“Noboru, don’t,” Joyce warned again.
Grissom shot a silencing a glance her way.
“Yes, but the third one, that’s the mystery,” Grissom said. “Any fool with half a brain knows the original translation is wrong. ‘Loose soil’ makes no sense. But you’ve figured out what it means, haven’t you? Tell me.”
Noboru swallowed hard and looked away from Grissom’s eyes. “No. We haven’t. None of us has.”
Grissom grabbed a fistful of Noboru’s hair and held the three-bladed dagger to his throat. “I don’t have time for games. What is the third element?”
“We don’t know,” Noboru insisted. “I swear.”
“You’re trying my patience,” Grissom hissed. “Hunt, speak to me or he dies.” He pulled back the dagger, ready to strike.
“Sorry, Joyce,” Gabriel said. “You and I are one thing, but Noboru didn’t make you any promises. I’ll tell you what you want to know, Grissom. Just let them—”
A shout of alarm came from outside the tent. The report of a gunshot rang out. Grissom straightened, letting go of Noboru’s hair. Another shot exploded, followed by more shouting, a confused clamor, the sound of boots running through mud. Grissom touched the eye of the dragon on the dagger’s hilt again and the two outer blades slid back into the handle. He tossed the dagger back in the wooden box. “Watch them,” he barked at the guard stationed at the tent flap. Then he exited.
“How could you?” Joyce said. “Both of you! If he finds the other gemstones and activates the Spearhead, he’ll use it to slaughter thousands—maybe millions.”
“I’m sorry,” Noboru said. “But I couldn’t let him kill you.”
More angry shouts erupted outside, more gunfire, and another sound, like the twanging of a guitar string.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Joyce asked.
Gabriel shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
The guard stiffened suddenly and a strange gurgling came from his throat. He fell backward, clutching at his neck. The shaft of an arrow protruded from his Adam’s apple.
The dying man’s fingers grabbed at the tent flap, pulling the canvas to one side.
Just long enough for Gabriel to see someone run past holding a wooden longbow, a quiver of arrows strapped to the back of his white robe.
A skull mask covered his face.
Chapter 10
The cult, here? Now? Gabriel had never thought he’d be grateful to see them. But it was only a temporary reprieve. Both groups wanted them dead and whichever came out on top would see to it that they wound up that way.
“This can’t end well,” Gabriel said. “We have to get out of here.”
Noboru pulled hard against the ropes tying him to his chair, to no avail. “Any suggestions?”
Gabriel eyed the table with the box on it. “One. But it depends on my getting over there.” He began rocking back and forth in his chair, tipping it farther and farther until it finally fell forward. He shifted as he fell so that he landed on his side. The jolt of the impact made the fresh cuts on his torso flare with pain again.
He wriggled on the ground, making slow progress toward the table, dragging the chair with him. The strain it put on his shoulders made it feel like they would snap out of their sockets at any moment. He backed up against the table and knocked the chair into it as hard as he could. The wooden box on top shifted but didn’t fall. He hit the table again, gritting his teeth against the pain. The box jolted, crept closer to the edge. Looking up, he saw that it was within centimeters. He struck the table one more time. The box jumped, teetered on the edge. Come on, damn it…It teetered on the table’s edge, then fell. He swung his head to the side and it smashed beside him, kicking off splinters. One nicked his ear as it shot past. Grissom’s ivory-handled dagger spilled out on the floor and rolled a yard or so. He rotated till it was in reach of one of his feet, then kicked it toward Noboru. The other man caught it between his boots.
More shouting came from outside the tent. Gabriel could hear people running past, the crack of gunfire and the shuk of arrows landing in the mud. They had to hurry. All it would take was one cult member to stumble upon them, or one of Grissom’s men to catch them in the middle of an escape attempt, and they might as well have spent the time digging their own graves.
“Turn it around,” he told Noboru. “The other way. Upright.” With the sides of his boot soles, Noboru turned the knife till it was pointing straight up. He steadied the pommel against the ground. Gabriel squirmed painfully back to him, angling himself so his back was to the blade. “Just hold it steady,” he said. “Despite the position we find ourselves in, I don’t really want to slit my wrists.” He started working the rope holding his arms together against the blade. The angle was difficult, and it hurt like hell to raise and lower his arms, but after half a minute he could feel the tension in the rope weakening.
“Go faster,” Joyce called. “You’ve got to go faster.”
Gabriel grimaced. It felt like his arms were about to break. He thrust the ropes against the blade savagely—again—once more—and suddenly his hands were free. He threw the rope off to either side and scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the knife and pressed the hidden button. The extra blades snapped into view. He used their razor edges to make short work of the ropes holding Noboru and Joyce to their chairs.
“We’ve got to get the Star back,” she said, rubbing circulation back into her wrists.
“The only problem,” Gabriel said, “is that there’s a battlefield between us and wherever Grissom’s got it. Assuming he’s not lying facedown in the mud.” We should be so lucky. Gabriel crossed to the tent flap, stepping over the dead guard, and pulled it back an inch to peer out. It was chaos outside, with Grissom’s men running back and forth, shouting and firing their weapons. Everywhere, the feathered ends of arrows stuck up out of the ground like tire spikes. One of Grissom’s men ran past, pistol in hand, shooting at a target Gabriel couldn’t see, and then an arrow hit him in the back. The man fell forward, his body skidding to a halt in the mud. The arrow had come from the direction of the jungle. Aside from the one cult member he’d seen running past the tent, it looked like the others were hanging back and trying to pick off Grissom’s men from the trees. There was no sign of Grissom himself, or of Julian.
“I can’t see much from here,” he said. “We have to move, find a better vantage point. Someplace a little safer, too.”
Gabriel handed Grissom’s dagger to Noboru. “Here, take this.”
Noboru weighed it in his hand and nodded. “What about you?”
“I’ll find something.” Gabriel looked outside again. The chaos hadn’t abated. He saw a jeep full of Grissom’s men barreling toward them.
“When I say run, run,” Gabriel said. Joyce and Noboru nodded. He waited until the jeep was just before the tent, the gunmen in back firing into the trees, and then shouted, “Run!”
He threw open the tent flap and sprinted out into the open, using the passing jeep for cover. Joyce followed right behind him, then Noboru. Gabriel kept running, head down, pumping his legs as hard as he could to carry him toward a tent directly across the open center of the camp. Arrows hissed through the air toward them, one going by directly over his head and three more embedding themselves in the ground near his feet.
When he reached the other tent, he ducked around the corner. Joyce and Noboru dove for cover behind him, breathing hard.
“Where to now?” Joyce asked.
Gabriel peeked out. He had a better view of the scene from here. Dead bodies littered the ground, mostly Grissom’s men but also a few members of the Cult of Ulikummis, their white robes stained with mud and gore. Grissom’s remaining soldiers were running for the jeeps, squeezing off shots into the forest as they went. Arrows continued to fly from the trees, though not as many as before. Gabriel couldn’t make out the cultists’ positions in the trees. For men whose choice of camouflage was more suited to the Arctic, they did a hell of a job of blending in.