The Lands Below

by William Meikle

  “Do not berate yourself,” he said. “It is no fault of yours that things took this turn. Never fear, Elsa will lead us out, we shall find the doctor for your brother, and shall all be back in the village for supper, you’ll see.”

  Elsa had turned at the mention of her name, her tail wagging furiously.

  “Home, Elsa,” Stefan said. “Take us home.”

  The tail stopped wagging immediately and the dog whined deep in her throat. She started to come back up the slope towards them, then whined again, looked left and right then went back to Tommy’s side, looking miserable.

  “Home, Elsa,” Stefan said, more forcibly this time.

  The dog started walking back down the slope along the side of the stream, but some of the bounce had gone out of her step.

  “She will see us home,” Stefan said, but now he sounded as if he was trying too hard to convince himself of the fact.

  They continued down the slope.

  The cavern seemed endless. At times, the roof was a high vault, cathedral-like above them. At other points, it descended so low that the dangling roots brushed at the top of their heads and had Tommy complaining about cabbage again. And all the time the small stream gurgled away downhill beside them. Ed’s gut was now telling him that they were indeed going in the wrong direction, but he could see no alternative to their current course.

  Nobody had spoken for several minutes, each of them lost in their thoughts. At least the pains in Ed’s chest wounds had eased, but that too served to remind him how long they had been in the cavern. He was about to speak up about the folly of going any deeper when Danny stopped.

  “Do you feel that? There’s a breeze.”

  He had just lit a cheroot and he held it up for them to see that the smoke was drifting in a definite wind that was coming from somewhere below. Elsa lifted her head, sniffed at the air, then barked once before bounding away down the slope. Tommy headed off after her with a yelp of his own.

  “Tommy, come back,” Ed shouted, but the youth and the dog were paying no heed, heading away now at some speed to where the roof dipped again and gloomy shadows gathered some two hundred yards away.

  Ed broke into a run to go after them. He heard Danny and Stefan join him at his back but all his concentration was on watching his footing and trying to control the shifting weight of the pistol at his hip to avoid it tugging him off balance. Ahead of him his brother and the dog ducked under a very low-hanging outcrop of rock and disappeared from sight into the shadows beyond.

  “Tommy!” Ed shouted, and put on a burst of speed he hadn’t realised he possessed. Something tore at his chest, one of the bandages giving way under the stress. Blood trickled, warm against his belly inside his shirt. He paid it no heed. He almost caved his skull in by neglecting to duck in time when he reached the low outcrop, but he got away with no more than an abrasion on his forehead then he was out in a more open area again. Ahead of them was a rock wall with three caverns stretching away into blackness. Tommy stood at the mouth of the right hand one, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “He went in there,” he said, pointing into the dark maw of the cave. “Tommy didn’t follow. Tommy doesn’t like the dark. It smells bad.”

  By this time, Stefan had arrived at Ed’s side.

  “Elsa, heel,” he shouted.

  The only sound was the men’s labored breathing. Danny arrived to join them and all four of them stood at the cave entrance. Tommy was right, it smelled rank, a stench of rotting meat and musk.

  “It’s a predator’s den,” Danny said. “I’ve smelled this before.”

  “And I,” Stefan said grimly. “But if Elsa is in there, I must go and get her.”

  Danny put a hand on the shepherd’s shoulder, but it was brushed away.

  “You cannot dissuade me, my friend. She would do the same for me.”

  “We have no light,” Ed said. “We lost our lamps in the water.”

  Stefan went back to the low-hanging rock and gathered clumps of root in his hands. When he stepped into the cave mouth, Ed saw that the vegetation gave off enough of a glow for them to see several feet ahead of them, but no more than that. The shepherd stepped forward.

  “Wait,” Danny called. “If you go, we all go. I won’t have us splitting up the group…not when there might be a beastie of some sort about.” He turned to Ed. “Gather up more of yon cabbage, lads. Let’s give our shepherd some light.”

  A minute later, all four of them carried a bundle of roots, two-handed in front of them as they inched into the cave.

