The Lands Below Read online

  “Please. It is not safe.”

  Danny patted his pistol and showed the man his saber.

  “I know how to use both of these,” he said.

  The shepherd’s gaze never faltered.

  “They will not be enough,” he replied, and seemed to come to a decision. “But you are guests in my country. I cannot leave you here. I will accompany you part of the way. Elsa will come with me, and she is a ferocious hunter. Mayhap together we can prevail.”

  “I must say,” Danny said as they headed for the cave mouth, “I never expected to hear English spoken up in these hills.”

  The big man laughed.

  “Benefits of a rich uncle and a good education,” he said. “He wanted me to go to Strasburg and the university. But when my father died, there was no one to tend the farm but me. I was happy to do it.”

  Then there was no time for conversation as they entered the cave itself, having to step over the bloody remains on the ground to get access to the deeper darkness.

  It took Danny a minute or so to get the headlamp lit. The dog, Elsa, growled as the tiny flame sparked, took and brightened, and only quietened when Stefan spoke softly to her in German.

  By the time Danny was ready to move into the dark proper, he looked ahead to see the brothers’ two lights bobbing some way ahead and upward, in a narrow tunnel with just enough headroom to allow passage.

  They climbed in silence for several minutes with Elsa trotting just ahead of them, seemingly unconcerned at being in the tight darkness. Danny envied her sang-froid; as for himself, he was already casting longing glances backward to the receding dim light of the cave mouth. Even that small comfort was lost when the climb took a curve and the entrance was lost from sight. He had almost made up his mind to beat a strategic retreat backward when he saw that the bobbing lights up ahead had become still and fixed in one spot. A further short clamber brought Danny, Stefan, and Elsa out to join the brothers at an opening into a much larger cavern beyond. Their headlamps only lit a fraction of the space but it was obvious from the echoes running around them that it was a cathedral-like hollow in the mountain.

  “We used to come this far as boys,” Stefan said, his voice booming around them. “We’d bring bread and cheese and wine…and girls. We’d tell stories and scare each other a bit here in the dark. I haven’t been here for more than twenty years.”

  “It looks like no one has,” young Ed said, his whisper echoing back at them like the hiss of a snake. He looked down at a map in his hands.

  “There is no way out save the one we came in,” Stefan said. “Trust me, we looked.”

  Ed traced a finger along a line on the map and pointed to his right.

  “Up, and over there,” he said.

  Stefan laughed.

  “There’s nothing there but a long drop into nothing,” he said, his laugh echoing and booming around. “Your map misleads you.”

  Danny saw that the youngster wasn’t going to be deterred.

  “If your wee bit of paper says we go up and right, we go up and right. We’ve been following it too long to give it up at the last minute.”

  Tommy spoke first.

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since Calais.”

  And before Danny could reply, the elder brother was off again, clambering up a fall of loose rock on the right, moving fast and sure-footed with the misplaced confidence of youth. Ed went next and Danny and Stefan brought up the rear with Elsa now seemingly glued to the shepherd’s heel.

  “I am telling you,” Stefan said. “It is, how do you say, a wild duck chase.”

  Danny laughed.

  “In that case, our goose is cooked.”

  Stefan seemed puzzled at that but he obviously found Danny’s laugh infectious and both of them were grinning when they joined the brothers at the top of the incline. They stood on the lip of a sheer drop. Danny kicked a pebble that rattled and echoed as it fell away into darkness. It was several seconds before the sound of its descent faded. If there was a bottom, the pebble still hadn’t reached it.

  “See,” Stefan said. “There is nothing but death that way. We go now?”

  It was Ed’s turn to grin.

  “If it’s death, at least we came prepared,” he said and uncoiled the length of rope that hung below his rucksack. At the same time, Tommy reached into his own pack and came out with a small hammer and a bag of pitons.

  “Just like Glencoe, little brother,” Tommy said.

  “Easier than that,” Ed replied. “It’s not snowing here. I’ll go first.”

  Danny watched with rising horror as the younger brother smacked a piton into the rock, the clang ringing like a bell in the chamber. Once that was done, Tommy tied on the rope and Ed, without a qualm, lowered himself over the edge and let the rope take his weight. It made Danny go weak at the knees just watching. Seconds later, Ed spoke from somewhere below their feet.

  “It’s easy enough going,” he said. “There’s plenty of handholds, we’ve got a hundred feet of rope, and I’ll bash some pitons in every few feet. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “As long as it’s not more than a hundred feet,” Danny muttered. He turned to Stefan.

  “It looks like this is where we leave you,” he said, offering the man his hand.

  Before the shepherd could reply, the dog at his heel let out a low growl that quickly became a bark. She moved to the edge of the drop and bent her head, looking down into the depths before letting out a howl that brought the hackles rising at Danny’s neck. Stefan had to hold her tight by the skin at her neck to stop her from launching herself into the dark, but she kept growling, her lips pulled back to show her teeth.

  “Something’s got her spooked,” Danny said.

  “I’ve only seen her like this when there is a wolf about,” the shepherd said, suddenly grave. “Mayhap your young friend should get back up here.”

