On the trail below, thudding footfalls approached, accompanied by various creaks and cracks, and once, a curse and a cry of pain. She listened tensely, but the sounds passed by without incident and faded, lost in the crickets’ symphony. Continuously she scanned the darkness, pulling out the rough verticals that were trees, the pale humps of rocks. Her belt’s energy field, amplified and integrated by helmet and breastplate, not only protected her from being shot, it extended her range of visible light—at both ends of the spectrum. With it on she could tolerate light that would normally blind her, could see Aggillon and Tohvani manifestations that unenhanced eyes would miss, and enjoyed a significantly improved level of night vision.
A sound drew her eye to the left—it was Pierce shifting onto his side. She could see his face with its week’s growth of beard and placid brow. He’d made peace days ago with his failure at the fire curtain, but she still struggled with it. Of course, it was none of her business. It was Elhanu he’d offended, Elhanu he answered to. And since he was still alive, still wore the circles and bars, and had even used the belt immediately after his failure to destroy the curtain that had beguiled him, she had to conclude Elhanu had forgiven him. And if he had, how could she not?
She had tried—really tried. Except . . . somehow she hadn’t been able to return to that place of giddy warmth she’d known on the mountainside. Instead she’d been cool toward him, unfailingly professional, and without conspicuously avoiding him, managed never to end up alone with him. He’d borne her reaction stoically, patiently, saying nothing. But though she knew she was hurting him—again—she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
Stars blanketed the night sky when the voices in the Cauldron rose to a dull roar. That, plus a high-pitched tone that stabbed deep in her ears and buzzed over her skin, told her the Trogs had turned on the fire curtain. The screams started soon after. Some were from the Trogs— savage vocalizations of strength and power and pleasure. But then came the wails of their victims, betrayed by the high-pitched edge of hysteria and the fade-out into ragged breathlessness.
Callie tried not to think about her friends, but it grew increasingly difficult. Doubt assailed her like a cold wind snatching at the shutters of her soul, rattling the door, gusting down the chimney. What if Pierce was mistaken after all and they
were
in the wrong place? What if they should have left earlier? What if there was no passage or it was blocked? What if he was unwittingly being drawn here by his craving for the fire curtain? What if it wasn’t unwitting at all but a deliberate conspiracy?
The night air carried a stench of burning flesh, the screams raking her nerves as the pestering doubts interwove with nightmare visions of her friends’ torture. She pushed the images away, but they returned again and again. This was what awaited them if they were caught tomorrow. Perhaps she could use her weapon on herself before it came to that. A head shot would kill her just as certainly as it killed a mutant, wouldn’t it?
But Elhanu had forbidden suicide as a means of exit from the Arena. And in the heat of battle her shot might go wild. . . .
Pierce rolled over, moaning, and a new concern seized her. What if he had a nightmare? What if he started one of those screaming fits?
She swallowed, grimly put the notion aside, and flipped on her belt again. As it purred back to life she set herself to find and focus on the link within, wishing she dared close her eyes.
Her breath caught and she stiffened, hands tightening on her SI. Something had moved. There. A stealthy form glided from one tree to another, melting into the darkness. Her heart drummed against her chest. Her hands ached from the intensity of her grip. Around her the crickets droned on, and the distant snap of a branch echoed through the night.
Moments dragged by.
She was about to exhale when she saw it again, lurking behind a tree ten yards downhill—a lean, pale-skinned form, naked despite the chill. Tohvani. Its eyepits were blacker than shadow, and they pierced right into her, snatching up her mind.
They were doomed. All of them. No one had ever penetrated the full congregation of Trogs. Only those who found the meadow empty could pass. Pierce had made a mistake, and they would pay. Mocking laughter sounded in her soul, then silenced with a cold wrenching as the creature vanished, leaving her gasping. Then something dropped onto her shoulder, and she lurched violently before she realized it was Mr. C come to take the next watch.
“Sorry,” he whispered as he settled beside her. “Didn’t mean to startle you. What’s up?”
“Just another Watcher.”
“Ah.” He peered into the darkness. The number of Watchers had tripled over the last few days. “Did it speak to you?”
