The Lands Below

by William Meikle

Danny rubbed at his eyes.

  “We have been awake these many hours now,” he said. “Are you capable of holding a watch for a time? I will only be napping and will wake in seconds if you raise an alarm; an old soldier’s trick I’ve had plenty of occasions to test.”

  Ed nodded in reply.

  “I can stay awake now as long as I stay off the brandy.”

  Danny laughed.

  “There’s no chance of you getting enough to get you drunk in any case; the shepherd and I polished most of it off; storytelling is thirsty work. Now, I must sleep.”

  The old soldier handed Ed one of his brother’s Colts.

  “Point this at anything that shows up and fire until it buggers off. I’ll be awake after the first shot anyway.”

  Danny lay down and was lost in sleep within seconds. The shepherd stayed awake long enough to share the rabbit with Ed and Elsa, then he too lay down, the dog at his side, and both man and dog were snoring loudly minutes later.

  Ed sat with the pistol in his lap, turning the ring round in his hand. There was an inscription inside the band but the writing was too small for him to make out without a magnifying glass and the only one he’d had with him was lost with his pack somewhere in the caverns high above. It left him wracked with frustration that he could not read it, which joined the frustration at not being able to be up and after the very thing that had so possessed him these long months. Then he looked at Tommy, and his heart sank.

  “I’m sorry to have brought you to this, brother,” he said softly. “Here I am thinking about treasure when it is you who should come first. I will not let my greed betray me again. I promise you that, on our mother’s grave.”

  He slid the ring onto his right index finger; it fit snugly, as if made for it.

  Time passed. Ed found the constant sameness of the light to be most disconcerting, and wished that he’d thought to take his pocket watch from his pack before what proved to be his foolhardy attempt to cross the whirlpool. That event, and the descent to where they now found themselves, was already taking on an almost dreamlike quality in his mind, as if it might be someone else’s memory implanted into his. Then he looked across the waters, and saw the carcass of the wyrm still floating there. No, their problems were all too real.

  I got us into this. I’ll get us out. That’s another promise, brother.

  Despite his promise to Tommy, Ed’s mind continued to betray him with thoughts of treasures that might be waiting somewhere in the rocks, maybe even within sight of where he sat. After a time, he could stand his own company no longer. He forced himself to his feet, having to stifle a cry of anguish at fresh pain in his chest. He finally stood, stretched to his full height, and breathed deeply, checking for broken ribs. There was indeed pain, but nothing too sharp, and the shepherd’s bandages held.

  “It seems I am to live,” he muttered.

  Now that he was upright, he was getting his first good look at the cavern. To his left was the waterfall and pond into which they’d fallen beyond which was an obdurate rock face. To his right, the view was more open. Although the roof dipped in places to almost touch the cavern floor, Ed was able to see that the cavern was at least several miles in both length and width, and possibly more, for there wasn’t enough light to pierce the shadows in the distance. A stream ran from the pool away and across the cavern floor, which appeared to be mostly of the tumbled broken rock punctuated in places with what might be coarse vegetation or might just be more of the dried root material fallen from above. There was obviously life here; Elsa’s hunting proved that much. Ed wondered what else might be waiting to show itself in the shadows.

  He almost leapt out of his skin when he felt a hand press into his, and turned to see Tommy standing at his side. His first feeling was of relief.

  “Tommy, you’re awake!”

  But as soon as his brother spoke, Ed knew his relief had been premature.

  “It’s time I got you home, Eddie,” Tommy said. “Ma will be getting worried.”

  Tommy’s voice was almost an octave higher than normal; just as it had been ten years previously, at a time when their mother had still been with them. She’d passed at almost the same time as Tommy’s voice had broken. But now, for Tommy at least, neither of those things had happened. Worse than that, he appeared to be oblivious to their surroundings or circumstances. He tugged at Ed’s hand.

  “Come on, Eddie, it’s getting dark.”

  “I know, Tommy,” Ed said softly. “But we can’t go just yet. We’re having an adventure.”

