The Lands Below Read online

  THE LANDS BELOW

  William Meikle

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2020 by William Meikle

  - 1 -

  Daniel Garland looked up the mountainside and not for the first time on this trip wondered how in the hell he’d managed to get talked into this fools’ expedition.

  It had all seemed so straightforward back in London a month previously. A guinea a day for his services and all his expenses provided for had been the offer. He’d got a new pair of fine leather hiking boots, a new pistol—a .41 caliber Thunderer he’d had his eyes on for months—a gun belt and holster holding thirty rounds and a fine new saber and scabbard, all procured at no cost to himself from Holland and Holland. That was when he’d known that Ed Ellington was serious. It was also before he’d met Thomas Ellington; if he’d done that earlier on the first day, he might not have made it as far as the gunsmiths’ premises.

  It had started well enough. Ed Ellington had sought him out in Garland’s favorite watering hole in town, The George in the Strand. Daniel had been sitting at the end of the bar minding his own business when a full tankard of porter was placed in front of him. He looked to his left to see a young, slightly plump fresh-faced fellow of some twenty years smiling rather awkwardly.

  “The barman tells me this is your drink of choice. I’ll buy you another if you’ll listen to my proposition?”

  “Son,” Daniel replied, “I’ll listen to any old bollocks if there’s a beer in it for me, so buy away.”

  And at first, he did think the lad’s story was nonsense, full as it was of talk of Teutonic Knights, lost treasure, and a hidden cave in Austria where all manner of fortune and glory might be found.

  “So you’re planning an expedition to this cave?” Daniel said eventually. By this time, he was on his third pint of porter and feeling more agreeable to nonsense. “Where do I come in? I know nowt about caves, I’ll tell you that before this goes any further.”

  The younger man smiled ruefully.

  “It is not your caving experience I need; I have a modicum of that already. I am more worried about both the journey to the place, and, if we are successful, the way back.”

  “Ah, I start to see,” Daniel replied. “You need a guard?”

  “Exactly. Someone to watch our backs and protect our interests.”

  “Now that I can do just fine. What’s in it for me?”

  Once the terms were agreed, Daniel had shaken the lad’s hand and they’d both headed to the gunsmith’s shop. After that, it was a three-course meal in the Ridlington Club in Pall Mall washed down with fine wines and brandy and by the end of that Garland was feeling pretty pleased with his new employer and the start they had made to their working relationship.

  Then Thomas Ellington walked in. He was a tall, muscular, blond lad who carried himself with a cocky self-assuredness and swagger that Daniel recognized immediately. It reminded him all too well of young officers with more balls than sense and an over-inflated opinion of themselves. His suspicions were proved right when the newcomer ignored Daniel completely and spoke directly to his brother.

  “I told you, Ed. We don’t need him. I don’t need him.”

  “And I told you,” Ed replied. “I’ll feel safer with him along.”

  “I refuse,” the newcomer said. “I will not travel with a mongrel reject from the Army.”

  Daniel didn’t get out of his chair but when he spoke, the whole room fell quiet.

  “I’d be careful with my words if I were you, lad,” he said quietly. “A lesser man than I might take offence.”

  The lad turned as if seeing Daniel for the first time. The color was high in his cheeks and his dander was up. Daniel knew that if he stood, the boy would take a swing at him. He also knew he could have the lad laid out flat in a matter of seconds. But he’d shaken on the deal with the brother so he held his peace and continued to speak softly.

  “Your brother and I have come to terms,” he said.

  “Well, you can forget that.”

  “No, I can’t,” Daniel replied calmly. “We have shaken on it like gentlemen and I have taken my first payment. I’m his man.”

  Daniel saw that the lad was still ready for a fight. He sat back in his armchair and puffed at his cheroot, not taking his gaze from the youth’s face. Thomas Ellington blinked first, reddened further, and turned on his brother where he couldn’t turn on Daniel.

  “Take it back, Ed. Right now. We don’t need him.”

