Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (42 page)

“Being sick does have its advantages,” Enoch joked. But for the next two hours he was thrown back and forth in the chariot as they navigated rocks, roots and gullies. Finally they were at the smuggler’s tree and the start of the trail. What they found did little to encourage them, but much to spur them on to an early arrival at Bastrap. Around the tree and for the first quarter mile of the trail they found the bones of perhaps a dozen an-nef. There were few signs of fighting, it was as if the an-nef had been ambushed and killed as they waited by the smuggler’s tree or along the path.

“Werewolves have done this,” Enoch remarked, sniffing the bones.

“Are they still around?” Jesse asked.

“No. But they’ll be back, sure as fog kills.”

They drove the chariot slowly along the smuggler’s trail until they reached the mountain road. Not long after they came to the outcropping of rock that overlooked the Pishon and the rainforest beyond. Jesse and Perez crawled on their bellies to the edge of the rock to look down at the river below. To their surprise the bridge that was at mid-river only a few weeks before now stretched three-quarters of the way across. The an-nef were making good progress in their planned invasion of Atlantis—there was now no doubt in their minds what was the bridge’s ultimate intent.

As their assent continued the jungle foliage of palms and ferns along the riverbank quickly turned into the evergreens of alpine regions. The trek up the steep mountain was slow, but not long after midday they were at the trail that led to Bastrap. As the chariot tuned to take the trail to the mountain city the rain which had been falling all morning now turned into light snow. This was not good, thought Jesse. The next morning they would have to attempt to make Prophet’s Pass—snow or no snow.

Within the hour they caught their first glimpse of Bastrap through the trees. The gates were open, which struck Jesse as odd—given their vigilance against the werewolves. In a couple of minutes more and they were at the clearing outside of the city. It was then that they saw that the gates were not open, they were missing! They looked around at what remained of a city that had suffered a fatal attack. Just inside what had been the city’s outer perimeter, snow fell on crops that were overgrown with weeds. Not only were the gates of the city lying on the ground by the city’s entrance, but the wall had been breached in several places, and their approach had startled deer that had been grazing inside the city wall. The deer bounded for the nearby forest as the chariot pulled up to the gate. On the ground lay the skeleton of one of the dark people, an an-nef bolt from a crossbow tangled in its ribcage. As they proceeded down the city’s main street they saw other bodies scattered here and there—always with evidence of crossbow bolts nearby.

Jesse drove the chariot down narrow streets that he knew from his time at Bastrap earlier that summer. The chariot dodged debris left in the street, now covered by a dusting of snow. It didn’t take him long to reach the cabin where he was headed. The door to Kenan’s house hung open, swinging in the breeze as snow blew in, accumulating on the living-room floor.

Jesse jumped down and ran through the open door.

“Adah! Kenan! Zillah!”

There was no reply. He went through the ransacked house, searching from room to room.

“She’s not here, Jesse,” Enoch said from behind him.

Jesse turned to see Enoch and Perez standing in the doorway.

“We have to find her!”

“Jesse. She’s gone. She’s not dead,” Enoch replied.

“Where? How do you know?”

“Where? To Eden. How do I know? Because...not to put too fine a point on it...there aren’t enough bodies. The dark people have been taken prisoner. Not killed.”

“Then we must find out where they’ve taken her and free her!”

“The best chance that we have to free her is to warn Atlantis about what has happened here and about what we have seen in New Sodom. Otherwise, she will never be free. None of us will be. If Eden wins this war we will all be their slaves. We must go to Atlantis and warn them. You must focus on that.”

“But...” Jesse began, but was interrupted by Perez, “Jesse. Enoch is right. We can’t help her. Not now. We must hurry to Albion and let Hezron know what has happened! He can tell the Emperor in Atlantis. Perhaps if we can hurry they can get legionnaires to the Fog Mountains before the winter’s over and stop the an-nef before they can attack Mountain Shadows. It’s your best chance of seeing her again!”

