by Foy W Minson
Jerry sat in the dry dust at the bottom of the steps, his arms cradling his swollen knee. The three men that had escorted them from the bridge sat on a low wall in the shade of a large tree. Their bats leaned against the wall within easy reach, and they all kept their eyes on their captive. When Morgan stepped out onto the landing at the top of the steps, they all stood up and picked up their bats.
“Where is the tide?” Morgan called out.
The man without a bat and whom Hughes had greeted as Brad stepped out of the shade and peered up at the sun before answering, “Probably still another hour before it’s full.”
“Then, to the bridge with him.”
Olen had little doubt what that meant, and he resisted looking over at Jackie. He didn’t know if his son would be foolish enough to try to defend his friend, but he didn’t have to wonder what the consequences would be. Not necessarily the details, but certainly the outcome. He just didn’t know if he would be automatically included.
Olen doubted if Morgan would order his own men to soil themselves by carrying someone they all considered too vile to touch, so he expected he and Jackie would be ordered to support Jerry in his walk of the last mile. He didn’t look forward to getting that close to Jerry again. He knew the man would beg for them to help him avoid his fate, maybe even to mount a legal defense on his behalf. No doubt, as they neared the river, his pleas would become demanding, grasping and clutching if they were within reach. But, then the way Morgan’s men spared him of it might have been as bad as what he had anticipated.
Brad, the man across the street without a bat stepped through a door over there. When he came back out a few seconds later, he uncurled a bullwhip. He flipped its eighteen-foot length out along the ground in front of him a couple of times, then flicked it up and lashed it out to crack in the air like a gunshot. He did it a couple more times, just to limber it up and get the feel of it, and probably to impress everyone watching. Then he walked toward Jerry.
Morgan remained on the top step, holding his staff to one side and watching the play in the street. Olen stayed behind him with Jackie. He was pretty sure what was coming, if not the level of vicious brutality. Still, he couldn’t help but watch.
The whip cracked again just inches from Jerry’s shoulder, and the terrified man flinched but didn’t move other than to drop his arms from his knee. He looked around at Morgan, Olen and Jackie then back at his tormentor just as the whip cracked again. This time the tip of the whip, moving through its terminal arc at supersonic speed to create another gun-shot crack, flicked across his cheek. The flesh separated as easily as under the blade of a scalpel, leaving a gaping hole like a second mouth. With a cry, Jerry grabbed his face and curled away.
Olen watched horrorstruck and fascinated at the same time.
The whip came at Jerry from his right side where the man had moved. It missed him but cracked only half an inch away. He flinched and rolled in the dust away from it. It cracked again, biting into his back like a hot branding iron, leaving a line of red visible through the long rip in his shirt’s fabric that soaked up the blood as it spread across his back. He tried to jump to his feet and flee, but his knee buckled beneath him. As he rolled in the dust, grabbing his agonizing knee, the whip jerked several strands of hair from just above his right ear. He rolled away from it again and then again when it cracked close behind. He looked around at the wielder of the whip who stood grinning and slowly flexing his leather for the next strike. He looked up at Olen who was still on the landing, although now several yards away, and pleaded with his eyes as his hand reached out, begging. Olen’s gaze dropped to the steps below him, and he refused to look back at Jerry. Jackie continued to watch, but he made no move, not even enough to form an expression to indicate his disapproval.
“Crawl on thy belly, worm,” Morgan intoned. “If fear of my presence prevents the Black Lord, thy true master, to come to thy aid, tis thy payment in worth.”
Olen wondered if Morgan had a scriptwriter, or if the man just made it up as he went along. Whatever, the Prophet might be crazy enough to be committed in a sane world, but he was in command here and apparently took himself very seriously.
The man with the whip followed Jerry as he tried to scramble away, lashing out with his punishments whenever Jerry slowed, or as reminders not to slow down or veer except as herded.
Jerry tried repeatedly to gain his feet, to hobble, to limp, but his destroyed knee wouldn’t let him go more than a few steps before dropping him into the dust again. And, then, the whip was there to encourage him to push himself another few feet, a yard, a pace, just enough to get beyond the reach of the vicious thing.
Morgan followed twenty feet behind Brad, and the two bat wielders behind Olen and Jackie who stayed just beyond arm’s length of Morgan.
By the time they neared the river, Jerry was bleeding from dozens of knife-like slashes. One ear hung from a small strip of skin and cartilage still attached. Still, the man drove him on, not allowing him to rest even for a moment, to catch his breath, to comfort himself in any way. The whip forced him to use his shattered knee, grinding his teeth in fighting to overcome the agony there in scrambling away, or to roll in the dirt if he couldn’t rise fast enough.
He cried out, screamed in agony, sobbed streams of pleas, and rolled in the dust again. If he moved just a little farther, maybe he could stop. Maybe the whip wouldn’t reach him if he rolled one more time. Such was the simplicity of thought that was all his mind could manage since the whip punished anything else. Even though he was being herded onto the bridge, his mind couldn’t form a warning; it couldn’t scream at him that it was the last place he wanted to go. As the whip sliced away half of his other ear, all he could think was that he had to scramble away from it, but he could no longer scramble with his knee unable to support any weight at all, so he would roll again…and again.
