Sons of the Lost

by Glynn James

  He unscrewed it, feeling the weight of the sloshing liquid inside. Ten, twelve ounces at least. Enough to take the edge from his bone fractures. Rav took a swig, and the grain alcohol made his eyes water. He chuckled and then looked around as if the noise would bring the Valk back.

  “Fuck ’em and their pale asses.”

  Rav leaned against the wall, standing on an outcrop of rock high above the floor of the breach. The stone ran down at about a thirty-degree angle which he’d be able to slide down on his backside. But if he did that, he’d be trapped on the floor, like the Valk. And even though some of them had crossed the platform and continued through the tunnels, he thought that was a better option. The tunnels had to lead somewhere.

  Rav took another drink, screwed the cap back on, and slid the flask into his pocket. He looked to his feet and followed the ridge of rock to the right where it came within two feet of the tunnel opening on one side of the breach—the tunnel from which the Valk had originally appeared. That side had to lead back to a lair, based on the location of the chasm compared to where the bridge had been. These foul creatures had been coming from Eliz to the west, and their movements below ground seemed consistent with what the clans had seen on the surface.

  Gunney was down there. Somewhere. And probably not far from where Rav stood. The man had not been as fortunate; he had not been grasped by a tree branch of the gods and saved from a cracked skull at the bottom of this gorge. That’s when it hit him.

  “Jonah thinks we’re both dead.”

  Nobody would be coming to rescue him. The Elk would not be pacing the breach at the surface, yelling down in the hopes of communicating with survivors. They had seen the bridge fall, and the men on it to their death. Or so it had been for many. Why not him? Why did he make it when Gunney had not? The questions began to ache more than his broken bones, and he decided it best to focus on what he knew, on what he could do.

  The Valk were using the tunnels, as they always had. But they had also found a way to cross the breach. They were going through it, not across it. Rav wanted to scream, to run and find Jonah to let him know about the threat they would never see coming. But he couldn’t, because there were unlikely to be Elk above and only dead ones below. That the Valk’s tunnels could reach this far out from Eliz was unnerving enough, but the fact that they went across the breach and farther—who knew how far—was terrifying.

  A noise stirred Rav from his thoughts. He felt the air inside the chasm shift along with the resurgence of a stench that was not coming from the mangled bodies. He scuttled along the ridge until he was within an arm’s length of the opening of the tunnel. He told himself not to look down, knowing that one slight miscalculation would drop him to the ground—alive and trapped as the Valk approached.

  Rav reached out with his good arm and used it to pull his upper body into the tunnel. He rolled over onto the platform they had put in place to cross to the other side. He blinked, black circles threatening to overtake his vision, the pain from his broken collarbone escorting him toward unconsciousness.

  “Get up, get up,” he said to himself as hissing intensified from deep within the tunnel.

  He whimpered, his face burning from the embarrassment the fear had driven out of him. Rav got to his knees and could hear their teeth grinding as they came closer. He looked across the platform to the other side of the breach, where the tunnel opening sat in silence like a huge, black eye. Maybe these had been the ones searching the bodies, and now they had found a way to get back into the tunnel? At that moment, he knew what needed to be done both to save himself and to give Jonah and the Elk a chance.

  His collarbone felt like it was on fire. It hurt whether he kept his arm to his side or not, so Rav gave up trying to save himself the pain to make it across the makeshift platform before the Valk reached him. And may the gods have mercy if those who had already crossed came back through the tunnel.

  Rav listed to one side as he put one foot down after another. The planks the Valk had scavenged to create the platform appeared old and dry-rotted. If they cracked or gave way, he’d most likely die from the fall to solid rock below.

  Eyes flashed in the darkness behind as the Valk approached. Rav looked over his shoulder at them and then spun around to look ahead, hoping their kin had not yet retraced their steps. If the Valk appeared at the mouth of both tunnel openings on each side of the breach, he’d be better off tossing himself to his death below.

  He lumbered on, his injuries making him look like a drunk staggering from a tavern. Rav ran toward the black eye in front of him while the white devils emerged from the one behind him. They moved like insects, crisscrossing each other’s paths, ducking and dipping between one another. Rav had a fifteen—maybe twenty—foot lead on them.

  He pushed his legs onward, and the black circles returned at the edges of his vision. When he was within five feet of the mouth of the tunnel, Rav realized just getting there wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to push the two planks of the makeshift platform off the edge of the tunnel floor—with the Valk on them and in pursuit.

  A humming filled his ears. The sound intensified as the horde of bottom-dwellers approached. Rav leaped forward, his knees slamming against the ancient cement floor of the tunnel, his upper body positioned inside the opening while his legs stretched out behind him on the planks. He rolled over and saw the first of the Valk now only ten feet away, and the smell of rotting meat invaded his nostrils.

