Seeker’s Curse

by Alex Archer

  She heard another sound, like fat raindrops spattering a cardboard box. Prasad grunted. Dropping his heavy rifle with a clatter, he reeled back into the cave. Annja saw small holes, deceptively neat, in the front of his coat.

  Something clanked on the smooth stone floor. A metal egg was bouncing toward Annja. She stared at it as if it was a serpent in midstrike. For once she was frozen in indecision.

  Prasad fielded it one-handed like a major-league shortstop bare-handing a bouncer up the middle. He jammed it to his chest, folded his arms over it and rushed outside.

  Annja heard the thump of bodies colliding. The grenade went off, its explosion muffled by human flesh.

  It was followed at once by a whole series of explosions like a firecracker string going off, but magnified a hundredfold. Brilliant hellfire flashes danced in the cave mouth as Pan’s body hit hers, slammed her to the cave’s back wall and pressed her down to the floor.

  The blasts and blue-white flashes seemed to go on and on. The flashes ceased, and Annja realized she was hearing the echoes in her own head. Her ears rang with a high keening note.

  Pan climbed painfully to his feet. Picking up his rifle from where he’d dropped it, he went cautiously to the cave entrance and stuck his head out for a three-second look. Then he stepped outside.

  Annja sat up. Her head spun. She felt numbed horror at Prasad’s self-sacrifice. For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to budge.

  To her enormous relief, Pan quickly returned to kneel at her side. “They’ve pulled back,” he shouted. “We should check out the cave.”

  She nodded. He rose and extended a hand to help her. She shook her head and pushed off with her hands. She swayed, had to get a knee beneath her. Finally, with a heave of her will, she got upright and shook her head. Her hood had fallen back.

  Since Pan had stuck his head out into the daylight, Annja’s eyes were better adjusted to the dark than his. She quickly found a second crack that, from the proper angle, turned out to be a four-foot-wide tunnel angling into the rock of the mountain. From where they had been it was completely invisible.

  They shared a look, then cautiously entered the passageway. Annja held her M-16 in one hand and a small flashlight in the other. Ahead of them the tunnel, which like the cave was either wholly artificial or natural but improved, curved right. As they crept around the bend they saw a yellow glow.

  Pan moved in front of Annja, rifle at the ready. She followed close behind, holding the flashlight up over his shoulder and making sure to keep the muzzle of her weapon covering his back.

  A few feet beyond the tunnel a wide, smooth-walled chamber opened. Pan advanced into it. At once he sidestepped left, by policeman’s reflex clearing the area where any hypothetical waiting enemy would have a perfect shot at him. Annja followed, quickly stepping right. Then she let herself take in her surroundings, and inhaled sharply.

  By the light of butter lamps she saw treasure. Gold coins, silver ingots, jewels, glittering idols, covered the floor. Overflowing crates were stacked high up the walls. A path through the center of the room led to a jovial golden Buddha statue, at least twice life-size, sitting in lotus position in an alcove in the far wall.

  Before his crossed legs rose a stone catafalque. Upon it rested the perfectly preserved body of a man in full Macedonian armor.

  “Oh, my God,” Annja breathed.

  Aside from his full beard, which was black lined with silver, he was a perfect match for the man who stood beside her.

  30

  As if in a trance, Pan walked slowly forward. A sword in a scabbard of what appeared to be leather as well preserved as the dead man lay across a bronze breast-plate molded to resemble a heavily muscled torso. The bronze itself was still a deep yellow-red color, not the green of verdigris. A large oval shield stood propped against the stone bier by his feet. Its polished face was silver, its sheen dulled but not discolored or severely tarnished.

  Pan picked up the sword and drew it from the sheath by its gilded hilt. It was a xiphos, the characteristic Macedonian sword, with a straight, double-edged blade about two feet long.

  Yellow light from the improbably burning lamps reflected across Pan’s face from the shining blade, illuminating a look of sheer reverence as he turned it in his hands. He spoke words Annja could not hear. She knew she would not have understood them if she had.

  A shot shattered the cavern’s silence and her world. Pan pitched forward across the corpse.

