Mundus Cerialis

by Sharon Bidwell

  Nathanial was not a strategist, and he knew he had no head for military thinking, but it seemed clear to him that keeping the creatures bottlenecked in the tunnel was only going to last for so long. But, of course, there was little else that could be done. The corridor itself was narrow, and they were being pushed back bit by bit, each inch costing them the life of at least one miner. He looked around. What could he add? Just another body carrying a useless weapon.

  He caught Blayney’s eye. The man was talking to one of his miners. He beckoned Nathanial over. “Professor, I need you to go with Wendt here, we’re going to blow this corridor, bring the whole thing down on them.”

  Now Nathanial understood. They had no intention of keeping the creatures back, Folkard and the miners were merely a diversion, attempting to hold them at bay while Blayney blew the corridor.

  “Anything I can do,” Nathanial agreed.

  Blayney noticed Annabelle, who was even now retrieving a weapon from a dying man who had been pulled from the front line. “And get your sister out of here. This is no place for womenfolk!”

  Nathanial nodded knowingly. “Would that I could,” he said, then looked at Wendt. “Dynamite then?”

  The German miner grinned at him. Without another word the two men hared off. Nathanial did not give Annabelle another thought for he knew she was quite capable of defending herself. Besides which, he hoped she would show Blayney a thing or two about womenfolk that he didn’t know.

  As they ran, Nathanial said; “Thank you, for saving my sister.”

  Wendt glanced at Nathanial, smiling. “She is remarkable.”

  That she was. “Do we even know why these creatures are attacking? Or where they came from?”

  The look on Wendt’s face said it all. He knew the answer to both questions, but he was not at liberty to say. It was a pity, but by the time they returned with the dynamite Nathanial was certain he’d get the truth out of Wendt. Seemed to be a good and honourable chap, and Nathanial could not help but think that this attack was the consequence of the actions of less honourable men.

  4.

  FOLKARD WAS STILL not convinced Blayney would hold his end of the plan, and if he did then how much time would he give the men to get out of the corridor? He would have preferred to be handling the deployment of the explosives himself, but he trusted Blayney at the head of the defensive position even less. Although Folkard was certain Blayney deserved to be here, fighting these things off. Who knows, maybe he would be one of the dead miners by now? There was no doubt in Folkard’s mind that Blayney was responsible for all this.

  It was his experience that natives did not attack without cause.

  Another miner fell, the bull-like creature snapping his neck with its large hands. “Morgan, get him out of here!” Folkard ordered, and the short heliograph operator brushed forward to pull the dead man away. Several miners around him took up hacking and slashing at the creatures to make sure little harm came to Morgan.

  This was useless. Unless Blayney set those charges soon there’d be no one in Messor Base to protect. Once again they were forced back, as more of the bull creatures surged forward, spears ripping into the miners at the front.

  Folkard glanced back at Mister Fenn, who was moving more miners into position. They needed a show of force. He didn’t know how intelligent these creatures were, but he hoped they were as frightened of loud noises as their Earth counterparts.

  “Fenn, here!”

  The seaman looked over at his captain and forced his way through the miners. “Sir?” he asked, barely having room for a salute.

  “Are you armed?”

  Fenn looked down at the iron bar he held, but pulled out his revolver.

  “Of course you are,” Folkard said with a smile. He would never have selected Fenn for this mission had he not been fully trained. “Let’s see if we can slow these creatures down a bit, shall we?”

  With a nod both men aimed their guns and fired. Two clean shots and two of the bull creatures dropped. For a moment the rest of them stopped. Folkard was not an expert on the expressions of beasts of burden, but he felt sure he saw alarm in their dark eyes. Grunts and hisses came from the creatures. He was about to order the miners to push them back, when he felt it again.

  The Heart.

  He had to go through that tunnel.

  He shook his head. Now was not the time, but what else could he do? “Fenn, try and hold the line, I’m going in!”

  The seaman looked at his captain as if he were mad, and for all Folkard knew maybe he was. How many other men listened to the voices in their heads?

