mark darrow and the stealer of

by Unknown

  ‘Have it your way. I’ll take the gun.’

  Rip lifted a leg and peed on the floor. A dog’s way of showing who is boss.

  Momentarily Mark considered doing the same, but the slugs he’d eaten hadn’t gone as far as filling his bladder. Anyway, he decided, Rip might see his action as a direct challenge. No way did Mark want to anger his greatest ally in this mad place.

  Once more, Rip led the way. Mark followed, feeling a little chastised. Occasionally the bank of the stream was low enough that Mark could see the progress the army of golems were making as they attacked the pyramids. On the far side the army there continued their barrage of rocks, but whatever defended Skathalos’s pyramid destroyed each with impunity. The boom of exploding rock was a constant background accompaniment to Mark’s steps. The golems at this side continued to charge forward and Mark was surprised to see that nothing seemed to be checking their advance. They seemed senseless in their attack, as though they did not have individual fears or desires, and Mark wondered if these men of clay were puppets commanded by some other mind. But who could that be?

  There was a twist in the course of the stream ahead. Rip had already made it to the corner and paused there, sniffing the air. Satisfied that nothing dangerous lurked out of sight, he looked back at Mark and made a whining noise deep in his throat.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. It’s all right for you. You have four legs; do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to walk crouched over like this?’

  Rip’s answering whine gave Mark cause to wonder.

  Not only did Rip come in the guise of a dog, but he could also change in to the crocodile-headed Ammut. Could he possibly change into anything else? Thinking back to the Egyptian hieroglyphs that he’d seen, Mark recalled that the Nile deities were often shown in human-like form. Was it such a stretch of the imagination to think that perhaps Rip – or Ammut – had once walked on two feet? Had he once known what it was like to walk upright and now wished to do so again? If Mark had a choice he’d rather be fleet on all four limbs. It would make him a much quicker runner if he needed to escape from the dangers of this insane place.

  Turning the corner, Mark found that the stream had once burst its banks. The waters had flattened the area and between them and the pyramids there was no cover.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  In the distance war raged.

  More winged shapes boiled from the top of the centre pyramid and swooped down on the armies of clay men. Catapults hurled their missiles, which in turn were obliterated by fire. Clay men charged but were thrown back by the defending harpies, but then they got up and carried on – some of them missing limbs. The battle was fought as before with shrieking harpies and silent men in competition for whatever lay within the pyramid.

  Not one eye was turned their way.

  ‘Okay, Rip. There’s nothing else for it. Run!’

  Mark ran, holding the shotgun across his chest. His glasses bobbed up and down with each step. His feet dug deep into loose ashes. His chest ached from a mixture of anxiety and excitement, but he didn’t stop. He knew their only hope of evading capture – of finding and rescuing his friends – counted on him running as fast as he could. Rip kept pace with him, for which Mark was thankful, because the dog could have easily outpaced him in an instant.

  They made it to a group of boulders that stuck up from the earth like the knuckles of a giant hand buried in the ground. Mark threw himself down among them gasping for air. Back in the real world Mark was usually the last to be picked for the school soccer team. His small stature and glasses unfairly pointed him out as a weakling, but he had to admit that it didn’t help when he was not the most athletic boy in class. He made himself a promise that, should he live through this, he would do more sport and get himself fitter.

  He didn’t feel so bad when he noticed that Rip was also panting from exertion. When he looked back at how far they’d just run, he saw that they had covered quite a long distance. Maybe he wasn’t as unfit as he thought.

  Still, he was shivering with a sudden weakness when he finally stood up and he had to support himself by using the shotgun as a crutch. He cleaned his glasses, wiping dust off them with the tail of his shirt, before pressing them back in place. He blinked and for the first time got a good, close-up look at the pyramid.