  Too shocked to feel, Annja spun. A man built like a short bear with a tattered and bloody coat stood at the treasure chamber’s entrance. Half his face was burned black, and his left eye was invisible behind a crust of baked and congealed blood. His unscorched cheek bristled with a graying stubble of beard. In his right hand he held an ungainly pistol with a short box magazine in front of the trigger and a long slender barrel.

  It was Major Jagannatha. His terribly disfigured face was a mask of conflicting passions. Annja was astonished to see what she could only take for grief predominate.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must be this way. I cannot let you tell the world of this.”

  She felt as cold as the glacier in the valley below. “So you’ll let Chatura plunder it instead,” she said angrily.

  He frowned, mulling that over. “No,” he said slowly. “I’ll die first. But before that I shall kill him.”

  The numbness of seeing her companion, her friend, unexpectedly gunned down before her began to fade. Emotion began to seep in around the edges of Annja’s being. She felt rage.

  “You’re right about one thing,” she said. “You will die.”

  The sword appeared in her hand. She lunged to impale the guerrilla chieftain. His gun roared again. The sword’s sudden apparition and the ferocity of Annja’s assault made Jagannatha flinch. It threw off his aim.

  Pain lanced through Annja’s left thigh like a white-hot iron. The leg gave way beneath her. Jagannatha danced back.

  The pain was literally breathtaking. Each move seemed to tear her muscles apart. But the anger kept growing, driving her on. She forced the leg to work, to launch herself at him again. His next shot missed her clean. He evaded a clumsy swipe of her sword.

  She ran into him. They grappled as her momentum pushed him back. She bounced him backward off the walls of the passageway as they battered and clawed ineffectually at one another. He held her too tight for her to wield the sword. She had his gun wrist in an unbreakable grip, and its long barrel worked against him as the sword’s length did her.

  Their wild pinball battle carried them into the cave’s outer chamber. By a random shift of their writhing Jagannatha managed to bring a knee up hard into Annja’s stomach. The breath rushed out of her and her grip weakened.

  He pulled away and raised the handgun. His muscles trembled with exhaustion and oxygen starvation. He fought to control the swinging of the muzzle enough to get a shot into Annja.

  Taking a two-handed grip on her sword, she wound up and swung with all her might. They both screamed as the mystic blade struck his gun arm two inches above the wrist. As he raised the bleeding arm before his face in horrified disbelief she side kicked him out the cave mouth. His head struck a rock as he fell.

  In grief and pain and fury, Annja collapsed on the cave floor. The cold stone sucked the warmth from her body. Somehow that felt seductive. She felt as if she should just let go, allow her life to flow from her and merge with the stone of the great White Mountain, to make an end of strife and pain.

  But that was not her way. She refused to give in or give up.

  Full of pain, she crawled for ward and disengaged the autopistol from Jagannatha’s still-twitching fingers. I’ll need all the firepower I can get, she thought.

  She no longer had any reasonable hope of escape. She was alone on the mountain. All her friends and allies were dead. But she was coldly determined to take as many of her tormentors with her as possible.

  “SO,” CHATURA SAID, standing on the trail with hands on
hips. “The mighty Jagannatha still lives.”

  Enver Bajraktari and Duka stood right behind him. The guerrilla chieftain lay bent across a boulder ten feet beneath the ledge of the cave, his arm bleeding in fitful pulses. Though his chest continued to rise and fall, his spine was clearly broken. The storm had subsided for the moment; the wind was almost still, and only flat flakes fell slowly upon his shattered body.

  “We’ll have to remedy that,” the commissar said.

  Bajraktari was woozy with more than altitude and exertion. They were down to fewer than twenty men. Almost as many lay strewed along the trail and especially around the cave mouth.

  The pursuit had been nothing but disaster piling upon disaster. Only a mad rage for revenge combined with an even more insane lust for the gold that must await them within that cave had kept the mixed group from breaking and fleeing back down the mountain.

  There couldn’t be many living enemies inside the cave with that terrible witch woman. She might even be alone. All the same, by now Bajraktari felt they’d need every man they had to force their way inside and overcome her.

