Warlord didn’t guess; he knew. ‘‘We’re the new slave labor.’’
‘‘Gold miners, that’s us.’’
All of his men, but especially Magnus, hated to be confined. These were men who walked their own paths, and now they would dig . . . until they died. Warlord felt sick with guilt. ‘‘How far down are we?’’
‘‘Only eight hundred feet. They’re pampering us until we’re healthy—’’
‘‘Healthy? What’s wrong with you?’’
‘‘I lost an eye, and I can’t stand up straight enough to run a drill.’’
This was his fault. ‘‘What happens when we’re healthy?’’
‘‘They’ll send us below.’’
‘‘Below?’’ Warlord moved painfully, slowly. ‘‘We’re at eight hundred feet. Just how deep is this sucker?’’ He healed quickly, more quickly than normal men. His bones were mending, but there had been a lot of damage. He had to get on his feet. How much longer until he could stand?
‘‘Sixteen hundred feet straight down. They say they won’t let helicopters fly in the area because the down-drafts suck them in. The deeper you go, the closer to hell you are, the hotter it gets. They say the air down there is full of poison and men die where they drop, and not even the worms are there to eat them.’’
This was his fault. His fault. His fault. He’d neglected duty to touch Karen, to hold Karen, to hear Karen’s voice and make love to Karen. His men trusted him, they followed him, and he’d led them right into slavery. He’d failed them.
He knew what damage his uncontrolled lust had caused, yet he had to ask, ‘‘Did Karen escape?’’
‘‘Yer woman?’’ There wasn’t an ounce of reproach in Magnus’s voice. ‘‘I never heard that they caught her, and no reason why she shouldn’t have. The damned Varinskis were too occupied with crushing our bones to bother with a woman.’’
Warlord closed his eyes in relief.
Karen was safe.
Then, lifting his head, he said, ‘‘Listen to me, Magnus. I’ll get better fast. And you know what I am. I’ll get you and the other men out of here; I swear I will. . . .’’
Karen struggled, trying to get away from the horror of this vision, but it gripped her and wouldn’t let her go.
Four days Warlord had been down here. He knew that because once a day someone shoved food and water into their cell. Bobbie Berkley had died on the floor beside them; the guards had left him for twenty-four hours before they dragged his body away. The heat, the dark, the sense of being trapped in the womb of the earth with billions of tons of rock pressing all around like a grave . . . it never changed. Nothing changed down here.
Magnus twitched and groaned in his sleep, and once when the guards shone a light in the cell, Warlord saw his injuries.
He hadn’t just lost an eye. He’d lost half his face.
His fault. It was all his fault.
Now Warlord heard the guards at the door, and jerked away at the light.
‘‘He’s fine. Get him up and send him down.’’ Warlord recognized that voice. Innokenti Varinski.
He broke into a cold sweat.
As if he were a puppy, the Neanderthal picked him up by the collar. ‘‘I see you remember me.’’
‘‘I remember you.’’
‘‘I am Innokenti Varinski. I am your conqueror.’’ When Warlord said nothing, Innokenti shook him. ‘‘Say it.’’
‘‘You are Innokenti Varinski. You are my conqueror. ’’ Warlord told himself he obeyed because it was the smart thing to do. But more than that, he obeyed because he was afraid. Afraid of this beast who had defeated him in battle, hurt him as he had never been hurt before, and who would delight in the chance to do it again. And again.
Innokenti sniffed him as he would a moldy piece of bread. ‘‘You smell funny . . . for a human.’’
‘‘I need to wash.’’ Warlord did not need this massive Sauron imitator to figure out they were related by blood. As long as Warlord’s abilities were secret, his men had a chance.
‘‘Would you like us to draw you a bath? And put rose petals in the water?’’ Innokenti grinned and showed a mouthful of black and missing teeth.
‘‘When did the Varinskis start rotting like normal men?’’ It was a fair query, maybe a little rude, but still a fair query, for the deal with the devil had guaranteed them long lives without the problems that plagued mere mortals.
But evidently Warlord had hit a sore spot.
