War From The Clouds Read online

  "We have found it," Elicia said wistfully, her shoulders slumped and her face sad, "but we can do nothing. It is too high and this cave is empty of everything but rocks and bones and ashes." She shuddered.

  We could have piled up rocks to give us more elevation, but that ceiling was thirty feet away. It would take days to pile up enough rocks to do us any good. By my calculations, we had just over three hours to do four hours of climbing, as it was.

  The realization of failure was stronger because it also signalled our entrapment. We couldn't go forward and we couldn't go back. Our bones would be added to those in the cave, and it was no solace to us that we would not have been burned in sacrifice. Death by starvation, my boss David Hawk once said, is no damned picnic.

  The four warriors also realized the hopelessness of our situation. They sat on the cold floor and began to chant in a kind of sing-song fashion that made my flesh creep. In my mind's eye, I envisioned scenes of years ago when young maidens were brought here for ceremonial torture, ceremonial sex and then ceremonial burning. I imagined that the torturers — Don Carlos leading them — had chanted in that same creepy way.

  I was about ready to join them, though, when I looked up again at that outcropping of rock that had hidden the opening from us when we had first looked up. I walked around in a circle, kicking burned bones aside, studying that piece of jutting rock.

  It stuck out from the ceiling at right angles, spearing across a corner of the hole. And I could see that the hole was bigger than we had first thought. There was ample room for a man to get past that outcropping, that spear of rock, and into the chimney.

  But how was a person to get up to the jutting piece of rock?

  The answer was still tied around my chest. I looked down at the rope trailing away into the darkness. It was thin, but it was strong. And it was supple.

  "What are you doing?" Elicia asked as I began coiling up the loose end of the rope.

  "I'm going to play cowboy," I said, grinning at her. "Just watch."

  The four warriors stopped their chanting to watch my strange activities. I tied a loop in the end of the rope and coiled about forty feet of it around my shoulder. I took a few practice throws, but the loop never rose more than twenty feet in the air. The warriors and Elicia were looking at me as though I'd lost my senses.

  "All right," I said, grinning at them as I coiled the rope for another throw. "That's enough practice. Now I go for the real thing."

  "For what real thing?" Elicia asked.

  "Just watch."

  I went for the outcropping of rock. The lariat arched up through the air and missed the rock by inches. The warriors, not understanding what I was trying to do and convinced that I'd gone daft, began their chant again. Elicia suspected the truth and began to bite her lower lip and give body English to the trajectory of the lariat.

  On the fifth try, the loop snaked over the end of the rock spear and I tugged gently on the rope. The loop tightened, but it was far out near the end of the rock, at its weakest point. The chances of the rock supporting my weight were sparse, but I had no other choice.

  I put more weight on the rope and the loop tightened more. Pebbles came loose somewhere up there and rained down on us. The warriors chanted louder and began to howl. Elicia bit her lip so hard that I expected to see blood spurt out.

  The suspense was also killing me. I took a chance then. I lifted myself by the rope, felt a ping in my side from my wound, and began to swing back and forth across the platform of old bones. The warriors let out a cheer. They finally understood the principle of the lariat. They also were hoping that I was more powerful than the curse put on the cave. I'd try not to disappoint them.

  But we were far from out of it. I climbed a few feet on the rope, my eyes on that slender point of rock that jutted out beside the chimney hole. I flopped about, testing the strength of the rock, then began a swift, hand-over-hand climb.

  When I was ten feet off the ground, I heard a fluttering sound and thought perhaps the whole ceiling was starting to crack open above me. I saw nothing. The rock was holding and the ceiling had no new cracks in it. I climbed faster.

  I reached the twenty foot level when the fluttering came again, louder, more menacing, closer.

  "Look out, Nick," Elicia screamed.

  Her voice echoed through the chamber and seemed to come at me from a hundred different directions. I looked up and saw why she had shouted.

