Geological Thinking, Chapter Three

After hiking for many miles along the soaring cavern’s dusty floor, Joe, Dylan, Gala and D’Carthage came upon their first sign of life since the battle with the barbarians. It was not geological life, for the herdsmen who built the corral and small homestead had not survived the war and lay shattered on the plain, looking like their own funereal cairns. However, the creatures they had once tended, perhaps because they were organic in nature, seemed to have weathered far better the environmental changes and were roaming healthy and wild in the acres of rocky farmland beyond the boundary fence. They were like huge lizards, each as tall as a carthorse and as long as a bus from its snout to the tip of its tail, and jets of fire snorted from their nostrils as they lurched, shambled and charged each other at surprising speed in a baggy, flat-footed way.

“Salamanders!” Joe breathed. “So the legend is true of a species of fire-breathing reptiles that dwell in these depths!”

“That tale was told even in my day, dear boy,” D’Carthage beamed. “Ah, what a grand day of discoveries this is! And moreover, friends, those fine fellows are fit not only for a volume of their own in any explorer’s travelogue, but here and now shall serve as capital transportation too. Suffer me to lead the way!”

So saying he was off, flinging aside his red velvet cloak in an elegant swirl and vaulting the corral fence, to run easily and freely into the open pasture. When the salamanders saw his approach they began to stampede in the opposite direction, kicking up dust behind them with many a warning croak and flame-spurt, but D’Carthage kept pace as he plunged after them. With his muscular arms swinging, his long legs taking stride after mighty stride and his sun-bleached ponytail streaming back, he did not relent in his pursuit until he had drawn abreast of the hindmost salamander, whereupon he seemed barely to draw a breath before swinging himself onto its back as lightly another man might straddle a motorcycle. Grasping the beast by its horns D’Carthage spurred it on, and in swift measure began to drive the rest of the creatures back to the boundary where his fellows were standing.

Joe and Dylan watched all this with interest and some newfound understanding. On the one occasion D’Carthage had ever spoken to our heroes about his history before joining the Next Four, he had described himself as a frontiersman who loved nothing more than living at one with the natural world. Recent events had led The Four Heroes to wonder how well-suited D’Carthage was to their own superheroic lifestyle in the modern day, after humbling defeats had been served out to him first by a rogue Dimension Borg robot and then by the enchanted blade of their old enemy Sword-Slicer. Since then there had been nothing about D’Carthage’s manner to indicate these humiliations had affected him adversely, but Joe and Dylan both knew their business well enough by now to see how much of his customary swagger and grandiloquence was there to conceal the wounds his confidence had lately suffered. That he had remained below in the Drillmobile’s passenger section during the mid-air clash of earlier that day was evidence enough of this. But seeing him now, ranging the plains with an effortless grace, mastering the salamanders as if he had spent a lifetime rearing such animals, and all the time grinning with hardy glee and giving enthusiastic whoops and calls to his strange steed, Dylan and Joe felt they were witnessing at last the real D’Carthage. Here his daring and courage were no façade, and here, as nowhere else, an unadulterated happiness shone from him.

Amid a spectacular dust-bowl D’Carthage brought the herd around to the edge of the corral, and his companions wasted no time in leaping the fence to race alongside the whirlwind and seize mounts of their own. None could display quite D’Carthage’s dauntless skill at climbing astride and it took several efforts for all, but finally Gala, Dylan and Joe were each seated on a salamander of their own. Gala reined hers in.

“At last we can cover some ground,” was all the acknowledgment she gave to her team-member’s efforts. “Joe, I gather from Steam’s psychic messages that he and your friends are in trouble at a settlement north of here. You should go to them at once. I’ll find The Chancellor.” There was something in the way she said this last part that indicated she was not open to arguments.

“It is agreed, Gala,” said Joe, turning his salamander’s head northwards, and his tone was just as firm as hers. “We must rescue Neetra and the others. Maintain telepathic contact at all times. Let’s do it!”