Jesse thought for a moment. They were both right. Enoch and Perez were seeing this rationally, but every ounce of him wanted to return to Eden and hunt for Adah. There was no more denying it to himself, now. He was in love with her and he feared for her. He said no more to either of them, but walked back outside and looked around. Half the city had been burned. Gone was the Great Room where the boys had told their tales of adventure. Gone also were half the houses that once comprised the city. Every here and there they found another skeleton with evidence that scavengers had picked the bodies clean. Claw marks found in some of the houses left little doubt as to who the scavengers had been. The werewolves had cleaned-up the mess that the an-nef left behind. They spent an hour or so wandering from house to house of the log cabins that survived, but the scene was the same in each one: the an-nef had looted the city and removed everything of value. Even the livestock were gone. The stables were empty, but still contained enough fodder for the horses. But another question remained: what to do about the coming night and the certainty that werewolves would descend upon the city.

“We can’t make it over Prophet’s Pass by dark,” observed Perez.

“We’ll have to spend the night here,” agreed Jesse.

“And eat only dry stores,” advised Enoch. “Cook nothing. Wolves are like dogs when it comes to a keen sense of smell, and no smell travels further than smoke.”

The three decided to spend the night in a stable that had been left intact by the an-nef attack. But they faced another problem, unlike Jesse’s earlier trap for the lion on the Southern Highway, werewolves had fingers. They couldn’t simply bolt the door and keep them out, so Jesse and Perez set to work devising a series of countermeasures to defend against any werewolf incursion. First, they barred the stable’s main door from the inside with not one, but four, wooden beams. Then they used an axe that the an-nef had missed to chop an additional window in the log structure so that the building now had windows on all four sides. Additional scouting before sunset had produced stores of apples, pears, and even some dried beef for Enoch. But the biggest find was a bow and some arrows that the boys had found in a nearby house. An-nef armed with crossbows had no use for such crude weapons, it seemed. Additional searches produced additional finds of unused arrows and the boys now thought themselves ready for any siege.

As darkness descended upon Bastrap they could hear the howl of werewolves in the distance.

“Don’t be overly concerned,” advised Enoch. “They are still some distance away. Perhaps two miles.”

Two miles too close, thought Jesse. He doubted that any of them would get any sleep that night. In that he was soon proven wrong, however, as Enoch was snoring away on a pile of hay within minutes.

Jesse and Perez lay wrapped in their cloaks on a pile of hay, staring out the window at the night sky, watching the moon as it rose over the Fog Mountains. The sky had cleared, and the snow that had fallen in the late afternoon only amounted to a small dusting. For this Jesse was grateful. What was better was the clear sky and the promise of no more snow. They would be able to travel the next morning if there was no more accumulation, and there was no fog this evening on a mountain that was known for fog. Perhaps the gods
were
still watching over them.

“Maybe the werewolves won’t come if there’s no fog,” said Perez.

“Maybe.” But Jesse doubted that would be so. The werewolves would come tonight, whether or not there was fog. Whether or not they were even hungry. They had a score to settle, and if they could smell as good as Enoch thought that they could, then they already knew that the boys were here. They were just waiting for the darkness to favor them before they attacked.

“You want me to take the first watch?” Perez asked Jesse. “I’m too nervous over the werewolves to sleep, anyway.”

Before Jesse could answer they heard another werewolf howl. This one closer.

“Nah,” Jesse replied. “We can both stay up for awhile. I can’t sleep either. The first one to get sleepy can sleep first. Me, I think it’s gonna be a while.”

“Same here.”

Jesse lay back on the hay and stared out the window. The air inside the stable was cold and he could see his breath. Too cold and too scared to sleep, he thought, just before he drifted off to sleep.

Jesse awoke with a start. Had he heard a noise? How long had he slept? He looked beside him to see Perez sleeping softly. A couple of paces away Enoch snored loudly. Jesse lay motionless for a minute and listened carefully. Outside he thought that he heard a slight rustling. He reached over and slowly picked up his bow, then quietly as he could he strung it. No need to wake Perez or Enoch for no reason. Once finished, he shouldered his quiver and carefully walked to the nearest widow, trying to calculate how long he had slept. An hour? Two? Three? Impossible to know, but long enough that the moon—once high in the sky—had dipped beyond the tree-line, and now cast long shadows from the street across the snow. Stars shone brightly above in the crisp mountain air. In the moonlight he could see the distinct shape of paw-prints in the snow. They were all around the stable. He looked up and down the street, searching in the dim light for the werewolves. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something dark darting behind a building. Jesse ducked beneath the window and crawled on his hands and knees back to Perez.

