Hunted [The Flash Gold Chronicles] (10 page)

“You all right?” Cedar released her with a
pat on the arm.

The lantern had tipped over and gone out.
Somehow Kali had kept a hold of the drill, and the slender streaks
of lightning arcing along the tool provided the only light. It was
enough. She found her hole and went back to work. This time she did
not bother with slow and quiet.

“I reckon that’s a yes.” Cedar, sword in
hand, turned to guard her back while she worked.

“Did you cause that explosion or did they?”
Kali asked, her voice vibrating with the reverberations of the
drill. Dirt and rock sloughed from the growing hole.

“I did.”

“How?”

“You, being a bright book-reading girl, know
that hydrogen is flammable,” he said, referencing the airship she
had crashed. “I, being a bright alcohol-drinking boy, know that
vodka is flammable.”

“You blew up the still?”

“Not bad, eh?”

She agreed, but all she said was, “Huh.”

“There you go again,” Cedar said, “making me
blush with your fulsome praise.”

The dim lighting hid her grin.

She rose on her tiptoes, pressing the drill
higher. Cedar would have to take over soon if she didn’t reach—

A draft of fresh air whispered across her
cheek. Her grin broadened. The resistance disappeared, and the
drill poked through.

“I’m going to need a boost.” Kali widened the
hole so Cedar’s broad shoulders would fit through.

“I’ll go first and pull you up.”

She cut off the drill and nodded toward the
hole. “Not interested in handling my hips again?”

“Oh, I’m interested, but let’s make sure
nobody’s waiting to put a bullet in your head first.”

“Or drop a grenade on it,” Kali muttered.

Cedar grabbed both sides of the hole and
pulled his head through. Long seconds passed while he hung, boots
dangling above the ground. At first, she marveled that he could
hold himself in that position so long. Then she lost patience and
wanted to shove him out of the way so she could look.

Elsewhere in the tunnel, the screams had
abated, and she doubted it would be long before some of the men
climbed out, if only to tend to each other’s wounds.

Finally, Cedar pulled himself up, slithering
over the edge without a sound. Only a trickle of dust marked his
passing.

As promised, he soon extended a hand for her.
Kali plopped the handle of the drill into it. With their ammo gone,
it was the best weapon she had. Besides, she would not leave it
behind with precious flash gold embedded in it.

Cedar lifted the drill out, then lowered his
hand again. She gave him her pack, which he also pulled free.

“What’s going on up there?” she asked,
wondering how much time they had.

“Ssh,” he whispered and wriggled his
fingers.

Kali grabbed his hand and bunched her legs,
preparing for a good jump, but he simply pulled her out as if she
weighed no more than a snared rabbit. She settled beside him where
he crouched above the ragged hole.

Dawn had come to the river valley, revealing
more stillness than expected, considering the activity of moments
before. As she had hoped, they were in the trees above the rocky
bank. The engine and boiler that marked the mine entrance sat
downhill twenty meters away. Several bodies lay on the bank,
unmoving, and Kali swallowed, numbly aware of the carnage they had
caused. More dead must be buried in the rubble beneath them. A
concave depression marked a cave-in, right about where the still
would have been. She clenched her teeth, resenting Sebastian all
over again for starting her along this path where bounty
hunters—and simple prospectors—vied to turn her in for a
reward.

“Stay here,” Cedar whispered. “I’m going for
my pack and ammo.” He pointed to Sebastian’s camp. His mangled
bedroll lay visible on the rocky earth. “Keep an ear open. I
thought I heard some mechanical noises in the forest behind us when
I first poked my head up.”

“Blazes,” Kali said. “That woman again?”

Why couldn’t she have gone back to Dawson to
rest, like a normal just-shot person?

Cedar left her side to follow the tree line
toward Sebastian’s claim. The spring foliage soon hid him. Kali
took a few steps from the hole and put her back against a spruce.
The undergrowth should hide her from anyone who came out of the
mine.

She closed her eyes for a moment, both
because looking at the bodies made her uncomfortable and because
she wanted to listen for suspicious noises.

