Crucible of Time

by James Axler

  Jak had taken a half step toward Wolfe, his fingers groping for one of the concealed knives, and he barely halted the movement. "Test Doc?"

  "Right. Test Doc. Couldn't have put it any more succinctly myself."

  "He's real sick," Dean said shrilly.

  Wolfe nodded gently. "That's absolutely correct, young man."

  Mildred looked for a moment as if she was about to throw the drink in the man's face. "You really are something damned special, mister."

  "Why, thank you," Wolfe replied, dropping a low bow.

  Ryan could have taken him at that moment, but they would still have been absurdly outnumbered by armed men, all within calling distance. He held himself in check, waiting to see how the cards fell.

  "I'm not a hard man," Wolfe protested. "Nor do I wish to be unfair. Blessed Jesus of the cap and ball wouldn't want that to happen."

  Ryan managed to control the crimson rage that had brimmed dangerously close to the surface. "Just what are you saying, Wolfe?"

  "If he's unwell, we can postpone the testing."

  "For how long?" Mildred asked. "Long as it takes for him to recover?"

  Wolfe gave out his genuine, friendly laugh, which crinkled the lines around eyes and mouth. "Oh, dear me, no. I'm afraid that's not on at all, lady." He slipped the blaster back into its holster. "Lady, we don't have the time."

  "Then…?"

  "Doc can have all of the rest of today to recover, and all of the coming night, as well. He needn't face his testing until… Let me see. Until eleven tomorrow morning. No, why pinch the penny? Until noon."

  "Noon!" Mildred roared. "Poor old guy'll probably still be unconscious by then. Give him a week and then he might, just might, be able to make a showing."

  "Tomorrow. Noon. Best you don't leave the hut. Food'll be brought to you."

  He turned about and marched quickly out of the cabin, leaving a pool of shocked silence behind him.

  THE SHADOWS HAD lengthened around the ville, as the great golden bowl of the sun slipped slowly out of sight, behind the final range of hills that separated the place from the endless stretch of the Cific.

  They'd been fed from a black iron caldron of vegetable soup, thick with carrots and parsnips, served with fresh-baked bread and some tender roasted sweet potatoes. There was home-brewed beer on offer, but Ryan gestured for them all to reject it. Now they were left alone again. A bowl of the soup stood cooling on the small table under the window, waiting to see if Krysty could be roused enough to try to sample it.

  The one slightly encouraging sign was that Doc had been able to sit up, with help from Ryan and Jak, and had sipped at his own helping of the steaming soup, licking his lips after three or four spoonfuls before wearily lying down again.

  "We have to get him well away," J.B. said, standing in the doorway, the setting sun flaring off the twin lenses of his spectacles.

  Ryan was sitting on the bed, holding Krysty's limp hand. "Fates are against us, bro."

  "You mean her using the Gaia power and it knocking her out like this?"

  "Sure."

  Mildred was lying on her own bed. "She's hit harder by it than I ever saw before."

  "When do you reckon she might be able to travel again?" Ryan asked.

  "Krysty's about the strongest woman I ever came across, Ryan, but she's not going to be up and walking good for… At the most optimistic, say three days."

  "Just to get back to the gateway?"

  "Still, three days."

  "How about Doc?" Jak asked.

  "Same. Think he's about turned the corner. If it came to it, he could maybe walk a short distance, tomorrow evening. Not a lot sooner."

  "If made break tonight? Me, Dean and J.B. help Doc, and you and Mildred take Krysty?"

  Ryan sniffed. "Don't know the country like they do, Jak. They got some dogs. And there's the Apaches, as well. One of them'd hunt us down before we got two miles."

  The teenager got up from his bed and walked to stand alongside J.B., the dying rays of the sun turning his white hair to a mane of living fire.

  Ryan looked at the two slight figures, side by side. His mind flashed back to the long years that he'd known the Armorer, and the shorter time with the boy, all the desperate times they'd faced together.

  He wondered if they were all coming close to the end of the line.

  "You four could get away," he said hesitantly.

  "Looks like a cloudy night. Be long gone into the forest before they started off to chase you. Move fast, a lot faster, without Krysty or Doc to slow you down."

