Warrior in the Shadows (22 page)

"Who drew these?" he asked the old men.

"Ancestors," Robert said. "Long time ago, during the Dreaming."

Charley followed them up the narrow path. He read the land with the eyes of an infantryman. When they paused while picking their way carefully up the slopes, Charley looked back and fixed landmarks in his mind. This was good country for the defender and tough country for an attacker. Kativa had told him that the old Aboriginal camp sites were situated in the hills with overwatch positions so that lookouts would have plenty of opportunity to see any approaching enemy making their way up the slopes. It would be a tough battle coming up these hills against an opponent who knew you were coming and was prepared for the fight. The terrain was perfect for ambushes, with many switch-backs on the trail overlooked by rock ledges, where an attacker could lurk and bring fire— or arrows, or stones— down on your head and still have plenty of cover.

Tough terrain to hunt in. And who would live out this far? Alfie Woodard. Charley was glad to have the man's name. Alfie Woodard was a man of the city, an urban warrior who dressed like a rock musician… what was he doing living out here so far away from anything resembling the civilization he so obviously relished? Charley didn't understand that, but then he didn't understand any of what was happening to him right now. A part of him watched himself in bemusement, wondering at how he had in a matter of minutes accepted that two old men in a bar had been waiting for him to arrive so they could show him the lair of the man he hunted— all because they had dreamed of it.

Just as he had dreamed of it.

Robert stopped at the foot of a sheer rock face that shot straight up and then broke into what was obviously a small cave entrance about forty feet up.

"Here's the place," Robert said. "This is where he lives."

"How does he get up there?" Charley said.

"Climbs, mate. He's a young man, like you. He can climb right up there," the gap-toothed other elder said. He pointed at a narrow chimney that led to the cave entrance.

Charley saw how it could be done; if he levered himself into the chimney, he could push with his feet and inch his way up with his back wedged against the opposing wall.

"You say he's not here?" Charley said.

"I told you, mate," Robert said. "This man is in Cairns, looking for you."

"All right," Charley said. He studied the cliff face and the chimney. "I'm going up there."

"Wouldn't do that, mate," Robert said. "Bad magic in that place, all this place, but worst up there. That cave is as old as the ancestors. That cave is where the black comes from."

"The black comes from?" Charley said.

"You know what we're talking about, Charley Payne," Robert said testily. "The black magic, mate. Alfie Woodard is the blackest of the black and that's why that little girl back at the bar won't speak of him. She's afraid of him, just like everyone else. He's a bad one, and in the Dreamtime he's something else. He gave up something a long time ago for that power he's got and something got inside him. That something is old and black and lives in this cave… lives in this cave even though Alfie's not here. He goes by another name when he's alone here. He's like many people in one skin, this fella. He's one man when he comes here, he don't look nothing like your photograph of him. But when he's in that cave, something else is him, not him being something else. That's what you need to know about Alfie. We can't help you in here with him, but we've been doing a Dreaming, had a talk with the other elders and we'll do what we can, do a ceremony to help you and maybe light your way. But what's between you two is between you two and it's been that way forever."

The two old men exchanged glances once more.

"No laughing here, mate," the gap-toothed elder said. "Feel the air here? Everything's dark even in the bright light of the day. Imagine what it will be like here in the middle of the night, in the darkest time of the night. That's what you need to know. That's when you and this one will meet. In the dark of the night. And only one of you will walk away from here."

"Time we be heading back," Robert said. The shadows had grown appreciably longer as the day had gone on.

"Is there another way to the top?" Charley asked.

"There's another way to the top, but then you have to figure out how to get down," Robert said. "You follow along this little game path here, this way," he said, pointing to a footpath about as wide as two human feet pressed together. "Along the side of the hill and it comes to a little boulder field. You climb that up to the top, puts you right above the cave, some little old gnarled kouri trees there. You hang over the top and you can see your way in. But there's no climbing down that, the cliff faces in. No, you won't be getting in that way."

Charley looked up the cliff face. There would be no getting to that cave, if it were occupied, by working your way up the chimney. All the occupant had to do was lean out and drop a rock on your head and you were done for. And there was no burning anyone out of a dry cave. He stepped back and studied the hill, saw the gnarled trees at the top and had a glimmer of an idea.

"I want to look in the cave," Charley said.

"He'd have been on us if he was here," Robert said. "He won't be back for days now. You'd be taking a risk even in the light of day. But you go ahead if you must… take a look if you think you have to."

Charley felt a deep cold sense of foreboding in his belly. For a moment, as he studied the cliff face and then the dark faces of the two elders, he thought about how easy it would be to just walk away from all this, to go back to the tavern and collect Kativa, go back to Cairns and get on a plane and leave all this madness behind, forget about the deep fear and worry that rose in him now. But an image rose up in him, an image of Bobby Lee, Max, and Nicky as they were wheeled out of their home, huddled shapes on metal gurneys, and it was as though a switch were flipped inside him, transmuting his raw fear into raw anger, something primal that heated him from head to toe in one hot flash of barely controlled rage.

"Wait here," he said to the elders. "I only want a quick look."

