by Leslie Fish
Revocare
Leslie Fish
Fish, Leslie
Revocare
Published by the Writers of the Apocalypse
1117 N Carbon Street, PMB 208
Marion, Illinois 62959
http://www.apocalypsewriters.com
For more information on Leslie Fish, visit www.lesliefish.com
Second edition
ISBN: 978-1-944322-06-9
(License notes) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. Cover design by Katrina Joyner, premadecovers4u.com.
Revocare
Facilis est descensus Averno...
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
—Virgil, The Aeneid
Langspur Caverns are no deeper than treachery, as I found to my cost. It was a classic triangle -- my money, my best friend, my supposedly-loving spouse -- and I suspected nothing. I thought a weekend spent cave-climbing would be fun for all three of us; after all, I’d first met Lee at the Cavers’ Club, and Jan often said she was willing to try anything once. I had no idea that there was anything more than friendship between them, or how far they were willing to go to have each other and my money too.
I trusted them completely, right up to the instant they cut my rope.
We were crossing the Johnson Chasm, usually called Bottomless Bend: Lee ahead, Jan in the middle, me on the end. The other two crossed and waved me on, so I fixed my line to the piton-ring and started across, concentrating on placing hand over hand, watching the rope. My only warning was that the beam from Lee’s helmet-lamp jiggled -- and I never imagined that it was from the motion of his arm as he sawed his knife through my line.
The very next thing I knew was that the rope had gone slack in my hands, and I was surrounded by rushing wind and darkness. I realized what was happening just in time to throw my head back and look up.
There I saw the fast-disappearing edge of the chasm with two helmeted heads peering over it, smiling like hell as they watched me go down. The only yell of surprise and shock was my own.
Then the smooth wall of the chasm began its long curve, and its rushing stone rasped against my backpack, and the ride became very rough very fast. I vaguely remember curling into a tight fetal ball, then impact after impact as I bounced and slid down the sloping wall, and I know I lost consciousness before the slide stopped. I have no idea how long I slid and skidded down the curve, or how long I was out cold afterward, or what miracle kept me from breaking more than my left arm.
***
I’m fairly certain I slipped in and out of awareness several times before the pain woke me completely, and then my only thought was to roll off that aching arm. It took me three tries before I managed it, and the arm still hurt. I lay still awhile longer to see if the pain would go away, but it didn’t. Sometime later I noticed the sour smell of oil- smoke in the air. Eventually I opened my eyes.
My helmet-lamp was smashed, of course, but the darkness wasn’t total. There was a dim reddish glow in the air above, not enough to let me see the roof of the cave, no more light than false dawn. It was enough to let me see my workable hand silhouetted before my eyes: enough to stir a thread of hope.
Then thirst competed for attention amid the sea of other pains. I remembered that I had a canteen, managed to sit up and fumble at my belt until I found it. The canteen looked and felt as battered as I was, but it didn’t leak and had plenty of water. I drank until my threat felt a little less raw, then slowly began taking inventory of myself.
Besides the damned insistent broken arm, I had bruises and scrapes everywhere that I could feel. Everything moved stiffly, and everything hurt. I still had my helmet, pack and belt. I was alive and could still move.
Thoughts worked sluggishly through the constant haze of pain, but I constructed a good guess as to how I’d survived the fall. Johnson Chasm is an ancient volcanic vent, glassy with obsidian, too slick-walled to climb. Nobody had ever measured its full depth, and surely not the way I had, but the few explorers before me had noted that after the first hundred feet the chasm bent slowly to the westward. If that curve continued, it would eventually level out. If so, I’d gone sliding down the curve and come out at the end in this cavern, like a bowling-ball down a chute. I’d been falling feet first, and the opening must be somewhere behind me.
I looked back -- slowly, stiffly -- but saw only darkness. The dim red false-dawn glow came from somewhere ahead. So did a faint breeze, tinged with that burned-oil smell. That meant there was another opening, a way out, ahead of me. Best to go that way; even if I could find the chute where I’d come down, not likely in the dark, I’d never be able to climb that smooth chasm wall.
There was no point in waiting for rescue. I doubted that Jan and Lee would hurry to report me lost, or tell exactly where in the cave I’d gone down. It was anyone’s guess if the police or even the Cavers’ Club would send an expedition, or how long they’d take to arrive, much less find me.
My broken arm twinged for attention again. I rocked and groaned with pain for long moments, trying to think clearly about cleaning, splinting and bandaging. Eventually I gathered enough nerve to grit my teeth and work my way out of the backpack.
At that point I saw how I’d survived the long, sliding fall. The pack had been snagged, scraped, torn, and generally sandpapered clean away. There was nothing left but the straps and the scoured-bright frame. By some miracle, I’d skidded all the way down the chute on my back. The pack had kept my spine and ribs intact, the now battered and lightless helmet had done the same for my aching skull, and the gods of all cave-climbers only know how I kept from breaking both legs and my other arm. I was, all things considered, amazingly intact.
However, I had no food, lamp, radio or medical kit. All I had were the scraped backpack frame, the dented helmet, two long pitons on my belt, the canteen and the clothes I was wearing.
