The Kar-Chee Reign Page 10

  — a man.

  • • •

  The brothers looked at Liam, scowling — masking shock and outrage and bafflement. “Get down?” Lors repeated. “To rescue that one? It’s madness — ”

  “How could we do it?” Duro demanded. “We couldn’t do it! We would be killed, simply … or” — he winced and shuddered — “not so simply.”

  They could hear him now, for the machines had fallen silent and the blasting and the fall of broken rock had ceased. They could hear the hissing of the dragons and the clicking and shuffling sounds produced by the Kar-chee. They could hear the pad-pad-pad of dragon feet and even, if a second’s silence fell, the running of the feet of the man down there below. But over all of this, almost incessantly, they could hear the man’s voice — the voice of terror and of the fear of death — human, because it was neither dragon nor Kar-chee, but otherwise scarcely human in its absolute loss of control.

  Man’s voice screaming as the dragon lifted and tossed him and caught him in its mouth. Man’s voice shrieking as the dragon shook him as a dog shakes a rat. Man’s voice babbling witlessly as the dragon released him. Man’s voice gibbering as man’s feet tottered and ran. Man’s voice screaming as the dragon came after him again.

  There seemed no end to it.

  They had formed a circle, the Devils had — Kar-chee on the inside, dragons on the outside. The man ran blindly, stumbling, drooling and piddling in terror. The Kar-chee cuffed him back. He fell, he crawled, he got up, he ran. The Kar-chee cuffed him back. The dragon caught him up again. Blood streamed down his naked sides. And suddenly the dragon, as though tired of the sport, closed his jaws with a crunching, mashing sound. The man’s voice continued for another second, still, high and thin, like an insect’s screech; then it stopped. The dragon tossed the mangled body aside.

  Rickar was sick. Cerry moaned, eyes closed, hands to mouth. Duro said, through clenched teeth, “So he’s dead. No reason to go down now. We’d be dead, too. He’s dead. No reason — ”

  And Lors, his voice high-pitched and trembling, incredulous, on the point of breaking: “Oh — Oh — Another. Another — ”

  They had not known the first man, and they did not know this man. They felt his pain, his anguish, fright, terror, the body that hopped and ran and bled and screamed … and screamed…. And it all began all over again, everything as before.

  “We — must — go — down!” Liam said, hoarsely. “To save him? I don’t know. But — look you, all of you: They are down there. Down there. All of them. So — ”

  He forced them to listen; he seized them by the hair, struck them in the face. He dared not raise his voice, but they listened to the voice — the voice of Liam — and slowly, unwillingly, in fear and in trembling, they listened. But now and then despite themselves their eyes would move, only to jerk back to his eyes, away from the hideous gathering below. Their eyes were fixed by Liam’s eyes and they listened and they nodded. And, slowly, slowly, scuttling sideways like crabs, they retreated.

  • • •

  The screams were still going on when they emerged through the half-buried fissure three-quarters of the way down the side of the cavern wall. The cavern itself was more or less horizontally cylindrical and so they had reasonable purchase for hands and feet as they descended. From far away the screams still sounded, but they could not tell if they were still coming from the same man or from another. They did not stop to try and decide. Uppermost in their minds was that they not be caught. And next in claim upon them was to follow Liam, which they did, instinctively crouching as they moved. A thick and bitter odor overlay the air, mingled as it was with several other ones — the dust of the shattered rock, the smell of sea mud which had come up from the now-closed cavern, various unfamiliar reeks probably pertaining to the machinery — but over all was the bitter odor of the Kar-chee and the thick stench of the dragons.

  Liam had no easy task orienting his passage here below in terms of what he had seen from high above. But he managed it, somehow. The mesh reticulations of the serpentine bores lay motionless, but they stepped over them fearfully as though not certain that they would not, if touched, spring to dreadful life. On and on in the curious lighting and the rubble and clutter they moved, bent over. Trying not to listen to the sounds of agony from far ahead. And at length Liam found what he was looking for.

