The Caldera

by John Flanagan

  “Up you go,” he said.

  The former guard commander scrambled aboard the elevator. He looked a little nervous about the whole thing. He didn’t have Lydia’s head for heights, and the cage seemed awfully frail.

  Thorn sensed his unease and grinned. “Enjoy the ride. And don’t forget to hang on.”

  “I’m not likely to,” Olaf said through white lips. Then Thorn gave an order to the rowers, and both ship and cage moved away from the dock. Olaf’s knuckles turned white on the cage railing as the elevator soared upward. But the motion was smooth and there was little jerking. Before long, he began to feel more secure. He could make out Hal’s face leaning over the rail at the upper station, watching his progress. Then, as the white scarf waved again, Olaf felt the cage’s progress slowing.

  He grunted nervously as the reduction in speed caused the cage to rock from side to side. Previously, there had been little lateral movement, and now he felt as if the elevator were trying to shake him loose. He gripped tighter on the railing.

  “Give me your hand.” Hal’s voice surprised him. It was only a couple of meters away. He raised his eyes and saw that the cage was almost at the top of its run. Hal was leaning out, stretching a hand to him. Lydia, he noticed, was hanging on to Hal’s belt to anchor him. He took the proffered hand and felt a slight bump as the cage slid over the top of the hoist and came to rest on the solid floor timbers of the upper station. Hastily, he scrambled out, glad to feel firm ground under his feet once more.

  Only to lurch awkwardly as the ground beneath him trembled. He grabbed at the timber frame to steady himself.

  “Gorlog’s teeth!” he exclaimed.

  Hal shook his head sympathetically. “It keeps doing that,” he said. “Look over there.”

  Following the direction of his pointing arm, Olaf saw a sudden violent jet of steam erupt from a split in the rocks. A few seconds later, he coughed as the smell of sulfur assailed his lungs.

  He wiped his brow. “Just what I need. A ride on a spider’s web and the ground shaking and quaking beneath my feet.”

  “Don’t tense up,” Lydia advised him. “If you stay loose, you stay balanced, and it won’t throw you off your feet.”

  The ground shook again. This time there was a deep rumble that they could feel rather than hear beneath their feet. Olaf staggered, inadvertently tensing as he felt the movement.

  “That’s easier said than done,” he said. “How long before we can get moving?”

  If they had something to do, he wouldn’t have to concentrate on the feeling that the earth was shaking itself to pieces beneath him, he thought. But just standing around waiting for it to heave and quake wasn’t his idea of a good time. Hal pointed out to sea, where the sun was balanced on the rim of the horizon.

  “Sun will be down in a few minutes. We can get going then and see what we’re up against.”

  The transition from light to dark was surprisingly rapid. Once the sun sank below the horizon, deep shadows fell over the cliff top. The inlet below was already in darkness and they could only just make out the shape of the Heron, nestled into the dock.

  Hal waited a few minutes after the light was gone, then gestured toward the entrance to the elevator hut.

  “Let’s get going,” he said. He motioned for Lydia to lead the way. She was a skilled hunter and he knew she’d find the easiest route, and the best cover, across the cliff top. He gave her a twenty-meter start, then followed her, ghosting through the outcrops of rock and stunted, spiny trees. Olaf followed behind him, keeping the same interval between them.

  The ground rose from the elevator hut to a small ridge fifty meters inland. Lydia stopped at the ridge, crouching behind a pile of boulders. She waited until Hal and Olaf dropped into cover beside her, then pointed across the flat plateau.

  “There’s their compound,” she breathed.

  Hal wriggled forward on his elbows and knees to see what she was pointing at. From the shallow ridge behind which they were concealed, the land rose slightly, until it reached the bottom of a low wall, perhaps three meters high. He scanned along its length but could see no sign of a gate or any break in the wall. He felt Olaf scramble forward to lie beside him, and the three of them surveyed the pirate compound.