I pulled my wandering mind together long enough to rip off my tattered shirtsleeves, tear them into strips, improvise splints from the pitons and a rough sling from the rags that were left. My left hand worked well enough that I could tie the knots. Once splinted and slung, my arm hurt less.
Now all I had to do was get myself out of here -- with a broken arm, no rope, and no light.
But there was some light down here, now that I fixed my mind on it. The dim reddish glow seemed brighter ahead to my left, apparently behind the edge of a dark ridge. Volcanic vent, I guessed, wondering if this were some live remnant of the ancient eruption that had made the cavern.
I was too dazed with pain to think of possible danger; I simply knew that I needed light, and it was over there somewhere.
Likewise, I didn’t stop to question why I struggled back into the remnants of my pack; I only knew that it had saved my life once today, and abandoning it would be downright ungrateful. I buckled the frame back on, staggered to my feet and went lurching like a last-stage drunk toward the dim red light.
It took a surprisingly long time to reach and cross the ridge, for it was much further off and bigger than I’d expected: more like a low hill than anything that belonged inside a cave. I was in no condition to ponder what this implied about the size of the cavern, but it made me uneasy.
So did the faint sounds that prickled at the edge of my hearing: soft rattlings and clickings, like falling sand… or claws on stone. I couldn’t be sure I really heard them, but I had a worrisom
e feeling that I didn’t want to hear them any clearer or closer. I made effort to hurry.
At the top of the ridge I got my first sketchy picture of the territory. A long stony slope stretched down and away from me; at the bottom was another sharp rim of silhouetted rock, and beyond that flickered the tips of sullen red-orange flames. It had to be some sort of burning gas-vent within a small crater; the air was too cool for it to be magma. It was approachable fire.
Now that I looked, far beyond the crater I could see other faint pinpricks of red light in the dark distance: probably more vents. I still couldn’t see the roof of the cavern, and the walls were hidden in darkness. I could, however, see that the stones on the slope below me were bedded and twined with thick pale lichens or molds. There was life down here. I thought I heard the claw-clicking sound again.
Perfect love, they say, casts out fear. So does perfect misery. Feeling only a sour annoyance above the surface of the gnawing pain, I went on down the slope.
Halfway to the crater’s edge I stumbled over something that looked like a patch of pale and anomalous rock. Curiosity blooms at the damnedest times and circumstances -- and just as well. I hunkered down to look at the odd rocks.
But they weren’t rocks at all. They were bones. Big bones.
…Definitely animal life down here, was all I thought as I poked stupidly at the bones. There was a big thick one as long as my thigh. There was a roughly-round one that had to be a skull. I picked up the skull and looked at it for a long time while the facts trickled slowly through my pain-dulled brain.
What kind of animal has a skull as big as a bear’s, a beetling brow, an ape-like jaw, and three horns?
Not an animal I wanted to meet. Not in the dark. Not empty-handed.
I noticed that there were toothmarks on the long bone. I remembered the faint clicking noises, wondered what this creature could have looked like when its bones were all connected, and how big it was, and what could have killed it. I decided that I needed a weapon, and right away.
The only likely materials I could see were the bones themselves. I picked them up and shuffled hurriedly toward the fire-vent.
It was a small crater, right enough, but it surrounded a pool of waxy, gummy material. The gum/wax/whatever was solid near the crater’s edge, softer toward the middle, and liquefied at the center where the flame danced about a spur of spongy rock. It was like the top of a huge candle, a sullen mineral candle that might have been burning for half a billion years. The rock in and around Langspur Caverns is some of the oldest in the world…
The light was perhaps as strong as that of a large campfire, and it revealed that I was the only living creature within the crater -- but it hadn’t always been empty. There were some very odd footprints at the margin where the gum softened to liquid: tracks of something like a very large, thick-footed bird. At one side of the pool, amid a cluster of the tracks, was another pile of bones. These bones were different, somewhat smaller, all of them cracked, split or chewed.
I sat down with my back against a steep bank of the crater’s rim, drank some more of the water, and considered the big shank-bone and the three-horned skull. If I could attach them, they’d make a serviceable mace. Tying would do, but I had no rope and couldn’t spare any more of my clothing, thin protection though it was.
Then I thought of my hair. I’d always let it grow long, however fashions came and went, and it reached below my waist when unwound. The coiled braid made good padding for my cave-climbing helmet; it had probably helped save my life on the trip down here. With luck it could provide me with a weapon, too.
I uncoiled my braid, pulled it as far forward as I could, and chewed it off, strand by strand. It took a long time, and tired my jaws. It took less time to tie one end through the eye-holes of the skull and the other end to the shank-bone just below the swell of the joint. There were some small stones near the rocks of the crater’s rim, and I stuffed the skull’s cranium with as many of them as would fit.
The end result of perhaps two hours’ painful and tedious work was a crude but reassuringly heavy bone-stone-and-hair Morning Star. I practiced swinging it, and managed to avoid hitting myself in the foot.
I was armed. Now what?
