Rogue (18 page)

“See,” said Ajay to Nick. “I told you that you'd thank me later.”

At that moment, just as Will was trying to summon up the strength to make the jump across the trapdoor paver, an enormous explosion erupted from the front of the structure behind him.

Will turned back to see debris from the pile they'd created there soaring into the air in every direction—he had to dodge a large block of stone that landed, skipped, and caromed off the wall near his feet, ending up on the next paver beyond him that activated the trapdoor. That was followed a moment later by a deafening bellow of rage, and he realized what had happened.

The snake king had reared up to its full height and smashed through the barricade at the entrance, its head and hooded neck rising up and towering above the walls behind Will, looking around for the intruders.

Jericho and Nick heard the commotion behind them; Nick quickly hopped up on top of the nearest wall, looked back, and saw the giant serpent rise up the maze. The snake king spotted Nick on the wall almost as soon as he appeared and surged forward. But instead of following the winding path of the maze, he simply used the bulk of his enormous trunk as a battering ram and burst through the nearest wall, forging the straightest line between two points and heading right toward Nick.

“Oh, mama,” said Nick.

“What is it?” asked Jericho down below.

“King Mamba's coming, and he is royally pissed.”

As the snake king passed by, Will tried to blend into the wall behind him, feeling the sharp edge of the network of vines digging into his back.

The rasp of their bark gave rise to an idea that began to take shape in the back of his mind. He now recognized the peculiar itch this feeling generated—
intuition
again—although this time he sensed his mind needed more time to roll it around before it would come fully to life.

But the snake king passed by his position without noticing him, intent on some other target farther ahead in the maze, most likely his friends. Will stepped back, took a running leap, and cleared the open trapdoor. Then he accelerated to the top speed he could manage—dizziness still affecting his balance—and whipped around and through the corners of the maze.

As he rounded the first turn, the gigantic enraged snake smashed through another wall only a few yards to Will's right. Glancing back through the ruins it left in its wake, Will saw the remnants of the king's elite regiment—still at least forty soldiers—picking their way over and through the rubble at the entrance, trying to follow their leader.

A few turns ahead, Jericho called up to Nick, “Draw him away! Don't do anything stupid!”

“Fat chance,” said Ajay.

Nick launched a series of insulting gestures and sounds toward the onrushing monster, then scampered away to the right, running along the narrow top of the wall as if it were the middle of a street.

The snake king heard and saw Nick moving away to the right and slightly altered its course to give chase, smashing through another couple of walls in its path.

“Get behind me,” said Jericho to Ajay and Elise. “And close your eyes.”

“Not that again…,” said Ajay.

“Do as I say if you want to live,” said Jericho.

They did as he said. The sound and fury that erupted within a few feet of them momentarily rivaled the tumult the big snake was causing behind them. Both Ajay and Elise felt a burst of heat, and then the acrid odor and bristling presence of a wild beast filled the air right next to them. When they opened their eyes, they could hardly see past what appeared to be the world's largest grizzly bear immediately in front of them.

A booming gravelly voice, only remotely recognizable as Jericho's, burst from its jaws with a ferocious growl: “CLIMB ONTO MY BACK! HURRY UP!”

The bear bent down on all fours, immense bands of muscle rippling under its fur. Elise immediately jumped onto him, but Ajay froze, gaping at the bear a moment longer.

“NOW, AJAY!”

Ajay vaulted forward like he'd been poked with a cattle prod. Elise grabbed and pulled him up beside her onto the bear's back, and they scrambled farther on top, just below his shoulders.

“HANG ON! AND KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN!”

Both of them grabbed handfuls of fur, held on as tightly as they could, and lowered their heads. Nearby, they all heard the giant snake smash through another section of wall; when Ajay turned his head, he could see the top of the thing's body moving off to the right but with only a few sections of the maze left standing between them.

Will raced through the turns behind them, desperately trying to catch up. As he rounded the next corner, he caught a glimpse of the bear with Elise and Ajay clinging to its back as it made the turn and headed around the other way.