  Something huge and black and pulsating had dropped from the chimney and was zooming straight down toward me. I thought at first that it was a great glob of soot, then I thought of a soot-blackened boulder.

  But why was it pulsating?

  The black glob was about to hit me when it seemed to break apart with a great fluttering sound. I nearly let go of the rope. My heart was pounding several hundred miles an hour. I let out a yip of my own and heard the cries and shouts of Elicia and the warriors below.

  But I held tight to the rope and tried to duck my head away from the falling glob. The fluttering sound rose and seemed like thunder in my ears. Small black objects were zooming around my head and off to distant parts of the cave. Soft wings beat at me.

  And then I knew.

  Bats.

  The cave had been strangely absent of life when we had entered it, but that opening that provided light should have told me that wildlife of some sort must be using this cave. That wildlife was bats and they had all been in their favorite nest in the opening of the chimney.

  That black glob that had looked like a soot-covered boulder was a cluster of several hundred bats.

  Elicia was screaming below me, but I knew she was in no danger. She was merely reacting to the bats that were now streaking back and forth in the cave, dive-bombing every alien object spotted by their special radar. While the bats occupied themselves with harassing Elicia and the warriors, I continued my climb to the top of the rope.

  My side was on fire and every muscle in my body — especially my hands — threatened to go soft on me as I took one hand from the rope and clasped it around the rock spear. The spear, I could see in the dim light, actually was the leading edge of a small ledge just outside the hole leading up.

  There were hundreds of baby bats in a nest on that ledge.

  A high-pitched squeal came from the nest when my hand bumped against it. This set off the other bats in the cave. They were still streaking back and forth, dive-bombing Elicia and the four warriors. Now they began a screaching and squealing that was almost deafening, and was certainly hair-raising.

  Distasteful as it was, I raised myself with both hands on the rock ledge and reached in to scoop out the nest. Bony wings flapped against my arm and face as the debris came falling down past me. Straw, twigs, dried grass and large cakes of bat shit made up most of the debris.

  The screeching in the cave reached a fever pitch when the baby bats went plummeting down to the platform. The adult bats began swooping down and catching the little ones in wiry claws, then flying around and around in a circle, looking for a safe place to nest them. But I had fought hard for this place at the peak of the cave's dome and I wasn't about to be unseated by mama bats.

  It took several minutes, however, to work my way up through the hole and onto the ledge. The hole was bigger than it had looked from below.

  There was plenty of room for me to stand on the ledge, haul the others up one by one with the rope and let them get past me into the chimney.

  I looked up to see if other ledges existed above me, but the walls were smooth and black. I stood on the ledge and ran my hands over the smooth walls of the almost round hole. Soot fell away, covering my body and falling down into the cave.

  The only way to climb, I deduced, would be to put my feet on one side of the wall and my back against the other. By scooting along, like a mountain climber in a narrow ravine or cleft, I'd be able to make progress. It would be slow progress, but I knew the chimney must narrow as it rose. It must also twist and turn, giving us purchase with our fe
et and hands.

  Then again, I thought, this isn't a man-made hole up through the mountain. Smoke and air don't need large or perfect openings. The chimney might have places where it narrowed too much to permit the passage of anything the size of a man.

  There was, of course, only one way to find answers to all my speculations. And that was to climb up.

  I was tempted to go on alone, knowing that time was precious and that I could make much better time on my own. But I would need the warriors and Elicia at the top. I would need firepower. That is, if this chimney had an opening at the top big enough for us to get through.

  I loosened the loop of rope on the jutting rock and made a more secure link over a greater section of rock. When the rope was ready, I looked down and saw that Elicia and the four warriors were still fending off bats.

  "Climb up first, Elicia," I shouted. "The rope is secure."

  "Nick, I can't do it," she shouted back. "The bats. They're attacking our eyes."

  I looked harder and sure enough the bats were not missing them in their diving attacks. Most were still swooping past Elicia and the others, but some — perhaps the mothers of the disenfranchised babies — were making direct hits, going for the eyes.

