Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) (45 page)

Dust filled the chamber next to the Carrion barrier, causing Ellen to cough.

Martin said so many people had arrived to help fill the barrier because a hunter’s share of dyitzu had been offered by the Fore as compensation. Not all of them were actually helping, however. Alice, the one that Turi liked, was just watching. Hoping, maybe, that Aaron would come and start shouting from the other side of the barrier before it was finished. Hoping, just like Ellen was, that they would have to undo all the work they were doing to let the men back in.

The villagers came armed with wheelbarrows of gravel, mined from a nearby chamber. They would spill the gravel into a pile by the barrier where two hunters would shovel it into Julian’s hole. It was this shoveling that filled the chamber with dust.

The corridor had been cooler, originally. Rick had told her it was because the Carrion was such a cold place. Now the hallway was warm, heated by the bodies of so many men working.

Ellen brushed the dust off of her shoulders. If Turi were to come back and they were to dig him out, she wouldn’t want to look a mess.

I’m deceiving myself. He’s not coming back.

“That should be good,” Rick said to the hunters. “Pack that in as best you can, and we’ll brick it over.”

The dust began to clear now that more wasn’t constantly being flung into the air. Rick and the hunters started laying the bricks, pouring some sort of paste over them as they went. Ellen walked by Alice and tried to give the girl a smile.

The woman looked terrible. Her blue skirt looked to be grey from the dust which covered her face as well. Tears had cleared away some of the dirt on her cheeks, making her attempt at stoicism a fairly transparent lie.

Alice did her best to smile back at her, but she just couldn’t hold the expression. Ellen knew how she felt.

By the time Ellen made it to Rick, he was taking a break. She offered him her canteen.

He smiled and drank from it.

She sat down beside him.

“This is important stuff,” he told her, holding up a handful of the paste. “It’s ground hellstone. The water helps keep it even. When the water dries out, it will heal those bricks together. It will be as strong as any wall in
Hell.”

Ellen didn’t want the wall to be strong. She wanted it to be easy to break through. Who cared if the demons came? Who cared if Turi was probably dead already? If they were alive, didn’t they want them to have the best chance of coming back?

The hunters got their second wind, and Rick went back to directing them. Ellen watched the wall grow higher and higher, layer by layer. It didn’t have to be too high, just high enough to block the stone that the boy Julian had managed to lever open. As if the gravel wasn’t enough on its own. As if Rick hadn’t already built a wall on the far side as well.

When the work was done, the Harpsborough people left quickly. Their promised lot of food was waiting for them back in the village, after all. Ellen felt more comfortable now that they were alone again.

Rick didn’t get up right away. He leaned back against the wall and poured water over his head and shoulders. “It was tough work. I’m pretty hungry.”

He said so, but he didn’t stand.

Ellen nodded.

Rick wiped some of the water off of his brow. “Yeah, I’ll look forward to eating tonight. You’ve got enough fruit for us?”

“Yes.” Ellen’s voice sounded distant to her own ears.

“It’s good to see all these people working together.” Rick was looking anywhere but towards the wall. “Builds spirit. The villagers feel better. I like working with them, too.”

“Of course.”

“It’s a good thing, showing them how to build the walls. They’ve seen it before, of course, but it helps them just the same. They’d be able to make their own, I think.”

“Yeah.”

Rick breathed in through his nose and looked up to the ceiling for a second.

“I’ll show you how to make a pie out of that fruit,” he went on. “You’ll probably pick it up pretty quickly. Pretty quickly. It’s tricky making dough out of devilwheat. You have to be really careful about what you put into it. What you put in. And cooking it is a chore. It’ll come apart really easily if you cook it too much. It dries out too much. Then you don’t really have a pie. You know. It dries out too much.”

He blinked a few more times before speaking again. “We did a really good jo
b—”

Ellen reached out and took his hand. She held it for a second, and then she hugged him.

Rick covered his face and cried.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” one of the Carrion warriors shouted over the cacophony of water.

