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sealieBy Sealie and LKY
Warnings and disclaimers in Part One
The sun came out that morning, bathing the neighbourhood, the shoreline and the North Sea in sparkling brilliance. Jim slept through it. Blair snored from his own room, equally as tired. What little of the night had been left from staking out the cave had been frittered away at the local police station.
Blair had bitched all the way back to the house, yawning so widely his jaw cracked. Mostly the kid had grouched about the fact another band of smugglers would be using the cave before the end of the month. And yeah, Jim knew that.
It wasn’t the point.
The point was that by then, Jim wouldn’t be temporarily living a couple dozen yards away from the drop off site.
After arriving back the old house, he had pushed Blair toward his bedroom and told him not to come out for at least three hours. Then he’d treat him to a filling lunch. Blair grumbled, but the promise of free food made him compliant.
Now, feeling fresh from his nap and ready to take on another band of smugglers, Jim dressed after a quick shower and banged on Blair’s door.
“Up and at ‘em, Rip. I’m starving.”
Thirty minutes later they were in Tonka the Mighty Tiny car. “I’m getting the hang of this left hand shifting,” Jim bragged.
Blair’s fingers had sunk into the dash. “I’ll alert the media,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
By the time they ate at a quaint little café down a side street beside the city’s cathedral and drank rather watery coffee and strolled around the downtown streets, heavy clouds had rolled back across the sky. The smell of rain caused Jim to feel lazy and disconnected. Store windows held gifts suitable for his friends back home. He eyed the price tags in the store windows, did the math and decided to wait a while.
Blair walked silently at his side.
Too silently.
“What’s on your mind, Sandburg?”
“What?” Blair blinked up innocently.
“You’re cooking up trouble, I can sense it.”
Beaming happily, his short friend rubbed his hands together. “Funny you should mention your senses. I was just thinking I’m due my daily test.”
Crap. There goes the afternoon. “Can’t we count the arrest last night as a –“
“No!” Blair shot him down. “No way. *You* cooked that caper up, Batman. Not me. I want an honest-to-god test.”
A couple walking arm-in-arm gave them a wide berth on the cobblestone walkway cutting between two tall stone buildings.
“All right, Sandburg. Just calm down for me. I’ll do your test.” Jim rubbed his jaw. How bad could it be? Afterwards they’d get back to the house and poke around a little on the shore. The local cops should be finished by then. Then tomorrow they’d get up early and return to the Roman fort.
“Come on, this way.” Blair yanked him into a slender alleyway that smelled of rotted meat and piss. “The city was originally protected by walls. Some of them are still standing. I wanna see if your sixth sense picks up anything.”
Oh, hell.
Blair’s destination turned out to be where the original wall, blackened by time, had joined to form a corner. Jim had to admit, it was worth the extra effort to see. Steps rose to allow a guard access to peer over the top. A small room had been constructed at the inside corner, about the size of an office. A guard shack maybe?
Jim fingered the hand-cut stone, once more amazed by the intact history that surrounded him.
“I figure you just need the proper reference point,” Blair said. “Here, sit over here on the steps and lean back… that’s it.”
The steps were warm from the sun’s morning rays. Jim settled back, feeling foolish. “Now what?”
Circling the air with his right hand, Blair waggled his eyebrows. “Do your thing, man.”
“*This* is a test?” Jim chastised dryly. “You’re acting like a kid that learned his toy has flashy buttons to push.”
“I am not.” Blair whined. “Come on, Jim. You promised.”
~*~
Blair sulked.
Jim let him out and drove Tiny the Terribly Tortuous Tonka car into the garage, an act that always reminded him of threading a needle, and parked. He followed his partner to the side kitchen door.
“Listen, Sandburg. I tried, okay?”
“Yeah, right.” Blair twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
“Didn’t you tell me that no results can sometimes be just a useful? Well, there you go. We got nada.” Jim reasoned as he followed.
~*~
“Are you hungry? I’m hungry,” Blair mooched through the cupboards, hunting. “I don’t know what I’m hungry for?”
Jim consulted his watch, since his inner time sense was up the Watoosii River, to try and decide what he wanted to eat was too difficult. It was only four o’clock. Too early for dinner. They had had a relatively easy day, albeit an exciting morning. Jim guessed that Blair had engineered a quiet day.
The student was pulling out jar after jar after jar of preserves and spreads.
Then again he had been subjected to the sixth sense test; the day hadn’t been that easy.
“Toast,” his personal bugbear asked, “to tide us over until dinner? You want to go to the pub up the street again?”
“Before or after we check out the cave?”
“The cave?”
“Yeah, why not. Caves, smugglers; it’s an adventure.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” Blair mused. “Toast is a good idea. One slice or two?”
Shaking his head at the subject, Jim decided on two.
Blair popped four slices in the toaster and then sort of mock tap danced over to the fridge to grab the pot of spreadable churned butter. Jim sifted through the spreads, jellies, marmalades, two different types of honey and peanut butter. A large brown, round glass jar caught his eye. Its shape characteristic of nothing, brown glass and topped with bright, bumble bee yellow lid. The label said: Marmite.
