Chapter 34 - The Cave of the Gray Stone People part 14

We huddled together as we hurried home, supporting one another in our exhaustion. Although some faint light still lingered on the horizon, night had swept the world into its tenebrous embrace. And with the dark our fear grew fat. We scurried through the open land like two girls dashing to the edge of the camp to piss, clutching one another at every snapping branch. At any moment, I expected a horde of white demon things to come storming out of the darkness, eyes blazing, fanged mouths champing. We were filthy, limping and covered in dried blood. My left leg had swollen so badly I could barely move it without my head swimming at the pain. My body felt like one big sore, and I doubt that Brulde was feeling much better. He had taken a spill earlier and twisted his knee. He was limping now almost as badly as I was. I couldn't decide if I felt worse than I looked or if I looked worse than I felt. But the pain wasn't as bad as the fear. You might think that pain trumps fear, but it does not. I can tell you from bitter experience that pain is nothing in comparison to fear.

Brulde still had his bow, but I had lost my weapons and armed myself with a melon-sized rock and a tree branch. I was using the branch more as a walking stick than a weapon, however. I was in bad shape. Despite my father's unguents, an infection had set up in the wound the speartooth had given me. I was blazing hot and the surface of my skin from my ribs down to my knee had begun to throb with every heartbeat, like a bad tooth. It wasn't good. Infection was deadly business in those days. And I was slowing Brulde down. Despite his sprained knee, he was carrying me more than I was carrying him… but I also knew he would only get angry if I suggested he leave me behind. Arguing would simply be a waste of our time and energy, and we had precious little of either commodity.

We had one goal, a single ambition, and that was to get ourselves back to the People with enough life left in our bodies to warn them of the creatures that had destroyed our Neanderthal neighbors. Nothing else mattered. Not our injuries. Not our pain. Not our lives. We had to get back and warn them. We had to make sure our people fled the valley before the monsters came to get them.

The stars winked down brightly as we tramped through the reeds and low brush of the river flats. We had found the river and were following its meandering course to Bubbling Waters. Which of those stars, I wondered mournfully, was the campfire of my father's spirit? I craned my head to take in the full breadth of the heavens, but there were so many stars, and no way of telling if any of them were newly minted.

Pessimism crooned from the dark side of my mind: You may see for yourself very soon! I ignored that jeering gore-crow. Perhaps it was right. Perhaps I would see for myself soon enough, but what good does it do to worry about the things one cannot change? It is only needless suffering piled atop the suffering we must, as mortal men, endure. Worry is just suffering we inflict upon ourselves.

Looking to the east, I noticed some of the stars were occulted by storm clouds. I could see the dark mass of them in the light of the moon. Low. Fat. Black.

"More rain," I said.

"Snow, by the feel of it," Brulde replied. "Or ice. How much further to Bubbling Waters?"

I looked around, checking the landmarks. "We should get back well before dawn," I said. We had already passed Big River Camp, which was half a day's walk from the cave of the Gray Stone People. That was three-fourths of the journey. Not much further to go.

"Before the storm?" Brulde asked.

I shook my head. It might come. It might turn. Who could say? Such things were nuhnhe.

"The Fat Hands were right," Brulde said dolefully. "This valley is cursed now. I feel it in my heart. I never believed in evil spirits before but I don't know what else you could call a thing like that."

His breath came out in puffs of vapor as he spoke. His teeth were chattering. The temperature had dropped considerably as the winter storm pushed in from the east. Brulde was right. It would be snow tonight. The air had that heaviness that promised icy precipitation. After a long and pleasant autumn, the season of cold was poised to pounce.

I turned my attention from the heavens to look at my tent mate. His solemn eyes probed mine in the gloom. He was waiting for me to speak.

"I don't know if that thing was a man or a demon," I said, "but it was like nothing I have ever seen. The speed of it was terrifying. And it's voice. I thought my ears would rupture. And it was so cold. Its skin brushed mine when it tackled Tavet and it was like the wind that comes down from the glaciers. It was the kind of cold that's sinks into your bones. But we killed the little one. We know that they can die. Perhaps we can kill the big one as well. Perhaps, if there are enough of us…"

Brulde was unconvinced. "I do not think it was a living man," he said. "I believe it was some kind of evil spirit, like the Fat Hands always talked about. Or perhaps it was one of their gods. Perhaps they offended one of their gods and he decided to sort them out. If it was a god, I hope we did not anger it."

