The Silent Isle (31 page)

Pratt began
tearing at the bandages that held his splint. 

“Pratt, stop,”
Leech said.  “You shouldn’t move your arm.”

“You mean like
this?” Pratt said.  He had loosened the splint enough to be able to move
his arm at the elbow.  He twisted it in circles.  “I knew it,” he
said.  “I knew it.”  He began to cry harder than ever. 

Everyone assumed
it would be hours before he’d pull himself together enough to explain what was
going on, but he blubbered through his tears.  “She came.  She came
to me.  The same Woman Elias saw in his dream.  Don’t ask me how I
know it was
Her
.  I just do.  She took hold
of my arm and
Her
touch was like fire.  It spread
over my whole arm.  I felt so hot I thought I was dying.  I felt my
bones melt like gold in a furnace and I felt them flow back together.  And
then the heat slowly faded away and left me with this tingly feeling like when
your arm falls asleep.  And when I thought to look,
She
was already gone.  But I knew, I just knew, I was whole again.”

It took them a
while to get over Pratt’s healing, but once they did, they all shared their own
stories.  All of them had seen or felt something.  Some of them were
pleased and comforted.  Others were troubled.  Bailus shared what he
called the “generally relevant” parts of his vision, but seemed neither
particularly pleased nor troubled.  Dane sensed he was holding something
back, that something in his vision had struck him as deeply personal and that
he wanted to mull over it and savor it for a time on his own. 

Josie was among
the most troubled.  She had seen her sister and brother-in-law walking in
a green field.  She called out to them, but like in Dane’s dream, they seemed
not to hear her.  She tried to follow them, and though they were only
walking, they moved further and further away with every step they took. 
What troubled her most about the vision was that her nieces had not been
present.

Dane shared
last.  He told his vision as he had seen it, but he had come to understand
it better as he listened to the others.  “I have to find a way to stop
them,” he said.  “In the morning, you’ll all return home on the
ship.  But I must stay.”

“And why do you
think you should have all the fun?” Bailus asked.

“Because,” Dane
said, “It’s my fault.  This is all my family’s fault.  Those men were
searching for places to start new mines on my father’s orders.  His greed
for ore drove them on.  His greed awoke the
shriken
.”

“And what do you
expect to do on your own?” Paul asked.

“I’ll seal them
in their caves.  I’ll use the blasting powder.  I’ll seal myself down
there with them if I have to.”

“You can’t do it
alone,” Bailus said.  “If the cave is their city, it’s bound to have a
rear entrance.  And any cave of that size is sure to have flues, fissures
in the rocks above.”

“This is my
family’s wrong to right,” Dane said.  “I have asked more of each of you
than I ever should have, and now I give you my final order:  Go home.”

“No, sir,” Josie
said.

“Excuse me?”
Dane said.

“You heard me
just fine,” she said.  “All I wanted in coming here was to be reunited
with my sister; or, if that were not possible, to give her a proper
burial.  But if I am to be denied even that, at least give me the chance
to bury some of these bastards.”

Bailus
rose.  “Well, I think that settles it.  We’ll be tagging along with
you, even if it’s just me and the young lady.”

“And how far do
you think you’ll get?” Mirela asked.  “You don’t even know where you’re
going.”

Dane looked at
her.  “I didn’t expect you of all people to talk that way.”

“I’m only
talking sense,” she said.  “If you’re going to do this, then you need our
help. 
All of us.
  You lead us, but we’ll be
right behind you.”

“But she’s
right, we don’t know where we’re going,” Paul said.  “We can’t waste time
blundering about the island looking for a place we’ve never been.”

“You’re right,”
Dane said.  “We’ve never been there.  But he has.”  He nodded
towards the boy asleep on Molly’s lap. 

“But even if we
know where we’re going,” Rawl said, “It’ll likely take more than a day to hike
there.  We won’t survive a night in the woods.  And even if they have
fallen back, they’ll have plenty of warning if we plan on hoofing it from
here.”

“So we won’t start
out from here,” Dane said.  “We’ll use the ship; use it in a way they
could never imagine.  Forsythe said there was a beach on the northwest
side of the island.  He said the highest ground of the island is directly
above it.  If I had to bet, I’d say that’s their home.  Tomorrow
morning we load the ship and set sail for the mainland.  As soon as we’re
out of sight of the island, we’ll double back to the beach under cover of
darkness.  That might give us enough time to sneak up on them. 
They’d never expect us to be so foolish as to return for a frontal assault on
their turf after we’d made a clean break.”