Jim cracked the jar.
“Oh.” That was difficult to categorise, savoury – a base of yeast (maybe) with salt and carrots? But it all came together in appetizing goodness. The instructions said: spread thinly on toast. Perfect.
Blair dropped a plate with two slices dripping with butter before him. Precisely, Jim spread the Marmite.
“No!” Blair shrieked as he opened his mouth to bite down on the toast.
“What?”
Blair held his hands out in a warding gesture. “That’s Marmite, the nastiest stuff on the planet. Do not eat it!”
“This is from the guy whose favourite dish is boiled tongue and last week you ate miso with squid.” He took a bite. All his taste buds awoke, tingling in happy-pleasure. The butter eased but, somehow, also concentrated the salty goodness. Umami.
Blair shuddered. “You like it? I don’t believe it. How can a sentinel like Marmite?”
“What’s the problem? It’s a … I dunno, a spread, it’s like….” He took another large bite. “Nothing that I’ve tasted before, actually.”
“Marmite. Blergh.” Blair stuck his fingers in his mouth and gagged dramatically.
“Don’t you think that you’re over reacting?” Jim asked around a mouthful of toast as he made plans to import jars back to the US.
“Why do you want to go back to the cave?” Blair asked out of nowhere and Jim suddenly realised that he did.
Jim pursed his lips as he went over the takedown outside the entrance. The reverberating sound of the police sirens had been concrete, so tangible that he could map their bouncing around the cove. The ricocheting lines of sound that had entered the cave had disappeared out of all ken, swamped by the darkness.
The cave went far back into the cliff face.
Jim pushed the rest of the slice in his mouth and then stood. “Come on,” he mumbled.
“Now?” Blair said plaintively.
~*~
Jim munched on his second slice of toast (now cold) as he regarded the cave. His ears pricked as he listened to the splash of the rising tide. Sound echoed back on itself, but the tailing edge moved further back into the cave to rebound again and again.
“You got a flashlight?”
“Yeah, I just happened to have one. I always bring a flashlight when I travel to the UK.”
Jim cocked his head to the side, hearing the little bite of sarcasm in Blair’s voice.
“You’re kidding.”
“Actually, I’m not.” Blair held up key fob where a small mag-lite hung. “It’s got a tiny flashlight.”
Jim huffed. “Okay, stay close.”
Under the salty tang of the sea, the cave smelled of decaying seaweed and animals.
The walls dripped.
“Is this sensible doing this on the rising tide?”
Green slimy algae dotted the cave up to waist height. So Jim doubted that the water inundated the cave, unless it was the springiest of spring tides. A little crab skittered sideways into a crevice.
“We’ll be all right.”
Blair muttered dubiously under his breath. Jim tracked the discontented muttering.
The sound snaked back and forth. He followed his guide’s voice.
Children’s footsteps marked a sandy path to the back of the cave. On his left was a knee high gap. Crouching down he peered through, a tunnel bent away at thirty degrees and daylight shone at the end. The scuff of many small knees dotted the sand. Kids ran through the cave and wiggled through the gap to crawl out to the other side of the cove. Who under the age of six could resist? This was one of the routes that the echoing sound took, but another moved back further.
“Are you zoning?”
“No.”
Jim stood, automatically ducking. The cave twisted to the right. Slowly, he moved forward, fingers running over the water smoothed stone. The levels of deposited sediment that his fingers ran over varied in texture. The secondary cave was like a truncated cone on its side, getting smaller and smaller to the back. There was another passage somewhere in the darkness.
“Whistle,” Jim directed.
Blair let rip.
“Ow!” Jim winced. Sound ran up above his head, creeping through worn tunnels and water driven cracks in the rock. But ahead, at head level, was the passage further into the cliff face.
Blair let his flashlight play over the back of the cave. Bits of mica glowed. Some of the sandstone was fragmented from feet trying to get a purchase up on the stone so they could reach the dark, gaping maw.
Jim chose a sensible foot hold and hoisted himself up, getting head and shoulders through the gap. To anyone else it would be pitch, pitch black.
“You come back down with a crab hooked on your nose and I’m gonna laugh,” Blair sang quietly.
Jim continued to survey the opening he had discovered, following the source of the odd echoing.
“Ever see the second Indiana Jones flick, Chief? The one where the babe puts the hand through the hole with the creepies?” He heard Blair shudder, so he continued. “Good thing you can’t see the ceiling.”
“What!” The dim light immediately hit the low ceiling, finding it absent of bug life. “Jerk.”
Projections in the rock, darkened and smooth by years of use as handholds allowed Jim to pull himself up until he was crouched inside the upper cave. A startled sound from Blair caused him to twist around and reach back down with one hand. “Get up here.”
Guiding, scooting back, guarding his partner’s head from hitting rock, Jim and Blair were soon huddled in the passageway.
“Neat-o, Huck. What do we do now?”