Kali did not have long to wait. In the woods
behind her, a soft click-whir grew audible. It repeated, steady and
regular, like the ticking of a clock. Oddly, the sound seemed to
come not from the ground but from the trees, perhaps ten or twenty
feet in the air. It couldn’t be the flyer; she and Cedar had
crashed that. The noises were not the same either.

She craned her neck, her eyes probing the
canopy. Though birds should have been chirping to welcome the dawn,
no animal sounds drifted from the woods. Water rushed by in the
river, and a soft breeze rattled tree branches, but nothing
warm-blooded stirred.

Click-whir, click-whir, click-whir.

It was definitely coming from the
treetops.

Movement rustled a clump of needles high up
on a spruce. Kali squinted. Another breeze? No. The other branches
remained still.

She chomped down on her lip, tempted to
investigate, but she should wait for Cedar’s return. If that woman
was responsible—and who else would be out here with things that
clicked and clanked?—Kali would need help against her.

She checked on Sebastian’s camp and did not
spot Cedar, but his packsack had disappeared. The first man was
crawling out of the mine entrance. Time to get going.

Something sharp stabbed Kali in the butt, and
she gasped in pain, almost dropping the drill. She glared behind
her, thinking Cedar was playing a joke. The pain had been enough to
bring a tear to her eye, and she planned to give him a mouthful of
vitriol.

Nobody stood behind her.

She patted her rump, expecting shrapnel or a
dart protruding from it. That had been too powerful to be a bug
bite, especially given the thickness of her trousers.

Cedar slipped out of the foliage to her side,
glanced at her hand placement, and raised an eyebrow.
“Problem?”

She yanked her hand away from her backside
and glowered suspiciously at him, but the angle of his approach was
wrong. Whatever had attacked her had come from behind. Behind and
maybe above.

Click-whir.

Kali lifted her eyes. Leaves shuddered.
“Something’s up there.”

Cedar knelt beside her and plucked something
from the mud. A tiny metal sphere, perhaps a third of the size of
an old musket ball, glinted in the palm of his hand.

Low voices came from the mine entrance.
Another man had crawled out. Blood stained his sandy hair and
saturated his shirt.

Weariness dragged Kali’s shoulders down; she
had grown tired of this adventure and wanted to go back to the city
where she could rely on the defenses in her workshop to protect
her. And where no one need be injured. Or killed.

“We can go back to town,” Cedar said, perhaps
guessing her thoughts. “Wilder...isn’t going to pan out. He isn’t
with Cudgel any more.”

“Didn’t you say his head is worth money in
its own right?”

“I’m not collecting on it. He says he’s gone
straight, and I believe him. He’s up here with his pregnant wife
and one-year-old son. They’re hoping to find enough gold to make a
fresh start.”

“Oh.” Kali did not know what Wilder had done
to earn his bounty, but she could not argue for killing a man with
a new family to provide for. “Sorry the trip was a waste for
you.”

“Not a total waste. I got kissed.”

“By Wilder?”

Cedar snorted. “By
you
.”

“I know about
that
. I was just making
sure I didn’t have competition. This Wilder might be a looker.”

He waved away her goofy comments. “Wilder did
say he agreed with me in that Cudgel was probably on his way up to
Dawson. He’s too greedy to miss an opportunity like this.” He
spread a hand to indicate the river and the claims.

A thud sounded beside Kali’s ear, and shards
of bark flew off the tree beside her. A gouge appeared in the
trunk.

“Time to go,” Cedar said.

“Do we face the angry humans by the river or
the unknown somethings in the forest?”

“Your choice. I have ammo now.

“We can cut back to the trail through the
trees.” Kali glanced at Sebastian’s injured men. “I’m tired of
hurting people.”

“You want to hurt machines?” Cedar led the
way into the forest.

“No, but I want to see them up close.”

“Even if they’re shooting at you?”

“I’m odd,” Kali said. “I know.” She wanted to
know what powered them and what directed them to move—and shoot.
Nothing natural. That much she knew.

Something glided out of the branches. Before
Kali got a good look, burning pain lanced into her abdomen. She
hunched over, clutching her stomach. Again, the wound was not
enough to break skin or rip clothing, but she would have a bruise
before long.