Wow,
thought Will, not even immune to wonder under this kind of pressure.
Coach went full-on bear.

Nick didn't turn around until he reached the far right side of the maze with only swamp ahead of him, and when he looked back, he saw the giant snake wading its way through the maze toward him, knocking down one wall after another as it advanced. Nick jumped up and down and waved his arms.

“OVER HERE, SNAKE EYES! COME AND GET ME, YOU BIG, UGLY BASTARD!”

They were in a long section of passageway that faced the swamp, so Jericho—or simply “the bear,” as Elise and Ajay both perceived it; it was a challenge to hold the thought of this giant beast as “Coach Jericho” while they were riding on his back—turned and galloped back along to the next turn, then swung around and sprinted toward the wall straight ahead.

Elise raised her head and looked up just long enough to realize what the bear was about to do and sent to Will,
Oh God, Will, he's going straight through the wall.

Will spun around the next turn just in time to see the big bear lower his head and smash through the wall in front of him. The stones seemed to more or less vaporize on impact and the bear hardly lost a step as he powered through the gap he had created and headed on the same line for the next wall ahead of them, with Elise and Ajay hanging on for dear life. Will scrambled after them.

At the sound of the bear smashing through the second wall, the snake king stopped and looked away from Nick to his left. Nick saw a cloud of dust and debris rising from that area of the maze. The snake king turned again and focused its fury back in that direction. It picked up speed, flattened another few walls along the way, and raised its trident.

“HEY, FANG-FACE, WHERE YA GOING?” he shouted, then muttered when it kept charging away, “Great, a giant snake with ADHD.”

In the wreckage behind the snake, Nick could also now see the remaining soldiers that had followed the big mamba into the maze. About a third of the original force appeared to have regrouped and were rushing through the rubble, trailing their leader by no more than a few seconds now. Larger groups of soldiers were spreading out into other sections of the maze, and he noticed more than a few of them were activating secret passages that let them bypass whole sections of the maze uninterrupted.

“Aw crap,” said Nick.

Will continued running behind the bear, cruising over the rubble of the first wall. As he hurdled over the crumbled remains of the second, he realized that the snake king was headed back their way and was only a couple of sections away on his right. For the first time, he was close enough to smell the thing, and it wasn't a scent he would soon forget—metallic, dominated by the tang of rancid blood and the smothering scent of ammonia.

He could also hear the shouts and roars of the trailing soldiers in the near distance behind it and, even more distressingly, all around him. The big snake had taken down so many walls by this point that his minions were quickly closing the gap.

Then the idea that had first taken shape in Will's head back at the trapdoor presented itself, fully formed.

That's it.

He immediately threw a thought to Elise:
Get out of the maze as quickly as you can. Straight line.

Elise leaned forward and shouted as loudly as she could into the bear's left ear: “WILL SAYS TO KEEP GOING STRAIGHT AND GET US OUT OF HERE FAST!”

“OH, DOES HE?” roared the bear, turning to look back at her. Elise saw that the bear's head was bleeding and bruised in many places. “WHAT DOES HE THINK I'M DOING NOW?”

“I MUST SAY I THINK IT'S AN EXCELLENT IDEA,” added Ajay, flopping up and down with every stride like a bull rider coming out of his saddle.

“THEN WHY DON'T YOU GENIUSES TRY SMASHING THROUGH A FEW WALLS?”

“OKAY,” shouted Elise. “MAYBE I CAN HELP.”

Looking ahead, she saw the next wall in their path fast approaching. Elise focused, drew in a deep breath, and blasted out a cone of sound ahead of them. It cracked the stones and then completely smashed through the wall just as they reached it. The bear lowered his head for an impact that never came; the wall was already gone. As they passed through, the bear threw back his head and Elise and Ajay felt a deep vibration rumbling through the bear's back; they realized the bear was laughing.

But if this is going to work,
thought Will,
I've got to get out of the maze, too.