  “Elsa,” Stefan shouted, but there was only silence and darkness ahead of them. The stench was even more pronounced inside the cave and Ed took to breathing shallowly through his mouth to try to minimise the impact.

  “It smells like shite,” Tommy said, then giggled until Ed had to hush him. Then Ed had to pick up the pace to keep up with the shepherd, who was almost running now, his concern for the dog overcoming any fear.

  “Elsa!” he shouted again, and this time got a whimpering yelp in reply.

  They turned a corner, entered in a wider, higher, chamber that was dimly lit by more of the foliage, and discovered why the dog hadn’t come at Stefan’s command. She was on the far side of the chamber, lying flat on her stomach, her ears pinned back, lips pulled up and showing her teeth to the thing that almost filled the area between her and the newly arrived men.

  Ed recognised it immediately as another of the wyrm-like things, similar to the one that had attacked him at the waterfall. But this one was larger, much larger. The thickest part of the body was broad and barrel-shaped, some two feet in diameter, supported by four legs like tree trunks capped with metal-like talons. The head, horse shaped as before, turned to stare at the approaching men to reveal a maw filled with sharp, pointed teeth between which a too-red tongue slithered. It lay in a coil in the center of the chamber, tail tucked away somewhere below it and it appeared to be confused by the presence of the four new arrivals in its domain.

  “Is it a horse?” Tommy said at Ed’s back, and that was the cue for the thing to move. It opened its mouth and hissed, spraying all four of the men with fine spittle that tasted as foul as anything they’d smelled so far. Ed hadn’t even considered going for his pistol, such had been his shock at seeing the beast, but both Danny and Stefan had no such qualms. Ed got pushed none too softly aside as Danny stepped forward. He put two shots down its throat and Stefan put out one of the great red eyes for good measure.

  “Why didn’t it attack us?” Ed said as the beast slumped in on itself. At the movement, something underneath it squirmed and squealed. Elsa finally moved, leaping forward and, as if she’d caught a rabbit or rat, grabbed at something white and wriggling, shaking it violently from side to side until it went limp. Beneath the body of the wyrm something else squealed. Elsa dropped the thing she had in her jaws. She lunged again, but this time she came to heel when Stefan called her. Danny went forward first and looked down inside the coiled girth of the dead beast. He sucked at his teeth and motioned Ed and Stefan forward, pointing down to where five white writhing bodies lay, young wyrm, not long birthed, with a sixth lying dead where Elsa had dropped it.

  “There’s why she didn’t attack,” Danny said. “She was protecting her brood.”

  “Baby horses?” Tommy said from behind them. “Can I see?”

  “No,” Ed said, sharper than he intended. “Stay back, Tommy. It’s not safe.”

  He turned back to see Danny raise his pistol and aim downward.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “We have to,” Stefan said, raising his own gun. “It’s a mercy. With the mother dead, they won’t survive in any case.”

  Ed led Tommy away as the sound of pistol shots echoed loudly around them. He thought that Tommy might be crying again, but couldn’t tell, for his own eyes had suddenly misted over.

  - 9 -

  Danny strode out of the cave and took a deep, welcome, gulp of fresher air. It had been grisly work and altho
ugh as Stefan had said it was a mercy killing, he still felt as if he’d just shot a puppy. His ears still rang from the pistol fire, like church bells in his head, and his guts were roiling from both the tension and the stench in the cave. He felt mightily relieved to be out of it. Ed and Tommy were standing in the cave mouth, both of them looking as miserable as Danny felt. Even Elsa seemed subdued as she came out at Stefan’s heel.

  “Quickly now,” Danny said, his voice sounding distant and echoing in his ears. “We need to get away from here, as far as we can as fast as we can.”

  Stefan nodded in understanding, but Ed was slower on the uptake.

  “I thought that we might have a rest?”

  “Not here. Where there’s a mother and a brood, there’s a father. I’m guessing it was he who killed yon horse-thing back up the trail. We don’t want to be meeting him. He might be an angry beastie when he sees what we’ve just done. No, we move, and we move fast.”