  Daniel watched both the lads closely. Thomas was the bigger, fitter, more cocksure of the two. But Daniel could see just by looking at them that Ed, although soft in the body, was the stronger in the head.

  “I will not,” Ed said. “As Captain Garland has said, we have shaken on it and he has taken a payment. He comes, or we don’t go at all.”

  The brothers had stared at each other for long seconds then Thomas turned on his heel and walked out without another word. Daniel hadn’t seen him again until all the details were ironed out and provisions were purchased, and he took to the train for Calais with young Ed one Saturday morning in June.

  Now here they were almost a month later in an inn on the outskirts of Salzburg below the mountain and Daniel and Thomas Ellington had barely spoken a word to each in the intervening weeks.

  “Tomorrow,” Ed said as they sat on a porch having a post-supper smoke. “We’re nearly there.”

  The three of them sat in a row overlooking the mountain, Daniel on Ed’s right, Thomas on the left. Daniel saw that Thomas was wearing his pistol belt, a pair of Colt Peacemakers in the holsters, one on each hip. They were showy guns to Daniel’s mind, too heavy when it came to close-range fighting.

  Let’s hope the lad never has to find out.

  “It’s up there. I know it is,” Ed said quietly. The same words had been on his lips ever since they’d come in sight of the mountain two days before. The trip from Calais had been so uneventful as to be boring but here below the mountain, Daniel found the younger man’s excitement infectious. He felt the old thrill and tingle that always came with the promise of action. The brothers began another of their seemingly endless arguments over a trivial detail of tomorrow’s climb so Daniel tuned them out, puffed on a cheroot, and mentally reviewed their inventory for perhaps the twentieth time in as many hours.

  They would be going in light, each of them carrying a rucksack with water and provisions for two days. They’d each wear a hard hat with a carbide lamp headlight fueled by a small acetylene tank that fitted at the top of their bespoke rucksacks. Daniel had eyed the equipment warily back in London when Ed had demonstrated it; going down into a deep cavern and trusting to a flame for light did not seem like the best of ideas, but the lad had been adamant.

  “Monsieur Trouve in Paris has assured me that they have been produced to the most exact standards and I myself have tested one of them in Yorkshire just these two weeks passed. They work, Captain Garland. They work perfectly.”

  Of course, that remained to be seen.

  “Are we expecting to meet anything in there?” Daniel had asked.

  “Bear, possibly, maybe a wolf? I really have no idea.”

  Given the vagueness of that reply, Daniel had also decided to go in armed; he’d have the Thunderer, his gun belt, and carry a small box of spare rounds in the rucksack, extra weight he was happy to endure. He’d also wear the saber, having grown attached to it on the trek here from Calais. Thomas Ellington had also decided to go in armed, hence the Peacemakers.

  Attached below the rucksacks each of them would carry a bedding roll and Ed, not being encumbered by any weaponry, would carry rope, a small paraffin stove and some pots and pans.

  Satisfied that they’d done all they could to prepare, Daniel we
nt back to enjoying his smoke and the view before darkness finally sent him inside for a good night’s sleep in a proper bed. He intended to make the most of it.

  - 2 -

  Ed Ellington woke in the morning as excited to get going as he had been on every day of the trip. This was it, the culmination of a year of planning and fifteen months of fervent hope since that day in the Bodlean when he’d discovered the two loose leaves of parchment tucked inside the pamphlet on the geology of the Lamprechtsofen.

  While dressing, his mind went back to that first afternoon back in a damp English spring. Tommy had been skeptical at first.

  “It’s a forgery, obviously,” he’d said. “You know these medieval scholars; always happy to slip a joke in unawares, something to confound future generations. You’ve seen it before.”

  But Ed had the bit between his teeth.

  “I’ve checked the dates where I could,” he said. “And read the legends. I’m sure there’s something to it. And besides, even if there is nothing there but the cave, it’s still an adventure. That in itself is enough for you to buy into it, is it not?”