  He raised his gun and fired again, and with each shot one of the creatures dropped, but their alarm had abated. Now they simply surged forward with increased fury, making sure to steer clear of the man with the deadly weapon. Folkard couldn’t worry about the miners now, although he feared their resistance to the creatures was waning.

  It couldn’t matter to him. He had to heed the Heart.

  5.

  HE KNEW IT! That damned captain. Blayney knew he couldn’t be trusted. He just wanted to be at the front so he could snoop himself, uncover the secrets he was so interested in.

  Blayney would show him. He removed his own revolver—it had belonged to his father, a Colt Single Action Peacemaker, one he kept in good working order, and pushed his way through the miners. Up until now he had needed to be careful as he carried it; as was typical of the type, the revolver had a touchy hammer, just the slightest movement would set it off, and to that end it only ever carried five bullets, the empty cylinder safe against the hammer. But such safety measures were not needed now.

  It was like walking against a tide. The miners were being forced back, the horned beasts winning out through sheer brute force. But Blayney was not to be beaten. He raised his gun, but before he could use it a miner was slammed into him, knocked back by the force of a particularly brutal buffalo. The gun fell from his grasp.

  Any chance of finding the gun was gone. The buffalo was almost upon him. Blayney looked up at it in horror.

  “Come on then, boyo! Do your bloody worst, it won’t bring your children ba…!” His words were cut short by the splatter of dark thick blood hitting his face.

  The creature dropped, half of its face missing. Blayney turned around, and found Brooker’s sister standing behind him, his gun held firmly in her hand.

  “Fall back!” she said with such force that the miners around her did not hesitate. Blayney could only look at her in shock.

  He had been saved by a woman. A woman!

  6.

  MON DIEU. HE hadn’t known such pain could come from such a small injury. He suffered what he could only describe as instant frostbite. The flesh around the bite lost colour. Ice seeped through his veins. A metallic taste filled his mouth; he’d bitten his own tongue!

  As soon as awareness came back to him, he shook the spider off, but it fell only a short way and landed on his leg. Again, it rushed up his body and bit, but this time was defeated. Thank goodness for the tough fabric of the miner’s jacket and for the garment being long enough. If the spider had stayed on his leg its bite might have penetrated, but it was already moving. It seemed to work out it had bitten his hand and that was where it headed. With a yell, Arnaud twisted and somehow he managed to crush it, but he had little time left. Other spiders were dropping, and now he struggled to cling to the spearhead. The pain had eased into numbness, but his hand was stiffening.

  Another spider landed. Arnaud tried to lift the blade. The spider crept along a thread. Sweat beaded his forehead. Another spider dropped beside him. His hand was shaking. The spider sprung…

  Bang.

  The sound of a shot made Arnaud start, but instead of worrying about the ringing in his ears, Arnaud spared hardly any time glancing at his saviour, sawing at the threads. His weight shifted. Another report of gunfire, another exploded spider. The creatures seemed to hesitate before another tried its luck.

  Maybe there was another shot
, maybe there wasn’t. Arnaud couldn’t hear well enough to be certain whether what he heard was reality or imagination. The threads parted, he fell, landed on his feet and stumbled forwards. A hand grabbed him, tugging him along, and he staggered out of the clearing, then kept going until that same grip pulled him around and made him stop.

  Arnaud went to his knees, gasping, cradling his injured hand, amazed to see he still gripped the spearhead. White threads dangled from it. Were there any spiders on him? He shuddered at the thought, had not the energy to look. If he felt another bite, he’d know soon enough, but he believed he had escaped.

  Sound gradually returned, muffled but increasing. He could hear his own breathing and that of the man beside him. He looked up. A tall man, bearded face, with kind eyes, stared back at him, his gun still in his hand. There was something about the way the man appraised him.

  “Merci,” Arnaud said, “you found me in the stick of time.”

  A dim recognition crossed the man’s features. “Doctor Fontaine, I presume?” he asked, and Arnaud nodded. “Bit of a sticky situation you found yourself in back there.”

