“Nowhere in this land is safe, lady. But it offers concealment for the night.”
“I take it the twin of your body is not here, Mr. Shannow?”
“No,” he said.
She nodded. “Then she chose to undertake the mission without you, obviously a mistake which she paid for dearly.”
Amaziga turned away and returned to the horses as Gareth approached Shannow. “That’s the closest she’ll ever come to saying you were right about the jeep,” said the young man, attempting a smile. “You’re a wise man, Shannow.”
The Jerusalem Man shook his head. “The wise man was the Jon Shannow who didn’t travel with them.”
Gareth took the first watch, a thick blanket around his shoulders against the cool night breeze. He was sitting on a wide branch that must have snapped in a recent storm. The sight of the body in the jeep had unnerved him as nothing else had in his young life. He knew the dead man better than he knew anyone, understood the hopes and dreams and fears the man had entertained or endured. And he could not help wondering what had gone through his twin’s mind as the jeep had crashed over the cliff. Despair? Terror? Anger? Had he been alive after the fall? Had the Devourers forced their way in and torn at his helpless body?
The young black man shivered and glanced to where Shannow slept peacefully beneath a spreading elm. This quest had seemed like an adventure to Gareth Archer, yet another exciting experience in his rich, full young life. The prospect of danger had been enticing. But to see his own corpse! Death was something that happened to other people … not to him. Nervously he glanced across at the ruined jeep.
The night was cold, and he noticed that his hands were trembling. He glanced at his watch: two more hours before he woke his mother. She had seemed unfazed by the tragedy that had befallen their twins, and just for a moment Gareth found himself envious of her calm. Amaziga had spread out her blanket, removed the boxes and headphones, and passed them to her son. “Lucas’s camera has an infrared capacity,” she had said. “Don’t leave it on for long. We must conserve the batteries. Two minutes every half hour should be sufficient.” Now she, too, seemed to be sleeping.
Gareth pressed the button on the box. “You are troubled,” whispered Lucas’s voice, sounding tinny and small through the earphones.
Gareth flipped the microphone into place. “What can you see?” he asked, turning his head slowly, giving the tiny camera on the headband a view of the plain below.
“Move your head to the right—about an inch,” ordered Lucas.
“What is it?” Gareth’s heart began to pound, and he slipped his Desert Eagle automatic from its shoulder holster.
“A beautiful spotted owl,” said Lucas. “It’s just caught a small lizard.” Gareth swore. “There is nothing on the plain to concern you,” the machine chided him. “Calm yourself.”
“Easy for you to say, Lucas. You haven’t seen your own corpse.”
“As a matter of fact, I have. I watched the original Lucas collapse with a heart attack. However, that is beside the point. Your resting heartbeat is currently 133 beats per minute. That is very close to panic, Gareth. Take some long, slow deep breaths.”
“It is 133 beats faster than the poor son of a bitch in the jeep,” snapped the young man. “And it is not panic. I’ve never panicked in my life. I won’t start now.”
A hand touched his shoulder, and Gareth lurched upright. “One hundred sixty-five beats,” he heard Lucas whisper, and he spun around to see Amaziga standing calmly behind him.
“I said use the machine,” she told him, “not get into an argument with it.” She held out her hand. “Let me have Lucas, and then you can get some sleep.”
“I’ve another two hours yet.”
“I’m not tired. Now do as you’re told.”
He grinned sheepishly and carefully removed the headband and boxes. Amaziga laid aside her Uzi and clipped the machine to her shoulder rig. Gareth moved to his blanket and lay down. The Desert Eagle dug into his waist, and easing it clear, he laid it alongside him.
Amaziga turned off the machine and walked to the edge of the trees, staring out over the moonlit landscape. Nothing moved, and there were no sounds except the rustling of leaves in the trees above her. She waited until Gareth was asleep and then waded back across the stream, past the ruined jeep, and onto the scene of the feast. The body—or what was left of it—was in three parts. The head and neck were resting against a boulder with the face—thankfully—turned away. Amaziga flicked on the machine.
“What are we looking for?” asked Lucas.
“I am carrying a Sipstrassi Stone. There is little power left. She should have an identical stone. Scan the ground.”
Slowly she turned her head. “Can you see anything?”
“No. Nothing of interest. Traverse to the left … no … more slowly. Was it in the trouser pocket or the shirt?”
