The Valley of Despair Read online

freewomen.

  Lafalldor, however, was not so fortunate. Once hauled beyond the waning influence of the portal the creature began gasping, his attempts to drag himself back over the threshold reaching new heights of violence and desperation. The people would not allow him to return, though. Dragged along by the chains Erik had wrapped in knots about his wrists, the gray creature rapidly wasted away before their eyes as the ponderous weight of Earth’s time fell heavily upon his gray frame. While the crowd looked on his muscle sloughed from his frame, his skin sagged, his eyes sunk inward and he seemed to age centuries in only moments.

  “Here,” Argos said. He pressed the sword of Garmakalok into Erik’s hands. “End him.”

  Grimly the pilot looked down at the sword in his fist. His dimming eyes glaring hatred and terror, Lafalldor stared at him. Erik strode over to where the Denebian lay and with a single swipe took his head.

  12: Discovery on the Plains

  The humans fled down the ancient marble steps into the forest while close on their heels behind them the dust and mayhem of the crumbling city worked its way outward from the location of the portal below what had once been Garmakalok’s throne room.

  Of the purple loknovarloks of Deneb they saw only mouldering, skeletal remains. Erik guessed that with the collapse of the star’s influence their specially adapted bodies had followed suit. Who could explain the strange and bizarre particularities of such mind-bending physics?

  After exiting the city Erik turned the multitude north where he perceived the forest to be less dense and freer of underbrush and with only a gentle perceptible acclivity. Many perished in the dense forest to strange, unheard of beasts against which they had only the pilot’s pistol, the sword of Garmakalok and a few miscellaneous weapons of iron stolen during their escape with which to make a defense. As the band of refugees made their way up the valley in a northerly direction following the path of least resistance they paused and looked back the way they’d come.

  The city was slowly disappearing into the cavernous maw of the collapsing portal to be replaced with raw and torn earth in the form of an immense crater, the underlying strata exposed as the city was swallowed to some distance below its foundations. Beginning at its center and working its way outwardly, the columns, plazas, buildings and other structures of the city were slowly devoured out to the extremities of the sphere of influence.

  Beyond this boundary there remained only the outer periphery of the city, resembling an immense prehistoric henge made up of fragmentary columns and portions of the metropolis, neatly cut away from the original edifices as by an immense scalpel. And beyond these last remaining standing portions lay the untouched boles of Acacias and giant ferns and swaying jungle grasses - all as unharmed as if the primordial forest had never felt the touch of man, nor knew of any city builded by an extinct race in the long ago.

  Who could explain the strange forces that were unleashed with the blending of the varying times of two vastly different stars and worlds? No one there could account for it but none doubted the veracity of what they each witnessed with their own eyes. When the rumblings ceased only the outermost columns and structures remained – those outside the sphere of influence of the distant star - mysterious and haunted Deneb.

  Hand in hand, the pilot and the girl from the coastlands of 18th century Germany led the people they helped free from awful servitude northerly of the sinking sun which the man was grateful to note now remained visually steadfast in the clear, blue vault of sky. He felt hopeful they might survive to reach civilization, considering what they’d undergone.

  Overhead, the streak of a ship of bizarre configuration flying at a puzzling altitude in that it seemed to sail far above that to which modern day aircraft might attain reminded him of the war he’d inadvertently left and to which he must soon return.

  “My commanding officers must think me a deserter by now.” He glanced wryly at the girl walking at his side.

  “Well, I know you are no deserter. You are far too brave for that,” she commented, smiling up at him.

  Her smile was infectious and he found himself smiling in return. Such is the way of youth that having survived ordeals many might have found maddening, and with their freedom firmly in hand and their tormentors destroyed behind them, these two felt happy as two spring lovebirds and worried of naught, concerning themselves only with the moment.