Pyle peered into the chamber. It was a purely natural cavern, perhaps a mile in length. Its left and right walls were ragged and sheer. Possible to scale but it would require an expert climber to do so. Water streamed down in places along the sides of the cavern and fell freely from cracks all along the five hundred foot tall ceiling. A particularly tremendous waterfall, wider than any Pyle had ever seen, flowed out of the far end.

Hale said something, but Pyle couldn’t hear him over the torrents.

“What?” Pyle yelled.

“Giant’s Tunnel,” Hale shouted.

“Bullshit.” One of the warriors disagreed. “Giant’s Tunnel ain’t got water.”

“The settling,” Sinna’s high pitch could be heard easily. “You can see its cracks all over the place. It must have let some river in.”

Pyle walked in and took full stock of the place. “Would have to be under a major offshoot of the Kingsriver or Lethe. Too much water for anything else.”

“Lethe.” Hales eyes narrowed as he peered across the cavern. “You can tell because Hell’s architect hasn’t touched the place. Completely natural.”

Turi had lucked out, Pyle surmised. If he had tried this escape just a month ago, this place would have been one long easy run. As it was, the boy might end up gaining some ground by the end of it. It was hard even to see through the chamber. The waterfalls pouring down the rock and free falling from the ceiling filled the air with mist. That mist clung to the walls, too, making them dangerously slippery.

Who knows, one of us might even fall to our death?

Pyle looked down from the ledge.

Jesus.

The cavern remained sheer as it hit the water level. The water itself was a churning mass, running as fast as any rapid. In places it was being drained away, creating huge whirlpools. Jagged rocks thrust themselves up out of the churning abyss, seeming almost to bob in the tremendous currents, fading in and out of view as the mists moved. There would be no swimming in that sea, Pyle knew, and any fall was likely to be deadly.

“Let’s race across,” Pyle yelled. “Leave the dog.”

“No!” Came Sinna’s response.

“We’ll need it if he makes it to the far side.” Hale agreed with her, of course. “There’s an exit to Giant’s tunnel over there, just left of that waterfall. If he makes it, we’ll need to be able to track him.”

“Well, I’m not carrying him,” Pyle shouted back.

“Of course not.”

Hale lowered his pack and took out a stone jar. Two of the Carrion soldiers grabbed the hound by its legs and forced it on its back. Hale knelt on the hound’s throat and grabbed its jaws. The hellhound’s eyes were wild, and the beast gnawed uselessly at Hale’s hands.

Hale poured the liquid into its mouth, shifting his knee along the thing’s throat. Some of the potion was sputtered out, but some had to have been swallowed. Hale worked quickly to bind the hound.

Pyle walked around the ledge which they stood upon, checking the walls. He found some of Turi’s blood on the left side.

“Here he was,” Pyle reported. “It looks like he climbed straight up from here.”

“Why would he do that?” A Carrion soldier asked.

“Waterline,” Pyle answered. “Look up there. As you get higher you get drier. Easier climbing that way.”

Hale had managed to attach the hound to his back. The man’s pack had been designed with that purpose in mind.

Brilliant bastards, Maab’s men.

“There he is!” Sinna ran forward, pointing along the wall.

One of the Carrion soldiers lifted his shotgun.

An excellent weapon for the labyrinth, but it won’t do you much good here. Boy’s out of range.

The man didn’t even get off a shot. The boy had disappeared from view, hiding in a crevasse.

But the blood was on the left?

The boy must have climbed up and over the entrance. If they hadn’t just spotted him, Pyle would have led them the long way around.

Smart little bastard.

The cavern turned too, just slightly towards the right, as it went on. That bend in the wall was going to protect Turi as he made his way down Giant’s Tunnel.

“We have a plan?” Sinna’s voice squeaked.

“He picked the correct route, and he’s about an hour ahead of us,” Hale pointed out. “We’re not going to have a good shot at him until he makes it to the back. I remember there being a ledge over there. It’s right at the bend. If the settling hasn’t made it crumble, we can set up there and get a clear shot at him as he tries to get out.”

Pyle spat over the ledge. “The settling may have made more exits.”

His spit disappeared into the mists.

