Cursing, Lesauvage raised his pistol again. "Kill them!" he shouted.

Annja closed her hand around the sword and pulled.

Chapter 29

AS SOON AS THE sword was in the cave with her, Annja's senses went into overdrive. It was like time slowed down and everyone was moving in slow motion.

She swung the sword, cutting through Lesauvage's pistol before he could fire, hitting the barrel and knocking the weapon off target. When he fired, the yellow-white muzzle-flash flamed in a spherical shape and the bullet ricocheted from the ceiling.

The other men had trouble aiming at her for fear of hitting Lesauvage. She stepped toward him as he tried to point his pistol at her again.

Planting her right foot, Annja pivoted and slammed her left foot into the center of Lesauvage's chest, knocking him back into his men. Machine pistol-chatter filled the cave with a deafening rattle that defied the sonorous cracks of thunder. Ricochets struck sparks from the wall, and two of Lesauvage's men went down with screams of pain.

Annja ran for the wolf trap and dropped to the bottom of the pit. Bullets cut the air over her head and slammed against the stone oval hanging from the ropes.

Reacting instinctively, as if the sword had been part of her for her whole life, Annja swept the blade from her hip and launched it at the double-stranded line.

The sword sailed straight and true through the rope. Stepping over the tunnel's edge, she dropped and landed in the stream below, bending her knees to take the shock.

Lying in the rush of water, Avery and Roux stared at her in surprise.

In the next instant, the ropes parted and the heavy stone oval slammed down onto the tunnel. The fit wasn't exact. Flashlight illumination leaked through the cracks. It was enough to show that Lesauvage's men were wasting no time about pursuit.

"The sword." Roux pushed himself to his feet.

Annja reached into the otherwhere for the weapon and was relieved to find it there. "I've got it," she said.

"Did you get any of their weapons?" Roux asked.

"No."

The old man cursed and shook his head. "At the very least you could have slain one of them and taken his weapons."

"Next time," Annja said. "If you want, you can wait for them down here. They'll probably get that tunnel opened again in a minute. You can get all the weapons you want."

Roux glared at her. "She was never a wiseass."

"I'm not Joan," Annja said. She turned her attention to Avery.

The young man looked as though he was in shock and about to pass out. He cradled his wounded hand in his good one.

"Can you run?" Annja asked.

"I… I think so."

"Upstream," Annja said. "There should be another way out." She took the lead, splashing through the water. She set the flashlight to wide angle.

Behind them they could hear Lesauvage's men wrestling to remove the heavy stone oval.

"What makes you think there's another way out?" Roux asked. "I trust you haven't been here before?"

"I saw a leaf float past me. It came from outside."

"It could have passed through an underwater opening. For all you know, this stream could run for miles underground."

"I hope not." Annja followed the slope up into the heart of the mountain.

The way got tricky and footing was treacherous. There were sinkholes along the way that plunged them up to their chests in near freezing water. They scrambled out and kept going. The rock ran smooth as time and fungus had made it slippery. Again and again, they fell with bruising impacts that left them shaken. They kept moving, certain that Lesauvage and his men would follow.

Annja tried to make sense of the direction they were heading, but she had to give up and acknowledge that they were lost. She listened, but she couldn't tell if they were being pursued.

Maybe not, she thought hopefully. With the treasure right there, Lesauvage wouldn't let anything else stand in his way.

She kept running.

Corvin Lesauvage was in heaven. Hanging from the rungs set into the wall, he played his flashlight beam over the treasure that Benoit the Relentless had dumped into the Roman garrison's hiding place all those years ago.

It didn't matter to Lesauvage how Benoit had managed to find the place. Maybe he'd learned of it while searching for La Bête. Or perhaps one of his men had known about it.

The fact was that everyone who knew about it now was dead.

Except for Annja Creed, Avery Moreau and the hard-eyed old man who had accompanied her.

Lesauvage reconciled himself with the knowledge that they wouldn't get down off the mountain in the storm. He wouldn't allow that to happen. If they told the authorities about his ill-gotten gain, it could cause him no end of problems.

He stared at the gleaming precious metals in the glare of his flashlight a moment longer, then he climbed the rungs back up to the cave. His men awaited him.

"We hunt," he declared.

They all grinned and howled in eager anticipation. Quickly, they took up the old Celtic chant he'd taught them in the cave beneath his house. Then they took the special concoction of drugs he'd created, which he told them contained ancient magic. It was mostly speed with a mild hallucinogenic, enough to make them physically able to push themselves past the level of normal human endurance and never know any fear.

Within minutes, they were all high, edgy and ready to explode. Eager to kill.

"They're down there," Lesauvage said, feeling the drug's effects himself. He felt impossibly strong and invincible. Almost godlike. "I want them dead."

Dropping back through the wolf trap, Lesauvage lowered himself into the stream. He didn't know which way to go. Closing his eyes, he tried to sense his prey, but there were no signs of them.

He reached into the water and came up with a gold coin. He laughed a little, feeling the heavy weight of it in his hand. The coin had two sides. One was blank. The other held the symbol of the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. He designated the insignia "heads" and flipped the coin.

The gold disc whirled in the air. Lesauvage slid a hand under it and looked down at the symbol lying in his palm.

It was heads.

"This way," he told his men. They headed upstream.

Baying and laughing, the Wild Hunt took up the chase.

Brother Gaspar stood back for a moment while two of the young monks entered the Roman garrison. Cold rain pelted him, a barrage of hostility fueled by nature. He fully expected an exchange of gunfire within the cave at any moment.

Instead, the two monks returned. They were armed with pistols, rifles and swords.

"There is something you should see," one of them said.

Brother Gaspar followed the monks into the cave. He saw the stone oval suspended over the wolf trap at once. Peering down into the hole while another monk pointed his flashlight, Brother Gaspar saw the water and the gold and silver below.

"Benoit's ransom," Brother Gaspar said. "I'd thought it lost forever." He looked up at the young monk. Then he noticed a dead man sprawled on the floor. "Who is that?"

"One of Lesauvage's men."

Brother Gaspar knew that Lesauvage and his men had not left. Their motorcycles were still parked outside. "What happened to him?"

"He was shot," the young monk said. He touched a spot between his own eyes. "He was dead when we got here."

"They're in the tunnel below." Brother Gaspar looked down at the water. "Where does it lead?"

The young monk shook his head. "We've tapped into an underground stream as a well. Perhaps it's another one."