by D. J. Butler
“Ah, that does sound nice,” Eirig grinned.
Jak handed the field lens to Dyan. “Take a look. Myself, I’m sort of anxious to not be chopped in half.”
“I have the advantage there,” Eirig dug into the saddlebags beside him and found the other field lens. “For me, it would be three pieces.”
Dyan looked through the lens. Cheela did look pleased with herself. She looked eager, sly, and sort of amused. As Dyan looked, and just before Shad disappeared around the bend, Cheela yelled up to her.
“It’s not too late, Dyan!” she called. “Surrender! Maybe you can be forgiven!”
“I’m a prisoner!” Dyan hollered back. It was irrational, but she hoped Shad heard her words. She was shouting pretty loud, so she was pretty sure he’d hear the noise at least, but thought that the echoes might hide what she was actually saying. “Help! Rescue me!”
Shad turned in his saddle before entering the bend and looked up at her. She snapped the field lens around and focused on his face. She hoped to find confusion, disbelief, or sorrow reflected there.
But he just looked sad.
“I told him you attacked me!” Cheela shot back. “I showed him the bruises!”
Shad went around the bend and he and his horse disappeared.
Dyan looked back at Cheela. Her face was bruised. Also, her expression was smug, sneaky, and vicious. It was an animal-like expression.
Eirig laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound. “I guess there’s some tension between you two.”
“Watch the other side,” Jak told him.
Eirig scooted across the saddle to the Shad side, keeping low to the ground.
“Shad won’t believe her,” Dyan said.
“Yeah?” Jak pressed. “Is that how it always goes? The other girl’s a big fat liar, and the handsome guy’s on your side?”
“I … I …”
Jak didn’t wait for her to finish. “Either check your girlfriend to see what weapons she’s carrying or give me back the device.”
“Field lens.” Dyan looked through the lens and examined Cheela.
“Field lens,” Jak repeated.
“I didn’t say he was handsome. And she’s not my girlfriend.”
“The guy on the horse is in sight over here,” Eirig reported.
“I can see he’s handsome with my own eyes,” Jak snorted. “And she sure isn’t my girlfriend.”
Dyan finished her survey. “Two bolas.”
“No whip? You sure about that?”
Dyan checked again. “No whip.”
“Not that it matters,” Jak grumbled. “She might as well have Pistols.”
“What’s Pistols?” Dyan asked.
Jak ignored her question. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he told her, “but now is not the time for old stories.” He knelt beside an angular boulder, jutting upright like a tooth from the gum of the arch and leaning out in Cheela’s direction. Experimentally, he put his shoulder against it and pushed. The big rock didn’t budge.
“Whichever side of it you’re on,” Eirig added. “Horse boy has arrived.”
Dyan scooted across to Eirig’s side and looked.
Shad stood on a sandbar, across the canyon from the arch and from the water seep in the canyon wall beside it. He hitched his horse’s reins to a gnarled pine, pulled the bow from his saddle and slung the quiver over one shoulder. He nocked an arrow and turned to look up in Dyan’s direction.
Dyan stood. It was a risk, but Shad surely wouldn’t shoot her.
She held up her tied hands. “I’m a prisoner!” she yelled.
Shad raised his bow, lightning quick—
hands grabbed her coat from behind—
and yanked her backwards. An arrow rattled off the vault of the arch, lancing through the space Dyan had just vacated. She hit the ground hard and found herself staring up into Jak’s face. He looked confused, disbelieving, and sorrowful.
“Cheela,” Dyan gasped, sucking air back into her lungs. “She lied.”
Jak shook his head. “I don’t think you can blame this one on the System, Dyan,” he said.
Eirig chuckled. “This one belongs to love,” he smirked.
“Ironically,” Jak pointed out, “your only hope right now is in me not freeing you. If I let you go, handsome guy believes dark and curly that you’re the one who attacked him, and kills you on the spot.”
“Kills or captures,” Dyan said weakly, but she wasn’t convinced.
