Shadowprey: A Black Foxes Adventure

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Randall said, “M’lady, here’s what the cap’n said.”

  He explained the plan, and asked her if she understood.

  She nodded.

  Randall looked at the men, and said, “Four bells after mid of night it be.” He glanced at Lyssa, and again she nodded then vanished.

  Lyssa briefly appeared in the cell where Arik and the others were held, and she signed,

  “The crew is ready?” asked Arik.

 

  Arik shook his head. “No.”

  Lyssa quenched her light and was gone.

  And time dragged by. . . .

  . . . and crept . . .

  . . . and oozed . . .

  Kane spent a good deal of it pacing the confines of the cell, until Ky in frustration grabbed his arm and bade him to sit.

  Arik and Trendel and Rith tried to sleep, but only rested, their minds achurn with what-ifs and may-bes.

  Mid of night came and went. . . .

  . . . and then one bell . . . two bells . . . three . . .

  But before the next bell sounded, there echoed the distant discharge of flintlock fire.

  Somewhere muskets sounded.

  “Damn, damn,” spat Kane, “I hope that isn’t ours.”

  There came a muffled thud, and the cell-hall door banged open and a screaming guard came running in.

  Lyssa rushed upon him, her eerie moan preceding her, and prisoners in other cages shrieked in dread and fled to the backs of their cells.

  A blast of blackness shot out from Ky’s palm, and burst the lock on the door.

  “So much for subtlety,” said Trendel, as they fled down the hall and out.

  The offices and chambers and hallways beyond were in chaos, and warders with muskets and flintlock pistols turned to see them coming, and they raised their weapons to fire. But Rith spoke a word and screamed, and they clutched their heads and fell to their knees in agony.

  Kane and Trendel and Arik all snatched up weaponry, and then ran onward. And out from the fortress jail and into the streets they escaped.

  Still, gunfire sounded, and it came from the direction of the slips, and Arik cried, “Lyssa, fly to the Sorrow and if they’re ours, give aid.”

  And they ran swiftly for the docks, with gunfire and shouting in the distance ahead and shouting and pursuit coming after.

  And even as they sped onward and neared their goal, from the fore there came screams of terror mingled with jubilant cries.

  They rounded a building to see the Sorrow in the near distance. The queen’s men had thrown down their arms and were running straight at Arik and the others. And above them and brightly lit flew Lyssa, wailing as would a lost wind. Dodging and darting this way and that, Arik, Ky, Rith, Kane, and Trendel passed among the queen’s men fleeing opposite.

  “Up sail!” shouted Rith, her voice heard by all of the Sorrow’s crew, and they took up their wounded and even their dead and scrambled aboard and unfurled the silks and hauled on the halyards.

  “Cast off,” shouted Arik, even as he and the others fled up the gangplank, two men hauling in the board right after, as other men loosed the hawsers.

  “Open all levitator cages,” shouted Arik, “and shut in the flux anchor.”

  Men scrambled down the hatchways to obey.

  Kane commandeered several of the crew, and they began hauling the wounded down to the infirmary.

  Musket fire rattled against the hull and masts and punched into sails.

  “Rith!” shouted Arik.

  “I’m on it,” she called back. She ran forward as the ship began to rise. And she spoke a word and then screamed at the men who had come in pursuit, and they dropped weapons and clutched their heads. In the same moment, Lyssa depleted their captain, and then turned back for the ship.

  “Ky, we need shadow,” called Arik, “else the city cannons will take us down.”

  As darkness cloaked the Sorrow, one by one the sails began to fill, and as the ship gained headway, Arik brought her about and cruised toward the nearest edge of Validor.

  Boom!

  A battery in the city let fire.

  The shot whistled overhead and detonated.

  “How did they spot us?” asked Trendel. “We’re in shadow, and the moons have set.”

  “Yes,” said Arik, “but we’re silhouetted against the stars.”

  Just as the Sorrow passed over the rim of the sky island, another cannon fired, this one to miss as well, though some shrapnel from the explosion rattled down on the ship.

