Battlesaurus (32 page)

When they near Lightning Rock, where the river splits in two, the noises in front of them stop, and they hear loud conversations. It is an easy guess that they are discussing which branch of the river to take. The left and most obvious one leads toward the abbey, and on to Brussels. The right would take them to the northeast and into the heart of the forest.

The discussion ends and the soldiers move out, toward Brussels. Willem smiles. That is exactly what he wants them to do.

To cross the river to get to the left fork is a tricky balancing act across slippery boulders. Fran
ç
ois scrambles across easily but Willem almost falls several times. When he gets to the other bank, he looks back to see Frost on his hands and knees, being assisted by the tall, strong private.

“Go on,” Frost whispers. “We will catch up.”

Just a hundred meters farther on, Willem's careful plan falls apart.

*   *   *

Perhaps the French soldiers have cottoned on to Willem's plan. Or perhaps they heard the crack of the breaking branch and made a lucky guess. But the two cuirassiers who hide, waiting for them, are so well concealed that Willem and Fran
ç
ois walk straight by them without seeing them.

The ambush site is well chosen, just past a sharp bend. The river narrows here, the water running rapidly through high, steep banks. There is no way to escape.

The cuirassiers wait for Willem and Fran
ç
ois to pass before emerging from heavy foliage.

“Hold!” is the shout.

Willem and Fran
ç
ois spin around.

Somewhere in front are the rest of the soldiers and now behind them are two cuirassiers, pistols raised. There is no time for Willem to reach for his own pistol, or Fran
ç
ois for his crossbow.

At almost the same time they see what the Frenchmen do not see: Frost and Jack rounding the bend behind them.

Jack acts, seemingly on instinct. Leaving Frost standing uncertainly on the riverbank, he starts to run.

At the last moment the French soldiers hear his footsteps and try to turn, but it is already too late. Jack cannons into them, pushing one into the other, then both overbalance on the narrow path, toppling down the steep bank into the river. The heavy armor the soldiers wear now becomes a hindrance as they struggle against the rapid waters of the current. Their pistols are useless, the powder soaked.

The damage is done, however, for even if the other cuirassiers had not heard the noise of the fall, they can certainly hear the shouts of the two soldiers in the river.

“Run!” Willem says, and they all turn back toward the village. Away from the soldiers. Away from the shouts and running boot steps intermixed with the snarls and rattles of the dark creatures.

Jack guides Frost as best he can, but the footing is uneven and several times Frost falls, each time bodily hauled back to his feet by the strong artilleryman.

They round another bend in the river just as a shape rises up, seemingly out of the rock of the riverbank before them. A wild, tangled thing, in damp clothes.

It is so unexpected that even though he knows this girl well, it takes Willem a moment to realize that it is H
é
lo
ï
se. Her mouth is smeared with blood, as though she has wiped it, but indifferently. Dark red also stains the top of her smock. Has she been injured? There is no time to ask.

“Run, H
é
lo
ï
se,” Willem yells. “The French are behind us!”

H
é
lo
ï
se does not move as they run toward her.

“I hear the rattle of the demonsaurus,” she says. “You cannot outrun a demonsaurus. Come with me.”

She leaves the riverbank, scampering through a dense area of trees. Willem follows without argument. H
é
lo
ï
se is nimble and quick, darting like a bird through the low branches. Willem and Fran
ç
ois are at her heels, but the other two slip farther and farther behind.

“Wait,” Fran
ç
ois says. “We must use the river. They will follow our scent. We cannot escape them this way.”

“Follow me or die,” H
é
lo
ï
se says. “There is a place the demonsaurus will not go.”

“Why?” Willem asks through heaving breaths. “Why won't it go there?”

“Because it is afraid,” H
é
lo
ï
se says.

 

MAJOR LANSARD

The lines are formed, precise, neat, exactly the way Thibault likes them. The soldiers stand in rows of three with other soldiers of equal height, which gives a pleasing uniformity to the column.

