When David didn’t reply, Xander said, “I don’t know, Dae. It’s something to figure out. Move faster.”
The coat billowed in front of David, making him look barrel-chested and fat.
As they approached the bend, Xander said, “Dae, it’s not pulling
too
hard, is it?”
David glanced at him, saw true concern. “Not yet. Why?”
Xander stuck his arm out, stopping him. “Maybe you should take it off.”
“What? It’s freezing.”
“Would you rather be cold . . . or hurled off a cliff ?” He nodded toward the end of the visible path.
David hurried to unbutton himself. “Think it would do that?”
“I don’t know,” Xander said, “but why find out the hard way? The pull
does
get strong.”
Xander slipped the coat off him. “Oh, Dae,” he said.
David followed his brother’s gaze to his chest and stomach. His torso was so red it looked like someone had beat him with a paddle. There were a million pinpricks of blood, like a really bad rash. “It’s from sliding down the slope,” he said. Looking at the damage to his skin, his breathing picked up. He swallowed, sorry for himself.
“Holy cow!” Xander said, gaping at David’s stomach.
“What?” said David, thinking: gushing blood, bruises, a shard of something jabbed into him that he couldn’t feel because of the cold.
Xander flashed a grin. “You’re getting a six-pack, dude.”
David smiled. “I wish.” As ornery as his brother could be, he sure knew how to pick up his spirits when he wanted to. “It doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks. Just a little.” He shivered.
Xander said, “Let’s do this.” He draped the coat over David’s shoulders. “Hold it closed from the inside. Better?”
David nodded.
“Just let it go if it heads someplace bad.”
“Don’t worry.”
About twenty paces before the path curved around a steep outcropping of stone, David felt the coat starting to nudge him that way. He took that as a sign the coat—or any of the antechamber items—wasn’t going to lead them where they couldn’t go.
Xander stepped close to the edge of the path and peered over. “Oh, man. It’s straight down. No slope at all. I mean, I can’t even see the bottom.” He backed away.
Around the bend, the path wove gently back and forth, giving them a long view of it, maybe a half mile. It sloped down shallowly, then went up a hill and disappeared.
“How’s the pull?” Xander said.
“Getting stronger.”
“Let’s move faster,” Xander said again, rubbing his arms.
They started jogging. After a minute, Xander stopped. He crouched and pulled David down. He pointed to something up on the mountain above them, just ahead. It was a man, dressed completely in fur. His boots might have been leather, it was hard to tell at that distance. A tight-fitting fur cap covered the top of his head. Long black hair spilled out from under the cap and whipped around in the wind. He was facing away from the boys, and David could make out a quiver of arrows strapped diagonally across his back. His left hand held a bow.
As they watched, another man appeared beside him. This one was similarly dressed, but carried a sword. A third man stepped into view. All three angled their attention beyond the hill at the far end of this current stretch of path. As quickly as they had appeared, they vanished.
“Who are they?” David whispered.
Xander shook his head. He looked ahead, then over his shoulder. Indecision etched old-man lines in his face.
“We have to keep going,” David said. The tug of the coat, urging him to continue along the path, was getting difficult to reign in. Even if they wanted to turn back, he doubted the coat would let them.
Xander stood and pulled David to the inside edge of the path, where the stone formed slanted walls. “Single file,” he whispered. “Stay close to the mountain.”
They continued toward the hill. Despite continually checking, neither of them saw the men again.
As they started climbing the hill, David touched Xander’s arm. He pointed at the coat. Below the spot where his hand held the front together, the material stood straight out, as though David had strapped a blue, cloth-covered table to his belly. It vibrated with tension.
Xander smiled. “Close,” he said. “Right over the hill, I bet.”
The ground shook, a quick rumble, then nothing. Xander’s eyes widened. “Did you feel—” It shook again, again, again.
A rumbling sound reached them, the low tremble of drums. The tremors under their feet continued.
Xander grabbed David’s shoulder. “What does that remind you of ?”
“An earthquake?” David didn’t want to be on a mountain during an earthquake. Who knew what would come tumbling down on them.
“
Jurassic Park
,” Xander said. “When the T. Rex is coming and the coffee starts trembling.”
“You think we’re in
dinosaur
times?” David almost screamed.
“I’m not saying that,” Xander said. “But
something’s
coming.”
“We have to get to the portal!” David said. “Now!” He ducked out of Xander’s grasp and ran up the hill. He half expected Xander to grab him or at least call his name. Instead, his brother caught up, ran alongside. Both of them scanned the rocks above them. Nothing.
They hit the top of the hill, and David grabbed Xander’s arm. A cloud of vapors billowed from his mouth, giving form to his silent scream.
An elephant charged up the other side at the boys.
A
war
elephant: Armor covered its head. Its tusks curved forward from the sides of its mouth—impossibly large swords. Behind its head sat a man wearing red, flowing robes. He held a short rod, which he used to tap the animal’s head. A harness crossed over his chest and held him to the front of an ornate wooden box, which bounced precariously on the elephant’s back.
Three men—obviously soldiers—stood in the box. They wore metal helmets and breastplates. Two gripped bows and arrows, ready for a fight. The third brandished a polelike spear—a pike, long enough to impale people on the ground.
Behind this lead animal, a dozen more trotted, all with drivers and soldiers on their backs. Men on horseback rode among the larger animals. They galloped alongside, some crossing in front, some in full stride heading for the front.
Farther back, foot soldiers marched, carrying a forest of pikes and shields that sparkled like the scales of a dragon. Behind them, more elephants and cavalrymen.
