The squawk of surprise and pain, harsh and guttural with an undertone of fear, carried across the still morning air, reaching them as the first bird began to fall, the slightest darkness in the sky betraying a rain of blood as something vital was torn.
The fight was that swift, that sudden, that savage. As the first bird fell, the second bird wheeled in the sky with an almost deceptive leisure, heading for its falling opponent. It swooped beneath the plummeting bird, jabbing at it so savagely that it changed the course of its fall. It followed it down, slowing the momentum of the fall by pushing it from side to side, sometimes jabbing so savagely and with such force that it propelled the now chilled bird upward for the slightest moment. The corpse, which had given one last harsh cry, was now disintegrating as it fell, ripped apart by the attack of its rival.
“Welcome back to the real world,” Mildred murmured.
Ryan walked to the lip of the tunnel and peered over the edge. The tunnels and corridors on the top level of a redoubt always sloped upward, but suddenly he realized that the angle of ascent had been slightly more than usual. Looking out over the land, he could see that it was a bare desert, with very little scrub cover, and the reddish-brown earth dry and loose. It was also some fifty feet below them, with a rock face that fell away from the mouth of the tunnel.
J.B. joined him, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he looked down.
“So it was a rockfall, but not how either of us reckoned,” he observed.
The one-eyed warrior assented. “Looks like this redoubt was another one set into a mountainside, and when some of that mountain moved—” he gestured to emphasize his point “—the redoubt moved up, and the road in moved down.”
“Still, it’s not much of a climb. Even Doc should be able to make it.”
“Please do not mock me, John Barrymore,” Doc said, eyebrow raised as he peered over the Armorer’s shoulder. “It would seem to be a simple descent.”
“Probably, Doc, but we don’t know how safe it is yet. If the rocks have settled loosely, then…” Ryan gestured how the rocks would part.
“Then we are buzzard fodder,” Doc finished. “A fair point.”
“Exactly.” Ryan turned to the others. “We’ll take it one at a time. I’ll go first, then Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Dean, and Doc. J.B. last.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Mildred stated, staring down at the steep slope of loose rocks. “Sooner I get down the better.”
“Then let’s get to it,” Ryan stated.
The one-eyed warrior stepped off the lip of the redoubt entrance and onto the rocks, pressing hard with the ball of his foot to test the security of each rock before resting his weight.
He turned and faced the rocks, using his hands to steady himself. The slope was deceptive. Although the descent seemed steep, the slope of the rocks was less sheer, the outcrops providing plenty in the way of foot- and handholds. The problems arose from the fact that the rock face was composed of many individual rocks rather than one slab. And until the descent had been made, there was no way of knowing how secure were the actual rocks.
Ryan took the descent slowly, searching for handholds and testing each rock. His feet stamped rocks, knocking some away from the face, landing firmly on others and using them to define a path. He was watched intently from above by the others, all of them making a note of the path for when they would come to use it. This was made easier by the falling rocks that had been rejected as footholds, which almost outlined Ryan’s route.
It was slow but not difficult, and Ryan’s progress was relatively easy. Despite that, he had to stop several times to wipe the sweat from his brow before it ran into his good eye, the occasional drop stinging his eyeball and making him blink furiously. He felt a sheen of sweat on his body, soaking into his clothes, and wondered how hot it would get at the height of the day.