“But first, to settle roles, we have ritual,” Uta said.
“What ritual?” Gabriel said.
“It is law: when more than one come from beyond the sky, they shall fight, prove who will make stronger children. The winner, he is mine. The loser, to the women of the tribe, each of them in turn.” She looked over and down again, and this time Gabriel thought he saw her shiver slightly, perhaps thinking of her small frame and the prodigious instrument jutting between the plates of Millie’s kilt. She took Gabriel’s chin in her hands and leaned in close till her lips were nearly touching his.
“You,” she said. “Fight hard.”
Gabriel pulled his chin from her grasp. A flare of anger flashed across the queen’s face. She gave a command to her guards and then turned away as Gabriel and Millie were led away by their rope leashes.
Chapter 18
Instead of being returned to the men’s hut, Gabriel and Millie were brought around to the other side of the village. An enormous tree of some species Gabriel didn’t recognize grew thick and twisted on the edge of the eucalyptus jungle and dangling from its heavy branches like huge wicker fruit were a cluster of spherical cages. The sight gave him a start—just a few months back, on a rescue mission to Borneo, he’d found the woman he was looking for in a cage suspended from a tree, about to be sacrificed by the remnants of an ancient Hittite cult. Now here were Velda and Rue, sitting hunched and apparently naked, each in her own tiny cage, unable to stand or stretch out their legs inside the woven spheres. A massive bonfire burned in a shallow pit nearby. The smoke was thick and black, making his eyes sting. It was not the sort of déjà vu he liked.
“Gabriel!” Velda cried, but one of the guards silenced her with a swift jab upward through the woven bars.
Two cages sat empty on the ground, their gates open. The guards sliced through the cord connecting Gabriel’s ankles to Millie’s and forced Gabriel at spear point to climb into one of the spheres. No amount of prodding and screaming was going to get Millie’s massive frame into a four-foot-diameter cage, so as Gabriel was sealed inside his cage and hauled up using a heavy rope-andpulley arrangement, the women resorted to lashing Millie securely to the trunk of the tree. Gabriel watched the process through the side of the cage. In their cages beside him, Rue and Velda were watching as well, he saw.
Giving the ropes connecting the cages to the tree one last going over to be sure they were secure, the guards left the team to dangle like aging meat.
Gabriel looked from side to side; Rue was on his left, Velda on his right.
“Thank God you’re both okay,” Gabriel said. “You are, aren’t you?”
“We’re alive,” Rue said.
“They were pretty rough on us,” Velda said. She turned one arm toward him to display a darkening bruise. “And they took our packs and clothes, and all our equipment.” She nodded toward the large, smoky bonfire. “They burned everything.”
“Now even if we could make it back up to the surface,” Rue said, “we’d be dead of exposure in minutes.”
“What did they do to you?” Velda said.
“Nothing good,” Gabriel said. “Except clean us off. And they fed us a little,” he admitted. “And gave us these loincloths.”
“Hell of a lot better than the treatment we got,” Rue said.
“Yeah, well, they’re not looking to breed you.”
“To breed—” Velda said.
Gabriel swiftly filled the women in on what had transpired: the sickly men, the queen and her demands, the ritual combat. When he finished, he fished the pocket watch out from under his kilt and, facing Rue, held it to a space between the bars of his cage. With one finger he flicked it open. He couldn’t see Velda behind him, but he heard her sob.
“That’s him,” she said, her voice unsteady. “It’s his. My god. I gave it to…Gabriel, do you think he’s…”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said firmly. “We didn’t see him. All we know is that they had his watch.” He replaced the watch under his kilt.
“Millie?” Gabriel called down. “Millie, how you holding up down there?”
“I got ants the size of my thumb using me for an expressway,” Millie replied between clenched teeth. “So far no bites, but I’m gonna try to keep really still and not piss them off.”
That was a smart plan for a nearly naked man tied to a tree that was crawling with ants. But a plan like that—keep still, do nothing, hope you don’t piss off your enemies—was not one the group as a whole could afford to use.
Gabriel pushed his fingers through the weave of his cage and clenched his bound fists, pulling at the bars. What ever kind of wood the cages were made of, it was both flexible and strong—it moved under his grip, but didn’t break. He hissed with frustration and shifted his trapped and folded legs into a slightly less uncomfortable position.
Gabriel squinted through the bars at the red ice overhead. In the distance, he could see the thick shaft of white light pouring through the opening in the ice but could not see the opening itself.
“We’ve got to get over there,” he said. “Somehow. Rue, if we made it to the plane, do you think you’d be able to pilot it through that opening?”
“Are you kidding?” Rue replied. “I can pilot a 747 through a hula hoop.”
Rue sounded as cocky and confident as ever, but Gabriel could hear a brittle undertone of fear in her voice. And it only made sense. From the little they’d seen of the plane, it had looked like a vintage number, possibly from the 1960s, maybe older. Even if it were still functional after all this time and still had fuel—two very big ifs—depending on the exact make and model of the plane, Rue could have as little as twelve inches of clearance to make it out through that narrow opening. It would be a difficult enough stunt in a modern plane in mint condition with modern navigation tools. Who knew what sort of condition this plane would be in? Always assuming, of course, that they managed to get to it at all.
“We’ll wait till they take us out for the ritual,” Gabriel said. “If they want us to fight, they’ll presumably give us weapons. Even if they want us to fight bare-handed, at least they’ll have to untie us first. That’ll be our chance to rush them. We should be able to grab a spear or two at least.”
“They’ll be expecting it,” Rue said. “They’ll be on their guard.”
“These are twenty-year-old women,” Gabriel said. “Between Millie and me—”
“Don’t underestimate them,”Velda snapped.“They’re seasoned, coordinated fighters—you saw how they took down the bird that killed Nils. You and Millie weren’t able to do that. And there are dozens of them and only two of you.”
“There are four of us,” Rue said. “Unless you’re too frightened to fight, princess.”
“No, Rue,” Gabriel said. “If you get free, I don’t want you wasting any time getting involved with the fighting. First chance you get, you run. You understand? You run as fast as you can and you get to that plane. We’re all stuck here for good otherwise. Getting to that plane and getting it running has to be your top priority. And if you succeed—if you manage to get it up and running—and you don’t see any sign that we’re on our way—” Gabriel’s voice trailed off. “We’ll try to make it. I promise. But if we don’t, you get the hell out of here and don’t look back. You hear me? Get out and get back to safety.”
“I won’t do it, Gabriel,” Rue said softly. “I won’t leave you here.”
“Well, let’s hope you won’t have to,” Gabriel said. The emotion in Rue’s voice touched him. Maybe she still had some feelings for him after all. “But if you have to, you do it. Someone has to survive to tell the world about this place.”