“Trouser.”
“There’s not much left of the legs. Perhaps one of the beasts ate the stone.”
“Just keep looking!” snapped Amaziga.
“All right. Move to the right … Amaziga!” The tone in his voice made her blood grow cold.
“Yes?”
“I hope the weapon you are holding is primed and ready. There is a beast some fifteen meters to your right. He is around eight feet tall …”
Amaziga flipped the Uzi into position and spun. As a huge, gray form hurtled toward her, the Uzi fired, a long thunderous roar of sound exploding into the silence of the night. Bullets smashed into the gray chest, blood sprayed from the wounds, but still it came on. Amaziga’s finger tightened on the trigger, emptying the long clip. The Devourer was flung backward, its chest torn open.
“Amaziga!” shouted Lucas. “There are two more!”
The Uzi was empty, and Amaziga scrabbled for the Beretta at her hip. Even as she did so, the beasts charged.
And she knew she was too slow …
“Down, woman!” bellowed Shannow.
Amaziga dived to her right. The booming sound of Shannow’s pistol was followed by a piercing howl from the first Devourer, which pitched backward with half its head blown away. The second swerved past Amaziga and ran directly at the tall man at the edge of the trees. Shannow fired once; the creature slowed. A second shot ripped into its skull, and Amaziga was showered with blood and brains.
Shannow stepped forward, pistols raised.
Amaziga turned her head. “Are there any more of them?” she whispered to Lucas. There was no answer, and she saw that one of the leads had pulled clear of the right-hand box. She swore softly and pressed it home.
“Are you all right?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. What can you see?” asked Amaziga, turning slowly through a full circle.
“There are riders some four kilometers to the north, heading away from us. I can see no beasts. But the cliff face is high; there may be others on the higher ground. Might I suggest you reload your weapon?”
Switching off the machine, Amaziga rose unsteadily to her feet. Shannow handed her the Uzi just as Gareth came running onto the scene, his Desert Eagle automatic in his hand.
“Thank you, Shannow,” said Amaziga. “You got here very fast.”
“I was here all the time,” he told her. “I followed you across the stream.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I felt uneasy. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to your watch.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Gareth, staring down at the three dead beasts. “They’re huge!”
“And dead,” Shannow pointed out as he strode past.
Gareth moved alongside Amaziga, who was pressing a full clip into the butt of the Uzi. “Jesus, but he’s like an iceman …” He stopped speaking, and Amaziga saw his gaze fall on the moonlit head of the other Amaziga. “Oh, my God! Sweet Jesus!”
His mother took him by the arm, leading him away. “I’m alive, Gareth. So are you. Hold to that! You hear me?”
He nodded. “I hear you. But Christ
…”
“No buts, my son! They are dead—we are not. They came to rescue Sam. They failed; we will not. You understand?”
He took a long, deep breath. “I won’t let you down, Mother. You can trust me on that.”
“I know. Now go get some sleep. I’ll resume the watch.”
Samuel Archer was not a religious man. If there was a God, he had long since decided, he was either willful or incompetent. Perhaps both. Yet Sam stood now on the crest of the hill and prayed. Not for himself, though survival would be more than pleasant, but for the last survivors of those who had followed him in the war against the Bloodstone. Behind him were the remaining rebels, twenty-two in all, counting the women. Before and below them on the plain were the Hellborn elite. Two hundred warriors, their skills enhanced by the demonseeds embedded in their foreheads. Killers all! Sam glanced around him. The rebels had picked a fine setting for their last stand, high above the plain, the tree line and thick undergrowth forming a rough stockade. The Hellborn would be forced to advance up a steep slope in the face of withering volleys. With enough ammunition we might even have held, thought Sam. He glanced down at the twin ammunition belts draped across his broad chest; there were more empty loops than full. Idly he counted the remaining shells. From the breast pocket of his torn gray shirt he drew a strip of dried beef, the last of his rations.
There would be no retreat from there, Sam knew. Two hundred yards behind them the mountains fell away into a deep gorge that opened out on to the edge of the Mardikh desert. Even if they could climb down, without horses they would die of thirst long before reaching the distant river.