  Tommy’s eyes went wide when he saw the Colt in Ed’s hand.

  “Is that a gun? I’m telling Dad.”

  “Tommy,” Ed said, trying to keep his concern out of his voice. “How’s your head?”

  “Hurts,” Tommy replied. “That was a bit of a knock, wasn’t it. We shouldn’t play on that swing any more. It’s not safe.”

  And with that, Ed knew where Tommy’s mind had settled; he was lost in a country house in the north of England, on a hillside behind the property where they’d played as children on a rope swing where both of them had taken numerous tumbles over the years. Tommy was recovering, in his head at least, from one such fall.

  “Is that a dog? Can I go play? Can I?”

  Somehow, Tommy was simultaneously seeing Ed as his younger brother but also as an adult from whom he needed permission. Ed didn’t quite know how to handle it; Tommy, on the other hand, seemed happy not to wait, let go of Ed’s hand, and ran over to the sleeping dog, throwing himself on it with a giggle.

  Ed had a sudden mental image of the dog tearing out Tommy’s throat the same way it had done with the wyrm, but his worries proved baseless; the dog woke and immediately sensed the spirit of the moment. Seconds later, both she and Tommy were rolling on the ground, the dog licking at his face and Tommy giggling like a happy baby.

  - 7 -

  Danny woke with a start, instinctively reaching for his pistol and only stopping when he saw the wag of the big dog’s tail and heard the happy giggling from Tommy, who appeared to be up and about, if not quite himself.

  Young Ed stood off to one side, looking puzzled. Stefan had woken at the same time as Danny and was now trying to prise the dog and his new pal apart. Danny rose, stretched, and went to Ed’s side as they watched the dog and the lad play together.

  “He’s awake, then,” Danny said. “That is good news.”

  “Is it?” Ed said gloomily. “Is it really?”

  “Put it this way,” Danny replied. “Would you rather he were dead?”

  The crestfallen look on the lad’s face told Danny he’d been, not for the first time, too blunt in his wording.

  “Sorry, lad,” he said. “It’s the old soldier in me I’m afraid. Look on the bright side. This is progress. He’s had his brains rattled around inside his head. It’s just going to take a while for them to settle down again.”

  “Really? You’ve seen this before?”

  Danny had seen most injuries that could befall a human body over the years. He also knew that Tommy’s chances of getting back to the man he had been before were middling to slim, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that to the younger brother.

  “Look, you’re both on your feet. The best thing we can do for him is get out of here fast and find a doctor who knows what he’s about.”

  Tommy, although within earshot, was too preoccupied with the dog to pay any attention. Danny saw a look of resolve pass across Ed’s face, and knew that, for once, he’d said the right thing at the right time.

  “What say we break camp and get on the move?” he said.

  Stefan was already kicking dust and pebbles over their small fire, a shepherd’s instinct for safety on the trail.

  Tommy looked up at Ed and Danny.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “And so are you, lad,” Danny said, getting the youth to his feet. “We’re taking Elsa for a walk. Do you want to come?”

  Tommy looked at Ed and there was a childish, p
leading, tone in his voice when he spoke.

  “Can I, Eddie? Can I go for a walk with the dog?”

  Ed had tears in his eyes when they all left their small camp five minutes later, but Danny thought it for the best not to comment on them.

  Danny had taken charge of all the pistols. His backpack dragged heavy at him with the weight of the two Colts, their belt, holsters, and ammo along with them, but it was preferable to having them in the hands of a lad who appeared to have regressed to a mental age of somewhere around ten years old. This boy carried none of the braggado and swagger of the previous version but in truth, Danny wished for the older lad back, for there was something truly pitiful in what had become of him.

  As for himself, Tommy was happy as a sandboy walking alongside the dog. Elsa seemed only too agreeable to put up with his ministrations and at least it was keeping the lad occupied. Ed walked beside his brother, lost in thought, although Danny was pleased to see that the tears had only been temporary.

