Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (25 page)

Faeranir began to glow softly.

Caleb lashed out with an incoherent shout, sending golgent flying as he shouldered the bow and pulled a pair of arrows from his quiver, holding them like knives. Instinctively Caleb ducked, and a blow rang off Faeranir’s metal arm. He flipped the arrow over in his right hand and jabbed behind him, feeling the point dig into flesh. He left the arrow there and took an intractable step forward towards the woman’s screams, lashing out with his other hand as he pulled another arrow from his quiver.

The arrows rose and fell with flashes of sliver and white, illuminating the darkness for an instant. The light gave Caleb enough time to choose his next step amongst the maelstrom of bodies and blades. Caleb gained another few feet forward with each burst, his efforts spurred onward by the woman’s continued screams. Swords and axes bounced off the coat of mail he wore beneath his clothes, though he felt the force of the blows through the metal rings.

Suddenly, Caleb broke free, leaving the chaos of the fighting behind. From the sounds behind him, the golgent fought on, mistaking each other for enemies in the darkness and the fog of battle.

He struggled to catch his breath and slow his racing heart. He took a step forward and winced as pain shot up his leg from a wound he had not felt during the adrenaline rush of his frantic escape. His anger was melting away and as it fell, the pain grew. Caleb gritted his teeth and inched forward carefully, the arrows in his hands dripping blood onto the floor.

The glow from Faeranir had faded so he stretched the weapon out in front of him like a walking stick. The metal was cool and relaxing to his touch, giving him a sense of calm and focus that allowed Caleb to ignore the noise and screams of agony behind him and move cautiously forward. After only a few steps the bow hit something soft. From the terrified, barely contained scream, Caleb knew it was the woman.

“It’s ok,” Caleb said, dropping Faeranir and falling to his knees next to the woman. He reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, feeling her trembling in fear beneath his fingers. She recoiled from his touch and Caleb realized how his blood-covered hands must feel.

“Hey, it’s ok,” he whispered. “We’ve got to get the baby to safety. Can you do that for him? I need to you stand.”

The woman sobbed, making Caleb glance nervously over his shoulder towards the sound of the golgent, but she got shakily to her feet.

“Good,” Caleb whispered, picking Faeranir up off the floor and slinging the bow over his shoulder. “We need to hurry. Can you run?”

The woman sobbed harder and stumbled forward. It was obvious that she could not. Knowing that the woman’s sobs would soon alert the golgent to the fact that they’d escaped, Caleb immediately scooped the woman into his arms, feeling the infant in her arms cradled against his chest. Caleb felt an odd sense of déjà vu overwhelm him for an instant, as if he had held another woman in his arms recently, but he shook off the feeling and broke into an unsteady shuffling run. He hoped his footfalls were masked in the sounds of battle that still echoed through the darkness. He didn’t dare run any faster than a slow jog in the impenetrable blackness that surrounded them, not with the mother and her infant child in his arms.

His arms grew leaden quickly, and his legs lost all feeling as he ran blindly through the dark. He had no idea where he was going and only kept from slamming into the walls and sides of the passage on instinct. Several times he brushed up against something in the dark, which made the woman sob even harder against his chest. He never stopped to figure out what it had been, just kept running. He stumbled once, but caught himself before the woman could slip from his grasp. He was growing lightheaded from loss of blood and didn’t know how much further he could go.

Caleb stopped and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. His body shook with exhaustion but he could no longer hear anything other than the echoes of his own heaving gasps and the woman’s continued cries. He marveled that the baby had not started to scream during it all. The bundle remained still and quiet, pressed in between Caleb’s heaving chest and the woman’s arms.

Caleb knew he was lost. The entrance to the passages beneath the city-fortress had been to the northwest, but in the dank, claustrophobic confines of the tunnels, Caleb couldn’t tell one direction from another with any degree of certainty. He would need to find some light to have any chance of finding his way out of the maze. He lowered the woman to the ground where she sat huddled into a ball around her child.

Caleb didn’t know where to begin.

