Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Chapter 19

As the guards led Gabriel though the village, all the inhabitants turned out again, lining the pathways between the huts, tagging along behind Gabriel or reaching out to touch him as he passed. When they arrived in the center of the village, several women were hauling aside a heavy woven mat about ten feet in diameter. Beneath the mat was a stonelined pit. Gabriel couldn’t see the bottom, but he could hear Millie’s angry voice coming up from below.

The guards slung a rope under Gabriel’s arms and used it to lower him into the pit, dropping him the last six feet to the hard-packed dirt floor. Millie hurried over as the women up at the top yanked the rope away.

“You okay?”

“Dandy,” Gabriel replied, getting to his feet again and taking stock of his new surroundings.

The pit was approximately twenty-five feet deep, damp and claustrophobic. There was a bad smell, like fear-sweat and spoiled meat. The stones of the pit walls were slick and mostly featureless except for what looked like some kind of asymmetrical drainage hole, about a foot wide, off to one side. Even in the dim light, Gabriel couldn’t help but notice the brown stains of dried blood on the stones surrounding it.

A shout came from above and something was slowly lowered on a rope: a stone knife, the rope looped through a hole in its broad handle. A second rope followed, with another blade. When they had descended enough for Gabriel and Millie to grasp them in their bound hands, the men set to work sawing through the ropes around their wrists. Gabriel freed his hands and bent to cut his ankles free as well, but before he could, the rope from which the knife hung was abruptly yanked upward and the knife shot out of his grasp, slicing his palm on its way up.

Gabriel raised his gaze and saw that Millie had also had the knife wrenched from his grasp. Gabriel wiped his bloody palm on his barkcloth kilt and began working on the knots at his ankles. He saw Millie doing the same.

“Christ,” Millie said when he finally kicked the rope off. “Now what?”

Gabriel looked up. The walls were too steep and slick to climb. “Even if I stood on your shoulders, it still wouldn’t get us out of here,” he said.

“You will fight,” said the voice of Queen Uta from above.

Gabriel saw the queen’s face peering over the edge. Her platinum hair was piled up into a complex braided coif.

“The man who cannot get up is the loser,” Queen Uta said. “The winner will make royal daughter to be my heir. The loser will be given to my sisters. To make more daughters. There is much work to be done before jealous Unterg takes away your manhood.

“You shall not kill,” Uta continued, “and you shall not harm the organs of generation. Failure to observe this rule shall be punished by your most slow and painful death.”

“What if we refuse to fight?” Gabriel called up.

“You must fight. It is the law.” Uta’s voice sounded more puzzled than angry.

“And if we don’t?”

She thought it over. “You shall be punished,” she said, “by your most slow and painful—”

“Death, right. No, I don’t think so,” Gabriel said. “That would deprive you of our seed. If it’s true that your tribe is dying, killing us would be like killing yourselves.”

There was no response to this. Queen Uta’s face vanished, and the silence went on long enough that Gabriel started to think they’d been abandoned in the pit. Perhaps that would be their punishment: a slow death of starvation at the bottom of this crude oubliette.

Then he heard a clamor up above, the sound of something being dragged to the pit’s edge. Two new faces appeared: Rue’s and Velda’s. They were lying facedown, their throats pressed against the ground, a fist tangled tightly in each woman’s hair.

“You fight,” Uta’s voice resumed, as though there had been no interruption, “or your women die a slow and painful death.”

“Ah, hell,” Millie muttered.

Gabriel saw several women come into view around the perimeter of the pit, Uta among them. They looked down eagerly, expectantly. Impatiently.

He bent forward in a grappler’s stance. Millie bent forward to match. When their faces drew close, Gabriel whispered, “New plan. We put on a good show for them, I win, and then when I get her majesty there alone, I should be able to overpower her. Once we have her, we should be able to control her subjects.”

“There’s just two problems with that plan, boss,” Millie said. “To start, you’re assuming they’ll let you be alone with her. More likely, they’ve got some sort of ritual for getting the queen pregnant that involves all her handmaidens standing around with spears pointed at your ass.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Gabriel said. “What’s the other problem?”

“No offense,” Millie said, “but nobody in their right mind is gonna believe that you could win a fight against me down here.”

“Why, Millie,” Gabriel said, “I’m surprised at you. It’s not like you to get a swelled head.”