  “Closed for construction,” he said, using the heels of his boots to push at the end grain of the one-inch thick planks.

  The first one slid off the edge and dropped to the floor below, taking the Valk on that plank down with it. Some hit the ground and didn’t move, while others crawled back into the darkness after dropping twenty feet or so to the rock floor below.

  A hand reached up and grabbed Rav by the ankle. He shrieked, looking down his leg at a Valk warrior trying to pull himself up and over the edge of the platform using Rav’s leg as a rope. He kicked at the creature’s fingers as if trying to dispel an angry rat.

  But the other plank had to be dislodged or he would be overrun by the rest. Rav leaned back, closed his eyes, and pushed his right heel into the edge of the board with as much force as he could muster. At first, the plank didn’t move. But then something shifted, and he felt his foot kick free and into the open air. A shriek came before the plank fell into the chasm, landing on the rock floor and clattering against the board that Rav had dislodged only moments earlier.

  His leg was free of the white hand.

  “For the love of shit pots!”

  Rav sat up, leaning back against the ragged opening of the tunnel. He pulled his arm in to his side and leaned over the edge, grimacing as he remembered the painful throb. The dead Valk lay in bloody tangles while those who survived the fall crawled into the darkness. He turned around, holding his breath and hoping the others weren’t backtracking to see what had caused the commotion. They would come soon, he thought. They would surely have heard the noise, and they wouldn’t be long.

  He had destroyed the platform, and that would prevent more Valk from crossing the breach and hunting Jonah and his people. At least for now. But that had not solved his problems. Now he had to figure out how the hell he was going to get out of this tunnel and back onto the land above, and the only way to do that was the dark hole that cut deep into the rock face ahead of him.

  “I hate tunnels,” he cursed before stepping into the darkness.

  Chapter 12

  Jonah could smell the venison roasting on the coals from the night before as he walked into the camp. A fine mist had descended upon the forest, and the clan folk had been going about their morning tasks silently.

  He had brought several of his old warriors along and dispatched them to help Briar’s hunters pick up what remained of the camp.

  Both the Valk and Cygoa weighed heavily on his mind. While having all the clans united under an alliance would swell their ranks, it also posed logistical
challenges for both the commandeering and resources of each unit.

  Jonah recognized several hunters who had stood next to Briar through most of the skirmishes. They shoveled dirt on the fire as Briar came through the trees, pushing the pine branches out of his face.

  “Jonah,” Briar said. “I did not expect to see you until later this morning.”

  “I figured it best to get a good start. There are things I would like to discuss with you, plans for moving the clans out of harm’s way.”

  A hunter approached Briar, out of breath and his face red with sweat beads on his cheeks.

  “What is it?”

  The man looked from Briar to Jonah and then back to Briar.

  “Jonah is the chief of the Elk clan. We have an alliance with him and his people. Whatever you need to say, you can say in front of him.”

  Jonah kept quiet, watching how Briar interacted with his hunters. The man’s tone and the words he chose demonstrated natural leadership ability. Jonah had seen it during fights, and now he was a witness to it in the camp.

  “Loner,” the man said. “We cannot find him.”

  “What do you mean, you cannot find him?” Briar asked. “Where is he?”

  Jonah shifted his weight to one leg and folded his arms across his chest. He had not had many interactions with Loner, but clearly, this was a concern to Briar.

  “We do not know. He had a shift on guard duty last night, and the man who came after thought that maybe he had gone to sleep early. No one has seen him since late last night, and his belongings are gone as well.”

  Briar waved at the hunter and sent him off to take care of his morning tasks.

  “Should we go looking for him?” Jonah asked Briar.

  “Wherever he has gone, he has gone of his own volition. I hold no commitments over any of my men’s heads.”

  “I understand,” Jonah said. “But is there no sense of loyalty to his fellow hunters?”

  Jonah saw the flicker in Briar’s eyes, and he recognized that this was not the first time Briar had experienced doubts about Loner.

  “It does not matter. I will instruct the rest of my hunters to pack up the camp. We can’t afford to wait for Loner to stroll back into camp from whatever adventure he happens to be on. If he chose to take his things and head off into the forest, that is his business and not mine.”

  Jonah nodded, allowing Briar to handle the situation however would be best for his clan of hunters. Jonah looked around, guiding Briar to a more secluded spot in the trees where they would be beyond the earshot of the other men.

  “The Valk. They continue moving west. Something tells me the breach will not prevent them from crossing.”

  “With women and children, the old folks and carts, it will be impossible to outrun them. And that is assuming Cygoa don’t catch us first.”

  Jonah understood Briar’s concern, and he shared the same fear, which was why he wanted to move the conversation beyond the prying ears of the other hunters.

  “I think you and your hunters should hang back. Keep a rear guard as we move the clans onward. You are nimble and fast. If you see any threats coming, you’ll be able to get word to me quickly.”

