatter of gear and weapons.
“Can’t hear it, though,” Godfry said, speaking right next to Brine’s ear.
Brine jumped a little, then settled down as his mind began to whirl and his thought began to gravitate towards interpreting the old man’s announcement.
“Can’t hear what?” he asked.
“That hissing, er…cougher…creature,” Godfry said.
Brine frowned at the darkness. His teacher was correct in his assertion, but he wondered what had prompted him to introduce the topic. He opened his mouth to ask the question…and closed it when he heard the old man snoring.
He turned his head to the east, the direction of the muffled shouts and random clatter, and felt another jolt of fear pierce his chest from the inside-out.
If this was the handiwork of that slick-skinned monster—that heartless butcher that tortured its victims for an entire morning—why had the initial scream been so brief? Why hadn’t they heard the shrieks of some poor soul being dragged into the wilderness?
He cocked an ear to the east and listened to those who’d responded to the scream. One of them was Ardose, indicated by his curt cadence and caustic tone, but he had no idea who the others were. All he knew for certain was that the speakers on that end of the spur sounded as though the situation was serious.
Ardose, for instance, was speaking as though he were being punched in the gut with each word, each syllable quick and strained. Brine began to wonder about the eerie silence and the oppressive cover and the fact that the hissing-thing did not appear to be taking trophies.
Was it some other creature they were dealing with, a troll or an orc pack, or maybe a creature so menacing that any visitor who met with it never lived to tell?
The longer he thought about it, the more he put his money on the latter. Trolls were rather large and dimwitted and, from what he’d heard, incapable of stealth. By the same token, he wasn’t sure if an orc pack could hold its collective tongue long enough to be furtive. He’d once read that orcs behaved—and, in some ways, resembled—a pack of rabid dogs, and he struggled to envision a pack of dogs sneaking through the clearing.
It bothered him that he didn’t know what the Lathains were dealing with, but in a place like this, a place untouched by exploration or trade, the unknown was part of life. With so few people venturing in and with only raving lunatics scrambling out, who was to say what crept along the sands or leapt between the bo—
One of the sentries to the west let out a terrifying shriek.
Ardose and the men on the east side of the spur went still for a time, then one of them made a hushed order and they ran towards the cry via the south side of the spur, Ardose shouting at his men to stay in pairs, his men breathing heavy and struggling to keep up.
…thut-thut-thut…
As Brine listened to their passage, he was aware of a second set of footfalls behind him—on the north side of the jut. He turned his ear away from Ardose and focused on the movement, his heart going cold as he realized it was a single set of footfalls. It went colder still as he realized they were moving away from the last scream and towards the east side of the spur.
Brine was willing to accept that it might be the lone mercenary whose partner was killed during that last scream, fleeing from the attack site and seeking aid from his brethren, but what sent a sickening pool of dread welling in his stomach was the quality of those footfalls.
Instead of a thut-thut-thut, like the other footfalls, they came to his ears a tad heavier, more on par with a poomp-poomp-poomp.
Brine spun round, jerked his monocle at the footfalls, and saw nothing but black space. He didn’t know what he expected to see, but until the insufferable lighting changed, Sira herself could have been squatting over him with a harpoon in one hand and a net in the other and he wouldn’t have—
No…No, wait a moment.
There was something over there, something in the general vicinity of the footfalls, something like a white shield floating through the gloom, floating through the darkness like a…like one of those…
His mind failed to place the object and decided to throw up an image from his past instead, an image from a history book Serit had assigned to him as reading.
The image depicted a court jester dancing a jig before the masses, his legs kicking, his arms swinging, his painted-on grin stretched from ear-to-goofy-ear. In the background, the court was full of ruling-class nobility (king and queen among them) and they were all smiling and clapping and cheering the fool.
Brine had never understood why. As a boy, he’d always despised those pasty-faced charlatans, never really trusting their chalky grins and never-ending smiles. But like them or not—understand them or not—it was one of these white harlequin faces he now saw floating through the gloom.
He pushed back from the thing, knocking Godfry from his shoulder (the old man thumping numbly in the sand) and went crawling to his feet. Before the image dissipated in the east, he was leaping up and down and trying to yell for help, applying pressure to his diaphragm and hearing only a thin whistle in his ears.
“Here! It’s heeere!” He grabbed at his throat, squeezing it as though trying to break free from the obstructing terror. “I seee it!”
