MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (19 page)

With a surge of ichor, he recalled his church face—the balding man with his mustache, glasses, and potbelly. No telling how a mage from the Guild of the Staff would react to something nonhuman blundering into his camp. Best to play it safe. Always prudent. Without another word he trudged forward, easing up to the work site.

“Hello?” he called as he approached the first tent, the smallest of three. “Anyone here?” He peeled back a thick canvas flap covering the entrance.

No answer.

He shoved his head in, peeking around: a Spartan room, which looked to be sleeping quarters. There was a pair of canvas folding cots lined up against the far wall with thick wooden travel trunks at the end of each. A small folding camp desk, holding an unlit oil lamp, lounged against the right wall; next to it was a collapsible stool—a backless folding thing with a strip of canvas serving as the seat. A copper washbasin as large as a porcelain tub sat in the left corner nearest the doorway, a stained white towel draped over one side.

Levi crept inside, heading for the pair of trunks by the beds. No place else to look, really. Each trunk had a spot for a lock, but neither was secured, which meant whoever was out here didn’t expect company or guests of any sort. He popped the top of the first trunk and waded into the contents. Clothes—several pairs of pants, shirts, and undergarments—and the normal assortment of hygiene items. Nothing with much of a tale to tell. He shut the lid and headed for the next trunk.

More of the same—

“Oh shit, oh shit! Levi!” Chuck called, his voice thin and muted both by distance and the rustle of the wind. “We got something here. Nasty ass shit. Hurry.”

Levi shut the lid with a
clap
and hustled out of the entryway, ducking low through the narrow opening, and lumbered toward the largest of the tents. Ryder was outside, hunched over, with a string of clear vomit trailing from her lips.

“You okay?” he asked as he drew near.

“Fine,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, then spitting onto the ground. “Wasn’t ready for that. Just need a minute.”

The Mudman nodded and pushed his way into the tent’s interior.

The source of Ryder’s nausea became quickly apparent.

The body of a naked and recently murdered man was splayed out in the middle of the floor. He looked to be in his late thirties, and based on the state of the body, Levi guessed he’d been dead a couple of days. It was also obvious he hadn’t died quickly. Someone had driven rusty iron spikes through his hands and feet into the earth below—small pools of blood-caked sand surrounded each limb. He’d been crucified, at least in a manner of speaking. Even worse, his guts lay in a heap next to his body; a jagged, messy cut split his abdomen.

Disemboweled.

A brutal way to go, considering how long a person could live in that condition. If the torturer was careful—and, from the look of things, Levi had reason to believe he’d been an experienced hand—a person could live for hours or even days in such a state. Levi didn’t know who this man was, but he was sure it wasn’t the professor. One, he was much younger than the man he’d come looking for, and two, he was Asian. The professor was nearly two hundred, which for a mage, would’ve put him in the sixty-year age range, black, and hailed from South Africa. There’d been two cots in the other tent, so obviously this was the second occupant—likely a research assistant.

Chuck stood in the corner, one arm slung over his face, trying to block out the stink of coppery blood and voided bowels lingering in the air.

“You good here?” he asked, refusing to take his arm away from his face. “’Cause this? You didn’t pay me enough for this. Nasty-ass dead bodies and shit? Naw. I could use some fresh air, for real.”

Levi motioned toward the flap while eyeing the corpse. “You’re good. You and Ryder check the last tent for the professor, call if you find anything.” He paused, thinking. “You said there were guns in the packs?”

Chuck nodded.

“Good. I want you and Ryder armed, just in case. And stay alert. Whoever or whatever did this could still be around. Once you get done with the tent, I want you to check for a vehicle. The professor’s a mage, so it’s possible they used some sort of portal to get here, but if not, that means they had a truck to transport all this gear. Find it. And Chuck—stick with Ryder. I don’t want the two of you to split up for any reason. Understood?”

