At Swords' Point

by Andre Norton

  “Perhaps. On the other hand there is a lot of traffic on the St. Pietersberg road even this early and once we make the highway we shall not be so conspicuous — ”

  He stopped almost in mid-word. And Quinn’s hands balled into fists. Another car pulled out of a side street and swung in between them and the taxi. A car which showed no desire to catch up or pass Wasburg’s. Another toiler — ! But who — ?

  Joris cut speed, dropped back — a half block, a full block. The taxi and its black follower proceeded in a stately parade.

  “Friend of yours?” Quinn hoped that that was true.

  “No.” Joris’ answer was curt.

  They were driving through the suburbs of the city now, almost on the road which ran two and a half miles on to St. Pietersberg. Free of the bicycle swarms the taxi picked up speed, but its spurt was matched by the black car. Joris ventured to draw closer. He took his left hand from the wheel and pulled open a pocket on the door. A moment later he held a Luger.

  “Kidnapping ahead?” suggested Quinn.

  “That may be what they plan. I do not like the looks of this at all.”

  That, thought Quinn, was a prize understatement. He located the pencil gun and wondered if Joris had any more arms concealed about the car. A machine gun or a couple of grenades would be a help. He wished that he had not lived so sheltered a life and knew a little more about firearms.

  But the black car made no effort to force the taxi off the road, and the procession of three continued in the same order across the countryside until Quinn's excitement faded and he felt more the pangs of hunger than before-the-battle jitters.

  As the high rises of the limestone cliffs came into view the black car suddenly slackened speed, and Joris had to brake to a standstill to avoid catching up with it. The taxi drew ahead and vanished. The black car was at the side of the road, and a man got out to look under the hood.

  Joris made several blistering comments under his breath. There was no place here to get off the road out of sight of the car ahead. And for him to fake a break-down also would be entirely too suspicious. He dared not even keep to his present crawling pace for the same reason. But ahead the hood was being snapped down again, the driver got back in and started up at a speed which sent the earth spinning out from the car wheels.

  “Wanted to let the taxi get a good start, but didn’t want us to pass them — ” deduced Quinn aloud.

  “Right. And there is the entrance to the caverns.”

  Before they reached the parking place the taxi passed them, the driver alone in it, bound back to Maastricht. Wasburg must have already entered the caverns. Joris drove in to park beside the now empty black car. Then he went over to the guides’ office. He returned scowling and kicking at pebbles.

  “Well?”

  “It is not well at all.” The Netherlander opened the car door. “But we can eat while we wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Guides! It is the fault of my own thickheadedness.” Joris unscrewed the top of a thermos bottle. “Wasburg had a guide who met him and took him right on in. It turns out that one of the men in the black car — there were three of them — was a guide. There isn't another to be had for an hour when the regular crew come on duty. And we are not allowed to enter alone. So we'll just have to wait! I should have arranged for one yesterday.”

  “But how are we going to get across into Belgium if a guide goes with us?” Quinn wanted to know.

  “There are markings on the wall — I know how to find the trail from a point inside. But we have to take a cave runner to get us that far and then we'll have to give him the slip and try it alone. But I do not like the thought of Wasburg in there and those three others after him — ”

  Quinn’s sandwich suddenly lost all taste, and he chewed and swallowed large dry chunks. An hour before they could start — and so much could happen in an hour!

  “If they want to get him they’ll have to wait until they are in some distance,” Joris continued as if he read the other’s thoughts. “The main galleries are too public. But a cave runner who knows his work could get him off into a side pocket where he would never be found — ”

  “Murder!”

  Joris swallowed as if he found the food as hard to manage as Quinn had. “I do not know. But this would be an excellent place to hide a body. There are supposed to be about twenty-three thousand galleries, and many are very dangerous. Rock falls can entomb one alive. Some of the deeper passages are flooded.”

  Quinn put down the remaining part of his cheese sandwich. He had lost his interest in food.

