by Rick Shelley
"Sire?" Lesh said. He got to his feet and looked around, ready for battle and looking for foes.
"Today is Aaron's ninth birthday," I said, squeezing the words out through continuing laughter. It was a painful catharsis. It didn't release all of the agony I felt, but it did make it easier to get through the next hours… and I could hardly think farther ahead than that.
Dawn saw rain falling again, heavy rain, dripping off the bill of my Cubs cap, soaking my head behind it. We broke camp in the wet and got up in the saddle. The rain had been too heavy to get a fire going, so we had to start the day without coffee or a hot breakfast.
"There is one way we could maybe find out how close they are," I told Aaron as we started riding north again. "We could ride either east or west for five or ten miles and see how much the direction changes. Triangulation."
"What, and lose an hour or two of riding?" Aaron asked. He smiled. "Anyway, I didn't get that far in math. We were just doing simple fractions in the third grade."
So we rode straight north. We were an hour short of I-70. Climbing the rise to cross the highway, we popped into sight of another refugee camp, sitting right at the north side of the road.
"We're the four riders," Aaron said quickly. I felt the tingling of active magic and nodded.
Sentries at the perimeter of the camp had spotted us, but we still angled off to the right, toward the nearer side of the camp. We had gone only about a hundred yards before Aaron pulled to a stop.
"They must be in this camp," he said. "The pull changed, off that way." He pointed. "That what you meant before?"
"That's what I meant."
We gathered a lot of intent attention from the camp as we approached, but nobody came out to intercept us. The sentries, and a crowd of civilian onlookers, moved apart to let us ride in without challenge. I saw people crossing themselves or waving the horns toward us to ward off evil. I glanced around, looking for familiar faces.
"Ditch the disguise, Aaron," I said as soon as we were inside the perimeter of the camp. "I don't want to spook my in-laws any more than they already are."
This camp was a lot larger than the first one we had seen. There had to be more than five thousand people here. Rows of wall tents paralleled the highway. A United States flag flew over a tent in the center. That had to be the command post. There was an open space at the west end of the camp that had to be set aside as a heliport, but there were no choppers on the ground at the moment.
The officer who came out to meet us was a captain, and he didn't approach until we were halfway from the perimeter to the center of the camp.
"You're the ones we heard about?" he asked when we reined in our horses.
"Since I don't know what you've heard, I can't say if we're the ones you heard about," I replied, softly, trying to sound very friendly and nonthreatening. "I'm looking for my in-laws, Captain. I have strong reason to believe that they're in this camp."
"You're the one who took off all the cases of radiation sickness?"
"Yes."
"We have about four hundred and fifty of them here."
"And you want us to help them?"
"We certainly can't do much for them here. By the way, my name is William Travis Thompson."
"Gil Tyner. This is Aaron Carpenter. Lesh. Timon."
"The Four Horsemen," Captain Thompson said.
"Some have called us that," I admitted. "As I said, I'm looking for my in-laws, my wife's family, and I think that at least some of them are here in your camp."
"We have a roster at the command post," the captain said. "Can you help our injured?"
"You seem awfully anxious to trust someone you know nothing about, Captain. Are you that desperate?"
"Yes," he said, very softly, but without the slightest hesitation. "We just can't handle so many. We don't have the facilities, the medical personnel, the drugs. All we can do is watch as people get worse and die, some that could be saved-according to the book-if we had the means to treat them."
"We'll do what we can, Captain, as soon as we find the people we're looking for." There was no way I would even think of turning him down. "Are you in command here?"
"Ah, technically, no. But the colonel has four camps to look after, so I'm the ranking officer here at the moment."
When we reached the command post, Captain Thompson asked me for the names of the people we were looking for, and I told him: Joy's parents, Dan and Rosemary Bennett; her brother, Danny, his wife, Julia, and their children, Dawn and David.
The roster was alphabetical. Thompson had my answers almost immediately.
