Warlock. Part 11

'And crushed! me to death! in the bargain,' Gregor said, grinning at his brother. They were brothers now, if they had never been by birth. Hardship had removed the 'step' from their relationship.

'How do you feel?' the Shaker asked the neophyte-Shaker.

'Fine. I'll slow us up some, but otherwise, everything seems normal.'

'Pain?'

'Surprisingly little,' Gregor said, his arm around Mace's shoulder to support himself.

Sandow knew he was lying. The pain he suffered was there, just beneath the sheen of calm that covered his young face. But the old magician remained silent. There was actually very little they could do for the pain, aside from administering brandy to make the boy less aware of his suffering. If he forced Gregor to admit the extent of his agony, nothing would be gained-and Mace would be made more morose than ever.

'Shaker,' Commander Richter said, laying a hand on the magician's shoulder to gain his attention and, perhaps, to indicate the friendship that had grown between them, an unspoken friendship that needed no words. 'Would you come with me a moment?'

'The boy here-' Sandow began, indicating Gregor.

'This will take but a moment,' Richter said.

He led Shaker Sandow to the slumped bodies of the men who had died outside the shielding bamboo with no chance of reaching cover fast enough. They stopped before one hunched form which was balled up more than most. The tangle of clothes and the film of rich blood which covered the man made an identification from the back impossible.

'Who?' the Shaker asked.

Richter stooped and, very gently, turned over the dead man. It was Fremlin, the bird master. Half a dozen shots had struck home through his torso, and his face was blank and empty and dead, dead-though oddly at rest. Beneath him, a partially crushed wicker cage contained the shattered bodies of his last two Squealers.

'He fell on them to protect them, and they were killed anyway, for the bullets went directly through him.'

'I had not yet begun to understand, fully, the relationship of the birds and their master to one another,' Sandow said. 'But it was far more than a man and his pets.'

'Legends say the man who loves the Squealers becomes a black bird himself when he dies.'

'Let us hope,' Shaker Sandow said. 'It would be fitting for him, not such a waste as it stands now.'

'You realize that now you will be our only eyes in advance of our eyes? Since we've been spotted, they'll send search parties after us to kill the last. Your powers have become invaluable to help us avoid those hunters. Without you, we won't make it.'

'I had realized that. I'll do what I can.'

'Will the wounded boy, your Gregor, make a difference?'

'My powers are strong without him. Indeed, I feel they are now stronger than ever. Perhaps imminent death does something for magic talents that no amount of practice can.'

'I'll detail two men to help Gregor.'

'No,' Sandow said. 'I think Mace would rebel at that, He'll want to do it himself.'

Richter nodded. 'We have to get moving now,' he said. 'We'll be slowed by the wounded. I had thought of putting young Barrister out of his misery. But I keep thinking that if we hang onto him, even if he slows us, we might reach the city. And reaching the city, we might discover some traces of ancient medicine that will heal him. If there are such wonders as flying machines!'

'Two men and a stretcher can move swiftly,' Sandow said, sensing the commander's need. 'You've decided correctly. A mercy killing can sometimes become a murder when salvation shows later.'

'Most of the food is in good shape. All the water containers have been punctured, most more than once. We'll have to hope we have water all along the last part of the journey. It can't be far.'

'The sooner we get moving, the safer,' Sandow said. 'And, too, the sight of so many dead in such a brutal fashion cannot help but play upon the nerves of those remaining.'

'Forgive my rambling,' Richter said. He began shouting orders to the men, and in a very little time, they entered the bamboo again, moving while the darkness was on their side.

Later in the night, three aircraft pa.s.sed over them, streaking for the place they had left behind.

'Search parties,' Mace said. 'They'll be putting men on foot to give chase.'

'Perhaps,' the Shaker said.

And they walked faster.

20.

In the morning they were exhausted, and they paused tt rest only shortly after first light. The way had been difficult. After only an hour of their march, making less than a third of a mile in all that time, weariness overtook them. In two hours, they were exhausted. In three, they felt incapable of going on. In four, they were zombies. But still they managed to pick feet up and put feet down, over and over in what seemed an endless ritual to some long-dead G.o.d. Richter had suggested that movement by day would be even more difficult, for they would have to be especially careful not to disturb the reeds enough to make their movement obvious on the surface of these bamboo stalks. And that was enough of an excuse, even at this early hour, to drop and recover some of the strength which the land had drawn from them.

To make matters worse, they had found no water on their journey thus far. The bamboo stems contained nothing but a damp punk which could not slake the thirst at all. Though they scooped collection pots into the earth, no dampness rose and no water filled them. They were fortunate in having with them some dried fruit which yet contained moisture and which drew saliva from their dried cheeks to wet their throats. But such could not sustain them for long.