“Perez! Wake up!” he said, shaking him.

“Whasss wrong?” Perez answered sleepily.

“The werewolves! They’re back!” he whispered.

Suddenly Perez was completely awake, his heart racing and his eyes wide with fear.

“Loooook!” he cried aloud. “Beeehind you!”

Jesse rolled over on his back to see a werewolf standing upright and looking at them through the open window. He rolled on his side and fumbled for an arrow, but before he could have it nocked the beast was gone.

“Get the other bow strung!” Jesse said to Perez. “Hurry!”

Jesse then ran to the widow and looked outside. The werewolf was nowhere in sight.

Perez strung his bow and grabbed a quiver full of arrows and ran across the stable to the opposite window. Opening the shutter he looked out and could see three werewolves crouched a few paces away. One of them stood and as it did Perez nocked an arrow, took aim and released it—all in one swift movement.

The arrow sunk into the werewolf’s chest with a “thud” and it let out a brief howl.

The other two werewolves ran around back of a house a few paces away.

“Got one!” Perez called out excitedly.

“Good!” Jesse congratulated him. As he did, the shutters on the window at the back of the stable began to rattle. Jesse nocked another arrow and let it fly through the shutter. On the other side he could hear a werewolf began to howl in pain.

“Got one, too!” Jesse cried back.

Behind the house across from Jesse one of the werewolves yelled at the boys, “No need for violence! We wish to settle this peacefully!”

“Fine with us!” Jesse called back. “Take your dead and go home! I promise not to shoot long enough for you to drag him off!”

“A fair proposal!” The wolf yelled back. “But we would like one more thing...as a token of good faith...open the stable door and send out the horses. They are all that we want. Then you can leave with no more bloodshed.”

One of the horses, awakened by the yelling, whinnied. Jesse wondered how much they really understood.

“They’re such a peace-loving bunch,” said Perez.

“Got a better idea!” Jesse yelled back. “Why don’t you come in and get ‘em yourself?!”

“You’re so sarcastic!” Perez said as he nocked another arrow. “Have you been taking lessons from Enoch?”

Enoch growled in his sleep and then began to snore again.

Perez took aim at a werewolf that was peering around the corner of a house and released the arrow. The arrow caught the werewolf in the eye and the wolf fell forward into the snow.

“Got another one!” Perez yelled.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“He never knew what hit him.”

“Doesn’t count if he doesn’t howl.”

Both of the boys then nocked another arrow and looked back out their windows.

“Perez!” Jesse whispered across to him. “Shutter the window for a moment and then check the front and back windows.”

Perez did as Jesse had suggested, running first to the front stable window. Looking around he saw an empty snow-covered city street. Darting to the rear of the stable he first pulled out the arrow that Jesse had fired earlier. It was lodged in the beast, which was still leaning against the window, the arrowhead covered with blood. On the other side he heard a soft “thud” as the dead werewolf crumpled to the snowy ground. He looked out. Not a werewolf in sight, just a ladder leaning up against the building, and lots of paw-prints. He secured the shutter and jogged back over to Jesse.

“Jesse!” he whispered. “Was there a ladder leaning up against the back of the stable earlier?”

“Don’t think so,” Jesse whispered back.

“There is now.”

Jesse put a finger to his lips as if to tell Perez to be silent, then glanced up toward the stable’s roof. Both of them could hear it now. A slight creaking in the rafters could be heard from two distinct locations. The boys moved quietly through the hay and drew back their bows as they walked.

Once they were in position, Jesse took aim at the stable’s roof, and mouthed silently to Perez, “One...two...three!”

On “three” both boys released there arrows, which flew through the thin roofing board and met their marks. From above they could hear howling as the two injured werewolves scrambled back to the ladder. Perez again nocked an arrow as he ran. Opening up the rear widow he released another to the side and Jesse could see the werewolf as it fell from the ladder. The second animal lay on the roof howling, afraid to attempt a retreat. Jesse walked under where the sound was coming from and again fired into the roof. This time the howling turned high-pitched and then stopped.