Free Warlock by Dean Koontz Page A

crossing.”
        
        “Wait,” Mace said. “I require more than prayers.”
        
        “What?”
        
        “Certainly,” the giant said, “the cargo crossed without incident. But it is not our supplies the assassins want. They too must eat. They are after flesh, after human lives. I do not trust to Gregor's passage.”
        
        “He can't very well climb,” the commander said. “If he tries to come back with the last foot team-with those men manning the pulley over there-he'll die and take them with him. There is no hope of an amateur climbing under that overhang, even with the help of a professional team. It's the rope or nothing.”
        
        “Then I'll test the rope,” Mace said. “I'll go over there and back.”
        
        “Risk a man already safe?” Richter asked incredulously. “Out of the question!”
        
        “Either that or all of us return,” Mace snarled. He towered over the old officer, and his physique and expression did not permit much argument.
        
        “Master Sandow, argue sense to him!” Richter said turning to the Shaker.
        
        Sandow smiled. “Mace here is a minor magician. With quick reactions, quicker than any normal man could hope for-quicker even than Gregor's, for the boy is undeveloped as yet. He will have a greater chance than anyone of seeing what it was that caused those two fall -and he will have a greater chance of returning here alive. Besides, when Mace makes up his mind-well, it remains where he puts it.”
        
        “Well…”
        
        “There is no time to waste,” Mace said. “Signal the far side as to our intentions.”
        
        The flagman was brought forth, did his colorful chore In another minute, Mace was riding toward the far ledge from which he had departed not so terribly long ago. He arrived without incident, checked the pulley system over there and had a short conversation with Gregor to ascertain whether the youth felt fit. Inside of five minutes, he was on his way back, and he made that trip in good health as well.
        
        “Apparently accidents,” he told the Shaker. “I see no treachery. I felt nothing unusual coming either way. Gregor says he feels fine, though he was about to take a swig of brandy to settle his nerves for the crossing.”
        
        “Here he comes,” Richter said. “He's just lifted off the other side there.”
        
        Everyone turned to stare openly at the apprentice who then seemed like a hapless insect out of its season, soon to perish from the cold. He swung gently back and forth on the pulley rope, drawing toward safety at too slow a pace to please anyone on the east of the chasm.
        
        “It's happening!” Belmondo gasped, his voice thin and worried, not at all the competent, cool manner of a trained mountaineer.
        
        And certainly enough, Gregor was losing his grip but a third of the distance along the two hundred-foot ride. He fought desperately to regain that handhold, finally latching fingers around the thin line. But it was evident by the sluggishness of his movements, by the angle of his weary head, that he could not maintain his position for very long.
        
        “Put another man or two on your drawing team,” Mace told Richter. “They're going to be needing extra strength to drag in two of us.”
        
        “You can't go out there!” Belmondo gasped. “The line won't hold that weight. It'll snap against the pulley wheels!”
        
        Mace smiled, but not in a friendly or even tolerant fashion, patted the young officer on the head. “You let me fret about that,” he said. He turned to Richter. “Now!” he shouted.
        
        Without waiting to see if the old man did as he had suggested, Mace stepped from the eastern edge of the canyon, grasped the topmost rope of the double line. Whereas the lower rope was coming toward the east, the upper rope