  The unnatural red sky had been reflecting off the pyramid last time he’d looked. Now, this close by he saw that the pyramid was as black as tar. The sides were smooth like glass, but leading up the centre on each side was a broad stairway cut out of the rock. The steps were tall and if he’d counted them he would have known there were more than five hundred of them on each side of the pyramid. It was going to be an effort making his way to the top. That was if he could even do that when there were dozens of harpies circling in the air and guarding the stairs. Golems that made it to the stairs were swiftly dealt with. The harpies plucked them from the pyramid, flew high in the air and then dropped them to earth. When the clay men hit the ground, all that remained was a wide splash of dirt and a cloud of dust to mark their passing.

  For a few seconds Mark felt like giving up. He was just one boy. What did he hope to achieve here? How was he supposed to help his friends? He should take Rip, return to the mountain and look for a way back to his own world. That would be the sensible thing to do: except Mark couldn’t think of too many occasions when he had been accused of being sensible.

  ‘Any ideas, Rip?’

  The dog jiggled his eyebrows a moment, then bounded through a gap between two boulders. Feeling an ache in every muscle, Mark followed. The boulders were tall enough that his view of the pyramids was obscured. Coming out into the open again, he saw what Rip had been leading him toward all the time.

  ‘You expect me to go in there?’ Mark shook his head.

  Rip was standing at the entrance to a pipe. It looked to be made from the same stone as the pyramid and glistened blackly. From its end trickled rusty water that smelled decidedly unpleasant. Mark couldn’t decide what the smell reminded him off most; rotting flesh or garbage left out to fester in the sun. Whatever it was he had no desire to go crawling in amongst it. Unfortunately, if he was going to make his way inside Skathalos’s pyramid that was exactly what he was going to have to do. The pipe was no more than three feet wide.

  Again Mark felt like throwing down the gun and running back the way he’d come. But two things stopped him. One the vision of his smiling friend, Shax, and the second, Amy, with her hands fisted on her hips. Would either of his friends run away and leave him to whatever terrible fate Skathalos had in mind for them? No way.

  ‘You go first,’ he told the dog. Rip set off immediately. Mark slung the shotgun over his shoulder, then ducked down and took his first step inside the pipe. Just as he did there was a colossal crashing sound behind him and he saw a boulder smash to earth, then roll towards the entrance to the pipe.

  ‘Run, Rip,’ Mark cried out. Then he followed his own words into the darkness even as the boulder rammed into the mouth of the pipe. Compressed air rushed past Mark, and his nostrils were filled with dust and the putrid water stench. Struggling to look back the way he’d come, all he found was a solid wall of black.

  There was no going back.

  The pipe was completely sealed behind him.

  14

  Claustrophobia, the darkness, the stench, everything conspired to halt Mark in his tracks. He would have stopped, too, maybe to huddle against the wall of the pipe and feel miserable, but he knew that wasn’t going to get him out of his predicament. The best idea was just to keep moving. Each fumbling step he took forward was one step nearer to the light again. In front of him, he could hear Rip’s claws scrabbling along, but he could see nothing of the dog. It was too dark. He continued on, his knees and the palms of his hands rubbed raw by the stone.

  Here time was measured in a different way than it was back in his world, but it was still relative. Except Mark felt like he’d been stuffed in this pipe for much
longer than it should have taken him to cross the distance between the dry streambed and the pyramid. He began to wonder if the pipe he was crawling through was in fact a drainage duct running all the way from the furthest of the three structures.

  ‘How much further?’ he groaned.

  Rip didn’t - couldn’t - answer. In the darkness even his peculiar talent for facial expressions didn’t help, and it wasn’t as if he was going to count out the steps in barks like a circus act.

  The darkness was complete.

  Or was it?

  Mark thought he caught sight of a flash of white. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks with him, but this was no spark in the corner of his eye, but a swaying banner of white. Mark had to crawl on a dozen feet further before he realised what he’d seen. The white had been the tip of Rip’s tail as he’d passed under an opening in the pipe. Mark looked up through a circular hole that was no wider than his bunched fist. He expected to see the blood red sky, perhaps catch a glimpse of a swooping harpy, but instead he saw a vaulted roof and the flicker of torchlight.