  The Kar-chee had reached down into the container. Liam had to climb up — but not very far up. He reached out his hand and he noticed that it trembled. The blue points shimmered and flashed. He took one in his hand. It seemed to feel both hot and cold at the same time. He seized it firmly, thrust it into the sacket which had been emptied of food. Thrust in another. And another. And another…. He filled the bag, handed it down, received another one. He filled them all, filled the sheepskins, tied them up, and then descended, carrying the last of them.

  “Don’t stumble,” he warned them. “Don’t drop any of these. Don’t run — but if you do run, lay them down — gently — first, and just leave them lie.”

  Off they started, back the way they had come, walking delicately, stooping beneath their burdens. The cavern echoed with the mind-shaking sounds from behind, but they did not stop Liam had carefully observed his landmarks. Here a spring of water gushed from the rock face into a sluice; there two serpentine borers lay coiled together as though in some cold, loveless pythonic embrace. He gave a short hiss, turned. Behind them the screams suddenly ceased. There was another hiss … not from Liam. And another. The air was filled with them. And then came the first bellow. And the pad-pad-pad of dragon feet. This became a quick and thudding and ground-shaking stamp. They climbed the slanting face of the cavern wall. They did not look back. They knew they were discovered.

  “Duro and Lors, drop behind — you others, up with you! Don’t wait for us, don’t drop anything — go!” As he spoke, he drew open the mouth of a sacket, took out two of the blue points and stood there with one in each hand. “Cock your bows,” he directed. They did so; took the points, once each, loaded, followed Liam’s pointing finger; fired; turned and were scrambling up again when the double blast behind caught them and flung them. On hands and feet they crawled back, crept upward, slowly, carefully, the lips of their sacks between clenched teeth, echoes roaring and rolling, dust and gravel; on hands and on knees they reached the safety of the cleft in the rock and sidled through.

  Through the obscurity a dragon came thundering, pounding upright on two feet, the claws of its forefeet slashing at the air, the nodules on its cheeks swelling and puffing, body a dark-green-black along the back, a paler tint below. It shattered their eardrums, so it seemed, with its bellows. And then the finger on the trigger of the crossbow tightened, the blue point flew flashing through the air — the flashing seemingly reflected in the flashing irridescence of the great faceted dragon-eyes — the point and the dragon alike vanished in a cloud of thick dust and darkness and the noise of it rolled and roared.

  Lors’ chin was bleeding where a sharp stone had cut it in ricochet. He grinned a twisted, terrified, yet quite triumphant grin, shot his hand inward, directing. “Go on, Liam! Go on! I’ll cover you! Go — ”

  But Liam shook his head, pulled out two more of the strange but unquestionably potent points, handing as before one to each brother. “Shoot these — there,” he said, pointing. “And try for as much distance as you can get.”

  The clouds rolled around, thinned, thickened again. Here and there something lay upon the ground, still; here and there something thrashed and bellowed and bled. Lors and Duro nodded. Their other shots had been of need hasty and impromptu. Now, for the moment at least, nothing seemed to be pursuing them. They hefted the points, spoke briefly to each other, made swift, skillful adjustments of their crossbows, downed them, foot against lever for the pressure that hand and arm couldn’t give, cocked them, raised and loaded, aimed, holding them a bit higher than before.

  They shot.

  Through the haze they saw a group of Kar-chee, black c
hitinous exoskeletons covered and gray with dust, chirring and gesturing in front of that great closed gate which led — which led where? — which led below, wherever or why-ever —

  Thud-thud —

  As they dashed for their lives deeper into the fissure, and, suddenly remembering, slowed, clutching more tightly on the sacks and skins containing the explosive points, they retained one single swift-flashing recollection of the great blast of fire and steam and scalding air and boiling mud that came vomiting up and out from that hellish corridor where once the Kar-chee had chirred and gestured and where once that door had been.

