by Rick Shelley
Thinking about the way we had sent the Ingelses off to Varay started me grumbling about our lack of foresight. I realized that we could have saved ourselves a lot of bother with packhorses. Aaron could have opened a doorway at mealtimes. We could have kept someone watching for us in Varay, have our food and whatever else we might need ready to hand through.
"We might have trouble finding materials to make a doorway, or finding the time to put one together two or three times a day," Aaron said, trying to stop my grumbling. "And it's not the easiest magic in the worlds. I'd as soon not have to strain at it several times a day."
It was still something I should have thought of in advance, even if we had discarded the idea as impractical.
The bridge we found across the Ohio River was a railroad span that looked as though it had been there for a century or longer. How it managed to survive, I'll never know, but it had. When we approached the bridge, riding along the tracks, my danger sense started to itch. I saw the old bridge and at first assumed that it was the rickety condition of the span that was causing the alarm, the way the bridge over the Tarn at the edge of Basil Town always worried me.
"We'll have to take a good, long look at this bridge before we cross," I said.
We were riding slowly, not pushing our horses at all. It was late afternoon and I didn't see much difference between camping on one side of the river and camping on the other. Staring at the bridge as we got closer, I didn't really notice the directional shift in my awareness of danger as quickly as I should have. The peril was on both sides of the railroad tracks, not out on the bridge.
Two men stepped out of the bushes. Both were armed with shotguns.
We pulled our horses to a stop.
"Well, lookee here," one of the men said. "Robin Hood and his merry men." The men showed the effects of several days in the wild. Both wore jeans and ragged flannel shirts. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with their guns, though.
"Almost," I said softly, becoming aware of more points of danger to either side. More armed men, I guessed. A small band of post-holocaust entrepreneurs had set themselves up in business.
I rested both of my hands on the pommel of my saddle, resisting the urge to grab for one of my elf swords and charge forward. I was very careful, anxious not to make any sudden moves before I absolutely had to. We had walked into some sort of trap. In this world, that meant that there were probably more guns in the underbrush, all aimed at us.
Stupid, I told myself. You're so damned used to the Robin Hood crap that you forgot that guns work here and there are people willing to use them against other people.
And while the Hero magic gives me exceptionally quick reflexes, there was no way I could dodge a volley of gunfire coming from several directions at once. Maybe Aaron could, but Lesh and Timon wouldn't have a chance. I had to find a better way.
"You folks looking to cross over to Illinois?" the same man asked.
"That's where we're heading," I said, nodding in what I hoped was an agreeable manner. Even the pistol under my shirt wouldn't be much good against a gang of these thugs.
"This here bridge is the only one left crost the Ohio. Ain't nothing else 'tween Louisville and Cairo."
I doubted that. If this wreck had survived, I expected that others had as well. Besides, the chances of the only bridge left happening to be just where we needed it to be were too small to bet on, even at long odds.
"Then I guess we were lucky to hit this one right off," I said. I felt a tingling on my skin, and just at the threshold of hearing, I could hear Aaron starting a chant. I didn't know what he was preparing, but I hoped I could stall any violence until he was ready to spring his magic.
"This here being the only bridge left, it's valuable," the thug doing all the talking said. He seemed to get an extra syllable or two into "valuable." He was standing ahead of me, to the right. "There's a toll for crossing it."
Surprise. "How much?" I asked.
"That depends on just what you got." This time, it was the other man on the tracks who spoke.
"I'll tell you want," I said, still being careful with my voice. "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse." Maybe they never saw The Godfather. Or maybe they just weren't smart enough to pick up the implicit threat. "If you two and all your little friends in the bushes put down your guns and let us cross peaceably, we'll let you live to rob other folks who are unlucky enough to stumble on you."
I guess the easy conversational tone puzzled them. They took a moment to react. And then they just laughed. That was as far as they got.
There was a loud clap of thunder immediately behind the two men who were standing on the tracks blocking our path. Twin bolts of fire-I'd really hate to call it lightning-flashed into the brush on both sides of the tracks. The fire flared with impossible speed, erupting for some thirty feet on either side.
With that sort of distraction, the fight was hardly fair. I spurred my horse forward. Electrum was used to noise and light. He responded perfectly. The instant that the two men on the tracks lost looking to see what the explosive noise behind them was lost them their advantage… and their heads. I drew Dragon's Death and took one long swipe that finished off both of them.
The men hiding in the bushes were routed by the fires. Not one of them managed to get off a single shot. Three of the five men were on fire, or their clothing was. Lesh, Timon, and I waded into the fray. We let two men who threw down their guns and ran go. The others fell quickly.
Aaron hadn't moved through the engagement. He didn't need to. He had done his part.
"We should have thought of this kind of thing," Aaron said after the fighting ended.
"I should have," I said. "If I hadn't lost touch with this world, I would have."
"Did you hear what that sandy-haired one said when he ran off?"
"No," I said.
"He yelled, 'It's the Four Horsemen.' "
"Again?" I asked.
"It looks like it," Aaron agreed.
"Just what are these four horsemen supposed to be?" I asked.