  I remembered reading somewhere that bats were frightened of loud noises. The sound of our voices had alarmed them and had got them stirred up. What would a louder sound do to them?

  I didn't know, but anything was worth a try. I got Wilhelmina out of its pouch and aimed at a point to the side of the platform. It wouldn't do to have a ricochet or a hunk of splintered rock hit Elicia or the others.

  BOOM!

  The whole damned cave seemed to explode in a rolling crescendo of thunder. The sound of the shot echoed from wall to wall and back again, nearly blasting out my eardrums. I could imagine what the sound must have been like below.

  The bats went wild then. The deafening sound of the luger shot must have fritzed up their radar. They screeched and slammed into the walls of the cave. The mothers gave up their attack on Elicia and the warriors and went sailing off into walls. Some of them even flopped into the icy pond and a few others sailed out through the narrow opening into the afternoon light.

  "Hurry and climb," I called down. "Once they get their senses back, they'll renew their attack. Come on, Elicia."

  Elicia climbed as though she'd been squirreling up ropes all her life. She reached the outcropping of rock and I put out a hand to help her. She missed my hand on the first try and did a crazy spiral on the rope. Her hand slashed at the air and she was about to lose her grip with her other hand. I leaned down, caught her swirling arm and literally dragged her into the hole and onto the narrow ledge.

  "Climb farther up to make room for the others," I said. "Put your feet against one side and your back against the other. Just scoot your body along until you're ten to fifteen feet up the tunnel."

  She was short and her body barely gained purchase on the opposing walls. When she went past me, I put my hands on her buttocks to give her a boost. Her skirt was hanging free and my hands were against bare flesh. For a fleeting moment, I remembered that delicious hour in the council hut, then put it all out of my mind. Wrong time, wrong place. And she was Purano's woman now.

  Most of the rest went smoothly and without mishap. But not all. When three of the warriors were shuttling along up after Elicia and the fourth was on the rope, climbing up, the bats returned.

  "Hurry, before their radar picks you out," I said in a hoarse whisper. "Climb, man, climb."

  The Indian came streaking up the rope, hand over hand, his legs dangling free. The bats sensed him and, after making several swoops just beneath him, they zeroed in on his body and, finally, his face.

  He was almost at the top when a huge bat came swooping in a wide arc around the full circumference of the cave below. It took a radar bead on the warrior's eyes and scored a direct hit just as my hand was touching the Indian's outstretched hand.

  We never made the proper link.

  The warrior let out a scream, and let go of the rope. The bats skittered to dark areas of the cave and I lunged forward to catch the man's flailing arms. I missed and he went plummeting thirty feet through the dimly-lighted air.

  I heard him hit, heard the sickening thwack of skull being cracked open. I knew he was dead the moment he landed. But I waited there at the opening to make sure. The Indian had landed on his |head, and his rifle had gone clattering across the platform, sending up a cloud of ashes. Human ashes. I stared at his body, at the grotesque way he was strewn on the platform. There was no movement and the bats were already attacking his face.

  Even as a sick feeling was rumbling through my stomach and chest, I looked up to see that the others had also witnessed the disaster. The three warriors and Elicia were silent, watching the bats work over the battered corpse below. I didn't try to imagine what they were thinking or feeling: there was no time for the obvious.

  But I did respect their feelings and thoughts. I waited until they had obviously prayed for the soul of the dead warrior and then I began to climb slowly past them.

  "I'll take the lead," I said as I edged past the three warriors in the channel. "We'll have to hurry now."

  "How much time do we have?" Elicia asked as I eased past her.

  I took my digital watch from its waterproof pouch and saw that it was still running. The numbers flipped over to 5:32.

  "We have just about three hours," I said. "We'll have to really punish ourselves and keep at it."

  "Do you think the bats will return?"

  "I doubt it," I said, although I didn't doubt it for a minute. 'The way should be clear and easy now."

