The Lands Below Page 3

  The rope tore at Danny’s palms as he took hold. He was looking at the shepherd’s broad back, wondering whether the man’s jacket might rip at the bulging seam, so he didn’t see the thing that came out of the darkness to his left and barreled into the two men. Before he could get his bearings, Danny, with Stefan ahead of him, was tugged, hard, into the water. He caught a glimpse of Tommy going head-first into the whirlpool, tried to get his footing, then was dragged, accelerating, towards the suck of the pool.

  Something white with a head as big as that of a horse and with a mouthful of teeth in a wet, red mouth lunged at him, jaw snapping shut only inches from his nose, then he was sucked away out of its reach.

  He had time for one breath, saw Stefan go down into the whirl with Elsa leaping from the bank to go with him then he too was in the clutches of the current.

  He went down into the spiral with no hope of ever coming up again.

  The next minute was a terror plunge through whirling darkness; his headlamp fizzled out as soon as he went under the water. He spun like a child’s top, buffeted, and pummeled. His left hip hit rock, hard, and his descent halted, but only for a second before the rope at his waist yanked at him and he was tugged away and down faster and more furiously than before.

  His chest howled in pain, the last of his air gone. Something wet and soft fell in front of his face. Reaching up, he felt what he thought was the dog, Elsa, then it too was lost in the swirling madness.

  This is no way for an old soldier to die.

  That was his final thought. He was ready to give himself to the water and the dark when there was suddenly light beneath him. He shot out of the water like a cork from a shaken champagne bottle…only to find that he was falling through open air.

  Below him someone screamed, long and loud. He fell for perhaps two seconds then hit more water with a thundering splash. He fought, fearing that he might go under again, but found that his feet touched solid ground below him. He stood, water up to his waist, taking in huge gulps of welcome air.

  It was only once he was able to breathe that he realised someone was screaming near his left side. He turned, and at first couldn’t understand what he saw. Young Ed was holding off something that looked like a foot-thick snake with the head of a pony, mouth full of sharp teeth that were trying to tear at the man’s face while taloned feet on muscular limbs tore gouges at his chest.

  Danny reached for his pistol, realised that it would be too wet to fire, and was drawing his sword as he closed the ground between himself and the beleaguered lad.

  Stefan beat him to it. The shepherd didn’t pause. He stepped forward and grabbed the snake thing from behind, pulling it by brute force away from Ed’s face and body. Elsa barked ferociously but was unable to go to her master’s aid, her energy being spent on keeping herself afloat. Danny arrived at the shepherd’s side just as the man’s grip was starting to slip. The beast turned in the big man’s arms and made a lunge for his throat. Instead, it met Danny’s sword, a well-aimed thrust that went right down its gullet and emerged from the back of its neck in a spray of blood. All of the fight went out of the thing and it fell away. Elsa took the opportunity to swim forward and take hold of it by the neck, worrying at it as if it were a barn-rat.

  As always was the case after action, Danny’s sense of reality filled in slowly. The first thing he noticed was the cold that gripped like ice around everything below his waist. Then he saw young Ed was in trouble, blood seeping into his shirt from a series of wounds on chest and belly. He looked past the lad and saw what looked like a shore some twenty yards away. The older brother, Tommy, stood a few yards further away, head bowed and ominously still.

  “Stefan,” Danny said, putting the tone of his years of command into his voice. “Get young Ed to shore. We need to get out of this water before it kills us.”

  Getting all of them plus Elsa to shore proved more difficult that he’d thought it would, due to several factors; for one, they were all still tied together, his hip hurt like blazes where he’d bashed it, Tommy proved to be either in shock or had taken a concussion and had to be almost forcibly carried out of the water, and Elsa insisted on dragging the dead thing along with her, retrieving the kill as if she’d made it herself.

  But finally it was done and they flopped out onto a shore of tiny pebbles. Danny kept on his feet as he got the rope untied from around his waist.