"Danny and Julia Bennett and two children, tent D-4. That's toward the northwest from here. Rosemary Bennett, dispensary. Just down the line here. Dan Bennett died the day they arrived. Radiation."
Now Joy's lost her father too, I thought. It was getting to be an epidemic.
"Can you tell me how bad Rosemary's condition is?" I asked.
"I don't have the daily status reports here," Thompson said. "The doctors keep those."
I nodded. "We'll go to the hospital tents first."
Rosemary Bennett was in critical condition, bed-bound. She hardly seemed aware of who I was. But Danny was with her when we arrived. After I said hello to his mother, Danny took me off toward the door, away from her.
"What the hell did you do to Mom and Dad?" he demanded. I had only met Danny a couple of times while I was going with Joy. Danny had his own family, and Joy and I were in Chicago most of the time before Joy moved to Varay.
"Joy and I tried to give them, and you and your family, a chance to escape all of this," I said. "Joy was worried when we saw this coming. Your parents didn't want any part of it."
"Part of what? All this fairy-tale hocus-pocus?"
"It's real, Danny, whether you want to believe it or not."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Looking for all of you. Joy's going crazy with worry. I'm here to take the whole bunch of you through to Varay."
"You think I'm crazy? I'm not a gullible fool."
"Neither is Joy. Neither are the two-hundred-odd people we helped through from a camp by Marion, Illinois. Ask Captain Thompson here about that. We can help your mother. Going through to Varay will reverse most if not all of the damage from radiation. Varay is the only hope she has. And it's probably the only chance your kids have for a decent future too."
"Oh? Do you have Mother Goose there to tell her own stories?"
"Get your wife and kids and bring them back here. We can't waste all day. We make people nervous."
"Yeah, I heard that story about four skeletons riding across the country. All the hellfire preachers are making a big noise about it. Judgment Day is almost here."
"They may be right," I said. "Now, get your family. If it's a fraud, you'll have your laugh soon enough. But it isn't, and you'll see that quick enough too. Look at it this way. You've got nothing to lose but a few minutes, and you've got everything to gain."
For a moment, I thought that Danny was going to just tell me to go to hell and refuse. But he didn't. I sent Lesh along to help him bring his family back to the hospital tent-and to make sure he didn't change his mind and take off in the other direction.
"Timon, as soon as Aaron gets the first doorway open, take the horses through and then find Baron Kardeen again. We'll all be coming through this time. If Joy's there at Basil, find her and tell her that we're bringing through her family. Got it?"
"Yes, sire."
That brought looks from the people around us. Aaron and I started giving the same kind of pep talks we had given to the casualties at Marion. There were five tents filled with radiation cases here, though, larger tents than at the other camp, and more of these people were in really bad condition. Closer to St. Louis, and several days farther along, I guess that was inevitable. We finished talking to the people in the one tent, then went outside to wait for Lesh to get back with the other Bennetts.
"Look, if you don't mind," Aaron said, "a
fter you get your wife's people and all the casualties through, I'll hang on at the door to let as many of the others through as want to come. Can we handle that?"
"It might strain things for a few days, but go ahead." I might have suggested that if Aaron hadn't. "Just one caution. Stand on the Varayan side of the door. If things get out of control then, all you have to do is pull your hand away."
"That'll mean no second chance. I'm not sure I could open the way back to one of these tent doors."
"I know, but it's the only way, Aaron. I can't take any chance of you getting trapped on this side. Crowd gets out of hand, you might get trampled before you could whip anything up."
"You may be right," Aaron said. "Parthet didn't give any guarantees about old-age pensions in this job."
I turned to Captain Thompson. "Once we open the passage here, you'll need to make arrangements for the people in the other hospital tents. Bring the people in through the door on the other end of this tent. We'll funnel them through this way." I had decided on a change in tactics. Shifting from tent to tent had done little but give the onlookers more time to get worked up at the other camp. "Tell the people that we have a treatment for radiation sickness. And try to get the families of the sick people here matched up with one another so we can send them through together. That cuts down on the anxieties. Then-and keep this quiet until we get all the casualties through-we'll hold the door open as long as we can. Anyone who wants to go through to a place where there hasn't been a nuclear war is welcome. As long as it's orderly and there are still people who want to go, we'll keep the way open. But if things get out of hand, we'll break the connection from the other side. If that happens, that's the end, no way we can open it up again." Thompson nodded, then repeated the gist of what I had said. "I'll get my people busy rounding up the families now."
