Fish Tails (21 page)

He stilled her with a gesture. Then she heard what he had probably heard: a very loud sound quite a way off. Abasio didn't move. They waited: another sound. And another. And another: footsteps.

“It's coming this way,” said Abasio, turning. Willum was already gone.

“Wagons have been through here,” murmured Blue, his voice shaking. “There are places where the wall is scarred. I think it looks worse than it is. The road's washed to rock, Abasio, no mud . . .”

Willum's treble voice came back to them, the echoes in the notch making him sound like an army. “It's no way a'tall, Abasio. Jus' one long sorta curve, and that's it.”

Abasio stuck his head into the notch, calling, “Stay there.” He reached up to the hooks high on the left side of the wagon and lifted off two coils of rope, a thin one over his right shoulder, a long, heavy one over his left. He called, “Xulai, you and Kim get the babies through first! Follow me!” He beckoned and she came toward him, one child on each arm. Kim took one from her.

The horses followed, getting as close to the entrance as they could get. Abasio placed the coil of heavy rope against the wall and tied the end of it to a heavy iron ring that formed part of the wagon frame at the right rear corner. “Blue, everything's covered with green slime, and it's slick. Wait here until I get them through . . .”

The huge footsteps were louder.

Abasio felt his way along the left wall. A shallow declivity in the rock wall began a few paces inside the notch, the hollow hidden from the entrance by an almost smooth pillar of stone. A metal ring had been drilled into the wall near the pillar, and there were others along the wall, about shoulder high. He tied the thin line to the first ring and threaded the other end through the other rings he found as he followed Willum. He was trying to do it quickly while counting arm spans of rope, but the footing was as treacherous as Abasio had feared: the road did slope rather steeply upward as well as canting toward the water. Luckily enough light was reflected off the wet surfaces above to let them see where they put their feet.

“It's not a tunnel,” Xulai shouted from close behind him, barely audible above the roar of the water. Abasio glanced back. Both she and Kim had one hand on the rope. He nodded. No, it wasn't a tunnel. He thought it likely someone had attempted a tunnel, but at some point while making the initial bore, the wall above it had shattered and dropped huge, sharp-­edged chunks into the flow. The metal rings set about head high into the tunnel wall had been there long enough that they were almost totally obscured by the same slick growth that covered the road.

Willum had been right: the wall they penetrated was not a thick one; the notch led south at the point of entry, but it soon angled to the left and emerged pointed southeast. From this point on, the road was level. Abasio tied off the rope handhold and beckoned Xulai past him, and Kim. And Socky, who had very sensibly decided not to wait.

He ran back toward the wagon, one hand on the rope he had strung. Blue and Rags were already inside; both horses were trembling. Abasio heard the crashing sound of approaching footsteps even over the roar of the water. The rocks in the stream sent enough water splashing upward that every stone above them poured like a pitcher. It was like standing under a waterfall. Water streamed down the back of his neck under his collar, onto his bare back, and down, leaving the bottoms of his trouser legs in tributary streams. He dropped two loops of the thick rope around the smooth, pillarlike stone he'd picked, took a position in the declivity behind it that was hidden, he prayed, from the entrance. He pulled the rope tight, calling, “Go, Blue. Take it slow.” The wagon was not a full length beyond the pillar before the wheels began to slide toward the water. Abasio braced himself and pulled, keeping the rope tight. The road was barely the width of the wagon, giving him just enough angle to keep the wheels from sliding off. He counted arm lengths of rope as he played them out, mentally counting down from the total he had strung getting to the angle where the road flattened and was not wet! If they could only get past that angle . . .