  The wall was patrolled by sentries. In the fifty-meter section that lay in front of them, Hal could see two men pacing. They carried heavy spears over their shoulders, the points gleaming occasionally in the last of the daylight. Both of them wore helmets. The parapet behind which they were pacing came up just past their waist height. Neither man seemed particularly alert, but there was very little cover between the spot where they lay, concealed by the slight ridge, and the base of the wall where the sentries were.

  “We’ll have to wait till it’s fully dark,” Lydia whispered.

  Hal nodded agreement. “I’d like to give it a couple more hours after that, and let the sentries get bored and tired.”

  Olaf grunted impulsively. “Why wait?” he said. “Let’s just fight our way in and find Constantus. This hanging around is giving me the heebie-jeebies.”

  Hal regarded him sardonically. “You’re not big on subtlety, are you?”

  Before Olaf could answer, Lydia chipped in. “Or brains. There are twenty to thirty men on the other side of the wall. We don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. If we go blundering in there now, we’re liable to find out—the hard way.”

  Olaf flushed. He didn’t like being criticized by people younger than he was—particularly when one of them was a girl. “Well, I say we attack now.”

  Hal eyed him coldly. “And I say we don’t. And in this crew, it’s what I say that counts, remember?”

  Olaf snorted. He pointed to the nearest sentry. “Look. He’s facing away from us now.”

  “And he’ll be facing back toward us by the time you’re halfway to the wall,” Hal said. “Stay where you are.”

  Olaf glared at him and began to gather his hands and feet under him, preparatory to rising. Lydia’s calm voice stopped him.

  “You make one move toward that wall and I’ll drop you with a dart,” she said. The tone of her voice left him in no doubt that she meant it. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to sink back to the rough ground. Then he started as the earth a few meters in front of him emitted a sudden gush of steam and sulfurous smoke. The ground shook. In response to the sound, the sentry on the wall turned and peered in their direction.

  “If you’d moved, he would have spotted you,” Hal pointed out.

  Olaf reacted angrily. “I can’t help it if the ground keeps snorting and belching every five minutes.”

  Hal exchanged a look with Lydia and rolled his eyes. You just couldn’t win with some people, he thought.

  As darkness fell and they lay hidden among the rocks, they became aware of the loom of a fire behind the wall, and heard the occupants shouting and laughing—and then singing. Sparks flew in the air, rising high above the wall. After some time, they could smell the fragrant scent of roasting meat.

  “Sounds like some kind of celebration,” Lydia said.

  “Good!” said Hal. “We’ll wait till it settles down and they’re all either drunk or asleep. It’ll make it easier to find our way around the compound.”

  The singing and feasting continued for several hours. Watching the moon slide across the sky, Hal estimated that it was well past midnight. The ground around them continued to heave and tremble with increasing frequency. Geysers of steam and sulfur smoke shot into the air from fissures in the rocks.

  “That’s getting worse,” Lydia said after a particularly violent upheaval.

  “It certainly isn’t getting better,” Hal replied. “Although it doesn’t seem to be bothering them inside the compound.”

  Eventually, the noise of revelry began to abate, and the glow of the huge bonfire died down, so that sparks could no lo
nger be seen beyond the wall. The singing grew more ragged, and there were fewer voices joining in the songs, until eventually, only one voice, slurred and wavering, could be heard, and that eventually died away into a hiccupping silence.

  By contrast, the rumbling and trembling of the ground, and the eruptions of steam and sulfur, seemed to grow more frequent and more powerful. After one particularly violent outburst, Hal and Lydia eyed each other anxiously.

  “I think the sooner we’re out of here, the better,” Hal said.

  Lydia nodded, although she gestured toward the wall, where one helmeted head was still visible.

  “Sentries are still on patrol,” she said. “Although he’s not looking our way now.”

  The celebrations inside the compound had one favorable result. The sentries hadn’t been relieved in hours, although from time to time their friends had brought them jugs of wine. As a result, they were half asleep and definitely not alert.