"Agents of death, famine, and pestilence. One of the signs of the End of Everything." The End of Everything. Aaron's use of the phrase was like a kick in the face.
"My folks were big on the Bible," he explained. "Used to read it to me every night. Made me start memorizing passages when I was only five. And my grandma was even worse." He made a face. "I always hated that memorizing and reciting but I was afraid to refuse 'cause I might get sent to hell." He looked around. "Looks like we might be getting close to there now."
"Do we cross the river or camp here tonight, sire?" Lesh asked. He's never been one for abstract discussions.
"We'll cross," I said. "With the fires, we may draw more people. Or the two who ran off may find friends and come back. Let's collect the guns they dropped and pitch them in the river."
"There may be others like these at the far end of the bridge," Lesh said.
"It's possible, but we won't be caught napping again if there are," I said. "I'll lead the way. Let's keep some distance between us. This bridge still doesn't look all that sturdy."
I've never been a real big fan of bridges. One of my vague memories of when I was very little concerns bridges. When the family was traveling anywhere by car, I did a lot of sleeping in the backseat. But all we had to do was find a bridge and I woke instantly, especially those bridges with the metal mesh pavement. Our tires wouldn't have time to complete two revolutions before I was awake.
This railroad bridge was worse. We had to dismount and walk across, leading our horses, trying to keep them calm when they could see through the bridge down to the river, fifty or sixty feet below us. There was a sort of deck along the sides of the tracks, but between the rails there was just the regular spacing of ties, and all that openness between.
Although there didn't seem to be any real chance of a train running the line so soon after the nuclear exchange, I kept listening, straining for any hint of a locomotive pulling toward us. We woul
d have been in a sticky situation, unless we happened to be close to one of the two wide spots on the bridge, where the platform stuck out farther, and even there, I wasn't sure that four people and six horses would fit, or that our horses would be able to stay calm with a train rushing past just inches away. And jumping would hardly be a solution.
Several times, one or another of our horses put a hoof through the old wooden planking that ran alongside the tracks. None of the animals seemed to be seriously injured by their missteps, though.
When we got close to the Illinois side of the bridge, I drew my Smith amp; Wesson 9mm automatic and held it close to my side, where it would be handy but not obvious. There wasn't much cover close to the tracks on the Illinois side. I couldn't see anyone lurking, and my danger sense had nothing to say.
"We'd better ride on for a while before we make camp," I said when the last of the horses was back on solid ground. "We may have just hit the shift change, or suppertime."
"Speaking of supper…" Lesh said. I looked his way, and he shrugged. "Just a reminder that we haven't eaten lately," he said.
"We'll ride on for about an hour, southwest," I said. "We'll make camp and eat then. I want to get a little farther from the edge of this forest. We'll ride due west tomorrow. Shawnee National Forest. It pretty much runs all the way across this end of Illinois. We shouldn't be out in the open very much at all."
Most people think of Illinois as just flat, open prairie, even people who live there. While I was living in Chicago I used to hear variations on the same basic joke, that you could putt a golf ball southwest along the Stevenson Expressway, Interstate 55, and it wouldn't stop rolling until it reached Missouri. Sometimes it was a marble or a bowling ball. Same joke. But there are a few long ridges running through the state, some river valleys, and down in the southern end, some real hilly country and a lot of forest. That area looks more like Kentucky or Tennessee than it does the central and northern parts of Illinois.
"If we ride straight across, it should only take two or three days to reach the Mississippi," I told the others. "We can follow the river north until we find a place to cross."
"There might be a lot of people staying close to the Mississippi," Aaron said.
"You're probably right," I said as we mounted and started to ride again. "I'll give it some thought tonight." Going on to St. Louis, we were going to run into people no matter what way we went, maybe a lot of them, and we had to look for a way to cross the Mississippi, somewhere south of St. Louis. I doubted that there would be any intact bridges near the metropolitan area, and if we went north to cross, we'd have to find a way across the Missouri River as well coming back south.
"How far do you suppose we are from St. Louis right now?" Aaron asked. "Straight line, not the way we might have to go."
"I'm not sure. Probably no more than a hundred miles, maybe less."
"We get settled in for the night, I'll start trying to find your wife's family."
"Just how do you work that?" I asked. "Parthet always said he had to be able to see things for most of his magic."
"Most," Aaron agreed. "But I've seen photographs. Joy showed them to me. Snapshots. And I've got a good read on her. I think I can make the link to her family. But I'm still not sure how close I have to be."
Aaron didn't come up with anything that night. The next morning, we did head due west. I decided that the immediate advantages of having all that forest around us were more important than the disadvantages of too many people later.
Riding through the National Forest, we didn't see any obvious signs of nuclear war. Of course, the roads we crossed were empty of traffic, except for a few pedestrians, and there were occasional encampments of refugees, but most of the time we might almost have had the world to ourselves. That was a touchy thought.
Dad and I had talked of camping in the Shawnee National Forest a couple of times. We had even sent away for brochures and maps. But with so many place to go outdoors, we just never made it to this area. It's not all wilderness and trees. There are small towns, villages, scattered through the area, but we stayed away from them, the way we had been staying away from any concentrations of people.