The sarcasm was light; Blair was obviously enjoying himself. It was a shame he couldn’t see like a sentinel. The tunnel twisted and turned. The air was fresh and moving. The walls were solid rock with occasional marks of tools. This was an old smugglers’ path.
“Well, Tom. I say we follow this and see where we come out.”
They had to crawl for the first few hundred yards, caking their knees with muddy sand until the ceiling rose to allow them to stand. Jim had to keep his head ducked, but Blair had the freedom to straighten his spine. Jim walked in front, allowing Blair’s mud covered hand to anchor in the back of his jacket. Blair was using his light sparingly, trusting Jim.
After nearly an hour of steady progress, Jim saw the bluish glow, its source coming from around the bend. He stopped, one hand reaching back, lightning fast, to halt his guide. Blair’s instinct kicked in. He remained silent.
The glow was steadily growing brighter.
No sound.
Shit.
Turn back?
Face it head on?
They weren’t armed.
This was a known smugglers’ cave.
This wasn’t fun anymore.
Flowing like liquid mercury over ice, the orb glided around the corner, sailing near the ceiling and racing towards them like ecstatic cocker spaniel greeting its owners after a long day at work.
“Wonderful,” Jim muttered, relaxing his ‘fight or flight’ body.
“What?” Blair demanded. “What do you see?”
The orb stopped a few feet away from them, vibrating with bright colour spectrum of blues and cold whites. Transparent, yet not entirely, Jim had to work from going into a zone from its beauty.
“The welcome wagon arrived,” Jim answered. “I think I know where this tunnel comes out.”
“What are you thinking, Jim?”
“History.”
“History?”
“Yeah.” Jim extended two fingers and reached to brush the outmost edges of the orb’s aura.
“You wanna explain, Huck? Shouldn’t I be Huck? I mean I’m the cute, smaller one. What welcome wagon? I’m in dark here, Jim. Literally and practically.”
“This is a smugglers’ route and it’s old. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of hands have carved this passage out over centuries.”
Blair breathed slowly and deeply enthralled.
“At the start it’s natural. There probably was a passage all the way here, but it needed work.”
The orb drifted to the north wall, where granite hewn rectangular blocks shored up the tunnel. A humongous stone pillar separated hewn stone face from manufactured bricks and mortar.
Jim snorted. The orb bobbed merrily. “We’re under the old Keep.”
“What?”
“We passed what I think was the edge of the foundations of the city wall a hundred yards back. You know, it’s lucky the Keep’s at what I guess is the edge of the city. The modern constructed buildings are further east. As we’ve trekked through this tunnel over head there’s just been suburbia and smaller buildings. If a sky scraper had been built they would have spliced through this tunnel like hot knife through butter.”
Blair shivered.
“We’re under the Keep,” Jim repeated, “and this passage is used.”
“What do you mean?” Blair said, even though he understood.
“There’s footprints.”
The orb dipped down and then bobbled up. Abruptly, startling him, it jerked away at right angles to the floor in the direction of the Keep.
“You know,” Jim continued conversationally, “I can guess where your lost treasures went.”
Jim would have said more except Blair unexplainably bolted from his side.
“Hey,” Jim called out, wasting precious seconds before giving chase. He didn’t want Blair exploring on his own, even if he did have the feeble light from his flashlight.
“Get back here.”
“Yes!” came a distant cheer down a narrow, twisty side tunnel that Jim had missed. The orb had been too distracting. “Check this out.”
Jim turned the last corner in time to see Blair strike off across a spacious, dead-end room where the side tunnel ended. The ceiling to the cavern rose to ten feet. The walls were smooth. The floor covered in a layer of fine dirt.
Fine dirt with no footprints.
A hoard of stolen artefacts rested against the back wall.
Jim glanced back down at the floor and realized it had been raked into a perfect even cover.
“Chief, NO!” Jim lunged forward to haul his gleeful guide back just as the first crack of dry wood beneath them gave way.
Blair fell, arms wind-milling madly.
Jim fell right beside him. Dirt exploded everywhere, shooting up his nostrils, making him sneeze, attacking his eyes, blinding him, forcing its way into his throat. The free fall ended with a cruel landing. Jim was ready, keeping his body loose and rolling with the impact.
The unmistaken sound of a breaking bone came right before the scream.
Jim scrambled to his hands and knees, blindly patting the rock-hard ground and finding Blair’s shoulder. “Sandburg.”
“OhgodJimithurts… hurts!”
Scrubbing at his useless eyes until he could make out dark shadows on black background, Jim forced his partner to stay still. “Easy, easy. Let me check it out. Where?”
“L-leg.” Blair answered with clenched teeth. He groaned and jerked as Jim’s hands moved downward. “No, no, no, don’t! Don’t touch it.”
Roughly pushing back the slapping hand, Jim penned him to the ground. “Stop it. Keep still.”
The supine body froze.