  7.

  IT WAS OVER. At least, by the time Nathanial and Wendt returned, it might as well have been. The buffalo creatures had forced the miners deep into the corridor, and now it was almost a free for all. The miners were doing their best, but the buffalos continued, regardless of the bits of mining tools that happened to be sticking out of their hides.

  Nathanial looked around. They couldn’t plant the dynamite now, too many of the miners would have been killed, including Annabelle. She was mid-way in the corridor, standing back to back with Jack, both fighting for their lives, while a further scan of the corridor showed no sign of Folkard. Dead bodies littered the floor, mostly human, but he couldn’t tell if Folkard was one of them.

  Jack slammed the butt of his pistol into the weak point between one of the buffalos eyes. The creature staggered back, but it was not deterred for long. The distraction was all Fenn needed to retrieve a drill head from the floor, which he then rammed deep into the creature’s right eye. That, at last, dropped the brute.

  Blayney rushed over to Nathanial and Wendt. “Get the dynamite in place!” he yelled.

  Nathanial was dimly aware of Wendt moving away, but his attention was taken up by the sight of another miner backing against the wall. He was barely a man, blood covering his clothes and face. Nathanial looked around for a weapon. There, on the floor near Annabelle, a gun!

  Nathanial forced his way through the fighting, but he was felled by the weight of a dead body thrown against him. He tried to pull himself back up, but stopped when his eyes alighted on the scene before him.

  The young man was being torn, literally, limb from limb by two of the buffalos. Nathanial could do nothing but watch the brutal act. The boy—Nathanial could hardly call him a man—screamed, but as one of the bulls wrenched his head from his body, the scream died out into a gurgle.

  As bile rose into his mouth, Nathanial’s analytical mind wondered why. Why had that boy been the victim of such an attack, when all the other dead miners were left, largely, intact?

  8.

  “THAT BITE LOOKS nasty.”

  It was but it didn’t seem to be growing any worse. Arnaud wrapped a rag around it for now. “And you found me, how?”

  “I didn’t.” Folkard hesitated. “You know more about this mission than I am comfortable with, and will likely learn anything of which you are not already aware from the professor if not I. I was following…” Folkard broke off. “Tell me, do you happen to have any minerals about your person?”

  Arnaud couldn’t hide his surprise. He knew he was frowning but he lifted the bag over his head and set about showing Folkard some of the samples. The captain’s hand went straight to one roll of cloth and then another. Unerringly, he chose those that contained the brown stones.

  “These are what we seek.” The captain looked around. “Do you know where there are more?”

  “Nearby? Oui.”

  “You would save me a great deal of time and trouble showing me where, especially as then we may need to fight our way out of here.”

  Arnaud felt a little lost in the conversation but the sooner he did as Folkard asked the sooner he could be away from this place. He set off.

  “Nathe… Pardonnez-moi. Professor Stone is here? You would not lie to me, non?” Fine so maybe the way he phrased the question did sound peculiar, but these British. So reserved. Did Folkard have to look at him like that? “Forgive me. I have…been through much.”

  “Of that I have no doubt, but as I have told you, when you see the others do try to remember that we are using aliases.”

  “Mais oui.” Arnaud tried to imagine calling Nathanial William and couldn’t. To Arnaud, he would always be Nathanial.

  9.

  “THESE WILL BE sufficient?” For some reason Folkard wanted these minerals, the more the better, if Arnaud wasn’t mistaken.

  “I would like to carry more but these will suffice if needs be. They will do for now, and you’ve certainly led me to a rich deposit. One not all that far from the entrance, conveniently. Should we have the opportunity to return that is good to know.”

  “The fighting increases.”

  Folkard looked up from where he was stuffing some of the largest stones in his pockets. “Yes. We must move.”

  “What began this?” Arnaud was partly talking to himself, but Folkard took it as a genuine question.

  “I can only answer that in part. The first I knew of trouble was when one of Blayney’s men dashed into the office interrupting a discussion. He was ranting about horned beasts from hell.”