  As he knew it would, his appeal to his brother’s vanity worked its magic. Tommy agreed to pour some of the family’s not inconsiderable fortune into the endeavor. Ed set about organizing an expedition to the deepest cave in Europe in search of a great treasure purportedly buried there by Teutonic Knights almost a millennia before.

  And now they were here.

  After dressing and before heading down for breakfast, Ed took out the two thin sheaves of paper for perhaps the thousandth time and reverently laid them out on the bed. He traced a finger along the line delineated on the crude map, from river to cave and into the depths. He mouthed the ancient Latin that told of the knight, Lamprecht, and his travels from the Holy Land, his flight from the Pope, and his descent into the dark. The short tale did not specify the nature of the treasure the knight had carried, but Ed had faith; it was there, in the dark, just waiting to be found. His head full of thoughts of fortune, glory, and a place in the history books, he finally put the papers away in an inside pocket and went downstairs in search of food to feed the body in the same way that hope had filled his soul.

  Tommy and Daniel Garland were already there, and, not for the first time, were at loggerheads over something that had brought the older Ellington brother close to rage.

  “What is it now?” Ed said on joining them at the table.

  “Ask him,” Tommy said.

  Ed turned to the soldier and raised an eyebrow. He got a grin in reply.

  “Your brother wants me to be head cook and bottle-washer,” Garland said. “I informed him where he could put that idea.”

  “I pay your wages,” Tommy said, almost shouting.

  “That you do,” Garland said pleasantly. “But my contract is with your brother here and nothing was said of my acting as your personal slave. If you want your shirt washed, wash it yourself.”

  Ed laughed and turned to his brother.

  “You never asked him to wash your shirt?”

  “It’s dirty,” Tommy said.

  “Then wash it. Captain Garland is right. He’s not your slave.”

  “You’re taking his side?”

  “It’s not a question of sides. It’s a question of personal responsibility and teamwork. We’re going to need both once we get into the cave. If we’re not of one mind, we’re liable to come a cropper in a dark place where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  “That’s where I told him to stick his shirt,” Daniel Garland said, and laughed as Tommy turned on his heel and left without another word.

  “You should not bait him,” Ed said as he tucked into some bread and cheese.

  “He’s a hothead,” Garland replied. “That makes him an easy target. I have been avoiding him for that precise reason and today’s little altercation was his doing, not mine. That said, I do not relish spending any time with him in a deep dark hole and I will be all the happier when this job is done.”

  “I think we all will,” Ed said, and concentrated on his breakfast, his bright shining hope of just minutes earlier having already been tarnished before the day had properly begun.

  It did not get any better when they donned their packs and ventured onto the mountain slopes.

  “I say we go this way,” Tommy said when they came to a fork in the path. He was pointing left. Garland shook his head.

  “Right is the easier trail and ends up in almost the same spot if you look,” he said.

  “I didn’t come to take the easy road,” Tommy replied, and set off left. Garland shrugged, went right, and Ed followed the old soldier.

  They met Tommy ten minutes later at a spot where the two trails met again some distance up the mountain. Tommy was red in the face and breathing in deep whooping breaths, whereas Garland and Ed were hardly breathing heavily. Garland smiled; Ed saw it but luckily Tommy was too busy trying to catch his breath to start another argument.

  Besides, Ed had no time to mediate between the others; they had arrived at their destination. The trails had converged at what, in a wetter summer, would be a small waterfall with a pond below it. Now it was a man-sized gaping hole leading into the mountain with barely a trickle of water running out of the dark.

  “This is it?” Tommy said when he’d recovered enough to speak.

  Ed nodded.

  “Exactly where the map said it would be,” he said, pointing at the cave entrance. “It goes in, upward for a bit then opens out into the caverns proper. We’re lucky it’s dry; it might have been impassable otherwise.”

  “It might still be impassable once we get in,” Tommy said.