The Varinski’s smile disappeared. He smashed his forehead against Warlord’s face until blood spurted from Warlord’s nose and mouth. ‘‘You insolent little prick. I’ll show you rot.’’ He flung him against the wall, picked up the guard’s steel prod, and slashed Warlord across the back.
Warlord screamed. Five times the rod fell. Then Innokenti threw it across the room. He hit a guard, who shrieked and fell to the ground. ‘‘Chain his hands and feet and put him to work.’’ Picking Warlord up off the floor, the Varinski said, ‘‘I’m Innokenti Varinski. When you die, remember me and curse my name.’’
‘‘Innokenti,’’ Karen muttered. ‘‘Innokenti.’’ The scene shifted and . . .
Days and months without end, without light, without enough food or water.
Warlord didn’t have the breath to curse Innokenti Varinski. He didn’t have the strength or the will. The depths of the mine sapped his energy. The work shattered his body. The constant loss of his men, one after another, broke his will.
This was his fault. His fault. His fault.
Once a month Innokenti arrived with his steel rod and beat Warlord. At first Warlord didn’t know why he’d been singled out. Had Innokenti realized that Warlord was related to the hated rogue branch of the Varinskis, the Wilder family?
Then Warlord recognized the source of Innokenti’s frustration. No other man could have lived through a single one of those beatings, yet every month when Innokenti returned, Warlord was working again.
Innokenti would take his rod and beat Warlord, and one day would succeed in killing him, for only another demon could kill a man bound by the pact with the devil.
But not yet. Not yet.
If Warlord hadn’t neglected his duty to his men and spent all his time with Karen, he and his men would still be free. Yet the memory of Karen was the only thing that kept him alive. When the guards had beaten him with the steel rod, and he could no longer imagine what sunshine and fresh air felt like on his skin, he would bring Karen to his mind.
Karen, glimpsed on the train from Kathmandu.
Karen, in her tent in the depths of night.
Karen, clutching him on the motorcycle as they raced the rockfall.
Karen, dancing in the meadow, kissing the ground, naked under the waterfall.
Karen, tied to the brass bed and writhing with pleasure . . .
Sometimes, she was so close he could smell her scent, touch her skin, hear her voice crooning to him.
That was when he knew he was hallucinating. Karen would never croon to him . . .
In a year’s time half his men were left. They died while blasting the rock. They died in cave-ins. And worse, one by one, they lay down and died of starvation, from the beatings . . . and because all hope was gone. Nothing he said made a difference. They didn’t trust him anymore.
Even Magnus had given up.
He had to lead them out. They couldn’t wait any longer. He couldn’t wait any longer.
Because he had given up, too. He didn’t realize how low he had sunk until one of the guards poked him with a steel rod and said, ‘‘Hey, titty-baby. Guess who’s coming tomorrow? Your best friend, Innokenti Varinski. And you know what he’s going to do? He’s going to beat you half to death. Better get ready to scream, titty-baby.’’
Warlord sank to his knees and cried. Cried with fright, cried for the release of death, cried and begged the guard to kill him, when he knew it was impossible.
The guard laughed and poked him again. ‘‘Do I look insane? If I killed yo
u, he’d kill me. No, titty-baby, I’ll just wait to hear you sing soprano tomorrow.’’
The tears leaked down Warlord’s cheeks all the way through that guard’s shift and into the next. None of his men would look at him. Magnus wouldn’t talk to him. He had let them all down . . . and still he cried.
Then, with the change of the guard, opportunity presented itself. He didn’t recognize it—until Karen’s voice snapped in his mind, Pay attention!
Two guards instead of the usual four. Both were drunk—somewhere up above the mining company had thrown a party. One guard passed out and never heard the roar of the drill before it pierced his chest. The other fell from Warlord’s swift and slashing chain.
‘‘See, boys?’’ Magnus said. ‘‘He did it.’’ But his voice was weak, and he collapsed when he tried to collect the weapons.
Warlord picked up his friend and placed him in the elevator.