With that they parted, Joe, Dylan and D’Carthage thundering off towards the barbarian tribe’s village while Gala pulled away and rode out alone for the crags in the distance.

Back in the bomb-crater an exodus was proceeding apace, building its own road even as it went along its way. What had once been a sacrificial platform now scaled the valley’s steep slope in a somewhat wobbly concoction of wooden ladders, platforms and stairways, maintained from base to precarious summit by busy crews of marble-men who ushered their countrymen from stage to stage of the laborious climb or ferried building materials to the very top, where The Chancellor was overseeing the last stretch of construction work that would lead them to the rim and freedom. Suddenly, there came a shout from his lieutenant below.

“Chancellor!” the tiny rock-man called urgently. “Another one!”

The Chancellor jumped several landings down to find the lieutenant kneeling by one of his people who had collapsed from exhaustion. “Medical team, to this position at once!” The Chancellor commanded.

A crew of marble-people scrambled up to them and gently helped the fallen man to sit, while others fed him sustaining handfuls of lichen from the rock bowls they carried. Soon he was able to stand, and gratefully set off again. As the medical team trotted back to their post, The Chancellor sat for a moment on the platform and raised a forearm to his brow.

“Chancellor, you are weary too,” the lieutenant said to him in great concern. “You have helped so many of us on this remarkable voyage, at no small cost to yourself. If only our crops could refresh you as they do us…”

“I will admit I am feeling the lack of water in your land,” The Chancellor replied, but clapped his lieutenant on the shoulder. “It is no matter. Return to duty. We are all but there.”

The end was indeed in sight. Under The Chancellor’s supervision, the uppermost teams of marble-men slotted the rungs into place in the final heavy wooden and heaved it up and over, laying it down against the crater’s lip with an almighty boom. Their vertical route from valley floor to lands beyond was at last achieved; but the impact sent shockwaves reverberating up and down the bridge, shaking every peg and spar. The Chancellor saw well enough that this construction was never built to last, and that time was now of the essence. He turned to the waiting masses of stony citizens below.

“Cross!” was his single resounding command.

The tiny rock-men and women swarmed to the ladder, their vanguard gaining the rim in moments and scrambling out of sight. Many still waited below, however, for the bridge was fragile and the only way to spare it disastrous stress had been to stagger the exodus in small groups spread out along its span. The planks under these lower groups’ feet creaked and splintered ever more as they filed upwards, until suddenly, with a wrenching shuddering groan, the entire construction began to split across the middle.

Panic tore through the populace. Those below the crevasse prepared for the end, while those above froze and cast huge jewel-eyes upon their ill-fated countrymen, dumbstruck with horror. Amid the terrified screams rose up wails of “The Vengeful One! It is the Vengeful One!” but The Chancellor’s stentorian tone cut across them, with: “It is the structurally unsound nature of this edifice, nothing more! Lieutenant, with me!”

Leaping from the highest platform to the widening crack in a series of swift and purposeful jumps, joined by his tiny lithe lieutenant half-way down, The Chancellor was upon the disaster area in seconds. Wedging himself into the divide, he grasped each half of the ruptured flooring and attempted to pull them together with the sheer power of his arms, while the lieutenant wasted no time in crying out: “All of you! Get across, fast!”

The citizens flocked over in a tide, jumping the gap while The Chancellor bore grimly down with the last of his strength. Once the crowd was over, he barked to his lieutenant: “Now you! That is an order!” and the rock-man obediently scampered off climbing at once, leaving his superior officer to haul himself out of the hole and begin his own desperate ascent.