  They were following the stream that fed out of the pond, gradually walking down a slope further into the canyon. Danny’s plan was to continue on this course and hope that the waters drained out somewhere outside in daylight, somewhere they could get out.

  They had travelled only a hundred yards, picking their way across rock, when Elsa showed some signs of excitement.

  “What is it, boy?” Tommy said.

  “She’s a girl,” Stefan said with a laugh that echoed around the cavern.

  “Don’t be silly,” Tommy replied. “All dogs are boys. Everybody knows that.”

  And before any of them could stop them both youth and dog bounded away, heading off to the right away from the stream.

  “Elsa, heel!” Stefan shouted, but the dog only came to a halt several seconds later. It stood on a small hillock of rock and barked furiously. They saw why as they got closer.

  It wasn’t a mound of rock, at least not a natural one. It was a cairn and it had served as a burial site in some distant past, but something had been at the remains. Bones lay strewn around the site alongside tattered remains of clothing and a sword long since rusted to little more than brittle dust.

  “I think we’ve found where yon ring came from,” Danny said, and Ed nodded.

  “It was marked on the map,” he said, almost to himself. “I remember now. It was just a name and I never knew what it meant. Jacques of Kassel. He must have died on the expedition.”

  Ed turned to Danny, the old zeal back in his eyes.

  “Don’t you see? We’re still following the map. The knights came this way too.”

  “I see only too well, lad,” Danny said and managed a grim smile. “I see that they also got out, for how else did the map get to England after that? There is a way out. We can all go home.”

  Danny gave Ed some time to rummage amid the ruined tumble of the cairn but it was obvious there was no treasure buried here and nothing else to find beyond the ring itself.

  “Did your map tell the way from here?” Stefan asked, twice before Ed replied.

  “It followed the stream after this.” He pointed down the slope towards the distant shadows. “That way.”

  “It’s the way we’re going anyway,” Danny replied.

  Even then, Ed looked to be reluctant to be on the move. It took Tommy and Elsa to get him away and walking; the dog went first, bounding down the slope with Tommy whooping like a banshee at her heels. Several of the rabbit-like things, flushed from the rocks, scattered to all points of the compass, one of them only eluding Elsa by the thinnest of hairs on its back legs.

  “There is plenty of food, at least that’s something,” Stefan said.

  Danny was looking further down the slope; another movement had caught his eye. His hand went to his pistol at first, then away again when he realised what he was seeing.

  The rock ceiling came down closer to the cavern floor at the foot of the slope and there were beasts down there taking advantage of that fact to feed on the pale roots that dangled down. At first, Danny thought them to be some kind of giraffe, impossibly transplanted from the African plains to this lost cavern. Then he got a better look as one turned to gaze up the hill at the approaching men.

  It had the torso and head of a horse and in bulk was the size of a large pony but there the equine resemblances ended. The neck, while not as long as that of a giraffe, was definitely elongated in the same manner as they’d already seen in the ‘rabbits.’ And again, there were too many legs, six in total, three to a side and bent outward at what might be knees to give it an almost crab-like, scuttling gait as the small herd of perhaps a score of the pale beasts retreated at the same pace as the men advanced towards them. Elsa barked excitedly and that was the cue for the herd to turn as one and flee, off and away into deeper gloom below.

  Elsa would have followed had Stefan not brought her to heel with a sharp word that saw her creep back, tail between her legs. Tommy, meanwhile, showed no contrition.

  “Horses, Eddie. Can I ride one?”

  That finally got a laugh from his brother.

  “Tell you what, Tommy, if you can get one of those things to let you on its back, I’ll be the first to congratulate you.”

  Tommy looked confused at first, then immediately forgot his thread of thought as Elsa nuzzled her head into his palm for him to pet her.

  They arrived at the point where the herd had been feeding a few minutes later. Before any of them could stop him, Tommy reached up, grabbed one of the dangling roots, pulled it out of the rock, bit a chunk from it, and chewed.

