by Jay Aspen
Jac saw Bel moving slowly round behind Sam and tried to quietly signal her to stop. Even if Bel managed to get control of the gun without hurting him it might trigger and hit someone else. Unfortunately Sam seemed to be locked in his own world and Jac couldn’t be sure if talking to him would make things better or worse.
Fin walked towards him, speaking softly as she held out her hand. ‘It’s okay Sam. The captain’s not here. I’ve got a message from Raine. We can find the captain later.’
Sam stared wildly around the darkening forest. ‘Raine? Where is he? Why didn’t he tell me he was coming?’
‘He’s not here Sam, he just sent a message.’ Fin didn’t try to get the gun away from him, gently pushing his hand down until the thing was pointing at the ground. ‘Come on, let’s get something to drink and we can talk about it.’ She steered him in the direction of the hut.
The inside of the hut was dimly lit by an oily reed taper stuck in a bottle. All manner of junk was piled up around the walls and a dozen or so rather smelly dried fish hung from the cobwebbed ceiling.
Sam appeared to have forgotten about Raine, enemies, and even the mysterious captain as he rummaged in the heap of miscellany piled at the end of the room, looking for twigs to light the fire, muttering an ongoing commentary to himself. While he blew on the embers in the fire-pit Jac managed a whispered conversation with Fin.
‘Do you actually know this guy? Or just another example of your intuitive guesswork?’
Fin smiled sadly. ‘All I recognized was the line, ‘One bullet for the captain’. We rescued him from the rendition black site six years ago when we got Raine out.’
‘So this captain of his?’
‘One of the mercenaries who’d been torturing them.’
‘That would explain the fixation.’
‘I think so. He’d been in there a long time. Too disturbed and restless to stay with us. So before he wandered off for the umpteenth time we sent him north with the refugees.’
‘So how did he get here?’
‘The guide came back saying he’d disappeared again, somewhere on the moorlands leading up to the pass. He must have gradually worked his way downriver to get here.’
‘Is he dangerous or just erratic?’
‘Both, probably. If I can keep him calm I expect he’ll be all right.’
After twenty minutes Sam managed to produce some boiling water in a filthy enamel bowl. They shared it cautiously, more concerned with Sam’s fluctuating moods than the quality of the water. Sam watched them drink, his eyes flitting restlessly from one to another.
‘Boat tomorrow. Mad Sam takes you. In daylight. Not dark. Dark is bad.’
He seemed to suddenly forget about them and shuffled off to the far end of the hut where he curled up on a heap of dry bracken in the far corner and went to sleep.
Kit was looking for a place to sit for the next few hours where he would have a clear view of their unpredictable host. ‘Fin, is one at a time enough on watch?
‘Probably. Just bear in mind he still has that handgun in his pocket.’
The night passed without incident but Sam couldn’t remember meeting any of them when he woke up at first light. It took Fin half an hour to calm him down again and remind him about the boat.
‘Yes, boat. Unless the captain comes. One round for the captain.’ Sam led the way to the boat on the shingle beach and untied the painter. There were two paddles. Bel took the spare. Jac noticed Sam’s physical strength as he pulled out into the current.
Lucky it didn’t turn into a fight last night. Someone would have got hurt.
The fixed rope prevented the boat from being pulled downstream into the rapids and although it made heavy weather of the paddling it only took ten minutes to beach the clumsy craft on the shingle at the far side.
‘Thanks Sam.’ Jac picked up her pack and threw it to Bel who was already on the bank.
‘Not Sam! Mad Sam. They don’t ask so many questions when you’re mad. It was nice having visitors. I wish you’d stay.’
She tried to sound reassuring. ‘Perhaps we’ll visit on the way back.’
‘The secret’s in the boat tree. It’s all about crossing rivers. Then you come back and visit again?’
He looked very lonely as he sat in the boat clutching the paddle.
‘We’ll try, if we can.’ Jac waved to him and followed the others through the switchbacks of the faint trail up the hillside.
Four hours crossing rough country brought them to the crest of the last low ridge before the mountains. Fin climbed an outcropping of weathered grey rock and scanned the valley below them. She scrambled back to where the others were resting.
‘We’re still on course, no one following. Half hour down to the lake, then skirt around the northern end of it.’
Jac’s gaze roamed around the hilly terrain covered with scrubby gorse and heather. Only a few stunted rowans survived in the sheltered gullies.
‘Where’s the pass through the mountains?’
‘Just beyond the lake. Longer route than the pass on the main road but with luck the enforcers are still scouting for us back there.’
‘How many times have you been this way before?’
‘Only once, couple of years ago.’ Fin was still scanning landmarks below. ‘I was pilot for a big group of refugees. Security forces suspected Karim might be heading north to the Ice Islands after his little adventure with their online sefet-system so they staked out the moorlands like they’re doing now.’
Jac looked northwards to the ragged clouds above the pass, streaked with high cirrus from the roiling jetstream winds. ‘It’s hard to imagine the Ice Islands. As if people just disappear there. Who’s your pilot-contact?’
‘The islander’s leader. He calls himself Wolf. Most of them take on new names. Part of the process of disappearing from the outside world.’