  Ed answered from somewhere below with a laugh.

  “If there’s a wolf down here he’s a better climber than I am,” he said. “Just keep her quiet, would you? There’s a good chap.”

  Stefan looked down the cliff then back at Danny.

  “I will not leave you here,” he said.

  “You cannot follow us though,” Danny replied. “We cannot take your dog down there.”

  “Why not?” Tommy piped up, and not for the first time, Danny considered punching his lights out. But it turned out for once that the elder of the brothers was right; they could indeed take the dog down into the dark. After Ed called up from the pit that he’d reached a ledge of sorts that looked to be a navigable, Tommy manufactured a basic harness from two shirts tied together and to Danny’s amazement the dog went, as calmly as if sleeping on a blanket, down to Ed’s side some twenty feet below. Stefan went next, hand over hand down the rope as if he’d been doing it all his life. Danny looked down into the dark and went weak at the knees. He’d stood in high places plenty of times with no qualms, but the darkness beneath looked absolute, a hell from which he might never rise. Every fiber of him shouted to flee. Ironically, it was Tommy Ellington that got him moving, or rather that supercilious smirk of his. Giving the choice of punching it or going down the rope, Danny opted for the rope…this time.

  They grouped together on the ledge, waiting for Tommy to make his descent. Elsa growled again deep in her throat, looking pointedly along what looked a too-narrow ledge into the darkness to their left. Danny turned his gaze that way and lit up the narrow strip of rock they’d have to traverse above the fall. His lamp picked up something white against the rock, and while Ed cut off the rope to take everything save the twenty feet they’d used with them, Danny went to investigate.

  He knew before he took two steps what he was looking at; he’d seen enough death to recognise it well enough. The thing that lay on the shelf had once been a man but that had been a very long time ago. Now there was only age-weathered bone and the rotting strips of what had once been clothing. A closer look told Danny somet
hing else—this had been no natural death. The rib cage was torn asunder and splayed, in much the same manner as they’d seen in the goat in the cave mouth. No matter how many years—centuries even—apart the two killings might have been, it looked to Danny’s professional eye that the same kind of beast was responsible for both. But he still had no idea what such a beast might be.

  Elsa seemed to have an idea, and she showed her opinion of it by lifting her leg and washing a stream of hot piss over the bones before once more taking her place at Stefan’s heel.

  “Well, we’re down,” Tommy said to Ed. “Now what?”

  “The map says left,” Ed replied.

  “For how far?” Danny asked.

  “As far as it takes,” was the only reply he got.

  - 4 -

  Ed led them out along the ledge. It was only wide enough for them to proceed single file but there was little danger of falling; it was solid rock along its whole length and they were able to walk freely. It took them upward at a slight incline, a rock wall to their left and the drop into the black to their right. Ed was aware that his head was getting warm, hot even, a side effect of the lamp, but his excitement at being on the scent of the long-anticipated treasure kept him moving forward.

  They continued upward for twenty minutes before Ed became aware of a cool breeze on his face coming from up ahead. At the same time, Elsa growled again deep in her throat, as if the breeze had brought a smell with it that she would have a disagreement with.

  “Best let me go first, lad,” Danny Garland said at Ed’s back. “It’s time for me to earn my keep.”

  As they shuffled past each other, Ed noted that the breeze was freshening in his face and now he caught a hint of what had spooked the dog, a faint odor of bad meat in the air, the same smell that had hung over the dead goat back at the entrance but coming from ahead of them. Ed was more than happy when he got moving again with Danny ahead of him. The old soldier had his pistol aimed along the trail ahead.

  Minutes later, they came up and out into a cavern even larger than the first, a high-vaulted dome rising away and up into the darkness high above. Pale stalactites hung like ribbons from the roof, the dancing shadows making them look like grasping fingers. Off to their right, water ran with a rush. Turning in that direction, Ed saw a thin waterfall that plunged from on high into a pool that seethed and roiled as the water was sucked away in a whirl down to some greater depth. On checking his map, his heart sank; the path seemed to track directly into and through the waterfall itself.

  He made to move in that direction but Danny stopped him with an outstretched arm.

  “Me first,” the soldier said. “There’s a stench over there I don’t think we want to get too close to.”

  As they moved in single file towards the waterfall, they quickly found the source of the smell; some of the missing entrails and organs from the goat was Ed’s guess, a small pile of tissue and gore on a flat rock at the edge of the swirling pool.

  To Ed’s disgust, Danny bent and took some of the mess in his free hand.

  “Still warm, but not too much so,” he said. “Whatever left this here, it was sometime earlier today. There’s definitely something in here with us.”

  Danny moved off to make a survey of the cavern. He went right, Tommy went left, but Ed only had eyes for the waterfall. The only way to it was across the pool and that was a seething roil of white spume. There was no way to pass, no matter how emphatic the line on the map looked. He was still staring at it when Tommy returned a minute later.

  “Nothing but rock over there,” he said then must have seen the look on Ed’s face.

  “Don’t tell me. We’re supposed to go that way,” he said and pointed at the waterfall.