“Let’s hope not.” Hale cinched a rope around his waist tightly enough to make the half-comatose hound on his back yelp. “We’ll have him trapped unless it has.”

Sinna said something to the man, but Pyle couldn’t hear it over the water.

Hale turned back to Pyle and the Carrion men. “The water will cover the noise of our guns, so we don’t have to worry about a quick retreat after we fire.”

Sinna paced back and forth. “It’s better if we capture him.”

Hale nodded in agreement. “If we get to the ledge fast enough, he’ll have to climb across our field of fire to make it out. We can shoot in front of him to try and get him to come on back. If not, or if he doesn’t respond, then he dies.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t,” Sinna yelled. “He’s been marked by Maab. And he’s pissed me off enough that I have half a mind to strap on a cock and be the first to greet him on the stone bed. The Kruks will have to wait in line for me.”

Pyle imagined her slipping, falling along the wall. The rocks would break her bones as she hit them. Maybe one jagged outcropping would pierce her skin, punching through the ribs at her chest and letting blood spill into her lungs. She would tumble farther down, bones shattering and bruises accumulating until she hit the bottom, tainting the water with the froth of her blood before the suction pulled her under and bashed her to death upon the cavern floor.

Bitch.

Hale took to the wall, climbing as if he weren’t weighed down by a hundred pound hellhound.

Fucker’s drank too much of the Minotaur blood.

Hale looked down at them. “Our plan only works if we make it to the ledge before he gets to the exit.”

Sinna walked behind Pyle and pushed him forward. “You’re next,” she said, her delicate mouth pulled up into a smile.

She smiles like my sister.

“Galen,” the warrior announced just moments before he stormed into the room.

Aaron had never seen the man so angry.

Jesus, where’s Turi?

Avery sat up, bending to try and see behind Galen. “Tell me you took him home.” Avery’s eyes were suddenly clouded over with passion.

Galen shook his head.

Avery slammed his fist into the stone.

Aaron hadn’t realized how much the boy had meant to Avery. Johnny Huang was also sitting up now, and like Avery, he made no attempt at stoicism.

“What happened?” Huang asked, “Is he—”

“Maab’s got him.” Galen tossed his pack into the wall and then knelt before it.

Duncan was awake now as well, looking confused. Only Kyle remained unconscious, and he had every right to.

Maab. Klein was once one of her slaves.

“What happened?” Aaron asked.

“I got in there and met my friend.” Galen loaded a few rounds into his Heckler and Koch clip. “I thought Arturus would be safe. I’d put him in a back corner while the ritual was going on. He spotted Julian in the crowd. He did the right thing, I feel, and tried to rescue him. It didn’t work out.”

Aaron noticed that Galen’s hands were shaking.

Is it anger that makes him shake, or fatigue? Has he slept since we got here? He must have, it’s probably been five days.

“Has it been five days since we left Harpsborough?” Aaron asked aloud.

Galen nodded. “We’re probably already bricked in. If not, it will happen shortly.”

Aaron felt the breath go out of the room.

Avery struggled to his knees. “We get the boy first. Then we worry about getting home.”

Galen stopped rustling through his pack and looked at the hunter.

Aaron saw that Johnny was nodding. Duncan at first looked unsure, but
his expression hardened, and then his head began to nod as well.

“That’s right,” Aaron said. “We can’t leave him behind, but Avery, you can’t walk. As far as I know only I can.”

Johnny Huang stood up. He grimaced, but the effect was convincing.

“Okay,” Aaron conceded. “Johnny, you’re good too.”

Galen loaded the clip back into his MP5.

“Do we have a plan?” Aaron asked the warrior.

“Yes. The Carrion people are breaking up from their ritual. They’re heading back into their separate hiding holes. We hit one of the groups, kill everyone but their leader and find out where he is.”

Aaron joined Johnny in flanking Galen as they left the chamber.

“We’ll be back soon boys,” Aaron assured them. “Don’t you worry.”

“Hey!” Avery called.

They stopped in the doorway.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Aaron asked.

“Good hunting.”