Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (10 page)

Instead of being returned to the men’s hut, Gabriel and Millie were brought around to the other side of the village. An enormous tree of some species Gabriel didn’t recognize grew thick and twisted on the edge of the eucalyptus jungle and dangling from its heavy branches like huge wicker fruit were a cluster of spherical cages. The sight gave him a start—just a few months back, on a rescue mission to Borneo, he’d found the woman he was looking for in a cage suspended from a tree, about to be sacrificed by the remnants of an ancient Hittite cult. Now here were Velda and Rue, sitting hunched and apparently naked, each in her own tiny cage, unable to stand or stretch out their legs inside the woven spheres. A massive bonfire burned in a shallow pit nearby. The smoke was thick and black, making his eyes sting. It was not the sort of déjà vu he liked.

“Gabriel!” Velda cried, but one of the guards silenced her with a swift jab upward through the woven bars.

Two cages sat empty on the ground, their gates open. The guards sliced through the cord connecting Gabriel’s ankles to Millie’s and forced Gabriel at spear point to climb into one of the spheres. No amount of prodding and screaming was going to get Millie’s massive frame
into a four-foot-diameter cage, so as Gabriel was sealed inside his cage and hauled up using a heavy rope-andpulley arrangement, the women resorted to lashing Millie securely to the trunk of the tree. Gabriel watched the process through the side of the cage. In their cages beside him, Rue and Velda were watching as well, he saw.

Giving the ropes connecting the cages to the tree one last going over to be sure they were secure, the guards left the team to dangle like aging meat.

Gabriel looked from side to side; Rue was on his left, Velda on his right.

“Thank God you’re both okay,” Gabriel said. “You are, aren’t you?”

“We’re alive,” Rue said.

“They were pretty rough on us,” Velda said. She turned one arm toward him to display a darkening bruise. “And they took our packs and clothes, and all our equipment.” She nodded toward the large, smoky bonfire. “They burned everything.”

“Now even if we could make it back up to the surface,” Rue said, “we’d be dead of exposure in minutes.”

“What did they do to you?” Velda said.

“Nothing good,” Gabriel said. “Except clean us off. And they fed us a little,” he admitted. “And gave us these loincloths.”

“Hell of a lot better than the treatment we got,” Rue said.

“Yeah, well, they’re not looking to breed you.”

“To breed—” Velda said.

Gabriel swiftly filled the women in on what had transpired: the sickly men, the queen and her demands, the ritual combat. When he finished, he fished the pocket watch out from under his kilt and, facing Rue, held it to a space between the bars of his cage. With one finger he
flicked it open. He couldn’t see Velda behind him, but he heard her sob.

“That’s him,” she said, her voice unsteady. “It’s his. My god. I
gave
it to…Gabriel, do you think he’s…”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said firmly. “We didn’t see him. All we know is that they had his watch.” He replaced the watch under his kilt.

“Millie?” Gabriel called down. “Millie, how you holding up down there?”

“I got ants the size of my thumb using me for an expressway,” Millie replied between clenched teeth. “So far no bites, but I’m gonna try to keep really still and not piss them off.”

That was a smart plan for a nearly naked man tied to a tree that was crawling with ants. But a plan like that—keep still, do nothing, hope you don’t piss off your enemies—was not one the group as a whole could afford to use.

Gabriel pushed his fingers through the weave of his cage and clenched his bound fists, pulling at the bars. What ever kind of wood the cages were made of, it was both flexible and strong—it moved under his grip, but didn’t break. He hissed with frustration and shifted his trapped and folded legs into a slightly less uncomfortable position.

Gabriel squinted through the bars at the red ice overhead. In the distance, he could see the thick shaft of white light pouring through the opening in the ice but could not see the opening itself.

“We’ve got to get over there,” he said. “Somehow. Rue, if we made it to the plane, do you think you’d be able to pilot it through that opening?”

“Are you kidding?” Rue replied. “I can pilot a 747 through a hula hoop.”

Rue sounded as cocky and confident as ever, but Gabriel could hear a brittle undertone of fear in her voice. And it only made sense. From the little they’d seen of the plane, it had looked like a vintage number, possibly from the 1960s, maybe older. Even if it were still functional after all this time and still had fuel—two very big ifs—depending on the exact make and model of the plane, Rue could have as little as twelve inches of clearance to make it out through that narrow opening. It would be a difficult enough stunt in a modern plane in mint condition with modern navigation tools. Who knew what sort of condition this plane would be in? Always assuming, of course, that they managed to get to it at all.

“We’ll wait till they take us out for the ritual,” Gabriel said. “If they want us to fight, they’ll presumably give us weapons. Even if they want us to fight bare-handed, at least they’ll have to untie us first. That’ll be our chance to rush them. We should be able to grab a spear or two at least.”

“They’ll be expecting it,” Rue said. “They’ll be on their guard.”

“These are twenty-year-old women,” Gabriel said. “Between Millie and me—”

“Don’t underestimate them,”Velda snapped.“They’re seasoned, coordinated fighters—you saw how they took down the bird that killed Nils. You and Millie weren’t able to do that. And there are dozens of them and only two of you.”

