It was enough to lift some of the tension, and Cade sighed. It felt good to be so close to her. He’d been so engrossed in their survival, he’d hardly had a chance to talk to her.
“You know what I mean,” Grace said, grinning. “Cade knows this game. Knows how Abaddon thinks. If this smelly place was part of Abaddon’s plan for the Romans, at the very least we can find out what was there.”
Cade felt his head nodding, his chin bouncing on his chest. It would be so easy to sleep here. The cabin was already warming to the sun’s rays above.
But he could not allow them to rest. They had to move on, make camp in the spot where they had the best chance of discovering what new tools Abaddon had given the Romans.
“You know, this might all be a waste of time,” Yoshi said. “The Romans definitely checked out this death place, right? So what could we possibly find there that they overlooked?”
Cade shrugged. “Our advantage has to be the Codex. It sounds like the Romans attacked so soon after their arrival, they didn’t have time to find out what everything was. Marius said he only learned what the cannons were because Louis Le Prince told him.”
He thought a moment longer. “In fact, that’s a second thing. Even without the Codex, we are modern humans. More so than even Louis—if they could understand him properly then. Maybe there’s something there that he wouldn’t have recognized.”
“A rocket launcher?” Scott joked.
“Maybe,” Cade said, dead serious. “It could be a tank for all we know.” He sighed. “We won’t know for sure until we go there. But I know there’s something we can use. There has to be.”
“Well, all right, then,” Scott announced, leaping to his feet, then wincing and clutching his head. “Oh man, I think I need some water.”
Cade smiled and handed him his amphora.
“Thanks. And hey, I didn’t mean to put you down earlier. Just making a bad joke.”
Cade shook his head. “We’re all exhausted, man. Don’t worry about it.”
“You are right though,” Amber said, standing too. “We need to get going. I say we pull Quintus along; he’s had even less sleep than we have. I don’t know how accurate that map is, but it looks close. Maybe we can get there before nightfall, investigate in the daylight, and finally sleep when the sun sets.”
“Now you’re speaking my language,” Yoshi said. “I don’t care how bad it smells. I’d crawl up an elephant’s ass if I could get some sleep.”
There were groans all round, and then they were off again, Quintus snoring in one of the sleds.
As they trundled over the drawbridge, circling to the other side of the fort, Cade kept his eyes peeled for any Gray scouts. To his relief, he could see nothing but endless fields of purple grass, swaying against a soft breeze. It might have been beautiful … were it not for the timer, ticking away.
“Codex,” Cade said as they rounded the opposite side of the fort. “How long do we have?”
00:96:01:54
00:96:01:53
00:96:01:52
It was an ominous number, but there was nothing he could do. Only trudge on, ignoring the pain from his aching, blistered feet and the exhaustion that weighed his body like a suit of lead.
“What’s that smell?” Grace groaned, wrinkling her nose.
“It can’t be what we’re looking for,” Cade said. “We’ve hardly left the fort.”
But as he stepped farther into the grass, he noticed a well-worn path had carved a furrow, leaving black soil exposed. People had walked here, many times.
They followed the path, more for ease of travel than anything else, and the stench grew stronger. It was not the smell of death, of that Cade was certain. He had smelled enough of that in the previous rounds of the pantheon’s game to know that.
Soon enough, they discovered the source of the scent. An enormous, round pit, rimmed on one side with a bench of wood, holes cut into its top.
He almost choked at the smell. It was a cesspit—where the Romans defecated and urinated.
“My god,” Amber said, her voice nasal from her fingers pinching her nose. “That is disgusting.”
“I bet they missed the toilets back at the keep,” Scott said. “I know I do.”
Cade shuffled closer, the fetid air almost muggy as he peered over the bench’s edge. The pit was deep and wide, so much so that you could drop a double-decker bus in and it would hardly touch the sides.
“Come on,” Cade said. “We should keep moving.”
* * *
They saw it as a smudge on the horizon, hardly an hour after they left the fort. But it still seemed too far off. The going was tougher, for they had to wade through the tall grass with every step, and the struts of the sled kept tangling in the grass.
The smudge was a good sign, but the contenders were flagging. There was only so much they could ask of their bodies. Fueled on strips of hard jerky and a few mouthfuls of water, with hardly any sleep for two days, each step was a torment, and their progress imperceptible.
Cade almost wanted to give up—to return to the Romans and plead his case again. Perhaps they were wasting precious time, precious energy on this endeavor. Worse still, as doubts plagued his mind, Cade began to wonder if it was his own curiosity driving him more than logic.
If curiosity drove him to walk on, perhaps it would the others.
“So any guesses what it is?” Cade called out, his voice hoarse from heavy breathing.
For a moment there was no reply, only the panting of the others as they staggered on like zombies.
Then Scott’s voice piped up.
“All I’ve got is a triangle shape that smells like death,” he said. “Maybe … Yoshi’s underwear?”
It was a poor joke, but it elicited a laugh from the others.
“Joke’s on you,” Yoshi called out. “I haven’t worn any for months.”
Another laugh, this time more heartfelt.
