Warlock. Part 7

'Zito,' Richeter said, 'if he does not surrender his dagger to me in the next ten seconds, put an arrow in him.'

Crowler blanched, drew his knife and placed it in Richter's open palm.

The commander examined it briskly and returned it to the squat non-com. 'I'm sorry, Crowler. But we have a clue to the killer, and we aren't trusting anyone. And you were acting mighty suspicious there.'

Crowler sheathed the dagger. 'Only because I thought maybe you-maybe all of you were the killers!'

'Call the next man,' Richter said.

Gregor did the commander's bidding again and again, ushering one potential killer after another through the slit in the canvas where the ritual of the knife examination was repeated.

His name was Cartier, and he had been the last man on that seven-man team which had met with disaster on the first day of their climb. The commander had said that only a madman would have tried to kill the six men above him on a climbing situation like that. Cartier was not a madman, but he was not merely a man, either.

'May I see your dagger?' Richter asked, p.r.o.nouncing the words in a monotone by this time. Of the forty men who had been waiting on the windward side of the canvas, thirty-two had already been checked. By this time, Richter operated almost like an automaton. In all of them, despair had replaced tension. It was possible, of course, that the killer waited in those last eight to be checked, but doubtful. Instead, it seemed more likely- considering the craftiness of their adversaries-that he had somehow managed to slip by them. This despair was also evident in the commander's tone.

'My dagger?' Cartier asked. As with all the others, he did not know what would be asked him until the words had been spoken.

'Yes,' Richter said.

But Cartier made no move for it.

'That's an order,' Richter said.

'How am I to know that you're not all-'

'Zito,' the commander said. To Cartier, he said: 'If you do not surrender your dagger now, Zito will place an arrow in you to make certain you offer no resistance to Mace there.'

Cartier looked about himself, at Mace and at the Coedone who stared back at him with a coolly murderous look that belied the strength in the dark hands that held the bow and arrow. He seemed like a cornered rat, and he hissed between his teeth.

Richter stepped backward. 'You have nothing to fear if you aren't the killer. Just hand over your knife-'

In the instant, Cartier had the dagger in his hand and had leaped for the commander, snarling like some mad dog, his face expressionless but for the twisted sneer of his lips.

Zito's arrow tw.a.n.ged. It caught the a.s.sa.s.sin in the neck and sent him sprawling at Richter's feet, blood pumping out over the virgin white of the snow, spreading around the gagging, twisting corpse like a burial shroud.

Richter bent to the corpse, went to touch it, then drew back suddenly as snaking lengths of glistening wire rose through the clothes of the man. They waved in the breeze like the seeking lengths of cobras, bending toward the body warmth of the men close by, growing longer, dancing, singing in the slight breeze that washed them.

'What is this?' the Shaker asked, moving in to look. Behind him, the other men moved in as well, staring with fascination at the corpse that was not just a corpse.

'Be careful there!' Mace said, drawing the Shaker back. 'I think those wires would spear your flesh and make you into another of whatever this Cartier was.'

A murmur of agreement went through the ranks of the Banibaleers who looked on.

Mace kicked the body over with his booted foot, danced backward as the swaying wire tendrils grasped at his leather footwear and sought to breach it in its quest for flesh.

Wires sprouted from the front of the dead Cartier, just as they did from the back, thousands of them. He seemed to be a man covered with a wind-stirred mat of coppery fur.

His eyes were pulped and gone. Wires rose out of them.

His nostrils spewed forth curling lengths of shimmering metal which grew toward his lips like tiny streams of oddly colored blood.

In his mouth: copper.

His lips split open, and pieces of machinery, little tubes and gears, spilled out and down his chin.

Bits of gla.s.s glistened inside his throat which hung open to their view.

'Demons,' someone whispered.

'No,' the Shaker said, almost absent-mindedly. 'This is something from the Blank, a lost invention.'

'But I knew Cartier since childhood!' someone protested.

'And Oragonian spies reached him and used the science from gone days, from the Blank, and made him into whatever he is here.'

Cartier's face split open.

Desperately, the living machinery within him attempted to find another host.

There was no more blood.

The wires began to tangle with each other, snarled, weaved one another, collapsed, fizzing, dying!

