Читать книгу Blackfire: The Rise of the Creeping Moors - James Daniel Eckblad - Страница 9

There was no more fight in either Alex or Jamie. They had struck with their knives a multitude of times “in the will of the Good,” and had killed or critically injured dozens of Wolfmen and Unpersons, but they had lost the battle’s endgame. No amount of will, be it their own or even the will of the Good, could marshal enough strength in their bodies to strike once more, and they were now surrounded. They stood, arms and weapons to their sides, waiting for the onslaught that would send them into oblivion in this world called Bairnmoor—and into nonexistence in their own. The loud creatures, dancing in vile relish, closed in with weapons raised, and the boys bowed their heads to receive the blows.

Instead, they felt the sharp claws of several Wolfmen grabbing their limbs and hoisting them atop the shoulders of other Wolfmen, not even bothering to disarm their passive captives. Far from feeling any degree of relief Jamie and Alex shuddered at the thought of what was likely to ensue once they had been delivered to Santanya. The battle for Taralina’s castle still raged in the distance, and the boys wondered how many of their party remained to fight. Among them was not Thorn; they didn’t know what had happened to him, but they knew he was down—and either dead or critically wounded, and if wounded also likely captured. Thorn had fallen swiftly to the enemy when he stumbled carrying the girls; fortunately, but to no known end and with little to kindle hope, Alex and Jamie had seen Childheart appear, out of nowhere it seemed, and rescue the girls from an imminent assault or capture.

As the Wolfmen scurried with their captives across the battlefield southeast toward Santanya’s castle, Alex and Jamie grimaced from the stabbing pains of the claws piercing their skin—and made all the more torturous from the jolting by the heavy-footed stomping of their captors. The fighting at Taralina’s castle was now a faint din; about three hundred yards ahead the drawbridge across the swift river surrounding Santanya’s castle was being lowered.

Suddenly, a roaring, like that from a thousand lions riled in caverns deep below ground and racing toward the surface, caused the earth to shake and the enemy forces to quake and stumble, many falling into or on top of one another. As the ground shook and shifted more violently, it split open in the middle of the battlefield, producing wide cracks and deep crevices that traveled with the speed of cracking glass toward the enemy forces carrying Alex and Jamie.

In the enemy’s panicked scramble to outrace the splitting of the earth that threatened to swallow them, and looking like staggering drunks, the Wolfmen, who had only moments earlier swept Jamie and Alex into their arms, abruptly dropped them, sending the two boys tumbling harshly to their fate on to the devouring ground. They fell hard, and in their delirium lay involuntarily still—but only for the briefest of moments. For the earth near the boys cracked open, the quaking causing Alex and Jamie to tumble into a wide, shallow depression, where, toward the middle, they rolled to a stop at the edge of a deep crevice, the boys looking lifeless.

When the earth had finally stopped shaking, the Wolfmen and others had vanished, leaving behind their dead and the chilling moans of their injured whom they had abandoned. Clouds drifted in all directions overhead, casting pale shadows that flitted fitfully among the detritus of concluded battle. Alex regained consciousness and stirred looking for Jamie, whom he discovered only several feet away. Alex crawled on his stomach over to his friend and shook him gently for a minute until Jamie too became conscious. Jamie stared into Alex’s eyes. “Where are we?” he asked drowsily.

“I don’t know, Jamie. But we ah in a hoe—and thew is anothuh hoe wight behind you.”

Jamie turned over, saw the yawning crevice only several feet away and abruptly sat up, scooting himself away from the edge. Together they sat, looking all about them and not speaking. Alex spoke first. “I wiw go wook,” he said, pointing toward the rim of the depression some six feet above their heads and about fifteen feet away.

“Okay, but stay on your belly, Alex, and just peak a little bit above the edge,” replied Jamie, rubbing his eyes and feeling his wounds. Alex returned a minute later. “What did you see, Alex?”