Millie shrugged. “Just stating the facts. Up on a castle wall somewhere, with swords or guns or ropes to swing from, there’s no one better than you. But down here, with nothing but our fists and no room for anything fancy? I’m just saying, Gabriel. It’s not plausible.”

“Well, that’s why you’d better make it look good,” Gabriel said, and threw a punch at Millie’s jaw. The big man took it without flinching, then after a second remembered and jerked his head back.

“Work on your timing,” Gabriel whispered.

“Sorry,” Millie said.

“Now you throw one.”

“I don’t—”

“Do it.”

Millie cocked back a big fist and let Gabriel have it. Gabriel staggered backward, clutching a bleeding nose. The crowd above howled bloodthirstily.

“Damn it,” Gabriel muttered, struggling to shake off the effects of the blow. “Not that good.”

Millie shrugged. “Sorry,” he said again.

Gabriel moved cautiously to his right and Millie mirrored him, circling. Gabriel spoke low, between clenched teeth. “Play it like you’re big but slow. That will buy us a little time, at least.”

Millie nodded and took a couple of wide, bearlike swipes at Gabriel who danced back out of his reach. Millie raised his foot to kick Gabriel in the knee and Gabriel took two swift and agile steps up the stone, pushing off and landing behind Millie as the big man’s foot slammed into the wall above the drainage hole. A cascade of dust and grit sifted down from between the bloodstained stones. Millie limped backward, selling the pain in his leg like it was the Brooklyn Bridge.

Gabriel leapt onto Millie from behind, clinging to his back and Millie slammed him backward against the wall.

“I’m gonna throw you,” Millie said. “You ready?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “But go ahead.”

Before Gabriel could catch his breath, Millie peeled him off and tossed him through the air. He landed hard against the opposite wall and slid down. Seconds later, Millie grabbed Gabriel by his shoulders and hauled him back to his feet.

“You ever watch pro wrestling when you were a kid?” Millie whispered.

“Not so much,” Gabriel said, swinging at the side of Millie’s head. The big man jerked under the impact more convincingly this time. “But my sense was those guys used a padded mat.”

“Not always,” Millie said, and flung him across the pit, where he crashed into the wall above the drainage hole for the second time. Gabriel felt the impact in his spine. He also felt one of the stones in the wall shift behind him, knocked loose by the successive impacts. He was struck with a sudden idea.

He lunged back at Millie and wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling Millie’s ear down close.

“Throw me against the wall by that hole again,” Gabriel whispered. “As hard as you can.”

Millie did as instructed and Gabriel felt the loose stone shift again. One more blow and it might come free.

“Throw a kick,” Gabriel whispered. “Use the same leg as before and really play up that you’re hurt.”

“Got it,” Millie said.

He swung wide with a stiff kick, missing Gabriel by a mile and knocking the loose stone out of the wall. Gabriel threw a kick of his own, striking Millie in his supposedly injured leg. Millie howled and went down on one knee. The loose stone was about the size and shape of a cobblestone, and it was heavy when Gabriel hefted it.

Millie was right: the women wouldn’t believe that Gabriel could best a man of Millie’s size and strength bare-handed. And if the women thought they were sham ming, they might well take it out on Rue and Velda.

“Sorry, Millie,” he whispered, positioning himself so his body was blocking the queen’s view. “I owe you an aspirin.” And he brought the stone down, the muscles in his arms wrenching tight as he checked his swing just before connecting. The stone still hit, with a crack that carried all the way back up to where the women were waiting to hear it. Millie dropped as if he’d been shot.

Gabriel let the stone fall to the ground and raised his arms, breathing heavily. Were they cheering up there? It sounded like it. Then he saw something raining down on his upturned face. Flower petals. He turned back to where Millie lay, crumpled and unmoving. He was struck with the sudden fear that maybe he really had hurt his friend. He dropped to a crouch beside him. There wasn’t any blood that he could see, but—

Millie’s eyes cracked open narrowly. “Just like the pros,” he whispered, and grinned. He closed his eyes again.

Gabriel felt a flood of relief as he stood again. But it was short-lived. An instant later, he felt a sharp jab in his chest, like a nasty hornet sting. His fingers flew to the source of the pain and found a colorful feathered dart protruding from his left pectoral muscle. He pulled the dart out and flung it away but before it hit the ground, the world around him went liquid and untrustworthy. Black and red shapes swirled around him and he unceremoniously followed the dart to the floor.