  "Dad! You can't mean that. I'm not going, and you can't make me."

  J.B. and Jak both opened their mouths to speak, but Mildred was quicker, holding up an accusing finger. "In my time, Ryan Cawdor, we had a good saying. 'Why not go and take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.' "

  "Come on, it makes sense."

  J.B. bit his pale lips. "Never reckoned to hear you say anything like that, old friend. Times to walk away and times to stand. Trader used to say that. And you know what, he was right as ever."

  "Tomorrow at noon they'll find a legal way of butchering Doc in front of our faces." Ryan sighed. "And there's nothing we can do to save him. Then there'll be some pretext for chilling you and me, J.B., then the others. Knife in the back? Poison in the cup? We don't all have to die."

  "Together," Jak said very quietly, with a calm finality. "What goes down, goes down together."

  JIM OWSLEY HAD LOOKED in just after dark, lighting the oil lamps for them.

  The sec man was hardly able to restrain his delight at their hopeless predicament.

  "Always said that nobody likes a smart-ass. Specially not mutie, black smart-asses. All that winnin', just so you can end up losin'."

  Ryan casually rested his hand on the man's scrawny shoulder, letting finger and thumb bite together. He clipped the nerve ends of the muscle, making Owsley whimper with the sudden electric pain, making him drop to his knees on the chipped planks of the floor.

  "Hey, you son of a bitch! Didn't have to do that to me."

  "Get out." The voice of the one-eyed man was icy with anger and contempt.

  "Just come to bring you light."

  "You did that. Now get the hell out of here."

  The sec man paused in the doorway. "You should try and reckon on winning some friends, outlander. By the saints of night and fog, but you'll be needing them."

  He went out and slammed the door shut behind him, making the whole cabin shake.

  "Mean little redneck peckerwood," Mildred spit. "Wish I'd got my blaster with me now."

  "Wish we'd got a single blaster between us," J.B. replied. "One'd be a start."

  Ryan sat down and picked up Krysty's limp hand. "Talk's cheap, friends, and action costs. And time is passing us by. We got the rest of the dark hours. Then it's done."

  Doc coughed in his sleep.

  THE CONVERSATION kept following the same circle. There was no hope of Krysty being well enough to make a nocturnal run for it, so they all had to stay. But Doc was irrevocably doomed if he was still in Hopeville at noon tomorrow. Mildred had awakened him around nine, feeding him some oatmeal gruel that she'd gone and begged from one of the older women. She chafed his cold hands and legs, making him stand and move around, despite all of his protestations, keeping him walking around and around.

  "By the Three Kennedys, madam!" he moaned. "To so torture a wretched, dying old man. You must certainly be kin to Tomas de Torquemada, accursed head of the hateful, hated Spanish Inquisition. Give me peace."

  Josiah Steele had returned the ebony cane to the sick man that evening, not realizing that it concealed a lethal blade of Toledo steel. Now Doc used the swordstick, leaning heavily on the silver lion's-head handle as he built up his strength, the ferrule clicking on the floorboards.

  Ryan bit his lip. Though the old man was much better than earlier, he still had the uncontrollable cough, and he was desperately frail.

  "Doc?"

  "Dear b
oy?"

  "Let's go through the plan one more time."

  Chapter Thirty

  Ryan opened the door a crack, peering out into the first dim glow of the false dawn. A huddle of sec men stood by the dying embers of the main camp fire, while half a dozen others were patrolling the perimeter of the ville. A thin coil of gray white smoke rose lazily up between the branches of the enormous pines that lined Hopeville.

  "Shit's going to be hitting the fan any minute now," he said. "Best all get up and ready."

  Dean yawned and sat up. Like the others, he'd remained fully dressed. "How's Krysty, Dad?"

  "No change. Slept quiet."

  She hadn't yet recovered consciousness, though Mildred had kept checking her vital signs, finding both respiration and pulse were improving.

  J.B. checked his wrist chron. "Doc's been gone for just on eight hours. Should be time enough for him to hole up someplace. Fingers crossed."

  Three times during the night, Owsley had peeked in, checking that everyone was still there. Doc's bed was farthest from the door, and they'd made up a realistic mount of blankets. Each time the sec man had left, convinced they were all there.