  And Liam, too, clutched at the sheepskin packed with the blue and flashing points, but even tighter was his grip on the curious object that had been standing so casually there among the engines where the Kar-chee had stood distributing the points; the object between his shirt and skin, warming his heart. He had had no chance to take more than the most rapid and inconclusive glance at it; it was perhaps even likelier that he was wrong than that he was right….

  But he might be right!

  And in that case what he held would be a map.

  VII

  AFTERWARD HE was to compare their retreat through the mine-caves to the passage of a troop of ants crawling through a sponge caught in a high wind. Over quivering ground, pelted by falling debris, half-stifled with dust, singed by burning air, more than once finding that either the roof or the floor or sometimes both the roof and the floor of a corridor they had planned to take had given way — such was their trip from the Kar-chee cavern to the world outside.

  But the world outside seemed little if any more stable. No sky appeared likely to fall down in upon them, true, but the land quivered. Offshore, far off-shore, a great bubble broke the surface of the water, and a great puff of steam rose and vanished into the air; presently the hot and muddy breath of the vexed sea-bottom reached them. Again and again and again….

  While they watched, fascinated, alternately sweating and chilled, an entire headland slid, sighing and rumbling, into the ocean. Their ears were next buffeted by soundless concussions. As they stood, straining to hear, the earth rose and fell and rose again. Carefully they lay down their sacks and skins of warheads and subsided into sitting positions. Cracks and chasms opened, closed again with the sound of thunder-claps, only to reappear — so it seemed to their bemused and confused sight: as though a chasm was a living creature, now hiding and now disclosing himself — elsewhere.

  And after these great shocks came stillness and silence.

  Several of them made as though to get up, but Liam gestured them to remain where and as they were. His eyes were rapt and intent; the eyes of the others followed his without being able to see what he could see — but never doubting that he did see. “Wait….” he murmured through slightly parted lips. They waited, uneasy but content. Cerry felt as she had upon that night when she had known that it was for him to lead and for her to follow and that he was one of those about whom tales were composed and songs sung: seers and doers and heroes….

  And after the silence and the stillness came another quake, and this second one was greater than the first. And after that one they looked at him again and still his eyes (the one brown as loch-water and the other as blue-green as the sea itself) were focused afar off and again he said, this time in a whisper, “Wait….”

  The third shock was mild and brief, and after it subsided Liam rose to his feet in one swift motion and stooped and carefully picked up his burden and walked off, silent and absorbed. And they silently followed them, all of them.

  The face of the land was much changed in places. Here had been a stream and now already the gravel of its bed was drying in the sun; there had been an old water-course dry except in the rainy season: now it rolled to the roiled sea in a torrent of liquid mud and it stank of the bowels of the earth. Once they had to detour inland because where the path had led now lay a new lagoon of water still faintly streaming and full of dead fish; but once they were able to proceed straight on through because what had been a high ridge of rock was now a flatland. Such marvels were many, but most marvelous of all was a hushing pillar of flame where natural gas, long imprisoned beneath the earth, had been freed and, rushing to the surface, had been met by a transforming touch of fire.

  It was having gone but a short way beyond that they saw the Kar-chee.

  There were a number of them — six, perhaps, or seven — and they stood upon their four lower limbs with their huge two upper limbs in the folded manner common to them, as though engaged in silent meditation and prayer. Only one of them looked up as the people came suddenly out of the woods, and this one made no motion other than the lifting of its head. Liam turned back on a diagonal course; Lors did the same; so did Duro, Fateem, and the others … except Rickar. He, as though unseeing, continued walking as he had been. Liam snapped his fingers. Clicked his tongue. Said, finally, low-voiced, Rickar — ”

  A second Kar-chee lifted its wedge-shaped head. And a third. And Rickar gasped and halted. He looked wildly around him. What happened next was probably attributable to the fact that his whole mind and body told him to run but that he remembered — now! — Liam’s words of warning in the cavern: “Don’t stumble. Don’t drop any of these” — the blue detonation points. — “Don’t run — but if you do run, lay them down — gently — first, and just leave them lie….” So he bent forward and deposited the sack he was carrying, and turned to run away after his friends.