  Hal studied the nearest sentry. “Even so, there’s still a good chance he’ll see us if we start to move.”

  Lydia bared her teeth in a grin. “He won’t see me,” she said, and selected a dart from her quiver, fitting it to the atlatl handle.

  “You’re going to kill him?” Hal asked. Whether the sentry was a pirate or not, Hal wasn’t altogether comfortable with the idea of killing a man in cold blood.

  But Lydia was shaking her head as she held out the dart for him to see.

  “It doesn’t have a broadhead, just a knob of hardwood,” she said. “It’ll knock him out, not kill him.” Before he could comment, she explained further. “If I used a broadhead, he might yell out in pain before he died.”

  Hal couldn’t resist smiling at the serious way she said it. “For a moment there, I thought you were getting softhearted.”

  Lydia shook her head. “Me? Never. Wait here while I take care of him.”

  And so saying, she rose into a crouch and crept toward the wall.

  chapterthirty-four

  Lydia moved in a crouch, using the scudding shadows of the clouds as they passed across the moon, moving with them, staying inside their concealment, then dropping to the ground as the shadows pulled away from her. There was a regular spurt of steam coming from a fissure in the rocks now, and she also timed her movement to coincide with that, using the noise to blanket any small sound she might make.

  The trick is not to rush it, she thought to herself, avoiding the temptation to dash quickly forward. When she was thirty meters from the wall, she stopped and rose to a half crouch, the dart back over her right shoulder, ready to throw.

  She rose to her full height and some part of the movement must have alerted the sentry. He turned and looked in her direction. But the uncertain light and the jugs of wine that he’d consumed over the past five hours combined to make his vision uncertain. He thought there was a slim figure standing out there among the rocks below the wall. But maybe it was a tree. He leaned forward, peering owlishly at it. Then it moved.

  “Who—” He began the normal challenge, Who goes there? but never managed to articulate the last two words. Something came hissing out of the night and slammed into his forehead, just above the midpoint between his eyes.

  His legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed, unconscious, to the planks on the walkway behind the wall. His spear fell from his nerveless hands, clattering briefly on the planks, then falling silent. Lydia paused anxiously, her hand automatically selecting another dart. This one was a broadhead, she knew—a leaf-shaped, razor-sharp iron point. If another sentry had been alerted, he was going to be out of luck.

  But there was no further sound from the parapet and she ran lightly forward, signaling with her arm for Hal and Olaf to follow.

  They arrived with a rush, making a little more noise than she thought was necessary. She made a shushing sound, with her finger to her lips, and Hal had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “So you should be,” she told him. “Now give me a boost up the wall.”

  He put out a hand to stop her. “You’re not going up. I am.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “No argument. You’ve done your bit. Now stand back.”

  She heard the steel in his voice and shrugged mentally. Once her blood was up in a situation like this, she was keen to keep going. But she recognized the sense in what he was saying. He was a skilled swordsman, and all she had was a dagger. If there was trouble waiting on top of the wall, he was better equipped to deal with it.

  Olaf obviously had the same thought. “Maybe I should go,” he said.

  But Hal waved him back. “You’re too big for me to boost up the wall.”

  Olaf had to agree he was right. He stepped close to the wall and made a stirrup with his hands, lurching as the ground trembled under him, then recovering his balance and gesturing for Hal to put his foot in the stirrup. Hal slung his crossbow over his shoulder, checked that his sword was loose in its scabbard and stepped up into Olaf’s clenched hands, immediately straightening his knee as the burly warrior heaved him upward.

  He shot up the face of the wall, using his hands to push himself over the top and landing catlike on both feet. His knees bent to soften the impact, and his right hand dropped to his sword hilt, drawing the gleaming blade clear with the usual warning shriing! of metal and leather.

