Part 3 (1/2)

'What is it? Who screamed?' Richter demanded as he and the Shaker, accompanied by a number of others, reached the precipice.

'The last team, sir! they're gone!'

'Gone? What is this 'gone? Speak up, boy!'

'I was monitoring them,' Barrister said, obviously quite shaken, rubbing his face with one hand as if unable to believe this was not a dream, not something that he could snap himself out of. 'Before I could do anything about it, the lead piton, here, gave way, pulled rock with it, and was gone over the edge. They must have been relying totally on the anchor, for the scream came almost instantly.'

'There were seven in the team,' Richter said. He turned to the Shaker. 'He's gotten seven more of them, if he happens to be Barrister here.'

Sandow looked at the boy who was staring over the edge of the cliff, his face drawn, his entire body wracked with terrible nervous spasms. 'He doesn't seem the murderous sort. Could it not have been an accident?'

'Perhaps,' Richter said. 'The edge rock here is probably fractured invisibly inside, from the constant vibration. But it seems it should have given way before this, before all but the last team had been drawn up on it.'

'Sir!' Barrister called.

They turned to the boy, saw that he was bent dangerously over the lip of the ledge, staring intently into the darkness and the mists below where seven companions had been lost 'What is it now?' Richter asked.

'There below, coming up!' Barrister called. The expression of utter joy and relief was almost comical. Unless it was merely the clever mask of an actor.

To suspect everyone, the Shaker thought, is what will wear away our nerves most quickly.

Fifteen feet down, the head and shoulders of a climber came into view through the thick fog. He was working carefully from piton to piton, taking no chances now that there was no safety rope to save him, should a foot slip on the icy iron spikes. It was impossible from that angle for the commander to recognize the man, but he wasted no time in ordering a coil of heavy rope, from which a loop was made and pa.s.sed downward to the struggling mountaineer.

As the group on the cleft watched with a barely restrained tension and agony of sympathy, the man held to a piton with one hand, his right foot on one below him, and grasped the proffered loop. Doing a balancer's act beyond match, he managed to slip the loop through the jaws of a spring clamp on his belt, making himself safe against a slip.

There was a collective sigh of relief above him. A moment later, he had reached the ledge and collapsed full length in exhaustion: tired, but alive.

'Cartier!' Richter said, bending on one knee next to the man who had just scrabbled to safety. 'What happened? The rest of them?'

After he had gulped a great many lungfuls of watery air and some color had returned to his face, Cartier managed to sit up, holding to the commander's shoulder, and look about himself in bewildered anger and sorrow. 'Gone,' he said. 'All of them. Tumbled to the bottom of the falls and smashed and drowned.'

'What happened?' Richter pressed.

Cartier shook his head as if to clear it of the vision of dying men. 'I was the last on the team. When it happened, I was holding onto a spike, which was all that saved me, no doubt to that. I heard Bennings, the top man, scream. Then the second man screamed too, and it was clear what was happening. That moment Bennings fell by me, his face a terrible sight, absolutely horror-stricken. The third man must have been trying to hold tight, but he was ripped loose too. There were two above me yet, c.o.x and Willard. I heard c.o.x go and knew Willard would follow immediately. He couldn't hold the weight of all those men himself. I thought fast, and had G.o.ds' grace, I tell you. I pulled my knife from its sheath and severed the line between Willard and me. Not a breath later, he went, and all of them dropped by me like stones.'

'Get this man to shelter,' the commander ordered. 'Some hot soup should help his nerves, I daresay.'

When Cartier had been helped away, the Shaker leaned close to the rough old officer. 'I feel your suspicions still negate the possibility of an accident?'

'Not negate, Master Shaker. But they certainly cast dubiety on it.' The commander looked at the broken team rope which had been taken from Cartier along with the man's rucksack.

'May I ask why?'

'This.'

'Ah, yes, Commander, but then he did say that he cut it, not that it broke.'

'It is possible,' Richter insisted, 'that Cartier waited until Bennings-first man on the team-was not using the team rope for support, until it was slack. At that time, he could have taken the rope in his own hands and pulled it taut. The instant he felt Bennings' weight transferred from a piton to the main line, Cartier could have given the thing a d.a.m.n healthy yank, tearing the top anchor piton loose. A team rope, as any competent mountaineer knows, will take enormous weights at a steady pull-but a sharp and abrupt drag on top of the weight will pull the anchor piton loose five times out of ten: a deadly average.' Cartier could have given the thing a d.a.m.n healthy yank, tearing the top anchor piton loose. A team rope, as any competent mountaineer knows, will take enormous weights at a steady pull-but a sharp and abrupt drag on top of the weight will pull the anchor piton loose five times out of ten: a deadly average.'