  “Stefan, I need you to see to the lads here, okay? We need to get those wounds seen to, and we need to get dry and keep warm, so we’ll need to get a fire going. I’ll see if there’s anything to burn around here.”

  It was only then that he took the time to check their surroundings and he almost lost his breath again as he took in the sight. He had thought they’d somehow come out from under the mountain back into the sun, but there was only solid rock high overhead, a vaulting roof over a cavern that stretched away out of sight in every direction. Diffuse light, glimmering like a full moon on water, came from the roof itself, from pale luminescent roots that dangled in loose fringes from the face of the rock, waving in a breeze that shifted the roots like wheat in an autumn wind. A waterfall fell out of the roof and tumbled in a white roil out on the pond; Danny realised that was how they’d arrived, falling out of the sky from darkness into this near oblivion. The landscape around the pond was grey; bare rock and pebbles in the main, but as he looked closer he saw dry vegetation interspersed among the rocks; ropy lengths of what he guessed must be dead roots fallen from the roof above. He cracked one open with his hands and nodded to himself; it would burn readily enough.

  He made several trips to and from the shore carrying handfuls of the stuff. Stefan was working on binding Ed’s wounds with strips from a shirt out of Tommy’s pack; possibly the same one Danny had declined to wash what seemed like years ago. The younger brother was awake and at least had some color in his cheeks, but Tommy was still lost in his far-away stare and Danny knew he’d have to check the youth out sooner rather than later. But his first priority had to be the fire.

  He was amazed to find that his smokes and matches had survived dry in the pocket inside his tunic. Using scraps of the torn shirt as kindling, he was able to get a fire going within minutes. The dry root burned slowly and he calculated it would be an hour at least before he’d have to collect more.

  He finally had some time to take stock.

  Stefan finished patching up young Ed.

  “He will live,” the shepherd said. “Most of the wounds are shallow. He will lose his right nipple, and there will be scars.”

  “But I’ll live,” Ed added, looking up at Danny from where he sat by the fire. “How’s Tommy?”

  Danny looked across the fire. He’d sat the other brother down, having to manhandle him like a mannequin. The blank stare that persisted in the elder brother’s gaze had Danny worried but he tried not to let it show.

  “He’s had a knock on the head. Only time will tell. We can’t let him sleep though; I’ve seen men in his condition slip away entirely once sleep took them. Keep him upright and awake and he’ll come round in his own good time.”

  He knew that wasn’t entirely accurate and from the look Stefan gave him, he saw that the shepherd knew it too, but young Ed had his own worries to keep him busy; he didn’t need to take on those of his brother. Not yet anyway.

  “My pack?” Ed asked as Danny passed ‘round a smoke for each of them.

  “Left above,” Danny answered. “Along with the stove and cooking pans.”

  “…and the map,” Ed said forlornly.

  “The map’s no use to us now anyway, lad,” Danny replied. “We’re in uncharted territory. Here there be dragons.”

  He pointed to the water’s edge where the thing he’d killed lay in the shallows, already drifting away from them back towards where the waterfall plunged into the water.

  “I have never seen anything like it,” Stefan said.

  “I’m not sure anyone has,” Danny replied before Ed spoke up.

&nbs
p; “You’re from the North, Danny,” he said. “Surely you’ve heard stories of the wyrm?”

  “Old women’s tales and bunkum,” Danny replied. “Tall tales designed to make small boys fearful of going into caves alone.”

  “Not so tall though. Look at that thing and tell me it’s not a wyrm. Lifted straight out of the old stories.”

  Danny had to admit the lad had a point. But it was a moot one.

  “Whatever it was, it’s dead now. Our concern here is not with it, but with how to get out of here.”

  Ed looked like he wanted to argue but he obviously lacked the energy. Danny saw that the lad’s wounds were paining him.

  “Stefan, do you still have the brandy? I think the lad could do with some.”

