Darkthunder's Way (29 page)

The trail was ridiculously easy to follow, but the Faery insisted on as much silence as was feasible, urging them along mostly by signs and the occasional irate whisper. It was like walking in a freshly plowed field, David thought. The earth was turned up in the same way, and even smelled the same: dim and musty—strong, even above the scent of pines. And it was soft underfoot: so soft he wanted to emulate Calvin and go barefoot, though he knew that his feet were no match for the Indian’s—certainly not now, when his blisters had blisters. The
last
thing he needed in a moment of crisis was to worry about stepping on something sharp.

For perhaps an hour they traveled, always uphill. David became aware that the vegetation was changing: the oaks and maples were dwindling, becoming dwarf parodies of themselves before giving way entirely to shrubs and bushes. The air was cooler, too, and he shivered, grateful he had decided to bring along his jacket. Calvin ahead of him showed goose bumps across his smooth rusty skin.

“Burr,” Alec said.

“Yeah,” Calvin replied. “Must be true what they say about killing eagles.”

David rolled his eyes. “Yeah, what now?”

“To kill an eagle in summer will bring a frost that’ll kill the corn.”

“Well, gee, Fargo, you’re a regular mine of information this mornin’. You
sure
you don’t know anything more about this uktena?”

“Scout’s honor. Grandfather was real erratic.”

“Will you humans please be silent!” Fionchadd hissed over his shoulder.

Smirking, they acceded.

A short while later the trail steepened perceptibly, and the last of the trees disappeared, leaving only stunted bushes. David realized they were approaching the top of a bald: one of those mountains whose summits barely passed the timberline. Georgia’s highest peak, Brasstown Bald, over on the Towns-Union line was one such. He remembered the trip he’d made there with the 4-H Club when he was twelve. The visitor center on top had reminded him of a castle—only now he had seen a real mountaintop castle, and one much closer to home. Idly he wondered if the ground they currently trod had any analogs back in Georgia. Uki’s place, he knew, had been so like Tallulah Gorge as to be identical, but the rest…some was familiar, some was not. Take here for instance: there were no other balds in Georgia save Brasstown (Bloody Bald was called that because it had bare rocks on its summit and slopes too steep to grow trees; its mortal summit came nowhere near the timberline), which meant this would have to be in North Carolina—only they hadn’t gone anywhere like that far, not if they’d started from the Galunlati equivalent to Tallulah Falls.

Fionchadd’s abrupt whispered “Halt!” jerked him from his reverie.

They had come much closer to it than they had intended. What David had taken to be an eruption of muddy-white quartz along the mountain’s summit barely twenty yards above them had moved slightly: a barely discernible ripple across its ridged expanse. They were within easy striking distance of the uktena.

Fionchadd signed them to silence and slipped forward. His feet made no noise: none. David scarcely dared to breathe, and heard Alec’s sudden awed gasp.

Fionchadd had frozen for a moment, still in a half crouch as he studied their quarry, and David found his eyes wandering toward the Faery as well—anywhere but toward the shape that lazed across the ridge line before them. Most of its mass, he realized, must be deposed down the opposite flank, for only a short section showed here: maybe five feet high and thirty long. By squinting he thought he could make out transparent scales with the merest hint of red to them, glistening in the sunlight.

Fionchadd crept closer, slipped sideways around the mountain.

“What’s he doing?” Alec whispered.

“Trying to find out how big it is, I reckon,” David told him.

“Damn big enough,” was Calvin’s only comment.

The Faery had disappeared over the left-hand crest by then, and for a long moment David held his breath, wondering if he should follow, or how long he should wait before acting. But then Fionchadd was back, coming around from the right, having evidently circled the summit. He motioned them downslope, and they were easily a hundred yards from the creature, though still in sight of it, before he dared to speak.

“Never have I seen anything like it,” he said. “Vaster by far than any of the wyrms of Faerie, and thicker of skin, it appears, for I touched it.”

“And we’re supposed to
kill
it? Bloody hell!”

“Got any good ideas?” Alec asked pragmatically.

“Yes,” Fionchadd said. “I have been thinking of how we solve such problems in Faerie, for beasts with poison blood are not unknown there. Three things we must do: first we must rouse it to anger.”

“I was afraid of that,” David groaned.

“The head lies on the opposite slope,” the Faery continued. “And likewise the tail, both at least twenty arm spans either way, maybe forty-five overall. The head itself is roughly half the size of—what do you call your chariots, David?”

“You mean cars?”

“Right.”

“Super,” Alec snorted.

Fionchadd ignored him. “To attack the head directly would be folly. We must center our attention on this side, so that when it awakens, it will be at a disadvantage.”

“Hold on a minute,” Calvin broke in. “What makes you so sure about that?”

“The fact that the beast is, at heart, a serpent. It sleeps in the sun, its blood is cold. It will be slow to rouse, and lethargic. If we rouse it enough for the spots to show, then kill it before it fully wakens—”

“Lots of
ifs
there, Finno.”

“Never mind,” Alec interrupted. “What then?”

“Why, a simple thing: when the uktena angers—when its spots appear—I will shoot it.”

Calvin bristled slightly. “Why you?”

“Because I am the best archer, and because my bow never misses.”

“Are you
sure
about that? How do you know its magic still works here?”

“It does not matter. Magic or no, it is still an excellent bow, and I am an even more excellent archer.” He pointed behind him. “If I could get above it would be best, but it already commands the highest ground, so that is impossible. Yet I will need to wait until I am sure of the seventh spot, and for that reason, I would prefer to be as far from the head as possible. Also,” he added, “do not forget what Uki told us of the blinding glitter of the stone, to which even I may be not be immune.”

“You didn’t, by any chance, get a look at it, did you?”