Jim talked softly as he let his fingertips move over one hip, down the jeans, over the knee. “I’m careful, see? Not going to move anything. Just need to see where the problem is.” He breathed a silent sigh when he realized the damage appeared to be below the knee joint. A broken femur not only hurt like hell, the amount of blood lost could kill. “Ahh, okay, I’ve got it. Yep, a fracture, Chief. Feels like the tibia for sure, maybe the fibula. Hard to tell. Skin’s intact, that’s good.” Jim checked the left leg and found it whole.
“I don’t believe this. I *don’t* believe this,” Blair chanted angrily. He had yet to move after being ordered still, except to throw one arm over his eyes. His breath hitched and he groaned. “It hurts, man.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Jim slipped two fingers into Blair’s tennis shoe, checking the distal pulse below the fracture. He found it strong. That was another good sign. All in all, it could have been worst. He moved back to Blair’s head and caught the free hand that had worked into a tight fist. “Look at me.”
Blair lifted his arm. Tears mixed with the fine dust caught in his eyelashes, forming specks of mud.
Jim knew it was dark, too dark for Blair to see him probably. He pretended Blair could and smiled. “Keep still. You’re still pumping blood to all the necessary parts down there. I don’t want to mess with that. We’ll get to a hospital and get you fixed up in no time.”
“Ah, I suppose now’s – ah, shit.” He winced and squeezed Jim’s hand. “I suppose now’s a bad time to tell you I skipped getting the international insurance policy for this t-trip.”
Jim rolled his eyes and tilted his head back to examine the edge of the pit overhead.
“Wonderful. Wonderful,” Jim uttered again, “stuck in a pit with an idiot for a guide.”
“Oi,” Blair protested.
“Luckily your blessed protector was on the case. I got us insurance. And you call yourself an international traveller.”
“I’m a student. Poor, you know.”
“There’s some things that you don’t stint on, Chief.” Jim began.
Blair slumped back on the earth floor, a distinctly pale green cast to his features. Berating would come later, where they were holed up in the local hospital and Blair had some of the good drugs.
Jim rocked back on his heels, closed his eyes, took a meditative breath in through his nose and out through his mouth and then mapped the world around him. The fusty air tasted like death. The passage above him was used, the pit was old and the earth floor firmly packed. People had moved through the tunnel since its inception until this modern age.
The question was: where were the smugglers now?
In an ideal world moving Blair would involve professionals, but they had landed in a smugglers’ hoard. This was not a good place to stay.
“Chief?” he said softly.
“Has the cavalry arrived yet?”
“‘Fraid Simon’s in Cascade; it’s gonna take him awhile to get here.” Slowly, Jim unwound his belt. “Chief, I’m just going to take your belt off.”
“Why?” Blair said suspiciously.
“Make you more comfortable.” Jim suited actions to words. He tested its length and the punch holes. The broken wood that was strewn across the floor were tested next. They were brittle and dry, fragmenting under his questing fingers. Decisively, he abandoned that approach. Shrugging out of his jacket and fleece jacket he removed his t-shirt. The cool, damp air seemed to congeal on his skin. Swiftly, he pulled his fleece and coat back on. He folded the t-shirt into a thickish, long wad.
“Chief?”
“Uhuh?”
“Chief, I’m going to have to brace your leg against your other leg. Splint one to the other.”
“What!” he shrieked.
“Sssssshh.” Jim planted his hand over Blair’s mouth. “Shush, Chief. I don’t think we want the inhabitants to find us.”
“Oh, this is gonna hurt, isn’t it?” he murmured against Jim’s palm.
“Yep,” Jim said uncompromisingly. Moving with the utmost care he straightened Blair’s good leg. The little shifts made Blair whimper. He placed the wad of t-shirt against Blair’s knee. When he lashed Blair’s legs together the t-shirt would cushion his knees. He laid the two belts down under Blair’s leg. One situated at the ankle and the other just below the knee joint.
“You ready?”
“No.” Blair said through gritted teeth. A tear track marred the fine dust on his face.
Rarely was Jim gratified to possess sentinel senses. His hands could feel the ebb and flow of blood in the damaged limb. The rapid pooling of fluid as the flesh swelled. Eyes closed he could visualise the damage as touch told him of the splintered bone and a tiny floating fragment. Jim moved and Blair shrieked. The splinters tore soft tissue. Bone edges grated. He looped the belt through the buckle and pulled bringing Blair’s knees together.
Blair was batting his hand against the dirt floor, pain the melody.
He caught the end on the second belt and looped it once, twice around Blair’s ankles and then fastened it firmly.
Blair lolled loosely, not quite fainted but not really present. Jim could hear the rush of blood through his arteries and the fainter shush-shoosh back through the veins. Blood still flowed through the damaged limb. His first aid had not compromised Blair’s leg.
“Hey, Chief.” Jim patted his cheek. “You did good.”
“Don’t do that again,” he whispered. “Don’t do that again. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.”
Jim stood to examine the pit. The edges were rough hewn. He should be able to scale the side. If he got Blair to stand or propped him again the wall, he could reach down and drag him up.
Maybe.
Possibly.
This plan sucked.