“There are four of us,” Rue said. “Unless you’re too frightened to fight, princess.”

“No, Rue,” Gabriel said. “If you get free, I don’t want you wasting any time getting involved with the fighting. First chance you get, you run. You understand?
You run as fast as you can and you get to that plane. We’re all stuck here for good otherwise. Getting to that plane and getting it running has to be your top priority. And if you succeed—if you manage to get it up and running—and you don’t see any sign that we’re on our way—” Gabriel’s voice trailed off. “We’ll try to make it. I promise. But if we don’t, you get the hell out of here and don’t look back. You hear me? Get out and get back to safety.”

“I won’t do it, Gabriel,” Rue said softly. “I won’t leave you here.”

“Well, let’s hope you won’t have to,” Gabriel said. The emotion in Rue’s voice touched him. Maybe she still had some feelings for him after all. “But if you have to, you do it. Someone has to survive to tell the world about this place.”

A sound of footsteps from below indicated that the guards had returned.

Gabriel craned his neck to see what was happening. He could hear Millie swearing, and the women speaking to him in the local tongue, and then Gabriel saw Millie being led off by his leash.

Seconds later, he felt his own cage shudder and sway and then begin to lower.

As the guards led Gabriel though the village, all the inhabitants turned out again, lining the pathways between the huts, tagging along behind Gabriel or reaching out to touch him as he passed. When they arrived in the center of the village, several women were hauling aside a heavy woven mat about ten feet in diameter. Beneath the mat was a stonelined pit. Gabriel couldn’t see the bottom, but he could hear Millie’s angry voice coming up from below.

The guards slung a rope under Gabriel’s arms and used it to lower him into the pit, dropping him the last six feet to the hard-packed dirt floor. Millie hurried over as the women up at the top yanked the rope away.

“You okay?”

“Dandy,” Gabriel replied, getting to his feet again and taking stock of his new surroundings.

The pit was approximately twenty-five feet deep, damp and claustrophobic. There was a bad smell, like fear-sweat and spoiled meat. The stones of the pit walls were slick and mostly featureless except for what looked like some kind of asymmetrical drainage hole, about a foot wide, off to one side. Even in the dim light, Gabriel
couldn’t help but notice the brown stains of dried blood on the stones surrounding it.

A shout came from above and something was slowly lowered on a rope: a stone knife, the rope looped through a hole in its broad handle. A second rope followed, with another blade. When they had descended enough for Gabriel and Millie to grasp them in their bound hands, the men set to work sawing through the ropes around their wrists. Gabriel freed his hands and bent to cut his ankles free as well, but before he could, the rope from which the knife hung was abruptly yanked upward and the knife shot out of his grasp, slicing his palm on its way up.

Gabriel raised his gaze and saw that Millie had also had the knife wrenched from his grasp. Gabriel wiped his bloody palm on his barkcloth kilt and began working on the knots at his ankles. He saw Millie doing the same.

“Christ,” Millie said when he finally kicked the rope off. “Now what?”

Gabriel looked up. The walls were too steep and slick to climb. “Even if I stood on your shoulders, it still wouldn’t get us out of here,” he said.

“You will fight,” said the voice of Queen Uta from above.

Gabriel saw the queen’s face peering over the edge. Her platinum hair was piled up into a complex braided coif.

“The man who cannot get up is the loser,” Queen Uta said. “The winner will make royal daughter to be my heir. The loser will be given to my sisters. To make more daughters. There is much work to be done before jealous Unterg takes away your manhood.

“You shall not kill,” Uta continued, “and you shall
not harm the organs of generation. Failure to observe this rule shall be punished by your most slow and painful death.”

“What if we refuse to fight?” Gabriel called up.

“You
must
fight. It is the law.” Uta’s voice sounded more puzzled than angry.

“And if we don’t?”

She thought it over. “You shall be punished,” she said, “by your most slow and painful—”

“Death, right. No, I don’t think so,” Gabriel said. “That would deprive you of our seed. If it’s true that your tribe is dying, killing us would be like killing yourselves.”

There was no response to this. Queen Uta’s face vanished, and the silence went on long enough that Gabriel started to think they’d been abandoned in the pit. Perhaps that would be their punishment: a slow death of starvation at the bottom of this crude oubliette.

Then he heard a clamor up above, the sound of something being dragged to the pit’s edge. Two new faces appeared: Rue’s and Velda’s. They were lying facedown, their throats pressed against the ground, a fist tangled tightly in each woman’s hair.

“You fight,” Uta’s voice resumed, as though there had been no interruption, “or your
women
die a slow and painful death.”

“Ah, hell,” Millie muttered.

Gabriel saw several women come into view around the perimeter of the pit, Uta among them. They looked down eagerly, expectantly. Impatiently.

He bent forward in a grappler’s stance. Millie bent forward to match. When their faces drew close, Gabriel whispered, “New plan. We put on a good show for them, I win, and then when I get her majesty there
alone, I should be able to overpower her. Once we have her, we should be able to control her subjects.”