Magnus had shrunk down there. His bones almost pierced his skin, and in the harsh light his lips looked blue.
Thirty-eight men crowded into the elevator.
‘‘I’m going up the stairs to the next level. Give me a couple minutes, then follow. While I finish the guards, you collect their weapons.’’ Warlord leaned in to push the button. ‘‘We need the weapons to break out of here.’’
‘‘Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?’’ Logan Rogers demanded.
‘‘He’s the guy who got us out of there,’’ Magnus said.
‘‘He’s the guy who got us in there, too,’’ Logan retorted.
‘‘Do you have a better plan?’’ Warlord asked.
Logan subsided.
‘‘Then shut up.’’ Warlord looked around at the remains of his band of mercenaries. ‘‘Free the other prisoners, but don’t let them on the elevator. It won’t take the weight. When we’re done with the management, those miners will have their chance.’’
His men nodded solemnly.
‘‘Horst, before those assholes up above realize what’s going on down here, you might want to figure out how to override the controls.’’
‘‘How are you going to take out the guards by yourself?’’ Horst asked in his ponderous Swedish accent.
Warlord looked at the chains on his wrists. He was emaciated, so thin he looked like a starvation victim. Would the panther be able to slip out of the cuffs? If not . . . well, in this dark they would never see a panther, even a chained panther.
He smiled his first smile in a year. ‘‘They haven’t got a chance.’’
They didn’t. He moved from level to level, silent, invisible, striking without warning. His men arrived behind him and gathered the weapons until every one of them held rods and whips and guns.
At five hundred feet, when someone on the surface got wise and tried to cut the power, the elevator continued to rise. Horst had done his job.
But Warlord was falling behind. He was weak, too weak to run so many stairs. He couldn’t make it.
When his men reached the top, they couldn’t just go running out of the elevator. A single machine gun would mow them down.
He had to stop them before they reached the top.
Then he heard it. Gunfire from above.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Karen caught her breath. She came up with a gasp. She found herself struggling, trying to sit up in the sleeping bag.
Warlord held her in his arms, saying over and over, ‘‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’’
‘‘It’s not all right. I can’t breathe. I can’t . . . it was dark. There was no air. It was hot. They beat me.’’ Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.
‘‘The venom has made you ill.’’ He trickled water into her mouth and onto her forehead. ‘‘But you’re better now. You can breathe. Take a breath now.’’
She looked wildly around the barely lit tent. The weight of the snow made the nylon sag around them and hid the sunlight.
‘‘See? We’re in the mountains. Together. This is now. That time and place is past.’’
‘‘But I saw it.’’ And yet . . . she was here. He was here.
He wrapped her close. ‘‘You were there. I saw you . . . but I figured I’d gone crazy.’’
‘‘I’d wake up at night and it was so dark, and I’d know you were alive somewhere. . . .’’ She was sore in her bones and muscles, as if she had been beaten. ‘‘Oh, God, how did you stand it? All that time with no hope . . .’’
‘‘When you walk through hell, keep walking, ’’ he said wryly. ‘‘A year in the dark in the heat gives a man a long time to think, and I did. I reviewed my life a thousand times.’’
‘‘I know.’’ She had been in his mind every minute.
He gave her the canteen.
She drank.
‘‘At first, when I remembered, I was defiant. I was proud of what I’d done, walking my own path, ignoring my father’s admonitions, being free.’’ He fed her pieces of an oatmeal-raisin Baker’s Breakfast Cookie.
She ate slowly, filling the empty places.
‘‘But at about review three hundred, I started remembering my brothers and my sister, thinking about what it would have been like to know what they were doing, who they loved. I remembered my mother, the kiss she gave me the last time she saw me. I even remembered my dad and every word he said to me, over and over, all the time I was growing up.’’ He mimicked a deep voice with a pronounced Russian accent. ‘‘ ‘Don’t change, Adrik. Keep your heart pure, Adrik. Every time you give in to the panther, you put yourself into the devil’s hands, Adrik.’ I remembered how much I hated all that good advice, and how dumb I thought he was, and the way I swore that when I was an adult I’d do whatever I wanted.’’
