The Silent Isle (32 page)

Dane nodded,
remembering how easy it had been to sneak up behind the creatures in the woods
the night Rem had been killed.

The ship drove
up onto the beach with a sheering scrape-crunch of wood on sand.  The
assault team dropped over the side.  The crew handed down their kegs and
packs and the team walked well up the beach and set these on dry sand. 
Then they returned to the ship and helped the crew push it back into the
water.  The harbor waves resisted them, jostling the boat back against the
sand, but they soon had it free.

“Get out now and
get away,” Dane said to Pratt just before shoving the ship out to sea. 
And don’t come back in here till you see our signal.” 

Pratt nodded and
moved silently aft to the tiller.

The small group
watched the boat sail out of the inlet.  The drop-off had been so fast
they had not even bothered to furl the sail.

“We’re on our
own now,” Paul said.

“Still, in a
way,” Rawl said, “it’s kind of nice knowing they’ll be OK regardless of what
happens to us.”

Dane turned and
led them silently back to the powder supply.  They pulled the hoods of
their cloaks over their heads.  They wore no helmets or other armor, not
wanting to advertise their presence with the shine of moonlight on metal. 
They carried no torches, for fear of the flames giving them away or setting off
the powder they carried on their backs.  The large moon was a blessing and
a curse.

The men strapped
their kegs onto their backs and the women hefted their packs.  Each of
them kept their weapons at hand.  Dane bore an iron pry-bar in addition to
his bow.  Mirela carried a pick.  Elias used his spear shaft as a walking
stick. 

“How are we
supposed to see where we’re going?” Paul said.

“That’s the easy
part,” Dane said.  “We just keep going up.”  The boy’s indication on
the map had confirmed what he’d suspected from his vision; the
shriken’s
cave was at the very peak of the island.

The island rose
steep and trackless behind the beach and they had to help one another make
their way through the thick brush and up the inclines until they got the hang
of walking in the dark with the heavy packs.  As they moved off the beach
into the trees, drums began to throb in the hills overhead. 

“You think that
means they’ve spotted us?” Paul said.

“It doesn’t
matter what it means,” Dane said.  “We can’t go back.  All we can do
is keep moving forward.”

At first light they halted. 
While the others ate a cold meal around the powder kegs, Dane moved a little
ways off and started a small fire.  This took considerable effort in the
pre-dawn damp, but his patience and his careful keeping of his tinder box were
eventually rewarded.  From the fire, he lit a half dozen or so slow
matches, braided lengths of hemp rope and cypress bark treated with glue so as
to burn slowly but continuously.  The slow matches held their fire in tiny
smoldering embers in their tips.  They could be handled roughly without
the worry of the spark going out and they were less likely to set off the
powder prematurely than the naked flame of a torch.  They were ideal for
the job.  He knew they were getting close to their destination and they
would have no chance to light a fire once there.  They had to carry the
ability to ignite the powder onto the battlefield with them.

He returned to
the group and gave each of them a slow match.  It was a solemn communion,
that last meal together in the dim forest.  Receiving the spark-bearers,
they realized up till that point their talk about destroying the
shriken
warren had been nothing more than that.  But now they had all they needed
to accomplish it and they were uncomfortably close to their goal.  The
power to rend the world and remake it went with them.

As he shouldered
his keg-pack, Dane looked out from the rocky ledge at the view below
them.  He was surprised at how high they had climbed.  The mountain
rose about them like a castle carved by giants or the gods themselves. 
Before him, the sea spread out like an infinite moat, or like an endless plain
of liquid green. 

He led them
forward.  He could tell by the plants they were getting close.  The
trees were no longer the tall majestic spruces and oaks of the lower
places.  Here at the crown, the trees were stunted and twisted, as though
they lived constantly in a searing wind.  There were also thornbushes of a
kind he had never noticed in the lowlands.  Though in his vision he had
approached the crest from the south and not the west, the trees had looked the
same.  He passed a bird-skull totem set just above eye-level between the
forking branches of one ruined tree.  He hardly noticed it. 

The thornbushes, scanty as they were, caught and tore at their
clothing and slowed them down.
  Dane knew if they worked around to
the east they would come upon the clear step-like path of layered rock he had
traversed with the men in his vision.  This path would be free of
obstructing plants and lead them directly to the front gate.  But Dane did
not want to lead them into the open.  He suspected the drums, which
continued to pulse occasionally, may be a call to assembly instead of an
alarm.  And if there were any
shriken
responding from those
watching the settlement down below, they would be moving along that path on
their way to the caves.

With every climb
they made, Dane thought it was the last, but every time they reached the brow,
they found the slope continued on.  Finally, they came in sight of what
they had sought.  It was a long, low dome of jagged rock, sitting atop the
island like a ruined crown.  Grass and scraggly bushes grew in some places
on the stony plateau and a few stunted trees. 