“Not sure which would be worse.”
Dyan wasn’t sure either. “His name is Shad.”
“I know his name.”
Dyan dragged herself to the edge of the saddle, keeping low. “I didn’t do it!” she yelled. “I didn’t hit Cheela! I didn’t do whatever else she told you—I’m captured by … by these men!”
“Call us Landsies,” Eirig suggested. “That always brings a tear of mirth to a Systemoid eye.”
“Shut up!” she hissed at him.
“I’ve seen the bruises,” Shad called back. “And there’s no other way two unarmed Landsmen could have overpowered you.”
“They snuck up on us!”
Shad shook his head. “Not on an Outrider.” Was there a hint of doubt in his voice?
“I’m innocent!”
Shad shook his head stubbornly. He retrieved something from his saddlebags, and Dyan saw that it was a flare. He stripped its seal off, preparing to pull the ripcord and ignite the device. “I knew you were jealous, Dyan!” he yelled. “But I didn’t think you’d go this far!” He raised the flare—
“Capture me!” Dyan yelled.
Shad hesitated.
“You’re the one who always wants to capture, remember?” she called down to him. “Capture me! Take me prisoner back to Buza System. I’ll explain!”
Jak and Eirig crouched beside her, watching intently.
“You sure you want to let her do this?” Eirig asked his friend.
“It’s a distraction,” Jak said. He had one of the field lenses to his eye and homed in on Shad.
Shad looked down at his boots, ankle-deep in the brown river water. When he looked up, his eyebrows knit together fiercely. “I can’t.” Dyan could barely hear him. “I promised.”
“Holy Mother,” Eirig cracked. “It’s true love.”
Dyan looked down at Shad and realized that she was staring at her own death.
He aimed the flare at the sky with one hand and yanked the cord with the other. With a sharp pffffft! the ball of green light snapped out of the flare tube and raced skyward. Then he nocked another arrow and stood waiting.
“Ha!” Jak spat, and dug into his saddlebags. He came out with three flares and held them to Dyan. “You know how to use these, I assume?”
She started to object that her hands were tied, but before she could articulate even the first words, he had produced a utility knife and cut through the ropes.
“I don’t get it.” She took the flares. “I didn’t think you wanted to attract the others.”
“I don’t,” he agreed. “I want you to shoot these at your girlfriend.”
He scooted over to the other side of the saddle and Dyan followed. She looked down, and saw Cheela creeping up the slope. The flare had been Shad’s signal to her that he was in position. He would wait with his bow and kill any of them who emerged.
“They’re not really accurate like that,” she said. “I don’t know if I can hit her.”
“If you can actually hit her, great,” Jak agreed. “Mother, I think you might even find it personally satisfying to put a green fireball into that vixen’s forehead. But at least keep her distracted.”
“You trust me to do this?” she asked.
“The flare takes two hands to operate,” he said, and nodded at Eirig. “Do I have another option?”
“I guess not.”
“Wait until she exposes herself to try to throw at me,” Jak suggested. “Then let her have it.”
Dyan stripped the seals off
all three flares. “What are you going to do?”
Jak pulled the bola, their last monofilament weapon, from the purse at his belt. “I’m going to do my best to kill her.”
Cheela came low to the ground, moving from rock to rock with quick, planned motions, never exposing her body very long. Jak climbed up behind the tall, angular, leaning boulder, nodding to Dyan that he was ready.
Dyan aimed the first flare, squinting down it in Cheela’s direction as if it were an arrow to the string of a bow.
Cheela paused a moment, crouching behind a gnarled, sun-bleached tree trunk. She laughed. “You’re just making it worse for yourself!” she called.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Dyan countered.
Jak slipped around to the side of the boulder, exposing himself. He stretched apart the bola and its counterweight with his hands. He looked like he was trying to hug the rock.
Cheela stood, bola in hand—
Dyan pulled the ripcord. Pffft! A green spark the size of her fist exploded from the tube in her hand, spraying a sulfurous, stinking smoke into her face. She coughed.
