The unsettled feeling in his gut spoke a different language.
“All right,” he said, coming to a decision. “Listen to me. We will pack up and move out. We will take the ore safely away from here. Once clear, I and four of our best fighters will return under cover of darkness.” His speculative gaze rested on the far knoll. “If there are thieves in the night, we will bury them here.”
Around him, the exodus began.
*
Bodie lay flat, halfway up the dusty hill, talking it through with the others.
“We can’t sneak up on them,” he said. “They have sentries everywhere. We can’t sneak past them...” He paused. “Or maybe we can, but it will be dangerous. Maybe, on this occasion, we wait for them to leave.”
“And risk them blowing up that well?” Cassidy asked.
“It’s okay,” Lucie said. “There are so many wells here that at least another fifteen stand along the ley line, some more perfectly. We can wait, if we can afford the time.”
Bodie picked up a stone and rolled it around in his hand. “How far is the next shrine?”
“The Himalayas,” Luce said with a catch in her voice. “That’s gonna be a rough one too.”
“Rough? Why?”
“We’re talking Tibet and Mount Everest. That kind of tough.”
Bodie gawped. “You’re kidding?”
“I wasn’t built to climb Everest,” Cassidy said. “Isn’t there an easier one?”
Lucie shrugged. “Well, there’s Loch Ness in Scotland. That ley line appears to run just where the waters meet the shore. But we still have to do the Himalayas and since they’re so close...”
Bodie agreed with her. “No point in leaving—”
A while later, Yasmine, who was perched at the top of the hill watching their enemies, called down. “Hey, they’re leaving.”
“What?” Jemma looked both surprised and apprehensive.
“Yep, they’re packing up their gear and moving the trucks about. The sentries are standing up. Looks to me like they’re moving out.”
“You see anyone come out of that well?” Bodie asked.
“Yeah, a few minutes ago. Everything happened at once.”
Which meant the Hoods had gotten what they came for.
Bodie asked Yasmine to do a quick head count, and considered their options until she came back with an answer.
“Fourteen.”
They would all be armed, and at least half of them were Hoods. Bodie saw that the question did indeed have an easy answer after all.
“We become scavengers,” he said. “Wait until they’ve gone, then follow in their footsteps. With luck, we can then beat them to the Himalayas.”
“Or they might have already been.” Lucie shrugged.
Maybe, Bodie thought. Lucie’s comment threw into sharp relief one of the biggest problems that faced them. With ten shrines to unearth, how many had the Illuminati successfully visited? And then, how soon would they go to the crucible and look for Hades?
Hades... Bodie thought. What the hell am I thinking? If, by misfortune, it was a real place then the Ishtari would have built it in an image that best represented their master. Bodie dreaded to imagine what it might be like.
“Clear,” Yasmine said. “They’ve moved out.”
“Then let’s waste no more time.”
Bodie led the way over the top of the hill and down the other side. Darkness shrouded them, turning the surrounding structures into dim shapes, the night claiming the land like the swirl of a cloak. The going was slow as they tried to stick to a path, their destination plotted by the compass on Lucie’s phone. Bodie had to double back around one structure and circumvent what appeared to be a large bath house. Cassidy and Yasmine walked to either side with Jemma and Lucie at the back. Bodie watched the area in which their enemy had departed, not expecting them to return but always wary. Lucie kept up a step count the whole way.
“One thousand,” she said.
Bodie avoided a mound of sand half his height and slipped down the side of a building. The sand on the paths was hard-packed through use and, once he found one of the trails, he tried to stick with it. A brisk wind blew through the darkness, stirring up whorls of grit that swirled in the air, forcing him to squint and lower his eyes. All other sounds were lost as the team struggled on.
“One hundred feet,” Lucie said.
Bodie could already see the well, rearing up out of the night to a height of around fifteen feet. It was a tall cylinder and would require a harness or two to negotiate. Running through an inventory of their gear in his mind, he figured they’d be able to rig something.
A minute later he came up against the side of the well.
“Here,” Cassidy said, to his right. “The top of this building is close to the top of the well. We can practically step over.”
Bodie nodded, paused and listened for a moment. Was that a breath? A whisper? Something out of sync with the scene? By now, he was used to the wind, the shifting sand, and the sounds his friends might make. And he was trained through experience to see and hear the anomalous in any situation.
“Wait...” he said.
They came in a rush, three dark bodies surging through the night. Bodie was facing them and managed to cry out before the first struck him. Cassidy and Yasmine collapsed as two more bodies fell on them from above.
Knives flashed. Bodie felt a line of fire along his stomach. He rolled in the sand, searching frantically for the arm wielding the knife, struggling to hold off the dark-cloaked, hooded figure crouching atop him.
Cassidy staggered to her left, struck by an attacker but managing to stay on her feet. The attacker, unluckily for him, hit the sand face first and let out a deep groan. Cassidy jumped at him, but he slashed wildly,