  Ed nodded, not able to bring himself to say it.

  “We go home now?” Stefan said hopefully at their back. Ed turned just as the shepherd took a leather flask from a shoulder bag, took a swig, and passed it over. Ed smelled the brandy before it got to his lips, and a deep gulp of it went down warm and most pleasant in his belly. He resisted the urge to take another and instead passed the flask to Tommy.

  He addressed the shepherd.

  “Yes, it looks like this is the end of the journey for us,” he said. “Unless you know anything different?”

  Stefan shook his head, took the flask back from Tommy, and had another swig for himself before putting it away in the bag.

  “This is further than anyone I know has ever been inside,” he said. “I know as little as you about this place.”

  Tommy asked to see the map so Ed passed it over. Away to the left, they could see Danny’s headlamp, the light moving backward and forward across the rock. From what Ed could see from that distance, there was little possibility of an exit in that direction.

  “Tea in two minutes,” he called out, his voice echoing disconsolately around him, reminding him all too much of how empty the place was.

  The small acts of getting the paraffin stove going and water boiling did a little to ground him back in a more likeable reality but by the time Danny returned with news that there was nothing but dead ends to the left, Ed was feeling sorry for himself again.

  “I have dragged you all this way for nothing. A pipedream.”

  Danny grinned.

  “Speaking of pipes.”

  He passed round his tightly hand-rolled cigarillos and soon they were all blowing smoke at each other save for Elsa who sniffed the air, snorted disgustedly, and immediately went to sleep at Stefan’s feet.

  “So what now?” Danny said as they drank the hot, sweet tea. “Do we look for another way in?”

  “There is none that I know of,” Stefan replied. “And I have lived in these hills my whole life. There is not even a rumor of another entrance.”

  Ed was barely listening. He’d looked down at his backpack on the ground and seen the rope, then looked up at the waterfall and the swirling pool.

  “I have an idea. But you’re not going to like it.”

  He was right, they didn’t like it. Danny especially was vocal in his disagreement.

  “Go into that maelstrom tied to a rope? Are you daft, man? To what purpose?”

  Ed pointed to the map then to the waterfall.

  “We go that way or we go home,” he said. “I’m not ready to go home.”

  As he said it, he realised he believed it. He’d trusted the map until now and it had brought them this far. To give up now would be to deny the reality of all that had brought him this far. He expected Tommy to back him up, but his older brother appeared to have lost some of his cocky confidence faced with the reality of the whirlpool.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with Garland, Ed. There is too much risk.”

  “And yet I have to try, Tommy. You see that, don’t you?”

  As soon as Tommy moved to take up the rope, Ed knew he at least had his brother on his side. And it was Tommy who got the other two on board with the idea.

  “You don’t know him like I do,” Tommy said, addressing the others. “Once he’s got an idea in his head, there’s no stopping him; it’s how we got into this mess in the first place.” He turned back to Ed. “But we do it my way, tied together alpine style, all of us or none of us. Remember?”

  Ed remembered the climbs only too well but this was different, at least in his mind.

  “It’s only a bit of water,” he replied. “Not a thousand feet straight down.”

  “Nevertheless, we’ll be tied up. I insist,” Tommy replied.

  Seeing that it was the only way he would be allowed the attempt, Ed concurred.

  Five minutes later, the four of them stood at the edge of the pool, all tied together at the waist by the stretch of rope that went from Ed to Tommy to Stefan to Danny in that order.

  “We’ll be anchoring you,” Tommy said. “Don’t do anything daft.”

  “You know me,” Ed replied, and stepped off the rock into the cold, churning water of the pool.

  - 5 -


  It all went well at first. Ed, his only concession to the danger having been to divest himself of his backpack and helmet, moved slowly and carefully into the pool.

  Danny saw Tommy pull on the rope so that he had his brother on a tight leash but as yet Danny didn’t have to take up any slack.

  “I’m okay so far,” Ed shouted, having to yell to be heard above the rushing water. “It’s dashed cold but I think I can make it.”

  The younger brother was having to put some effort into staying on his feet in the swirling currents and Danny saw that Tommy strained to maintain a stiff rope. Between them, Stefan put in some effort, his back muscles bulging as he worked to keep Tommy from being pulled into the pool with his brother.

  “Nearly there,” Ed called out. Danny saw that the man circled as close to the rim of the pool as he could, the swirling whirlpool sucking away at his right as he tried to navigate around it to the waterfall.

  “He’s going to make it,” Tommy shouted, and Danny thought he might actually be right, but two things happened almost simultaneously that brought disaster on the whole enterprise.

  Elsa growled deep in her throat and then let out a howl that filled the chamber. Out in the pool, Ed turned at the sound and immediately lost his balance. His footing went away from under him, the current caught hold and he vanished down into the whirlpool before he had time to let out a yell.

  The rope ripped through Tommy’s grasp, he took a tighter grip on it and was himself tugged off balance and into the pool where he was pulled inexorably towards the sucking whirlpool. Stefan planted his feet firmly and called out.

  “Take the strain. Take the weight or they are gone.”