Cheela yelped and fell back, scrabbling to get her balance on the rocks. As the smoke cleared, Dyan got a look at her former Crechemate and saw that the shoulder of Cheela’s coat was singed. Dyan had hit her.
It felt good. She dropped the empty flare tube and pointed the second flare at Cheela.
Jak scooted back to safety behind the boulder.
Cheela got back into position behind her log, cursing.
Dyan laughed. “You could still surrender, Cheela!” she yelled. It was a ridiculous thing to say—did she really imagine that she was going to help Jak take her fellow Crecheling prisoner? But hitting Cheela with the flare had felt like a victory. It had given her hope, and she enjoyed the feeling.
In answer, Cheela threw a rock. Dyan didn’t see it coming, and the stone narrowly missed her. Narrowly enough that if Cheela had thrown a bola instead, it would have sliced Dyan’s head off.
Dyan stopped laughing, hunkered down, aiming the second flare at Cheela again.
Jak once more shuffled into an exposed position to the side of the boulder, hugging it with his bola extended.
This time Cheela threw a rock at Dyan first. The throw was left-handed, though, and Dyan didn’t flinch. The moment Cheela rose from her crouch to fling a bola at Jak, she fired again. Pffft!
This second shot hit short of the mark, the flare spitting sparks in all directions as it struck the log in front of Cheela. The sparks, though, must have stung. Cheela held hands up to cover her face, and dropped back into hiding at the same time
Jak scooted around his boulder to shelter. “Help me!” Jak hissed to Eirig.
Eirig threw a quick look down at Shad and scrambled up to join Jak behind the boulder.
“Careful!” Dyan warned the boys. “Stay down, and behind the rock. You don’t want either one of them to see you clearly.”
What was she thinking?
As if to punctuate her advice, an arrow slammed into the boulder just over Jak’s head. He squatted, getting out of the line of fire. Then he and Eirig put their shoulders to the rock and pushed.
Dyan felt a little thrill. She saw Jak’s plan now, and she expected the rock to topple right over and cause instant headaches for Cheela, who crouched right in the stone’s path.
Only the boulder didn’t fall.
She looked back to the Outrider-designate, in time to see her swing her arm—
“Duck!” Dyan yelled.
Jak threw himself to the ground, dragging Eirig with him.
The bola sliced right through the big stone, whizzing through the space the two boys had just occupied. It spun between the saddle and the vault of the arch, then out into space on Shad’s side of the river.
Good, she thought, and for a second she hoped it hit him.
Then she felt bad.
Jak snapped his fingers in her face, getting her attention. “One more time!” he whispered. “You ready?”
“The stone’s too heavy,” she told him. “Cutting through it isn’t helping you. Blazes, it’s cut through twice now, and the rock’s just sitting there.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But Eirig’s going to help me this time. Cover us!”
Dyan lay at the edge of the saddle again, pointing the last flare at Cheela. In the seconds during which Dyan had looked away, Cheela had crept another ten feet up the slope. She was daunting close now, with an easy shot at anyone who was exposed.
Jak and Eirig dropped in front of the boulder, one on each side.
Dyan stood up, exposing herself.
Jak and Eirig looked like they held hands for a moment and then drew apart, and Dyan realized that they each held one end of the bola’s monofilament line. Cheela might realize it, too.
“You lying cow!” Dyan shrieked.
Cheela looked at her and swung her arm.
The boys stepped back up into the saddle, slicing diagonally through the stone.
Dyan fired the last flare. It was a terrible shot, ten feet wide at least, and Cheela only grinned at it.
With an immense crack! a divot of stone sprang from the face of the boulder where Jak and Eirig had sliced it out. The stone slid, toppling and falling towards the slope.
Cheela threw her bola.
***
Chapter Twelve
CRASH!