Gregor was unconscious. His broken foot had swollen seriously, until his boot had to be cut off. His leg was growing blue, and all of them knew what that meant: rot and death. And they had no facilities for amputation. Death!

Mace attempted to force some syrup into the boy's throat, syrup procured by squeezing handfuls of dried fruit into a cup. There were only one or two sips, but Gregor could not even come round long enough to gain interest in those.

The Shaker pretended that all would be well when they reached the city, though he had grave doubts. First, even upon reaching the city, they would have to find some way of taking it. And there were but twenty-one whole men among them. How many would the Oragonians have on those great battlements? Hundreds? Thousands? Too many, in any case. And even, if by some strange quirk of fate, they should capture the city, there might be no medical equipment there. Or if there was, it might be decayed and inoperative. And if it worked- well, to h.e.l.l with them, none of them really would know what to do with it. It would be alien machinery that would take time to master.

And Gregor did not have time.

Richter settled beside the unconscious boy, next to the Shaker. 'How is he?'

'Poisoned,' the Shaker said. He peeled back the trouser leg to show the angry welling blue-black in the boy's flesh.

'The city cannot be far,' Richter said.

'Perhaps just a bit too far, though,' Sandow said.

'No. It is dose,' Richter said, refusing to share anyone's pessimism. 'I wonder if you could do a reading for us.'

To find?'

'Several things,' Richter said. He wiped a hand across his grimy face, as if to strip away the exhaustion there. He was ten pounds lighter than he had been, though he had never been a particularly beefy man. He looked gaunt, beaten, but still in there, fighting whatever was thrown at him. His voice, cool and clear, showed no signs of fatigue, and seemed to emanate from the throat of a much younger man. 'First, we should know if we are being followed and-if we are-exactly where the pursuers are. We should know whether we are still headed toward the city; these d.a.m.n plants make it easy to alter course without knowing it. And we should also know exactly where we should come out of the bamboo to give us the best tactical advantage.'

'Very well,' Shaker Sandow said. 'Ill see to it in just a few moments, when I've taken a bite of food and have had a chance to clear my mind of cobwebs.'

Since the Shaker was not attempting to read the minds of men, the silver reading plate was not necessary, though the chants were. He worked through the words in all the strange tongues of the sorcerers, and at last he was prepared to strike upward with his mind, to sail above the stalks of bamboo and seek out the nature of the landscape to all sides of them.

His eyes remained open.

They saw nothing.

His mouth went slack.

His hands hung uselessly at his sides.

A bead of drool appeared on his lips.

It was as if he had vacated his body. And he had.

And then he was back, blinking his eyes, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. He drew a very deep breath and settled his strained nerves with a last relaxative chant that took his voice down through all the registers of the musical range until he was singing a low base that made the words almost unintelligible.

When he was finished, Commander Richter leaned forward and said, 'What have you seen?'

The city is but a mile ahead,' Sandow affirmed. 'We are very close indeed. There are great black ramparts, walls easily eighty foot high. I could see no stone marks, no seams in all that encircling masonry, and odd substance indeed. Upon the walls are stationed soldiers in the colors of the Oragonian Empire, and they are armed with devices which they have mined from the storehouse of the dead city. I did not see any way in which we could breach those walls in our small numbers and with the meager bows and arrows we possess. To complicate matters, I found that they have chosen a much more dangerous method of dealing with us than sending searchers in our path.'

'That is?' Richter asked.

They have encircled the bamboo field with torch-bearers, and they have lighted the dry reeds at the perimeter. Even now, the fires burn in toward us, leaving black ash and little else in their wake. We should soon smell the smoke-and feel the heat.'

'But this stuff will go up like well-cured kindling!' Richter gasped. 'When it has finished and the smoke has cleared, they would find nothing but our bones!'

'I doubt they desire to find anything more than that,' Shaker Sandow said, smiling grimly.

Commander Richter was about to speak when his face changed from fury and confusion, slipped on an expression of graveyard humor. 'Aye, and you wouldn't be sitting there so smugly if you expected all of us to die,' the old officer said. 'Out with it now, friend. What else did you discover?'

'An escape,' Sandow said. He smiled the same smile that Richter used. 'And perhaps a way into the city. Not far from here, but twenty feet ahead, there is the foundation of an ancient house which is now filled with dirt Part of the earth filling the ruins has caved in, and there is a pathway into rooms beneath the ground, into what seem to be tunnels. The tunnels, in turn, stretch long dark fingers toward the walls of the city, as if-perhaps and the G.o.ds be willing-they go under the mighty black walls which the Oragonians guard.'

Richter grinned with sheer delight now. 'I knew that luck must come our way sometime, friend. And now it has!'

'Perhaps, but please speak softly. Luck is a s.a.d.i.s.tic woman, and she likes nothing more than to see a man brought to ruin after climbing the walls of false hopes.'

