John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  “By that stage, so many of the Guards were dead, this young Corporal was left in charge. He decided he’d try to bargain for their lives. He sent the rest of them on ahead with Caylen, and stayed behind with me on a sandbar, out in the middle of Red River, where Yalnita would be sure to find us. He meant to let her have me, in exchange for Caylen. So we lit a smoky fire and raised a white flag, and waited.

  “Yalnita came alright, just as the light began to fail. When she found out Caylen wasn’t with us, she killed the Corporal on the spot. Did this thing with his neck.” Rain Dog squirmed a little. “Never seen a man die so fast, Bowman…

  “...Well, by then, the Guards had Caylen safely into Kasina Reach. From there, the river crawls with patrols, so she was lost to us.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Rain Dog rolled his head around as if his neck was stiff from a bad sleep. “We came back. There was nothing else to do, just Yalnita and me. And I was no use, with my leg. There was nothing we could do, Outlander!”

  Bowman exploded. “But there must be something we can do, even now! How long has it been… oh God, nine years, rings, did you say? Have you heard anything? Is she still….”

  “Yes, she lives.”

  “Well, what happened to her?”

  “Oh, nothing much. They kept her for your return.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “That was the deal Keemon made, remember? You were to take him back to your old world, then bring him back here, and Caylen would live. At least, that’s what he told Denaren. Which brings me to a question of my own. Where is Keemon?”

  Bowman felt sick. “Shit! Back in Dyall's Ford – my old world, Rain Dog, I left him there!”

  “What! Why didn’t you kill him?”

  Now it was Bowman’s turn to backpedal. “I never had a chance. There was a fight, I got knocked out. When I came to, Keemon was gone. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to leave him stuck there!”

  “You damn fool, what good will it do Caylen anyway, if he’s back in Dyall's Ford? At least if he’s dead, that’s an end of him, and bad luck to Caylen.”

  “Bad luck? Is that all you can say? A Pack member dies and it’s bad luck!”

  “Look, if Keemon lives, and somehow finds his way back here, how many Caylens do you suppose will die?”

  “I don’t care! She is my responsibility, not the others. I paid for my freedom with hers. I can’t save the whole world, but I can try to save her!” He walked away and kicked grass, furious with himself, thinking how could I have been so stupid? He faced Rain Dog again.

  “I should never have left him behind. We need him here, to bargain with the Kasina to get Caylen back! We could top the bastard any time after that.”

  “Fool, you don’t bargain with Kasina!”

  “So how the hell do we get her away from them?”

  “We don’t. As I said, she’s lost to us.”

  “I’ll be damned if she is! What’s the matter, Rain Dog, you haven’t lost your balls as well as your leg, have you?”

  The Rory’s black eyes drilled him. He waited for Bowman to speak again. It took a moment for Bowman to recognize what he’d said, and another, longer moment to compose himself.

  “Sorry, Rain Dog. Sorry. But I’m going to Kasina Nabir, somehow; I’ve got to try something. Caylen’s there because of me. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  “That’s a truly foolish idea. All the land South of Twins Fall is held by the Palace now. It swarms with Kasina. Besides, you don’t know the way.”

  “You do! Come with me!” Bowman ignored Rain Dog’s disability. They’d find a way around that, they had to. “How can you bear to leave her there?”

  “Don’t question my loyalty to my own people, Outlander!”

  Rain Dog’s retort ended the conversation. They ate in silence. Bowman tried to find a way back to where they’d been a few minutes ago, but he knew it was too early, the harsh words too raw, for that. He finished his food and rose.

  “Think I’ll take a look inside the Origins, it’s been a while,” he mumbled and shuffled off, absent-mindedly wiping greasy hands on his shirt.

  ***

  He padded along in the dark tunnel, wondering why in Hell he’d chosen to go back into the mountain’s lair. There were plenty of other places round Animarl to sulk in. Why willingly enter the one that had spat him three times into a world of exile? Origins indeed, it certainly seemed at that moment to be where his troubles started. But he felt unable to turn around and go back to Rain Dog’s camp, to make peace with him. And something else, something new, kept him going. There were noises coming from the other end of the tunnel. Dull, intermittent sounds, that only a large animal could make.