  Mildred was busily washing her hands and face in a large blue-and-white china bowl, using a large tablet of dark brown soap. "Cold," she said. "Went to take a leak—must have been around three—and there was a biting frost. It's not going to help Doc with his cough and all."

  "Cough could be the least of his problems," Ryan said. "Uh-oh. Here comes Wolfe and his sec men, taking their early-morning check."

  Mildred held up her fingers, crossed. "Good luck, Doc," she said.

  THE TRUSTY BLUE swallow's-eye kerchief had been lifesavingly useful.

  Doc's mind was never one hundred percent sharp. Mildred, Ryan and J.B. had all tried to explain to him what was happening, what had happened and what was going to happen. But he'd ended up more confused than when they started talking at him.

  There was to be a testing. He'd clued in to that. But he still didn't quite understand what it would have involved and why his presence in the ville would be seriously bad news.

  And Krysty was ill. She'd had some kind of a fight and she had won it. Doc understood that much. But it had made her very sick so she couldn't travel.

  What he had to do was get out of the ville without being seen or heard, make his way through the cloudy darkness and try to keep back along the trail to hide in the burned-out eatery, where the rest of them would join him when they could.

  When he'd sneaked out of the back window of the shared log cabin, it had been full dark, with only a sliver of moon visible through some drifting clouds. Ryan had used some fragments of charcoal from the old fireplace to draw a rough map onto a torn linen rag, showing Doc where he thought the guards might be encountered. He showed him the route back in the general direction of the redoubt, to the ruined restaurant, warning him to look out for the giant mutie rats.

  "And the Apaches," he'd reminded Doc.

  "No problema, mi amigo!" had been the reply. Doc had to remind Ryan that he'd once spent time with a tribe of Mescalero Apaches and spoke a little of their language.

  Doc felt another cough prickling deep in his chest, and he took out the trusty kerchief again.

  He'd still been well within the settlement, only a scant thirty yards or so from their hut, when he'd been seized by a racking paroxysm.

  He'd hastily pulled out the swallow's-eye kerchief and crumpled it into his open mouth, muffling and cutting off the noise of his helpless coughing.

  He crouched, feeling the damp of the sodden pine needles through the thin material of his ancient breeches, squinting to try to spot the sentries that Ryan had told him would be patrolling.

  Doc moved on when he'd regained some measure of control, having to stop twice more before he was clear of the perimeter of Hopeville and out onto the winding trail.

  "NONE OF YOU HEARD him go?" Disbelief rode high in the angry voice of Joshua Wolfe. Ryan answered for them all. "Nope. Reckon we were all totally bushed after the testing and all. Thought Doc was real sick, but the old coot sure fooled us."

  Owsley leaned close to the leader of the Children of the Rock and whispered something in his ear.

  Wolfe listened intently, nodding a couple of times. Then he shook his head. "No. Not yet. Means a sort of delay in the plans. Best is to go after the old goat and bring him back here. Then things'll be back on course."

  "But we—"

  "No." Wolfe held up his unmutilated hand as a warning to the sec man. "You heard me, Brother Jim. We play this one like I said. Understood?"

  "If you say so."

  "I do. I say it with the backing of the Blessed Lord Jesus, Savior of the gun and the blade."

  "Amen, Brother Wolfe."

  Wolfe managed to claw a smile back into place. "Small and temporary victory, outlander." He pointed at Ryan. "Trader used to say that he who shoots last shoots finest, didn't he? Think about that, One-Eye."

  "We getting after the old man now, Brother Wolfe?" Jim Owsley asked.

  "Right now. Double the watch on the rest of them." He stared intently at Krysty. "But she doesn't look like she'll be going anywhere. Not for a while."

  DOC HAD TO KEEP reminding himself that he was supposed to be traveling light-footed. The temptation to use his ebony swordstick as a walking cane was very strong, but he realized immediately that the metallic tapping sound would carry a long way at night in the deeps of the forest, and bring any potential pursuers after him at a flat run.

  He would have been a whole lot happier if he'd had his beloved Le Mat in the fancy hand-tooled Mexican rig on his hip.