  The shepherd fished around in his bag that had miraculously survived the fall, and came up with the flask. He didn’t pass it around this time, merely handed it to the youth. Ed took to it lustily. Two minutes later, his head drooped to his chest and he was gone into sleep that Danny considered to be a blessing. It gave him time to check on what else had managed to make the journey with them.

  He still had his pack and his weapons. He’d lost the headlamp somewhere on the descent but that didn’t worry him unduly while they had the luminescent light from above. What worried him more was the lack of food; Ed had been carrying the bulk of their provisions, and that was still sitting by the edge of the pool, somewhere high above and far out of reach.

  He laid out his pistol as close to the fire as he dared to dry it out, doing the same with Tommy’s Colts; in other circumstances, he’d have expected an argument from the lad, but all that was there was the same blank stare.

  “This is bad, no?” Stefan said.

  “This is bad, yes,” Danny replied. “But I’ve been in tighter spots. We got in. We’ll get back out again.”

  Stefan nodded.

  “Elsa will find our way; her nose will lead her home.”

  That gave Danny another idea.

  “How’s her nose for hunting?” He waved an arm around, indicating the extent of the cavern. “Think there’s anything worth eating down here?”

  “Her nose is better than mine,” Stefan replied with a laugh. He turned to the dog whose ears pricked up as he spoke.

  “Rabbit, Elsa. Fetch rabbit.”

  The dog bounded away, soon lost to sight among the tumble of rocks to their right.

  “If there is anything, she will find it,” Stefan replied. “In the meantime, I have this.”

  He fetched some strips of dried meat from his bag. Danny laughed.

  “What else have you got in there? A map of the way out? A telegraph machine?”

  Stephan laughed again in reply.

  “A shepherd learns early to be prepared for having to sit out bad weather…or mishaps in caves for that matter.”

  Danny looked at the roof of stone above them. The light seemed to be even and constant; there would be no nightfall here, just endless daylight.

  He wondered how long they might have to survive under this perpetual gloom before they found a way home.

  - 6 -

  Ed woke with the taste of brandy in his mouth and a headache the size of London. There was something else too, something it took full waking and sudden saliva in his mouth for him to recognize. Someone was cooking meat.

  He sat up and immediately wished he hadn’t for shooting pain coursed through the myriad wounds in his chest and belly. He thought he might be able to walk, but only just. Running…or climbing…was going to need some healing before it could be attempted.

  “The boy is back in the land of the living,” the shepherd said and Ed heard Danny Gillam’s laugh from somewhere behind him.

  “Well, that’s something at least.”

  Stefan sat up close to the fire, turning a makeshift spit that held something that looked rabbit-like if you didn’t look too closely at the extra legs and too-long neck. The shepherd saw Ed looking.

  “Elsa has been a very good dog. It looks like we are not fated to starve down here at least.”

  The dog lay at the man’s side, gaze fixed on the cooking carcass. Her tail thumped twice on the ground as her name was spoken, but her attention never wavered; it looked like she was as hungry as Ed now felt.

  “Tommy?” Ed said, looking across the fire to where his brother sat, head down, features hidden in shadow.

  “He’s much the same, lad,” Danny said, approaching from the direction of the lake. “But he’s alive. Give it time.”

  Ed turned slightly to look Danny in the eyes and winced again as the movement brought fresh pain. He felt tugging at the wounds but Stefan had bound them up tight and there didn’t seem to be any fresh bleeding. Danny put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Keep still, lad. We’re not going anywhere for a bit, not until we know what’s what with your brother. We have fire, food, and water and my pistol’s dried out enough to give anything that might come at us a fright. Hunker down, we’ll have some of…whatever the hell that thing we’re cooking is…and we’ll see if we can come up with a plan.”

  “What are we going to be eating?” Ed said.

  Danny laughed grimly at that.

  “I’m not a naturalist, so I couldn’t tell you. It looked like a rabbit as you can see. But it had six legs, and a neck like a goose; ain’t ever seen, or heard, of anything quite like it.”

