Arena (31 page)

Maybe it was the fifty Watchers clinging to the roadside cliffs, or maybe people weren’t ready to reject Pierce’s leadership outright just yet, or maybe the participants who were reading the manual confirmed the fact that it was pretty clear about the instructions. Whatever the reason, everyone continued to follow Pierce—but not cheerfully. As Callie had predicted, many believed he’d left Rimlight to save face and saw his abandonment of the road as just another attempt to prove his courage.

The increasing signs of mutant presence did not help matters. Along with tracks and warm campfire ashes, they found shriveled, feather-trimmed human hands dangling from tree limbs, a freshly decapitated stag’s head set dead center in a pass, and eerie lines of skulls standing guard over lakes and waterholes. Whether these were territorial markings, offerings to the gods, or totems of cursing, no one knew. But they made everyone uneasy.

Pierce said the Trogs wouldn’t attack so great a force as themselves, and so far he’d been right. Nevertheless, he routinely chose strategically defensible campsites, always set up the perimeter alarms and electronic fencing, and insisted on backup shifts of flesh-and-blood sentries. Thus far, however, the only things that tried to crash their perimeter had been the ubiquitous mites.

Three weeks out of Rimlight, they stopped for the night beside an ice-fed lake in a glacial moraine overlooking a long, spruce-filled valley. The valley was to have led them to a passage through the spine of lofty, snowcapped peaks blocking access to the south—until they saw the columns of smoke arising throughout it.

Morgan threw a fit, insisting they return to the road at once. Pierce refused. If worse came to worst, they would try a mountain route, but they were not going back. Alarmed and angry, and in defiance of Pierce’s command otherwise, Morgan took a party to scout out the mutant camps, apparently thinking additional evidence would change things. Meanwhile the others set up their three-man tents, rigged and readied the alarm system and perimeter shields for later, gathered firewood, and scraped out latrines. In less than an hour, a blanket of domed tents arced across the basin’s lower, flatter portion, and cook pots roiled with steam.

When Callie went down to the lake for water, she thought the campsite looked like a geothermal area. Hardly discreet, but Pierce figured the mutants would count them as more of their own, en route to the intertribal religious rites held each summer in this wilderness.

It was nearly dusk, and the lake mirrored the surrounding peaks and sky in a breathtaking fire of pink and peach. In the stillness she could hear the hissing of the cookstoves, the murmur of voices, and occasional laughter from up the hill behind her—a peaceful, quiet moment. But as she squatted on the granite bank and dipped her first bottle into the icy water, a sense of being watched drew her gaze to four Tohvani, pale against a backdrop of dark spruce, on the opposite bank.

Watchers had dogged them in increasing numbers since they’d left Rimlight, and several people had had encounters with them similar to what Callie had experienced. Was their presence tonight just more of the same? Or was it an omen of approaching disaster?

Uneasily she finished filling her bottles, then turned to find Meg on the slope above her. Like everyone else Meg wore the camo-patterned breastplate and belt over a drab olive undershirt and baggy camouflage trousers. The matching helmet hid her black curls. She held a couple of her own bottles, already full, and as Callie met her gaze, her green eyes slid away. They’d not spoken to each other at all during the three-week trek.

“Hullo, Meg.”

“Hi.” Meg’s gaze darted back to Callie’s. “How ya doing?”

“Fine.”

Again Meg’s eyes danced away. Then she drew a breath, as if to nerve herself. “Listen, uh, I, uh . . . well, some of us are going back.”

“To Rimlight?”

“To the road.” Meg gestured with a sloshing bottle toward the smoke-threaded valley beyond the lake. “If we go marching into that, we’ll surely be caught.”

“Not if that’s the way Elhanu wants us to go.”

“Big
if
.”

Callie hugged her water bottles to her chest and said nothing.

“We’ve passed a lot of natural fire curtains the last few days,” Meg went on. “And, well, Brody saw Pierce at one last night.” She met Cal-lie’s gaze evenly. “Said he just stood and stared at it.”

“So?”

“Come on, Cal. With his history he’s got no business going near one of those things. If the Watchers get to him”—she held up a hand, stopping Callie’s protest—“if they get to him, he’d lead the rest of us into their hands.”

Her words were so close to what the Tohvani had said on the hill above Rimlight that Callie shuddered. Unfortunately, she had to admit she’d harbored the same suspicions. Worse, she wasn’t close enough to Pierce anymore to know for sure—if one ever knew for sure. “Did Brody see him walk through it?”