“But what about the man on the beach?”
Josie asked.

“What man?” Paul
said.

“The body we
found.  What if there’re other colonists still alive.  We can’t risk
sealing them down there with
shriken
.”

“Well then it’s
hopeless,” Pratt said.  “We’d never be able to launch a rescue raid inside
their caves.  Our only chance is to seal off their escapes before they
know we’re there.”

“We have to try,
even if it’s suicide,” Josie said.  “We can’t just abandon them because we
think it’s impossible.”

Everyone fell
silent.  They were at an impasse.  Dane felt somehow sure there had
to be a way out of this debacle, but he was groping for it in the dark.

“No,” he said
suddenly. 

Everyone turned
to him. 

“No,” he
repeated. 
“The way they reacted to the presence of men
in their caves.
  Their caves are sacred to them, a sanctuary. 
The
shriken
despise us, but they fear us also.  I do not think they
would take humans into their caves, not even as captives.”

“But where else
would they hold them?” Josie asked.

Elias made a
clicking noise with his tongue.  Everyone turned to him.  “The trophy
hall,” he said. 
“The hollow floor.”

Dane looked at
him with dawning realization and horror.  “They were right under our
feet.”

The next morning came much too
soon.  The men and women of the expedition tried to sleep for the few
hours that remained in the night, but sleep eluded them.  They lay awake
in silence, thinking about what tomorrow and the day after would bring. 
All of them had slept little in the past week and this was their shortest night
yet, but at first light they were up and about, knowing that every minute of
daylight counted. 

The plan itself
was simple.  Load the ship, set sail for the mainland, double back to the
beach under cover of darkness and drop off the assault team.  The ship
would depart again and wait the signal fire of the assault team if it should be
successful.  But Dane knew simple plans had a way of complicating
themselves when they were put into action. 

It had been a
relatively straightforward thing to divide his remaining people between assault
team and ship’s crew.  He had made his choice, indeed it seemed he had no choice,
and Mirela and Bailus would never leave him.  Josie wouldn’t look her last
upon the island until she’d taken every chance she had to rescue her family or
avenge them.  Rawl wouldn’t leave Josie.  Paul wouldn’t leave
Rawl.  Elias seemed to view this final journey to the heart of the island
as some kind of spiritual pilgrimage.  There was no talking him out of
it.  Most of the others were too wounded to even consider joining
them.  Ashly Almast and Lane Townsby, two of the men who had circled the
island with Forsythe, would be indispensible as navigators and deck
hands.  They joked they both had missing pieces but made a full set of
fingers and toes between them.  Leech would care for the wounded. 
Molly would care for the boy.  Dane’s trouble was with Pratt.

“Sir,” Pratt
said.  “I’d be ashamed not to go with you.”

“You found a
ship.  You found a captain,” Dane said.  “My word stands.  You
have your ticket home.”

“I was joking.”

“I wasn’t. 
You’ve done more than
your
of share of fighting
already.”

“We’ve all done
more than our share.  But every other man who can walk is walking in with
you.”

“Then I need
more healthy bodies to man the ship,” Dane said.  “Even with you in top
shape, they’ll barely be able to keep her afloat. 
Thatcher’s
captain.
  I need you to be his steersman.”

“I’ve never
acted as steersman, not even in a drill.”

“I know. 
But I know you can do it.  Your job will be as dangerous as ours and every
bit as important.”

Pratt eventually
conceded.  As he watched him walk away, Dane noted the change in his
men.  That Pratt would volunteer, adamantly, for danger.  That Paul
would be man enough to walk away from a fight – but also man enough to walk
into a fight that he could walk away from.  Dane hoped a few of them at
least would live long enough to make use of the ways these past few days had
altered them.

Josie also was
giving him trouble.  “We need to rescue the captives first,” she told him
for the tenth time.

“That’s no
good,” he said.  “The
shriken
will know the moment we breach their
shrine.  We’d never make it to the caves, much less back to the ship.”

“But if the
shriken
are guarding the prisoners, they’ll kill them as soon as we attack the caves.”

“That’s a risk
we have to take,” Dane said.  “It’s double or nothing.  We have very
little chance as it is, but we’ll have no chance at all if we don’t deal with
the
shriken
at the caves first.”

