In the morning they ate a quick meal and resumed their journey. A few hours later they arrived at a fork in the road. On their left the road continued on across the rock-strewn plain at the bottom of the cliff, while the right fork immediately rose along what looked like a vertical canyon. From there they were they could see that their path wound back and forth around promontories with deep cuts and across chasms with bridges, always rising higher. They climbed for six hours, crossing great arched trestle bridges and looking into the dizzying depths on their left.
By the time they arrived at flat ground at the top it was quite dark. The air was cooler there, but at least the rain had stopped. They ate some cold food and started laying out their bedrolls.
Later that night Lewis took second watch. When he was preparing to wake Derrik when he saw a flashlight in the far distance. He woke everybody silently, sending a few of them to hide in the landscape, and bidding the others to keep their weapons close at hand. When the man with the flashlight drew closer Lewis heard more feet crunching quietly in the gravel behind the man. The stranger played the light across the team members that Lewis had kept with him.
The man spoke in a very thick Hagen accent “Can I sit?” He turned off the flashlight.
“Please join us,” Lewis replied, handing the stranger a piece of jerky when he was close enough.
“Thank you,” he said, sniffing the meat before chewing on it. “Where you from?”
“We came up here from Landee,” Lewis said.
The man shook his head slightly. “I been Landee, you no look Landee, no sound Landee.”
“You’re right,” Lewis agreed. “Landee was the last place we stopped, before that we traveled far to get here.”
The man put his fist on his chest. “Me Tern, you?”
“Good to meet you Tern,” Lewis said. “My name is Lewis,”
“Lewis, this Calo Mountain. Special place,” Tern looked very serious. “You no kill people, yes?”
“Will the people let us pass?” Lewis countered.
“Where you going pass to?” Tern asked.
“All the way to the top,” Lewis told him.
“I going tell people,” Tern announced. “You will pass,” the man rose as he said it.
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“Thank you, Tern,” Lewis said. “We will leave here at first light.”
They listened to the footfalls as they faded into the distance. Gomez and Telini returned to camp and the team discussed their next move.
By the time it was full light they were already moving north along the roadway, strung out in single file, five paces between each person. There were fewer large boulders there and around midday they saw a tailing pile rising like a small mountain on their left. The cliffs grew closer on their right all day. By evening the road ran along the bottom of the rockface.
They camped in a cleft, under an overhang that provided plenty of room for the whole team. As they looked out across the plateau from their vantage point at the base of the cliff, Lewis noted people moving perhaps two miles off to the west. He dug his binoculars out of his pack and peered through the gathering gloom. A group of around twenty people were busy setting up tents while several people watched for trouble from all quarters.
“Those look like Hagen,” Larry said quietly.
“Not the military style of the defenders,” Fink agreed. “We could wait until it’s really dark, then quietly move on.”
“No,” Lewis replied firmly. “I don’t think we could sneak away from them, and besides I kinda like having them there, watching our flank. Larry, you take first watch, Telini will spell you in two hours. Good night.”
Lewis woke up some time later to the sound of gunfire inside their alcove. Everyone surged out of their bedrolls and Derrik switched on his flashlight as he rose.
Telini was firing his Maze rifle into the rocks on the other side of the roadway at something big, which quickly wound its way to their right among the boulders.
“Hey, try not to shoot at that camp out there!” Lewis shouted.
The beam of the flashlight followed the target, which turned out to be a twenty foot long lizard.
“There’s another at ten o’clock!” Telini yelled, taking a shot to the right.
Gomez flashed the light onto the one that lay squirming in the gravel to their left and Roquette walked over, and put two rounds in its head with her pistol. It did not move after that. Derrick circled around to get a shot at the lizard that Telini was trying to hit. The battle was soon over.
Fink brought a large combat knife and carved several roast size pieces of meat from the lizard that Roquette had finished off.
“We should cook this soon,” he told Lewis. “Why don’t you guys get some sleep, while I do that.”
Lewis was tired and couldn’t see any harm in it being cooked, so he agreed. He fell asleep quickly, dreaming of Gloria and Mary. They were sitting dressed in fine dresses on a church pew. He couldn’t hear the pastor, but Gloria’s eyes were wet with tears and Mary looked up at her mother with concern. It seemed to him that Gloria saw him for a split second and almost smiled. Mary noticed her change and said something, to which Gloria nodded and they hugged. When he woke up he felt completely refreshed, even the barren and rocky landscape under the omnipresent gray overcast sky looked strange and beautiful. The fire was just dying out and the air was thick with the smell of coffee and cooked meat.
“Try this,” Gomez said, coming over to him as he sat stowing his bedroll. “Fink really got it right.”
With a smile she handed him a chunk of meat on a stick. When he took it and dug in hungrily, she fetched him a mug of coffee to wash it down with. As they left he noticed that the lizard carcasses were gone and there was a great smoke column rising from the Hagen camp to the north.