What is displeasing to his eye are the blood splatters that stain the uniforms, but that, as always, is an unfortunate consequence of war. And this is war. War against an insidious disease.

The cuirassiers would normally ride at the rear of the column, but they are off with Baston, chasing the boy.

It has been a difficult day, but Thibault is at peace, knowing that despite the difficulties, he has done his duty. He waits on his horse at the front of the column. He is keen to move out. To get away from this unbearable place.

The only real concern on his mind is the disappearance of Major Lansard. The village has been thoroughly searched, without result. As he waits, a patrol inspects the circumference outside the saur-fence.

The leader of the patrol, a gruff sergeant, arrives back through the saur-gate at a trot.

“Sir, you must come.”

Thibault dismounts and follows the sergeant down to the river beside the bridge. In the water two privates are retrieving the body of a soldier, and as it is hauled up onto the riverbank and rolled over, he can see that it wears the uniform of a major.

There are gasps of horror from the soldiers who have waded into the river to bring the body out. Were it not for the uniform there would be no way to identify him. Certainly not by his face, which is a bloodied mess. His neck also is a raw red mass, and his nose and ears are missing.

“He has been attacked by a raptor, sir,” one of the soldiers says.

“Or a wolf,” says the other.

“Undoubtedly,” Thibault says.

 

THE SONIAN CAVES

The tree is a giant spruce, hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. It is entwined with creepers that have somehow merged into the bark to give the tree a lumpy, ridged skin that reminds Willem of the skin of the dinosaur.

H
é
lo
ï
se slides to a halt at the base of the tree, waiting for the others to catch up.

She looks behind them at something Willem dares not turn to see.

“Hurry,” she says, and in the quiet of her voice is a warning more chilling than if she had screamed.

She pulls back the branches of a thick bush that grows at the base of the tree, revealing a vertical shaft that descends into blackness.

Willem reaches the tree just after Fran
ç
ois, who moves quicker through the forest than he does.

“Down,” H
é
lo
ï
se says.

Fran
ç
ois hesitates.

“Just go,” Willem says.

Fran
ç
ois sits on the edge of the hole, turns and grasps the rocky lip of the shaft, then lets himself down. He dangles by his fingertips for a moment.

Willem looks behind to see Jack arrive, no longer leading Frost, but carrying him on his shoulder.

There is a thump that echoes up the shaft.

“Fran
ç
ois?” Willem calls.

“It is not deep,” Fran
ç
ois shouts back. “The fall is not great.”

“The lieutenant is first,” Willem says. “Help to catch him.”

He doesn't wait for a reply but helps Jack lower the small frame of Lieutenant Frost into the hole.

The dreadful rattle of the demonsaurus sounds through the trees behind them.

“Jack, go!” Willem says, but for answer Jack shoves him backward into the hole, catching one of Willem's arms as he falls and lowering him down with one strong arm. Hands grab at his legs, and then he is safely on the ground. Jack arrives headfirst just after him, and Willem, looking up, sees black skeletal hands scrabbling down into the hole behind him. Jack lands on top of them, collapsing the group into a pile of bodies on the ground.

Willem looks around for H
é
lo
ï
se, and sees her extricate herself from underneath Fran
ç
ois. He hadn't even seen her climb into the hole.

At the surface, the demonsaurus are silhouetted against the light of the sky and the forest above. They scrape at the edge of the cave, and long spines on their head rattle furiously. The sound echoes down the shaft and off the hard rock walls in the cave.

The cave is narrow and dark, except for the rod of light that falls from the entrance. There is a muddy, earthy smell here, along with something else. A faint but bitter smell of animal dung.

Abruptly the creatures above are pulled back.

“Muskets!” Frost shouts, and they all scramble away from the area beneath the shaft.

The explosions are deafening in such a small space and lead balls ricochet off the rocky floor and the walls.