“But if we free
the captives you’ll have more soldiers.”

“Numbers don’t
count for anything now,” Dane said.  “Our only hope lies in
surprise.  Hitting them hard and fast and damming them up inside their
holes.”

“How much of
this food are we packing?” Rawl called from the door of the cellar.

“Just enough to
get us to the mainland,” Dane answered as he passed, Josie still tailing him.

“We pack it
all,” Josie said.

Dane turned to
her.

“We don’t know
how many we’re going to rescue.  But we can bet they’ll be hungry and we
should be prepared for anything.”

Dane studied her
face for a moment. 
Was this merely her way of staving off the
inevitable disappointment?  Was she really hoping, or only coping?
 
He turned to Rawl.  “Very well; load it up.”

The dock had
been destroyed in the fire and there were no boats for ferrying goods to the
ship, so they beached the ship and set ramps on the sides and loaded it directly.

While the others
loaded the ship, Mirela, Elias, and Bailus inventoried their arsenal. 
There was far more blasting powder than they could carry, but they were
determined to carry as much of it as they could.  They selected smaller
kegs, one for each of the men, and fitted them with rope straps at both ends so
they could be borne on the back.  They made fuses by coating cotton
strings in
a slurry
of powder and glue.  The
strings they wrapped in paper and coated the paper with wax.

Mirela secured
two large backpacks for her and Josie.  She cut the sleeves off all the
spare pairs of pants and shirts she could find.  She tied off one end with
twine, filled the tube with powder, inserted a fuse, and tied up the other
end. 

The assault team
would hike to the cave together and then split into smaller squads.  Paul,
Rawl, and Elias would take the front gate.  Dane and Bailus would hit the
back.  Mirela and Josie would seek out and seal up any flues or vents in
the roof of the cave. 

“These things
have bodies like weasels,” Bailus said.  “If we’re going to trap them down
there, we’ll have to stop up every hole bigger than your fist.”

By late morning,
their preparations were complete.  They sat down for a final meal in the
dining hall.  It was a solemn assembly.  The compound had been their
home for only a few days, and a poor home and miserable days they had
been.  Even so, no one was quite ready to willingly bid farewell to a
place they had spilled their blood to defend. 

“I don’t know why,”
Rawl said, “But I think I’ll miss this place.”

There was a
certain sense of consensus in the silence which followed his remark.  Owen
spoke next.  “I know what we need to do, but I know no one will like it.”

Dane looked up
at him.

“We need to burn
this place to the ground.”

“We can’t do
that,” Paul said.  “Half of us are buried out there.  They died
defending these walls.”

“They weren’t
defending the walls,” Owen said softly.  “They were defending us. 
And if our plan’s going to have any chance of succeeding, then we have to do
everything we can to make this look like a full retreat.” 

“I don’t see why
we have to leave at all,” Pratt said.  “Why not stay and defend it to the
last man?”

“Because the
colonists are depending on us,” Josie said.

“Josie’s right,”
Dane said.  “And so is Owen.”

After lunch they
gathered all the kindling and tinder and branches they could and piled them
against the walls.  They took all the lamps in the compound and poured
their oil on the brush piles. 

As the flames
climbed the walls and licked skyward, their small company stood in the little
graveyard and paid their last respects to the fallen. 

“I hate just
leaving them here,” Rawl said as they moved towards the harbor.  “I don’t
want those monsters defiling their graves.  They deserve to rest in
peace.” 

“That’s what I
want, too,” Dane said, clapping him on the shoulder.  “And that’s what
we’re going to do.  We’re going to let the whole island rest in peace.”

It was late
afternoon before they boarded the ship, but Dane was pleased with this. 
There was light enough for their enemy to see them depart, but he did not want
to get too far out before dark overtook them and offered them their chance to
slip back in.  They helped the wounded aboard and hauled Mirela’s donkey
up the ramp and then shoved the ship fully into the water and shoved her prow
towards the mouth of the harbor. 

Will gave orders
and the sail was unfurled.  Dane nodded to Pratt and he took the
tiller.  Most of the crew stood astern, watching the smoke climb above the
trees. The island was once again a wilderness; untamed and formidable, alien
and forbidding. 

