Arena (33 page)
A deep thumping reverberated through the ground, cutting him off. They both went rigid, listening to the wind’s thin whine.
Slowly Pierce reached for his SLuB while Callie turned off the field lamp, leaving only the red glow of the stove’s coil. The thumping came again, rapid, rhythmic, as of running steps. With their daylight-sensitive eyes, if the mutants were going to do any tracking, now would be the time for it.
A chill skipped up Callie’s spine, as if she had brushed up against something cold and evil. Again she felt that sense of malevolence, stalking her. She glanced at Pierce. “Can you. . . ?” she whispered. “Are they. . . ?”
He nodded and turned off the stove. The red light faded to darkness. The coil ticked erratically. Outside, the wind keened, and down the mountain the thumping sounded again, definitely coming closer.
They sat very still, listening. A fine sweat broke out on Callie’s brow. The SLuB thrummed against her palm. She reached down to check her belt, then recalled she had taken it off. An eruption of snorts and thundering footfalls made them both flinch, and the sounds halted right outside their hideaway.
“Mountain goats,” Pierce whispered.
As the musky smell enveloped them she knew he was right. Goats were the only mountain creatures big enough to make those kinds of noises. But they sounded spooked, and she gripped her weapon tightly, knowing her first shot would have to be a good one if the Trogs found their hiding spot.
Gradually, though, the sense of malevolent presence faded. Outside, the goats grunted and rustled as if bedding down. Finally, Pierce put his SLuB aside and pulled the plastic blanket around him. “They’re gone,” he said. “The goats must have obliterated our scent trail.”
“So we should be thankful for this stench?”
A smile twitched his lips as he settled. “I’d bathe in it if I thought it would keep the Trogs away.”
Morning dawned cold and foggy. Though Callie’s headache had abated, the back of her skull was tender, and she was stiff and sore and bruised in a hundred places. They breakfasted on hot tea and cold biscuits, peering out of their hollow at the seven white goats that had saved them last night. There were five adults and two kids, their coats long and silken, the adults sporting short pearlescent horns. Against the foggy background, they seemed as insubstantial as wraiths and flew up the slopes in alarm when Callie and Pierce stepped out among them.
With visibility cut to thirty feet, Pierce scrapped his plan to use the binoculars, but he went down the slope a bit to look around and returned with confirmation that Trogs had indeed been in the area last night. After his news, Callie was not so eager to go back to the valley, especially when they couldn’t see anything.
They followed a game trail over the ridge and along the trickling runoff of yet another alpine lake. An oblong of reflective pewter, the lake was bounded by steep granite walls on one side and a forty-five-degree slope of crusted snow on the other. Pierce tackled the snowy slope without hesitation, following a path cut by the goats, which were now traveling ahead of them just at the edge of sight. The path wound some fifty feet above the lake, and Callie could not help observing that a fall would take her right into the icy water, where the shock of cold would drive the breath from her lungs and paralyze her limbs. Her legs trembled, and she blanked the image before fear unhinged her.
One step
at a time
, she told herself.
One solid step at a time
.
Carefully she kicked into the snow, testing each purchase before she committed to it. Pierce was sitting at the field’s edge when she caught up, and though she was ready to rest, he sprang up as soon as she joined him and started off again. Sighing, she followed.
A basin curved behind the lake, ringed by ragged peaks on all but one side. At the gap, a crescent of snow arced beneath a low cliff, which the goats were already climbing. Some had stopped to watch, as if waiting for the humans to catch up. By the time Callie and Pierce reached the cliff base, the mists had closed to a ten-foot pocket of visibility that Callie welcomed heartily. If she had to climb, she’d rather not see what lay below her.
A sharp crack from behind brought them both around.
“Was that rocks hitting together?” Pierce murmured.
“I heard a thumping,” she said, glancing at him. “More goats, maybe?”
“Could be.”
But as they continued, she realized if the Trogs were going to track anyone into the heights by day, these foggy conditions were ideal.
The cliff was rougher than it appeared. They climbed swiftly, angling left across its face, then right, forced at the end to use hands and feet to scramble over the top. Callie made it, but by then she was shaking, dismayed to find herself dogged by the old crippling fear.
They stood in yet another grassy basin. The goats were still ahead of them, lingering, as always, at the edge of sight. Leaning his SI against a rock, Pierce stripped off the pack, pulled out the water bottles, and sat down. Callie settled gratefully beside him. Her headache was back, and she was short of breath, so she figured they must be pretty high. Maybe ten thousand feet. Maybe more.
Pierce sat rigidly, scanning the mists. Presently he got up, SI in hand. “I’m gonna look around,” he said. “Stay put.”
She glanced at the weapon and nodded, content to rest her still-trembling muscles. As he disappeared into the fog she realized things were going from bad to worse. On a clear day, they could’ve studied the peaks from a distance and picked out the most promising route. Today they didn’t have that option. Leaning back against the rock, she sipped from the bottle. Fear, her most faithful companion, clawed at the pit of her stomach. She tried to push it away with imaginings of an easy route opening before them, sunshine and flowers on every side, all going well—
But how could she, when the landscape was anything but? This was not the world of
The Sound of Music
. It was a barren, inhospitable moonscape, just rock upon rock and the impenetrable mist. They were going to get into trouble. She knew it. And though she’d supposedly conquered her fear at Rimlight, she saw now she hadn’t—not totally. Perhaps she never would.
I’m going to freak. And then where will we be?
Stop it
. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists.
Stop thinking like
this. How can you be such a wimp?
Easy. I’ve had lots of practice. All my life. If it was too scary, I just
didn’t do it.