  Briar rubbed the stubble on his chin. He looked to his men, packing up the camp, and then back into Jonah’s eyes. “There are other options, Jonah.”

  “Such as?”

  “What if we explored a northerly route? We don’t know exactly where the grumble has split the earth. Let me take my men up Ninety-Five and see what I can find.”

  This was not the first time Jonah had considered a northerly route, but it would be impossible to take the Elk and the rest of the clans, with all their carts, into an unknown situation. The risk was simply too great for all the clans. By sending Briar and his men, he could minimize the risk to the Elk, but at the same time, he would be left without the protection of the deadly accuracy of their bows.

  “You came from lands to the north. What do you expect to find that we don’t already know about?”

  Briar raised his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips. “The Ninety-Five goes north and crosses into the ruins of Virginia. Although I don’t think it has been inhabited for a long time, the abandoned city of Richmond could provide us some temporary shelter. Or, at the very least, it could give us an opportunity to pause and decide what to do about our pursuers.”

  “And what if the Valk have already infested Richmond?” Jonah asked, gripping his axe with one hand. “What if the Cygoa are waiting there for us?”

  “Then we won’t be any worse off than we are right now.”

  He thought about Briar’s idea and the risk involved in dividing their fighting forces. Losing those bows would not be ideal, but on the other hand, they were running out of options. Eliz had been overrun, and Rocky Mount had been burned to the ground.

  “I have no idea what the breach has done to the James River. Nor do I have any clue if it has disrupted access to the coastal region. I’m not saying this is a solution to our situation, but I do think it’s worth exploring.”

  “I agree with you,” Jonah said. “But how will we know if the northerly route is safe? How will you get word back to us?”

  “Some of my men are fast and light of foot. Given what’s at stake, I would suggest I send a direct messenger back to you rather than relying on some other form of communication.”

  Jonah sighed, realizing what Briar was going to risk making sure the Elk clan found a haven. He put a hand on Briar’s shoulder and smiled.

  “Okay then. Pack up your camp and have your men head north on Ninety-Five. Just remember that we are heading along the Eighty-Seven, and the Sixty-Four all the way to the lake, for the time being. I will expect word from you in ten days’ time.”

  “That would be possible if the trail remained intact. But we have no idea what the grumble has done to Ninety-Five farther north. If it takes a few extra days, don’t assume the worst.”

  “Assuming the worst can lead to the best results when lives are at stake. I hope you don’t take that personally.”

  Briar smiled. “I never do.”

  Chapter 13

  The priests shuffled about the room. Water still glistened on the stone where the blood had been washed away. Gaston sat on his throne and watched them, smiling to himself as their robes fluttered behind them in silent urgency. The sun had dropped below the horizon several hours before, the last rays disappearing into the night. The stone of the ruin released the day’s heat and brought a darkened chill.

  Morlan had handed him the coven, and with it, the central power force of the Cygoa. The leader both feared and revered Gaston, and their last exchange had not been lost on him. But he had to be cautious of his own hubris and not allow his ego to get in the way of the book. The fading ink on the weathered pages had not led him astray so far, and he would not forsake it now.

  “Anything else, my lord?”

  He contained a chuckle. The priests addressed him as they did Morlan. And if the warrior was not present, he could see no harm in it.

  “Please pull the doors shut on your way out.”

  The priest bowed and backed out of the room, closing the doors as Gaston had instructed. He sat still for several moments, catching the fading scent of spilled blood upon the night breeze. He looked out of the window and into the ruins where torches and campfires had sprung up to chase back the darkness.

  Gaston reached inside his robe and took out the book. His fingers moved over the worn cover, and he thought about the hundreds of miles he had traveled with it. The book had taken him across the northern lands, to the south, to the east, and now here in the western lands where the Cygoa would again push south and east in the hopes of crushing Jonah and the Elk.

  The door was shut, and Gaston no longer heard the steps of the priests on the stone floor. He opened the book and ran his finger along the edge of the worn pages. He stopped at one particular passage he could not remember reading.

  “The outsiders shall gather
where they will be overtaken by the creatures from within. The dead and dying shall cover the plains, and the crows will feast on the rot. He who forsakes the ways of the old will succumb to them.”

  This was not the first time Gaston had seen the Valk. The vile creatures seemed to have inhabited most of what the old world left beneath the surface. However, he had never heard of so many concentrated in one area, and the word coming back from scouts was that the whole of the eastern lands, all the way from Eliz to this new breach, was overrun with them. It was as if they had been waiting for generations to reclaim the surface. The Valk warriors had evolved and adapted like a lethal virus, and now the grumbles had shaken their underground homes and they spewed forth. Gaston had no doubt that the book had foretold of their rise. The book had always been his guiding light, his truth. He turned a few pages and came to another passage.