End of Part Eight
Part Nine
Warnings and disclaimers in Part One
The sun came out that morning, bathing the neighbourhood, the shoreline and the North Sea in sparkling brilliance. Jim slept through it. Blair snored from his own room, equally as tired. What little of the night had been left from staking out the cave had been frittered away at the local police station.
Blair had bitched all the way back to the house, yawning so widely his jaw cracked. Mostly the kid had grouched about the fact another band of smugglers would be using the cave before the end of the month. And yeah, Jim knew that.
It wasn’t the point.
The point was that by then, Jim wouldn’t be temporarily living a couple dozen yards away from the drop off site.
After arriving back the old house, he had pushed Blair toward his bedroom and told him not to come out for at least three hours. Then he’d treat him to a filling lunch. Blair grumbled, but the promise of free food made him compliant.
Now, feeling fresh from his nap and ready to take on another band of smugglers, Jim dressed after a quick shower and banged on Blair’s door.
“Up and at ‘em, Rip. I’m starving.”
Thirty minutes later they were in Tonka the Mighty Tiny car. “I’m getting the hang of this left hand shifting,” Jim bragged.
Blair’s fingers had sunk into the dash. “I’ll alert the media,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
By the time they ate at a quaint little café down a side street beside the city’s cathedral and drank rather watery coffee and strolled around the downtown streets, heavy clouds had rolled back across the sky. The smell of rain caused Jim to feel lazy and disconnected. Store windows held gifts suitable for his friends back home. He eyed the price tags in the store windows, did the math and decided to wait a while.
Blair walked silently at his side.
Too silently.
“What’s on your mind, Sandburg?”
“What?” Blair blinked up innocently.
“You’re cooking up trouble, I can sense it.”
Beaming happily, his short friend rubbed his hands together. “Funny you should mention your senses. I was just thinking I’m due my daily test.”
Crap. There goes the afternoon. “Can’t we count the arrest last night as a –“
“No!” Blair shot him down. “No way. *You* cooked that caper up, Batman. Not me. I want an honest-to-god test.”
A couple walking arm-in-arm gave them a wide berth on the cobblestone walkway cutting between two tall stone buildings.
“All right, Sandburg. Just calm down for me. I’ll do your test.” Jim rubbed his jaw. How bad could it be? Afterwards they’d get back to the house and poke around a little on the shore. The local cops should be finished by then. Then tomorrow they’d get up early and return to the Roman fort.
“Come on, this way.” Blair yanked him into a slender alleyway that smelled of rotted meat and piss. “The city was originally protected by walls. Some of them are still standing. I wanna see if your sixth sense picks up anything.”
Oh, hell.
Blair’s destination turned out to be where the original wall, blackened by time, had joined to form a corner. Jim had to admit, it was worth the extra effort to see. Steps rose to allow a guard access to peer over the top. A small room had been constructed at the inside corner, about the size of an office. A guard shack maybe?
Jim fingered the hand-cut stone, once more amazed by the intact history that surrounded him.
“I figure you just need the proper reference point,” Blair said. “Here, sit over here on the steps and lean back… that’s it.”
The steps were warm from the sun’s morning rays. Jim settled back, feeling foolish. “Now what?”
Circling the air with his right hand, Blair waggled his eyebrows. “Do your thing, man.”
“*This* is a test?” Jim chastised dryly. “You’re acting like a kid that learned his toy has flashy buttons to push.”
“I am not.” Blair whined. “Come on, Jim. You promised.”
~*~
Blair sulked.
Jim let him out and drove Tiny the Terribly Tortuous Tonka car into the garage, an act that always reminded him of threading a needle, and parked. He followed his partner to the side kitchen door.
“Listen, Sandburg. I tried, okay?”
“Yeah, right.” Blair twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
“Didn’t you tell me that no results can sometimes be just a useful? Well, there you go. We got nada.” Jim reasoned as he followed.
~*~
“Are you hungry? I’m hungry,” Blair mooched through the cupboards, hunting. “I don’t know what I’m hungry for?”
Jim consulted his watch, since his inner time sense was up the Watoosii River, to try and decide what he wanted to eat was too difficult. It was only four o’clock. Too early for dinner. They had had a relatively easy day, albeit an exciting morning. Jim guessed that Blair had engineered a quiet day.
The student was pulling out jar after jar after jar of preserves and spreads.
Then again he had been subjected to the sixth sense test; the day hadn’t been that easy.
“Toast,” his personal bugbear asked, “to tide us over until dinner? You want to go to the pub up the street again?”
“Before or after we check out the cave?”
“The cave?”
“Yeah, why not. Caves, smugglers; it’s an adventure.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” Blair mused. “Toast is a good idea. One slice or two?”
Shaking his head at the subject, Jim decided on two.
Blair popped four slices in the toaster and then sort of mock tap danced over to the fridge to grab the pot of spreadable churned butter. Jim sifted through the spreads, jellies, marmalades, two different types of honey and peanut butter. A large brown, round glass jar caught his eye. Its shape characteristic of nothing, brown glass and topped with bright, bumble bee yellow lid. The label said: Marmite.
