Free Warlock by Dean Koontz

and Gregor, of course. The next to last private, according to the commander, was a fellow by the name of Hastings. He was slight, but apparently rugged, in his early thirties. He grasped the lower rope firmly and kicked off from the ledge, swung over the chasm and began his journey. He was but half a minute from his side of the gorge when he evidenced weakness. His head drooped between his shoulders, like a man embarrassed, his chin upon his chest. He shook himself, aware of the danger all about, and he seemed to recover for a short moment-
        
        -before he lost his grip with his left hand and maintained life only by the tenacity of the right.
        
        “Faster!” Richter ordered the men drawing the rope. They began to pull more quickly, more dedicatedly, reeling the exhausted man in. They were as aware as anyone that the fewer of them left alive, the worse each man's chances became.
        
        Hastings was a third of the way across now, batting at the rope with his free hand, trying to obtain a solid grasp of it. But it seemed as if he were seeing double or triple, for he could never quite do more than brush it with his fingertips.
        
        “Hold on!” Commander Richter shouted, cupping his hands about his mouth. “You're almost home, boy! Almost home, you hear?” His words echoed in the still, clean air.
        
        Then Hastings let go with his right hand as well.
        
        He fell down, down, down into the bottom of the gorge.
        
        He did not even flail, as if he saw that screaming and arm-waving was of no avail to him at this point. He had a curious, slack resignation that made the fall all the more horrible.
        
        He struck the rocks, and he bounced.
        
        When he came down the second time, bloodied and quite dead already, he was speared through on a needle-sharp projection of granite and did not bounce again…
        

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    9
        
        
        
        The last enlisted man, Commander Richter said, was a twenty-year-old lad named Immanuli, very dark of skin -so dark that from this distance they could see nothing but his white teeth and the white of his eyeballs. He followed Hastings with little more than a moment's hesitation, grabbing the rope and swinging out over nothingness, his hand clenched fiercely around the thin lifeline.
        
        He had been on the pulley a minute when Mace said, “It's happening to him as well. Look there!”
        
        Immanuli was swaying erratically, shaking his head as if fighting off hands that gripped his skull and attempted to drag him into the rocky ravine below.
        
        He was halfway now.
        
        “He's a strong lad,” Richter said. “Whatever it is, perhaps he can manage it.”
        
        At that moment, the dark Immanuli let go with both hands and fell like a stone into the depths of the gorge, slammed head-first into a thrust of granite and burst like an over-ripe fruit before tumbling along to a final resting spot.
        
        “It's a Shaker doing this!” Richter said. “One of your brothers, Shaker Sandow.”
        
        “I have thought of the same possibility, and I have been ranging lightly with a minimal power output. There is no other Shaker. The accidents were not caused by evil magic.”
        
        “Well, let us see how the cargo bears. It does not have fingers to become weak or will power to give out under some strange curse.” The commander looked gloomily across the divide as the men on the other side attached the first parcels to the pulley lines.
        
        But pessimism turned to optimism again as the bundles began to arrive without disaster. One after another, a steady stream of them crossed the scar in the land, until everything was at last on the eastern edge of the canyon.
        
        “Now that apprentice of yours,” Richter said. “And let us all say prayers for his