  “You were wishing a guide for the caverns, Mijnheeren?”

  The man who came up to their car was small and thin, and his face in the full light of the rising sun seemed oddly white. He was a hairy man with a thick growth of dark fuzz low on his forehead, sprouting again in bushy tufts over his eyes until they were as well hidden as if protected by hedging. On the back of the hand which rested now on the window of the car was a wiry black mat.

  He wore the worn and discarded fatigues of an American soldier, stained on the knees and along the forearms as if he had crawled and wriggled through damp earth not too long ago.

  “You are in search of a guide?” he asked again.

  “You are not one of the official ones,” Joris countered.

  The little man grinned and shrugged. “I have not the presence — the proper looks to inspire trust in tourists — or so the officials have frankly told me. But I have run the caves since I was a boy. Ask old puffy neck sitting like a judge there — ” He waved his hand toward the entrance. “He must, if he tells the truth at all, admit that Hans Loo knows even the bat trails inside. But if it is a proud strutter in a fine uniform you are waiting for — well, wait for him, Mijnheer —” He turned away.

  “Wait!” Joris got out of the car. “If the guard will vouch for you, you have customers.”

  He caught the small man with a firm grip on his upper arm and propelled him toward the entrance. Quinn picked up the knapsack, locked the car, and followed. He was only halfway to the entrance when Joris emerged and waved him to hurry.

  “It is all correct,” Maartens said. “Loo is an expert and reliable. Also,” he dropped his voice as the American fell in step with him, “I now know in which direction Was-burg was headed. He asked to visit the cave where the female bats raise their young — the bat nursery. It is quite famous. So,” he turned to the waiting Loo who had reappeared equipped with a powerful torch and a coil of rope, “we would visit the bat nursery, my friend.”

  “As you wish, Mijnheeren. You will follow me at all times, please, and do not stray. It is very dangerous to lose one’s way.” He waited to see them both nod in agreement before he padded away into a weird lost world which, Quinn decided, could overawe those who invaded it.

  Underfoot the soft chalky dust, faintly damp, which Joris called ‘marl’, muffled footfalls so that one moved zombie-fashion down corridors carved out of the living stone. In endless rows on either side were ranks of squared pillars rising to support a ceiling which was forty, perhaps even fifty feet above their heads. The massive pillars of shadowy stone suggested an Egyptian temple where the timeless silence could not be shattered by any sound made by relatively ineffectual mankind.

  When the guide pointed out the scrawls left by Romans, or those of the centuries-ago explorers who followed after them, Quinn began to realize that he walked where time moved no clock hands. Material taken from these walls had built Roman villas and temples to Mars and Mitra which had been wrecked in turn by Goths and Huns. Then men had come again to haul forth the stone for Christian churches and castles —

  “Men once said” — the small guide’s voice floated back to them, oddly muffled and deadened —”that the Devil roamed here at his will. The Black Man held his feasts for the Riders of the Goats in lower passages. If you wish I can show you, Mijnheeren, one of the black crosses which were made to summon him out to give a man luck. This place is old
— very old!”

  He drew his hand along the wall beside which he walked almost lovingly. “It was once on the bottom of a sea — so the professors say. And that is maybe the truth for in the walls are shells, and they once found hereabouts the bones of fish monsters. Now — they still take from here the marl and the building blocks. And in other parts mushrooms are grown. During the war there was also made a place of safety for use in air raids. For five thousand years have these caverns served man in one way or another. And that is a long time, Mijnheeren, a long time.”

  They passed from corridor to corridor, all alike, forming such a network of exactly similar passages that Quinn was quite lost within five minutes of their leaving the entrance. But the guide was perfectly certain of the path.

  “How can you tell the right way?” asked the American at last.