Above his head, The Chancellor saw the straggling marble-men and the lieutenant wheel over the edge to safety. Whether he himself would be joining them may prove to be another matter, for his muscles ached from the long day’s exertion, the crashing and rumbling din of the bridge’s collapse rang in his ears, and each tread he took seemed to cave in the boards that lay beneath his boot. The Chancellor reflected that the day might eventually come when he found himself too old for this sort of thing. Nevertheless, onward he strove, negotiating the roadway’s crumbling ladders and landings until the rocky rim of the crater was at his fingertips, and from there all it took was to fling himself over and roll exhaustedly down the slope on the other side. The coruscating purple light of the bomb’s nucleus vanished at once, replaced by the far dimmer glow of the underground world, and blocked out likewise was the worst of the deadly radiation. As the tired Chancellor rose to his feet, he could hear the sound of hundreds of tiny voices cheering and crying out his name in joy.

That was the scene that presented itself to Gala as she rode up astride her salamander: The Chancellor standing amidst a populace of marble-people a quarter of his height, all dancing and laughing and celebrating him. “I see that once again you’ve been having fun while the rest of us were hard at work,” she greeted him wryly. There was a twinkle in her eye, and a smile of rare fondness on her lips.

“I believe I have just been made a god,” The Chancellor replied, as soldierly in his bearing as ever, but if Gala seemed uncharacteristically glad to see him the emotion was double in his case. He turned to the rock-man by his side and saluted.

“You are dismissed, lieutenant. Exemplary service,” said he, as the salute was immediately and gladly returned. “You may be able to help me in one last way. Do you know the whereabouts of The One Below?”

“The One Below is close, Chancellor!” beamed the lieutenant, and pointed to a black rent in the rocks not far above them. “His palace now lies in the heart of that dark chasm, but a short journey distant.”

“Then it is time for us to part, for I must make all haste there. Farewell and good fortune to you, my friends,” The Chancellor announced. With that he clambered onto the back of the salamander behind Gala and they galloped away, leaving the marble people for generations to come to sing songs and write poems of the tall stranger who had led them to the promised land.

Bret and Steam were side-by-side, each chained to a pillar of stone in some tiny cell directly beneath the barbarians’ amphitheatre. Their guards had bound them and left them there, but both men suspected they would not be alone for long.

“These chains won’t give either of us much trouble, Steam, so let’s sit tight for now and wait for our friends upstairs to make the next move,” said Bret. “That way, we can have a talk about what’s to come. How are you feeling about that?”

Steam did not look at him. “If you think Neetra choosing Joe over me’s going to stop me fighting me hardest to save her, you don’t know me, mate,” were his only words. But Bret shook his head.

“That’s not what I meant, buddy,” he said softly. “Look, gladiatorial combat’s always going to be in the top ten of things bad guys make us do when they’ve captured us. I don’t complain, because I like a good fight more than most! Saving Neetra’s life, though, which they’ve turned into a part of this…the problem’s not that you won’t try hard enough, it’s that you might like it too much. After we beat them – and we will beat them, we always do – everything goes back to normal. Don’t buy into this fantasy of being her champion, Steam. It’s their fantasy, not yours. Start believing it’s real and it could hurt you more in the long run than their spears and swords ever could.”

Still Steam’s green eyes were fixed resolutely ahead. “You just enjoy your fight,” came back the reply. “You’ve got the thing you care about, and I’ve got mine.”

There was a sudden jolt of pulleys and winches as the pillars began to rise. Fiery light shone down on Bret and Steam’s heads as the ceiling slid back, and the bloodthirsty roar of ten thousand stone men reached their ears. The twin pillars rumbled to a halt, setting our heroes at dead centre on the sprawling arena floor. Surrounding the battlefield on all sides were high walls, too steep to climb and broken only by a locked and barred gate at the rear, while above these towered ascending ranks from which the raucous tribe looked on, loudly anticipating the show. The High Elder and his fellow lords were holding court in a royal box directly ahead, set between two enormous basalt portcullises that stretched the height of the encircling wall. Facing the chiefs stood Neetra, her back to Bret and Steam a short stretch away, tightly clutching a golden sword and shield in her small hands. The lava-skinned boy who had earlier been introduced as the tribe’s champion was advancing upon her, raising identical weapons, and from the noise of the crowd it was clear to Bret and Steam that the games had just begun.

END OF CHAPTER THREE