“Not directly.” But all those crazy fears had not been of her own making. It had used seeds from her thinking, yes, but they were magnified, embellished, saturated with emotion. Callie switched on her belt again, the vibration spreading warm comfort up her torso. Somehow she had to learn to keep it on longer. Preferably before tomorrow.
“It’ll be easier,” Mr. C said, “once you actually start.” His white beard glowed in the gloom.
“If I could just turn off my mind as easily as I turn off the belt. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.”
“There’s always the link. And exhaustion is a powerful soporific.”
“I don’t feel tired at all.”
“But you are.” He patted her shoulder. “You’ll make it tomorrow, lass. Your heart’s in the right place, and I have every confidence in you.”
She flushed with pleased surprise and gratitude. Even through the parka, his hand warmed her shoulder. Then, snorting, she drew her feet under her. “You’d think differently if you could see the wartorn battlefields of my mind. Good night, Mr. C.”
She joined the others and had just gotten comfortable when an ear-piercing wail arose from the valley. Guilt whipped at her, though she knew she could do nothing tonight. Whoever it was, she prayed they would hold on, that Elhanu would protect them. Her friends had the link within them, too, after all.
Folding her arms across her chest, she exhaled, searching for that blessed contact herself, and found it almost at once. As its quiet assurance spilled into her soul her doubts subsided. She relaxed, snuggling into the comfort, aware of a curious warmth in her shoulder where Mr. C had rested his hand. It radiated down her arm, across her chest, and up her neck, bringing with it an oily lethargy. Her eyelids drooped, her muscles sagged, her breathing slowed, and despite her earlier protestations, despite the awful noise, which was oddly distant now, she slept.
They split up the next morning. Gerry set off along the Cauldron’s rim with Pierce’s turquoise climbing rope looped across his chest and six ceramic carabiners clinking on his belt. He would circle around and rappel down the cliff, hopefully undetected, to find the slit and direct the others when they got there. He would also lay down covering fire if needed.
The rest of them descended the trail, stopping at their first closeup view of the Trogs’ camp. As Pierce had predicted, the mutants sprawled everywhere, sleeping off the night’s reveling. Around them, untended fires had smoldered to ash. Threads of smoke rose to join the blue pall overhead. Except for a couple of half-dozing sentries, nothing moved.
“Look at all the Watchers,” Dell whispered over Callie’s shoulder.
They clung to the Cauldron walls, gathered on the spit, stood in the trees and the water, and slunk throughout the fallen mutants. There were hundreds of them, and their presence was at once heartening and disturbing. This was most certainly a test, but one the Tohvani didn’t want them to pass. Would they alert their mutant servants? Could they?
Pierce’s gaze slid over them one by one—Tuck, Dell, Evvi, Mr. Chapman, and finally, Callie. He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something, then broke eye contact, drew a long breath and expelled it. “All right. Let’s do it.”
They eluded the inattentive sentries easily and spread out as they pressed toward the camp’s heart. Trogs lay everywhere, snoring vigorously, and the air reeked of liquor and urine and smoke, the stench worsening as the morning warmed. It was the most unnerving experience Callie had ever endured, not only because she was so visible—and so
small
—but because with every step she thumped and clinked and squeaked, and some of those steps took her directly over a mutant’s leg or hand. The fact that none were armed offered little comfort. This close they wouldn’t need weapons. Even the SI on automatic wouldn’t stop all of them. But she couldn’t worry about that or her belt wouldn’t work.
She turned it on. Again.
By now they were deep into the camp, well past the point of no return. She dodged a fallen mutant, slipped under a line of drying hides and around a skin teepee, and stopped in horror. Directly ahead, a stout wooden rack stood in the shade of a huge birch. On it hung a row of human bodies, clearly—
Grimly she tore her gaze away, fighting sudden dizziness. She was breathing a mile a minute and vomit clawed the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, drew in a deep shuddering breath, and hurried on, trying not to focus on the horror she passed. A Watcher’s laughter invaded her mind, drawing her attention back to where it stood among the bodies on the rack, enjoying her discomfort.