“You go wook, too, Jamie. What should we do?” Alex whispered, staring at Jamie searchingly.

When Jamie had returned from his own brief reconnaissance, he said, “I didn’t see anyone at all; did you?”

“No,” replied Alex.

“Well, we are only about three hundred yards from the castle, and I suspect now that it’s quiet they’ll be searching for us soon. Can you run for it, Alex?”

“Yes, Jamie, but wheyuh ah we going to wun to?”

“Left of the castle, to the river behind it. Maybe there we can crawl away along the riverbank—if there is a riverbank—down below, on the other side of the castle. Anyway, I don’t know what else we can do,” concluded Jamie.

“But, Jamie, thew is that hoe,” Alex replied, motioning toward the crevice. “Maybe it goes to the wivuh.” Jamie saw that the crevice did indeed extend beyond the rim of the depression and out of sight—in the direction of the river and left of the castle.

“I don’t know how deep it is Alex, or how we’ll climb out at the end of it, but,” he said, and then paused. “But it’s probably better than being in the wide-open where they’ll almost certainly see us.”

The boys slid down into the crevice, the top of which was just above their heads, and began the slow, arduous trek in the loose dirt and sliding stones, wondering how close the opening in the earth would take them to the river, if close at all—and where the river would take them, and whether it would provide a way of escape. They continued on in this fashion for half an hour when the crack turned sharply left, winding a path in a direction away from the river. They debated briefly whether to climb out at that point or continue on, and decided to keep following the narrow trough, at least for a while. Soon the crevice deepened considerably, taking them thirty feet below the surface, but at the same time snaked to the right and back toward the river.

Half an hour later they heard a couple of indecipherable voices far above them; they stopped and waited, not daring to make a sound, until the voices had soon disappeared. At this point they surrendered any intention of climbing to the surface and checking on their progress. Doggedly they traipsed and trudged along the base of the crevice, the fissure becoming ominously deeper and the sky frighteningly smaller. Alex was in the lead only ten feet in front of Jamie, but Jamie could barely see him in the pale light from above that drifted stingily below, seeming to stop falling altogether halfway down into the slender ravine.

Alex stopped. “Wet’s west.” They sat in the dirt, breathing laboredly and peering up at the slice of sky far above them. When their heavy breathing had subsided and Jamie was about to suggest that they should go back to find a way to the surface, taking their chances at that juncture by simply running across the battlefield, Alex remarked, “Jamie, I hew something!”

“What?” Jamie asked, alarmed.

“The wivuh, Jamie! I think I hew the wivuh!” Alex exclaimed quietly, and added, pointing ahead in the near-total darkness, “and I think it’s coming fwom oveh thew!”

“Yes, Alex, I think you’re right! It would make sense after all this time—let’s only hope there’ll be a place to climb out of here!”

Dripping with sweat, hungry, and with a gnawing thirst made more acute by the sound of flowing water, Alex and Jamie struggled to their feet and scrambled with stiff and sore limbs toward the sound, modestly hopeful and intensely wishful for something—anything, even remotely—promising.

For another thirty minutes, though, they trudged toward the sound of the water, wrestling with increasingly muddy dirt that became knee-deep sludge sucking at their feet. Each fell multiple times, becoming slathered in mud. A faint light appeared in the distance, illuminating what appeared to be a hole in the wall of the crevice off to the right, just ahead. As they approached the rather small, dark circle of an opening, they heard a high-pitched chattering sound, as of dozens of miniature people conversing excitedly. Alex tapped Jamie on the shoulder and gestured with a finger for quiet. They stopped, attempting to understand the words, and then proceeded cautiously, hoping to pass the hole without being noticed.

But it was too late to hide their presence. The pitch of the sounds grew higher and louder, and seemed to be approaching them as the boys neared the hole. They stopped just short of the opening and peered into it. Alex stood up with a jolt, falling into Jamie. “Wats! Thew ah wats, Jamie!”