Julia Bennett, Danny's wife, looked like a complete wreck-understandably. I would never have recognized her. I remembered a pretty, thin blonde who had laughed a lot. World War Three had aged her at least ten years. The kids were quiet. Their faces looked too old too. Julia didn't say much more than hello. She went to Rosemary and talked to her.
Lesh and Timon brought our horses inside the hospital tent despite the screamed protests of two doctors. Then Aaron opened the way to Basil right away, and that shut off any complaints about animals in the hospital. Timon led the horses straight through. Lesh stayed on the Illinois side of the doorway, across from Aaron.
"Okay, Danny," I said. "You and I will have to help your mother through. Julia, you can manage the children?" She just nodded. She didn't even ask where we were going or what kind of insane magic-or simple insanity-was up.
Rosemary Bennett had lost a lot of weight. That seemed to be one of the major problems of most of the radiation cases.
"I thought this was supposed to cure her," Danny said after we passed through the green veil.
"It gets rid of all the radiation in her system," I said. "She'll still need some care to recover from the side effects. Food and liquids, a lot of them, and a little time. But this buys her the time." I hoped it would buy her the time. She looked awfully close to the end.
Danny stared at me for a minute longer before he looked around. We were in the keep of Castle Basil, on the ground floor, and just off to the side of the passage from the refugee camp. Timon had the horses outside already. Someone had taken them, anyway. Timon came running toward us with Baron Kardeen and Joy almost immediately.
The relief of the reunion blunted the immediate pain Joy had to feel when she learned that her father was dead. She questioned me about her mother's condition. All I could do was repeat what I had told Danny. It was something Aaron and I had considered. We thought that recovery would be fairly quick.
The first minutes of the reunion were too chaotic for anyone to chronicle them. We moved Joy's mother through to the room above Parthet's workroom. It had already been converted for use as an intensive care ward, and a couple of people were still there from the Marion camp. Once everyone was satisfied that the senior Mrs. Bennett was well settled, Joy and I took her brother and his family down to the great hall for a meal.
"One thing you'll like here," Joy told Danny. "You can eat all day and night and not get fat."
Danny still didn't have a lot to say. He looked around a lot, frowned even more. The kids-Dawn was six and David four-perked up a little when Joy told them that it was the biggest castle in the kingdom. They ate and asked a host of questions. Julia perked up a little too. The improvement in the children's dispositions helped hers. But Danny was a lot slower to open up, and I didn't have time to waste at the moment.
"I've got to get back to Aaron," I told Joy. "I'm afraid he'll get bogged down trying to get everyone through."
Baron Kardeen had stayed right at the portal to organize our end of the rescue. After the earlier practice, he had the methods down pat. I even recognized a couple of people from Marion helping direct the new arrivals through.
"You did it, sire," Kardeen said when I stopped next to him.
I nodded. "What little I could. How's it going here?"
"We're still bringing through the injured," Kardeen said. Aaron and Lesh were still on the Illinois side of the door.
"This is going to be a much larger group," I told Kardeen. "More than twice as many injured, and maybe several thousand who aren't. How much trouble is that going to be?"
"I've had people out stocking extra food since the first refugees came through. We're even making arrangements to buy supplies from Belorz. Parthet and your mother went to Castle Curry to see to that. And the fleet at Arrowroot is putting in extra hours fishing. We figured that you would be bringing through a lot of people. We'll manage. And there is something else you need to see right away. If Parthet were here, he'd have dragged you up to the battlements already."
"What is it?"
"You really need to see for yourself, sire. Now?"