Dane led them
around to the south-east, always keeping a screen of bushes between his party
and the rocky dome.  Finally, the southern end of the dome came in sight
and there, seated in its center, facing out over the rest of the island, was
the main gate of the caves.  The three empty stone doorways stood exactly
as Dane’s vision had shown them.  There were no
shriken
in sight,
but the booming of the drums beat out from the open gateway.

Dane found Elias
and the twins a good place to hunker down in the brush where they could keep an
eye on the gate.  He looked at the sun’s position, then back to
Elias.  “Can you lie low here for an hour?” 

Elias nodded and
Dane continued.  “We don’t know how far it is to the other side; we don’t
even know what we’re looking for.  But we’ll move as quickly as we
can.  Have your charges set to blow in an hour.  When we hear yours
go, we’ll light ours – we’ll just hope we have them in place by then.”

They laid all
unnecessary items, including the pick and pry-bar, in the brush behind Elias’s
group.  Dane slapped Elias on the shoulder.  “Good luck.  We’ll
regroup here when we’re done.” 

Rawl and Paul
nodded to him as he motioned for the others to follow him, and they slipped
away the way they had come.

Dane led them
forward at a crouch, skirting around the west side of the cave-rock.  The
heavy keg on his back made it difficult to move stealthily, and after a few
minutes of moving in a crouch his legs were aching.  He ignored the pain
and pressed on. 

He had no idea
how long the barrow-like roof of the cave was so he was unsure when they were
halfway across it.  But they came to a point where the mound seemed to
peak slightly and he guessed this for the rough center.  A little ways
after that, they came to a dry streambed that cut down the side of the
hill.  The bed was shallow but yellow grasses and scrub brush grew waist
high about it.

He paused and
squatted down in the rocky bed.  Mirela and Josie sat on their haunches
before him.  He pointed up the length of the bed.  “Stay in cover
here and work your way up the side of the slope.  You have the hardest job
of any of us.  The boys back there have one thing to blow; with luck,
Bailus and I will only have one exit to plug.  But there’s no telling how
many crannies and rat holes you’ll have to stop up.  You’ll have to seek them
out and plant your charges beforehand so they’re all ready to blow as soon as
you hear Elias’s go off.  But be careful.  My guess is you’ll be kind
of exposed up there.  Use all the cover you can and don’t take unnecessary
risks.”

Josie nodded and
started working her way up the streambed.  Mirela’s face was still turned
towards him.  Dane looked into her eyes.  He tilted her chin up and
leaned forward to kiss her, but she put a finger to his lips.  “This isn’t
goodbye,” she said.  Then she had turned and followed Josie and her bulky
pack was all he could see of her.

Dane nodded to
Bailus and they started forward again.  They came upon a cliff which
dropped away beneath them and were forced to make their way along the brow of
it, skirting closer to the side of the cave-mound than they would have
liked.  They made it around to the northeast side of the hill without
finding any other entrance.  Dane was at first optimistic.  “Maybe
they only have one entrance,” he told Bailus.  “We could go back and help
the girls.”

Bailus shook his
head.  “Nothing that intelligent would make a home without a back
door.  We have to keep looking.”

They worked
their way half-way around the east side of the mound, taking speed over stealth
now in their worry that Elias’s group would be blasting the front gate
soon.  The east side of the mound was smoother than the west, just a
gentle grassy sward, and there was certainly no other exit there.

The two men
hunkered down in the brush.  The day was warming up and they were both
sweating.  Dane wiped his brow and drained his canteen.  “If Elias
blows his charge before we can set ours, even if he is successful, the
shriken
will just stream out the back door and all of this will be for nothing.”

Bailus only
nodded.

“We can’t do
this alone,” Dane said.

Suddenly, the
drums began to beat again.  The sound was coming from the north, from the
way they had just come.  The two men looked at each other, wondering what
this could mean.  “We didn’t miss anything,” Dane said.  “There was
no door there.”

Bailus rose and
silently began to move back the way they had come.  Dane dropped his
canteen and followed him. 

They returned to
the edge of the cliff, the face of which skirted the entire northern side of
the mound.  Bailus hesitated on the brink.  Dane joined him and
cocked his head.  There was no mistaking it.  The sound was coming
from below them.  Dane skirted along the edge of the drop-off, trying to
spot the source of the sound.  Bailus, who was right beside him, suddenly
put his hand on Dane’s chest and pulled him back.  Dane glanced at him but
Bailus pointed down over the ledge.  Dane peeked over the brow, trying to
spot what Bailus was pointing at. 
Rocks, trees, rocks,
bushes.
 