“Seriously though,” Cade said. “Let’s guess.”
Silence. Then:
“Another fort?” Amber said. “Maybe one full of bodies after a battle. I mean, we’ve got Fort Caroline and Jomsborg. Why not another?”
Cade considered it.
“Would have to be a pretty crappy fort for them to want to go to Fort Caroline instead,” he said. “But I hear you on the bodies part.”
“It has to be a place with a roof, right?” Trix asked. “If the Romans considered making it their base. Like a church, with the triangle shape? Like, the Vikings raided English churches all the time, killed all the monks. Maybe Abaddon stuck with the Viking theme.”
“Right,” Cade said. “Could be.”
He thought for a moment. “I’d love it if it was a modern building,” he said. “From our time. Or even post–First World War. Imagine how much better things would be if we had actual guns?”
Bea gave a bitter laugh. “I think Abaddon likes to watch us bleed.”
Cade didn’t doubt that. But he could dream.
The black smudge grew larger and clearer with each mile they traveled. It was gray brown in color and shaped like a leaning shard poking from the ground.
It was only when they were a hundred feet away that Cade recognized it for what it was.
A ship.
CHAPTER
20
The ship was a rusted hulk, broken down the middle with its back half-flat along the ground. Its front end pointed upward, as if it had fallen from the sky and bent from the impact before tipping back and resting.
So this was their triangle. A five-hundred-foot metal ship. Modern, perhaps. It was hard to say; the thing was so rusted that no lettering or detail remained.
And the smell. It hit them like a physical wall, leaving their eyes watering and nostrils stinging.
“That’s not dead bodies,” Cade choked.
“I think this is worse,” Scott groaned.
It was no wonder the Romans had abandoned this place. There was no getting used to that.
“How do we get in?” Scott asked, dropping the handholds of the sled and rubbing his cracked, blistered hands.
Cade jogged closer, curiosity fueling his aching body. There was a huge rent down the ship’s middle, a crack yawning like a jagged mouth. As he approached, the miasma in the air seemed to thicken, and he held a sleeve up to his nose.
There was something different about the ground outside the crack. No grass grew there, and the ground was not the black soil of this alien region. Rather, it seemed to be coated in a fine, yellow powder.
“Codex,” Cade coughed. “What is this place?”
The drone flashed blue light and spoke.
“Remnant is the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, which disappeared when traveling through the Bermuda Triangle in 1963. It had a crew of thirty-nine and carried a tank of 15,260 tons of molten sulfur in its hold.”
Cade staggered away, giving himself a break from the smell. He allowed himself to collapse on the ground, and the others followed. Here, the stench was just about bearable.
“The … Sulphur Queen?” Scott said first. “What kind of name is that? Sounds like Grace after a bean stew, if you know what I mean.”
He winked, only to wheeze a moment later as Grace’s elbow found his belly.
“Not funny, Scott.”
Cade wondered how thoroughly the Romans had investigated the ship. It didn’t look like there was anything of use left there. Scrap metal perhaps. But whatever was inside had likely rusted away already.
Nor was the ship a wartime vessel. There would be no rocket launcher here. No guns, nor any other weapons. He would explore the ship, but he had little hope of finding anything that would solve their siege weapon problem.
“So, sulfur,” Amber said matter-of-factly.
Cade rubbed his eyes and forced a smile. “Yeah?”
“Well … that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what Abaddon gave to the Romans. And I guess, that’s what he gave us.”
He rubbed his eyes some more. This was going to be more complicated than he had thought. “I mean, I don’t—”
“Acid!” Yoshi announced triumphantly.
Cade stared at him.
“We make sulfuric acid,” he explained. “I remember it from chemistry class. Remember, Bunsen burners and all that?”
Cade rubbed his chin. It was not a bad guess. Though he doubted they would ever be able to make anything potent enough to eat through a door of what he imagined was solid metal or stone.
“Codex, what is the simplest way to make sulfuric acid from raw sulfur?” Cade asked.
“Burn sulfur to create a gas, and direct the gas into a reactor bed with vanadium pentoxide catalyst and oxygen gas to make sulfur trioxide—”
Cade held up his hand.
“That’s enough, thank you, Codex.”
Yoshi sighed under his breath before collapsing back and closing his eyes. “Well, that’s all I’ve got. Anyone else?”
“Unless we can build a reactor and find some vanadium whatever, I don’t think we can make acid,” Amber said. “Let alone something powerful enough to be of any use.”
“All right, all right,” Yoshi groaned. “I get it, bad idea.”
“Yoshi is right, sort of,” Cade said, trying to settle the tension that had crept in. “It’s chemistry, right? Sulphur doesn’t do anything but smell on its own. I think if you burn it, the gas is quite toxic, but I don’t think we can smoke the Grays out—normal smoke would work just as well.”
“And they’d be chucking javelins at us the whole time we were setting the fire,” Trix muttered.
“Think,” Cade said, putting his head in his hands. For a moment he stayed like that, resting his eyes as thoughts rattled around his head. Chemistry was clearly the answer. In fact, he had solved a problem just like this one in the first round. That time he had made quicklime.
