Ryan noted the word gateand filed it away as something to ask about later. If there got to be a later.
"We could try some grenades," suggested Okie.
"Could do," Ryan said. "Gotta think. No other trail. Not one that we could ever hope to find. It's this or nothin'. And there's no way under it. It hangs over the edge of that sheer cliff. There's no way over it. So you want to know what I think? I think one of the Barons out east's got him a chopper. If we just had that..."
"If we had a balloon we could float up and over it," said Koll. "But we don't."
So they tried grenades.
High-ex and incendiary looked the best bets. No point in wasting shrap or nerve against a fog.
The hand bombs made a load of noise and some fire. The flames seemed muffled by the fog and the high-ex did nothing at all that anyone could make out. Some rocks and ice from high above them came rolling down, pattering on the road. The fog retreated about as far as a man could spit, then came back. Back toward them, stopping at the bend of the trail, becoming a huge wall, almost as if it had been cut clean with a giant's cleaver.
Doc had sat down, drawn and pale, looking as though the confrontation with the fog had exhausted him. He felt Ryan's eye on him and clambered up, pulling himself to a standing position with his hands on the rock face.
"My apologies, sir, but all the noise and fire has quite..." The eyes cleared as though a veil had been ripped from them. "Antimatter, Mr. Cawdor. I believe that might do the trick. Implode, and the foul fiend will be undone it will separate from its source."
J.B. banged one gloved fist into the other. "Implosion grenade. Turn that chiller inside out. Yeah. Koll?"
"What?"
"You got the implo?"
"Yeah. Couple."
"Go hurl them into the middle of that bastard fog. Right in, far as you can throw."
"Sure," said Ryan. "You got about the best arm, Koll. Go close as you can, then get the heat out of there."
Koll lowered his hood, wiping tiny gems of steel-gray ice from his long mustache. He unhooked the two implosion bombs, with their distinctive scarlet and blue bands around their dull tops.
"Chill it, Koll," whispered Hunaker, patting him on the arm.
The towering mist, with the strange pale light throbbing at its center, had retreated once more until it hung precisely where they had first seen it, countless small tendrils creeping from its base as though tasting the air for the scent of an enemy.
Koll crouched like a runner readying for a sprint, a grenade in each fist. He drew in a number of deep breaths, composing himself. Ryan stood at his heels.
"Not tooclose, Koll. No dead heroes on War Wag One, remember."
Koll nodded his blond head. Five more breaths, faster and more shallow. He powered himself up the trail, boots sending chips of stone and ice flying back into the watching group. For some seconds the fog showed no sign of awareness of the threat. Then it began to move.
Faster than before.
Koll skidded to a halt less than fifty steps from the nearest tentacle of the fog, looking up at its shimmering bulk for a second or two, as if he was hypnotized.
"Now!" yelled Ryan Cawdor at the top of his voice. Breaking the spell.
Koll lobbed the first of the implo bombs into the fog. For one sickening moment Ryan wondered if it would simply stick there, like a pebble in fresh dough, but it vanished deep within. The second one followed it, thrown with all Koll's most desperate strength.
"Back," said Doc calmly, speaking in a conversational tone to the eight others who stood near him. He led the way by shambling quickly around the bend of the trail, behind the rock wall.
"Koll!" shouted Ryan. "Get the..." but the words died in his throat and for a moment he closed his eye, turning away.
The fog had sensed the threat to its existence. The tendrils had shot from its base, faster than a shooter drawing his blaster. They slapped at Koll's feet and legs, before he could take more than a half dozen steps toward safety.
Ryan was the last of the party to move with Doc out of sight, and he saw it all. As the first coiling arm of the fog touched Koll, sparks flew from the man's flesh. Orange and blue fire sprayed out into the cold day as if from a welder's torch. Koll dropped his rifle and screamed, rolling onto his back and kicking. For the briefest of moments he managed to break free from the caressing tendril.
One fell across him, not hard, but more flames spat from Koll's body, at the top of his thighs, near the groin. He arched back, and the scream rose higher and higher. Smoke and the smell of burning filtered through the crackling air. The screams continued, thin and piercing, like a stallion's at the gelding.
Another tendril lashed at Koll's face and he raised his hands to take the impact, thrashing at the unknown power. Now there were a dozen or more of the thick gray tendrils enshrouding him, cording and swelling. Koll was lifted into the air by them, drawn toward the main expanse of the fog.
All this occurred within the eternity of seconds before the first of the implo grenades went off, followed a second later by the other. Ryan ducked away at the familiar hollow boom, bracing himself for the bizarre sucking feeling that came from the antimat bombs. He and the Trader had found a small supply of them years ago in a ravaged Redoubt close to the great swamps where once the Mississippi had rolled. Nobody, not even J. B. Dix, greatest of armorers, understood what they did. All that was obvious was that they caused an implosion and matter was pulled into a vacuum of limitless smallness.
Ryan looked back around the cliff immediately after the noise had faded. The fog was coiling and shredding as he watched. It seemed to be disappearing into frail towers that crumbled in on themselves. In less than a dozen heartbeats the dreadful monster had completely gone, leaving nothing but the cold wind and driven hail.
"Cerberus was a sentient creature, and designed precisely thus, Mr. Cawdor. Yet it was weak precisely where it needed to be strong. Now it is gone, my dear sir, and taking that poor fellow with it. Who cried so loud, did he not?"
Koll had disappeared with the double implosions. At least most of him had.
His right arm, two fingers missing, with the shoulder and neck and much of the right side of the lower skull, still lay in the middle of the mangled roadway. The survivors walked up the trail, pausing by the remains of the corpse. The missing fingers had been sliced away as though with a razor, and the rest of the torn flesh was cleanly severed. Both eyes were gone, as had the top of the nose. The jaw had been hewn through by an unimaginable force, and the flesh of the cheek and chin was laced with a pattern of tiny burns and scorch marks. The teeth were splintered to powder in the jaw.
Taking into account the massive injuries, there was very little blood.
"We goin' to leave him here like this for the wolves and bears?" asked Sukie, trembling with shock.
"No. Can't bury him. In the river, J.B.?"
"Best we can do."
As gently as they could, the two men stooped and gathered up the remains of the man who had been one of the strongest of the crew of the war wag. Swinging the dismembered mass once and then heaving it as far out as they could into the singing void, they watched as it fell into the river and joined the waters that flowed from the glacier way up above them.
They stood mutely for several seconds. Ryan broke the spell by turning to lead them up the trail. Now that the fog had vanished, he noticed a peculiar thing. On their side of the barrier, the road was in terrible condition, puckered and scratched. A hundred paces or so higher up it was in perfect condition. Smooth and flat, unbroken by the century of neglect, untouched by weeds. It went straight for a while, then curved sharply to the right, as though it ran into the face of the cliff.
Neat, rectangular white stones lined the side of the road, marking off the edge of the ravine. There was even the remains of a white line painted down the center of the trail. The nine men and women walked slowly along, cautiously checking all around them. Ryan stopped when he heard Doc start to chuckle.