Nothing.
  Then he saw it and
wondered how he had missed it.  A hundred feet down but literally directly
beneath their feet, so that if Dane’s foot had dislodged a stone it would have
struck it on the head, a
shriken
crouched on a large flat stone.

Immediately,
Dane began searching for a way down.  He found a possibility a few dozen
paces to the right of the
shriken
.  The
shriken
had its back
to the ledge and seemed to be looking out over the sea to the north.  Dane
decided he had not time but to risk everything on Rawl’s theory that they were
poor of hearing.  Even if the
shriken
didn’t hear them, they’d be
lucky if they didn’t break their necks coming down.  The place of descent
he had found, likely the only one on the whole cliff face, was nothing more
than a protrusion in the face of the ledge.  One side of this protrusion sloped
downwards at an angle a man might just be able to manage if he didn’t have a
keg of powder strapped to his back. 

With time
running out, Dane and Bailus had no choice.  Dane stepped out on the
protrusion, then crouched and lowered his legs onto the sloping drop-away. 
Twisting his body so his stomach was almost scraping the rock and the keg was
balanced above him, he began to slither-slide his way down, sliding sometimes
on the soles of his boots and his forearms, other times on his belly, using his
toes for brakes.  He bashed and cut his knees on the rough surface until
they were throbbing numbly.  At one point, Bailus, descending above him,
slipped and his boot slid over Dane’s hand, smashing it and dragging it against
the rock.  It was all Dane could do to keep from screaming out in
pain.  Sometimes Dane risked over-balancing to peek around the ledge at
the
shriken
.  The creature still had its back to the cliff
face.  At one point, when Dane risked a look, he was sure the creature had
spotted him.  He drew back and hugged the rock.  But when he peeked
around again a minute later, the creature was still in the same position. 
It was only the beady, round bird-eye, set in the side of the creature’s head,
which gave the illusion of looking in all directions at once.

When Dane was
only ten feet from the base, the drums stopped and did not beat again.  He
slid the rest of the way down and caught Bailus and pulled him back out of
sight as he tumbled down after him.

They worked
their way further away from the
shriken
and got into a stand of pine
which allowed them to move northward away from the ledge until at last they
were in front of and slightly downhill from the sentry.  Their search was
finally rewarded.  The stone the
shriken
sat on formed the top
piece of a door frame made of two massive standing stones set into the
hillside.  Two more
shriken
stood before the door, one on either
side of it.

The men slipped
off their kegs and set them on the bed of pine needles.  “If they take to
flight, they’ll outrun us right back to their friends inside,” Dane said.

“What are your
orders, sir?” Bailus said.

“I wish I knew.”

***

Rawl lay in the
brush between his brother and Elias.  The drums had fallen silent shortly
after the others left but they had started up again now and been going for some
time.  Elias glanced at the sun.  “It’s time,” he said. 

The three men
stirred and began to push themselves into kneeling positions, but even as they
did, the drums stopped, there was movement at the mouth of the cave, and out
from the triple door stepped the six largest
shriken
Rawl had ever
seen.  He doubted any of them were short of seven feet tall.  They
took up positions, one on each side of each door, facing outward.  They
each held a sickle and a flail and they folded their arms over their chests so
that the staffs of their weapons formed an X that crossed just beneath their
necks. 

The twins turned
to Elias.  The priest could only raise his eyebrows and shrug.  Elias
sank deeper into the depression they’d been laying in.  He studied the
front gate and its guards and the surroundings.  On the west side of the
gate, tall grasses and shrubs ran up the side of the slope, forming a kind of
shield on the brow of the hill above the gate.  “Rawl,” Elias said. 
“Do you think you can sneak around in that brush and get above them?”

Now it was
Rawl’s turn to shrug.  “I’ll try.”

“Once you’re
there, Paul and I will create a diversion to draw them away from the
doors.  You can shoot them in the back from above.”

Rawl
nodded.  He wished he had a repeater.  As he moved to slip away to
the left, Elias placed his hand on his shoulder.  “If just one of them
makes it back inside, he’ll bring the whole army out on us.  If any of
them should make a break for the gate, you’ll have to get in between them and
the door and stop them any way you can.”

Rawl nodded and
stole into the brush.  He went as quickly as he could, moving in a crouch
where the cover permitted and crawling on his hands and knees or on his belly
when the bushes were too low to hide him better.  Finally he reached the
foot of the mound and started up.  When he reached the peak above the
gate, he crawled forward on his belly until he could just peek through the
grass in front of him.  He could guess at where his brother and Elias lay
hidden, but the
shriken
and the gates were directly beneath him so that
he could not see them at all.  He cautiously stuck a hand through the
grass and waved it to signal to Paul.