  They were inside the pyramid at last. Mark couldn’t swear how he felt about that. Relief, but also impending fear as he realised they were now definitely in the realm lorded over by Skathalos.

  He put his mouth to the hole and sucked in a thankful mouthful of fresh air. Then he replaced his eye at the hole, peering around as best he could. But all he could see was the roof of a chamber. He couldn’t hear anything. No talking or movement of any kind. He wondered if this was a way out of the pipe. Feeling around the hole, he couldn’t find anything that could be the seam of a hatch. There was nothing to lever the pipe open, no handle or keyhole that he could find. He tried pushing his shoulder against the pipe, but it resisted him.

  Movement beside him told him that Rip had returned. The dog tugged at his shirt with his teeth. So it wasn’t a way out. Mark gulped another mouthful of air, then reluctantly went after the dog again.

  The journey wasn’t as difficult now. The pipe appeared to be growing wider the further they progressed, and Mark discovered more of the mysterious holes that made the going a tad brighter. He even found out what the holes were for. He heard the scuff of feet, then something plunged through a hole he had just passed. The item was a hollow pipe that tapered toward the top. It was a funnel. Even as he realised this, filthy liquid glugged from a container and splashed into the pipe, missing Mark’s feet by inches. Mark wrinkled his nose. They were crawling in someone’s toilet!

  He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to puke. He wanted to wipe his hands clean. He wanted a nice hot bath. He wanted to puke even more.

  But then he realised that things could have been worse: he could have been trying to get another mouthful of air when the person outside had emptied the latrine bucket.

  Count your blessings, he told himself.

  You’re still alive, you still have an opportunity to save your friends, you didn’t swallow a mouthful of God knew what!

  So keep moving.

  He found he was able to stand now. It was still a crush, and he had to bend forward to avoid bumping his head on the roof of the pipe, but the going got much quicker. Rip scampered on ahead, and Mark heard him give a short bark of encouragement. At about the same time he saw the darkness ahead flare into light.

  Seconds later he found that the roof had disappeared and here, the pipe was formed more like a steep-sided trough - or maybe a huge urinal like you would see in a public toilet designed for ogres and giants. Mark avoided looking down at his feet: he would need a new pair of trainers after this!

  He clambered out of the trough onto a floor made from interlocking slabs of black stone. There were damp paw marks on the floor, but Mark had no idea where Rip had gone. His first act was to look around at the room he was in. It was simply a cube with a door at one end and flaming torches burning inside metal cages to give light to the room. The room felt like it hadn’t been used in a very long time, so perhaps it wasn’t a toilet after all. Mark spied Rip’s tracks, expecting them to lead directly toward the door, but instead saw that the dog had veered to the left toward the solid stone wall.

  Another one of them weird doorways like the waterfall that he’d entered this land through, he assumed. But, as he followed Rip’s tracks he saw that he was mistaken. The dark walls and the flickering torchlight had conspired to make the wall appear solid, but as he got closer, he saw that the wall ended three feet short of the next one and there was an opening. He poked his head round the corner and saw that there was a short passage, then another opening leading out of the room. Mark snaked his way around the corners and found himself passing through a wooden turn-style, before stepping out into a wider corridor.

  Rip was waiting for him. But he wasn’t all. There were about a dozen small forms all gathered round the dog. As Mark stepped into the corridor they all turned to look at him at the same time. They were small like children, but Mark knew immediately that these things were old. Their bald heads and wrinkled skin would have told anyone that, but it was the ancient wisdom in their eyes that struck Mark. They eyed him gleefully, their mouths hanging open.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Mark gasped. His first instinct was to back into the doorway he’d just exited. The wooden turn-style bumped against his hips and refused to move. There would be no going back that way unless he turned and clambered over it, but by then the little men would be swarming all over him.