  “Can we blame them?” When Folkard shot him a look, Arnaud grimaced. “I believe I may have the answer as to why they are fighting. Why they…turned on me.”

  Weighed down with even more minerals—Arnaud refused to give up the other samples no matter how unimportant Folkard considered them to be—he felt the exertion more keenly, but within a few minutes they were at a point where they could look and see…

  A pile of dead youngsters, one with the pickaxe that had taken its life buried in its skull.

  He pointed. “Enfants. Children.”

  Folkard blinked, clearly not understanding. “Well, I suppose any animal would protect its young.”

  “Non! They are not animals, Folkard. Not as you mean.”

  “Another race?”

  “Oui. One not as advanced as some, but yes. I call them Bubalus. I thought they were defending their land, but they were in truth…protéger…fighting for their young.”

  “We must get back and tell the others.”

  That they must, but how could he ask Minos for forgiveness? If he could think of a way… Mon dieu but there wasn’t one. It hardly mattered whether these men had done this thing out of maliciousness or ignorance—he could never explain this as a mistake. The Bubalus were unpleasant and brutal in many ways, still had many years of development before they became civilised. They were neither men nor true beasts, but many from Earth would never understand the distinction. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself.

  Chapter Eight

  “Blood Sacrifice”

  1.

  BLAYNEY WAS GOOD at giving orders and shoving people around, but when it came to being in the thick of things he wasn’t much use to anyone. He couldn’t even shoot his revolver properly. Annabelle had it in her hand once again, while Blayney stood behind her, and continued to interfere with the work Nathanial and Herr Wendt were doing. She didn’t like the thought of sacrificing so many, but she could see there was little option in that regard.

  It puzzled her why these animals were attacking so viciously. There was something driving them forward, that much was clear. They had a purpose. No one attacked with such tenacity unless they were after something specific.

  She was worried about Folkard. He had gone into the enemy’s territory, a place beyond Messor Base that she had heard nothing about. Not
even a whisper in the whole time she’d been on the base. She wondered what would compel him to do such a…

  Of course!

  It had to be the Heart. If that was so, she trusted he was safe. The Heart had its own agenda, of that she was sure, and having Folkard killed would not serve that goal well. Fortunately Folkard had left Mister Fenn behind, and the engineer was doing a valiant job of rallying the miners in defence of the base. More so than anything Blayney had done so far. She could see Fenn having a long and distinguished naval career, assuming he survived this siege.

  She was glad to see that Doctor Mason was not in the fray; they would need all the medical help they could get when this was over, and perhaps Nathanial would get to use his recent research from Blackwood’s. Miners were falling everywhere. There was only about five feet of the corridor left under their control, soon the buffalo creatures would force their way into the base-proper, and when that happened they might as well give up. The creatures would rampage through the base and no amount of mining equipment would stop them.

  Annabelle checked the gun. Four down, so just one bullet left. She would have to make it count. She looked up and saw a miner struggling before her. Broad he may have been, but he wouldn’t last long in hand-to-hand combat with the buffalo.

  “Hitto vie peto!”

  Annabelle’s blood froze at the sound of that snarling voice. Eero Koivunen! When Blayney had said he wanted every able man he really meant it. For a moment Annabelle considered aiming the gun at him, but she fought against it. No, she would not be a cold blooded killer. But, then, Koivunen had tried to…

  She raised the gun.

  And watched as the buffalo tore at Koivunen’s neck with its large jaws. She knew she could pull the trigger, save the Fin with a single shot, but she didn’t. Instead she stood there watching him being mauled to death.

  2.

  “WE HAVE TO get down there.”

  Past the marauding wildebeests. For one moment, Arnaud almost wished he had woken up to what constituted a normal day on Ceres. In a cave. Fetching water. Slicing up snails. He felt too tired for this. Although he had warned Folkard of the ill-effects of the stones, he, too, had picked up a large quantity at Folkard’s urging, necessity outweighing common sense, but he was beginning to slow. When Folkard struck up conversation, he was grateful.