Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Detective

“‘Careful!’ I warned him. ‘There may be more.’

“‘No,’ said Cabal, pausing to check that the woods seemed clear. ‘They were arguing about leaving the cave again when they’re supposed to be guarding it. Apparently, the rest of the merry men are off taking advantage of the refugees who were driven from Mirkarvia in the recent unpleasantness. Theirs is an ugly, mongrel tongue, but the meaning was quite apparent. Come on, Enright, we may not have long.’

“We ducked around the corner and ran inside.

“I wasn’t expecting the cave of Ali Baba and I wasn’t disappointed. The first thing that struck us was a near-palpable wall of stench, human as well as horse ordure. What little light there was in that foul place was provided by a few torches and many crudely formed clay lamps burning animal fat through coarse wicks. The atmosphere was oppressive with smoke, and I wondered aloud what sort of men would willingly choose this kind of life over one in the open air.

“‘The usual sort,’ said Cabal, taking a torch from the crack into which it was wedged. ‘Desperate men. Just like you and me.’

“Ignoring him and his nonsensical talk, I went straight to the horses and quickly chose the two most promising. The mare that had caused me all this trouble in the first place could stay there for all I cared. I turned to pass the reins of his mount to Cabal only to find him gone. A flickering light down a rocky side passage showed where he’d vanished. I called after him in an urgent hiss, but he failed to respond. Cursing him and his misjudged and ill-timed curiosity, I tied off the horses again and followed him at a trot. I found him at the end of the passage examining the cul-de-sac he’d ended up in.

“‘Are you mad, Cabal? If they come back, we’ll be trapped. The treasure of the Great Hass can wait for some future date, can’t it? If those fools are still resorting to horse theft, then it hardly seems likely they’ve found it, or will any moment soon. Come on! We don’t have time to dally!’

“I might as well have been talking about the weather.

“‘Convincing, isn’t it?’ he said, blithely unconcerned with our danger.

“‘What is?’ I asked impatiently.

“‘This,’ he said and moved the torch close to the rock face.

“‘What are you blathering about, man?’ I started to say. And then the words froze in my throat. The natural rock face, lined with the cracks of ten hundred thousand nights of cold and as many days of warmth, was no such thing. Under the oblique light cast by the flickering torch, the cracks resolved themselves into regular markings … letters … just like the ones I’d seen Cabal transcribe by that curious stream. In fact, some were exactly alike. ‘The black exclamation,’ I murmured, caught up in the mystery of the moment despite myself.

“‘Just so,’ said Cabal, distracted. ‘The black exclamation. But the warning is different this time. Still terse, though. Do not enter . Not very equivocal, is it?’ He experimented for a few seconds with the torch, altering how its light fell as he tried to tease the secrets out of the other hidden letters. ‘ Know this, thou foolish … thief … no … interloper, know that to go beyond here is to suffer not only death in this life but … the one that is to follow .’

“‘A curse?’

“‘No, the Ugol liked their curses to go on for several stanzas. This is a warning. They believed in reincarnation, you see. Not only death in this life but the one that is to follow . It’s saying that you will be killed so very thoroughly that your reincarnation will die by it, too. That’s not the kind of thing they’d say lightly.’

“It is not for me to say I am a brave man, but I believe I can at least claim not to be a coward, physically or morally. Yet, as we stood in that close passageway and read those dire words of warning, inscribed seven hundred years before and likely never read until then, I felt a sense of nervous tension that I had never experienced before. The walls, lit by the fitful dancing flame, were covered in strange shadows that seemed to crowd about us; the air was thick enough to touch. There, gentlemen, within the living stone of that hill, I think I felt the slender, strong fingers of mortal, nameless fear close around my heart.”

Enright paused in his narrative to light another cigar. We waited in utter silence for the minute that the commonplace ritual lasted. When he spoke again, it was a shock.

“Thus when the bandits returned in force, it was actually something of a relief. A relief to be confronting a foe I understood on terms I was familiar with. A relief to face a known quantity. Admittedly, they would probably murder us in cold blood, but that, at least, was something I could apprehend and fight against.

“First we heard the clatter of hooves on the stone floor of the cave entrance and the laughter of men back from a successful day’s butchery. Leaving Cabal searching for the entrance implied in the warning for a moment, I walked quickly and quietly up to the opening of the passage into the main body of the cave and looked cautiously around the corner. There were a dozen of them if there was one — dangerous men, of evil aspect. The pair they’d left behind to guard the hideout were obviously the least of them, lowered still further by their evident dereliction of duty. Their leader looked around, and his snarling countenance showed his displeasure at their absence. A moment later, they ran in. The cockier of the two affected to slow to a saunter as he came to his leader’s notice. There were some barked derogatory remarks that left the less self-assured guard cowering and begging. The rest of the surly gang gathered around as the other guard stood up to his leader and spoke dismissively. The cave was safe, he seemed to be saying, why the complaints? Who was the leader to second-guess the man on the spot? The coxcomb actually swaggered back and forth as he spoke, taking the dark smiles of the other bandits as approbation. I did not. I knew their look, had seen it on the faces of righteous executioners and priests watching the innocent burn, seen it too many times to mistake it or the horrid sense of foreboding that always came with it. It wasn’t approval I saw in their eyes. It was anticipation.

“And then the leader, an ugly bear of a man, swept a curved dagger from its sheath, held it up just long enough for the guard to see it, to understand its import, and then he smashed it down into the hapless man’s chest.

“The blow was brutal, but it was not efficient. I think it took the guard almost a minute to die, sobbing and pleading for help as his blood ran free and hot over his fingers. A minute of laughter and derision as his ‘comrades’ watched his life flow across the floor to mix with the filth. Sickened, I quietly returned to Cabal.

“I found him behaving oddly, using his fingers like a cartographer’s dividers to measure out distances on the rock face. He listened as I told him about the number of bandits and pursed his lips. The fate of the guard he greeted with a nod and, ‘Good. One less to worry about.’

“‘No man deserves to die like that,’ I said, angered by his insouciance.

“‘Or kicking on the end of a length of state-owned rope. Or blown to pieces on a battlefield. Or quietly in bed surrounded by loved ones .’ He spat out these last words venomously. ‘One cannot pick and choose. You shouldn’t be railing against the manner of death, Enright.’

“‘And you find nothing to fear in death, I suppose?’

“‘Only one thing.’ He drew a line with his left fingertip along a crack and then continued down to where his right waited, having finished its curious measurings. He mouthed Perfect and pushed hard. There was a hollow grating sound of stone on stone, and the end of the passage swung in and back. Cabal looked at me, said, ‘Its inevitability ,’ and plunged into the darkness beyond. I admit I stood gawping at the secret entrance, so perfectly concealed, for a long moment until Cabal’s irritated voice demanding the torch broke me from my daze.