A soft tapping noise reached his ears and he froze instantly, straining his hearing to the limit. He grabbed a pair of arrows from his quiver as he glanced back down the way they had come. The noise echoed softly up the corridor towards them and Caleb crouched protectively in front of the woman. He knew that he didn’t have the strength left to run any further. Whatever was making the sound would have to meet him here. The tapping grew louder and Caleb steeled himself, ready to spring in any direction. He considered pulling out Faeranir and sending an arrow down the passageway behind them, but just as he’d decided for it his brain registered the pattern the taps were making.

Three quick taps, three long taps, then three quick taps again.

Caleb quickly tapped the same sequence back against the wall with an arrow. The tapping stopped instantly and there was a scratching noise followed by a sudden flaring of light. The sudden brightness bit painfully into Caleb’s eyes, forcing him to squint and blink rapidly to hold back tears.

Lando stood a few yards away, a flame lantern held high in his left hand. The boy’s right hand held his shotgun level and ready.

“Lando!” Caleb cried, stowing the arrows back in his quiver and quickly getting the woman to her feet. “How did you find us?”

The boy didn’t answer. He nodded back the way he had come with his head as if beckoning them to follow. The woman didn’t struggle though her tears had ceased with the coming of light. “We were attacked by a group of golgent,” Caleb explained, supporting the woman carefully. “Did you run into them?”

The boy shook his head and made a circular motion with the lamp.

“You went around them?”

Lando nodded and turned to lead them back through the tunnels, his lamp held high.

The beam cut through the darkness like a scythe, illuminating only the path in front of them through clever placement of metal plates along the back and sides.

Caleb limped hurriedly along after the boy, an arm around the woman’s shoulder for support and the other holding Faeranir. Lando led them sure-footedly along the path. He chose which forks and turns to take without hesitation, obviously quite familiar with the path back to safety. Caleb silently marveled at his skill. Caleb knew that he would have been completely lost, most likely permanently, had it not been for Lando’s timely arrival.

They rounded a corner and natural light could be seen at the end of the passageway, streaming in through the old cellar doors that marked the entrance into the basement complex. Caleb cheered inwardly and unconsciously picked up speed, almost dragging the woman along behind him.

Suddenly, shots rang out in a quick burst, echoing down the tunnel in a cacophony of noise. Someone screamed and the sounds of people running reached their ears. Immediately Lando doused his lantern and placed it on the ground as Caleb helped the woman sit down against the side of the passage. She was sobbing again and clutched her baby close.

“Stay here!” Caleb whispered urgently and crept slowly up the passage after Lando who was already at the cellar doorway.

A set of small wooden steps led up into the floor of the basement beyond. Lando was standing on the penultimate one, his head barely visible over the bottom of the doorframe. Caleb crept up next to him and peered out into the room. Utter chaos greeted him.

Thomas stood in the center of the room. His eyes were wide and crazed and he held an assault rifle in each hand. On the ground around him lay a handful of bodies ridden with bullets. Men, women and children lay contorted around one another, their bodies frozen in the fear and anguish they had felt before their deaths. All the others, including Sigvid, and Nepja, were huddled in the corners behind whatever cover they could find. Thomas staggered somewhat drunkenly and stared blankly around the room, a trace of spittle dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“Spies! All of you!” Thomas roared, turning around in a drunken stumble, “The dragons—they whisper things to you—whisper lies and you all succumb. You are all Dragonspawn!” His eyes were bright and far away, as if he were reliving a nightmare. “So many people, so much death and destruction! It’s all your fault they died.” He gazed beadily into one corner where a man huddled in front of a woman and a small child, protecting them with his gaunt body. His guns swung round to point at them. “You are locusts. We are locusts. Bugs, pests to be exterminated. They whisper things!”

Caleb reacted without thinking, leaping out of the doorway and throwing himself between Thomas and the huddled figures. Faeranir was in his hands, an arrow held loosely against the string, but it was low, at his side, unthreatening. Thomas stared at him blearily and for a moment recognition flashed across his face.

“Caleb?” he asked in a hushed voice. The guns didn’t waiver, but Thomas’s eyes seemed to focus momentarily.