“Callie—”

“Being tempted is not giving in. And the manual says we’re to go to this Devil’s Cauldron.”

Meg scowled. “I don’t think it says that at all. And I’ve seen too many vids of Trog prisoners screaming and begging. There’s no way I’m committed enough to resist that.”

“Well, I guess it’s your choice to make.”

“Come on, Cal. Be reasonable.”

“I am. And if—”

Meg stiffened. Her eyes fixed on something across the lake. Alarmed, Callie turned to find four more Watchers had joined the group on the bank.

“In the trees,” Meg whispered. “It wasn’t a Watcher.”

Callie searched the shadows. All this time, all these miles, and they had yet to be attacked. It couldn’t last. Had Morgan stirred up trouble? Carefully, she shifted the bottles to her left arm, felt for her belt’s control, pressed it on. She felt the vibration sweep up through her breastplate and into her helmet.

Something was out there. Something dark and evil. Something that wanted to hurt her.

It’s the Watchers
, she assured herself.
Trying to unnerve you. That’s
all
.

She stood rigidly, watching the trees. Beside her, Meg switched on her own belt.

A stag crashed out of the copse to the right, and Callie jumped so violently she dropped her bottles. The beast bounded across the roselit basin, zigzagged up the steep slope, and disappeared over the pass, leaving an eerie silence filled only with the camp stoves’ hissing in its wake.

Gradually voices and actions took up again, and Callie finally released her breath, chagrined to find she’d drawn and powered on her SLuB. So had Meg. No doubt the Watchers were having a good laugh. Grimacing, she knelt and fished her bottles from the icy lake.

“We’ll leave when Morgan comes back,” Meg said as Callie stood. “Please think about coming, okay?”

Callie stared at her. Grim faced, Meg turned and climbed the bank.

On the way back to her own tent, Callie detoured by Pierce’s, wondering if he was sensing anything unusual. Something had spooked that stag, and it wasn’t the Watchers. Animals always ignored them.

Pierce sat with Evvi on a rock near his tent. They were bent over the manual spread across their laps. As Callie approached, Evvi leaned against his shoulder, laying her hand on his back. Annoyed, Callie changed course. Clearly Pierce was relaxed, so either he could no longer sense the Trogs or the stag had spooked at something insignificant.

She found LaTeisha sitting Indian style by their tent eating macaroni casserole out of an aluminum trail cup. “You seen Ev?” she asked as Callie walked up.

“Yeah. Why?”

“She threw this macaroni together and barely stirred it before she lit out. I wondered what was up.”

“Pierce is what’s up.” Callie unhooked her own cup from the front of her pack. “Every waking moment.” She straightened, sniffing the air. “What is that
wonderful
smell?”

LaTeisha groaned. “Tuck’s beef stroganoff.”

“Does he have to spread the smell around like that?” Callie squatted beside the cook pot, where a pan of cheese macaroni and beef sat scorching over the flame. “We oughta make him camp on the other side of the lake.”

“Or else cook for all of us.”

“Now
there’s
an idea.” With a grimace Callie slapped gooey yellow pasta into her cup. “Eyugh! Why does she always burn it?”

“She doesn’t always. Last night it was hard in the middle, remember?” LaTeisha frowned into her cup, then pulled out a long hair. “I’m getting awfully tired of this.” She draped it over a tiny plant. “If I thought she could set up the tent,
I’d
take on the cooking.”

“I don’t even want to think about her and the tent.”

In the last weeks Callie’s aversion to Evelyn Albion had blossomed into full-fledged dislike. Not only was Evvi all thumbs and heedless of everything in her periphery, she had launched an all-out pursuit for Pierce’s attentions. Every night she sat at his side, draping herself over him, patting his legs and arms and shoulders until Callie had to remove herself to some other part of camp. It wasn’t just embarrassing, it was deeply annoying, and she had no idea what to do about it. For days she’d tried to ignore it, but lately she’d had to acknowledge, at least to herself, that she was not merely annoyed. She was hurt. And, Lord help her, she was jealous.

Abruptly the macaroni’s scorched, spoiled-cheese taste gagged her.

“I can’t eat this.” She dumped the stuff on the ground. “Is there any more soup in the bag?”