Will watched them pass through another wall, then dug down deep into his reserves and put on a burst of speed faster than any he'd ever remembered being able to reach before. He shot past the lumbering bear, catching a glimpse of Elise and Ajay gaping at him as if they were a frozen snapshot, and realized he was heading straight at another wall himself with no time to change course. Above him and to the right he saw the snake king out of the corner of his eye, nearly level with them now and only one last wall standing between them.

Just beyond the snake, Will saw Nick rushing toward them along the top of a wall, shouting and waving his arms, trying to pull the snake's attention away from his friends back toward him.

In the passageway just below the wall that Nick was traversing, a group of five soldier snakes turned a corner, slithering in the same direction. They hadn't even looked up and seen him yet.

“Yo, butt uglies!” shouted Nick. “Up here!”

All five soldiers looked up at him together, then stopped and hurled their spears at him. Nick contorted and twisted his body every which way, even doing a stationary somersault, which caused the first four spears to narrowly miss him. The fifth he plucked out of the air by the shaft, twirled around a few times—mostly for show—and shouted back down at the snakes: “Thanks for the spear, suckas!”

Nick resumed sprinting along the top of the wall and hopped over to the next one as the soldier snakes angrily hissed and jabbered, falling quickly behind in the maze. Nick was approaching the snake king's right flank now, and it hadn't spotted him yet…

…intent as it was on the oversized bear rampaging through the maze below and to its left. As it surged forward, the snake king raised its silver trident and hurled it down toward the bear.

Ajay, glancing back from the bear's back, saw the trident leave the snake's hand and hurtle toward them. Will looked up just long enough to see it coming, too. He jumped, turned his body around, too late to slow down, and in midair pulsed a thought-form at the speeding trident.

“STOP NOW!” shouted Ajay in the bear's ear.

The bear tried to slam on the brakes, but the pads of his feet kept skidding along the smooth pavers. Will's thought-form glanced off the trident, altering its physics just enough to knock it off its deadly trajectory by a fraction of a degree.

Then, in rapid order, Will slammed into the wall ahead of him and dropped to the ground, stunned. The bear finally came to a stop three feet away from him…and the three points of the gigantic trident descended just between them, burying themselves deep into the stone.

Will rose to his feet, still wobbly, trying to shake off the impact. The bear looked at him around the shaft of the trident and he heard a deep fun-house version of Coach Jericho's voice boom out of the bear's mouth:

“WHICH WAY NOW, WEST?”

Will's eye was drawn up and behind the bear. The snake king was closing in on them. He quickly turned to the open passage to their left, where he caught a glimpse of one of Ajay's fluorescent pink arrows on the wall.

“That way!” Will shouted.

The bear started running.

“Will, jump up!” shouted Elise.

She held out her hand as they passed and Will took it and swung up to join them, landing alongside them with barely a moment to grab on to some hanks of hair before the bear was sprinting full tilt down the long corridor ahead of them.

Just behind them, the snake king reached down and yanked its trident out of the stones with a yowl. It rose up, let out a furious shout of frustration, and then barked a string of orders down at its soldiers, which were now swarming all over what was left of the maze. The snake king was just about to rush forward and make another stab at the bear with the annoying little creatures on its back when it heard a scream behind it.

That was Nick, running up just behind it on the wall, and he let the spear go as he finished the scream. The snake king whipped around and used its trident like a hockey goalie's stick to harmlessly deflect the spear away. Then it glowered at Nick for a moment, apparently having a hard time believing that one of these puny creatures actually had the audacity to attack it with anything.

“Oh, shit,” said Nick.

The king's anger erupted; the snake leaned down, unhinged its jaws, revealing tusk-sized fangs, and roared at Nick with an earsplitting bellow that felt like it was going to melt his face and flattened a few of the damaged walls behind him.

Nick turned and scampered back the way he'd come along the wall toward the right side of the maze. The snake king stormed after him, caught up in a mindless berserker rage.

Elise looked up from the back of the moving bear and saw the snake king moving after Nick. “IT'S HEADING AWAY AGAIN.”