Grailstone Gambit. James Axler
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an exhausted swimmer pulling himself ashore, and he became aware of a consuming pain in his head and a burning thirst. He remained motionless, listening to the sound of voices speaking in low tones below him. The abraded flesh around his left eye felt swollen and raw.
Grant lay in a wooden cage, a bit under five feet tall at its apex, six feet in diameter. The slats were lashed together by rawhide thongs and many turns of a heavy-gauge wire. The entry gate was sealed by a length of rust-flecked chain and an old-fashioned iron padlock.
All things considered, the cage hanging from the cross-brace framework ten feet above the ground wasn’t the worst place he had ever been imprisoned, but it was a long way from the most comfortable.
The events that had led up to his imprisonment were only a set of disjointed images, fragmented memories of ugly dreams.
Grant remembered how he and Domi sauntered into the camp of the Survivalist Outland Brigade without being challenged by sentries, mainly because none was posted. They hadn’t seen any pickets, nor did there appear to be a clear-cut perimeter of the camp. The place was a sprawling mess of people and slapdash structures.
Tar-paper shacks, lean-tos, huts and tents stood jumbled in Central Park, spread out like a spilled garbage can. Four huge fires sputtered redly in the drizzle. In front of some of the dwellings stood poles of stripped saplings with skulls mounted on top, not all of them animal.
The people they saw in the camp ranged from youths with wispy beards to sharp-eyed, hard-bitten warriors. The clothing styles were varied and eclectic—colorful wool serapes, wide-brimmed cowboy hats with snake-skin bands and scruffy fur caps.
Grant easily differentiated between the Roamers and the Farers—the Roamers were festooned with weaponry, bandoliers crisscrossed over their chests, with foot-long bowie knives and big, showy handguns at their hips.
The Farers dressed a bit more sedately, and their weapons of choice were utilitarian longblasters, bolt-action rifles and a few autocarbines.
But neither Roamer nor Farer gave Grant or Domi so much as a second glance, which, he realized in retrospect, should have aroused his suspicions. Despite being dressed in standard Farer wear—patched denim jeans and leather hip jacket over a khaki shirt—he still stood four inches over six feet and much of his coffee-brown face was cast into sinister shadow by the broad brim of an old felt fedora. Walking side by side with a petite albino girl barely five feet tall should have drawn some curious glances, even from the most jaundiced member of the SOB.
He had almost no memory of being buffeted on all sides by a surging mass of bodies that overwhelmed him with such swift efficiency he had no chance to draw his weapon. As he was borne to the ground under the weight of many men, he heard Domi blurt in wordless anger. He shouted for her to run, then a flurry of blows fell on him and hands ripped the big revolver from his shoulder rig beneath his jacket.
A soft, lisping voice said, “Move aside, let me see him. Move aside, let him up so I can see him.”
When the crushing weight obligingly left Grant’s body, he lunged upward—then he felt as if an immense fist slammed into the back of his head. The impact drove all light and consciousness from his eyes. For a long time, he saw nothing but black and heard only silence.
He regained his senses in piecemeal fashion when a cup of icy water dashed into his face roused him. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. Agony tore his skull apart. He tasted the salt of his own blood in his mouth.
Then the pain ebbed, fading to a steady throb. Grant squinted around, trying to focus through a series of what seemed to be gauzy veils draped over his face. Finally, he realized he was surrounded by planes of pale gray smoke. He made a motion to touch his head, but he couldn’t move his arms. He sat tied to a heavy, wooden, straight-backed chair, arms and legs bound tightly by strips of rawhide. Glancing down at himself, he saw he wore only his T-shirt and jeans. Everything else, including his boots and socks, had been stripped from him.
The acrid fumes of the smoke seized his throat and dragged a cough from him. Lying on a far table were several long-stemmed clay pipes, the bowls discolored and smoldering. The place reeked of marijuana and overcooked meat, of stale and sweaty bodies.
The fact that he could even smell the stink of the room told him just how powerful the stench was. His nose had been broken three times in the past and always poorly reset. Unless an odor was extraordinarily fragrant or fearsomely repulsive, he couldn’t smell it; he was incapable of detecting subtle aromas unless they were literally right under his nose.
Grant coughed again, then cleared his throat.
“You may speak if you wish.”
The voice was a low, ghostly whisper, touched with a faint lisp. He remembered hearing the voice before, and he turned his head toward a shadowy figure looming on his right.
He felt a quiver of revulsion at the sight of Shuma and his enormous scaled belly bulging over his sweat pants. He glanced up into his face, expecting to see it twisted in a triumphant smirk. Instead, Shuma’s expression was vacant, his eyes hooded and distant as if they were focused on another scene entirely. His flaccid lips hung open, slick with saliva.
The voice spoke again and Shuma’s lips did not move. “Do you find your host revolting, Mr. Grant?”
Not responding to the question, Grant rumbled in his lionlike voice, “Who the hell are you?”
Shadows shifted behind Shuma’s bulk, and Grant caught a whistling, asthmatic wheeze. “I am the voice, the mind, the spirit behind the Survivalist Outland Brigade.”
Grant hawked up from deep in his throat and spit on the floor. “Bullshit.”
The voice tittered, sounding somewhat like an out-of-breath owl. “Why are you so sure?”
Straining against the rawhide bindings, Grant tried to peer around Shuma. “Let me see you.”
“All in good time, Mr. Grant…all in good time.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Oh, your spy—Wright was her name?—was most forthcoming about everyone and everything.”
Grant did not allow his sudden apprehension to show on his face or be heard in his voice. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
There was another breathy giggle. “Oh? What a pity…because I definitely know what she was talking about.”
The note of certainty, of complete confidence in the speaker’s voice sent a tingle of fear up Grant’s spine. He gusted out a weary sigh. “All right. But she wasn’t a spy.”
“She was here on an intelligence-gathering mission, correct?”
“More or less. We wanted to find out more about Shuma and this SOB of his.”
“Of his?” A mocking lilt touched the voice, but Grant detected an edge of anger there, as well.
“Who else?” He eyed Shuma surreptitiously, looking for a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes. They were covered by a dull sheen, the lids drooping.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
“Nothing,” came the dismissive response. “That is, nothing that’s isn’t wrong with any other addict of jolt and various other opiates.”
Grant knew that jolt was a combination of various hallucinogens and narcotics, like heroin. To sample it once was to virtually ensure addiction.
He hesitated, started to ask a question, then closed his mouth, shaking his head.
“You were about to ask how a jolt-brain could command his own bowels, much less an army.”
Grant nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
“I command Shuma and he commands the SOB.”
“Which brings me back to my first question—who the hell are you?”
“My