The crashing of enormous, running feet was loud enough to be heard over the water by the time the front of the wagon reached the angle. At that point, the road flattened instead of canting to the right. Abasio held fast until the wagon end was almost past the angle, then let the rope fall and scrambled along the wall, one hand on the rope through the rings, reaching the wagon just as it angled away. He called Blue to a halt and reached for the knot on the wagon. Having the wagon immobilized by a rope entangled among the rocks would not be a good thing. The knot was wet, impossible. He cursed himself. Wrong type of knot! He knew better! Stupid! He drew his knife and sawed through the rope, held on to the cut end of it, and shouted to Blue, “Go! Go!” as he jumped for the ladder on the left rear corner of the wagon. The few seconds taken up in reaching and passing the angle seemed to last an eternity. Everything was slow. If he'd used the right knot, it would have untied. Maybe. He'd never tried it with wet rope. If he'd had an ax he could have cut the rope more quickly . . . well, next time he'd have an ax. Next time?

The rope in his hand tugged. He dropped it as he would have a snake, watching it. It didn't move, so it hadn't been grabbed, it was just . . . stuck somewhere. He looked over his shoulder; something was blocking the light from the tunnel behind him, but the wagon was well past the angle. There was a sound from behind them, a shout magnified by the tunnel walls as a great howling. The horses shook; Abasio clung to the ladder and called to them, as much to himself as to them, “It can't get in here. Take it easy. Don't panic.” The opening was close ahead of them, the walls were smoother, the waters less violently constricted, the road almost completely flat and dry. Some quiet part of Abasio's mind noted that a tunnel had been started from this end and decently cut in a workmanlike manner that continued as far as the turn before being disastrously interrupted.

The horses emerged into sunlight. Abasio had already decided the thin rope would stay where it was, threaded through the iron rings. It made a good handhold, at least, and it would take too long to loosen. Not to mention bringing him within reaching distance of whatever . . . However, several turns of the heavier rope he had tied to the wagon lay at the bottom of the pillarlike stone near the entrance where he had dropped it; the rest of it lay along the wall all the way to the corner and a little past. With the light blocked at the other end, it was unlikely any . . . thing would see it moving. The near end of it was probably far enough on this side of the angle to be invisible from the entrance. ­Probably . . .

He dropped from the ladder and went back. As he approached the bend, however, he stopped. The tunnel seemed much darker. If he pulled the rope from here, he couldn't be seen, and with so little light, a moving rope couldn't be. Had they seen the wagon and the horses, or merely heard Willum's noise? He stepped back and located two rocks in the river's edge with a narrow slot between them. If he could get down behind them, he would be able to see the entrance at the expense of getting soaked. His feet squelched inside his boots, and he fought down a ridiculous urge to laugh. He could not possibly get any wetter than he already was.

Dropping into a crawl, he went over the edge of the road and down among the rocks that made up the riverbank, cold water now running up his back and sloshing over his shoulders while an endless torrent dropped on his head. It
was
possible to get wetter. He raised his head to look through the slot, staying motionless. The interrupted and jagged hole that served as tunnel entry now contained two faces. No, the entry was now
almost filled
with two faces and parts of shoulders. One of the bodies that came along with the faces must be lying along the road; the other had to be kneeling on the far side of the river, bending forward, the top of its head next to the cheek of its companion. Yes, what he saw beyond the chin of the one to the left was not a pile of rocks. It was a hand. A thumb, really. Just one thumb.

These were not giants as he remembered them from the war at the Place of Power. Those had been big, yes: fifteen to twenty feet tall, their proportions had been in keeping, stocky, thick-­legged. They had been very wide, very strong. These were vastly bigger. He solemnly resolved not to pull on the rope if it gave any resistance. A tug-­of-­war would not be appropriate. The one to Abasio's right had thrust his right hand into the river, feeling its way up the stream. The water, already half blocked by the huge lower arm, became even deeper. The hand at the end of the arm came out of the water, a hand the size of the side of their wagon, and smacked down in irritation, which drove a fountain of icy water upward—­into the hugely gaping nostrils of the wide, flat nose. The nose wrinkled.

Abasio wriggled back around the angle, grabbed the end of his rope, and ran. The sneeze caught him halfway along the angle and propelled him out onto the road. He was still holding the end of the rope. Evidently it hadn't caught on anything. Or . . . perhaps the sneeze had made the thing in there . . . drop it. Or . . . it really didn't matter which. No. It really
didn't
.