  He quickly bounded back into the hall, ready to run, but saw perhaps another ten of the little men approaching from the other direction. He was cornered. But worse than that, Rip seemed quite comfortable with their appearance.

  The dog - his supposed friend - had led him into a trap!

  15

  ‘Keep back. Don’t touch me!’

  More than fear of the converging creatures, Mark was struck by the thought that his greatest ally might actually be his worst enemy. He’d blindly followed the dog – no not a dog, but a monster in collie’s clothing – into this place, only for Rip to now stand idle while these wrinkly little beasts all moved toward him. Their glistening eyes and their drooling mouths made them look like starving children at a cake shop window. And – if he guessed rightly – he was the chocolate cake that they all had their eyes on.

  He was jammed in the alcove with the turn-style nudging his bottom. He had nowhere to go and no way of fighting off these little creatures. He had the shotgun, but what good was that to him? Two shells wouldn’t make much of a difference against so many. Nevertheless, the gun had a wooden stock and a metal barrel: it could be a handy club.

  The nearest creatures were very close now, their eyes wide and their mouths even wider. Some of them began to lift their fingers in anticipation.

  ‘Get away from me!’

  Mark lifted the gun by its barrel, wielding it like a cudgel.

  The front row of little men shied away and they began making a mewling noise.

  Good, Mark thought, they’re afraid of me. He brandished the gun again and the men moved back a step. Mark knew that overconfidence could be his downfall, but he also knew that to show a bully fear was to invite an attack.

  ‘Ha!’ he shouted. He jabbed the stock at the nearest little men and again they skipped back. Mark followed them into the corridor. He saw Rip standing amongst the crowd. One of the little men had a hand on Rip’s shoulder and they were both peering up at Mark as though he was insane. Rip made a noise that sounded so like a grunt of disapproval and Mark wondered again at how human-like the dog could be.

  The little men stepped forward. Both groups had come together as one and they circled Mark. He slammed his shoulders against the passage wall and lifted the gun.

  ‘You’re not having me for lunch,’ Mark said through gritted teeth. ‘Any of you come near me and I’ll brain you. I’ll brain the whole lot of you!’

  One of the little men, standing closer than all the others, moved forward a half-step and reached up at him with fingers that Mark saw were coated in grime. He cringed.
Then he jabbed the butt of the gun into the little man’s tummy and knocked him to the floor.

  He expected them to attack en-masse.

  But they didn’t.

  They all let out a collective gasp.

  Some of the little men helped up their fallen friend and he stood rubbing his stomach and frowning at Mark with equal vigour.

  ‘I thought you said he could help us, Ammut?’

  Mark couldn’t believe his ears. Had that sibilant voice just came from the little man with his hand on Rip’s shoulder?

  Still wielding the shotgun like a club, Mark stared at the little man.

  ‘I did not expect our deliverer to be so violent toward us,’ said the man as he crossed his arms over his bony chest.

  Rip shook his head and then moved forward. The group of men circling Mark parted to let him through. Confused, Mark shook the gun at him. Rip was unperturbed.

  ‘You’re still my friend?’

  The dog stood and regarded Mark with his chocolate eyes, then his gaze slid to the shotgun and he grunted. Feeling foolish, Mark lowered the gun.

  ‘They can speak?’ Mark whispered to the dog.

  ‘And we can hear quite well, too,’ said the little man.

  ‘But they’re not human...’

  ‘That’s a typically human assumption,’ said the little man. ‘Why is it you think you are the only beings with the capacity for speech?’

  Mark was over his first flush of confusion, now he felt the need to defend his words. ‘But you are speaking English.’

  ‘I speak many languages. I choose English because I doubt you have the ability for other tongues.’

  Mark straightened himself, standing head and shoulders over all the others. ‘I know some French.’

  ‘You do?’ The little man sniggered. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, uh, I mean Oui.’

  Now all the little men were laughing at him.