by Ben Bova
Behind them the dogs grew louder, more frantic, and had certainly picked up their scent by now. They waited nervously for one of the House searchlights to make a last sweep in their direction, then sprinted across the open area. They crossed the wide, mowed shoulder almost immediately and were halfway across the access road itself when his father cried out and stumbled heavily to the pavement.
"Father!" Eric went immediately to his side, helping him unsteadily back onto his feet. His father tried to say something, but suddenly started shaking uncontrollably and couldn't seem to form coherent words. Something hit the pavement just in front of them, sparking brightly as it deflected into the trees and crackled away at an oblique angle through the branches. He stared down the road, expecting that the horses they'd heard had already come around on the trail. There was someone there, just barely visible in the waning darkness. The figure took aim and Eric pulled his father out of the way just as another shot was fired, missing them. Several of the searchlights swung around in their direction and were joined quickly by the beams of a dozen hand-held lights as the guards gathered in a knot at the edge of the shielding.
Eric waved his arms frantically at the guards, trying to make them understand that the additional light was serving only to make them better targets. Another shot echoed in his ears and, not bothering to look where the shot went, he dragged his father toward the shelter of the trees on the opposite side. After a moment, Javas seemed to shake off the disorientation and managed to run several meters, almost halfway. to the trees, but then his legs and arms twitched spasmodically and he crumpled once more to the ground.
He pushed himself on unsteady knees, his head jerking uncontrollably from side to side. "N-n-n-no… Er-ic!" A painful grimace showed plainly on his face as he forced each word through clenched teeth. "R-r-run!"
"What is it? Father!" Eric struggled to drag him the rest of the way into the scrub, where yet again he managed to stand up on his own. His face was ashen, but the painful look had disappeared for the moment. He gripped at his right shoulder, and in the glowing dawn light Eric saw blood oozing between the clenched fingers.
"Eric, which way?" He panted desperately, but was speaking clearly now.
"There, but I'm not sure how far!" Eric hastily surveyed their surroundings. The landscape sloped steadily away from the level of the access road, and they were in the bottom of a small depression. "You stay here, I'll lead them to the east. I can get to the main trail in a few minutes, and once there I can run toward the town. Stay down and you should be—"
"No!" he yelled, nearly at the top of his lungs, silencing Eric. He turned, pointing his uninjured arm in the direction they'd just come. "Listen! Do you hear them?" The dogs were closer now; it would be a matter of minutes before they caught up with them if they didn't start moving soon. "They'll follow you right to the trail, after they've already found me. No; you've got to make a run for the cave, get inside the grounds."
The backwoods brightened rapidly now, giving him a better feel for their location in relation to the cave. "Come on," he said, pulling Javas' left arm around his shoulder to support him. "I think we can both make it."
"All right." He started moving. "But promise me you'll—unnh!" His father's eyes rolled back and he jerked repeatedly again. Eric held his father to keep him from falling, powerless to ease his pain as he felt the muscles contracting in tiny, regular seizures beneath the man's jacket. Saliva frothed through gritted teeth as five, eight, ten times he stiffened before the seizures stopped, leaving him weak and pale again. "All right, I—I think I'll be… I think I'll be able to run for a minute."
Eric didn't hesitate, grateful only that whatever it was had passed. With Eric still supporting his father's weight, the two of them made their way carefully through the backwoods in the direction he was certain would take them to the cave entrance. They made it out of the depression and came across a little-used hunting trail going in roughly the direction he remembered. The trail was a mixed blessing: The surer footing would enable them to pick up their own pace as they ran; but it also meant that there was a greater danger of the horses catching up with them, which would not be the case on the uneven terrain off the trail. Eric opted for speed and they had just begun moving again as the next set of seizures hit, crippling his father just as they had before.
"My God, what is it?" Eric felt tears of angry frustration run down his cheeks at his own helplessness to do anything. "What's wrong?" He held his father tightly in his arms, stroking the back of his head until the seizures—as before, exactly ten of them—passed and he sat up, dazed and disoriented. "What is it?" Eric asked again.
His father panted heavily, increasingly exhausted by each successive bout with the seizures, and tore at his jacket to get it off, then used Glenney's knife to cut the blood-soaked sleeve of his shirt away, exposing the surprisingly small but deep wound in his upper arm. "It's what they shot me with," he gasped, feeling where the skin had been penetrated. "A charged projectile of some kind, timed to send a series of electric shocks directly into my nervous system." He looked at Eric and handed him the knife. "You've got to get it out. I don't know how many more times I can take it and keep on going."
Eric wiped the blood away from the wound and examined it closely, pressing gently where the projectile had entered. His father gasped painfully. "It's deep, Father. I'm not sure I can—" He jumped to his feet, listening carefully. They had put some distance between themselves and the dogs in the last several minutes, or maybe the animals had momentarily lost the scent, but the barking grew closer again.
"Eric, there's no time! Go—unnh!" He fell backward to the ground, his back arching as the first of the seizures went through him.