  Jak had offered to lend him one of his remaining concealed throwing knives, but Doc had turned down the offer. "Such a weapon would be as much use to me as a chocolate chamber pot, dear boy."

  The forest was showing the first signs of the false dawn. The sky above had become fractionally brighter, throwing Doc's shadow on the winding trail. Twice he'd been stopped in his tracks, aware of something moving, ponderously, in the dark depths of the pines. But nothing had come near him, and he hadn't actually seen anything.

  He carried a gold half-hunter watch on a fob and he tugged it out, angling the face to try to catch enough light to read it. But it wasn't yet possible.

  By his own rough calculation he'd been traveling for five or six hours and was well over halfway toward his destination. The one thing that Doc couldn't know was at what point his escape had been noticed. If luck was with him, he'd still have something of a clear run. If not, then the pursuers could already be closing in on his track.

  "I said that the hounds of spring were in winter's traces," he muttered. "But let it pass, yes, let it pass."

  There was a whisper of movement, and he turned toward the sound, seeing something white floating toward him, showing a hideous, ghostly face. Great golden eyes seemed to bore into him, and he noted a wing spread of six feet or more and a cruelly hooked yellow beak.

  "A wise old owl, swirling," he said, ducking as the apparition swooped low over his head, the beat of the bird's passing disturbing his silvery hair.

  Doc was beginning to feel close to exhaustion. The attack of influenza, or whatever it had been, had taken even more out of him than he'd guessed. It was an effort to lift each foot and place it in front of the other. But he knew that if he stopped, he might likely fall asleep and not carry on at all.

  He tried to swing into a regular march, whispering the beat to himself. "Left, right, left, right. Left… Left, I had a good job and I left."

  On into the early morning.

  JOSIAH STEELE TOOK charge of the serving of breakfast brought by two women, each carrying a groaning tray of food, with mugs of buttermilk to wash it down.

  Ryan noticed immediately that they had been given only old plastic spoons to help themselves. No forks or knives. Brother Joshua wasn't taking any chances on an armed rebellion from his remaining prisoners.

  "Buckwheat toast with jell
ies and honey," Steele said. "And oatmeal gruel. There'll be some steaming acorn coffee for those who want it, in a while. At least it'll be hot." He hesitated in the doorway. "How's the woman?"

  "Sleeping," Ryan replied.

  "Hope she… Well." He paused as though considering saying something else. "You did the right thing getting the old man away. He'd have been cold giblets by noon. Shame you couldn't get away yourselves."

  "We could still mebbe manage it if we had our weapons back again," J.B. said quietly.

  Steele sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and looked outside the hut. "Sure, you could, outlander. But the cold fact is, I don't aim to slit my own throat. Nor put a ball through my own temple. Not just yet."

  "Where are our blasters and knives?" Ryan asked, seeing the doubt in the man's eyes. "Suppose I just said that I thought that they were likely in Wolfe's own house. You can just choose to say nothing. You don't have to tell us they aren't there. Just say nothing."

  Steele half smiled. "Guess I'd best say nothing, Brother Cawdor. Not a word."

  Ryan grinned across at him. "Thanks," he said. "Yeah, thanks a lot."

  "FRIED BACON, please, Emily." Doc jerked awake. "Upon my soul! What am I saying? What am I doing? Where am I and where am I going? Have I been… I suspect that I might have taken a small rest and closed my eyes for a moment. Most unwise, my dear Theo. Oh, dear, so careless."

  He hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, using the trunk of one of the smaller pines to help. He took several deep breaths of the cool morning air, looking around in the half light of the early dawn.

  "What is the time, I ask myself?" He checked the half-hunter watch. "And I answer myself that it is closing in on six o'clock. No pursuit yet."

  His voice disturbed a pair of pigeons that fluttered noisily away from the lower branches of a nearby larch. They circled once before heading north, still protesting at the intruder in their domain.

  He lowered his tone. "What would dear Ryan and the other companions think of me? To be so rash and foolish, falling asleep within a couple of paces of the track through the woods. Though the road through the woods has been undone by the wind and the rain. And there is no road…" He slapped himself hard across the forehead. "Enough, Dr. Tanner. Enough. Set your face toward the path to the redoubt."