Indeed, a large rat that had been standing on its two hind legs just in front of Alex’s nose dropped to the ground and raced back into the hole—toward a dense pack of salivating rodents already agitated, awaiting a signal to attack. Alex and Jamie jumped past the hole and struggled feverishly in the mud tugging at their feet toward the dim light in the distance. As they neared the source of the light, they heard the racing waters of the river just ahead—and the scrambling of squealing bodies just behind them, swirling about the mouth of the hole and whipping themselves into a frenzy for an all-out assault.

The boys made a sharp left turn and stopped at the river’s edge; above them was a ceiling of rock covering the water, as if the river was running at that point underground. But the earth during the quake had shifted markedly where they now stood, forcing a large sheet of stone to slide over the top of the river basin. It was entirely dark off to the right, but daylight again was only fifteen feet beyond the overhang to their left. To get there, however, they would have to jump a long way down into the muddy, churning water, the depth of which was impossible to know without leaping.

Without hesitating, Alex said, “Come on! Wet’s go!”

But Jamie stood frozen in place, staring less at the roiling river than at the envisioned memory of a barely missed appointment with death in a river in Riven Valley that he did not want now to revisit.

“Jamie!” screamed Alex. “We have to jump!”

“Alex—I, I can’t!”

Alex was about to repeat the urgent command when, upon hearing the rats suddenly advancing, he grabbed Jamie by his sleeve and pulled him over the edge. They plunged beneath the surface of the troubled water, only to resurface moments later well downstream, coughing and spluttering in the daylight. Alex, still holding onto Jamie, looked back and saw dozens of rats, poised above the water where only seconds earlier the two of them had stood. Jamie recalled hearing that cats had nine lives; he now wondered how many Alex and he had, and how many had already been used up.

They bobbed and rolled swiftly down the river, each hanging onto the other and without speaking, other than to give alerts, such as, “Jamie! A wock!” or “Alex! Push off!” or “Look out!” or “Going under!”

The water was surprisingly warm, and currents billowing up from below seemed to hold them aloft without their having to swim or even try to float. They traveled in this fashion for nearly an hour, searching the banks far ahead for a place to land; but everywhere they looked the banks were either too steep or entirely nonexistent—and they were moving too swiftly to take advantage of any shallow ones that might come along. The river flowed on for miles in a ravine carved thirty feet into the earth, so Alex and Jamie had no idea what any of the landscape outside the riverbed looked like along the way.

Finally, the river began to slow markedly, branching on both sides into a number of smaller streams and creeks, and thick stands of trees along the banks above them leaned over the water, turning twilight to dusk. The riverbed rose. Soon the banks were nearly level with the water, and Alex and Jamie found themselves floating gently through a dense forest, able to touch bottom and head for land at will along navigable shorelines. Since they were making progress toward someplace, however, and the ride was pleasant, they decided to wait for a while before beaching themselves. Occasionally a blackbird would give out a raspy chirp and flit rapidly from view. Otherwise, Alex and Jamie saw no other signs of life except the trees—the highest branches of which began to swirl wildly in a suddenly-freshening wind; the tree limbs squeaked and groaned as if conspiring with one another.

Soon, however, the trees thinned and the wind turned feathery, barely stirring the topmost branches.

A short while later the riverbed deepened once again and the trees soon disappeared, or at least disappeared from view. Everything all about them was again still.

“Wook, Jamie!” Alex whispered, pointing straight up. “What ah they, Jamie?” Jamie looked up and saw perhaps a half dozen spots, as if hovering in a pack, high in the sky, nearly to the clouds.

“I don’t know, Alex, but I’m thinking we should stay as still as possible—and try not to be seen.”

As they floated without stirring in a lazy current, they heard in the stillness only the sound of the water gently lapping the shores. The spots circled high overhead for a short while and then slowly dispersed out of sight.

It was just then, however, that the most startling of sounds shattered the stillness.