  Hans Loo laughed. “It becomes with us who run the caves like another sense, Mijnheer. Sometimes we travel even without this.” He twisted the torch so that the spear of light went from floor to roof and back in one yellow-white sweep. “We have our markings which others might not notice — the trace of an old cart trail on the floor, the scar of saw and chisel on the wall or arch. We start as boys. Sometimes we get lost. We fight the dark and the fear. There are men, Mijnheeren, who cannot withstand that fear. They come in, and when the dark closes about them, tighter, tighter, tighter, they are ridden by terror — they must get out or they will go mad! I have seen that happen. I myself have led out by the hand men who were sick and shaking.

  “But if you have not the fear you haunt the grottos and the corridors. You learn the ways as if they were those of your own home. You explore by yourself, always trying to find again old forgotten passages where men have not walked for centuries. In time, cave running becomes your life!”

  Quinn looked at his watch. They had been traveling almost a half hour. The dank chill of the place seeped through his coat, and he wondered how Joris could stand it with only a thin jacket over his jersey. Then Maartens caught his wrist and, having so attracted his attention, pointed to a scrap of white paper on the floor. Hardly pausing as he passed it the Netherlander stooped and scooped up a crumpled cigarette package.

  Quinn could see nothing out of the ordinary about the find. But to his surprise Joris tucked it away in his jacket pocket. Surely such a tourist memento could be found anywhere about the caverns. Then the American remembered he had not seen trash lying about. Could Joris believe that had been dropped on purpose?

  Their muffled journey continued. The gloom, the unending lines of massive pillars, the cold and silence began to nibble at Quinn’s nerves. He thought he was able now to sympathize with those men who could not take the caverns, who had had to be led out shaking. Man’s oldest and most common fear — not that of the dark itself, but of what might lie in wait there — above to see — to hunt — was nursed by the atmosphere of these ways. A man lost here, alone, without light, blundering through an unending maze — Quinn gave himself a mental shake. This was no time to indulge his imagination. He’d better think about what might happen when they caught up with Wasburg. How many men were ahead of them now?

  Wasburg and his guide — two. And the three men from the black car. But were those two parties together now? Two against five — not very good odds. They couldn't expect Loo to aid in their quarrel. There was a telltale bulge under Joris’ jacket, though. He still carried the Luger.

  “Is this section well known?” Maartens asked suddenly.

  “Not so well, Mijnheer. Most tourists do not care for the bats — The ladies, now — few of them will go near the bat caves. We have men of science who come from time to time to study the creatures. They band some of them on the legs with metal rings — to learn how far the bat will travel. I do not know — ” He shrugged. “The bats, they are most strange and odd. Some years ago I saw one which was pure white — like a ghost it flew. I tried to capture it for I thought that I might be able to sell it to one of the scientists or to a zoo. But I could not. For two years I saw it come and go, always in the same cave. And then it came no more. Perhaps it died — or went to roost elsewhere. I told one of those who band the bats of it. And he was much excited — asking me to watch for another. Well, I have done so ever since — maybe five seasons now — that is why I know the path to the bat nursery so well. But never have I seen another white one.”

  “What is this?” Joris had been skirting the wall, and now he stopped and put his thumb under a mark. The guide swung his light across it — a triangle, point down, the two top angles surmounted with straight lines.

  The guide laughed. “Modern foolishment. Some youngster tries to make a mystery with the old sign of the Goat Riders.”

  “Goat Riders?” echoed Quinn.

  “Satan worshipers and thieves who hid out in these caverns maybe two hundred years ago,” Joris explained.

  “But, Mijnheeren, if you wish to see the real sign of Black Man now — ” Loo stopped short and looked about him as if to get his bearings, then was off along a side way before they could protest. They had to break into a trot to keep his bobbing light in sight.

  “Wait!” Quinn seized Joris’ sleeve and brought the Netherlander to a sliding stop. “Listen!”

  “What — ?” Joris twisted himself free impatiently.

  “Thought I heard something — ”

  “You can't tell about sounds in here,” his companion returned brusquely. “Echoes and the dust distort everything. Come on — ”

  Quinn followed Maartens. But he was still stubbornly sure that he had heard something — a cry choked off in the middle.