Jack grunts and staggers, but when they turn to him he shakes his head and points to a small tear in his uniform at the shoulder. The ball that hit him has ricocheted at least once, and although it will leave a nasty bruise, it has not broken his skin.

Already H
é
lo
ï
se is leading the way deeper into the cave. The roof slopes down, lower and lower until they must crawl to get through.

Behind them Willem hears one then another of the soldiers drop into the cave.

H
é
lo
ï
se is humming, softly and tunelessly, and at first Willem cannot work out why, but as the thin light from the entrance fades he realizes. It is pitch-black underground. Only by following the sound can he follow her.

There are passageways here, forks and branches. He cannot see them but he can feel them. A honeycomb of tunnels through solid rock.

The sounds behind them cease, then he hears the soldiers retreating. But he knows they will be back. With lamps.

For now though, they are safe, and as soon as he is sure the soldiers are gone, he calls out names, to make sure no one has missed a turn in the blackness.

Everyone answers.

Here, deep in the bowels of the earth, there are sounds. Animal sounds. Roars and growls that echo in the distance.

They follow H
é
lo
ï
se. There is no way to gauge time, but it seems like hours. Sometimes they stand and walk, other times they crawl below low rock ceilings. How she knows where she is going, Willem cannot imagine, but eventually a faint glow appears in front of them.

The glow intensifies and they emerge onto a high rocky ledge in a vast underground cavern.

The light comes from oil lamps hung from hooks on the walls at regular intervals, and now they see the source of the animal sounds.

Dinosaurs.

H
é
lo
ï
se puts her finger to her lips, then repeats the gesture. Her meaning is clear. Utter silence. Although the ceiling is high here, they crawl, so they can't be seen from below.

Willem places his hands and knees carefully, feeling the ground in front of him before trusting it to take his weight, wary of any pebble or loose rock that might move and create sound.

The smell of dung is strong. Below them, a cart piled high with animal waste is hauled off by four men in gray peasant smocks. There are no horses to pull the carts, nor mules. Not even demonsaurus will enter this place.

The dinosaurs are chained to huge metal anchor points in the floor and walls of the cave. They are not as large as the giant crocodile that attacked the village, but still at least twice the height of a man. Immense heads on massive bodies are counterbalanced by long, heavy tails. The front legs are small, and seem to serve no purpose, but the back legs are enormous, with vicious claws like those of a firebird. They have the same protruding bony brow as the crocodile, but a shorter jaw. They are meat-eaters. There is no doubt. Only meat-eaters have teeth like these. The beasts strain against their chains, shifting their huge feet, scratching and stamping at the rock floor of the cavern. Some kind of leather mask covers their eyes and nostrils. Willem suspects they can neither see nor smell. Heavy leather straps run around the creatures' massive jaws, preventing them from opening more than a few centimeters. Willem has seen the remnants of one of these masks before, on the beast that attacked the village.

Willem taps Jack on the shoulder and points at the creatures. Jack nods. These are the saurs that attacked the soldiers at Mont-Saint-Jean.

Willem counts. There are a dozen dinosaurs just in this one section of the cavern, but the rock walls bend away around a corner and echoing from that direction come more grunts and occasional growls. There could be any number of the creatures here belowground.

They follow H
é
lo
ï
se, crawling along the ragged rocky ledge and under a low overhang that leads away from the cavern.

A series of interconnected caves takes them upward and here the air is slightly fresher, drifting in through natural vents in the rock, and the barest blush of natural light filters down somehow through a series of crystals in the ceiling.

They crawl beneath old, dead tree roots into another small cave.

There is just enough light to see, and what they see is both shocking and yet somehow not really a surprise. Some rough bedding is pushed against a wall. A wooden pail sits against the opposite wall. Old, dried food scraps litter a corner.

The surprise is the pictures. The walls are decorated with hundreds of them, crude images of flowers, trees, the sun, a boat on a river. One of them shows a woman cradling a baby. A wretched and yet touching vision. A desolate young girl's only reminder of her mother.