  The look on his face as he spit it out almost made Danny laugh.

  “What’s the matter, lad? Is it bitter?”

  “It tastes like cabbage. Tommy hates cabbage.”

  Danny took the root from the youth. In texture, it felt pulpy, like a soft turnip, and there was a faint vinegary smell coming from it. Danny took a tentative bite. It wasn’t too unpleasant in the mouth and did indeed taste like cabbage.

  “If we run out of rabbits, this should sustain us,” he said.

  Tommy put two fingers down his throat and feigned vomiting.

  “Cabbage. Yuk. It smells like hot wee.”

  That did get a laugh from all of them, and in spite of their situation, their spirits were high as they continued down the slope, still following the track of the stream.

  The roof lifted up and away from them again, exposing an even larger extent of the cavern below them. There was more ground cover vegetation here, wispy pale grass in the main punctuated with thickets of something that looked like gorse.

  “Are we heading inward deeper into the mountain, or outward towards the village?” Ed asked.

  Danny shrugged.

  “You had the compass and it’s up in your pack where you left it. There’s no way to tell without the sun or stars to guide us. My gut says we’re going deeper into the mountain…but my gut’s been known to be wrong.”

  Stefan spoke up.

  “I’ve done more than my share of walking these lands under very heavy clouds,” he said. “And my belly, ample as it is, tells me we are going the wrong way. But we are following the water, no? It will find a way. Water always does.”

  “Are we going home now, Eddie?” Tommy said. “I don’t like this place anymore. It doesn’t smell right.”

  “Like warm wee?” Danny said with a smile.

  “No, like something died,” Tommy said, and pointed ahead of them on the trail. They had been too busy talking to notice it, and it was partially obscured by a patch of the gorse, but as they stepped closer, they saw that one of the horse-things lay there dead.

  “Keep Tommy back,” Danny said to Ed. “He shouldn’t see this.”

  Danny walked forward, his hand back on his pistol.

  It was a fresh kill and the poor thing had been opened from throat to belly, its ribs torn wide open as something had ripped it apart in the same manner as they’d seen in the dead goat at the entrance to the cavern high above.

  “Yo
n thing we left in the water was dead, right?” he said to Stefan who had stepped up to join him.

  “You yourself put a sword through its brain and Elsa worried at it long after that. It was as dead as anything I have ever seen.”

  Danny smiled grimly.

  “Just checking. This looks like the work of the same beast, in which case there are more of those wormy buggers around here somewhere. We need to be more careful from here on. This isn’t a walk in the park.”

  Before they went any further, Danny redistributed the weapons. He forced Ed, under protestation, to take the Colt belt and one of the pistols. The other he gave to Stefan who stuck it inside the wide belt around his waist.

  “If anything comes at us, we don’t hesitate,” Danny said. Tommy’s eyes were wide.

  “Can I get a gun, Ed? Can I?”

  Danny saw tears in Ed’s eyes again, so he stepped forward to put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder.

  “Tell you what, lad, you look after Elsa for a while and maybe later I’ll give you some lessons with the pistol. How does that sound?”

  Tommy’s smile was back full force again and as they moved back onto their downhill trail he took the lead, with Elsa at his heel as if she belonged there.

  - 8 -

  The Colt felt too awkward and heavy at Ed’s hip, seeming to work against him with every step he took, the belt itself chafing at his waist. But better that he suffer some discomfort than putting the weapon back in Tommy’s hand; in his current state, Tommy might do himself, or one of the others, a real mischief by accident.

  The finding of the cairn and the knight’s remains had shaken Ed to the core; he’d uncovered tangible evidence after all these months of hope, only to realise that the search for treasure was now of secondary import. It had created a dichotomy in his mind that he had yet to fully comprehend but all he had to do was look at Tommy ahead of them to firm up his resolve.

  “I’m the big brother now,” he muttered. “It’s time I started acting like it and stopped feeling sorry for myself.”

  Stefan must have heard him.