And then it stopped.
Jerry felt as though he were suddenly in a vacuum. For as long as he could remember, his world had been the crack of the whip and its terrible bite. And, then it stopped. Without looking back to see if the whip was preparing to come again, in the unexpected peace that enveloped him, he allowed himself the luxury to sag to the dust covered pavement. He still lay there, sobbing in the dust, when they tied the rope about one of his ankles, the one below the shattered knee.
He didn’t protest until the rope lifted his leg and his knee was forced straight, and then extended with his full weight as he went vertical. His knee felt as though fire consumed it from within. His screams became screeches, rising in pitch as the ligaments stretched, pulling the bone and bone fragments against each other. Then, as he fought for breath in his agony, they came in pulses between gasps.
Morgan turned and walked around onto the promenade atop the riverbank where they had an unobstructed view of the spectacle. Olen and Jackie didn’t dare do anything but accompany him.
The rope went over a pulley at the end of a wooden beam that pivoted at its base. After it was swung out over the river, the men positioned themselves so they could watch Jerry spin slowly with his free leg sticking out to his front as they lowered him, still screaming, toward the water’s surface.
Olen doubted if he was even aware of the nearness of the water.
When the top of his head was only inches above the water, with his arms stretching upward to try to comfort his knee, they stopped him. But, then, probably to make him aware of the nearness of his new peril, they dropped him briefly in a ligament ripping jerk down into the slow swirl, just enough to cover his nose and mouth. When they raised him again, he sputtered and coughed, but his screaming had stopped — for the moment. With his head again no more than an inch above the water, they tied off the end of the rope and leaned over the railing to watch.
That’s when it finally dawned on Jerry. With the distraction of the whip and his knee, he hadn’t had a chance to think about it, but he was now just like the men they had seen on their approach into town, men still hanging farther acr
oss the bridge. He caught sight of the men standing on the bank and started screaming again as he reached out his hands toward them.
Morgan remained motionless and silent, but his gaze never left Jerry.
Olen and Jackie stood beside and a bit behind him. Neither spoke, but they both watched their previous companion twist about above the rising water. Within just a few minutes, the water was to his eyes, so they no longer had to make eye contact with him. Although he tried to curl himself up out of the water, he didn’t have the strength to hold it for more than a few seconds. After the water reached his mouth, his struggles lasted only another minute, violent spasms alternating with calm. When it was to his chin, his only movement came from the negligible push of the river as it neared its high mark.
CHAPTER 19
With only two days before they would all head up-river, Emmie was getting restless. She was packed, and she was satisfied the boat she would power was as fit as they could make it with their limited resources and knowledge of boat-building. Everyone else was packed and spending their idle hours fussing over little details they wouldn’t bother with if they didn’t have so much time to kill. They talked eagerly about all they would do during the next two weeks, not really fooling anyone that they would have the time to do all of it, or not get distracted with other things that would drive all those other intentions right out of their heads. Still, they planned and anticipated.
Her restlessness sent her strolling about the village. The first place she headed was the little beach where the boats waited and confirmed one last time that the boat was ready, but that only took a few minutes. She roamed out to the waterwheel platform. Uncle Joe knelt next to one of the support towers. He had his hands down inside the box with all the wires and switches for controlling the wheel’s output.
“Anything wrong?” she asked him when he glanced up after catching sight of her shadow on the deck.
“Nope, just fiddlin’.” He swung around to answer her and then sat back on the deck with his legs dangling into the slow current just a couple of feet from where the paddles of the huge wheel slapped the water before slipping beneath the surface on the upstream side. “I’m as packed as I can get, and now I’m just getting impatient.”
“Yeah, me too. Anything I can help with?”
“Nope. Not even anything I can help with. I’m just fiddlin’.”
She turned to leave, paused and turned back again. “Uncle Joe, aren’t you doing exactly what you warned everyone not to do — ever?”
“Huh?” He looked up at her and around at the platform deck on both sides of him. “What’re you talking about, hon?”
She perched her hands on her hips and cocked her head sideways. “Didn’t you warn us that the wheel could reach right out and grab us and knock us out and drag us under before we even knew it if we ever got too close? Just like you are right now?”
He peered over at the paddles softly stirring the surface as they swept past his dangling feet. She was pretty sure his feet would feel the drag of the swirling eddy created beneath the barge. His gaze rose up to her with a sheepish grin creeping across his face as he withdrew his feet from the water. “Well, I guess you caught me good, didn’t you?”
She managed to keep from laughing at the expression on the big man’s face. He looked like a little boy caught snagging a cookie, but she couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face as she waved when she walked back down the pier. She called back to him, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”
She walked back up the bank and across to where Charlie was restacking the stones around the base of his flagpole.
“Why don’t you just dig a deeper hole to put it in?” she asked when he glanced around at the sound of her footsteps crunching on the gravel behind him.