Suddenly, a ball
of fire reared skyward, followed by the sound of thunder.  The flames had
reached the powder room.  They watched the explosion morph and dance
against the pale sky in black and red and orange.  The ball of fire
deflated and dissipated back below the tree tops, but the flames and smoke
continued to rise, erasing the only sense of security and belonging on the
island they had ever known. 

They would face
the island again, in places utterly unknown, with nothing but what they carried
with them in their hands and in their hearts.

Will and Pratt set them a course which put them in line with the
western center of the island.

Those who could
caught
snatches of sleep.  Hardly anyone talked. 
Some dreaded the night’s approach.  Others thought it would never come.

Dane came back
beside the boy, who stood with his hand in Molly’s at the stern.  They
were watching the island sink into the distance.  Dane spread the most
detailed map of Haven they had on the deck at the boy’s feet.  The boy
glanced at the map and then turned back to the island. 

“I don’t want to
bring this back up for you, but I need your help,” Dane said. 

The boy did not
look at him. 

“I need to know
where you were when the bad thing happened.” 

The boy was so
still and silent, Dane thought he had not heard him, even though they stood
beside each other.  Suddenly, he turned and knelt opposite Dane.  He
took in the map at a glance, placed his finger on the small circle that marked
the settlement and ran it slowly along the length of the island.  He
stopped and tapped his finger at the end of the imaginary line.  Then he
took his place beside Molly once more and did not look at Dane again. 
Dane thanked him, folded the map, and walked away.

Rawl dozed
leaning against the gunwale beside Josie.  He awoke to find her making
scratches in her bolts with her knife.  As he watched, she finished her
work on one and placed it back in her quiver at her side.  He pulled it
out and found she had engraved the letter ‘N’ on it.  He pulled out
another.  It bore a boxy ‘G’.  She took them from him and placed them
back in her quiver. 

“Gwen, Nelly,
Chloe,” he said. 

She nodded as
she focused her attention on the next bolt.  He wrapped his hand around
her knife hand and pulled it to him.  “Why don’t you just tell me about
them instead?” he said.

The sun set, sending a shimmer of radiant reflection over the
surface of the sea.
  One moment, they were wrapped in light, the
air and water all about them burning with it.  The next moment, dark
descended like a curtain.  In the last of the twilight, they doused their
lights and brought the ship around and pointed her prow, as best as they could
guess with the help of Ashly and Lane and the map and their view of the dim
hulk of the island, towards the beach.

They had been
sailing away from the island for no more than two hours, but it seemed to take
at least double that to get near enough to it once more to begin navigating
towards the beach.  Fortunately, they had a full moon to work with. 
The section of coast they were looking at was foreign to all of them and, even
with the
moonlight,
its features were barely
discernible in the dark.  But judging by the way the island extended to
either side of them, they guessed they were somewhere along the center of the
western coast, which meant they had been driven a good ways south of their
goal.  Ashly and Lane agreed with this.  Pratt brought the ship to
port and began navigating up the coast, staying as close as he could to land
without risking damage to the ship.

They were
sailing against the wind and thus were forced to tack back and forth in order
to keep moving forward.   This took them farther out from the coast
and then dangerously close to it again and again. 

After an hour or
so, they came to a place where the coast angled out towards them.  They
continued along it but slowly, for their line of travel now took them directly
against the wind.  But they were encouraged by this change in the
coastline as they took it as a sign they were near the beach; for while the
beach stood on the northwest side of the island, the harbor that led to it
opened to the southwest. 

They came around
an outthrust lip of rock and suddenly they all saw it at once; the moonlight
shining on the water of a broad inlet, and at the end of the inlet, the pale
sand glowing dully in the moonlight.

Pratt brought
the ship to starboard and guided it up the channel.  Their cheer at having
found the beach was replaced by the silence of the realization of what that
meant.  With no need for command or signal, as though governed by a single
mind, the assault team gathered in the prow. 

Here Dane faced
a dilemma.  Beaching the ship would create extra noise and might alert any
nearby enemies to their presence.  The team could slip silently over the
side while the crew held the ship in the shallows but this ran the risk of
wetting their powder.  In the end, Dane ordered Pratt to beach the ship,
deciding any hostiles in the neighborhood would, at any rate, be alerted to
their presence soon enough.  They would just have to take their
chances. 

Rawl voiced his
support of this.  “We have to protect the powder.  And besides, I
don’t think they hear all that well anyway.  All that screaming and
speaking straight into people’s heads wouldn’t do much for the ears.”