  Duka looked at him. Jagannatha had fought like a hero. But he was no use to them now. Bajraktari looked his henchman in the eye and shrugged.

  Although he still favored his right leg in its brace, Duka disregarded the sheer drop. He slithered out toward Jagannatha. When he reached the guerrilla leader he picked him up and flung him unceremoniously over the cliff.

  Bajraktari stood watching the dark, spread-eagled shape dwindle beneath them. When it fell out of sight he turned his dark eyes up to the mouth of the cave.

  Chatura brandished his autopistol. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted as the wind again began to rise to a howl. “Seize the cave, in the people’s name!”

  Reluctantly the men began to advance along the barely visible wisp of trail toward the cave’s dark mouth.

  Blasts of gunfire met them.

  ANNJA FIRED her M-16 until it ran dry. That made her enemies fall back from the entrance. Throwing aside the rifle, she pulled Jagannatha’s gun from her belt and went to the entrance.

  A Kosovar loomed in front of her. She shot him in the chest and he went backward over the ledge. Leaning around the entrance, she aimed shots at her attackers. At least two went down before a wild fusillade from a half-dozen automatic weapons drove her back into the cave.

  She shot the first two men who came in after her. The pistol’s bolt locked back. Its magazine was empty. Any spare magazines had gone down the mountain with Jagannatha.

  Falling back, she dropped the useless weapon. A shadow blocked the entrance. She recognized the vast ungainly shape of Duka. He entered with Bajraktari right behind him.

  The Kosovar chieftain looked at her with his living eye as cold as his dead one. “Take her,” he commanded.

  The sword flashed into Annja’s hand.

  Bajraktari shrugged. “Very well, then. Shoot her.”

  Laughing uproariously, Duka raised a Skorpion machine pistol. His laughter boomed off the walls of the cave. Something spun past Annja, moaning. She felt its breeze of passage puff against her sweat-drenched cheek.

  In wonder Duka looked down at the golden hilt of the ancient xiphos buried in his chest. Then he toppled forward.

  Bajraktari gaped at his henchman’s fall. He tried to raise his gun.

  Annja was already gliding toward him like an avenging Fury. “You lose,” she said, and slid the sword into his belly until the cross-shaped hilt stopped against his torso.

  Bajraktari’s dark eye stood out from his head, staring at her in agonized disbelief. Savagely she twisted the sword. His lips worked beneath his mustache as he tried to force out words. All that came forth was a flood of bright blood.

  She yanked the heavy autopistol from his hand. Despite the pain she raised her wounded leg—she didn’t trust it to bear her weight unaided. Putting the sole of her boot against his chest she pushed hard. The sword tore free.

  Bajraktari tottered backward. Shrieking, he went over the edge, to free fall a thousand feet with his guts streaming from his body.

  The pain the exertion shot through her leg brought Annja to tears and robbed her of her strength. Her legs buckled beneath her.

  A strong arm caught her from behind as she fell.

  She looked up. Pan held her. He was dressed in the full armor from the dead man on the bier. Still supporting her, he stooped to yank his sword out of the dead Kosovar’s chest.

  She stared at him. “How?”

  He only smiled down at her.

  Her vision faded. She sagged. He steadied her until she could stand on her own again. Then he took up the silver shield he had carried in with him.

  In a moment the enemy was on them again. Side by side they fought. The three surviving Kosovars charged in and were cut down before their eyes adjusted to the cave gloom.

  Annja and Pan moved to stand to either side of the entrance. Guerrillas rushed in blazing wildly with submachine guns. The defenders slashed them down from behind. Then came four of Jagannatha’s men, kukris in their hands and vengeance in their eyes.

  Ignoring the shortness of breath that seemed to tear at her chest at every inhalation, ignoring the agony of her wounded leg, Annja fought in a whirlwind. Pan fought with controlled fury, blocking deftly with his shield. His xiphos licked out like a frozen steel flame.

  Silence descended. The sound of the rising storm rushed in to fill it. Dead men lay heaped at their feet. The floor ran slick with blood.