"It's not really like Precarra," Lesh said, early on our first full day in Illinois.
"No, not nearly as wild," I said. "There are deer, raccoons, skunks, some other small animals." But they probably wouldn't last for long if masses of hungry people started foraging for survival. Hunting laws wouldn't mean a thing now.
There were even birds in the trees.
We were riding through a thin patch of the forest when we heard the helicopter coming. There was only time to pull in close to a couple of trees and halt, hoping that we wouldn't be spotted. A helicopter would most likely be military, and soldiers would ask too many questions if they found a group like us.
"You know that magic Parthet uses to hide people from dragons?" I whispered.
"Already working," Aaron said.
"At least it means that there's some sort of government functioning here," I said after the Army chopper flew over-not nearly high enough for comfort. But there seemed to be no hesitation, no change in its course. Apparently they hadn't spotted us.
"Maybe they're checking air samples," I said after we started riding again. "I saw something like that in some movie about World War Three, and they did a lot of that kind of sampling after the Coral Lady."
After hiding from the helicopter, I started picking our path with more of an eye to cover, but even with that, we almost rode out of the forest about the middle of the afternoon. We stopped, then turned and headed farther south to keep trees around us and, as much as possible, over us. Riding alongside an oiled-gravel secondary road, we stumbled on a little village that had been burned. The fire was recent. Although the ashes and remains were cool, the fine soot and ash was still loose, swirling along the ground.
"Nobody dropped a bomb on this place," Aaron said.
"No." I stopped my horse and dismounted. The others followed my lead. We walked along the road, the only real street the village had boasted, leading our horses. There was nothing left but charred remains-a couple of cars, the foundations of several houses, the axles and metal underframes of a couple of mobile homes, odds and ends like the twisted and blackened frame of a child's tricycle.
"Bodies." Lesh pointed off to the side. Back behind the foundation of a house we found two dozen bodies, all huddled together. Some were burned beyond recognition. The stench was overpowering.
"Someone herded them all together and killed them," Lesh said.
"Raiders, thugs like those people at the bridge," I guessed. Lesh grunted.
"I suppose there are a lot of people like that," Aaron said.
"And if the Army or National Guard spots us, they're sure to think that we fit the description," I said. Reasonable pessimism.
"We'll just have to make sure they don't spot us," Aaron said. After a slight hesitation, he added, "Or if they do see us, we'll have to make them think we're something they really don't believe."
"You have an idea, I take it?"
"We might as well be those Four Horsemen. Folks want to think we are anyway."
"Disguises?" I asked.
"Just my kind of disguise," Aaron said. "If I can remember-let's see, a white horse, a red horse, a black horse, and a pale horse."
"That still leaves two horses," I reminded him.
"The packhorses. They won't count. You got the sword-one of the riders is mentioned with a sword, maybe more. And we've got to look like something that can't be, real movie-monster stuff. Let's find us a place away from these bodies and I'll take care of it."
"Hang on a second. How many different magics can you hold on to at one time?" I asked.
"I don't know. How many names do you remember?"
"It can't be the same."
"No. Wait, you said you studied computers?" I nodded. "Do you remember any of the programs you wrote?"
"Nothing longer than a half-dozen lin
es," I said.
"Oh." Aaron shook his head. "I guess that comparison won't work then. It doesn't matter. Most of the magics don't need my constant attention. I start them up and they run, they keep running. Sometimes I have to goose 'em a little later on. Only a few are more demanding. The big ones, mostly."
I still didn't understand, but he was the expert.
We followed the road out of the little village, still on foot, leading our horses. When the road bent a little and took the ruins out of sight, Aaron turned off the road, into the trees. About fifty yards in, we stopped, near a creek.
"The horses should be cool enough to drink their fill right off," Lesh said. "We been walking 'em long enough."
"Okay, you and Timon take care of it. But stick close." I wanted to watch Aaron do his stuff. Magic still fascinated me.
"I've got to see you all to do this," Aaron said.
He sat under a tree and rested his back against it. He stared at me when he started chanting. After a moment, he turned his attention to Lesh and then to Timon. Finally, he stared at each of the horses we were riding, in turn. He chanted the entire time, and the tingling of active magic was so strong that I had to fight the urge to scratch. Before Aaron stopped, he moved over to the creek and knelt next to it. He leaned over so he could see his own face reflected in the water.
When he got up, he cleared his throat and looked my way.
"I think that'll do it," he said.
"Do what?" I asked. "I don't see any disguises."
"We're not trying to hide from us," Aaron said. "We're inside the magic, not looking in."
"Then how can you be sure it's working?"
"It's my job to know," Aaron said, with an unusual firmness to his voice.
I nodded. "Let's get a few more hours of riding in," I said. "I don't want to camp anywhere near that village."
We went back to the road and followed it, staying off to the side so the horses wouldn't have to contend with all that oiled gravel. The road went southwest, deeper into the forest, just what I was looking for. I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of cover. But we would have to head west again before long.