“It’s an ingredient to a substance that we need to create. I think we need to look at the ancient uses for sulfur, not the modern ones. They wouldn’t have had chemicals and reactors and whatnot. Just clay pots, water, soil, that sort of thing.”
As he spoke, a memory swam to the surface. It was there on the edge. Something he had considered, all those months ago, when contemplating the exact same problem. But he had discounted it due to the ingredients.
“Codex,” Cade asked, crossing his fingers, “what are the basic ingredients for gunpowder?”
“Sulphur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate.”
Cade narrowed his eyes. Two out of three. Damn.
“See?” Yoshi said, still lying on his back. “Potassium nitrate. Where are we gonna get that?”
Cade turned to the Codex.
“Codex, how did humans make potassium nitrate back when it was invented?”
The answer came lightning fast.
“They would mix manure, wood ash, straw, and urine. After approximately eight months, they would boil and filter the remaining liquid with charcoal and cloth, then cool the liquid to form potassium nitrate crystals.”
For a moment, they sat in stunned, disappointed silence.
“Eight months!” Bea choked. “We don’t even have that many days!”
Cade pinched the bridge of his nose. The Romans had been given a whole year. If they had been patient, they might have been able to figure this out and could have begun making gunpowder with all the time to spare.
Now it was too late.
“This is an old answer to an old game,” Yoshi said. “It’s a dead end.”
The words rang hollow in Cade’s ears. He had misread the game. Misread everything. Perhaps Abaddon truly had abandoned them to death.
Whatever member of the pantheon who ruled this part of Acies might have become sick of these Romans living here. And as a favor, Abaddon had sent Cade’s crew to convince the Romans into suicidal attack. To rid himself of Earth forever, and start anew—as he said he had done with Mars billions of years before.
Despair had become a familiar feeling since he had first arrived on Acies, and this moment was no different. But a kernel of stubbornness remained.
Abaddon had spent a long time creating the caldera. Populating it with remnants, cherry-picking people and artifacts from Earth. Most had never been used.
And while an immortal being like Abaddon would have immeasurable patience, Cade imagined that a so-called god would be loath to leave so much wasted potential behind.
“No,” Cade growled. “There’s something to this, I know it.”
“Cade…,” Amber said, touching him gently on the arm. “No one blames you. We’ll find another way.”
Cade shook his head. “We’re taking some of this back with us,” he said. “As much as we can carry. Metal too. The going will be easier now that we’ve beaten a path.”
“Seriously?” Yoshi moaned.
Cade pursed his lips and lifted his chin. “I know you don’t all agree with me,” he said, trying to lace his words with confidence. “But I’m asking you to trust me. If we grab it all now, we can be back to Fort Caroline this evening, and we’ll sleep then.”
Cade stood and walked over to the ship, heading for the immense crack where the sulfur spilled out.
“I’m going inside,” he said. “See if there’s anything useful.”
* * *
As Cade eased himself into the fume-filled ship, he held his sleeve up to his nose and realized he would not be able to stay long. The acrid air burned his eyes and nose, and each breath felt hoarse and tight in his chest. The rotten-eggs scent coated his mouth and tongue, making him want to gag.
It was immediately obvious that hardly anything here was salvageable. In fact, it seemed the ship had spent many years underwater before being brought here, and it was only because the sulfur had been kept in an airtigh
t tank that it had not all dissolved away. He could see the tank on his right, a section of it twisted aside in its crash onto Acies, letting the sulfur spill across the floor in yellow piles.
The rusted walls were caked with calcified limpets and coral, and many of the surfaces had been completely eaten through. Access to the living areas above was possible via a rusted ladder, but when Cade went to put his foot on the first rung, it dislodged, clanging to the ground.
He managed to struggle up the remaining rungs and poke his head to see what was above, but it was all much the same. Cade hauled himself up, panting as he lay on the floor. He was dead tired, and the effort had been surprisingly difficult.
He did not want to venture too far, for the rust had eaten through the metal beneath, leaving jagged holes. If his feet burst through the floor, he might slice his flesh open to the bone. Tetanus would be the least of his concerns then.
With some disappointment, he lowered himself back to the level below and returned to the crack, almost holding his breath in desperation to get out into the fresh air.
The others were waiting for him, and to Cade’s relief, they held up an outstretched amphora, perhaps the largest one they had—now empty after their long journey. They also each held a roll of sackcloth to use as a makeshift bag. They were ready to collect the sulfur.
“Thank you, guys,” Cade said, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “I know I’ll figure it out.”
Scott walked past him and clapped Cade on the shoulder with a grin.
“You take first watch tonight,” he said.
CHAPTER
21
It was dark when they approached the fort. Every amphorae that did not contain water was filled to the brim with sulfur, as were the sackcloths they had intended to use as tents. Shards of rusted metal were also brought, if only because Cade knew that metal was hard to come by. Perhaps they could use it to forge arrowheads, or to repair Jomsborg’s gates.
Now, he sat alone, listening to the soft snores of the others inside. They had earned their rest, and then some.
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