Jac laughed. ‘Maybe they got the idea from a visit with the grey brothers. If they couldn’t find any trees on the Ice Islands they’d have to go for animals.’
‘Anything to lose their old identities I think.’ Fin picked up her pack and signalled the others to move off. As they descended to the lake shore Jac caught a flicker of movement below them.
‘I think we’re too late. They’ve cut straight across the fells from the main pass.’
Fin moved cautiously forward for a better look. Several dozen heavily-armed figures were spread across the lower end of the valley.
‘You’re right. I can’t see any vehicles so they must have abandoned them at the end of the road and arrived on foot. They’ve got the old disused road through the mountains completely staked out. That was the easiest route. Now we’ll have to go straight up through the cliffs and along the ridge.’ Fin pointed to the grey hulk of rock towering above the ambush. ‘The jetstream wind will be worse up there but once across the summit we drop down to the next lake and we’ll be on the other side of the barrier.’
Bel had a faraway look in her eyes, the way she did when gestalt focusing. ‘If they only went to all this trouble and expense before because they were after a high-value target like Karim, what’s so special about us?’
Fin frowned as she watched the activity around the road. ‘I’ve been wondering about that myself. I suppose there’s always a first time for them to try to actually follow through the barrier. But why?’ She shook her head as if to clear the intruding thoughts. ‘No time to think about it now, we need to get out of here.’
They backtracked until they were out of sight of the ambush and worked their way around the hillside until they were below the crag. The ground became steeper as they climbed towards the ridge until a wall of cliffs loomed ahead. The climbing became vertical in places but it wasn’t difficult on the broken rock. Finally they reached a narrow ledge less than twelve feet from the top. Jac stopped, listening.
‘Air cover. I can hear it. I mean, I can feel it. They’ve cut the engines and let it drift so we don’t hear them but there’s a disturbance in
the airwaves––’
There was no space or time to get out of sight as the plane came from behind the shoulder of the hill, deadly silent except for the muffled whisper of air displaced by its wings. Jac held her breath and waited for the flash that would leave nothing of them but a few scorched marks on the cliffside...
And then the plane banked and turned and disappeared in the direction it had come from.
‘What was that all about?’ Jac looked to Fin for answers.
‘They’ve relayed our position to the ground forces.’ Fin pointed to a change in the movement below them. ‘They want to capture us alive for questioning. It’ll take them less than fifteen minutes to get up here from where they’re stationed on the road.’
Jac focused on the wind blowing against her face. ‘The plane may not come back. I think its time-window is running out. I can feel the air shifting and cooling. The barrier’s moving this way. Doesn’t that mean sudden wind gusts that can throw a plane out of the sky?’
Fin seemed preoccupied, checking out the steep rockface above her. ‘Which is why they hardly ever bring planes up this far. They’re pushing this hard with more risk than I expected.’
Kit was working his way around the edge of their narrow platform, checking sightlines to the assembling patrols below them. ‘Fin, there’s no time for us to get clear of the ridge before they get here. Someone has to hold them off while the others make it past the barrier and into the trees.’
‘You’re right, but it’s not you.’ Fin stepped in front of him. ‘Go. I can keep them back for at least twenty minutes after they get within bowshot.’
‘No. Fin, I––’
‘Will follow orders. I’m in command here, remember? I think it’s me they’re after. They’ll just keep on till they get what they want.’
Kit froze as if a shockwave had hit him. ‘But everyone needs you.’
‘Not as much as they need the three of you. Raine isn’t training you and Bel for some day far in the future. You have to be ready to take over sometime soon.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why. Burnout. He’s kept going because he has to, but he knows it won’t last. You’re not getting the easy option here. Knowing your role has cost a life will make it hard to turn away from it.’
Suddenly Jac realized what they were talking about. ‘But Fin, you can’t. You––’
Fin gripped Jac’s shoulders, making her focus on her next words. ‘Jac, you’re ready to take over as medic. There’s someone else who can teach you the other things I promised you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be me. Now go.’ She handed the blue phoenix to Bel. ‘Take Jac along the ridge and get her through the barrier.’
Bel stared at her, unable to move or respond, fingers clasped around the tiny medallion.
‘Now.’ Fin gave her a push.
Bel grabbed Jac’s wrist and half dragged her up the last few steep ledges to the summit. Jac broke free at the edge of the cliff and looked back, trying to see where the other two had got to on the ledge below.
Then she was running along the ridge after Bel, hot tears stinging her face.
33
The first sudden gusts of wind were starting, between interludes of dead stillness. Fin faced Kit at the end of the perched ledge, trying to figure out how to get him to move.
‘Kit. I’m reminding you this was an order. Your job now is to protect Bel and Jac. You can’t abandon them.’
He stood his ground. ‘At least let me give you the honour you’ve earned. A lifetime of service has to mean something.’ He took her hand in both his own for the protocol they all had trained into them on the practice ground.
‘It has been a privilege to know you and to have lived and served beside you––’
He broke off. ‘Fin, I can’t do this. I can’t leave you here.’
‘You can. You have to. Go.’ She felt Kit’s fingers tense as he forced himself to complete it.