  This was the passage he’d taken earlier from the Feasting Hall, though that wasn’t such a coincidence, since it seemed most ways inside the mountain ended up in that room. He stopped and squinted with the effort of locating the sounds. They made no hollow echo, such as he’d expect if they were emanating from the cavernous Hall. In fact, there was an attenuated, muffled quality to them. He guessed the source to be in the passage directly ahead, though the tunnel nature of the space made it impossible to ascertain distance.

  It was a sound of large weights being dragged through the gravel wash of the tunnel’s floor and dropped against its wall. Bowman’s skin prickled. Someone, possibly close ahead, was moving sacks about. He put two and two together and came up with provisions. That ruled out the Rory, who were largely hunter-gatherers, and lived off the land they moved through. Which left Kasina. He cursed his lack of a weapon.

  Still, it could only be one Guard, judging by the sounds, which became suddenly distinct as he rounded a bend. Instinctively he crouched against the wall. His shoulder soaked with its icy condensation; his eyes blinked sweat away. The dim light obscured all but the outline of the toiling figure, which had its back to Bowman. Then it stopped, stood upright as a wary animal taking in the scents carried to it in air, and looked around.

  He was sure its head was moving about as his own had been a minute ago, trying to peel away the dark and see what had alerted it. Then a sharp, metallic sound shot through the tunnel, a sound of perfectly engineered surfaces clicking into place.

  Bowman froze. As every sense went into overdrive, his own smell registered: the stench of stale sweat, and underneath, something sweet and rarefied, that was either fear, or the thing that made you smell fear. Either way, it was part of the silent warning scream that puts an animal to flight. Bowman ran.

  He bounced off the far wall as he turned the corner and fell in a cursing heap. He rose, shaking mud and water off, and held his breath to listen.

  Whoever it was back there hadn’t given chase. Something more important had detained them. Bowman turned back in the direction he’d been going when he stumbled. And his wildly pumping heart stopped dead.

  There was a face, not six feet from him, that he vaguely recognized, but in that confused moment of poor light he couldn’t remember if it belonged to friend or foe. He staggered back, tripping on rock rubble, and fell again. The face came forward and stood over him. At the sight of Rory garb Bowman groaned relief and let his half-raised torso fall back. The icy rill restored his senses, and he was about to get up when a hairy hand reached forward from the dark figure and grasped his shirt. The hand curled upwards, taking Bowman with it, and stopped inches from a dusky face.

  Bowman put his hands either side of the face and kissed its lips. Then he rested his forehead against its nose and whispered, “Yalnita.”

  She hugged him as a bear might a cub, all power and tenderness. Then she pushed him back and looked past his shoulder.

  “What were you running from?”

  “There’s someone back there,” he rasped. “They’ve got a gun.”

  “Keemon?”

  Of course, it has to be the cop, Bowman thought. Who else in Animarl would be toting a firearm? Besides, he could sense him. He felt a chill.

  “Y
es, I think. At least I hope it was Keemon.”

  “Who else would have such weapons?”

  For a moment Bowman contemplated telling her about the cop’s plans to arm select Kasina, but he held back. He felt enough guilt for just bringing Keemon into this world, even though his complicity had been unwilling. He shrugged.

  “Yes, who else.”

  She looked at him for a time, waiting for more. Then her nose twitched. She bent low and sniffed at the trickling rill, pulled back as though smarting from a sting, and quickly moved behind him, examining his back.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked over his shoulder.

  She came around to his face and pointed at the stream. “There’s blood in this water!”

  He leant over it and sniffed, but divined nothing. He scooped a handful up and let it run through his fingers, holding the hand at eye level to try to discern colour. It was, to him, dark water in a dark cave. “Are you sure?”

  She answered with a withering look and dragged him towards the tunnel exit.

  Once outside, he spoke in a normal voice. “Did Rain Dog tell you where I was?”

  “Yes.” She had let go of him now, and gone loping towards the thicket of saplings Rain Dog had taken him to earlier. Bowman half-ran to keep up.