Sam sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. For four years he had fought the Bloodstone, gathering fighters, battling against Hellborn warriors and Devourers. All for nothing. His own small store of Sipstrassi was used up, and without it they could not hope to hold off the killers. An ant crawled onto Sam’s hand. He brushed it away.
That’s what we are, he thought, ants standing defiantly before an avalanche.
Despair was a potent force and one Sam had resisted for most of these four years. It had not been hard back at the beginning. The remnants of the Guardians had gathered against Sarento and had won three battles against the Hellborn. None had proved decisive. Then the Bloodstone had mutated the Wolvers, and a new, terrible force had been unleashed against the human race. Whole communities had fled into the mountains to escape the beasts. The flight meant that the Guardian army, always small, was now without supplies as farming communities disappeared in the face of the Devourers. Ammunition was in short supply, and many fighters left the army to travel to their homes in a vain bid to protect their families.
Now twenty-two were left. Tomorrow there would be none.
A young, beautiful olive-skinned woman approached Sam. She was tall and wore two pistols in shoulder holsters over a faded red shirt. Her jet-black hair was drawn tightly into a bun at the nape of her neck. He smiled as he saw her.
“I guess we’ve come to the end of a long, sorrowful road, Shammy. I’m sorry I brought you to this.”
Shamshad Singh merely shrugged. “Here or at home … what difference? You fight or you die.”
“Or do both,” Sam said wearily.
She sat down beside him on the boulder, her short-barreled shotgun resting on her slim thighs. “Tell me of a happy time,” she said suddenly.
“Any particular theme?” he asked. “I’ve lived for 356 years, so there is a lot to choose from.”
“Tell me about Amaziga.”
He gazed at her fondly. She was in love with him and had made it plain for the two years she had been with the rebels. Yet Sam had never responded to her overtures. In all his long life there had been only one woman who had opened the doors to his soul, and she was dead, shot down by the Hellborn in the first months of the war.
“You are an extraordinary woman, Shammy. I should have done better by you.”
“Bullshit,” she said with a wide smile. “Now tell me about Amaziga.”
“Why?”
“Because it always cheers you up. And you need cheering.”
He shook his head. “It has always struck me as particularly sad that there will come a point in a man’s life where he has no second chances. When Napoleon saw his forces in full retreat at Waterloo, he knew there would never be another day when he would march out at the head of a great force. It was over. I always thought that must be hard to take. Now I know that it is. We have fought against a great evil, and we have been unable to defeat it. And tomorrow we die. It is not a time for happy stories, Shammy.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “At this moment I can still see the sky, feel the mountain breeze, smell the perfume of the pines. I am alive! And I luxuriate in that fact. Tomorrow is another day, Sam. We’ll fight them. Who knows? Maybe we’ll win. Maybe God will open up a hole in the sky and send His thunderbolts down on our enemies.”
He chuckled then. “Most likely he’d miss and hit us.”
“Don’t mock, Sam,” she chided him. “It is not for us to know what God intends.”
“It baffles me, after all you’ve seen, how you can still believe in Him.”
“It baffles me how you can’t,” she responded. The sun was dropping low on the horizon, bathing the mountains in crimson and gold.
Down in the valley the Hellborn had begun their campfires, and the sound of raucous songs echoed up in the mountains.
“Jered has scouted the gorge,” said Shamshad. “The cliff face extends for around four miles. He thinks some of us could make the descent.”
“That’s desert down there. We’d have no way of surviving,” said Sam.
“I agree. But it is an option.”
“At least there are no Devourers,” he said, returning his stare to the Hellborn camp.
“Yes, that is curious,” she replied. “They all padded off late yesterday. I wonder where to.”
“I don’t care as long as it’s not here,” he told her with feeling. “How many shells do you have?”
“Around thirty. Another twenty for the pistol.”
“I guess it will be enough,” said Sam.
“I guess it will have to be,” she agreed.
Amaziga watched as Gareth lifted the coils of rope from his saddle. The cliff face was sheer and some six hundred feet high, but it rose in a series of three ledges, the first around eighty feet above them, its glistening edge shining silver in the bright moonlight.
“What do you think?” asked Amaziga.
Gareth smiled. “Easy, Mother. Good hand- and footholds all the way. The only problem area is that high overhang above the top ledge, but I don’t doubt I can traverse it. Don’t worry. I’ve soloed climbs that are ten times more difficult than this.” He turned to Shannow. “I’ll go for the first ledge, then lower a rope to you. We’ll climb in stages. How is your head for heights, Mr. Shannow?”