  And yet they could not focus only on their affection. The struggle to get hundreds of refugees out of the valley was one of monumental proportions, nearly as much so as was feeding them and finding water for them. They must feel out a path the weakest among them might negotiate, those being the oldest and the youngest and also the infirm who had felt the tender strokes of the Denebian’s frequent floggings. The escapees clutched captured weapons in the forms of swords, spears and daggers, taken as they fled the city; with these they sought prey to feed themselves.

  Acting as scout Erik, with Peenemünde who would not leave his side, sought the way forward, finding routes the feeblest might in safety trod. In this fashion they reached the summit of the cliffs and beyond, at last descending into a verdant vale on the other side, a quite different topography than that through which Erik recalled trekking upon wrecking his aëroplane what seemed eons ago.

  After crossing the barrier cliffs they turned east and hiked for weeks until they found themselves before a welcome topographical feature: a savannah. They breathed a collective sigh of relief to exit the dangerous forest which had accounted for many of their number, these having fallen to various examples of the multitudinous predators of the African interior, some of which none could identify.

  On the plains they made camp amongst a large copse of umbrella trees from which they hoped to attain fuel for their campfires. Soon the hunters among them returned with a quantity of a small antelope they took with their spears, they having become quite proficient with them during the last weeks where their lives depended on the accuracy of their casts.

  Although they now had food, and an exploration of their surrounds revealed a source of water nearby, Erik still worried about the people. They must escape this wilderness and return to civilization as soon as possible. Many had fallen ill and required medical attention – attention and medicaments they could not provide in the wilderness.

  Three mornings after pitching camp Erik determined to take a small party and trek north to see what they could find. Leaving Argos, the Greek, in command he and Peenemünde set out with two spearmen; they must be ever vigilant against the tawny predators who sought the small antelope of the grassy plains and so no party less than four or five was permitted to leave after two hunters left one morning and never returned.

  Erik initially determined to march no further afield than they could cover in three days. But at the end of this distance as they perched upon yet another knoll of seeming endless, waving plains, they still saw no sign of man – only more scattered herds of the tiny antelope, waving grasses and the occasional tree rewarding their view.

  Dejected, they made camp near a stand of trees from which they could pluck limbs to fuel a camp fire. While Erik and the two hunters gathered dead-fall limbs Peenemünde prepared to ascend one of the trees for whatever additional vantage its short height might add to act as watchman for the cunning predators who were wont to sneak through the lush grasses and attack the unwary. Night approached swiftly; already the stars began to twinkle to the east but the moon had not yet risen.

  Sometime later, as Erik prepared to light their campfire, the girl called to him.

  “Erik! Wait!”

  The man stepped out from beneath the tree where he might see the girl who stood upon the highest limb in the tree strong enough to bear her weight. She wasn’t looking at him; rather she stared steadfastly north. Fearing she’d spotted a group of predators he called out he would come up.

  As deftly as one of the small monkeys of the forest he fairly flew upward through the limbs until he assumed a positio
n behind the girl, one hand bracing himself against a nearby limb and one arm encircling the girl’s lithe waist to support her.

  “Just there,” she said, never moving her head from where she faced. “I thought I saw something, but now I’m not sure - over those hills just over yonder way.”

  He followed the direction she pointed with his eyes. Soon Erik thought he saw something there, too. Just the smallest hint of movement – or was it a dancing light? Distant, low-lying clouds obscured and blurred the skyline. Patiently, they waited, hoping the scene might clarify.

  “What do you see?” hissed Dakar, a hunter, from his position on the ground. “Is it the cats?”

  “No,” Erik replied, not taking his eyes from the foothills to the north. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “It’s a city!” the girl declared triumphantly. “Look further west toward where that low hill begins to merge with the mountains.”

  Erik looked. The darkening sky had begun to clear, the clouds moving eastward. And then he saw what Peenemünde had already spotted – tiny dots of lights rising into the sky much as might a myriad of windows adorning a colossally tall structure.

  Erik felt his heart swell with relief – it was definitely a city. This discovery spelled salvation for his people –