  “We’ve found Keemon,” Yalnita said as they entered the camp.

  Bowman expected Rain Dog to be shocked, but the Rory simply got up with surprising nimbleness, grabbed his bow and snarled, “Let’s go!”

  Yalnita unrolled an old oilskin, took an unstrung stickbow from it and handed it to Bowman.

  “Do you still know how to use this?”

  He grinned. “Like it was just yesterday!”

  The Rory looked at each other.

  “Yes, yes! I can still do it!” To emphasize, he quickly strung the weapon. Yalnita handed him some shafts, and they were off.

  Their progress was deliberately slow, since the noise coming down the passage had stopped. They couldn’t be sure if the figure was finished what it had been doing, or had abandoned the task. Or if, either way, it now lay in wait for them. The tinkling rill, their breathing, and the blood that coursed in their eardrums combined into a fog of sounds that camouflaged the one sound they really needed to hear, if it was there. They inched forward.

  Soon even Bowman could smell the blood. In the confined space it mingled with moisture and the rust and general dankness. He couldn’t really describe it, but it triggered some primal instinct that told him here was death, here some animal that until recently had got about in independent fashion had been killed, and death had opened its insides to the world.

  Yalnita, in the lead, found the bodies. She stumbled over the first and regained her balance, then drew on the prone figure that had tripped her. As the fingers of her string hand anchored by the mouth, Rain Dog spoke.

  “Wait!” The smaller Rory came forward and gently kicked the obstruction. “Long dead, this one.”

  “What is it?” Bowman asked.

  “It was a man,” said Rain Dog.

  Yalnita explored further. “He’s not alone!”

  Bowman came over. “Another one?”

  She shook her head.

  ***

  They found nine altogether. Rain Dog kept turning them over with his good foot.

  “What are you looking for?” Bowman asked.

  The Rory pointed at one of the many neat, round holes in the upper garments “Arrows. I want to see whose crest it is.”

  “For God’s sake, they’ve been shot with a gun, Rain Dog! This is Keemon’s doing, it has to be.”

  Rain Dog frowned at Bowman. He ran the tip of his broadhead down the front of the body. “Would Keemon do this?”

  Bowman looked and shrugged. He’d gotten over the initial nausea; any possibility was admissible. The bodies had been slit open, neck to crotch; their cavities emptied.

  None of Boyle’s men showed any signs of Malform grotesquery, and Bowman wondered about that. Perhaps because they’d been buried back in Dyall's Ford? Or because their passage here occurred not at the point of death, but after? He shook his head. Whatever. Each had been treated like a deer carcass, disembowelled for the hike back to camp.

  Keemon. It could only be him. But why? Bowman knew an absurdly simple solution dangled before his face. He MUST know the answer!

  But he didn’t, or couldn’t, and was having trouble avoiding the eyes of his companions. The thing he’d brought with him from his old world had defiled their most sacred place. If he’d felt guilty before, what was he feeling now? He searched inside and found the answer was, nothing. Overload had caused shutdown; he felt nothing.

  Yalnita brushed past him. “Let’s go,” she said. “This trail’s cold already.”

  ***

  They moved camp to a small ravine that ran into the valley of Animarl. The narrow way ensured any attacker would have to file in singly. An ancient watercourse had eroded the lower walls so that a sheltering ledge ran along either side. The ledge arced over them like a petrified wave, studded with crumbling fossil shells and bones, as they squatted in the dirt floor and talked of Keemon.

  “He could be anywhere by now,” Rain Dog ventured.

  Yalnita shook her head. “He has to be close by. Whatever business he had with those dead men, it has to do with Animarl.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bowman. “This probably sounds weird, but I, … I just can’t sense him. I usually can, if he’s around.” He looked up, expecting derision, but the instinctive Rory understood and simply nodded.

  Rain Dog handed more dried meat out. “So where would he have gone?”

  “To Kasina Nabir. Where else, there’s nothing for him here,” Bowman said. He thought about the arsenal Keemon had wanted to bring back. If he’d been successful, the Palace was the first place he would have headed. There was no point lording it over a deserted Animarl. Besides, he’d want an audience to brag to, and Guards to recruit.