Distracted, she blundered into a pile of bloodied pans and rags and fell headlong in a clatter of metal. For a moment she lay gasping, stars pinwheeling across her vision, choking on the fear of discovery. Nearby, a mutant gagged, then went on snoring. She leaped up and hurried on, sweat hot and slick under her armpits. Her stomach hurt from the tension, and every time she checked her belt, she had to switch it back on. She kept trying to find the link, but there were too many distractions and no way could she stop and close her eyes.
The fire-curtain poles towered over her like the antlers of some monstrous beast, its ghostly emanations promising succor from the filth, relief from the tension and fear. The tents stood closer together here, the walkways occluded by bodies.
Then the pen loomed ahead, a lattice of roughly hewn poles twelve feet high lashed together with a top grating. Pierce melted the gate chain with his SLuB, and they stepped inside. The prisoners—bloodied, battered, and almost naked—clung to one another, regarding the intruders warily.
Whit, Teish, John, and, incredibly, Ian sat together on the right side. Behind them sat another familiar group—Karl, Jesse, Anna, and Brody Jaramillo, all Morgan supporters. They all still had their clothes, now filthy and tattered, and though they appeared unharmed, there was no doubt Ian—since Callie had seen an arrow pierce his chest—had been put through the curtain.
Whit gained his feet. Beside him, John blinked furiously, his earring glinting in the shadow. “Pierce?” he said. “Is that you?” He was up now, too, hurrying toward them, disbelief warring with hope. “Man, we thought you were dead! How did you get here?”
“Came over the mountain. Can you walk?”
“Yeah. But some of these others can’t.”
“We haven’t been able to see the slit,” Whit said. The Trogs had taken his patch, exposing the shriveled socket of his lost eye.
“It’s there.” Pierce turned to the others in the pen, explaining, “There’s an escape passage in the cliff across the river. We’ll take you there.”
Gaunt, pain-wracked faces gaped at him. Some people whimpered and drew away, but a few got up.
“Come on, folks,” Whit said. “Hop to.”
“NO!” A huge bare-chested man burst out of the group. “You’re lying,” he yelled, eyes rolling wildly. “You only want to—”
Pierce shot him through the heart. As he crumpled to the ground, Callie was not the only one to turn in horror.
“He’ll be fine,” Pierce said. “He’s healing already.”
And so he was. As they watched, his skin glowed yellow-green, and the hole stopped bleeding, then drew closed.
“He’s more mutant than human,” Pierce said. “He’d only try to hinder us.” He looked at the others wearily. “You’re free to come or stay, as you wish.”
As he strode from the pen, some of the prisoners shook free of their paralysis. They rose and stumbled toward the gate, voices lifting in soft exclamations of wonder until Whit’s rough command silenced them. Of the thirty captives, sixteen chose to go. Five were so far gone they were unable to choose and thus were brought along by their fellows, and the remaining nine were too terrified to move. Once they saw they were being left, however, they began to scream and bolted from the pen, blundering among the tents, stumbling over the sleeping mutants.
Without the prisoners, the rescuers might have made it to the cleft anyway, but their rescuees were injured, weak, and disoriented. They were only halfway to the river when a roar from behind signaled trouble. The first flight of quarrels came shortly thereafter, pelting the ground around them. Callie saw one bounce off Dell’s shoulder just ahead, repelled by the force of his armor. Beside him another slid through a skin tent. From somewhere to her right she heard Pierce yell for them to scatter.
She needed no second urging. Fortunately the only mutants yet awake were behind them. Those through which she careened were only beginning to stir. Another flight of quarrels rained upon her. She jumped a prostrate Trog, wove between two tents, and saw the cliff face looming ahead. The front-runners were already disappearing over the high bank along the river. One of the captives ran ahead of her, twisting and dodging. A quarrel appeared, as if by magic, in the middle of his back, hurling him forward to flop facedown beside a mutant.
Horror and fear rose up in Callie’s chest. She quenched them both, sought the link, and slapped on the belt just in time. Something slammed into her back, knocking her headlong into a tent. Dazed and gasping, pain radiating from her left shoulder, all she could think was that she was down, and panic nearly claimed her.
Desperately, painfully, she sucked air and groped for her belt. It was off again, but she might have just done that. And there was no blood. She decided it must have been a deflection. Sometimes the force of the blow could knock one down even if the quarrel was prevented from penetrating.