LaTeisha rummaged through the food sack and drew out two brown packets. While they waited for the water to boil, Callie took out her sketchbook. Today had been another twenty-miler, but after twenty-one days she was getting used to it. Her blisters had healed, and the agony of overused muscles and joints had eased into the simple ache of fatigue. She no longer wondered with every step whether she’d make it to camp without collapsing.

Now she roughed in a sketch of the camp, Whit and Mr. Chapman perched on rocks in front of their tent, with Wendell and Gerry crouched before them eating from the ubiquitous trail cups. Behind them, others gathered in similar circles—eating, washing dishes, cleaning weapons—the perimeter alarm system poles gleaming over all in the fading light waiting for dark—and the return of Morgan’s party—to be activated. Her eye caught on a familiar pair not far away. Evvi had her hand on Pierce’s shoulder as she whispered into his ear. Frowning, Callie flipped to a clean page and turned to face the shadow-cloaked mountain looming over them.

“Here’s your soup.” LaTeisha handed Callie her cup. She set it on a rock to cool and returned to sketching.

They didn’t have mountains like this around Tucson—bursting out of the tree line and jabbing into the sky. This was all barren slopes and steep, angular planes, thousand-foot drops and bulging overhangs. Callie imagined clinging to that high, almost vertical face, slipping on iced rock, surrounded by mind-boggling space—

She swallowed and made herself start drawing, concentrating on shape and line, on light and shadow and form.

“Found a route up yet?” Mr. C asked, looking over her shoulder.

She chuckled. “Ask Gerry, not me.”

“Oh, Gerry’s already lined out his choice.” He traced along the rock faces she had sketched. “He thinks we could angle across these slopes to get above the cliffs, then head up this chute. After that I’m not sure.”

Gerry was now standing over her, too. “We’ll decide when we git there.” He pointed at the drawing. “But you’ve skipped some things, Cal. There’s a jag here and a drainage here.”

“I’m summarizing, Gerry.”

“Oh. Anyway, looks like the hardest part’s up top.”

She twisted round to peer up at them. “You really think we’re going up that?”

Mr. Chapman shrugged. “We need to get to the Cauldron. The mutants can’t take the heights. Sounds like a solution to me.”

“Why do ya think they had a rappellin’ cliff back at the base?” Gerry drawled, eyes twinkling. “Looks like an outstanding climb, if you ask me. Can you imagine the view?”

Callie shuddered.

Mr. C patted her shoulder. “You’ll do fine, lass.”

John strode up, looking peeved. “Well, it’s finally happening, just like Pierce said. A group’s going back to the road soon as Morg returns.”

“Idiots!” Whit rumbled. He sat beside the cookstove he shared with John and Mr. C, cleaning the pan they’d just used. “We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t bring back a pack of Trogs.”

“I can’t believe he was stupid enough to go down there,” John said.

“Stupid isn’t the word,” Whit said, dumping the dirty water from his pan. “He can’t sense ’em, and he’s had no real experience with ’em. What does he think he’s gonna do?”

They went on grousing, and Callie returned to her drawing, assuring herself that the mountain route would be okay, that she’d do fine, just like Mr. C said. But she kept remembering that horrible moment on the trail up the Canyon of the Damned when she’d turned and run. This was that canyon turned inside out. Maybe worse.

She was adding the final touches when a sense of malevolent presence hit her so powerfully she dropped her pencil. Her mouth went dry and her heart knocked against her ribs as the sensation swept over her in smothering waves. Everyone around her went silent and still, all of them scanning the gloom-shrouded trees across the lake, and nearer, to the left of camp. The compulsion to run seized her—it didn’t matter where, just out, away. Fast. It took all her willpower to calmly stand, step to her pack, and slide the journal inside.

When she straightened, she glanced at Pierce and Evvi. The girl babbled on, focused on the book in her lap, but Pierce sat ramrod straight beside her, staring into the nearer grove of trees.

Suddenly certain that an attack was imminent, Callie snugged up her helmet and reached for her long-barreled SI–42 as LaTeisha did the same. She had just pulled a handful of extra E-cubes from her pack when Morgan and his company raced out of the trees.

“They’re right behind us!” he gasped as he reached them.

“What happened?” Pierce strode up with his SI.

“They surprised us. We took a few of ’em down, but another group came to help. We gave ’em the slip for a bit, but I’m sure they’re following.”