“There’s just two problems with that plan, boss,” Millie said. “To start, you’re assuming they’ll let you be alone with her. More likely, they’ve got some sort of ritual for getting the queen pregnant that involves all her handmaidens standing around with spears pointed at your ass.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Gabriel said. “What’s the other problem?”

“No offense,” Millie said, “but nobody in their right mind is gonna believe that you could win a fight against me down here.”

“Why, Millie,” Gabriel said, “I’m surprised at you. It’s not like you to get a swelled head.”

Millie shrugged. “Just stating the facts. Up on a castle wall somewhere, with swords or guns or ropes to swing from, there’s no one better than you. But down here, with nothing but our fists and no room for anything fancy? I’m just saying, Gabriel. It’s not plausible.”

“Well, that’s why you’d better make it look good,” Gabriel said, and threw a punch at Millie’s jaw. The big man took it without flinching, then after a second remembered and jerked his head back.

“Work on your timing,” Gabriel whispered.

“Sorry,” Millie said.

“Now you throw one.”

“I don’t—”

“Do it.”

Millie cocked back a big fist and let Gabriel have it. Gabriel staggered backward, clutching a bleeding nose. The crowd above howled bloodthirstily.

“Damn it,” Gabriel muttered, struggling to shake off the effects of the blow. “Not
that
good.”

Millie shrugged. “Sorry,” he said again.

Gabriel moved cautiously to his right and Millie mirrored him, circling. Gabriel spoke low, between clenched teeth. “Play it like you’re big but slow. That will buy us a little time, at least.”

Millie nodded and took a couple of wide, bearlike swipes at Gabriel who danced back out of his reach. Millie raised his foot to kick Gabriel in the knee and Gabriel took two swift and agile steps up the stone, pushing off and landing behind Millie as the big man’s foot slammed into the wall above the drainage hole. A cascade of dust and grit sifted down from between the bloodstained stones. Millie limped backward, selling the pain in his leg like it was the Brooklyn Bridge.

Gabriel leapt onto Millie from behind, clinging to his back and Millie slammed him backward against the wall.

“I’m gonna throw you,” Millie said. “You ready?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “But go ahead.”

Before Gabriel could catch his breath, Millie peeled him off and tossed him through the air. He landed hard against the opposite wall and slid down. Seconds later, Millie grabbed Gabriel by his shoulders and hauled him back to his feet.

“You ever watch pro wrestling when you were a kid?” Millie whispered.

“Not so much,” Gabriel said, swinging at the side of Millie’s head. The big man jerked under the impact more convincingly this time. “But my sense was those guys used a padded mat.”

“Not always,” Millie said, and flung him across the pit, where he crashed into the wall above the drainage hole for the second time. Gabriel felt the impact in his spine. He also felt one of the stones in the wall shift
behind him, knocked loose by the successive impacts. He was struck with a sudden idea.

He lunged back at Millie and wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling Millie’s ear down close.

“Throw me against the wall by that hole again,” Gabriel whispered. “As hard as you can.”

Millie did as instructed and Gabriel felt the loose stone shift again. One more blow and it might come free.

“Throw a kick,” Gabriel whispered. “Use the same leg as before and really play up that you’re hurt.”

“Got it,” Millie said.

He swung wide with a stiff kick, missing Gabriel by a mile and knocking the loose stone out of the wall. Gabriel threw a kick of his own, striking Millie in his supposedly injured leg. Millie howled and went down on one knee. The loose stone was about the size and shape of a cobblestone, and it was heavy when Gabriel hefted it.

Millie was right: the women wouldn’t believe that Gabriel could best a man of Millie’s size and strength bare-handed. And if the women thought they were sham ming, they might well take it out on Rue and Velda.

“Sorry, Millie,” he whispered, positioning himself so his body was blocking the queen’s view. “I owe you an aspirin.” And he brought the stone down, the muscles in his arms wrenching tight as he checked his swing just before connecting. The stone still hit, with a crack that carried all the way back up to where the women were waiting to hear it. Millie dropped as if he’d been shot.

Gabriel let the stone fall to the ground and raised his arms, breathing heavily. Were they cheering up there? It sounded like it. Then he saw something raining
down on his upturned face. Flower petals. He turned back to where Millie lay, crumpled and unmoving. He was struck with the sudden fear that maybe he really had hurt his friend. He dropped to a crouch beside him. There wasn’t any blood that he could see, but—

Millie’s eyes cracked open narrowly. “Just like the pros,” he whispered, and grinned. He closed his eyes again.

Gabriel felt a flood of relief as he stood again. But it was short-lived. An instant later, he felt a sharp jab in his chest, like a nasty hornet sting. His fingers flew to the source of the pain and found a colorful feathered dart protruding from his left pectoral muscle. He pulled the dart out and flung it away but before it hit the ground, the world around him went liquid and untrustworthy. Black and red shapes swirled around him and he unceremoniously followed the dart to the floor.