Julius's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

They climbed for half a day before the trail ended. Julius stopped at the front, dead dish clipped to his belt. The path narrowed between two rock walls, and past that narrow spot the ground opened into a shallow basin. The basin was full of flowers. Not flowers. Bright pink and orange heads on thorned green stalks, each mouth wide enough to take an arm. A hundred of them, maybe more, packed shoulder to shoulder across the only way up. The nearest one turned its head toward the sound of his boot. "Maws," Harlen said behind him. His rig glowed red. "Whole field." Elina landed on the ledge above them, wings folding tight. "No way around," she said. "Wall drops off on the north side. South goes back down." Bethany pointed past Julius's shoulder. "There." A dark slot in the rock, maybe forty feet off the trail. A cave mouth. "Goes into the mountain." "Or nowhere," Harlen said. Julius looked at the maws. He looked at the cave. "Nowhere is better than back." He was leading. He had said he would. "We try the cave." They moved along the wall in a line. Elina flew low cover. A maw lunged and Harlen scorched its head off its stalk. The rest hissed but did not leave the basin. Julius reached the slot first and ducked inside. The cave went black fast. Tevin came in last, his shackles throwing thin blue light on the walls. He held his wrists up without being asked. Nobody thanked him. He had been quiet since the fortress, a stranger they had picked up who did not seem to want anything except to keep moving. The passage split. Then dropped. A four-foot gap opened over a pit they could not see the bottom of. Julius jumped it and turned to catch Bethany. Elina carried Tevin across in a short, ugly flight, her wings scraping stone. Harlen jumped last and landed hard on one knee. Further in, the ceiling dropped to a crawl. Julius went first on his belly. The dead dish scraped rock. He kept crawling. Somewhere ahead, cold air moved. He came out into light. The others crawled out behind him one at a time. They stood on a shelf of red stone. In front of them the ground split open into a canyon, and across the canyon a rope bridge sagged between two cliffs. Dry bushes lined the near edge. The far side climbed on into higher country. "That's the way up," Elina said. Julius unclipped the dead dish from his belt and looked at it, then at the bridge. Somewhere past that crossing was the man who did not need one. "Then we cross," he said.