  Yalnita stopped chewing. Her black eyes searched Bowman. Once again, she seemed to be waiting for more. Eventually, she frowned and leant a little closer. “So, what is there for him in the Palace?”

  Bowman let out a long breath. It was time to own up.

  “He wants to take over.”

  The Rory had no idea what he meant.

  “Over what?” asked Rain Dog.

  Bowman shrugged. “What have you got? Everything is my guess. He’s a megalomaniac.”

  Yalnita leant back and her eyes narrowed. “And just how would one man yield such power?”

  Bowman held her gaze. “With the guns he’s brought back from our old world. I don’t know how or even if he got them here, but he managed to amass enough of them in Dyall's Ford to arm a small Kasina detail. That’s what I think he plans to do, get himself an army of defectors.”

  Rain Dog snorted. “A single detail of Guards couldn’t do that, even with guns!”

  Yalnita looked sideways at the other Rory a moment, then back to Bowman. She raised an eyebrow. “Well, Outlander?”

  “He means to use me to keep opening the Gate to our old world. Each trip, he’ll bring back more guns. Bows and swords are no match for the sort of thing he can lay his hands on.”

  “And these ‘trips’, you can make them, at will?”

  Bowman sighed. “Yes.”

  She bared her teeth and tore a piece of meat off. “Interesting,” she said and started chewing.

  ***

  As they ate, a mounted column of Kasina entered the path to their camp.

  Rain Dog's ears pricked up first, but soon all three had traded meat for half-drawn bows.

  The ravine echoed as shod hooves negotiated the rocky trail. Bowman and Rain Dog crouched behind boulders. Yalnita went to the other side, holding close to the canyon wall.

  The column of unseen cavalry halted, only the head of the lead horse showed around a corner in the path, nostrils flaring at the scents it found. A short time passed while the column settled, then the lead rid
er's voice boomed.

  “Permission to enter camp, Rain Dog.”

  It was hard to weigh the greater shock: the identity of the voice - unmistakably Oyen's - or the fact that Rain Dog's hideout had been so widely known. Bowman broke ranks and rushed forward, his bow left at the rock fall.

  “Oyen! It's me, John Bowman. Since when did you need permission to keep company with your Pack?”

  Yalnita and Rain Dog left their shelter, but still held bows ready.

  Oyen edged his horse forward and came into view. He had aged, more than Rain Dog or Yalnita. But it was the man’s weariness and gravity that really shocked Bowman, more than the lines in his face. He took a deep breath. “Take care, John Bowman, these are not old times. My Pack is behind me. I have come here to take you to Kasina Nabir. The Queen wants an audience, since you've now returned.”

  “How did you know I’d returned? I only just got back.”

  Oyen shrugged. “The Queen’s Oracle, Unconnu, prophesied your coming. The Queen sent us here immediately.”

  “What business of yours is the Queen's bidding, Pack brother?” Yalnita shouted, bringing her loaded bow back to horizontal.

  There were murmurs behind Oyen, which he scotched with a raised hand. “My business, Yalnita, is with the only one of you who greets me as a friend. Pity him if you will, defend him if you must, but he will come with me when I leave here, whether you are left alive or dead.”

  Bowman's jaw fell. Things were piling in too fast to assimilate.

  “What the hell’s going on, Oyen? You, a traitor?”

  “Think what you will, John Bowman. I have come to take you to the Palace.”

  Yalnita’s low growl alerted Bowman. He turned and stood in her line of fire. Slowly he extended one hand to the broadhead and pushed down. He felt the resistance, and something flared in her dark eyes; her facial muscles flickered. She stood firm, and so did he. Soon the blade punctured skin; blood ran down the shaft. Seeing the red shock, Yalnita relented. The bow swung to her side. She glowered at Bowman.

  He shook drops of blood from his hand and turned back to Oyen. “I'll come. It suits my purpose to go to Kasina Nabir anyway. But the others are free to remain here. That's my condition for coming without a fight. What about it?”