“Only briefly from the corner of my eye, and even that caused me pain.”

“But what about the blood?” Alec wondered

“That is the third thing. Down this side to our left is a deep cleft in the stone. If we can contrive it so the beast lodges there once it is wounded, that will control the blood as well as hold it fast. For safety, though, we should build a line of fire on the hollow’s lower side as an additional shield between ourselves and both the blood and the creature itself. All beasts I know fear fire—save those that are born there, like salamanders. There is plenty of dry bush by the cleft, and these bushes should likewise burn well.” He glanced at Alec. “You have fire sticks?”

“Matches?” Alec corrected. “Certainly.” He patted his pocket.

“Very well: we will help you construct the barrier. When the time comes, you will light it. I can aid you there, for though I have little Power here, I think I have enough to fan a flame once started.”

“That’s a comfort,” Alec said sullenly.

“It was meant to be.”

“So,” David said hesitantly, “if Alex’s torchman, and you’re the archer, I guess that leaves me and Calvin to wake up old Mr. Scaly here.”

Fionchadd nodded. “If you are willing.”

David winked at Calvin. “You up for it, Fargo?”

Calvin nodded and thumped a comradely arm on his shoulder. “I don’t see we have any choice, White ’Possum; and as you say, it’s one way to come to terms with my heritage.”

“Or to meet your ancestors,” Alec muttered.

“Enough of that,” David snapped, then: “Sorry, but we’re all kinda wired.”

“’S’all right.”

David fell silent for a moment, staring at Alec, then squared his shoulders and addressed Fionchadd. “So we’ve gotta piss this thing off, huh? Any notion how?”

“Simply waking it may be sufficient.”

“Yeah, well, looks like it’d take a bloody cannon.”

“I think I know a way,” said Calvin. “It’s a snake and snakes have scales. They also have skin underneath—sensitive skin, I hope.”

“So you mean—?”

“Right: we simply walk up to it and poke it—hard.” David laughed in spite of himself. “Poke it with a sharp stick? I like that: poke a friggin’ monster with a stick!”

“Or a knife, or your staff, or whatever.”

“You have
got
to be kidding! I ain’t gettin’ close enough to stick that thing, uh uh, no way!”

“You got any other ideas?”

“I don’t suppose your basic noise would help, would it?”

“Snakes are deaf. I don’t think we’d better chance it.”

“They must be,” Calvin said. “Otherwise it’d already be on us.”

“He is right,” Fionchadd inserted, “though I did not know when I first urged you to silence that it has no ears. But Edahi speaks true: outright attack is the simplest way. Rouse the creature, and it will move—slowly, I hope, for that is usually the way of things so large.”

“You hope.”

“It is all I have.”

“Well, then, boys; let’s to it.”

*

Half an hour later they were as ready as they could be. Fionchadd had shown them the chasm he had spoken of, and it did look promising: a deep gash, maybe eight feet across and a like amount to the bottom torn into the mountainside a little lower down to their left. It meandered along horizontally for a couple of hundred yards, tending gradually downhill, but the upper end was fairly narrow and fairly close by: an easy jump for a decent athlete, which they all were. They had cleared a space behind it to keep the flames from spreading that way, and piled brush along most of the length, aided, as it turned out, by the corpses of several derelict maples that lay there, apparently lightning struck in punishment for their ancient defiance of the treeline.

“Such trees are strong medicine,” Calvin observed, kicking the one he had just helped heave into place.

“If you say so,” David sighed, wiping his dripping forehead.

Alec picked up two bundles of reeds, lit one, and positioned himself midway along the line of brush. “This is it, guy,” he whispered, gazing at David; and David thought he saw a gleam of tears. He reached out and clasped Alec roughly, and they remained that way for a moment, feeling for perhaps the final time their own aliveness reflected and given back. And then suddenly they were forced apart on one side, and other arms slapped across their backs, as Calvin came into the group. “Good luck, boys: break a leg.”

An instant later Fionchadd completed the square. “Luck,” he whispered. “Luck to all of us.”

“Luck,” Calvin echoed and broke away.

“Luck,” David whispered in turn.

“Luck, you guys,” from Alec.

“Yeee-aaaahhh-
hoooo
!” came David’s drawn-out Rebel yell.

And then they could wait no longer.

Fionchadd skirted away to the left, toward the head; for they thought the seventh spot must surely lie that way, and there was also a gentle rise that would give him a better vantage point, though he would still be shooting uphill.

David and Calvin jogged off to the right and began to climb. David had his runestaff ready, with the sharpened point he had lately added to one end. Alec had offered Calvin his, but the Indian had shaken his head, saying his knife was sufficient.

All too soon they were there.

Close up David wondered how he could ever have mistaken the uktena for mere rock. It was like a wall of intricate glass mosaic: white, but shot with ruby and scarlet and crimson, the scales interlocking in a pattern of fabulous complexity that reminded him of some of the walls of Lugh’s palace and made him wonder if perhaps there were not some greater scheme that ordered the aesthetics of all the Worlds.

Calvin gave him a brief thumbs up and darted forward, grabbed at one of the scales with a hand he had muffled in a protective wad of shirt, and thrust in his blade.

David took a deep breath and did the same, but from more distance, angling the staff up under the scales in a series of quick stabs that seemed to have no effect though he drove the point in over and over. Beside him he could hear Calvin swearing and grunting in apparent futility. David swore too, and stabbed harder—and somehow found a vulnerable spot, because the staff slid in deeper, and scarlet began oozing into the hollows between the scales. David jumped back reflexively, but only a thin trickle of blood welled out—though even that was enough to set the staff to smoking and wilt the foliage it fell on. The smell was horrible, too; for it was the stench of rotten blood.