The Bats of Elvidner

by Danielle L. Parker

part 5

There was still no light, but the air had grown stale and warm, almost too warm, and heavily tainted with the iron-tinged, acid breath of their captors. After a long, steeply pitched descent, endless enough for all of them to regret the loss of their drinking water, the cart was once more moving upon a level surface, more slowly than it had before.

There were many other sounds around them now — creaks and squeals of other unseen vehicles, some near, some not; a distant, dull, repetitive hammering; the whisper of wings beating in the dark, and the brief flutter of air disturbed by multitudinous passages.

The boy had ceased rapping. When Loeske had asked him why, he had taken the old man’s hand, and spelled out with laborious care the single word, much, in the elder’s skinny palm.

“They’re all around us now, I reckon,” the farmer said. “Don’t need no witch-boy to tell me that. I can smell ’em. The mother’s still close — smell the blood? The other cart’s right in front of us. I can hear it creaking. What now, old one?”

“They haven’t bled us yet. That’s good.” The old man pressed his face against the branches, squinting futilely into a dark thick as suffocation. “Don’t think we stopped long enough for her to feed the warriors. I wonder about that... But maybe she’ll feed them next, now that they’re safe inside Lichtlos. That may buy us time.”

“How much time, ye think?”

The girl child pressed close to his side, burying her head into his ribs. The old man patted her shoulder absently. “Can’t say, Hagar. A day’s worth. Two. A week... We know so little of these creatures... Four generations gone, and never any bridge made... Hagar? Don’t you have a mastiff to guard your pigs?”

There was a creak as the farmer shifted his considerable bulk. “Oh aye. Old Trap. Good dog, he were. Fought like a hero to the very end... never see ’im again, I guess!”

“Do you have a dog whistle? One of those silent ones?”

“A whistle?” There was a rustle. “Oh aye,” the farmer said after a moment. “Right here under me jerkin. Come jest a-runnin’ with his tongue hanging out, every time he heard that whistle, Trap did.” Fingers fumbled in the dark; the farmer’s big hand pressed something into his. “Ye’ll be wantin’ this for the boy, then?”

“Yes.” Loeske groped in the dark. “Boy — Bram — give me your hand. I’m going to blow this whistle. Just real softly, now. Squeeze my hand twice if you can hear it, for yes. Squeeze it once, if you can’t, for no. Are you ready? Yes?” He fumbled the small object to his lips. The boy squeezed his fingers swiftly, twice.

The old man lowered the whistle, panting. He wiped his face with the tail end of his jerkin. It was getting uncomfortably warm, and none of them could afford to sweat. The loss of their drinking water might soon prove serious. But he supposed they would be given food and drink soon enough. Their captors only drank fresh blood. Corpses were no use to them.

“He hears.” Loeske groped through the muffling darkness until he encountered flesh once more. “Take this whistle, boy. I don’t know what good it’ll do, yet... but they hear it, too. Put this around your neck. Keep it.”

“Ye’re thinking, if the boy can talk with ’em—?”

“Not really. Guess it’s just a vain hope...” The old man settled back. “You ever wish you had one of those oracular talking pigs, Hagar? Like Henny Piggy in the old stories?”

There was a startled silence. Then the farmer snorted loudly. “Nay,” he said. “I’m happy with me pigs just a-lyin’ in the muck eatin’ their fat heads off. Wouldn’t want any talking pig!”

“Why not?”

There was a longer pause this time, and the answer, when it came, was flat. “Because I eat ’em.”

“Exactly.” The old man nodded in the darkness. “Tell me, Hagar... if the Silent Ones didn’t eat us, what would they eat?”

There was a growl, much like that of a mastiff, in the darkness. “Oh aye, what do I care what those ’uns put in their bellies, so’s it’s not us? Whatever they ate before we poor men came to their cursed world, I guess!”

“Gazelles? Archons? Swift-wings? When I was a boy, we used to organize great hunting expeditions. Those were wonderful times! I remember gazelles thick as ants upon the plains. Now it’s rare to see one. When was the last time we went hunting? When was the last time you saw a swift-wing, Hagar?”

There was another unwilling silence. Then, gruffly, “Oh aye, mayhap two years ago... Don’t know exactly when.”

“When we came, we ate up the native game. There wasn’t much choice. The cattle died, and for two generations, even the pigs were sickly.” The old man sighed. “There were those with the knowledge to help us. To stop the babies that came, willy-nilly, whether there was food for them, or not; to adapt the grass that would not thrive; to save the cows. To save the goats, at least, perhaps. I liked the goats...

“But the wizards of Kolonie stayed inside their far-away fortress and lived with their old things, their deathless machines and their unchanging foods and their ways of ancient days. They’re there, still... Adapt, they told us. Adapt or die.

“Oh, there were a few who came out with us. The lords of White Star... a few others. So few, and most of them — this boy’s mother, perhaps — caring no more than the cold wizards of Kolonie what becomes of ordinary mortal man, upon this new Earth called Elvidner.”

There was another silence. The cart rolled on, creaking gently.

“Oh aye,” the farmer said at last. “Mayhap ye’re older than I guessed ye, old man.”

“I’m older than you still guess me to be, my friend.” Loeske stared into the darkness. “I’ve seen this coming for a long time. Our Darwinian war. Eat or be eaten... We brought it on ourselves as much as the Silent Ones did. One species will live.