  It wasn't.

  As I moved up into a narrow channel and saw that it split into two equal-sized holes, I heard movement above. A soft buzzing sound came from the hole to my left. I flipped on my flashlight and examined the hole openings. Soot covered the walls of both holes, so both apparently were open. I played the light into the left hole, trying to see what was making the buzzing sound, but could see only a twisting, turning, soot-covered channel ahead. The hole on the right presented an identical sight, but it had no buzzing sound in it.

  I took the hole to the right. I hadn't gone five feet into it, though, when I realized that it was narrowing radically. I no longer could maintain purchase with my feet against one side and my back against the other. I reached out and found small ledges in the darkness above. I let my feet hang free and began to climb the ledges with my fingertips. It was rough going, but I knew it would be easier once my feet were inside the hole and I could use my feet on the ledges.

  I never got that far. The hole narrowed until my shoulders were touching the sides. Soon, I couldn't get my shoulders through. I started crawling back down.

  Meanwhile, below me, one of the warriors had seen me go into the right-side hole and had decided to take the left. He had edged past Elicia and was climbing up into the hole where I had heard the soft buzzing.

  "Hold it," I said, tapping his foot just as he was lifting it to a small ledge inside the hole. "We'd better find out what's buzzing first."

  "No problem, Senor," he said, his voice muffled in the narrow hole. "The buzzing is only flies making a nest. I clean them out good."

  Elicia, the other two warriors and I propped our bodies in the wider channel below and waited for the intrepid warrior to clean out the nest of flies. It was good to rest, though I was conscious of the digital watch flipping over numbers as precious time went by.

  From above came a louder buzzing, as though the warrior was stirring up the flies. I heard a low curse from the warrior, then a furious buzzing, then a scream from the hole.

  "Aaaaiiiiii!"

  The man's feet began to thrash in the hole and the warrior slipped down until he was almost kicking me in the face. He screamed again and I reached out to support his legs. He kicked me twice alongside the head and I was ready to scream myself when the buzzing grew louder and I felt soft furry things falling dow
n across my head, face and chest. They dropped into the gloom below.

  'Scorpions!" the warrior shouted between screams. "A nest of scorpions! They're stinging me!"

  He screamed again as another scorpion obviously stung him up in that hole. I pulled on the man's legs and brought him down out of the hole. Three large scorpions were skittering across his upper body and he was almost white with shock. I batted away the scorpions and, with Elicia's help, we nestled him against the wall between us. He was no longer screaming, but a low moaning sound was rattling constantly from his lips. His face and arms were swollen from scorpion stings.

  The poison from a single scorpion normally isn't enough to kill a man, or even to incapacitate him immediately, but this man had received several stings. I had no idea how many and there wasn't time to strip him there in the channel. The point was, he was of no use to us now: he was a liability. We would have to carry him, in spite of the fact that it was becoming even more difficult to continue without having anything or anyone to carry.

  It wasn't easy to generate compassion for the man who was obviously dying in my arms. I considered his great pain and the shock of the poison, but I kept thinking of him as a liability, an impossible burden.

  "He is dead," Elicia said, looking up from the warrior's face. Her small hand was across his forehead. He was indeed motionless, his lips no longer letting out that unintelligible moaning. "What can we do now, Nick? We cannot go on and we cannot go back?"

  I was about at the end of my endurance. I had no desire to climb into that nest of scorpions that still remained in the hole on our left, and the other hole obviously was too small to get through. I was sore and raw from scraping against the rough walls of the hole. I was exhausted from the day's strenuous activities — I still hadn't recovered from that frightening swim before we had begun the climb up this impossible chimney. And the shocks to my emotions, from the bats, from the brutal death of the first warrior and from the tightening suspense of knowing that Don Carlos Italla might start his war while we were still burrowing up through the mountain like moles were taking a rigorous toll. And the newly-dead warrior was getting heavier by the minute.