  “Rith, grab as many as you can and close all cages and lose a thousand feet, we’ve got to get below the city cannons.”

  “Oh, my,” said Ky. “We’re in for a real ride, and I don’t think Kane is going to like it.”

  “All men, hang on!” cried Trendel.

  Even as he called the command, the ship began to sink, then plunge, and then plummet like a rock toward the sea below. And with their stomachs in their throats, the crew in free-fall held on for dear life, some with their legs afloat.

  But the Sorrow fell more than a thousand feet before her plunge began to slow, and finally they came to a halt no more than two hundred feet above the ocean waves.

  As Rith struggled up to the deck, Kane, white as a sheet, poked his head above a hatchway and shouted, “What by Nandra’s Toes was that all about? I’m trying to heal people, you know.” Then he popped back down.

  “Sorry about that, Arik,” said Rith, “but most of the men lost their handholds and were floating free before I pulled in enough of them for us to start whipping the cages open again.”

  Arik waved off the excuse and shouted, “Lyssa, are you here?”

  She briefly showed herself ere blinking out again.

  “I’m going to need you to take out several captains on our course through the blockade. We’ve no time for distractions and subtleties before the queen’s wizards are awakened. I would not have them begin casting whatever they might before we’re out of range.”

  Lyssa reappeared and signaled,

  Arik spun the wheel and turned to Rith and said, “Pipe the sails to put the wind on our beam and let us fly.”

  “What about our altitude, Arik?” asked Trendel. “Have you any orders for the vanes?”

  “Just hold them level, for I think we’ll run low like this and be all the harder for them to see.”

  And so, with Lyssa flying ahead and taking out the lookouts as well as the captains, they sailed well beyond the blockade before turning northward again.

  And as they did so, Randall came to the captain and said, “I’m sorry, sir, that things went to pot, but one of the City Watch patrols spotted us as we gathered nigh the slips. They challenged us, and we tried to behave like revelers, but they put flintlocks on us, and we did the same on them, and one of them went off—ours or theirs, I don’t know the which of it—and then all perdition broke loose.”

  “Worry not, Chief Bosun,” said Arik, “for such are the vicissitudes of war.”

  Randall scratched his head and worked his way through the cap’n’s answer, finally deciding that all was forgiven, and he went back to his part of running the ship.

  They sailed north for several days, finally crossing Malagar’s midline, where Trendel did another casting. He glanced up at the place where Lyssa normally rode, but it was day and she was absent. “Her body still lies north, Arik,” said Trendel. “And it is still neither alive nor dead. I wonder what the eff that means?”

  Arik shrugged, but kept an eye to the horizon ahead.

  After a moment, “Y’know what?” said Trendel, “I think it’s time we asked that Itherian again.”

  “Itherian?”

  “Arda, I mean.”

  Arik pursed his lips in thought.

  “After all, what can it hurt?” asked Trendel.

  Arik nodded and finally said,
“Tonight at the change of the watch.”

  At eight bells—mid of night—they gathered in the captain’s cabin, Lyssa included, though she remained as far away as she could. And Trendel put in mind the image of Arton, for that was how he had summoned Arda before.

  And he said a word, and the air before him began to swirl. And again Arda appeared as a vortex of spectral light—pearlescent and glittery, glowing and luminous, starlight and shine and frost . . . all endlessly spiraling away into an unfathomable silvery whorl.

  And even as Arda did so, an explosion rocked the Sorrow, and musket fire rattled, and someone pounded on the cabin door and shouted, “Cap’n Arik, Cap’n Arik, the Lost Prince’s ships, they’re on our stern!”

  Arik turned to Lyssa, but before he could say ought, the cabin began to change, to widen in a rush, the walls to vanish. And the chairs they were in altered and became leather and they found their legs astraddle and their feet in stirrups, and the horses they rode pounded across the desert and away from Necropolis. Word had arrived that General Gordon had been beheaded in Khartoum, slain by the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, and rabid bands of Mahdists now roamed the streets of Luxor. And directly west across the Nile from that ancient and noble city, the treasure hunting team had been driven out from the heavily cartouche- and hieroglyph-marked halls of the dead, and now they fled for their lives, with bullets whining past them through the moonlit midnight air and sounding like angry hornets.