  Strength deserted Annja. Sheathing his sword, Pan caught her again. He pressed his mouth to hers. They shared a passionate kiss.

  Then consciousness left her, and Annja slid into black.

  WHEN SHE AWOKE, Annja was alone. Except for the dead.

  Using her elbows, she dragged herself to the cave entrance. The storm was about to hit again. The first hard-driven flakes of snow struck Annja’s cheek like grit.

  Coming up the path below she saw a fresh squad of Maoist guerrillas, trudging bent over into the wind with their submachine guns held across their chests. A small figure slipped from hiding among the rocks to join them.

  Annja was flooded with anger. The man was Chatura, the district commissioner for antiquities division.

  He was the one behind all her troubles. The man guilty of the deaths of her friends. He had set her up from the very outset.

  Chatura gestured up at the cave.

  She grabbed a submachine gun dropped by a fallen foe and sprayed the advancing men with bullets. Two of them went down, one dropping on the narrow trail, the other tumbling down a few yards before going over the cliff.

  The others went to their bellies and fired back. The flames from their muzzles were like small bonfires in the fading light. She lashed the flame sources with bullets until the curved magazine emptied. Then she slithered back far enough to find another weapon and fight on.

  The snow closed in like a white wave sweeping over the face of the mountain. The last weapon Annja could reach without going back into the cave and giving her enemies a chance to rush her ran dry.

  Frustrated and filled with fury she retreated. Exhausted by blood loss and altitude, she collapsed against a wall of the small cave. It’s not fair, she thought. We won. How can more enemies turn up now to make a mockery of it all? Of Pan’s sacrifice?

  But Pan’s still alive…isn’t he?

  She might have retired to the treasure room and made a last stand there. But she didn’t have the strength anymore. It felt as if her bones were melting within her.

  The wind began to keen as if in mourning for the day’s dead. Through the white blizzard curtain that covered the cave mouth Chatura stepped, grinning. He aimed his handgun at her.

  “You have given me a very great deal of trouble, Ms. Creed,” he said. “I am about to shoot you in the belly. I don’t want to kill you right away, you see. I mean to disable you, and allow my men to take their revenge on you for the deaths of their comrades.”

/>   Annja gathered the last threads of her strength for a death leap. As she curled her hand to summon the sword she heard shouts from outside the cave. They quickly turned to screams.

  Frowning in puzzlement, Chatura started to turn. He was yanked backward out into the storm. Through a scrim of falling snow, Annja saw in silhouette a huge form holding the struggling man aloft. Chatura was tossed to his death.

  Roaring, the creature turned on the other gunman. It moved out of sight. A heartbeat later Annja saw guerrillas hurled past the cave mouth and over the cliff, following their treacherous leader to destruction.

  She could hold on no more. Oblivion claimed her.

  “IT WAS A BEAR,” she insisted. “What else could it possibly have been?”

  Annja sat with Roux at a sidewalk café. It was three weeks after the desperate fight for the cave shrine, and her wounds had mostly healed. A gentle spring-morning breeze made the streets of downtown Delhi almost bearable.

  Uncharacteristically, Roux said nothing. He merely sat and sipped his coffee, well dosed with cream and sugar.

  “Next thing I knew I woke up in the treasure room next to Pan,” she told him, “with my wounds all bandaged. I got lucky. The Mauser bullet was copper-jacketed, not pure lead, so it didn’t deform much when it hit me. It passed through my leg cleanly. Missed the bone. The doctors here say it didn’t do any lasting muscle or nerve damage.”

  “Which Pan?” Roux asked with his usual lack of sensitivity. “I or II?”

  Annja fought back tears. She was determined not to let her guard down with her sometime mentor.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He sipped coffee and gazed at her with impassive eyes.

  “Even though it’s up above the tree line, somebody must live up there,” she went on, trying to steer him back to the main line of her narrative. “Or at least, somebody visits the shrine regularly, tends it. Somebody has to keep those butter lamps filled and burning. They must have found me and bandaged me.”

  “Indeed.”