The men were summoned quickly to their feet, and the situation was quickly outlined to them. Not worried now about the size and the clarity of the trail left behind them, they hacked their way into the growth, desperately seeking the broken mold of the old house, the cellars that would protect them.

Barrister was almost entirely black and blue, and as they jostled his body through the torturous path, his flesh seemed to grow even darker, his limbs to swell, the veins on his head standing out fiercely as if they would burst in the instant.

Mace had slung Gregor over a shoulder and was moving with the ease he always exhibited. The boy's leg thumped against Mace's b.u.t.tocks, and the lad gurgled thickly, painfully in his sick sleep.

Don't let him die, the Shaker thought. Don't let him die, whatever you do, Mace.

He did not know why he should be exhorting Mace to maintain Gregor's well-being. Perhaps it was that, after watching the extremely capable giant, he had ceased to think of him merely as a man, but as some kind of demi-G.o.d.

Smoke drifted through the stalks now, though the heat had not reached them and would not for several minutes.

'Here it is!' the red-haired Tuk shouted from his position in the lead. He raised the curved blade of his machete and pointed directly ahead and at the ground.

In another moment, they were standing before a jumbled ma.s.s of stones through which the bamboo stalks grew, though not as thickly as elsewhere. Along the northern wall, the earth had parted and dropped down, giving view of darkness beyond.

'In there,' Shaker Sandow said.

Richter directed the men through, down a drop of seven or eight feet to a set of stairs. The stairs wound for twelve paces around a stone column and into a chamber where the air was cool and fresh, and where a breeze stirred their hair. The torches showed dark gray walls, some panels of what appeared to be wood-but was not -which still clung to the basic stone beneath. There was no furniture and no ornamentation. No one particularly cared about the crudeness of their haven.

By the time all were safe beneath the blazing land, the heat had become oppressive above, and even reached wispy fingers down to them, though the draft down there tended to carry both heat and smoke out of these rude chambers. They could hear the roar of the fire not far away, and by the time they had located the mouth of the tunnel which led toward the city, the popping, crackling, exploding fury was directly over them, consuming anything that its acidic tongues could possibly devour.

'Single file,' Richter said. 'Two torches to the front, two to the rear, and one in the middle of the procession, Move quietly, lest there be Oragonians at the other end, The moment you spot light, Tuk, outen your two torches, and everyone else will follow suit.'

Holding a dagger ready in his one good hand, the burly Sergeant Growler licked his salt-encrusted lips and said, 'The city will be ours, and we will find ourselves returning home by air. I feel it in my bones 1'

'And feeling it in your bones is no certain fortune-telling,' Richter said.

Again, they had taken the roles of the cheery optimist and the balancing pessimist. The men reacted with a general lifting of spirits, but also with a bit more caution-just as the two officers had wanted them to react Maybe there is a chance for success, the Shaker thought. Maybe Lady Luck's sadism will be directed toward those who wait so smugly on the ramparts above. Perhaps she has led them to build false hopes. G.o.ds knew, this bunch had never had much hope at all!

He felt a gnawing eagerness to be in the city, to discover the books and the machines that would await them there. Surely, there would be things even more fascinating than war machines. He wondered what the Oragonians might have pa.s.sed over as useless-and which he might find to be the most priceless artifacts of all.

He dared to allow himself to think that there might be enough in the city to explain to him why his mother had had to die. Even Gregor, whose mother had left a diary, might still feel the guilt of his birth enough to want that answer.

And, too, there might be some way of saving the youth's life in the city. And again, maybe not. They walked down the dark tunnel!

BOOK THREE.

The City and the Dragon!

21.

Down the center of the tunnel, there were two rails which were pitted with age, set almost flush with the moss-spattered stones of the floor. It looked very much as if a train had traveled here in centuries past, though the purpose of putting such a vehicle underground was one that none of them could fathom Twice, they found places where stairs lead upward from platforms that jutted out from the tunnel wall. Both of these were blocked by rubble and led nowhere. Since they could not yet have covered the mile to the city, they did not spend much time with these clogged exits but continued on their way.

In time, they found the train. It was on its side, wheels crushed against the left-hand wall, dug into the stone there. The top of the cab was pinned against the right-hand wall, and through the shattered gla.s.s of that operator's booth, the white bones of a man looked out at them The hollow eye sockets of the skull seemed to stare with inordinate interest. They came up to the front of it and set down the stretcher with Barrister slung in it. Mace propped the unconscious neophyte-Shaker, Gregor, against the gutter curb and stretched to get his cramped muscles in order, as if he expected to lift this mammoth obstacle himself.

'Half a mile yet, I'd say,' Richter said quietly, turning to Shaker Sandow.