I struggled to my feet and walked to the edge of the crater facing the breeze. Yes, there were more of those dull flame-lights ahead, like distant red stars. There was also too much suspicious darkness between them, too much desert between oases of light. I didn’t want to meet the local wildlife in the dark.
Maybe a torch…
I went to the pile of chewed bones and rummaged among them until I found a promising piece: a straight shank, hollow, with only one end broken off but the marrow totally gone. I didn’t stop to wonder how the unsplit bone had come to be empty; it would be enough for me to avoid whatever had done that.
I poked strings of the pale lichen down the hollow of the bone, leaving an inch hanging out. Then I crawled laboriously to the edge of the liquid-gum pool and submerged the bone until it filled to the top. I managed to reach the end of the torch to the central fire, where the wick caught and burned well enough. The thick oil/wax/gum burned slowly, and I hoped it would last me to the next fire-pit.
Finally I tucked the torch upright into the lamp-catch of my helmet, set the helmet on my head, took the Morning Star in my right hand and set off into the wind.
I hadn’t gone a quarter of the way to the next fire-pit before the clicks and rattlings came again. This time there was no mistaking them for the sound of falling sand.
I made a point of turning right and left every few steps to shine the dim torch-light around me. Whatever made those sounds didn’t care for the light, and kept well beyond its reach. Still, whatever it was could move fast. Twice I felt certain that something was sliding up behind me, and I swung the Morning Star low and hard to discourage it. I caught nothing the first time. The second time, though, I felt a solid impact.
There was a surprised-sounding squeal, and the whatever-it-was clicked and rattled away before I could see more than a large shadow, shaped something like a deformed weasel. There was no way to guess the thing’s true size.
I kept the Morning Star swinging and twitching in my hand as I walked on. That and the torch seemed to discourage the creature, or creatures, for I didn’t hear that noise again.
More than halfway to the second fire-pit, I felt the ground change under my boot-soles: no more roughness of mixed stones or coarse cushion of pseudo-lichen, but a smooth hardness softened by dust. I bent my head to lower the torch, looked, and saw a broad bare path crossing my course. It was as wide as a small city alley. Down the middle ran two deep parallel depressions, like inverted rails.
It took me a long moment to understand that they were wheel-ruts. This was a road.
I stood up and looked both ways down the road, hope stirring sluggishly through the relentless pain. Roads meant traffic, people, a way out of here. I wondered only for a moment what manner of people made or used a road at the bottom of Langspur Caverns. Most likely they were wildcat miners, doing a little illegal digging for gold, silver or gemstones. No problem: I could deal with such. I thought no further than that; it was enough to know that a ride was possible. I looked up and down the road, and waited.
In time I saw, off to my left, a tiny moving light that hadn’t been there before. As I watched it resolved into two lights, then grew larger and closer, accompanied by a growing sound: rhythmic creaking, as of wagon-wheels. There was also an odd irregular hissing, but I ignored that. I stuck the Morning Star in my belt and stuck out my thumb in the time-honored signal.
As the creaking wagon grew closer, I noticed two things. First, it carried two tall torches set at its leading corners.
Second, the creatures that pulled it were not horses, oxen, mules, nor any kind of animal I’d ever heard of. They were scaly-skinned, high-shouldered, long-legged lizards -- lizards the size of large ponies. The odd hissing came from them.
I blinked stupidly at the
m, pain-stunned past wonder, thinking only that beasts in harness are, by definition, tame.
The wagon was a simple two-wheeled cart with a flat bench for the driver’s seat, and the wheels stood taller than my head. The driver, as well as I could tell in that torchlight, was a huge and heavily ugly man. He wore scaly gauntlets and scaly armor, probably made from the hide of driving-lizards, plus an unmistakable sword-belt -- if you please -- with what I assumed was a hefty weapon in it, and a three-horned helmet that came down almost to his eyes.
Considering the signs of animal life that I’d seen down here, I wasn’t surprised that he rode armed and armored, no matter how old-fashioned his gear. He’d probably be suspicious of strangers, but I didn’t think he’d begrudge me a ride. I stepped forward and held up my thumb.
The cart pulled up beside me and stopped. The driver leaned over to get a better look at me, and I stepped further into the light to oblige.
Right then I saw that he was at least seven feet tall. And he wasn’t wearing armor at all; that was his skin. The helmet was part of his head.
As he looked at me, his jaw dropped. His mouth was full of splintery gray fangs.
Mutant? I wondered, blinking owlishly. Troll? Alien?
He gave a grating brassy cry, turned around and tugged furiously at whatever was hanging on his sword-belt. There was no mistaking that action.
Without thinking, I yanked the Morning Star out of my belt. His weapon cleared first. I saw it swing up to strike: a long bar of dark metal.
I had no shield -- except my pack-frame.
I swung far forward, and the swordlike bar came down across my back. It clanged heavily on the metal pack-frame, the impact enough to stagger me but not knock me down. I came up swinging and smashed the Morning Star upward into his elbow, knocking him backward. He screeched like grinding metal. I could almost sympathize, knowing intimately how a broken arm felt, but I didn’t think I should give him time to recover; he had, after all, hit first. I swung the Morning Star again, this time catching him in the face. He tumbled bonelessly out of the cart.