Jim cracked the jar.
“Oh.” That was difficult to categorise, savoury – a base of yeast (maybe) with salt and carrots? But it all came together in appetizing goodness. The instructions said: spread thinly on toast. Perfect.
Blair dropped a plate with two slices dripping with butter before him. Precisely, Jim spread the Marmite.
“No!” Blair shrieked as he opened his mouth to bite down on the toast.
“What?”
Blair held his hands out in a warding gesture. “That’s Marmite, the nastiest stuff on the planet. Do not eat it!”
“This is from the guy whose favourite dish is boiled tongue and last week you ate miso with squid.” He took a bite. All his taste buds awoke, tingling in happy-pleasure. The butter eased but, somehow, also concentrated the salty goodness. Umami.
Blair shuddered. “You like it? I don’t believe it. How can a sentinel like Marmite?”
“What’s the problem? It’s a … I dunno, a spread, it’s like….” He took another large bite. “Nothing that I’ve tasted before, actually.”
“Marmite. Blergh.” Blair stuck his fingers in his mouth and gagged dramatically.
“Don’t you think that you’re over reacting?” Jim asked around a mouthful of toast as he made plans to import jars back to the US.
“Why do you want to go back to the cave?” Blair asked out of nowhere and Jim suddenly realised that he did.
Jim pursed his lips as he went over the takedown outside the entrance. The reverberating sound of the police sirens had been concrete, so tangible that he could map their bouncing around the cove. The ricocheting lines of sound that had entered the cave had disappeared out of all ken, swamped by the darkness.
The cave went far back into the cliff face.
Jim pushed the rest of the slice in his mouth and then stood. “Come on,” he mumbled.
“Now?” Blair said plaintively.
~*~
Jim munched on his second slice of toast (now cold) as he regarded the cave. His ears pricked as he listened to the splash of the rising tide. Sound echoed back on itself, but the tailing edge moved further back into the cave to rebound again and again.
“You got a flashlight?”
“Yeah, I just happened to have one. I always bring a flashlight when I travel to the UK.”
Jim cocked his head to the side, hearing the little bite of sarcasm in Blair’s voice.
“You’re kidding.”
“Actually, I’m not.” Blair held up key fob where a small mag-lite hung. “It’s got a tiny flashlight.”
Jim huffed. “Okay, stay close.”
Under the salty tang of the sea, the cave smelled of decaying seaweed and animals.
The walls dripped.
“Is this sensible doing this on the rising tide?”
Green slimy algae dotted the cave up to waist height. So Jim doubted that the water inundated the cave, unless it was the springiest of spring tides. A little crab skittered sideways into a crevice.
“We’ll be all right.”
Blair muttered dubiously under his breath. Jim tracked the discontented muttering.
The sound snaked back and forth. He followed his guide’s voice.
Children’s footsteps marked a sandy path to the back of the cave. On his left was a knee high gap. Crouching down he peered through, a tunnel bent away at thirty degrees and daylight shone at the end. The scuff of many small knees dotted the sand. Kids ran through the cave and wiggled through the gap to crawl out to the other side of the cove. Who under the age of six could resist? This was one of the routes that the echoing sound took, but another moved back further.
“Are you zoning?”
“No.”
Jim stood, automatically ducking. The cave twisted to the right. Slowly, he moved forward, fingers running over the water smoothed stone. The levels of deposited sediment that his fingers ran over varied in texture. The secondary cave was like a truncated cone on its side, getting smaller and smaller to the back. There was another passage somewhere in the darkness.
“Whistle,” Jim directed.
Blair let rip.
“Ow!” Jim winced. Sound ran up above his head, creeping through worn tunnels and water driven cracks in the rock. But ahead, at head level, was the passage further into the cliff face.
Blair let his flashlight play over the back of the cave. Bits of mica glowed. Some of the sandstone was fragmented from feet trying to get a purchase up on the stone so they could reach the dark, gaping maw.
Jim chose a sensible foot hold and hoisted himself up, getting head and shoulders through the gap. To anyone else it would be pitch, pitch black.
“You come back down with a crab hooked on your nose and I’m gonna laugh,” Blair sang quietly.
Jim continued to survey the opening he had discovered, following the source of the odd echoing.
“Ever see the second Indiana Jones flick, Chief? The one where the babe puts the hand through the hole with the creepies?” He heard Blair shudder, so he continued. “Good thing you can’t see the ceiling.”
“What!” The dim light immediately hit the low ceiling, finding it absent of bug life. “Jerk.”
Projections in the rock, darkened and smooth by years of use as handholds allowed Jim to pull himself up until he was crouched inside the upper cave. A startled sound from Blair caused him to twist around and reach back down with one hand. “Get up here.”
Guiding, scooting back, guarding his partner’s head from hitting rock, Jim and Blair were soon huddled in the passageway.
“Neat-o, Huck. What do we do now?”