  It was beginning to look like 1885 would be a very bad year for recovering lost Egyptian artifacts.

  38

  Five Months Before the Hearing

  (Coburn Facility)

  “What do you mean, back so soon?” asked Mark Perry at the main gate.

  “Oh, and by the way,” said James Haddock, the Blackledge guard on duty, “Harvey says you forgot to sign in and out the last time you were here.”

  “Harvey who?”

  “Why, Harvey Middleton, Mr. Perry—the guard at the sign-in desk.”

  Frustrated, Mark said, “You didn’t answer my first question”—he glanced at the nametag—“James: what did you mean when you said ‘Hi, Mr. Perry. What brings you back so soon?’ I want to know what you meant.”

  “Why, just that you were here, lemme see”—James glanced at his watch—“just about four, maybe five hours ago. I could look it up in my log. Brought in a bunch of powertechs to shut down that machine, Avery.”

  “Powertechs?” Mark looked back at the crew that he had brought to do just that, techs hired and under the personal command of Finster Coburn and Charlotte Dupree, heirs to the Coburn Estate. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, James, but I’ll soon find out. Now open the gate.”

  James stepped back to the guard shack and threw a switch, and the gate slowly slid aside. And as soon as the way was clear, Perry drove through, followed by the second van.

  In the gatehouse James keyed his com. “Harve? . . . Whaddya mean, ‘who else would it be?’ . . . Hold on, hold on, you’re grouchy, man. We’ll both be glad when this shift is over and we can get a beer. Twelve hours is too long, no matter that we’re pulling down holiday quadruple-time pay. . . . What? . . . Oh, right. Perry is back with more men. . . . How should I know? . . . He must have gone out when I took a dump, but now he’s back. . . . Yeah, yeah, I told him he forgot to sign in and out. . . . Well, it’s up to you to see that he does; I can’t do it from down here.”

  James punched off his com and muttered, “Assholes. Harve and Perry both.” Then James frowned in puzzlement. Even if Perry did go out when I was in the crapper, I didn’t hear the gate run. Maybe it’s when I blew that big one. Oh well, one of life’s little mysteries. James picked up his copy of the latest Hologirls and settled back in his chair.

  “I’m an idiot,” said Al Hawkins, jumping down from the flatbed.

  “What?” Kat Lawrence looked at Al in puzzlement.

  “I forgot that we ran the Astro two-fifty back when the lightning struck six months ago.”

  “You forgot?”

  “Well, I didn’t really forget that we actually ran it,” said Al.

  “What then?”

  “That we burned H2 to do it.”

  “And . . .”

  “And I don’t know how much fuel is left.”

  “Oh, shit.” Kat jumped down from the flatbed beside Al, and they trotted toward the tank. Al punched an L.E.D. control and read the results. “Mother effer,” he groaned. “Two hours left, at most.”

  Kat pulled out her holocom unit. “Don’t worry, Al, it’s winter; lightning is uncommon, especially superbolts, like in the monsoons. So you see, it’s not as if we’re going to have to use it. I’ll make some calls. We’ll get an H2 tanker in here.”

  “They’ll have to get through the gate,” said Al.

  “Yeah, but now that we’re in, having a tanker come will look normal.” She punched in a code and as she waited for the line to be answered, she looked at Al and grinned and said, “Truth be told, I also forgot that we burned it.”

  In the control room, Grace Willoby clapped her hands and said, “Wow! That was exciting. I didn’t know just how the Black Foxes would get back on the Sorrow, but I had every faith they would.”

  “I don’t think when they are on Malagar they are the Foxes anymore,” said Drew Meyer.

  “Well, what else would you have me call them?” asked Grace.

  Drew shrugged and grinned and said, “Point taken, my dear.”

  They watched as Avery ran the clock, and the VR days passed swiftly. And then in the holo the officers gathered in the captain’s cabin, and Trendel summoned Arda.