  “And we’ll never know if we stand here wondering,” Ed answered. He stepped forward heading for the entrance and was stopped when something moved inside, a darker shape among the shadows.

  “Stand back,” Daniel Garland said and pushed Ed aside. Ed noted that the soldier’s pistol had somehow been drawn and raised in the second between Ed seeing the shadow and reacting. The pistol pointed directly at the entrance.

  Something growled in the darkness of the cave.

  “Do not shoot me,” someone shouted from inside. “I am but a simple shepherd.”

  “Show yourself,” Garland replied, and lowered his pistol as a burly man came out the hole with a large shaggy dog at his heel.

  “I am Stefan,” the man said with a thick accent and hit his chest with a huge fist. “And I am here looking for a lost bullock. I was inside and heard you speak but did not show myself for fear that you were the very bandits who took my animal. But you are English gentlemen, are you not? Here to climb the mountain?”

  The big dog at his side growled deep in its throat, eyeing Garland warily.

  Garland holstered his pistol and reached out a hand to the newcomer.

  “Danny Garland,” he said. “English but no gentleman. And we’re here to have a look in your cave.”

  The shepherd’s huge hand engulfed Garland’s and shook but he had a look in his eyes that looked very like abject terror.

  “We do not go inside,” he said. “It is not safe.”

  Ed laughed.

  “And yet you were just in there.”

  “Only as far as the light would allow,” the shepherd replied. “I cannot afford to lose a prized bullock. I needed to know if it had strayed inside.”

  “And had it?” Garland asked.

  “No,” the shepherd said, and this time Ed was sure it was fear that he saw in the man’s eyes. “But something has been there. Have a look for yourselves.”

  Ed went to step forward and the big dog growled again.

  “Don’t mind Elsa,” the shepherd said. “She’s protective, that’s all. Sit, girl.”

  The dog sat on its haunches, but its gaze never strayed from Ed and Garland as they walked into the cave. Ed knew before they reached it that something had died in there; the stench was unmistakable. He covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and moved into the gloom.


  The thing on the floor of the cave inside the entrance had once been a mountain goat. Now it was little more than a crushed head and a carcass that had been torn asunder by some great force. Garland took one look at it and backed away outside. Ed looked over the top of the remains and into the deeper blackness of the cave itself before joining him; there was no sound but his own breathing but he felt sure that there was something there, watching and waiting.

  “A bear do you think?” Garland asked the shepherd.

  “There have been no bears around here in a hundred years. My first guess was wolf but Elsa here would have sniffed one of them out before now. And I never saw a wolf that could tear a beast apart like that.”

  “Me neither,” Garland replied. “If I were back in Africa, I might conjecture it to be a lion or leopard. But there are no big cats in these parts.”

  “None that I know of,” the shepherd agreed. “But there is something. And these slopes have long had a dark reputation.”

  Tommy laughed at that.

  “I knew the locals would have a story to try to frighten us off. We came here to search this cave. Is one dead goat going to stop us before we even start?”

  “Maybe it should,” Garland replied.

  “I knew you were all mouth and no trousers,” Tommy replied. Ed stepped between them. Tommy hadn’t seen it, but Garland’s hand had gone for his pistol. Ed stopped it by placing a hand on the captain’s wrist and turned to his brother.

  “Put a stopper in it, Tommy. Of course we’re going in. We just have to be careful, that’s all.”

  “You be careful, then. I’ll see you inside.”

  Tommy went into the cave without another word.

  - 3 -

  All of Danny’s long experience and every bit of his gut instinct told him to stay out on the slopes in the light, to trust this shepherd. He’d tried bearding a lion in its den once in Kenya and still had the scars to show for it. Whatever had torn the goat apart might not be a lion but it certainly seemed to be as fierce as one. A cave was no place to fight such a thing. Given time, he might even have been able to persuade young Ed of the need for prudence but the lad was already on his way after the brother. As Danny moved to go with him, the shepherd put a hand on his arm.