The sarcasm was light; Blair was obviously enjoying himself. It was a shame he couldn’t see like a sentinel. The tunnel twisted and turned. The air was fresh and moving. The walls were solid rock with occasional marks of tools. This was an old smugglers’ path.
“Well, Tom. I say we follow this and see where we come out.”
They had to crawl for the first few hundred yards, caking their knees with muddy sand until the ceiling rose to allow them to stand. Jim had to keep his head ducked, but Blair had the freedom to straighten his spine. Jim walked in front, allowing Blair’s mud covered hand to anchor in the back of his jacket. Blair was using his light sparingly, trusting Jim.
After nearly an hour of steady progress, Jim saw the bluish glow, its source coming from around the bend. He stopped, one hand reaching back, lightning fast, to halt his guide. Blair’s instinct kicked in. He remained silent.
The glow was steadily growing brighter.
No sound.
Shit.
Turn back?
Face it head on?
They weren’t armed.
This was a known smugglers’ cave.
This wasn’t fun anymore.
Flowing like liquid mercury over ice, the orb glided around the corner, sailing near the ceiling and racing towards them like ecstatic cocker spaniel greeting its owners after a long day at work.
“Wonderful,” Jim muttered, relaxing his ‘fight or flight’ body.
“What?” Blair demanded. “What do you see?”
The orb stopped a few feet away from them, vibrating with bright colour spectrum of blues and cold whites. Transparent, yet not entirely, Jim had to work from going into a zone from its beauty.
“The welcome wagon arrived,” Jim answered. “I think I know where this tunnel comes out.”
“What are you thinking, Jim?”
“History.”
“History?”
“Yeah.” Jim extended two fingers and reached to brush the outmost edges of the orb’s aura.
“You wanna explain, Huck? Shouldn’t I be Huck? I mean I’m the cute, smaller one. What welcome wagon? I’m in dark here, Jim. Literally and practically.”
“This is a smugglers’ route and it’s old. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of hands have carved this passage out over centuries.”
Blair breathed slowly and deeply enthralled.
“At the start it’s natural. There probably was a passage all the way here, but it needed work.”
The orb drifted to the north wall, where granite hewn rectangular blocks shored up the tunnel. A humongous stone pillar separated hewn stone face from manufactured bricks and mortar.
Jim snorted. The orb bobbed merrily. “We’re under the old Keep.”
“What?”
“We passed what I think was the edge of the foundations of the city wall a hundred yards back. You know, it’s lucky the Keep’s at what I guess is the edge of the city. The modern constructed buildings are further east. As we’ve trekked through this tunnel over head there’s just been suburbia and smaller buildings. If a sky scraper had been built they would have spliced through this tunnel like hot knife through butter.”
Blair shivered.
“We’re under the Keep,” Jim repeated, “and this passage is used.”
“What do you mean?” Blair said, even though he understood.
“There’s footprints.”
The orb dipped down and then bobbled up. Abruptly, startling him, it jerked away at right angles to the floor in the direction of the Keep.
“You know,” Jim continued conversationally, “I can guess where your lost treasures went.”
Jim would have said more except Blair unexplainably bolted from his side.
“Hey,” Jim called out, wasting precious seconds before giving chase. He didn’t want Blair exploring on his own, even if he did have the feeble light from his flashlight.
“Get back here.”
“Yes!” came a distant cheer down a narrow, twisty side tunnel that Jim had missed. The orb had been too distracting. “Check this out.”
Jim turned the last corner in time to see Blair strike off across a spacious, dead-end room where the side tunnel ended. The ceiling to the cavern rose to ten feet. The walls were smooth. The floor covered in a layer of fine dirt.
Fine dirt with no footprints.
A hoard of stolen artefacts rested against the back wall.
Jim glanced back down at the floor and realized it had been raked into a perfect even cover.
“Chief, NO!” Jim lunged forward to haul his gleeful guide back just as the first crack of dry wood beneath them gave way.
Blair fell, arms wind-milling madly.
Jim fell right beside him. Dirt exploded everywhere, shooting up his nostrils, making him sneeze, attacking his eyes, blinding him, forcing its way into his throat. The free fall ended with a cruel landing. Jim was ready, keeping his body loose and rolling with the impact.
The unmistaken sound of a breaking bone came right before the scream.
Jim scrambled to his hands and knees, blindly patting the rock-hard ground and finding Blair’s shoulder. “Sandburg.”
“OhgodJimithurts… hurts!”
Scrubbing at his useless eyes until he could make out dark shadows on black background, Jim forced his partner to stay still. “Easy, easy. Let me check it out. Where?”
“L-leg.” Blair answered with clenched teeth. He groaned and jerked as Jim’s hands moved downward. “No, no, no, don’t! Don’t touch it.”
Roughly pushing back the slapping hand, Jim penned him to the ground. “Stop it. Keep still.”
The supine body froze.