  He faced left, then right, searching for any sign of danger. A few meters away, the unfortunate sentry lay sprawled on the walkway. But there was no sign of anyone else. In the compound itself, all was still. A few comatose bodies lay by the dying embers of the fire, but it appeared that most of the inhabitants had taken themselves off to bed. There was no sign of the second sentry they had seen earlier. Hal advanced down the wall a few paces and saw him, huddled in a shadowy corner, a wine jug cradled in his lap. His snores rivaled the sound of the volcanic disturbances that erupted every few minutes.

  Hal returned to the point where he had scaled the wall and leaned over. “All clear,” he called.

  Lydia was waiting with a length of rope she had carried, looped over her shoulder. She tossed it up to him and he made it fast round one of the crenellations, then stood back as Lydia came up hand over hand, moving quickly and sinuously. Olaf followed, making heavier work of it, grunting and snorting as he hauled his bulk up the wall. The two Herons leaned over and grabbed him under the armpits for the last couple of meters, swinging him up over the wall like a hooked fish.

  “Just as well you didn’t come up first,” Hal said with a grin.

  Olaf, for once, acknowledged the fact. “Not as young as I used to be,” he said.

  Lydia regarded him with a serious expression. “I’ve never understood why people say that,” she said. “None of us is as young as we used to be.”

  Olaf opened his mouth to reply but Hal held up a hand to stop him. “Let it pass,” he said. “Let it pass.”

  Lydia, still puzzled, shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t understand Skandians,” she said to herself.

  Hal pointed to a set of steps ten meters away, leading down from the wall into the compound.

  “Looks like everybody’s out for the night,” he said. “Let’s find the boy.”

  He paused at the top of the steps to take stock of the compound. Within the wall, there were eight buildings—all constructed in the whitewashed stucco that was standard for this part of the world. The roofs were covered in red clay tiles, each one shaped like half a pipe in the Toscan style.

  Three of the buildings he discounted immediately. They were too large for a prison. Two of them had no windows on their long sides, and he guessed they were storerooms or warehouses. After all, he reasoned, Myrgos must need somewhere to stow the proceeds of his raiding. He indicated them to the others.

  “We’ll burn them if we get the chance,” he said softly. The idea of destroying Myrgos’
s loot was an appealing one.

  “To create a diversion?” Olaf asked.

  Hal shook his head. “No. To really get up Myrgos’s nose. I’d guess that’s where he keeps his booty.”

  “Oh,” Olaf said.

  Lydia said nothing, but she flashed a fierce grin at her skirl. She liked the idea as well.

  The other large building had five windows spaced along its sides. They were open spaces, with wooden covers hinged at the top that could be lowered over them in the event of bad weather. At the moment, the covers were open, held up by wooden props.

  “Bunkhouse?” Hal asked the others, and they nodded. It was the most likely purpose for the building.

  That left the four smaller structures, each about six meters by six. One stood close to an outdoor cooking pit, with a roasting spit set in place over a wide, open fireplace. Smoke drifted up from the bed of coals that glowed dully in the night air.

  “Kitchen,” he said softly. The other three buildings were on the far side of the compound, and he could make out no details from his current position. Carefully, he led the way down the stairs to the flat ground of the compound itself. A corsair, dressed in a flamboyant mixture of garments he had undoubtedly stolen from a victim at some previous time, lay snoring on the dirt beneath the steps. Hal inspected him closely, ready for the man to stir and waken. But he was out cold. There was a rumbling in the ground and the earth shook violently. Hal noticed a small crack appear down the outer wall of the compound. Still the pirate didn’t stir.

  “That was a big one,” Lydia said nervously. She was right—the tremor had been stronger than most of its predecessors, and it had continued for much longer. Hal estimated that it had gone on for at least fifteen seconds—a small enough time in reality, but seeming like an age when the ground was shaking and lurching beneath your feet.

  “Come on,” he said. They took cover in the shadows beside the building he had guessed to be a bunkhouse, crouching double as they passed the open windows in case anyone was awake inside. The sound of loud storing reached them, confirming that his guess had been correct.