Well, now you don’t have that choice
.
A thudding, clacking sound came up from the cliff they’d just ascended, and she stiffened, her hand closing on the SI. As she slowly stood and turned she imagined Trogs climbing the same rocks she’d just scaled.
The soft thumps of approaching footsteps jerked her around, weapon leveled. But it was only Pierce. “You ready to go?” he asked, picking up the pack.
“Did you hear that noise from down the cliff?”
“Yeah.” He buckled the hip belt and turned away.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Callie asked.
“Not really. But I figure the goats do.”
“The goats? They could be leading us anywhere. Even around in circles.”
“Or to better pasture on the other side of the mountain.” He glanced back at her. “I don’t believe it’s a coincidence we’ve found them. And they do seem to be leading us.”
The thought had crossed her mind. “You think Elhanu sent them?”
“Yes. I do.”
They crossed the basin and ascended a talus-covered slope. As they climbed, the shattered rock gave way in localized slides so that each step took them back almost as far as they went forward. The mist thickened. Numbness crept into Callie’s extremities. She gave thanks there was no wind but wondered if it would snow. The small ice fields and the crescents and commas of crusted snow testified that flurries would not be impossible, even in summer. How ironic if, after all her concern about falling, she succumbed to exposure.
The talus was eventually replaced by five-foot chunks of rock even more difficult to traverse, and her limbs soon shook with exhaustion. She gasped almost fruitlessly in the thin air, blood all the while pounding in her temples, a painful timpani of altitude sickness. At length they rounded a slope and found a ragged cliff looming out of the clouds. On a ledge a goat perched bright against the dark rock. As they watched, it jumped from perch to perch, scaling the wall as if gravity did not exist, until it disappeared into the mist above.
Pierce started after it at once, but Callie hesitated, staring up at the wall, swallowing the thickening in her throat.
You can do this
, she told herself.
You can
. But already the black things flickered at the edges of her vision, and she had an unnerving recollection of preparing to climb the vertical bank of the Fire River and saying much the same thing.
Composed of ragged ranks of layered rock whose slant pitched inward toward the mountain, the cliff was more of a steep hike than a climb. Following the goats in a diagonal route across its face, they were able to ascend at first with shoulders to the wall, not even needing to use their hands. With the mist holding them close, Callie kept her focus on the rocks and climbed carefully, steadily, confidence rising within her.
Then the breeze kicked up, and light followed shadow as the clouds shredded, reformed, and shredded again. They came to a ledge sprinkled with goat droppings. It curved around a ragged granite face, then dipped under an overhang that forced Callie onto her hands and knees. Her confidence waned. The clouds continued to pull back. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed yawning spaces out beyond the rock’s edge and angled her face more toward the wall. Her heart pounded with exertion and altitude and rising anxiety. She felt shaky and lightheaded. Again and again she was swept with the sensation that something clung just beneath the ledge, preparing to leap up and grab her.
Pierce waited for her on a good-sized bulge. Reluctantly, one hand holding to the rock, she climbed beside him, keeping her gaze turned down on—
Nothing. Just beyond Pierce’s booted feet the ledge sheered off into dizzying space and vertical rock faces, plunging so violently she couldn’t see bottom, though she stood almost at the edge. She gasped as with a roar, the demons hurtled out of that space, flapping darkly around her and filling her with the familiar compulsion to hurl herself over the edge. Whimpering, she dropped onto hands and knees and inched back to the overhang where the ledge was wider, and where, shaking and weeping, she huddled and clung to the rock.
“Callie?”
She flinched as Pierce touched her shoulder.
“Callie, we can’t stay here.”
“I can’t do it,” she moaned into the rock.
“You must.”
“No.”
He gripped her shoulders to pull her up, but she fought him, squealing and struggling to break free until he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. After a few minutes she stopped struggling and clung to him instead, sobbing hysterically. He held her and said nothing, and after a time the hysteria gave way to exhaustion. She fell silent, sniffing, still shaking, pressing her face against him so she wouldn’t have to see that they were still on this awful cliff.
Presently he said, “I can’t carry you up this.”
“Then leave me.”
His arms tightened about her. “Can’t do that, either.”
After a moment he pushed her gently away, cradled her face in his palms. “There are Trogs behind us, Callie. We either have to keep on or go back and fight. Is that what you want to do? Go back?”
If they went back, he would very likely die—or be caught—trying to protect her.
She swallowed. “You really think there
is
a way up?”
“I do.” His hands dropped back to her shoulders. “Elhanu has promised to lead us through this, Cal. We’ve got to trust him.”
Her fingers tightened on his breastplate, and she shook her head. “It’s hard.”
“You can do it if you want to.”
“I do want to! It’s just that when I look at that drop—”
“Don’t look at it, then. Look at him instead.”
“Look at—”
“Use the link.”
The link. Of course.
She pressed her forehead to his chest and shut her eyes, seeking the elusive connection, trying to remember all she knew of the one who made the link possible. It was like groping down a dark hallway in a strange house. And then, as if a door had opened to the outside, light and strength and blessed calm poured into her. Suddenly she knew with startling clarity that they had been led here, to this time, this place, this situation, so that she could face this choice. Would she trust him? Would she use what she had been given?
Over and over Pierce had reminded them the battle was waged against thoughts and feelings more than material things. And so it was. She could let herself be carried away by visions of the terrible things that might happen, or she could willfully concentrate on the fact that she carried Elhanu’s power in her body, that he had promised to deliver her from this place and was capable of keeping that promise, and that she had climbed a cliff wall like this at least fifty times at Rimlight and knew very well what to do.