Jim talked softly as he let his fingertips move over one hip, down the jeans, over the knee. “I’m careful, see? Not going to move anything. Just need to see where the problem is.” He breathed a silent sigh when he realized the damage appeared to be below the knee joint. A broken femur not only hurt like hell, the amount of blood lost could kill. “Ahh, okay, I’ve got it. Yep, a fracture, Chief. Feels like the tibia for sure, maybe the fibula. Hard to tell. Skin’s intact, that’s good.” Jim checked the left leg and found it whole.
“I don’t believe this. I *don’t* believe this,” Blair chanted angrily. He had yet to move after being ordered still, except to throw one arm over his eyes. His breath hitched and he groaned. “It hurts, man.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Jim slipped two fingers into Blair’s tennis shoe, checking the distal pulse below the fracture. He found it strong. That was another good sign. All in all, it could have been worst. He moved back to Blair’s head and caught the free hand that had worked into a tight fist. “Look at me.”
Blair lifted his arm. Tears mixed with the fine dust caught in his eyelashes, forming specks of mud.
Jim knew it was dark, too dark for Blair to see him probably. He pretended Blair could and smiled. “Keep still. You’re still pumping blood to all the necessary parts down there. I don’t want to mess with that. We’ll get to a hospital and get you fixed up in no time.”
“Ah, I suppose now’s – ah, shit.” He winced and squeezed Jim’s hand. “I suppose now’s a bad time to tell you I skipped getting the international insurance policy for this t-trip.”
Jim rolled his eyes and tilted his head back to examine the edge of the pit overhead.
“Wonderful. Wonderful,” Jim uttered again, “stuck in a pit with an idiot for a guide.”
“Oi,” Blair protested.
“Luckily your blessed protector was on the case. I got us insurance. And you call yourself an international traveller.”
“I’m a student. Poor, you know.”
“There’s some things that you don’t stint on, Chief.” Jim began.
Blair slumped back on the earth floor, a distinctly pale green cast to his features. Berating would come later, where they were holed up in the local hospital and Blair had some of the good drugs.
Jim rocked back on his heels, closed his eyes, took a meditative breath in through his nose and out through his mouth and then mapped the world around him. The fusty air tasted like death. The passage above him was used, the pit was old and the earth floor firmly packed. People had moved through the tunnel since its inception until this modern age.
The question was: where were the smugglers now?
In an ideal world moving Blair would involve professionals, but they had landed in a smugglers’ hoard. This was not a good place to stay.
“Chief?” he said softly.
“Has the cavalry arrived yet?”
“‘Fraid Simon’s in Cascade; it’s gonna take him awhile to get here.” Slowly, Jim unwound his belt. “Chief, I’m just going to take your belt off.”
“Why?” Blair said suspiciously.
“Make you more comfortable.” Jim suited actions to words. He tested its length and the punch holes. The broken wood that was strewn across the floor were tested next. They were brittle and dry, fragmenting under his questing fingers. Decisively, he abandoned that approach. Shrugging out of his jacket and fleece jacket he removed his t-shirt. The cool, damp air seemed to congeal on his skin. Swiftly, he pulled his fleece and coat back on. He folded the t-shirt into a thickish, long wad.
“Chief?”
“Uhuh?”
“Chief, I’m going to have to brace your leg against your other leg. Splint one to the other.”
“What!” he shrieked.
“Sssssshh.” Jim planted his hand over Blair’s mouth. “Shush, Chief. I don’t think we want the inhabitants to find us.”
“Oh, this is gonna hurt, isn’t it?” he murmured against Jim’s palm.
“Yep,” Jim said uncompromisingly. Moving with the utmost care he straightened Blair’s good leg. The little shifts made Blair whimper. He placed the wad of t-shirt against Blair’s knee. When he lashed Blair’s legs together the t-shirt would cushion his knees. He laid the two belts down under Blair’s leg. One situated at the ankle and the other just below the knee joint.
“You ready?”
“No.” Blair said through gritted teeth. A tear track marred the fine dust on his face.
Rarely was Jim gratified to possess sentinel senses. His hands could feel the ebb and flow of blood in the damaged limb. The rapid pooling of fluid as the flesh swelled. Eyes closed he could visualise the damage as touch told him of the splintered bone and a tiny floating fragment. Jim moved and Blair shrieked. The splinters tore soft tissue. Bone edges grated. He looped the belt through the buckle and pulled bringing Blair’s knees together.
Blair was batting his hand against the dirt floor, pain the melody.
He caught the end on the second belt and looped it once, twice around Blair’s ankles and then fastened it firmly.
Blair lolled loosely, not quite fainted but not really present. Jim could hear the rush of blood through his arteries and the fainter shush-shoosh back through the veins. Blood still flowed through the damaged limb. His first aid had not compromised Blair’s leg.
“Hey, Chief.” Jim patted his cheek. “You did good.”
“Don’t do that again,” he whispered. “Don’t do that again. Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.”
Jim stood to examine the pit. The edges were rough hewn. He should be able to scale the side. If he got Blair to stand or propped him again the wall, he could reach down and drag him up.
Maybe.
Possibly.
This plan sucked.
End of Part Eight
Part Nine
