“I was there when the drakes rose off Carvenport.” Sigoral straightened, shouldering his carbine. “I know what is at stake here. We both have a duty to perform. Rest assured I will perform mine, regardless of how unpleasant it becomes.”
“Then you’d better hope we see things the same way when the time comes.” Clay met his gaze again, holding it for longer this time. Eventually Sigoral’s mouth formed a faint grin before he gave a shallow nod and resumed the climb.
? ? ?
By the time the light began to fade they had reached a point less than two miles from the shaft. It had swelled to monolithic proportions now, rising into the black void beyond the reach of the lights. The urge to press on through the dark was strong, but the route that confronted them forced a pause. They had ascended to the top of a plateau to find that there was only one remaining peak to scale. It was a broad mountain with an artificially flat summit where a building of familiar construction sat. Viewed through the optic of his carbine Clay found it to be a much larger version of the structure on the island, standing at least twice as high, its broad base covering most of the mountain top. The shaft rose from the structure’s roof in all its weird majesty and irresistible promise of escape. However, between them and the mountain stood a ridge no more than five feet across at its widest point. Clay could make out signs of construction along the ridge as it wound its way towards a point less than a few hundred yards from the mountain’s summit. The ridge was littered with patches of flat stone and disordered brickwork bespeaking a once-impressive construction.
“This was a road once?” he asked Kriz, who nodded.
“Very old,” she said. “Need to . . . walk with care.”
“It would be wise to wait for first light before starting across,” Sigoral said, casting an uneasy eye over the steep sides of the ridge. “This is not a place to lose one’s footing in the dark.”
“But we’re so close,” Loriabeth said, nodding at the shaft. “Just an hour or two more.”
“We keep going till it gets dark,” Clay decided, striding forward. “Camp in the middle if we have to.”
“It’s too exposed,” Sigoral contended, gesturing at the sky with his carbine. “If there are more Whites . . .”
“Look around,” Clay replied, taking his first steps onto the ridge. He concealed a sigh of relief when the slabs beneath his boots failed to crumble away. “There’s no more cover to be had here anyways.” He moved on, hearing their footfalls as they followed after a long moment of hesitation.
The track atop the ridge did indeed prove precarious, even treacherous at times. More than once the apparently whole stone slabs on which they walked revealed deep cracks at the mere touch of a boot. Kriz was obliged to save Clay from one near-disastrous tumble down the near-vertical slope after a slab turned to fragments under his foot. She managed to grab hold of his pack in time, dragging him back as they collapsed together.
“Thanks,” he said, his hammering chest adding an unmanly tremble to his voice.
She grinned and nodded, then frowned as her hand pressed against his pack and detected the large round object within. “What this?” she asked.
“Just a souvenir,” he replied, getting to his feet and turning away.
“Egg,” she said, her voice hardening as she rose and hurried after him. “You take egg.”
“Killed its ma. Seemed the least I could do.”
“It hatch. Kill us all.”
Clay’s hand went to the vials around his neck, playing over his growing collection of heart-blood. Only three more for the set. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Besides, without the waking fire it ain’t hatching anytime soon.”
She fell silent though he could sense a lingering discontent. For the first time it occurred to him that Kriz harboured a real hatred for the drakes inhabiting this strange world. The joy she had taken in killing the Blues back at the ocean and the fierceness in her gaze when she took aim at the White told of something more than just the triumph of survival.
He came to a halt, surveying the ruined brickwork around them. It had clearly been a substantial piece of construction in its time, now it was just old stone gradually crumbling to dust. “Wasn’t always like this, huh?” he said, turning back to Kriz. “This place. Something went pretty badly wrong once upon a time. What was it?”
Her face took on a familiar guarded aspect and she merely returned his gaze, saying nothing.
“The drakes,” he realised. “This place wasn’t made for them. It was made for you. They took it over, didn’t they?”
Kriz’s brow creased as she pondered the right response. “Made . . . for both,” she said finally. “They took all . . . as I slept.”
“Uh, Clay,” Loriabeth said. He saw she was standing close to the edge of the ridge, peering at something far below. Clay followed her gaze, eyes scanning the mist-shrouded depths. At first he saw nothing then noted a shimmering through the mist, as if the fading lights had caught the course of a fast-flowing river. Then he saw that it was growing, the shimmer fragmenting into many different points of light glittering on a rising dark tide. He heard the screams then, echoing up to assail his ears with grim familiarity. It was a sound he hadn’t heard since the temple back in the jungle bordering Krystaline Lake, the frenzy song of massed Greens.
They emerged from the mist in a wave, scrabbling over the rocky flank of the ridge. Clay raised his carbine for a closer look and soon realised these were not the pygmies of the forest but similar in size to full-grown Arradsian Greens. They were still different, however, their limbs and tails possessed of the same spindly quality as the White. Also, their hides had the same mottled appearance, something the carbine’s optic revealed to be glistening wet sores in their flesh. None too healthy, he realised, lowering the carbine as the rising mass of Greens swept closer. Still plenty fast enough, though.
Loriabeth started firing, her repeating rifle sending lengthy salvos into the advancing horde and sweeping a dozen or so off the ridge to tumble back into the gloomy depths.
“More here!” Sigoral called, Clay turning to see him standing at the opposite side of the ridge. The marine put his carbine to his shoulder and began to fire, sweeping the barrel from side to side in order to hit as many targets as possible. Kriz moved closer to the edge, her palm slamming a lever on the stock of her bomb-thrower and a now-familiar hatred marring her features.