  Loo had turned another corner, but they could still see the reflection of his light. And they were too close to stop when that reflection suddenly vanished. Quinn tried to pull his own torch out, only to have it catch in the flap of his coat pocket. He was still tugging at it when he heard a surprised grunt and other sounds which he could only interpret as a threshing battle in process ahead of him. He gave a last wrench at the torch, brought it out, and snapped the light on. And he had time for only an instant's glimpse of rolling bodies before a heavy weight crashed against his skull behind his ear and he fell forward into a blackness broken by jagged bolts of flame.

  Now he ran, ran through icy slush which entrapped him to his knees. And behind him rode the Black Man, an inky-faced menace mounted on a goat. But around his head was a band of fire, biting in and in and in —

  Quinn could touch the ice — it lay under his outspread hands, grainy, soft — cold. And the pain pounded in a regular beat behind his eyes. His eyes! They were open, he was staring straight ahead — ahead at nothing but blackness! He was blind! He mouthed a sort of choked whimper — cold, sick, waves of nausea in his middle — he was blind!

  Painfully he tried to remember. With his hands he made slow exploration. He was lying on his back against some kind of stone wall. A stone wall — in a cave — the St. Pietersburg Caverns! Quinn sat up abruptly and fought for control over his giddy head.

  Maybe he wasn't blind after all. If there was no light — Light! He had had his torch in his hand when he went down. Now he hunched forward and began to run his hands through the dust in a circle. His heart jumped as he touched metal. He grabbed for it — then he knew that what he had was Joris’ Luger, not the torch.

  With an exclamation of disappointment and disgust he dropped it behind him and began again in that blind quest, fingers sweeping furrows through the gritty dust. He crept away from the wall on all fours — like a wounded animal — sweeping inch by inch ahead, returning again and again over the same section to be sure he had not missed it in his sightless search.

  Eons later he found that metal tube. He got up on his knees and brought it close to his body, cupping both shaking hands about it. Then he snapped the button.

  Light leaped dazzingly down on the floor where the dust had been churned and plowed. Quinn edged back to the wall and steadied himself with one hand against it while he swept that beam over
bare walls, torn up marl — then the light caught and held on something else —

  Quinn could not get to his feet. He tried twice and his whirling head nearly sent him flat. So he crawled on hands and knees over the figure that was Maartens, lying face downward, his wrists and ankles tied with rope. Surely they would not have tied up a dead man, Quinn thought dully.

  He picked at the knots and it took a long time for him to unfasten them. But, when the loosened rope coils fell away from his wrists, the Netherlander rolled over. Quinn relaxed and held his throbbing head between his hands.

  Maartens spat a wad of cloth out of his mouth.

  “So you're alive after all!” he croaked.

  The American did not try to answer as Joris untied his ankles and kicked away the rope. Maartens took the torch and got to his feet, switching the light up and down the corridor. As far as that beam could pierce the gloom they were alone. Then the light centered on Quinn, and he shaded his tormented eyes against its glare. He was aware that Joris was kneeling beside him and that the Netherlander's hand was on his neck pressing his head down.

  “It broke the skin —”

  Quinn fumbled for his first-aid packet. Then he gritted his teeth and fought nausea while the other tended his wound.

  “They were waiting for us —” Maartens’ words came slowly.

  “Was — was Loo one of them?” asked Quinn with long spaces between the words.

  “Might have been. If he wasn't they took him along with them. I saw them go. They must have knocked Wasburg cold — they were carrying him.”

  “Go — where?” Quinn summoned wits enough to ask.

  “Across the border. We'll get you back to a doctor and then —”

  “No!” Quinn braced his arm against the wall behind him and levered his body up. This time, he thought, he could make his feet — the walls had ceased their mad dance around and around. He swallowed twice and found the words he wanted.

  “Can't lose the time. I can make it —”

  But Maartens was shaking his head. “That was a bad blow you took —”