  The stream they had been following descended sharply here, heading down into a steep-walled gully. As Danny led them towards it, he noted again the breeze in his face. It was coming up out of the gully.

  “It’s going to carry our scent back into the cavern but that can’t be helped. Come on, lads. Where there’s wind, there’s generally open air. We can’t be far from an exit back to the world. And the sooner we get there, the happier I shall be.”

  Danny went first into the gully. He’d reholstered his pistol but his hand rarely stayed far from it.

  The gully narrowed almost as soon as they entered it, necessitating that they travel single file. Danny went first with the brothers in the middle and Stefan and Elsa bringing up the rear.

  The breeze was stronger now, full in his face and doing much to dispel the odor of the beasts’ den from his nose and throat. What it couldn’t do was wash the memory from his mind; the mother had been huge, twelve feet in length, maybe more.

  And if she’s that big, what about the male?

  He hadn’t mentioned it to the others as he didn’t want to frighten either of the brothers, but he’d had occasion to beard a lioness in a den in Africa. On that occasion, he’d also been party to the killing of cubs…and suffered the consequences when they met a big, maned male on leaving the den. He’d lost a good friend that day, mainly due to youthful overconfidence. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

  The gully narrowed further. They were now walking in the stream, rushing water lapping at their ankles. The vertical walls on either side were almost close enough to touch, and it was darker here, the illuminating roots hanging from a roof that was fifty yards and more above them.

  The first indication that they were in trouble came when a bellowing roar echoed down the gully from somewhere behind them, a howl every bit as terrifying as any lion in rage.

  “Faster,” Danny shouted, and without waiting to see if anyone obeyed him he put on a burst of speed, throwing caution to the wind in a dangerous descent over wet rocks. He knew that at any step his footing might betray him and that a single slip might lead to a broken leg, which would surely be fatal in their current circumstances. But if that howl had come from the beast he was imagining in his mind, he didn’t want to meet it here in this narrow gully; it would be bloody carnage.

  The descent became a nightmare of splashing water, thudding feet and frenzied howling from behind them that was getting increasingly loud as the gully narrowed even further, so much so that at points Danny had to turn almost side on to squeeze through the passageway. He had been looking down, checking ahead for sure footing, but now chanced a look up, checking if the passage might show signs of reaching an end and a more open area where they might make a stand side by side. But there was only gloom and darker shadows below.

  Finally, the howling got too loud behind them to ignore. It was either turn and face it or be chased down like a rabbit in a burrow with the hounds at his heels. Danny turned and drew his pistol in a single smooth movement.

  “Get down,” he shouted. “Get down at my side, and cover me if you can.”

  Stefan moved quickly to comply, but Ed couldn’t get Tommy to move. The older brother seemed stuck to the spot, the fear big in his eyes as the wild howls screamed around them.

  “What is it, Eddie? What is it?”

  “Quiet, Tommy. Come on, get down here with me. Danny’s going to look after us.”

  “I want my mum,” Tommy wailed and as if in reply, another bellow came from their back.

  Then Danny saw it, a lighter shape against the dark rock, slithering down the gully towards them like some great cave-snake. It was even larger than he’d imagined, fifteen feet and more from snout to tail, most of it muscle, at least the bits that weren’t teeth and talons. At the same time he saw it, it saw them and as if given new impetus in barreled down the gully towards them, as fast as if it was dropping from a great height.

  “Down,” Danny shouted, raising his pistol, but still Tommy wouldn’t cooperate. Danny saw Ed trying to manhandle his brother to the ground, but knew it was going to be too late; the brothers were blocking his line of sight for a clear shot, and the beast, howling its triumph, was almost on them.

  They got a second’s respite when the beast was forced to take pause and squeeze its bulk through one of the narrower parts of the passageway. That allowed Danny time to lean to one side and attempt to take aim past the brothers, but it was going to be a risky shot to take. He was aware that Stefan was down at his left side, pistol raised, but the shepherd’s aim was even more impeded than Danny’s, the brothers’ bodies between him and the beast.