From the east, someone made one of those wet and strangled screams (the sound like a fisherman squeezing the guts from a bass) and every muscle in Brine’s body went taut and achy.
He stopped squeezing his throat and turned to face the cry, listening as, beyond the jut, Ardose and his mobile unit went hoofing it back to the east (thut-thut-thut). At the same time, the lone set of footfalls moved back to the west (poomp-poomp-poomp).
Brine whirled around and, again, caught sight of the harlequin mask hovering about eight or nine hands off the ground, the idiot’s grin of maniac laughter. Whatever the object was, it took no notice of him or his sleeping companion and continued on around the spur to where the mobile units were now leaving.
Brine knelt and took a fistful of Godfry’s robes. The old man never moved.
On the south side of the jut, there was another hawk-shriek of pain, only this one didn’t end. It went on and on as the shouting rose and the bowstrings twanged, continuing on even as the shouting receded and the sound of fleeing boot heels rose to fill the void.
The Lathians were coming towards him, coming around the north side of the spur and those who still could were screaming, “I’s comin round! I’s comin round!”
Brine already knew this. He knew because he’d remembered that poomp-poomp-poomp from when the hissing-thing had snuck upon them, claws up and steps light.
“Get in the cave!”
That was the unmistakable roar of Adose, the dark shape that Brine now saw rounding the spur and sprinting for the cavern, this time not even bothering to look for the Lathian adviser, let alone consult him.
As it were, Brine heard nothing from the Vultureman as the command broke the air. He could hear the footfalls of desperate men thundering around the rock and bolting for the cave, but no one ordered them to stop.
That means it’s open! Brine thought. It’s WIDE open!
“Godfry! Godfry, get up!”
Not waiting for the old man to comply, he began dragging him towards the spur. Ahead of them, more dark, fleeting shapes were merging with the darker outline of the jut, their footfalls turning to echoes as they entered the cave that Brine could not see, Ardose being one of them.
Brine heard the redhead yelling at his men while his voice receded to a hollow wisp. He heard another man, his voice reverberating from inside, yelling at the others to get The Pit out of the way or he’d leave them bleeding in the sand.
Listening to this, it occurred to Brine that he and Godfry were being left behind, that this group of men who’d wanted them so badly the night before (scouring the clearing, screaming at the boles) were going to leave them to the thing with the lunatic smile and the slippery black skin.
Panting harshly, stumbling badly, Brine drove his feet into the sand and screamed at Godfry to help him. Ahead of him, he heard the voices of his captors turning hollow as the last of them scurried through the entrance.
We’re going to make it, we’re going to make it, we’re going to…
At his heels, a human plow in the poop and sand, Godfry was saying something about his stick, then his book. Brine ignored him. He no longer cared what the old man had to say and he no longer cared if he made it to his feet.
Considering the trouble the old man had with his knees and back, Brine didn’t have time for him to make it to his feet. He was fairly certain he and Godfry were the only ones left in the clearing.
Oh, God! God, please! Please, let us make it! Please let us!
He lowered the arm with the monocle and leaned into his strides. He and Godfry might be the only people in the clearing, but he knew better than to believe they were alone. The hissing-thing was out here somewhere, possibly bearing down on him even now, its pawfalls concealed by the thump of his jackrabbit heart, its hissing covered by the rasp of his howling lungs.
Godfry was now wide awake and yammering on about going back for something he’d dropped. Brine was sure it was either his walking stick or his slipper, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care if it was one of his arms, he wasn’t go—
He hit the spur and ricocheted back, landing with an undignified grunt beside his teacher. He scrambled to his feet, oblivious of the monocle he’d dropped or the wind he’d lost, and just soldiered on, one hand dragging Godfry, the other patting at the darkness.
When his patting hand felt stone, he followed it to the right, hoping that was the direction of the cave, but knowing he could be wrong. After striking the wall, he’d lost all sense of bearings as well as the Lathian’s voices. He thought he’d fallen back and to the left, placing the opening to his right, but if he were wrong and he and Godfry were circling away from the entrance and into the clearing…
The rough face of basalt fell away and empty space licked his fingers. He leaned forward, hauled the recalcitrant burden after him, and stopped only when he felt several sets of burly shoulders. He tried to increase his distance from the entrance by moving around the shoulders, but found even more shoulders, and then a rock wall.
He gave up and dragged Godfry next to him, dropping the old man’s arm and curling into a ball in the sand. He refused to raise his head, but he could hear the bole-beast as it paced before the entrance, its grinning white face poomping back and forth.