The army completely filled the passage as far as David could see. In the distance, the path curved out of sight, the army curving with it.
David started to spin around, planning to run—up the mountain, back the way they had come, anywhere. Xander shoved him from behind, toward the elephant. As he fell, he craned around to see Xander on the side of the path. Terror twisted his face into a very un-Xanderlike mask. David realized his brother had not shoved him: it had been the
coat
! It wanted to go home.
David slid down the hill on his back. He batted the coat flaps off his chest, but he was
lying
on it—and it was moving.
The coat carried him like a magic carpet into the elephant’s path.
Xander yelled, “Roll off!”
David kicked the ground and spun, but it was too late. The animal was nearly on top of him. The thing reared up on its hind legs. Its front feet pedaled in the air. It didn’t trumpet as much as it
screamed,
a hissing, canyon-deep bellow that announced its displeasure at this strange creature slithering toward it.
The beast’s foot came down on David’s legs—or would have had David not thrown his legs up at the last moment. He bumped into its leg, and it reared up again. He slid under it—not fast enough. The pizza-sized foot dropped, aiming for his head. He rolled, and the foot stomped the coat. David lay facedown on top of the coat’s front panel. He rolled again, slipping his arm free from Xander’s makeshift sling. He pushed up onto his hands and knees.
A third time, the elephant reared. The coat began sliding away. David grabbed it. More than anything, he did not want to lose it.
The coat whipped like a flag in his hand. He stood, backed away from the animal.
Its heavy tusks swung toward David’s head like ivory baseball bats. He ducked. The tusks passed over him, then swung back. The beast stepped toward the cliff.
“David!” Xander yelled.
While his name still rang in his ears, something grabbed his left arm and shoved it. His arm slammed into the ground, bringing him down with it. He gaped at a pike pinning the bandage-covered cast to the ground. His eyes followed it to the soldier standing in the box on the elephant’s back.
He held the pike in both hands, his face twisted with cruel intentions. He yelled,
“Nativi! Prepari morire! ”
and pulled back on the pike.
David’s arm went with it. He rose off the ground and landed on his feet, his arm raised and crossing in front of his face. But the spearhead of the pike, which had pierced his cast without hitting his arm, now hovered three inches in front of his eye. He jerked his head sideways as the soldier thrust the pike. The spearhead nicked David’s ear. It carried his arm with it, and the cast cracked against his head.
The soldier pulled back, ripping the pike from the cast.
Xander came screaming down the hill. An archer in the elephant box raised his bow, taking aim.
The soldier with the pike did not avert his eyes from David. The spearhead wavered like a shaky hand three feet from David’s chest.
An arrow thunked into the neck of the archer who had taken aim at Xander. He gurgled out a scream and fell backward out of David’s line of sight—until he thumped to the ground on the other side of the elephant.
Two more arrows struck the soldier with the pike: one in the shoulder, one in the neck. The man dropped the pike.
The spearhead bit into the ground between David’s feet. The soldier pitched forward. He tumbled out of the box, rolled over the animal’s rear end, and crashed to the ground.
The last soldier in the box shot an arrow. It sailed high, toward the rocks above the pass. David followed it with his eyes. The cliff above the road was lined with the fur-covered men he and Xander had seen earlier. One of them shot an arrow, and David followed it back to the soldier on the elephant. It struck his breastplate and zinged away. The soldier flinched, reversed a step, and sent his own arrow flying.
Xander stomped up to David. He grabbed him and yanked him back toward the wall under the furry warriors.
David plopped down against the mountain. The road here was narrow, and even with his back pressed into the stone, David found the elephant too close for his liking.
A shadow flashed over him, coming from the mountain.
One of the furry men landed on the elephant’s back. He clung to the outside of the box. The soldier lunged at him, wielding an arrow like a dagger. Fur Man dodged it, raised a short sword, and chopped.
His body shielded David from seeing where the blow landed. But that it did was clear: a scream filled the air, and the soldier fell off the far side of the elephant. He did not thump to the ground as the others had done. He simply vanished over the cliff.
The beast—sensing or seeing how near it was to the edge— turned from it. Its tusks swung toward the boys.
David pulled his feet in and leaned into the wall behind him, wishing he could somehow climb
into
the stone.
The path was not wide enough for that huge animal to turn around, but it was turning anyway. The driver furiously beat the rod against the animal’s head. He yelled commands in a foreign language. One of the elephant’s tusks struck the rock cliff and scraped against it.
Fur Man was in the box now, directly behind the driver. He raised the sword over his head with both hands.
The elephant stepped back. Its hind foot stomped down on the crest of the cliff. The ground under it crumbled. Its leg went over. The rear half of its massive body collapsed, sending a shockwave into the ground that David felt. The animal’s other rear leg kicked, pushing its rear over the edge. Its front legs pressed into the ground, but it could not stop its backward slide. Its feet left deep gouges in the earth. Lifting its head, raising its tusks like outstretched arms, it let loose with that deep, hissing bellow.
Fur Man sprang up from behind its head. He planted a foot on the plate between the animal’s eyes, and leaped between its tusks.
The beast went over.
Fur Man landed on his feet, directly in front of David and Xander. He had a straight nose, high cheekbones, a short-cropped beard, and intelligent green eyes. David thought that in any other setting he could have been a nobleman. Glaring at David and Xander, the man cocked his sword high above his head.
David let out a squeaky yelp—he couldn’t help it—and threw his hands up. He watched the man through splayed fingers: he would close his eyes when the blow came, but closing them now and
waiting
seemed much worse.