“Yes, Thomas,” Caleb said, holding Thomas’s gaze. “It’s Caleb. You remember me? You saved my life when the Charlotte city-fortress fell. Do you remember?”

Thomas closed his eyes and rocked backwards slightly, but the barrel of his guns never moved. “I buried your wife. The golgent, they—they took your baby . . .” Thomas’s voice was soft and distant, but there was a note of deep sadness in it.

“Yes,” Caleb said softly, pulling his ring from underneath his shirt and holding it up on the chain for Thomas to see. “You taught me how to survive. You took this from my wife’s body and left it for me before you went.”

Thomas didn’t hear him, his eyes were fogging over and the insane gleam within them burned. Caleb felt a knot of fear well up in the pit of his stomach as Thomas took a faltering step forward.

“I saved you? Why—why would I save you? It would have been better to let you die.” Thomas’s voice was strong now, strong and filled with a fervor that sent chills running down Caleb’s spine. “It is our fate to be killed. Why free prisoners—we are them and they are us. We are all prisoners to the Dragonhosts. There is no escape, there is only temporary respite. They catch us. All of them, cut down, burned, eaten, torn apart. We all die!”

Caleb recognized the words with a shock of pure terror. Thomas had spoken them years before. It had started even then. The insane babbling man that stood before him, capable of killing men, women and children in cold blood, had been hidden beneath the man Caleb had once known. Despite his training and his overt suspicion of everyone and everything around him, Thomas had not noticed his own sanity slipping away. The man before him had been created by the nightmare in which they all partook. Caleb looked into Thomas’s unseeing eyes and knew that he was going to die. Thomas’s finger twitched on the trigger of his gun and someone moved in the shadows across the room. Thomas whirled, his guns spraying bullets into the air. Caleb reacted instinctively, bringing Faeranir up and releasing the arrow.

The silver shaft seemed to hang almost motionless in the air. Time slowed as Caleb, horrified at his own actions, watched the arrow cut through the air and bury itself in Thomas’s chest. The guns slipped from Thomas’s hands and fell to the ground with a clatter. Thomas turned as he too fell and, for an instant, his and Caleb’s eyes met. There was sanity in Thomas’s eyes and, for one fleeting instant, Caleb saw sorrow flood them before they clouded over in death.

Caleb ran to Thomas’s side, Faeranir falling to the ground from numb fingers. He dropped to his knees and pulled Thomas’s head into his lap, his silver arrow quivering like a silent flag in his chest, bearing testament to his shame. Tears streamed down Caleb’s face as he rocked back and forth, cradling Thomas’s head between his hands, ignoring the tendrils of ice that crept up the dead man’s neck like a spider’s web. Warm, foamy blood dripped from the corners of Thomas’s mouth. It slipped down the curve of his cheek and splashed onto Caleb’s hands unnoticed, staining them scarlet.

There was a hushed silence in the room as the escapees and the men from the resistance group that were present looked on the scene in reverent and shocked silence, too overcome to speak. Sigvid shifted as if he were going to move forward to Caleb’s side, but he remained where he was, his face fallen in empathetic sorrow.

Caleb cried as guilt, anger, and shame racked his body in waves of emotion. He looked around at the faces of the men and women Thomas had killed in his insanity. Rachel’s and Benson’s faces stared back at him. He looked down at Thomas’s dead face and saw only his own features in the peaceful rest of eternal sleep. Nepja had been right. Who was he to say that he was better than even the golgent? They killed and he killed. They were not to blame for what had happened. Their blood was on his hands.

Caleb felt someone sit down next to him and a small, gentle hand on his shoulder pulled him away from his dark, horror-filled thoughts. He looked up and saw the woman, tears in her eyes and staining her cheeks, smiling at him. Confused, he went to turn away, but she forced something into his hands and he looked down.

Small gray eyes looked back at him from a tiny infant face wrapped in rags, eyes full of innocence and love. The baby’s small mouth puckered and, for just a moment, Caleb saw Benson’s smile flash in the recesses of his mind. Caleb looked up at the woman, whose expression was full of inexpressible gratitude and understanding. Caleb hugged the newborn close and cried.