‘‘And you did.’’
‘‘And I did. Eventually in the dark I faced the fact that my dad was right.’’ Warlord’s eyes narrowed. ‘‘Man, I hated that. But I also figured it didn’t matter. I had to get my men out any way I could, and if that meant sitting on the devil’s right hand, I would. When the chance finally came, I became a black panther, silent as a shadow, and every time I killed a guard I knew I’d saved a hundred prisoners. And every time I killed a guard, I had the blood of another man on my hands.’’
She knew where she was. She could breathe without obstruction. Yet she still ached . . . for Warlord.
‘‘The closer my men got to the top, the more excited they were. I knew why. I could almost smell the fresh air, and I wanted to feel the sun on my face.’’ His green eyes glowed as he relived his anticipation. ‘‘I couldn’t control them. They got ahead of me. When I heard the shots I wanted to shriek at them for being such fools.’’
She hung on his every word. ‘‘What was it?’’
‘‘Five floors from the top they ran into an ambush.’’
‘‘Which wouldn’t have happened if they let you go first.’’
‘‘I pointed that out later, I can tell you. By the time I got up there they had the guards down, but four of my guys were shot, and it was a hell of a mess. I figured the main attack above would be ready to launch, but I also knew the way the guards drank. Their reflexes had to be off. They had to be in disarray. Most important, they were used to dealing with men too starved and dispirited to rebel. So—it was a mine; we used dynamite every day—we rigged an explosive in the elevator. My men sent it up while I took the stairs and cleared the way. They followed, and everyone was on the surface in time to see the explosion.’’ Proudly, Warlord said, ‘‘I took control of the mine with thirty-eight very pissed-off mercenaries, and we didn’t stop until we’d hijacked a plane bound for Afghanistan.’’
‘‘Innokenti?’’ She shivered.
‘‘I assume he arrived soon after.’’ He laid her flat and tucked the sleeping bag close around her neck. ‘‘I would have hated to be one of the surviving guards.’’
‘‘Magnus. Is Magnus alive?’’
‘‘He is, and living very well for a one-eyed former mercenary with eight fingers and twenty-nine tee
th. He’s the consultant for the Warlord game.’’
‘‘He likes video games?’’
‘‘He hates them. He always thought it was stupid that players sat and stared at a little screen and exercised their thumbs, so when I was talking about turning the whole experience into a game, he said build it so the action happened in a room all around the player. In Warlord, the player has weapons strapped to his body and sensors hooked to his hands, feet, and head, and he has to defend himself against the oncoming threats.’’ His enthusiasm grew as he spoke. ‘‘The higher the level, the more difficult the battles, the more attackers involved. It’s actually a training setup for mercenaries.’’
‘‘A video game in a room?’’ She watched him with an indulgent smile. ‘‘Where will it be played?’’
‘‘Pizza places. Paintball galleries. Burstrom has his finger in a lot of pies, and he’s buying up property to build actual game houses. But in addition, Burstrom and I see potential for training in any kind of fighting and self-defense. Karate schools will build them in. We’ve already started work to modify the idea for training boxers. The preliminary sales have brought in over seventy million dollars.’’
‘‘Seventy million dollars.’’ Her indulgent smile evaporated. ‘‘You’ve got to be kidding!’’
‘‘My cut is only ten percent.’’
‘‘Only? That’s seven million.’’
‘‘That’s just the beginning. Projections for next year are for five times that.’’
‘‘Wow.’’ She had never figured him for a financial wizard.
‘‘As with every venture, there is always a chance projections will fall short,’’ he warned her.
She didn’t see that happening. Not to this smooth-talking entrepreneur.
He continued, ‘‘In addition, I put the money I made as a mercenary in a bank in Switzerland, and with the help of my financial adviser—’’
‘‘You had a financial adviser?’’
‘‘I would have been a fool not to.’’ He let her absorb that. ‘‘So with the help of my financial adviser, my personal worth tops thirty million. That amount is completely separate from the money involved in the development of the Warlord game.’’