“I have no fear of heights,” said the Jerusalem Man.
Gareth looped two coils of rope over his head and shoulder and stepped up to the face. The climb was reasonably simple until he reached a point, just below the ledge, where the rock had been worn away by falling water. He considered traversing to the right, then saw a narrow vertical crack in the face some six feet to his left. Easing his way to it, Gareth pushed his right hand high into the crack, then made a fist, wedging his hand against the rock. Tensing his arm, he pulled himself up another few feet. There was a good handhold to the left, and he hauled himself higher. Releasing the hand jam hold, he reached over the edge of the ledge and levered himself up. Swinging, he sat on the edge staring down at the small figures below. He waved.
Climbing was always so exhilarating. His first experience of it had been in Europe, in the Triffyn mountains of Wales. Lisa had taught him to climb, shown him friction holds and hand jams, and he had marveled at her ability to climb what appeared to be surfaces as smooth as polished marble. He remembered her with great affection and sometimes wondered why he had left her for Ev
e.
Lisa wanted marriage; Eve wanted pleasure. The thought was absurd. Are you really so shallow? he wondered. Lisa would have been a fine wife, strong, loyal, and supportive. But her love for him had been obsessive and, worse, possessive. Gareth had seen what such love could do, for he had watched his mother and lived with her single-minded determination all his life. I don’t want that kind of love, he thought. Not ever!
Pushing such thoughts from his mind, Gareth stood and moved along the ledge. There was no jutting of rock to which he could belay the rope, providing friction to assist him in helping Shannow make the climb, but there was a small vertical crack. From his belt he unclipped a small clawlike object of shining steel. Pushing it into the crevice, he pulled the knob at its center. The claw flashed open, locking to the walls of the crack. Lifting one coil of rope clear, he slid the end through a ring of steel in the claw and lowered it to the waiting Shannow. Once the Jerusalem Man had begun the climb, Gareth looped the rope across his left shoulder and took in the slack.
Shannow made the climb without incident and levered himself over the ledge.
“How did you find it?” whispered Gareth.
Shannow shrugged. “I don’t like the look of those clouds,” he replied, keeping his voice low. Gareth tied the rope to his waist. Shannow was right. The sky was darkening, and they had still a fair way to go.
Lowering the rope once more, Gareth helped his mother make the climb. She was breathing heavily by the time she pushed herself up alongside them.
During the next hour the three climbers inched their way up to the last ledge. They were only forty feet from the top, but darkness had closed in around them and a light drizzle had begun, making the rock face slick and greasy. Gareth was worried. It had not been possible to see from the ground the slight overhang at this point. Climbing it would be difficult at the best of times, but in darkness, with the rain increasing?
For the third time Gareth prowled along the ledge, gazing up, trying to judge the best route. Nothing he could see filled him with encouragement. The rain slowed. He glanced down at the tiny, insect-sized shapes of the hobbled horses. To come this far and not be able to complete his mission—Jesus, Amaziga would never forgive him. He had long known that his mother did not love him, and he accepted her pride in him as a reasonable substitute. She would—could—never love anyone as she did her husband. That love was all-encompassing, all-consuming. As a child this had hurt Gareth, but in manhood he had come to understand the complexities and the bewildering brilliance of the woman who had borne him. If her pride was all he could have, then it would have to suffice. He stepped up to the face and reached up for the first handhold; it was no more than a groove in the rock, but he found a small foothold and levered himself up. Friction holds were vital on an overhang, but the young man’s fingers were tired, the rock face slippery. Gareth’s mouth was dry as he struggled to climb another fifteen feet. His foot slipped. He locked the fingers of his right hand to a small jutting section of rock and swung out over the six-hundred-foot drop. Panic touched him. He was hanging by one hand and unable to reach a second hold. Worse, he had moved out onto the overhang, and if he fell now, he would miss the first ledge. The drop to the second was more than eighty feet … he would be smashed to pulp. Gareth’s heart was pounding so hard that he could feel the pulse thudding at his temple. Twisting his body, he looked up at the face. There was a small hold around eighteen inches above the tiny piece of rock to which he clung. Taking a long, deep breath, he prepared himself for the surge of effort needed to reach it.