“Yeah I got you,” he said before shuffling out of the tent. Chuck’s passing let in a breeze of fresh air, for which Levi was grateful. Yes, he was a creature of death, born out of murder and charged to carry out the same, but he
did
have a sense of smell, and the corpse reeked. There was nothing for him to learn from the body, but the room might offer him something. Unlike the first tent, with its cots and washbasin, this was plainly a workspace. Bookcases were filled with old tomes and modern textbooks on a random assortment of topics:
Astrophysics and the Dynamics of Gravitational Singularities
, by Richard Townshend, PhD;
Myths and Theories Regarding Atlantis
, by Mage Viljo Mansikkamaa, PhD;
Sumerian Conjurations and Extrapolated Applications
, by Archmage Thorsten Maier, PhD;
Elements of Paleolinguistics
by Rachael Radcliff;
The History of Cain and the Lost Peoples
, by Nahman ben Hirsch;
The Sprawl, a Comprehensive History
, by Mage Owen Wilkie, PhD.

Levi couldn’t make heads or tails of the books. That last one, though—
The Sprawl, a Comprehensive History
—had been penned by the man Levi had come to find.

He moved to a series of heavy worktables and desks covered with papers, grainy photos, and artifacts likely salvaged from the temple. Maybe something would provide a few useful clues, though he wasn’t too optimistic. The papers and photos were disheveled and tossed about, as if they’d already been pored over by whoever had so brutally killed the assistant. Levi spent a few minutes scanning through the pages. Much of the material revolved around the lost city of Atlantis, which was curious.

Without more context, however, Levi wasn’t sure how any of it fit.

But, he did find a photo—this one in color—of an altar, identical to the one he’d seen in the temple beneath the Hub. And that, if nothing else, told him he was on the right track. There were still many puzzle pieces to discover, but if they could find the professor, or the people responsible for his abduction, he believed they’d find the answers they sought. He folded up the photo of the altar, shoved it into his pocket, and made for the exit. He paused just before leaving, glancing back at the crucified man pinned to the floor.

A pang of guilt rushed through him like a jolt of lightning.

What that poor man had suffered, Levi couldn’t even begin to guess at. He was sure, however, that he hadn’t earned such a cruel end. Even those murderers who deserved to taste Levi’s wrath didn’t deserve
that
. Death was one thing. What had been done to him was something else entirely, something not worth dwelling on. He moved back over to the man’s side and knelt down, knee just inches from the pile of guts.

Carefully, he closed the man’s eyelids and muttered a quick prayer:

“The
Lord
bless you and keep you; the
Lord
make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
 
the
Lord
turn his face toward you and give you peace.” He ran a thick finger across the man’s cheek. Human beings—so wonderful and so fragile. “Amen.” He whispered the last.

He transformed his right hand, fingers melting together to form a thin blade. Without a thought, he ran the knife-edged appendage across the inside of his left forearm; a line of ichor welled to the surface. The blade vanished, becoming fingers once more, which Levi gently dipped into the golden blood running over the surface of his skin.

Carefully, he splattered droplets on the body and onto the dusty floor surrounding the unfortunate casualty, then willed the earth to swallow the mutilated corpse.

The soil resisted him, fighting his efforts. Superficially it looked no different from the ground of Inworld, but Levi could feel the difference in his blood. Inworld was his mother and father, and the ground there was kin to him. The stone and sand of this place was foreign and resonated on another frequency. A pitch Levi wasn’t accustomed to. As a sculptor, Levi preferred to work with
stoneware clays
—gray and moist, highly plastic and effortless to model. Inworld was like that: malleable and easily shaped.

Everything in the Sprawl, though, was like
kaolin clay
, used for making porcelain: too dry, too stiff, too inflexible, and near impossible to work with. Levi hated the stuff. He
could
shape and draw from the earth and sand below, but it took ten times the effort to accomplish one-tenth of what he could manage in Inworld.

Eventually, though, the ground
did
groan in response, giving in with a shudder, then splitting wide and dragging the body down, burying it beneath the sands. Not a proper funeral, but better than leaving his corpse for the scavengers. A small mercy. With that done, Levi broke apart a camp stool and fashioned it into a crude cross, held together in the center with lumps of the Mudman’s clay flesh. This he drove into the ground with a
thud
, marking the shallow grave should anyone ever happen by this way again.

