Leonidas nodded, as if he expected this bad news. “You know the path the Theran Oracle gave you?”
Cyra’s face went white as the blood drained from it. “Yes.”
“We will take it.”
“And your army?” Cyra asked.
“The three hundred are already there, if I know Polynices. Which way?”
Cyra pointed to the mountains to the north and west. “The entrance is that way.”
CHAPTER 15
“How many do you think there are?” Dane whispered. He was lying next to Earhart, peering down at the huge cavern full of tables holding human bodies. Underneath the clear wrap he could see muscles, bones and ligaments. He saw one woman near the edge who’d had both legs amputated and there was an open cavity in her chest where a lung had been removed.
They’d only stopped by Earhart’s camp to drop off the crystal skulls. They discovered that Noonan had succumbed to whatever was ravaging his body and that the Navy men were still unconscious, but Dane had confirmed they were from his time — part of the crew of the Connecticut.
“Thousands and thousands,” Earhart replied. “At first we would raid the cavern and put some of the people out of their misery but—” her voice trailed off and Dane knew what she meant. There were simply too many people, in too much agony. The aura that was sweeping over him was worse than even going into a gate. His stomach spasmed and he rolled to the side, heaving, but nothing came up.
When he turned back, Earhart offered him a water bottle. He took a swig of the slimy inner lake water, and then spit it out. “Why are they doing this?”
Earhart shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to figure us out. What makes humans tick.”
“They’ve had a long time to do that,” Dane said, realizing even as he spoke the words that he couldn’t be certain how long the Valkyries had been doing this to people here in the space-between, given that time was very much a variable here.
“You know,” Dane said, “it looks like—”he searched for the vision that had just flashed through his mind, but he couldn’t draw it up. He shook his head and focused on the task ahead of them. “How do we find a Valkyrie in there?”
“We draw them to us,” Earhart said as she got up. She signaled and Taki and his men rose to their feet. Dane stood, but paused when Earhart put a hand on his arm. “Can you handle that thing?” she indicated the Naga Staff.
Dane hefted it uncertainly. “I was pretty good with an M-60 machine gun, but this—” he shook his head. “You have a suggestion?”
“Taki is a samurai,” she pointed out. “Trained in many different weapons.”
“It’s all his then,” Dane said. Earhart said something in Japanese and Taki took the staff from Dane, bowing slightly at the waist as he did so. In turn, he handed his sword to Dane. The samurai leader then spun it about in his hands so fast, Dane lost track of which end was where. Taki jabbed, sliced and shadow fought for a few seconds, getting a feel for the weapon, then he nodded and turned toward the cavern.
Dane didn’t feel very reassured with the sword in his hand. He hefted it as Earhart said something to Taki.
“I told him not to damage the suits too much,” she translated.
“Let’s hope they feel the same way about our skin,” Dane muttered.
“If you have to, go for the eyes — the red crystal,” Earhart suggested.
Dane followed Earhart and the samurai down the slope and they entered the cavern. Dane looked at the first person on a slab that he passed and was shocked to see the woman’s eyes following him, her head locked in place, a number of thin wires with small lit bulbs stemming up out of the exposed top of her brain. He started to step toward her, sword half-raised, but Earhart gave him a slight push.
“Not yet.”
Taki had reached an intersection among the slabs and paused, looking in all directions. Dane felt as if a ring of barbwire was wrapped around his head and it was being tightened. The pain was almost overwhelming as he absorbed the agony of the multitude of tortured humans around him. Writhing through the pain was the awareness that many of these people could no longer really be called human as their minds had snapped from the pain and nightmarish situation.
Taki moved along a row and summoned some Valkyries by the gruesome method of killing a dozen of the most hideously disfigured of the humans in one row. He paused, then hissed, pointing to his right. He held up two fingers and ducked behind a slab.
“Two Valkyries,” Earhart whispered as she edged Dane into a hiding spot. The person on the slab they hid behind had his ribs spread wide open, revealing the inner chest cavity. As he hid, Dane noted that most of the man’s intestines had been removed. The opening was covered with the same clear material, which must provide some protection from infection, he realized. A black tube was wrapped in a tight coil in place of the intestines and Dane could only assume it performed the basic functions needed to keep the man alive.
Dane forced his attention toward Taki. The Japanese warrior had the Naga Staff in his right hand and he had his back to the rear of the slab. A white figure floated past his location, then a second one. Just as the second one cleared, Taki sprang out, spinning, the Naga Staff level.
The blade struck right at the creature’s neck, slicing through cleanly, cutting through the front half of the neck. The body came to a halt, floating, the arms limp at its side, black gas issuing out of the wound. Taki was already attacking the second. He jabbed, the blade hitting the creature in the left shoulder, punching through. Black gas hissed out of the hole.
The creature swung its clawed hand at the samurai, narrowly missing. Taki ducked under its second blow and jabbed the point of the blade into the center of its chest. He twisted the haft of the staff, using the Naga heads for leverage and rotated the blade three hundred and sixty degrees inside the Valkyrie’s chest. Its arms dropped to the side and it was still like its headless companion, bobbing slightly.
Earhart was moving, gesturing for the samurai to grab the bodies. Dane ran to the one whose neck was cut. He found he could move it by himself, just pushing it. Earhart grabbed the other and they headed out of the cavern as quickly as they could, Taki bringing up the rear.
It is a common saying that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
History records that the winter of 1811–1812 was a very difficult one for the handful of settlers who braved the frontier and had settled in the Mississippi River Valley. The Shawnee chief Tecumseh was organizing the tribes of the area to push back the whites and counting numbers it looked as if it were a very real possibility come Spring. And as if that weren’t enough, on the morning of December 16th, 1811, the Earth shook terribly numerous times and the sky filled with ash, blocking out the sun. Throughout the winter there were many more earthquakes, culminating on February 17th, 1812.
That was the day the Mississippi reversed course.
Along the New Madrid fault line, which roughly followed the line of the Mississippi between Tennessee/Kentucky and Arkansas/Missouri, the surface of the planet split. A twenty-mile section of the mightiest river in the continent simply dropped through the opening.
Crewmen on the first steamboat launched on the river, the New Orleans, which was on its inaugural voyage, woke to the amazing spectacle of the island they had anchored to having disappeared under the water, and the ship being pulled upriver as the water raced in that direction.
No one knows how many thousands of Native Americans, mainly Chickasaw, died. Where there had been forests, there were now lakes. As the Mississippi resumed its flow, there were miles and miles of it in a new channel, gouged out by the earthquakes.