Unless we can begin to coexist, another will die. Perhaps both will. Then the wizards of Kolonie will depart their failure, and the lords of White Star also... though there is one among them we may trust to avenge us first, at least. He is apt for blood, that one.”

There was an odd sound in the close confines of the cart. The farmer grunted a question. A meaty hand swiped the air near his face; Loeske felt the swish of its passage. “Oh aye, and are ye chokin’, old man?”

“It’s the boy. He’s trying to talk.” The old man reached out into the darkness. A small hot hand grasped his, and tightened urgently. Squeeze, pause; squeeze, pause.

“We’re stopping!”

“Yes.” Another child’s fingers slipped into his free hand, gripping with the same desperate plea. Loeske nodded. “We’ve come to wherever they are taking us. We can only hope we have time... time.” Something large shook the cart; bitter-iron invaded their fouled air once more. He squeezed the pitifully trembling hands he held. “Stay close, children!”

The cart rocked. The farmer grunted alarm. “They’re opening the door!”

“Don’t fight,” the old man whispered, staring into darkness. “Don’t fight them, Hagar. Maybe they won’t use the sonics this time, if we don’t fight them.”

But they did. There came a shrilling almost too high to hear; it was hot pain in his head. Little Siglind wailed. The boy gabbled inarticulate agony. The pig farmer swore foully. The old man closed his eyes. There were floating spots before the pressed lids: red and black and yellow, images of cellular dissolution. They could kill with that sound. His brain would burst; the membranes of his ears explode and bleed...

Claws seized them, tumbling all willy-nilly out of the cart. Hands tore free from his own. The old man endured an instant’s revolting contact with an alien body — flesh hot and soft-skinned as a kid glove, muscles underneath like taunt wires. The deafening shrilling went on and on.

Then his shoulder hit dirt, and the old man rolled and tumbled until he fetched up, winded and gasping, against more dusty-smelling earth. Someone thudded to the ground beside him; the girl child screamed and screamed until her voice was almost as high and shrill as that endless waspy whine. There followed a second, heavier thud, that shook the very earth he lay upon.

Then silence.

The old man sat up. There was hot liquid running out his buzzing ears when he reached up to press them: blood. “Hagar,” he rasped. “Hagar... children! Are you there?”

There was a soft sigh in the darkness. Loeske scrabbled for the wall. He groped outwards and found a hand: one of the children’s. Its fingers clutched his in wordless urgency.

“Who’s there? Who’s in here with us? Answer!”

Someone cleared a throat. A rusty voice replied.

“Hagar? Is it truly ye?”

There was surprised grunt in answer. “Oh aye, and who be ye, then?”

“Markin,” the hoarse voice whispered, slow and thick as unstirred porridge.

“Markin! And ye dead these six summers, so we thought! Have ye been here in this great dark, then, e’er since they taken ye?”

“Dead,” croaked the slow rusty voice, and broke upon the word. “I’ve been dead these six years, Hagar. I’ve dug for them, like a blind mole, and hauled stone, and hollowed their endless tunnels. I’ve broken me fingers upon their rock. I ain’t seen light, Hagar, all these years. Six, ye said?”

“The child!” the old man cried. “Where’s the other child? Speak!”

There was a long silence. Then the farmer answered gruffly.

“They got her.”

* * *

The beast no longer a man could not see in the lightless tunnel it crept through, but it had keener senses than mere eyes. It had delicate ears, and a quivering, finely tuned nose, sensitive to the slightest sensory trail in the warm stale air. Most of all, it had a brutal, instinctual cunning, within which a man’s quicksilver intelligence lurked, half-dreaming, half-aware, enclosed in the red lust of the wolf.

This tunnel had fallen into disrepair. Water dripped from its low ceiling. The wolf drank from a pool it encountered and continued forward on its belly, its ears pricked high. Ever deeper, ever lower, in the musty depths of the earth. At last, a fall of rock blocked its way. The wolf investigated, yipping as it pawed the rocks and sniffed the wet earth.

But there was no way through. It retreated, whining bafflement.

For a time it rested, its huge head cradled upon its paws and its yellow eyes closed. Suddenly, its ears pricked, and it rose to its feet. It listened with its head cocked quizzically to one side; it stalked closer to the source of the sound in small, mincing steps. Then it dug furiously in the soft earth with its front paws, spewing dirt between its widespread hind legs.

The earth pile grew; the wolf’s shoulders sank; it panted as it continued to dig, until even its haunches were almost hidden with its cast-up dirt. Then its questing nose, pushed through earth, encountered air.

It wiggled through and shook itself free of dirt like a hound emerging from water, and loped down its new, wider tunnel.

There was a problem with this new route, though. It was not always empty. The wolf snared the first small flier with a great twisting leap in the air; it killed with a scissoring snap of its jaws, and ripped out the belly of the squeaking creature with its hind claws. Its acid odor displeased the wolf, so it left the mangled body behind.

It batted down the second bat with a swift paw, dancing on its hind legs, while the little flier squealed and chattered and swerved in futile aerial evasion. Its odor displeased the wolf still, but this time, the wolf was hungry. After it had bitten the smelly head into quietude, it ate out the belly of the creature with much noisy smacking.

Then it left the gutted remains and loped onward, licking its bloody chops.

Proceed to part 6...