“You all right?” Cedar gripped her shoulder.
“I saw it. It’s a foot long and looks like a big butterfly with
wings made of the same mesh as the flyer.”

“If you saw it, why didn’t you shoot it?”

“Don’t we want your friends to believe we
were caught in the cave-in?”

Right. Weapons fire would give them away.
“All right,” she said, “let’s get out of here. That thing is aiming
for me.”

They broke into a jog with Cedar leading the
way. Though no trail meandered through the forest, enough people
had clomped around their claims that Kali and Cedar could maneuver
between the trees, following paths of trampled foliage. Their
footfalls drowned out the
click-whirs
of the mechanical
creature, but she feared it was not far behind. Between the
packsack bumping on her back and the drill snagging on branches,
she was not moving quickly. More than once, Cedar glanced back and
slowed his pace for her.

Without warning, another tiny projectile
hammered Kali in the jaw.

“Tarnation!” she blurted, grabbing her chin.
Without the protection of clothing, that one hurt more than the
others. Warm blood dribbled through her fingers. “How’d it get in
front of us?”

“I don’t know. Another quarter mile, and I’ll
risk a shot.”

They kept running. Though the balls did not
cause overbearing pain, the face shot made Kali aware of the
possibility of getting one in the eye.

The next stab of pain came from the side. She
growled in frustration and gritted her teeth.

Sword in hand, Cedar darted in front of her
and crashed into the undergrowth. He leaped into the air and
whipped the blade upward so quickly Kali could not track its path.
Metal clashed against metal, and something slammed into a tree
trunk. Her eyes finally caught up with the action when the
contraption clattered to the ground.

“Keep running,” Cedar said. “There’s more
than one.”

But she sprinted over to check out the
device. It was worth a few more balls in the butt if she could take
one home to study.

The winged, bronze and steel creature had a
finely wrought carapace, and Cedar’s blade had sliced its body in
half. When she picked up a piece, its lightness surprised her.

“Go, go.” Cedar pulled her to her feet and
gave her a shove.

He was staring past her shoulder, and she
risked a glance before running the direction he indicated. And she
gulped. No fewer than ten of the flying creatures were descending
from the trees and angling toward her, like a swarm of bees.

Still clutching the broken one, she took
Cedar’s advice and ran. There were no clear trails, and she
stumbled on roots and rocks. Branches whipped her face and snagged
her hair. She almost dropped the drill, but she did not have time
to dig the flash gold out, and she refused to leave a piece of
that
on the forest floor.

Footsteps thundered behind her. Cedar.

“They’re staying out of sword reach,” he
said.

“They’re smart.”

“Flash gold smart?” He must have also
realized no natural explanation could account for the autonomous
creations.

“Maybe.” Flash gold was her father’s
invention, and she did not think much of it was out there in the
world, if any. She had read of witches animating inanimate objects
and controlling them, and thought that a more likely explanation
for the swarm, but she could not be sure. She lacked the breath to
share her speculations.

Cedar grunted, then cursed. He was running
directly behind her and taking the hits.

“You don’t have to...do that,” she said.

The effort of holding the pace was catching
up with her. Without the packsack, she would have an easier time,
but she was unwilling to leave her tools behind. She could have
dropped the drill or the metal carcass, but she might find another
use for the former, and she
had
to check out the latter as
soon as there was time. This woman’s work was incredible.

“Veer right,” Cedar said. “The river bends
ahead, and we’ll run into some rapids if we keep going
straight.”

“It’d be nice if...someone would have...made
a trail for us.”

“We’ll meet up with it soon.”

When Kali tried to follow his instructions
and run right, movement in that direction made her falter. Two of
the creatures swooped out of the canopy.

Cedar’s rifle cracked. One of the constructs
flew backward, smashing into a tree. The other returned fire. The
bullet was too small to track, but Cedar cursed and dropped his
rifle. He snatched it up and caught up with Kali.

“They’re herding us,” he said.

Yes, she was getting that feeling. “To corner
us...at the river? I’m hot and tired enough to jump in and...take
my chances with the current.”