Smoke rose from the corpse, as if the machinery had used his blood for oil and was now grating against itself without lubrication.

There was an angry noise as of bees swarming, then a strangled, ugly screech from Cartier's shattered throat as the inhuman machine tried to use his voicebox for some unknown purpose. Then the wires stopped moving and the smoke rose in a gush and the thing that had possessed him was finally dead beyond recall.

They stood for a while, watching the smoke blow away from the corpse, listening to the howl of the wind, unable to cope with what they had seen.

At last, it was Richter who turned the mood to one of determination. That is the sort of thing Oragonia would bring to bear upon the Darklands. If Jerry Matabain had his demonic way, your loved ones, your wives and children would be as those a.s.sa.s.sins which have stalked us: creations without souls, things more machine than man, with love and emotions gone from them and nothing but obedience to Jerry Matabain as their life's motivation!'

'No!' someone called, furious at such a thought. And it had worked, this call to patriotism and to love of family, to fear that lies in all men-fear of losing their individuality. Other men began grumbling, angry at the treachery set loose among them and dedicated, as never before, to reaching the east and the stores of Blank era machinery waiting there.

'But,' Richter said, 'we are not yet free of this curse. There is another such creature loose among us. Does anyone here remember who Cartier spent his time with? Did he have a buddy, a companion he seemed to share secrets with?'

The men talked among themselves, turned curious faces on each other, and in a few moments, the word came from several places at once, then was repeated everywhere: 'Zito-Zito-Zito. Zito. Zito. Zito. Yes, it was Zito. It was Zito he was with!'

The Coedone Gypsy stood where he had been, the bow in his hand. There had been but one arrow, and that was now embedded in the corpse of what had been Cartier.

'It can't be so,' Richter said, staring at the dark gypsy. 'You once gave me your kerchief. You swore eternal fidelity.'

'An' it is na' true, either,' Zito said, approaching the commander with his tough hands spread to either side, as if he were as perplexed by these accusations as the old man was. 'I wa' with him, tha' is sure. Bu' tha' does na' mean guilt! I am as loyal to tha' commanda' as-'

He was no more than ten feet from the commander when a thrown knife buried itself to the hilt in the center of his chest, ripping cleanly through his bulky coat and spearing flesh. Eyes turned in the direction of the knife, stopped on Mace who stood in the position of a marksman. 'He would have throttled you, Commander, or worse,' Mace said. 'It was in his face, believe me.'

Everyone turned to stare at Zito.

The gypsy was looking stupidly down at the blade buried in his chest, swaying back and forth as his pierced heart labored to pretend that death was not present, and the machinery that shared his flesh worked to knit the torn artery inside of him.

Mace spoke again, his voice self-a.s.sured, even though the dying man seemed only to be that and no more-certainly not a fiend whose body sheltered an alien life form. 'You told him to do no more than wound the guilty man whenever we discovered who it was. Instead, he placed that arrow in Cartier's neck, a deadly shot.' Mace turned to Zito. 'Were you frightened that what few traces of humanity remained in Cartier might turn on you and betray you if you only wounded him? Was it necessary to kill him so that he might not say the truth in his last moments?'

'It is na' true,' Zito gasped.

Blood bubbled up on his lips.

He looked beseechingly around the group, and finally a man named Hankins stepped forward and went for the wounded gypsy.

'No!' Mace shouted.

But it was too late. As Hankins touched the dark Coedone, the gypsy snarled, clasped the man in a death embrace.

Hankins screamed, fought to break loose.

The Coedone's face split, spewed forth snaking wires which stung into Hankins, threaded his flesh and sought out the core of him, slowly turning him into whatever it was that Zito had been. The living machine shrieked in triumph, using Zito's vocal cords.

From the ranks of the Banibaleers, four men threw their daggers. The weapons wobbled uncertainly, not made for throwing. But two of them found their mark in Hankins' back.

The writhing figures dropped on the snow, rolled against each other like some grotesque pair of unearthly lovers. The wires grew over them both, using their flesh to support extensions, whining, swaying, seeking!

In time, the machine was as dead as the men it had killed.

14.

The windbreakers were taken down and packed away.