  A moment later, with bullets winging all ’round them, the Black Foxes rode hell-bent away from Necropolis and into the Egyptian desert.

  Alya squealed and said, “Oh, my, they are in my adventure, now.”

  Sheila Baxter called out, “Avery is downloading tons of data into the I.D. crystals.”

  Toni looked at the comptech. At the adjoining console, Billy Clay said, “Just like he did last the time the Foxes were dropped into a new VR.”

  Toni turned to Alya. “Your adventure?”

  “I was a tomb raider in a time when Mahdi assassins were looking for infidels to kill,” said Alya, a white grin splitting her nut-brown face.

  “Assassins or not, just what the hell is going on here?” demanded someone.

  Toni and the others whirled around, and there stood Mark Perry, fuming, and a tall blond man stood at his side.

  39

  Egypt

  (Tomb Raiders)

  Of a sudden the rifle fire stopped, and from the ruins behind them, men began shrieking. Ky, in the lead, slowed her galloping mare to a trot, and Arik, Rith, Trendel, and Kane matched her pace.

  “That was close,” said Rith.

  “Yes, but Lyssa is now taking their measure,” replied Arik.

  That they had a wraith companion seemed reasonable to these treasure hunters, and they were only slightly confused but swiftly coming to grips with the fact that they were from the United States, as well as sky-ship officers on Malagar and mercenaries on Itheria. The fact that they lived three separate existences, though odd, now seemed normal. And as for Lyssa, Arik’s love, on all three worlds she had simply disappeared, and they had come to a dead end in their search for her. When her ghost showed up, they assumed that she had died in some manner, and Arik was devastated; her body had never been discovered, for Lyssa herself did not know where it was. But now, it seemed, Trendel had the power to find her, and he knew that her body was neither alive nor dead, and even though he was able to point toward where she lay, how far he did not know.

  They had met in Oxford, these rowdy Americans from the former colonies, now expanded to a full thirty-eight states and several territories. They had been at the university to study archaeology, there being a dearth of places to learn such in the U.S. of A. Drawn together by being outsiders to English academia, they soon discovered that archaeology was dry—�
�Dull as dust,” said Kane. Trendel, who it seemed could make sense of virtually any language had said, “When I read of Champollion deciphering the Rosetta Stone, well, I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But in truth, what I’d really like to do is certainly not this.” Rith had said, “I have no interest whatsoever in pottery shards,” and Ky had added “Nor in unearthing old walls.” And Arik had said, “For me, it’s the artifact itself that I find interesting. Not the digging of them up.” They had all agreed and together they decided that they would become treasure seekers, artifact finders, and would hire out to those who wished to collect such things.

  And they had been in Necropolis on a mission for a wealthy Belgian, but the damn Mahdists had decided that this was the time to drive the infidels out from Egypt—be they British, American, French, or whoever, it mattered not to those bloody fanatics. And the tomb raiders had been in Necropolis hunting for a crown when they had been discovered by a militant roving band seeking foreign unbelievers, and the tomb raiders had run.

  They pulled their horses to a halt and waited. Finally, Lyssa came floating off to the left, her glow enriched by a goodly portion of the life forces of the ones who had tried to kill them. she signed,

  “You didn’t kill any?” asked Kane.

 

  “Me,” said Kane, “I would have killed every one of the bloody bastards. After all, they tried to slaughter us.”

  Arik frowned in puzzlement, wondering why, except for Lyssa, the rest of them hadn’t simply used their powers to overwhelm that ragged band. It was almost as if they hadn’t had these talents until they were galloping away. Oh, well, it didn’t matter, just like getting Hashtupet’s crown for the Belgian no longer mattered. What they really had to do was find Lyssa’s body . . . not that they knew what to do with it once they succeeded. Oh, the Itherian god Arda had said they must find her, but given Trendel’s power, they would have gone seeking her, regardless, to give her a decent burial if nothing else. Arik turned to Trendel. “Lyssa’s body: which way?”