The boulder slammed into the slope. A noise like rolling thunder bounced off the vault over Dyan’s head and filled her ears with echoes. She didn’t watch the slope give way to landslide; the instant Cheela flung her arm forward to release her weapon, Dyan dropped.
The bola made a distinct hum as it whipped past her. Dyan felt a tug at her hair, and as she collapsed back onto the ground a cold panic flooded her.
Had her head been severed? Had she saved Jak and Eirig at the cost of her own life? Was she now dead, and just not yet aware of it?
She half-expected her skull to bounce away from her shoulders as she landed, but it didn’t. With a painful thump to her entire body, the firm sand pounded all the air out of her lungs. Stunned, she barely noticed Jak and Eirig rushing over the rocks, out of the saddle, and down the slope towards Cheela, spears in their hands.
Blood rushed into her head and she rolled over, struggling to rise. She could run, she thought wildly. She could run to Shad and explain everything.
Only Shad didn’t believe her. Shad had already tried to shoot her, and if she approached him now, he’d do it again.
Shad waited in the river below, to shoot her if she ran from Cheela. He must hear the same thundering of stone that Dyan did. She wondered what he’d make of it. What signal would he have arranged with Cheela in case anything went wrong? Would it be more flares?
She couldn’t wait to find out.
Dyan climbed to her hands and knees, then her unsteady feet, and finally she lurched out of the saddle, on the Cheela side.
Below her, in the deepening shadows of the afternoon, the slope was alive. It looked like a hill of boulder-sized ants, mad and swarming, all rushing downhill. Cheela stumbled near the river’s edge, riding the swarm and struggling to stay on her feet. Jak and Eirig jogged towards her. They ran in the dissipating second half of the rockslide, and Dyan ran after them.
She caught up to them as they reached Cheela. The Outrider-designate stood in the river, coughing orange dust from her lungs and batting it off the sleeves of her coat. Her posture was ginger and tentative, like she might fall over at any second.
Jak pointed his spear at her. “We have a hostage again.”
“I thought little Dyan here was your hostage,” Cheela sneered.
“A hostage pretty boy cares about,” Eirig explained. Then he shot an apologetic look at Dyan and shrugged.
“It’s true,” Dyan murmured. To Cheela she added: “You told Shad I hurt you.”
“It might as well be true,” Cheela laughed. “Look at you, running with the Landsies just like one of the her
d!”
Dyan shook her head. “I only did what you forced me to do.” In that moment, she wished she could be one of the Landsmen herd. Or one of any herd, actually. “What’s the signal?” she asked.
Cheela bared her teeth. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“There is no signal,” Dyan said. “Kill her.”
She didn’t know, when she said the words, whether she meant them or not. They just came out, rising from training or experience or some deep-rooted emotions she didn’t want to admit to herself.
Cheela, though, took her seriously. The Outrider-designate sprinted—
only she couldn’t. She took one step and fell, screaming, into the water.
Jak stood over her, spear in hand, hesitating. “I’m in charge here,” he said. He didn’t sound completely confident.
Eirig looked back and forth between Jak and Dyan.
“Pretty boy’s coming back this way any minute on his horse,” Dyan said. Part of her, deep inside, wept at the sound of her own words. Shad! She shoved that part deeper down into the darkness and slammed a door shut behind it. “He’s willing to kill me, and he’s willing to do it because he’s in love with her.”
Jak nodded. “We run,” he said. “Her ankle’s broken, she’ll slow him down.”
“We run,” Dyan agreed. “But first we get the horse.”
“Help me get her on the sand.”
Jak and Eirig dragged Cheela across the shallow river and threw her, roughly, onto a sandy bank of grass. Cheela struggled at first, but with every bump of her foot against the riverbed, she yelped, and the pain undercut her ability to resist.
Just as the boys pointed their spears at her face, Dyan heard splashing sounds in the bend of the canyon. She didn’t have to look to know that it was Shad, charging in on his horse to save the day. Tears stung the corners of her eyes, and she ignored them.
“Give me the bola,” she said.