'And you think that Cartier might have done this thing-and might have cut his connection to the team rope even before that?'

'It's possible. Not likely, mind you, but possible. A man would have to be a fool to take such a risk even if he had cut himself free of the team line. On the bottom of the group, where he was, it was highly likely that one or more of the six falling men above him would strike him and tear him loose of the shaft wall. And he would have gone down there with the rest of them. No, it must have been an accident. It would require a madman to try such a thing on purpose.'

'But these may very well be madmen we have aligned against us,' the Shaker said.

Richter looked troubled, tired. 'I suppose it seems that way.' He made the concession reluctantly, just as any man of logic dislikes to think the enemy may not be logical himself.

'Seventy enlisted men remaining,' the Shaker mused.

'And I can hardly grill each as if I expected him to be one of our killers. I have a close attachment to these men, Shaker. Some of those boys whose throats were slit had been with me for some time indeed. And on that rope there, the boy Willard! Well, he was my nephew, the son of my oldest and favorite sister. Fortunately, she's dead now, bless her soul. I'll not have to be reporting his fall to anyone but the General.'

'Perhaps double the normal guard tonight,' the Shaker suggested.

'I have already decided to order that. And since you are actually our most valuable a.s.set, I should suggest that you detail one of your boys to stand watch over you at all times.'

The Shaker nodded and watched Richter move back into the sheltered cul-de-sac cul-de-sac of the cleft, mingling with his men, stooping to talk to the closest friends of the newly perished Banibaleers. He had a sure way with men, a sense of leaders.h.i.+p mixed with a tenderness of human understanding that made him the sort of officer men would follow most anywhere. The Shaker had seen such before, but rarely. of the cleft, mingling with his men, stooping to talk to the closest friends of the newly perished Banibaleers. He had a sure way with men, a sense of leaders.h.i.+p mixed with a tenderness of human understanding that made him the sort of officer men would follow most anywhere. The Shaker had seen such before, but rarely.

If it's an act, and if he is himself an a.s.sa.s.sin, the Shaker thought, I shall be certain that he dies most painfully!

Gregor appeared at the Shaker's right arm. 'I used the excitement to search along the back of the cleft. Up toward the north end, clear to the rear, there is a short, torturous pa.s.sage which ends in a chamber perhaps as large as a pantry. No light will escape it, and the sound of the chants should be deafened sufficiently. We can hold the secret reading there.'

'After supper,' the Shaker said.

'And before our killers claim more victims, let us hope,' young Gregor said.

In the darkness of the camp, with the howl of the storm beyond the overhang, the boom of thunder and the crack of Lightning, the Shaker and his a.s.sistants reached the pa.s.sageway Gregor had discovered earlier in the evening. They carried what few bits of magical devices they required, but hid them beneath their leather coats lest they be accosted before reaching the den. Single file, they entered the short tunnel, took four sharp turns, and came out in the room the apprentice Shaker had described. Mace lighted a candle, set it upon a boulder and stood guard at the entrance, listening for the sound of following footsteps.

In the center of the floor, Gregor placed a silver reading square similar to that contained within the oaken surface of the table in Shaker Sandow's study. It gleamed with the reflected flickering of the candle. From a small tin box, he extracted a short sprig of incense, not enough to carry far out of the cave, and lighted it with care. From a final box, he withdrew two rings set with large sapphires, placed one on his own hand, gave the other to the Shaker.

'What I don't understand,' Mace whispered, 'is the need for such secrecy.'

'You have muscles, but no magic,' Gregor said. The power in you is generated by the Clumsy Spirits, the Horse Haunts, but not by the same spirits that produce a Shaker.'

'Aye, and you're rattled, not shaken.' Both of them were smiling, though they tried to hold the expressions down.

'We must keep it secret, Mace, for we fear that our enemies may have interfered with the first reading we took in the house, during the night past. They may have been aware that Commander Richter had ordered a reading and may have been fighting my powers. They may be minor Shakers themselves. If we come upon them by surprise, we may see their faces this night'

'Well, then begin your chants, Master, for we may be missed in minutes.'

The sweet, lilting, quiet voice of the Shaker began, humming like the wind in trees, punctuated now and then by occasional amplifying spell songs in Gregor's deeper, less consistent tones.

'There!' Mace said, leaning forward, pointing at the silver reading plate.

Again, two faces began to appear, slimed over with a film, their features indistinct.