He got to his feet and plodded out into the sunlight, shivering only partly from the cold. Water was draining from every part of him. He simply stood, incapable of any further action, the rope trailing from his hand. Kim took it from him and began to coil its sodden length onto its usual hook. Abasio was staring, counting: three horses. Blue, Rags, Socky. Correct as to number and name. Four ­people, including him. One female, one male, one noisy brat, and him. Right. Babies? Must be in the wagon. Otherwise Xulai would be screaming, and she wasn't. Yet. Everyone was here and safe. Maybe safe. Willum and Xulai were staring at him from terrified faces, unspeaking. The horses were visibly trembling—­even phlegmatic Blue . . .

Everyone was carefully not asking the question he didn't have an answer to. Can those things at the other end of that notch get in here?

“Good grass,” remarked Blue in voice that sounded almost normal. “That'll be nice for a change
. Animals seem to be enjoying it
.”

Momentarily derailed from either fright or fury, Abasio looked past them. Blue was right, as usual: the fields were dotted with grazing animals, sheep, goats, cows, horses; every one of them could hear that howling, but none of them were in a panic, none of them were running. Abasio simply stared at them, his mind frantically scanning for something, anything that would put the enormous faces out of his mind.

What came, ridiculously, was himself, in his dream, hanging above the quiet pool in that dreamworld while the little boy, Crash, asked: “What's bao? Do we got it?”

Why would his subconscious come up with that? Perhaps
bow:
weapon. Well, yes, but it was also a gesture of respect or subservience, a tied ribbon, half a dog bark. Perhaps it was
bough:
a branch of a tree. Was that helpful? At one time ­people had carried green boughs as indications that they came in peace. Not helpful. What did the little boy mean? Why was it important? Could it be a magic spell to quell monsters? Silently Abasio answered Crash's question: “What is it? I dunno if we have it. Do we need it? No, to all of the above and
get out of my head
!”

Blue said calmly, “Forest grass doesn't have much flavor, doesn't get enough sun.”

Slowly the tower dream evaporated, the giant faces dissolved into mist, and their surroundings penetrated reality. The wagon had emerged into a green, sunlit valley carpeted by rich grasslands, a valley limited on the south by forested mountains and in the near west by a tumulose of low, furzy hills. Abasio turned to look at the wall behind him again. The near side was a sheer vertical wall running from east to west, as far as he could see: a true wall, perpendicular to the valley floor they stood upon, towering above the trees as it disappeared into the west. The only scenario he could think of was that it had been one thick stratum of hard stone, originally laid down horizontally, as a thick sheet of lava, and then improbably thrust up in a vertical wall during that most recent upheaval . . . a thousand years ago, more or less. It could have had softer layers on either side that had since eroded away. Abasio stared at wall, wall at Abasio. He could not estimate the actual thickness. Panic had thickened it, increasing fear; fear thinned it, lessening good sense. Did it matter? It was high enough, thick enough, and strong enough to keep those things out. Otherwise,
as Blue kept trying to tell him,
all these placidly grazing animals would be in complete panic.

If the tunnel had been completed as started from this end, if it had been made neatly, smoothly cut all the way through, then the things on the other side could have crawled through long since. One at a time, of course. If the workmen had done a good job, the giants would be in here right now eating his family. However, the notch was anything but neat or smooth. The opening extended all the way to the top of the wall, projected in splintered fangs of rock that interlocked viciously with others from the far side. Preventing the giants from getting through. And obviously they couldn't climb the wall. And if one of them tried to crawl through, its body would block the water. Probably neither one of them liked water up its nose.

Xulai, Kim, and Willum were waiting for Abasio to acknowledge being alive. They weren't going to do/say/think/decide anything until he did. When he finally blinked owlishly at them, they were evidently . . . reassured, though Abasio was . . . not.

“When I got here and saw that,” Kim said, choking on the words as he waved at the notch, “I thought you might need help with the wagon, so I waited. Didn't expect . . . the other thing.”

Willum could hold himself no longer. He shouted, “Wuz it giants, 'Basio?”