“Pole’s too short. If I sunk it deep enough to hold it without having to stack stones around it, it’d only be a stubby little thing. If I’m gonna stack stones around it anyway, I might as well keep it as high as I can. Not that it really means all that much.”
She walked around the pole, looking up at Charlie’s creation. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it looks all right. Give it some time. It’ll have meaning.”
“Hmm, maybe someday. Meanwhile, I need to find some rocks that ain’t so round. You ever try to stack marbles?”
“I could go with you if you want to try to find some now.”
“Naw, that’s okay. Maybe when we get back. I’m gonna go down, now, and check the boats.”
“Okay, see you later.” She could have told him the boats had been checked and rechecked many times over the past couple of days, but she was pretty sure he already knew that.
She had walked partway back to her house where she was contemplating trying to take a nap to pass the time when she ran into Sherri and Dan strolling about. Sarah was back at their house playing with Raven’s youngest son, Jamal, under Tina’s watchful eyes. Vonnie’s son, Lazaro, and Geo came dashing around the corner of a house and almost collided with Emmie. She had just started to divert after she realized she was probably interrupting a getting-to-know-each-other stroll, but after the two boys shouted “Sorry” and continued on their adventure, Sherri and Dan both insisted she was welcome to join them. She was happy to assume the role of guide, telling the tale behind each point of interest.
They soon heard the thwack-thwack sounds of quarterstaffs and wooden swords slamming into each other. The practice field for Dagar’s weapons academy was just off to the right behind a couple of houses. That was always fun to watch. Maybe she could even pitch in if someone needed a sparring partner.
On their approach, she noted five pairs going at each other using quarterstaffs. Emmie described how the quarterstaffs were an improvement over the first ones Dagar had taught his earliest students to use back in Petaluma six years ago. They had made do back then with shovel handles, although, as she recalled that final battle at the old high school, they worked pretty well. But these new ones that Dagar made were aged oak from a nearby woodshop from pre-invasion days, shaped and balanced to his own demanding specifications. In the hands of trained fighters, such as his students, they could be as lethal as swords.
The trio had been watching the current quarterstaff matches for a while when a flash of movement off to the side caught Emmie’s eye. When she turned that way all she noted was a wooden sword sparring match with three against one in a way that reminded her of the first time she met Billy Ray. The memory of that uneven battle, even with the unexpected way it turned out, was enough to raise her hackles. But she didn’t understand just what it was that had caught her eye. She had watched uneven matches before; Dagar often set them up as part of his course. But something odd about this one had caught her eye even when she wasn’t looking at it, some movement that was unnatural enough to have snared her attention.
When Sherri and Dan noticed Emmie turned that way, they turned to watch, too,.
The fighter in the middle, unlike the image of a bull moose cornered by a pack of rangy wolves that Billy Ray had inspired all those years ago, was a young man hardly older than Emmie, and not a lot bigger, either. He wasn’t a member of the village, but neither were any of the other three. Dagar often accepted students from other villages. This fighter stayed in motion, turning continuously in the middle of the circle formed by his opponents, giving none an easy shot at his back, pretty much like Billy Ray had done. But, the others were Dagar-trained fighters armed with swords, not street hoods with switchblades, and they were closing in. She was surprised that Dagar would stage such an uneven match. With the three against one, there was no way —
Faster than she could blink, the configuration of the battle changed. Three men armed with swords worked in a circle, but there was no longer anyone in the middle. The lone fighter was now on the outside of the circle and at the back of one of the three. Pulling the blow at the last instant, he laid the tip of his sword into the back of the helmeted head in front of him, then he turned his attack onto the one to his left
, dropping him with whack to the side of his neck.
In Dagar’s classes, it was required to drop to the ground when you were touched by an opponent’s weapon that, in actual combat would have been a felling blow. It lessened chances of an actual hard blow landing, disabling or worse.
By this time, it appeared the third man realized he was the only one still standing. With only a moment’s hesitation, he charged the young man, swinging his wooden blade towards the other’s head. However, when he swung, the young man was no longer standing in front of him. In another blink, he had moved to his foe’s rear. From there he reached out to poke the tip of his sword against the back of the third opponent, who spun to face him. After a moment of them standing there looking at each other, they both burst into laughter.
Emmie’s eyes went as wide as the two beside her, but Dan and Sherri both stood with their mouths also agape. Emmie had heard Raven describe how some persons, rare but not unknown, were able to teleport, which must be what she had just witnessed. She still felt chills running up her spine, and she could almost imagine the riot of thoughts running through Sherri’s mind, and probably Dan’s, too. When she glanced over at her new friends, Sherri’s head moved ever so slowly to face her as her mouth opened even farther.
Before Sherri could say anything, Emmie said, “That wasn’t magic magic, either, just human magic.”
“C—c—can such a thing be?”
“We all saw it…and,” Emmie pointed at Dagar coming out of the academy building. He strode out to the four students with wooden swords and gathered them around him. Emmie continued, “I’ll bet he can tell us all about it. Come on.”
When they approached Dagar who was talking to the four combatants, he turned to greet them, adding, “…and I suppose you want an explanation.”