I nodded. If Kardeen theught it was that urgent, it probably was.
"Lesh, Aaron! You two get on this side of the door when you get the last of the sick people through. Don't take any chances after that."
"Aye, sire," Lesh said. Aaron nodded a reluctant agreement of his own.
Kardeen and I climbed to the top of the keep.
"Parthet thinks this may be just as dire as the extra moons in the sky," Kardeen said just before we reached the top. We went out and he pointed south. I didn't have any trouble at all figuring out what he was talking about. The peaks of the Titan Mountains were barely visible at the horizon.
"They seem to sink measurably day by day," Kardeen said. "Parthet says the barrier between the seven kingdoms and the lesser world is fading away."
"Did I do that, letting so many people through?" I asked.
"I think not, sire. It has been going on almost since you left."
What happens when the mountains are no longer a barrier? I wondered. 12 – Autumn Leaves
There are times when taking any action at all is wrong, when the only proper thing to do is sit back, close your eyes, and let everything sort itself out. The trick to effective management is knowing when to leave the chaos to others and to time, and when to wade in and take an active hand. After we returned from fetching Joy's family, it was a time for me to sit back and wait-mostly. I had confidence in Baron Kardeen and the people he had trained at Castle Basil. All I could do by butting in was get in the way and slow him up.
It was well after dark in Illinois, and near sunset in Varay, before the last of the refugees made it through the portal to Castle Basil. The captain and half of the Army detachment had chosen to come through as well, and they brought some of the supplies from the camp-not nearly everything, because the captain would not have shorted the refugees who remained behind, but enough to ease the start of life in Varay for the more than four thousand people who came through from the camp. Bedding was a big item.
Lesh had to help support Aaron on their way to the great hall. I got them both seated at
the head table close by me, and gestured for someone to bring more food and beer. I knew that Lesh at least would have about a two-gallon thirst.
"How many came through?" I asked, after both men had their beer.
"About forty-two hundred, Baron Kardeen said," Lesh said. "Call it sixty companies. If they were all fighting men, we'd have an army to match any in the buffer zone now."
"Some people didn't come through?" I asked.
"About a thousand, according to that captain," Lesh said. Aaron was still concentrating on food and drink exclusively. Magic was a drain. Parthet had often told me that. And Aaron had been holding a particularly active magic for a lot of hours. "He said two hundred soldiers were staying and the rest were civilians who didn't want to chance our doorway."
"Well, dig in. There's plenty of good food coming out of the kitchen, some of it stuff that I've never had in Varay before."
"I heard, sire," Lesh said, helping himself to another tankard of beer. "Talk is, some of the folks we sent through t'other day are working in the kitchens. Two of 'em was cooks before. They wanted to earn their way right off the mark here."
That sounded like good news. We were going to have to find ways for a lot of our new citizens to make their way in the buffer zone-if anyone had a long-term future. We could support refugees for a time, but not indefinitely.
Baron Kardeen was in and out of the great hall a dozen times that afternoon and evening. Then, as soon as the last of the refugees came through, I made him sit and take a long break so he could do some eating and unwind a little. I mentioned the new cooks and he nodded.
"Two cooks, and a couple of the men are already training with the castle guards. A few others have asked about work. Most will still need a few days of rest and eating before they're really up to anything."
"We need to do some kind of survey, find out what kind of talents our new citizens have," I said. "Charley Ingels is an engineer, a bridge builder among other things, so we can find work for him and a crew or two. We'll probably have quite a few farmers among the two batches." I hoped we would, anyway. Farming is the major occupation in the buffer zone. "At least people who have done enough gardening to learn the rest. But we'll probably have a lot of people who don't have any skills that will translate directly. If they have military service in their past, we can fill out the Army a little, and some of the people are soldiers already." I chuckled. "But they'll have to learn the weapons we use here. And there might be a few artisans and craftsmen. Well, you know the kind of information we need. Once we get everyone settled who won't need complete retraining, we can give more attention to the ones who only know TV repair or something like that."