Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear

He heard the swish of DeGroet’s blade then, flashing through the air where his head would have been if he hadn’t been bent double. He launched himself into a shoulder roll, coming up against one of the stone benches. He reached over to find the metal rack beside it. Was this the one with the halberd? No—his hand closed on one arm of the giant pincers. He saw DeGroet’s light coming near, bobbing as the man ran forward. Gabriel yanked the pincers out of the rack and swung them at the light, but DeGroet stepped nimbly out of the way and they swept through empty air. A second later DeGroet’s blade struck from the side, slicing through one leg of Gabriel’s pants and the flesh of his thigh underneath. He felt the wound open, felt blood run warm and sticky down his skin. It was his injured leg, too. He limped out of range as fast as he could, pulling over the rack behind him with a huge clatter of metal against stone. Anything to slow DeGroet down.

He staggered to the end of the next bench over and felt for the rack that should be there. Which one was this? He felt a surge of relief as his hand closed not on the shaft of a branding iron or some other bit of paraphernalia but the hilt of a sword. He drew it quickly. Ancient steel and probably fragile, not the thing you wanted most when facing a former gold medalist in fencing—but it would have to do. For good measure, he grabbed a second sword in his other hand, swinging one overhead and the other at chest level.

DeGroet loomed suddenly out of the darkness, his blade striking mercilessly toward Gabriel’s face. Gabriel parried it at the last second, the saber’s narrower blade clashing noisily against the steel of the curved sword in his left hand. He feinted with the one in his right, aiming high at DeGroet’s shoulder, and then when DeGroet angled his torso to dodge it, Gabriel changed course, tilted the blade down, and used it to sweep the flashlight off his hip. It flew through the air and smashed against the floor, leaving them in darkness.

He heard DeGroet’s blade coming and reached up blindly to meet it. The blades struck with a clang of metal against metal, and DeGroet’s slid off. Two parries in a row—Gabriel congratulated himself. Some of the finest fencers in two Olympics hadn’t managed that against DeGroet. But the second time had just been blind luck, Gabriel knew—and he couldn’t count on getting lucky again. He took several rapid steps backwards, heard DeGroet coming after him.

Neither of them could see, which negated DeGroet’s advantage in terms of pure swordsmanship. But fighting in the dark like this for any real length of time was no good. It left survival up to chance—and Gabriel had never been one to bet his life on the toss of a coin.

Orienting himself against the one light remaining in the room, he ran toward the flashlight lying against the wooden platform. If he could get hold of it, maybe use it to locate the gun…But as he got close, he saw DeGroet racing for the same spot. DeGroet saw him as well, and poured on extra speed Gabriel wouldn’t have thought the man was capable of. They stepped onto the wooden platform at the same instant.

Lit indirectly from below, the combat between the two men took on an almost dreamlike quality, their blades slashing in and out of visibility, cutting brief blazing arcs and vanishing again as they passed beyond the cone of light. DeGroet swept his sword down from above, an angled stroke of the cutting edge that could remove a man’s head; but Gabriel crossed his blades and caught DeGroet’s in the crook of the X they formed. DeGroet yanked the saber free and sent it darting at Gabriel’s chest. Gabriel sidestepped, parried with the flat of one blade and lunged with the other. The point streaked against DeGroet’s cheek and blood welled up.

“A touch,” DeGroet said grimly, raising a finger to his cheek. “It will be your last.” And he lashed out with his sword, spiraling it around the blade in Gabriel’s left fist once, twice, and suddenly the sword flew from Gabriel’s hand, yanked out of his grip by expert pressure against the blade in just the right spot.

Now it was down to one blade against one—a contest Gabriel knew he couldn’t win.

He kicked out with one foot, planting his boot in DeGroet’s midsection. DeGroet flew backwards, fetching up against one of the chains, grabbing onto it with his free hand to keep himself from falling off the platform. Before he could come back, Gabriel leaned out past the platform’s edge and took hold of the lever by its side. With a mighty heave, he pulled it toward him.

It didn’t want to move, but Gabriel left it no choice, dragging it along the channel in the floor in which it was lodged. It came, scraping with a horrendous squeal. DeGroet, meanwhile, had regained his footing and had his sword poised for another stroke—but a sound from overhead stopped them both. It was a loud grinding of stone against stone, not unlike the sound they’d heard in the chamber within the Great Sphinx, just before poor Rashidi had been chopped in half. They felt a tremor beneath their feet—and then suddenly the platform they were on lifted into the air, the chains rattling as they got forcefully yanked upwards.

Gabriel grabbed hold of one chain, DeGroet another; they both clung desperately as the platform sped through the air, the solitary light of the flashlight dwindling far below them. They were being drawn up a stone shaft at tremendous speed, as though a mammoth counterweight had been dropped from some vast height and was now plunging into whatever stygian depths Istvan had fallen to.

They couldn’t see—not just each other, but anything. Gabriel brought his sword up in front of his face and he couldn’t see the blade. The walls of the vertical tunnel through which they were rocketing might have been feet away or inches—there was no way to know, other than to reach a hand out, and Gabriel wasn’t about to try that experiment. Looking up, he saw no sign of what waited for them overhead—

But then a crack opened, a narrow line above them, lit by a concussive string of lightning strikes. It widened from a hairline to a handsbreadth and from there to a doorway’s width, two slabs of stone above them separating and tilting to either side to make room for the platform to emerge.

What had this been used for, Gabriel wondered, this primitive but effective elevator—raising beasts to the upper surface in dramatic fashion, to impress prospective purchasers?

The opening continued to spread wider and rainwater gushed down on them, the monsoon having reached its full strength while they were sheltered within the belly of the mountain.

The platform slowed, some sort of baffle kicking in. It shuddered to a halt when it was level with the upper surface. Gabriel stepped off between the chains, his legs unsteady.

The sight that greeted him in the next flash of lightning was extraordinary—all of Sri Lanka spread out below them, a thousand feet below or more, the treetops a vast furred carpet, the snaking lengths of highway and river like veins on an anatomy chart. The winds were powerful, gusting this way and that, buffeting him from behind, pushing him toward the rock’s edge. He saw DeGroet run toward him and raised his sword to meet the charge.

But it was hopeless. He parried high and DeGroet swung low, the point of his blade shredding the front of Gabriel’s leather jacket and the shirt and skin beneath. Gabriel tried to control his blade, to swing carefully rather than wildly and not give DeGroet any openings, but it was like a novice at chess playing against a master, his desperate attempts at strategy countered and foiled effortlessly.

He saw a cruel smile emerge on DeGroet’s lips as he pressed Gabriel back, back, till they were both near the edge. Glancing down, Gabriel saw they were at one of the mountain’s overhang points—no slope at all that he might roll down safely, not even a sheer face he might dream of climbing if the rains hadn’t made that impossible. Just a fall—an endless, open drop into eternity.