  Danny was still calculating the risks of taking a shot when Elsa took the matter out of his hands. The dog let out a howl almost as loud as that of the beast and launched herself away from Stefan, past the brothers and into the face of the beast. Stefan moved to go after her but Danny held him down with his spare hand; he’d seen what Stefan hadn’t. The dog’s attack had finally broken Tommy’s immobility, but instead of moving to safety, the youth turned and stepped forward towards where Elsa was trying to avoid the wyrm’s slavering jaws, looking for an opening to get at its throat.

  The next few seconds seemed to pass in slow motion and with a sense of inevitable doom. Tommy bent to try to drag the dog away from the wyrm but only succeeded in bringing himself inside the reach of its front left foot. A talon raked across Tommy’s shin, opening his leg to the bone. Blood flew in an arc across the worm’s snout, enraging it all the more. It made a lunge with its jaws for the wounded leg. That gave Elsa the opening she’d been looking for. The dog leapt forward and attached itself to the wyrm’s throat. Danny’s line of sight cleared as Tommy fell to one side, yelling in pain and misery. He fired, but the wyrm had moved too quickly, thrashing its head to one side and throwing Elsa against the gully wall with a sickening thud. A second shot, which Danny knew had to come from Stefan, raised a bloody red furrow along the wyrm’s snout. The sound of the shot and the sudden pain seemed to confuse the beast. It paused any attack long enough for Danny to take aim again. He tried for one of the egg-sized red eyes but again the beast moved at just the wrong time and he hit what must have been a bony ridge above the eye socket, leaving little more than a bloody scratch.

  It was enough though; the beast retreated in the face of the pistols, scrambling away almost as fast as it had come. Danny sent two more shots after it, unsure in the gloom if he had hit anything. Elsa struggled to her feet, went to run after the departing beast, then yelped in pain before going still.

  “Danny,” Ed called out. “I can’t stop the bleeding. He’s hurt bad.”

  “Stefan,” Danny said. “Watch our back. It could return at any moment.”

  He didn’t waste any time checking that the shepherd had complied. He bent to where Tommy sat, back to the gully wall, blood oozing from a wound that had opened his shin from just below the kneecap all the way down to the top of his foot, bone showing amid the blood. Tommy had his eyes firmly closed, refusing to look at his leg, and he
was obviously stifling yelps of pain every time Ed tried to get close to it.

  “Tourniquet,” Danny said. “Your belt, quick now, lad, before he bleeds out entirely.”

  Tommy’s face had taken on an almost gray pallor that Danny didn’t like at all, and as Danny applied then tightened the makeshift tourniquet at the lad’s thigh, there was only a flickering of his eyelids to show that he’d taken any notice of the procedure.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Ed said, almost to himself. “We can fix him up.”

  Danny didn’t reply. Experience told him the lad’s odds were at best fifty-fifty, and that would have been in a place with access to modern medicine. Here in the damp dark, with no escape looking imminent, he couldn’t speak his conclusions out loud; the younger brother wasn’t ready to hear them. Rather than face the agony he knew he’d see in Ed’s eyes, he turned away to see Stefan bent over the dog.

  “How is she?”

  “A broken rib, possibly,” the shepherd replied. “But there’s no blood in her mouth; I don’t think she’s punctured anywhere.”

  As if to prove her health the dog wagged her tail twice and walked in a tight circle, unsteadily at first then with more confidence.

  “Good,” Danny replied. “She can get along on her own. It’ll need the three of us to get Tommy here on the move. We need to find somewhere we can shelter and keep him warm; he’s lost too much blood.”

  Stefan had a long look at the sitting lad then turned back to Danny. It was obvious he’d reached the same conclusion as Danny had. Danny saw the question coming and put a finger to his lips to warn the shepherd that Ed would be listening. Stefan was quick enough on the uptake to answer with a small nod.

  “Ed,” Danny said. “Help me get him up. We need to find shelter, somewhere we can defend where we can keep Tommy warm.”

  Ed looked up through fresh tears.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  Danny could have told him that those same words could have been heard from soldiers the world over at any minute of the day, but held his peace as he bent to help with getting the wounded lad on his feet.