A party was detailed to scoop out hollows in the snow, while a second party dropped twenty-four human corpses into the depressions and scooped loose snow over them. In time, they would be encased in ice, as fitting a grave for a mountaineer as any.

The huddled, nightmare forms of Cartier, Zito and Hankins were left untouched.

At Daborot's insistence, the men were fed, though no one had much of an appet.i.te that morning. A bit of bread, some coffee, a little cheese, and a healthy dollop of brandy was the average lunch. No one, for some reason only partially understood, wished to partake of the salted beef jerky.

Commander Richter pulled on the tough bread and looked down into the swirling mists and snow through which they must travel in the hours ahead of them.

The Shaker said: 'Eternal fidelity cannot exist, of course.'

Richter said: 'Of course.'

The Shaker: 'No man is eternal.'

Richter: 'Sometimes, I feel that I am.'

The Shaker: 'And circ.u.mstances affect fidelity.'

Richter: 'Perhaps the knowledge of the Blank-perhaps it was not meant for us.'

The Shaker: 'For Jerry Matabain, then? You see, nothing matters more than knowledge.'

Richter: 'Love, family, children, freedom, peace.'

The Shaker: 'Ah, but all of them fall victim to the man with a little knowledge. With knowledge, he can take your woman from you. With knowledge, he can destroy your family and leave only ashes. With knowledge, your children can become his slaves, your freedom can become the product of his whim, and your peace will be shattered by his l.u.s.t for war.'

Richter: 'You make me pessimistic.'

The Shaker: 'Not I. The world.'

And then they went down, hand-over-hand, piton-by-piton, foot-by-foot, into warmer climes where they spent a night without terror. And on the evening of the following day, they pa.s.sed the frost line and changed into cooler clothes as the mysterious lands of the continent's heart opened to receive them!

BOOK TWO.

The East!

15.

Forty-two men and four dark-feathered Squealers const.i.tuted all the living creatures within the Darklands expeditionary force as Commander Richter brought them, at last, to the dense jungles which they had observed ever since they had come out of the mists on the eastern side of the Cloud Range. They crossed more than a mile of open, stony ground where rocks thrust up like fragments of broken urns and shattered bottles, and at last they reached the almost impenetrable, steamy richness of the rain forest. All of this was accomplished at double the average marching pace, for the commander feared that the Oragonians might be running patrols of the no-man's land between jungle and mountains in their aircraft. They might have a contingency plan in operation to cover the eventuality of their a.s.sa.s.sins-Cartier and Zito Tanisha-meeting with failure. Forty-two men and four birds would be easy targets in open country for men riding in aircraft.

In the winding vines and ropy, exposed roots of the towering, interlocking trees, they huddled in the dense blue shadows and broke open the mess supplies for a meal of chocolate, dried beef and dried fruit, coffee and some brandy.

It was two hours early for supper, but the commander had decided that appet.i.tes came second to the safety of his men. The way ahead looked rugged, and he wanted them to be full and energized for the next leg of the trek. Also, he hoped to make a good many miles before camp, even if it meant marching until darkness barred any further progress.

And darkness came early here, in the shadow of the great mountains to the west.

It was not that he was in such a hurry to find the place to the north-two hundred miles east of the Oragonia High Cut-where the enemy was mining the treasures of the Blank, though he certainly did wish to fulfill his mission. No, what plagued him more was the urgency to be gone from this open ground, to be secreted as deeply as possible in these thickly growing trees and ferns, these vines and flowers that barred their way but would part before them. If a patrol plane cruised over their exit point from the Cloud Range, found their path, trackers might be set upon their trail; the more jungle between the Oragonian hunters and themselves, the better their chances of survival.

And now that he had lost more than half his men, now that his own and-figuratively-the General's son had died under his command, only the eventual success of his mission could redeem him. And even that would not erase the screams he had heard these last days. Even that would not erase from his memory the sight of the men falling from that rope across the chasm, the sight of slit throats and dead men whom he had known as friends and almost as sons. Those things would remain with him; he could only accept them and go on if he had eventual success with General Dark's plan.

The world, as Shaker Sandow had said, had made him pessimistic. Maybe he could force it to give him his optimism back.