This is the sixth chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
Andrei gasped, and there they were, all around him. The men he'd killed.
Robed figures crouched around his spread arms and legs, eyes covered, sickles gleaming at their waists. He could not move. There was pressure on his chest, and leaden heaviness in his limbs.
"I'm sorry," Andrei told them. "I'm sorry I left you behind. Forgive me!"
Get a hold of yourself, Doctor. They certainly have.
They stood, and Andrei rose too, pulled off his blanket like a pike from a stream.
His ankles and wrists were wrapped in something soft and warm. The hands around his wrists and ankles were warm as well. Odd, for corpses. And one of the specters had terrible breath.
Andrei was starting to wonder whether he might actually be awake, but then he saw the woman.
She was standing waist-deep in the crack in the earth, robed in mist and crowned in moonlight. Braids of dark hair escaped from under a white head-scarf and flowed like water down her round shoulders. At her hip, impossibly yellow in the moonlight, nodded the narcissus.
Andrei's eyes watered. The smell of smoke and sulfur was overpowering. "Am I dreaming? Or does the Tsar's army employ beautiful women to hunt down deserters?"
She lifted her chin. A sheer veil stretched in clinging ridges across her cheekbones and nose. Andrei couldn't see her eyes, but her expression seemed cold, patient, and darkly amused. I make no mistakes, she seemed to say. I find a use for everyone.
What was happening to him? What the devil did any of this mean?
No deal, you said. As if you were in any position to bargain.
Andrei gritted his teeth. Whether he was dreaming or captured or damned, it didn't matter. Delusions, men, or the spirits of the dead, he had the same command for them all. "Take me, then," he said. "Take me back."
He did not know if the woman heard him, or understood him, or cared what he said. She sank into the earth, and Andrei followed, feet first. Feet first, down. Down.
He gasped in a mouthful of warm, sulfurous air. His arms and legs jerked in the grips of, of…"Who the hell are you?" he shouted. "Let go of me!"
His kidnappers popped him through the crack in the earth as if they'd done this a hundred times before.
Andrei looked up as if for help. He saw only the moon disappearing behind a ledge of rock. They stepped down. Down again.
With little "oofs," the men holding his hands and feet hefted him. The one in front called out, "Désma vu tan. Íratsa Dúba tan vu désit." Chuckles rippled down a long, narrow corridor.
There was just enough light now for Andrei to see a rocky ceiling above him, furred with some kind of pale moss. Stone scraped on stone and even that light faded. They were closing a lid over the crack. They were shutting him up in this stinking blackness. Entombing him. Where was the woman? Forget about the woman. Forget what he had just promised himself. Andrei had to escape!
With all the strength in his stomach, he pulled his knees toward him.
"Madí!" grunted the man holding Andrei's feet, and swatted him. That meant he was only holding on with one hand!
Andrei kicked out.
A muffled yell from one of his captors and his feet came free. Still bound together, they dropped. Touched the floor!
Andrei pushed off it, and his head smashed into the chest of the man behind him. He doubted the spirits of the damned would curse like that.
And they weren't soldiers, either. Andrei had fought children with better instincts. His muscles were stiff from his unrestful doze, and his own cramps were more of a hindrance than the fluttery hands of his kidnappers.
Oh, yes, Doctor, very good. With any luck you can cause them enough trouble to convince them to kill you.
Shouts echoed off the furry walls. Andrei's shoulder hit the floor. He swung out with his legs, knocked someone over, twisted like a worm up the corridor.
No, not up. They would know that he would go that way, wouldn't they? Back toward the light. What light? The tunnel was pitch-black now. But they would have to see him to stop him. Just block the entrance and wait.
So Andrei would have to fool them. He gathered himself up and squirmed down the tunnel, deeper into the cave.
No one stood in his way. They had gathered at the entrance! Ha!
Andrei held on to hope. The tunnel would have to widen at some point. He could roll out of the way, or wait behind the entrance to a side-passage if there was one. The woman, if not a hallucination, if this wasn't all a dream, or else a manifestation of hell, she would be deeper in the cave than any of his other captors. Maybe he could trip her. Grab her and use her as a hostage.
Best not to think of how poor a plan that is.
The floor was smooth stone, the darkness absolute. And, Andrei realized, silent. Could they hear the buttons of his coat scraping the stone? Could they hear Andrei's breath? His heartbeat? Were they still waiting for him at the mouth of the cave? Who the hell were these people, with their sickles and narcissus flowers and hissing speech? Were they coming for him even now?
"Ku~u? Ku ié ti~i?"
The floor and walls reflected a voice, so weird with echoes as to barely sound human.
"Brik," said another man. "Birik, bi~iryiirkk!" The vowels tuned in and out of harmonies in the wall, creating echoes so bright they hurt Andrei's teeth.
A third made a noise as if calling a horse. A tsk-tsk of the tongue.
Feet clicked over stone as if hob-nailed. Fingernails tapped on the walls.
"Ku~u?"
A whistle passed over and, it felt, through him.
"Bre~ema."
The basso growl vibrated the floor against Andrei's cheek on the floor. Were they singing? But this didn't sound like music. It sounded purposeful, like the shots gunners fired to test the range of their weapons.
Andrei wriggled faster, the noises of his pursuers clicking and humming past him liked missed shots. There was something ahead. Echoes came sooner and sooner, bouncing off what must be a wall. No, Andrei felt as he ran his still-bound hands up it, this was a vestibule, with niches for guards to stand on either side of a heavy, metal-plated door. Closed.
Andrei turned at bay.
"Táma ié." That was the woman's voice, high and bright as a bird call. Andrei he leaped at her.
A rush of air. A huff of surprise. Andrei's left shoulder struck painfully against a wall, but he made a hoop of his bound arms and passed them over her head. He pulled tight around her waist, pressing her to him. Hobnailed feet clattered toward him. She smelled like herbs and minerals.
"Release—!" Andrei got no farther before a cold pressure closed around his throat.
There was no hesitation, no groping in the dark. One of the men had simply walked up and pressed his sickle up under Andrei's chin.
"Release the Maiden at once." The words were in Russian.
"Wh-huh?" said Andrei, flabbergasted. He hadn't heard an accent like that in three months. The officers tried to fake it, but one had to be born into vowels that soft. Like a drizzle of sacred oil on Saint Peter's Day.
"Release. The Maiden!" A torrent of emotion ran under the accents of a cultured Muskovite.
Rage, Andrei diagnosed.
The sickle shivered against his throat. "Or die!"
Andrei considered it. Dying now, throat cleanly cut, seemed like a better deal than living through whatever grotesque torture this cult of Balkan troglodytes had in store for him.
Troglodytes who spoke Russian like princes. Was this all just madness? Damnation? The sort of dream from which one never wakes?
None of that matters. Stay alive, Doctor, and save those thousand patients.
Andrei released the woman. "All right," he said. "I'll take you."
Next: Chapter 7: Host of Many
Troglodyte is a great word.