He went to the rock face and raised one hand, tentatively, as though to stroke the surface and get a feel of it. Then he levered his back against one side of the chimney and walked his feet up, leaving him in an L-shaped position in the narrow deformity. He began to walk his way up the cliff face. It was harder work than it looked; he had to keep steady pressure even though the chimney widened in a few places, and he had no rope or safety devices to catch him if he fell. It took twenty long minutes to work his way up to the cave entrance, and then he realized that he'd have to lunge for the ledge outside the cave in order to get out of the chimney. He stayed braced, his legs trembling with the effort, and visualized the entire sequence of moves he'd have to make in order to catch the little rock outcropping that afforded the only handhold on the small ledge that jutted out from the cave's mouth. He took a deep breath, then another, then lunged and caught the rock outcropping with his left hand, then his right, then pulled himself the rest of the way onto the narrow ledge. Now he could stand erect, the big muscles of his legs trembling with the effort, his back and buttocks raw under his khakis. He waved to the two old men below, who pointed back at him and waved.

Then he turned to the cave.

It was larger and deeper than it appeared from the ground. Charley ducked his head and went in, but the entrance soon shot high into a ceiling that left plenty of room for his head. The ceiling and walls were covered with images and what looked to be the remains of a stalagmite on the floor was intricately carved and etched. It was dim, but there was light from the cave's mouth and another source from farther back in the cave. He could reach up and touch the ceiling with one hand, but still had plenty of room to stand. The cave was at least twenty by twenty feet, a good size, and in the back of the cave there was another narrow opening, an extension of the cave itself. Charley knelt and peered through and saw more skylight filtering down from above, and another narrow passageway that led farther into the bowels of the hill.

There were obviously other chambers back there, but this was where the cave's occupant spent his time. There was a rush mat against one wall, a rumpled sleeping bag laid out on it, a set of candles in the wall niches, a flashlight beside the sleeping bag. A small ledge held two leather bags. There was nothing else in the cave, but Charley could feel the sense of occupation. The rocks themselves seemed as though they were about to press in on him, and the images on the walls and ceiling seemed to move with the shadows cast by the sharp-edged sun falling into the mouth of the cave. There was a distinct boundary between the dark and the light at the front of the cave, and it seemed as though the images and pictures— of the Quinkins he recognized and other strange shapes— were still and lifeless in the light. But in the shadows, and especially in the boundary area between dark and light, the images seemed to have a life of their own, a life that stirred them and urged them away from the light and into the dark that lurked in the back of the cave. There was light there, too, a sign that some kind of passageway led to the top of the cave and let sun shine in, but he didn't want to go back there. He had the sense of something watching him— and he didn't know if it were the images or something else entirely.

He only knew he wanted badly to get out of there. His legs trembled, and he fought the urge to urinate. He took the time to look in the small leather bags on the ledge and he found that they contained tiny pots of paint and colored dirt for the images. There was a fresh image not far from the sleeping bag, fresh in its colors, but there were many others that had been added, in some instances right over an older image. The image was of a woman, naked and light-skinned and full-breasted, running toward the image of Anurra, his knobbed penis held high like a massive club. Beneath that was the image of a pale thin man, like a Quinkin, one of the Timara, held upside down and a stone knife wielded by an invisible hand sawing at the throat, spilling blood like that of an animal trussed upside down for the slaughter. Charley reached out as though to wipe the image, but something stopped him… he couldn't bring himself to touch that image, fresh as it was. And he knew who that image represented.

He stepped back into the light and felt the warmth of the sun across the back of his legs, still trembling from the effort of his climb. Charley backed out of the cave slowly, crouching to exit the cave mouth and stand on the small ledge. The two elders stood below watching him. Charley studied the cliff face above the cave's entrance. The rock was solid and it would take more explosive than he could carry, assuming he could get some, to close it off. No, there wouldn't be any closing this off. There was no way to climb higher than the cave mouth from here, not without climbing aids and ropes.

Charley stepped delicately and levered himself back into the chimney crack, and came down more quickly than he'd gone up, leaving raw spots on his hands, back, and buttocks where the harsh rock scraped against him. The two elders helped him out of his forced contortion to stand. They brushed dirt from him. His shirt and pants clung to him in places, lightly pink with seeping blood from the scraped places on his back and legs.

"He's having a taste of you," Robert said. "That bad fella, he don't like to have you right away. Wants you tender like a roo after it's been run for a while. But he'll have a taste for you now, you've spilt your blood in his home."

"I'm all right," Charley said.

"What did you see?" the gap-toothed elder said.

"There's not much up there," Charley said. "He sleeps there, though."

"He does more than that there," Robert said. "But it's not anything you'd see quick. Did you go into the deep of the cave?"

"No."

"Felt something, did you?"

"Yes."

"Been a long time since I was in that cave," Robert said. "Back in the thirties, before the war, I went into that cave. I was a young boy then and full of myself."

The gap-toothed elder said, "We were all young boys once, and full of ourselves."

"The man who slept in that cave was away, and we dared each other to go up into the cave," Robert said. "That was a bad thing, and if the Law Men had caught us, we'd of taken a spear in the leg for sure, no doubt about it. But we went, and we looked, and I crawled back through that passageway."

"What did you see?" Charley said.

"That's old Anurra's place. You go into that back chamber his image is right up on the wall with all kinds of old puri-puri paintings. It's a bad place, that place. There's some light that comes down from a crack in the rocks above, I don't know if it's big enough for a man to get through, but it's big enough to light the back chamber. There's a natural spring in the back of that cave that gives good fresh water. If you were up there with some food you'd have everything you need. But this Alfie, the one Anurra rides now, he likes to come out, he likes to live in several dreams at once. He goes away, that's one Dreaming, he comes back, that's another. But the real Dreaming for him is in that cave and what he does up there."

"What does he do up there?" Charley said.

"Dreams, mate," the gap-toothed elder said. "Dreams dark things till they happen. And that's where you're already fighting him, in his dreams."

"There was a new image up there…" Charley said.