Avram Davidson - The Kar-Chee Reign

“Duro and Lors, drop behind — you others, up with you! Don’t wait for us, don’t drop anything — go!” As he spoke, he drew open the mouth of a sacket, took out two of the blue points and stood there with one in each hand. “Cock your bows,” he directed. They did so; took the points, once each, loaded, followed Liam’s pointing finger; fired; turned and were scrambling up again when the double blast behind caught them and flung them. On hands and feet they crawled back, crept upward, slowly, carefully, the lips of their sacks between clenched teeth, echoes roaring and rolling, dust and gravel; on hands and on knees they reached the safety of the cleft in the rock and sidled through. Through the obscurity a dragon came thundering, pounding upright on two feet, the claws of its forefeet slashing at the air, the nodules on its cheeks swelling and puffing, body a dark-green-black along the back, a paler tint below. It shattered their eardrums, so it seemed, with its bellows. And then the finger on the trigger of the crossbow tightened, the blue point flew flashing through the air — the flashing seemingly reflected in the flashing iridescence of the great faceted dragon-eyes — the point and the dragon alike vanished in a cloud of thick dust and darkness and the noise of it rolled and roared.

Lors’ chin was bleeding where a sharp stone had cut it in ricochet. He grinned a twisted, terrified, yet quite triumphant grin, shot his hand inward, directing. “Go on, Liam! Go on! I’ll cover you! Go—”

But Liam shook his head, pulled out two more of the strange but unquestionably potent points, handing as before one to each brother. “Shoot these— there ,” he said, pointing. “And try for as much distance as you can get.”

The clouds rolled around, thinned, thickened again. Here and there something lay upon the ground, still; here and there something thrashed and bellowed and bled. Lors and Duro nodded. Their other shots had been of need hasty and impromptu. Now, for the moment at least, nothing seemed to be pursuing them. They hefted the points, spoke briefly to each other, made swift, skillful adjustments of their crossbows, downed them, foot against lever for the pressure that hand and arm couldn’t give, cocked them, raised and loaded, aimed, holding them a bit higher than before.

They shot.

Through the haze they saw a group of Kar-chee, black chitinous exoskeletons covered and gray with dust, chirring and gesturing in front of that great closed gate which led — which led where? — which led below, wherever or whyever—

Thud-thud—

As they dashed for their lives deeper into the fissure, and, suddenly remembering, slowed, clutching more tightly on the sacks and skins containing the explosive points, they retained one single swift-flashing recollection of the great blast of fire and steam and scalding air and boiling mud that came vomiting up and out from that hellish corridor where once the Kar-chee had chirred and gestured and where once that door had been.

And Liam, too, clutched at the sheepskin packed with the blue and flashing points, but even tighter was his grip on the curious object that had been standing so casually there among the engines where the Kar-chee had stood distributing the points; the object between his shirt and skin, warming his heart. He had had no chance to take more than the most rapid and inconclusive glance at it; it was perhaps even likelier that he was wrong than that he was right…

But he might be right!

And in that case what he held would be a map.

Afterward he was to compare their retreat through the mine-caves to the passage of a troop of ants crawling through a sponge caught in a high wind. Over quivering ground, pelting by falling debris, half-stifled with dust, singed by burning air, more than once finding that either the roof or the floor or sometimes both the roof and the floor of a corridor they had planned to take had given way — such was their trip from the Kar-chee cavern to the world outside.

But the world outside seemed little if any more stable. No sky appeared likely to fall down in upon them, true, but the land quivered. Off-shore, far off-shore, a great bubble broke the surface of the water, and a great puff of steam rose and vanished into the air; presently the hot and muddy breath of the vexed sea-bottom reached them. Again and again and again…

While they watched, fascinated, alternately sweating and chilled, an entire headland slid, sighing and rumbling, into the ocean. Their ears were next buffeted by soundless concussions. As they stood, straining to hear, the earth rose and fell and rose again. Carefully they lay down their sacks and skins of warheads and subsided into sitting positions. Cracks and chasms opened, closed again with the sound of thunder-claps, only to reappear — so it seemed to their bemused and confused sight: as though a chasm was a living creature, now hiding and now disclosing himself — elsewhere.

And after these great shocks came stillness and silence.

Several of them made as though to get up, but Liam gestured them to remain where and as they were. His eyes were rapt and intent; the eyes of the others followed his without being able to see what he could see — but never doubting that he did see. “Wait…” he murmured through slightly-parted lips. They waited, uneasy but content. Cerry felt as she had upon that night when she had known that it was for him to lead and for her to follow and that he was one of those about whom tales were composed and songs sung: seers and doers and heroes…

And after the silence and the stillness came another quake, and this second one was greater than the first. And after that one they looked at him again and still his eyes (the one brown as loch-water and the other as blue-green as the sea itself) were focused afar off and again he said, this time in a whisper, “Wait…”

The third shock was mild and brief, and after it subsided Liam rose to his feet in one swift motion and stooped and carefully picked up his burden and walked off, silent and absorbed. And they silently followed them, all of them.

The face of the land was much changed in places. Here had been a stream and now already the gravel of its bed was drying in the sun; there had been an old watercourse dry except in the rainy season: now it rolled to the roiled sea in a torrent of liquid mud and it stank of the bowels of the earth. Once they had to detour inland because where the path had led now lay a new lagoon of water still faintly streaming and full of dead fish; but once they were able to proceed straight on through because what had been a high ridge of rock was now a flatland. Such marvels were many, but most marvelous of all was a gushing pillar of flame where natural gas, long imprisoned beneath the earth, had been freed and, rushing to the surface, had been met by a transforming touch of fire.

It was having gone but a short way beyond that they saw the Kar-chee.

There were a number of them — six, perhaps, or seven — and they stood upon their four lower limbs with their huge two upper limbs in the folded manner common to them, as though engaged in silent meditation and prayer. Only one of them looked up as the people came suddenly out of the woods, and this one made no motion other than the lifting of its head. Liam turned back on a diagonal course; Lors did the same; so did Duro, Fateem, and the others… except Rickar. He, as though unseeing, continued walking as he had been. Liam snapped his fingers. Clicked his tongue. Said, finally, low-voiced, “Rickar—”

A second Kar-chee lifted its wedge-shaped head. And a third. And Rickar gasped and halted. He looked wildly around him. What happened next was probably attributable to the fact that his whole mind and body told him to run but that he remembered — now! — Liam’s words of warning in the cavern: “ Don’t stumble. Don’t drop any of these”— the blue detonation points. — ” Don’t run — but if you do run, lay them down — gently — first, and just leave them lie …” So he bent forward and deposited the sack he was carrying, and turned to run away after his friends.