  And a fourth Kar-chee lifted his head, and a fifth.

  And Rickar took two long steps. And saw that his friends were not running at all, but walking at a steady pace. He walked after them, perhaps half-a-dozen paces more. Then he realized what he had done. And he tried to undo it. He turned around and went back.

  The act was confused, but it was not cowardly, and he might in the end have gotten away with it — if he had walked. But he did not. He ran. He ran back and he stooped. And the Kar-chee broke out of their own introspective detachment, or whatever mood it was which had been holding them fast; the Kar-chee were all around him and the Kar-chee were upon him and held him fast. One low and mournful cry he uttered; then he was still.

  It was but a moment before they had the sack and knew what was in it. Perhaps they might have killed him then and there … but, although the people had seen, all of them, the Kar-chee cuffing the man in the cavern back to be baited by dragons, neither then nor anywhere else had they seen, nor heard — save in legend — of Kar-chee actually killing any human being themselves. This they seemed to leave to the dragons. And there seemed to be no dragons about.

  Rickar’s friends looked on to see him dragged away — but for a moment only. They dared not use the blue warheads, of course — but the brothers Rowen still had in their pouches conventional crossbow bolts. At Liam’s nod they shot once … twice … so that the bolts landed in front of the retreating Kar-chee. The Kar-chee hesitated — but they did not stop. So Lors and Duro loaded again. And this time they loosed their bolts into the bodies of the two Kar-chee carrying Rickar between them, dangling. He fell. The Kar-chee stumbled. And then — and this was curious — it was as though the same train of thought now passed through the minds of the Kar-chee, for the one carrying the sack of blue detonators stooped and laid it on the ground; as he was doing so, two others seized Rickar, who had been too dazed to escape. And the others surrounded the injured Kar-chee; and all of them began to run.

  They were heavy-laden, but they had four legs to run with, and the recocking of the heavy crossbows could not be done in a second. Then, from far off, but again and again, and each time nearer, came the call — the questing call — of a distant dragon. The people saw the wounded Kar-chee fall, saw the others — Rickar now swinging limply back and forth — race away. And then, at another command from Liam, they turned and walked rapidly off.

  • • •

  Old Gaspar trembled and shook. The quake had not unmanned him as this had. Liam felt for him; he had not realized that
the Chief Knower had so much softness in him.

  “My son, my only son … what a blow … what a blow,” he repeated. And then, shaking his head, lips trembling and eyes brimming, he asked, “How could he have done it? You — you have lived in ignorance; but he was a Knower. I knew that all was not well with him in his heart and that he lacked proper zeal to fulfill the obvious intentions of Manifest Nature … but still — but still! To engage in the blasphemous futility of resistance — !”

  And his wife, old Mother Nor, covered her face with her hand and withdrew, silently, silently shaking her head.

  The ark — and the other arks in process of building — had inevitably sustained some damage in the upheavals. Gaspar and his council of elders now set to work at quickened speed to repair, finish stocking up, and be gone. “For already the work of punishment and destruction has begun!” — thus, their cry.

  But Liam had not quite the same notion.

  “There’s no doubt that the Kar-chee had begun to put this place through the usual process. But I doubt that they’re ready for it yet. In fact, I’m confident that they’re not,” he told his small band of followers.

  “Do you think that what’s happened has been just natural phenomena?” one of them asked, somewhat doubtfully.

  Liam shook his head. “No. I’m sure that we set it off ourselves by firing the blue thunderheads down below, there! That cavern? — and the corridor we saw leading down from it? From the looks and the smell of it it seems to me that the Kar-chee were mining or sapping or perhaps just sampling and exploring down there. But likely not just — did you see how wary they and their Devil-dragons all were when the door on it opened? How they looked up and how they all kept on looking till the door closed?”

  Lors said, softly, “And we blew it open again! We dropped the fire into the tub of oil….”