‘Now you are facing death with the courage you have shown in life. Yr’illyn thana vere’ lieth.’
She smiled and gave his hands a gentle push.
‘Go.’
He laid his own arrows on the ledge beside her and scrambled up the last few feet of vertical crag. Fin added them to her own and moved behind the biggest outcrop of grey rock, waiting for the first sighting of men with guns.
She didn’t have to wait long. The clear picture in her mind of her five vantage points guided her as she moved smoothly between them, using her arrows carefully to cut off the advance on all three sides.
There was a flicker of movement below as bullets ricocheted off the grey wall to the side of her, flinging sharp splinters of rock in all directions.
Fin ignored the cut slicing across the back of her hand and moved swiftly to the rock buttress twelve feet to her left. She loosed another arrow, then moved again. If she could keep the arrows coming from different directions it would give her attackers the impression there were several people above them. The enforcers had become more cautious after their first losses and their advance had finally slowed.
Each minute that passed brought her a growing sense of relief. Every new fragment of time she created for the others gave them a little more chance to get out of range and out of sight under the trees before pursuit could reach the exposed ridge above.
Between the still periods of calm the occasional wind gusts were vicious, thankfully strong enough to deter the plane from coming anywhere near. It had probably already landed as far away as possible and stayed down.
Only two arrows now. Make them count.
She saw a movement over to her right. Three of them scrambling up the rocks together, covering each other as they advanced––
Only one way to do this...
She moved out into the open and dropped two of the three before the third was able to fire, the rattle of his gun sounding unreal as it echoed off the surrounding cliffs.
The white-hot pain in her side burned with a strange synthesis of pain and distance and she steadied herself against the rock wall behind her. Suddenly she found she had to fully lean against it to stay upright as she checked the position of the wound. The assessment was automatic, a repeat of what she’d done so many times for her patients back in the field clinics of the chaos wars.
I’ve probably got a few minutes left. Maybe I can delay them just a bit more...
She dropped her bow, kept her left hand tight on her side and drew her knife with her right. A movement on the ledge made her look up.
She wasn’t surprised when she saw him.
‘You again.’
Parry was standing a few feet away, a heavy pistol aimed at her head. He seemed to be surrounded by a halo of darkness but beyond him there was nothing but clear light.
‘Magdalene Mareschelle, you are under arrest––’
He broke off when he saw her smile.
‘You’re wrong, Colonel. You’re too late.’
The darkness was closing in around her now. She saw his expression suddenly change as he saw the blood staining the rock along her left side and he ran towards her even as she knew she’d eluded him yet again.
She has no fear whose spirit has already crossed into the realm of death...
You’re way too late.
*
Jac reached the edge of the evergreen forest surrounding the second lake and stopped. Everything was suddenly quiet on the ridge above them. She turned and looked back, sensing a change in the action behind them.
‘It’s over.’
Bel walked out from the shelter of the trees and stood beside her, one hand raised in final farewell.
They stayed there longer than Fin would have permitted if she’d been in command. At last Bel pushed Jac and Kit into the cover of the forest again.
The air was much colder now they had crossed the jetstream. Patches of crystalline snow still clung to the ground in the shadow of the rocks. There was no path but the frost and the acid soil under the conifers combined to prevent
much in the way of undergrowth and their progress was relatively easy. They kept moving until dusk, making camp in the sparse shelter of the last trees. Ahead lay only tundra and rock, partly covered by wider expanses of snow.
‘Do we need to take turns to watch?’ Jac felt tired but it seemed a necessary precaution. To her surprise Bel dismissed the idea.
‘No. I think Fin was right. It was her they were after. I’ve been watching for movement on the ridge and there’s nothing. The wind dropped but there’s no sign of that plane.’
They shared the last of Juniper’s food in silence. Kit sat on a rock and leaned, exhausted, against a stunted tree trunk. Jac instinctively moved a few paces away, finding it difficult to be close to him. She wanted so much to be in his arms and yet she wished they were hundreds of miles apart.
It was getting too difficult to deal with disturbing feelings that only seemed to be getting stronger since that first uninvited sense of attraction. She didn’t want this. Felt she was betraying Raine and yet found it impossible to change things.
Kit didn’t seem to notice, his thoughts turned inward. Bel walked over and sat next to him, a comforting arm around his shoulders.
‘Hey. We should get to where we’re going and grieve after that or we may not make it at all. I don’t want to waste the chance she gave us.’
He went on staring at the snowbank. ‘That’s what I was thinking about. Fin said the knowledge that a life had paid for us would make it harder to turn back.’
‘Kit, you’ve always given everything you’ve got to become what Raine wants you to be.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be enough. Raine was almost my age when he went undercover in the military and Fin said that after rendition he’s burned out in six years. I’d be lucky to last three! What use is that?’ He looked up at her with a shrug of impatience. ‘I have to find a way to do a better job than I feel I can right now.’
‘I know. I feel the same.’ Bel rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I just feel exhausted tonight.’
Jac watched them for a moment, then moved away into the trees to give them some space. She needed to find her own space for the confused and troubled thoughts of the last few days.