Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

Not that steep came easily, for in addition to the cold, the wolves were never really silent through the whole of that frigid, blustery night—they barked and howled and snarled and snuffled, they paced around and around the tower, they yelped and whined, wolf after wolf after wolf set himself at the sheer walls of that tower, jumping and falling back merely to jump and again fall back until utterly exhausted The pack seemed to be driven mad by the scent of so much manflesh and blood so very near to their slavering jaws, yet so unobtainable.

Although it seemed for long and long that dawn would not make an appearance, at last a grudging light dispelled the worst of the darkness, but there was no visible sun and no cessation of the sharp-toothed wind. Milo knew then that were he and his men to survive the coming weather, they assuredly must get off this exposed, wind-lashed pinnacle and into some shelter of some kind. But how?

The gaunt wolves paced the length and the breadth of the plateau. They numbered at least fourscore, probably more—gray wolves and wolves of a dirty, mouse-brown color, yellowish-brown wolves, reddish-brown wolves, several almost white and, here and there, a black wolf. Milo could almost feel pity for the lupines, for they were obviously not far from death by starvation, with rib racks and spinal bumps clearly visible beneath the dull, matted coats.

The pack had lost or forgotten their previous fear of the hurled missiles during the night and now were ranging close about the tower. But the men soon discovered that there were few handy bits of masonry remaining anywhere near to the rim of the tower. Only in the center, where the effects of freezing had been somewhat offset by their combined body heat through the night just past, did there appear to be chunks that could be pried loose without breaking their dirk blades.

With the supply of missiles decreased, Milo awarded such as were available to the four most accurate hurlers—Dik Esmith, the tracker, Djim Linszee, and his two younger brothers, the fiery-haired twins called Bill and Bahb. Milo and the other Horseclansmen set themselves and their dirks to supplying the four, worrying loose more of the bits and pieces of ancient bricks studding the layer of soil that covered the center of the old tower.

Milo thrust his dirk blade under a brick that looked to be almost whole … and felt his steel ring on metal! He set the others to working upon the same area; slowly, a red-brown ring of pitted, flaking iron was exposed. Shortly thereafter, they had cleared away all of the soil and rubble down to the rusty trapdoor to which the ring was stapled.

One of the Horseclansmen took a grip on the ring and heaved, vainly. Retrenching, taking his best grip with both grubby hands, half squatting so that he could put the muscles of his legs and back behind the effort, he strained until the throbbing veins bulged from his brows, but the soil-streaked trapdoor never budged an inch from its ages-old setting.

“Wait,” counselled Milo. “There may be a bolt or catch of some kind holding it secure.”

His dirk blade proved far too wide for the crack between door and metal jamb at the edge closest to the ring; so too was the blade of his skinning knife, and also his boot knife; but when he tried the slender-bladed dagger that he kept sheathed under his shirtsleeve, that blade slipped in easily.

When even with the center of the iron ring, the blade encountered an obstruction. While pushing the dagger against the unseen object, Milo noted that the ring moved a bare fraction of a millimeter or so. Maintaining pressure against the still-unseen obstruction, he gripped the ring in his other hand and twisted it right, then left, then right again. At that last twist the ring creakingly moved half a turn and the obstruction was abruptly gone; he was now able to slide the blade from corner to corner of the doorframe.

He sheathed the little dagger and scuttled backward on his knees, gesturing to the Horseclansman whose efforts had earlier failed to open the door.

“Try it now, Lari.”

Obligingly, the man set himself into place again, took his best two-handed grip again and heaved. There was a momentary resistance, then with an unearthly squealing screech that set the nearest wolves to yelping their displeasure, the trapdoor arose amid a shower of rust to disclose the first treads of what looked to Milo like a steel stairway, all covered with dust and cobwebs.

After bouncing his weight experimentally on those two easily visible treads while keeping his hands braced on the shoulders of two Horseclansmen, Milo gingerly began to descend the stairs into the yawning darkness, saber slung across his back and the big dirk ready in his right hand. While the men watched, all huddled about the square opening, Milo gradually disappeared into the waiting blackness, only the ring of his bootsoles telling them that he was still descending. Then, after a short time, even those sounds ceased.

The steel staircase wound down in a tight spiral, and for all that it trembled and crackled under his weight, Milo made it down to the bottom safely. Once there, he mindspoke the men waiting above him.

“The stairs held me, so they’ll certainly hold you, one at a time, but don’t come down yet. This room seems rather small. See if you can get that trapdoor open wider, then get back from around it so what light there is up there can penetrate to me. It’s black as the inside of a cow down here.”

The long-unused hinges shrilled like the screams of damned souls in protest, but the wiry nomads put their backs into the job, and presently they got the trapdoor almost flat to the floor of their eyrie, then moved to the edges of that eyrie.

In the increased amount of light, Milo could see that the chamber in which he now stood was indeed small, a bit smaller actually than was the roof above. Every visible surface was thickly covered with dust and hung with better than a century’s worth of cobwebs. But he could spot no droppings of any size or description, so apparently no animal or bird had ever gained access to this room. Staring hard, cudgeling his brain, it took him long moments to remember, to realize what the dust-shrouded object reposing on a shelf at waist level was. It was a gasoline lantern!

“I wonder … ?”

Wiping away the dust and cobwebs, he could see that there was little rust on the artifact, it being finished in chrome or stainless steel. Although very dirty, the glass was also intact, and there was even a filament still in place. Lifting it from the shelf he shook it beside his ear. It sloshed as if almost full, and if that liquid was gasoline … ?

He searched for and found the handle of the air-pressure pump and tried it gingerly. The shaft moved smoothly in its tube. Now, if he only had a match.

Milo let his fingers wander the length of the shelf, and near the far end, they encountered a small brass cylinder, all green and bumpy with a verdignis patina.

Not daring to hope, he brought his new find up into the wan light filtering down from above. It required all the not inconsiderable strength of his hands to break the screwtop free.

“Son of a bitch!” he breathed softly. The cylinder was packed with wooden matches, the head of each covered with clear yellow wax.

With the trapdoor closed and bolted and seven bodies gathered in the close quarters, the nomads soon ceased to shiver, and, as soon as their teeth stopped chattering, they all began to do so, exclaiming upon the clear, intensely bright light cast by the ancient lantern.

A lighted exploration of the small chamber disclosed another, larger, but otherwise identical lantern, two lumps of corrosion, that once had been flashlights, an assortment of rusty tools—several differing sizes and types of screwdrivers and wrenches, a couple of ball-peen hammers and a half-dozen chisels—two-gallon brass can of lantern fuel (so marked and almost full!) and, in a rotted leather hoister, a rusted and corroded thing that had once been a heavy-caliber revolver.