  “What with that, and the wyrm, I’m thinking that these caves have their own ecosystem,” Ed said.

  “I have no idea what that word means. If it means there’s weird critters down here, then yes, I’d agree with you on that.”

  “There’s been no more wyrm sightings.”

  “Nope. And I’ve been thinking. If yon thing we killed managed to get out of this cave and up top, then we can do it too, somehow.”

  “Unless it didn’t come from here at all?”

  “Where else could it have come from?”

  Ed didn’t have an answer, and when Danny passed ‘round a cigarette for each of them, they sat and smoked in silence, the only sound the spit and hiss of fat in the fire as the rabbit-thing cooked.

  It tasted enough like a rabbit for Ed to be able to fool himself in the eating of it.

  Stefan tried to get Tommy to take some meat, but the older brother was still lost somewhere behind his far off stare. He breathed, he blinked, but there was no recognition there that the world existed for him.

  “Come back to me, Tommy,” Ed whispered. “I can’t do this without you.”

  He looked up to Danny Garland, more to look away from Tommy’s dead stare than anything else.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Who knows? There’s no passage of the sun to tell us. Several hours at least. Time for my pistol and shells to dry out. I dried your brother’s guns too. Do you want them?”

  Ed shook his head.

  “Tommy will need them when he comes to himself again.”

  He caught the look that passed between Danny and Stefan; they didn’t think Tommy was going to recover.

  “What do we do if he stays this way?” he asked.

  Danny took his time answering, and when he did, it was in a grave tone.

  “I’ve seen men shake this kind of knock to the head off and be good as new, and I’ve also seen men just slip off into unconsciousness and never come back. I’d say it’s a toss of the coin which one we have here. As for what we do? I said we need a plan, so let’s have another smoke and talk through our options as we see them.”

  It turned out, however, that there wasn’t a great deal to discuss. Danny laid out the extent of their surviving provisions—they talked about Ed’s wounds and how long it might be before it was safe for them to travel and they all agreed that Elsa’s nose was probably their best bet to find an escape. They didn’t speak any more of Tommy’s condition; all that needed to be said had already been gone over. As he tossed the butt of his smoke onto the fire, Ed looked again at his brother and said a silent prayer.

  �
��Come back, Tommy. Please come back.”

  After eating and smoking, sleep called for Ed. He looked across to Danny.

  “I should stay awake, help with the watch,” he said. Danny patted him on the shoulder again.

  “Stefan and I have got this; we’ve both got experience of long, boring watches to fall back on. Sleep, lad. Sleep and heal. We’ll see about getting you on your feet when you wake.”

  He went down hard into the black again. If there were dreams, he didn’t remember them, but when he woke it was with a start, as if emerging from a nightmare. Danny smiled at him.

  “Back in the land of the living at last. And just in time.”

  Elsa had been busy again; another rabbit-like creature was roasting on the spit.

  “She found something else too,” Danny said softly. “Stefan and I pondered not showing it to you; you’ll only get excited and I’m not sure you’re up to it. But you deserve to see it.”

  “Now you’ve got me interested, you’d better show me,” Ed replied, and sat up, too fast, bringing a flare of pain in his chest.

  Danny took something from his jacket pocket and handed it over once Ed was upright. It was a gold ring. Heavy and regal looking and to Ed’s admittedly unpracticed eye, it looked to be centuries old, at least.

  “It’s from the treasure hoard,” he said, whispering almost to himself.

  “I guess it must be,” Danny replied.

  Ed tried to stand. Fresh pain shot across his chest, forcing him into ignominious retreat back to a seated position.

  “It’s been where it lies all this time,” Danny said. “Another day isn’t going to matter. Elsa will lead us to it when you’re capable.”

  Ed realised that he’d been so enraptured by the ring he’d forgotten to ask after his brother. He didn’t have to speak; one look across the fire told him that Tommy was still lost inside himself somewhere.

  “Has he spoken at all?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “The only sound has been Stefan here telling me his life story and I telling mine.”