Rest in peace
, the Mudman thought as he pushed his way free of the tent and into the early morning light—

He froze as he heard the distant scuffle of claws on powdery earth.

He’d been so absorbed with the dead man within, he’d failed to notice the approaching creatures. Scavengers, he thought. He pushed his earth sense into the soil, extending his awareness out in a circle, forcing it as far as it would go in every direction: a hundred feet, two hundred, three hundred. There, just on the edge of his senses. Several creatures—four or five, maybe more—were stealing toward them, likely drawn on by the pungent stink of the eviscerated body.

Levi moved, spotting Chuck and Ryder milling around by the entrance to the third tent, pistols clutched in anxious hands. Levi knew Chuck was more talker than fighter, but he had confidence the overgrown leprechaun could handle himself in a pinch—you didn’t live long in the Hub without some sort of experience and skill in combat. Outworld was an unforgiving, predatory place that consumed the weak. Ryder, he knew little about, but she seemed to have at least a passing familiarity with the weapon she held.

He broke into a jog, dropping his human façade and allowing his true form to spill out as he moved. “A vehicle? Did you find one?” he called.

Escape was their best option at this point. Drive away, wait for a day, then circle back once whatever was out there left. Scavengers wouldn’t wait around for long, not once they realized there was no more food to be had. Run and circle back. That would be best.

Chuck nodded, then promptly shook his head. “Yeah, well no. I mean, they got a truck over on the other side of the temple, big ass ancient mother, Soviet troop-carrier or something, but it’s busted to hell. Someone tore up the engine worse than that sucker in the tent. No one’s driving out in that piece.”

“And this tent’s clear,” Ryder added, pointing toward the heap of canvas on her right. “Excavation equipment. Wheelbarrows, shovels, pickaxes, lamps—”

Levi absently waved the words away,
It’s not important
, while reaching down with his senses, focusing his attention on the approaching hunting party. A hundred and fifty feet, now. Moving slowly, thoughtfully. Fanning out, the pack splitting apart, into three groups of two. One group broke left, another broke right—circling in from the sides—while the last group bore straight ahead. A flanking ploy. It was safe to assume, then, that whatever was out there knew about Levi and company.

“Ryder, get a pair of picks for you and Chuck.”

She canted her head and looked a question at him.

“For when your ammo runs out,” he growled. “Chuck, get that gun ready. We’re going to have some unfriendly guests.” Ryder nodded—eyes wide, muscles suddenly tight and tense—and ducked back into the tent with the excavation equipment.

“What’d you mean, unfriendly guests?” Chuck asked, hefting his pistol.

“Sprawl wolves, I think. Not sure, but I can feel something getting closer.”

Ryder came back a heartbeat later with a pair of dusty handpicks—not nearly as big as Levi had been hoping for—tucked under her arm.

“We need to move, now,” Levi said. “Everyone back up slowly toward the temple. Don’t turn. Don’t run—that’ll only draw their attention. Calm, focused, sharp. If we can’t get to the temple before they attack, you let me handle it. You two just get into the building and hold the entrance. A good defensive funnel, you understand?”

A howl, low and choking, broke the air. A second later another howl answered the first, this from the left, followed by a third from their right.

FIFTEEN:

Sprawl Wolves

A gust of gale force wind swept in, blowing out of nowhere and pushing a brown cloud across the camp—some foreign power was at work within the unnatural scree storm. Some extension of the wolves, maybe? Not important, not now. The trio backpedaled, Levi in the center, Chuck to the right, Ryder on the left—

The wind cut off as abruptly as it came, dropping away to reveal the first pair of creatures closing in on the left side. Scavengers, as Levi suspected. Sprawl wolves: opportunistic killers with a fierce reputation and a nasty disposition. These creatures, more than any other, kept all but the most dedicated travellers from venturing into these parts.

Other than academic types like the professor, only folks bound for the Spine—an impassable range of craggy peaks—came out this way. A few intrepid souls looking to make their fortune by mining out the rich veins of precious metal and addictive
Green-Charlie
buried beneath the mountains to the west. The wolves, however, were a major deterrent to such prospective entrepreneurs.