I shrugged. "There is nothing we can do about it now. Poi-lot said neither offerings nor rituals had any effect on the creature. If it is one of their gods it will do as it pleases, whether that be kindness or cruelty. What are we to gods?"

"Fleas on its back," Brulde answered. "Or so the Fat Hands believed."

Fleas or food, I thought.

And then I wondered, Are we the food of the gods? Is that what we are? And if that is all we are, do they take nourishment from our worship, or is it our suffering they crave?

I shivered, and not just from the cold.

The atmosphere was growing heavier by the moment, though with precipitation or menace I could not tell which. When we paused to rest about midways between Big River Camp and Bubbling waters, the first fine snowflakes began to drift gently earthward. I squinted to the heavens when I saw them, clinging to my walking stick as if it were a lifeline. The sky was a sodden and lightless plain, given the illusion of movement by the shifting shadow-patterns of the falling snow. The sight made me dizzy, or perhaps it was the infection. I was cooking with fever. My head thumped in rhythm with the pain in my hip, a drumbeat of misery.

The riverbank was pitch dark and eerie in its silence. I could hear the watercourse burbling quietly nearby, but there were no other natural sounds, no hoots or cheeps or howls in the forest. A hush had fallen over the world. There was just the wind, sighing through the leafless branches of the trees, and the low chuckling of the water.

"Our people will not want to leave the valley," Brulde said. His voice seemed too loud in the stillness, and I winced at the sound of it.

"Then we will have to convince them," I said. "We cannot stay here. Not with that thing running loose. And what if there are more of them? What if the two we fought were not the only ones? Who is to say there are not three, or four, or a hundred?"

"It will be hard on the children and elders, travelling at this time of year. Many will starve if we flee in the winter."

"What other choice do we have?" I asked. "If we stay, we risk the depredations of the demon-men who destroyed the Fat Hands. If we flee, we risk foul weather and starvation. I think I would rather take my chances with the weather."

A sudden gale of wind howled through the treetops, making their branches clatter together with a sound like bones rattling in a soothsayer's cup. My subconscious shot up a red flare of alarm as the wind whistled and the snow swirled around us but I did not know the basis for my sudden anxiety. I could not tell where the fear was coming from. It was just the wind.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Brulde's head jerk up, an expression of panic suffusing his features.

A shadowy figure suddenly reared up before us. He appeared with shocking rapidity, heralded by a violent flurry of snow. Before either of us could move to defend ourselves, before we even had time to cry out, the dark figure struck Brulde a vicious blow.

The astonishing force of the assault lifted my companion from the log he had been sitting on. It launched him into the air like a missile, sent him tumbling away into the gloom.

I heard Brulde crash through the treetops, heard his body thump down somewhere in the darkness behind me even as I rose, swinging the melon-sized stone I'd armed myself with. I was aiming for the dark creature's head. I meant to bash in his skull. But everything seemed to be moving so slowly: my rage, my fist, the falling snow.

The dark figure twisted around to face me. I could see nothing of his features but the glamour of his eyes. The stone I had propelled at his head was still rising, but slowly, as in a nightmare. The creature reached out and batted the rock aside, then leaned toward me and gripped my throat with his hand.

White teeth danced below the beak of his nose. He was speaking to me, telling me something in the guttural language of the Foul Ones, but I did not know their tongue. I didn't understand a word he was saying.

My forearm was buzzing, the pain like an electric shock. I looked down at my arm and realized the creature had snapped the bones in it when he slapped the rock out of my hand. It was bent at an unnatural angle about four inches below my wrist. It looked as if I'd grown an extra elbow.

I wailed in agony.

An instant later, I felt myself lifted from the earth, the clawed fingers still wrapped tight around my throat. The speed at which we ascended stunned me. The sudden acceleration was like being slapped by a giant invisible hand. I had an impression that the fiend had leapt into the treetops but everything was a blurred confusion. I could feel cold air slicing through my hair and clothing. Winter bare branches whipped me all over. A thick tree limb collided with my hip hard enough to fracture it. I yalped, tugging in vain at the icy fingers sunk into my neck, but it was like trying to bend stone. My broken arm flapped uselessly at my side, singing in agony. My knees and shins kept banging against tree limbs. Then another large tree branch struck me in the head. I saw a burst of red stars and then nothing for a while.