Now! Eric thought, and in desperation pulled the pin laser from his jacket pocket. He fell on top of his father, pinning his chest with one knee while holding his arm firmly to the ground with the other. His father's body spasmed a third time, then a fourth. Gripping the arm with his left hand, he thumbed the safety on the pen-sized laser with his right and jammed it into the wound. A fifth spasm. The fresh blood that oozed from around the inserted laser was slippery and he lost his grip momentarily as the muscles contracted again, jerking the arm powerfully. Eric struggled to steady the arm and made sure the laser was into the wound as far as it would go. He looked at his father's face, his eyes glassy and staring, and realized when he saw the saliva frothing pinkly at the corners of his mouth that he must have bitten his tongue or lip.
"Father, this is all my fault," he sobbed, even though he knew his words fell on unhearing ears. "I'm so sorry!"
There was another seizure, the sixth, and Eric thumbed the activator on the pin laser, holding the button down to keep the tiny beam firing steadily. There was a horrible sizzling that wrenched his stomach, and tiny curls of foul-smelling smoke poured from the edges of the wound. He closed his eyes at the sight and fought back the wave of nausea sweeping over him, but he kept holding the activator switch until he felt a sudden popping beneath his fingers, followed by his father's single piercing scream of pain. He released the button and immediately pulled the laser out of the partially cauterized wound.
His father went limp, the violent muscle contractions halting in mid-seizure. The glassiness disappeared from his eyes and he sat up shakily, his face ghostly white. Eric helped him try to stand, but Javas fell weakly to his hands and knees, his stomach heaving. He gasped several times, then rose once more to his knees, catching his breath. The color was beginning to return to his face and he looked up at Eric, a weak smile spreading across his face.
"Th-thank you, son." He extended his left hand and allowed Eric to help him to his feet, then held onto his upper arm, the wound now barely bleeding.
"Are you all right? Can you walk?"
He nodded tiredly and started moving, slowly at first, one foot plodding ahead of the other as Eric helped support his weight. He regained his strength quickly as they traveled, but Eric realized that they'd lost too much time and loo
ked desperately for landmarks. The dogs would not be far behind them now.
There they are… There was a great deal of karst here, but two large chunks of limestone—one on each side of the path—stood out among the outcroppings scattered throughout the woods. From there it was just another half kilometer to the cave.
They hurried through the opening between the two rocks, but had barely cleared them when the first of the dogs came up from behind. Eric whirled to meet them, the pin laser in hand, but the animal did not attack as he'd expected. His father joined him at his side, holding the knife well out in front of him, but still the dog hung back.
The dog was unlike any Eric had seen. It bore a resemblance, in build and coloring, to a Doberman; but the legs were much longer and thinner and ended in flat, wide paws perfectly suited for speed in the unsure footing of the backwoods. A second dog appeared, followed immediately by a third. Eric noticed that, unlike the baying dogs still in the distance, these animals hadn't made a sound and reasoned that they had been bio-bred for speed and stealth, and trained to keep their quarry from moving until the slower, noisier dogs—and their masters—caught up.
The lead dog growled, its head lowered and unmoving but its eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. Eric raised the pin laser, and all three animals oriented on the sudden movement as Eric thumbed the switch and fired on the one in the center. The dog was beyond the effective focal length of the laser, unfortunately, and it did little more than singe a spot on its short black fur, but the lead dog seemed aware of the weapon, what it was and what it could do, and kept a discreet distance from Eric as the other two animals slowly moved to either side as if to encircle them like some wild prey—which, it occurred to Eric, was exactly what they were.
"Don't move," said a voice behind them, and both Eric and his father froze. The dogs growled louder, clearly unsettled by the newcomer, who walked briskly to stand between the two men, the barrel of his shotgun pointed at the dogs. Eric continued to keep the pin laser trained on the dog nearest him, but from the corner of his eye saw that his father's mouth had dropped when he recognized who the man was.
"Brendan—"
"Sire, reach behind me. Tucked into my belt is a revolver. Slowly! Do you have it? Now, aim it carefully at the animal on your right, I'll take the other two. Prince Eric, don't move…"
Brendan waited until the Emperor dropped the knife into his boot to better handle the revolver with his uninjured arm, then fired over Eric's shoulder, catching the dog on the left squarely in the face, nearly severing the head from its body. He brought the gun around and shot the lead dog a split second before his father fired at the remaining animal on the far right, bringing it down.
Brendan paused a few seconds to be sure they were dead, then in one smooth motion slipped the shotgun over his shoulder and into a holster mounted on the side of the back-pack he wore. He pulled a small vial from one of the side pockets on the pack and quickly sprinkled its contents, a grainy black powder, on the ground and around each of the dead animals. "If the other dogs come this way, they won't be able to track us once they've inhaled some of that."
"Poison?" Eric asked.
"No, nothing so exotic; or cruel, for that matter," he said, already turning away from the grisly scene. "It's ordinary pepper." He took several steps into the brush before Javas stopped him.
"Wait, murderer."
The icy cold tone of his father's voice caused a sick, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, and as he spun to face him he saw that he now had the gun leveled steadily at Brendan. The man halted mid-stride, then sighed heavily and crunched almost unconcernedly back through the fallen leaves and branches to stand before the Emperor.
"What would you have of me, Sire?" he asked simply, his arms spread at his side. "Shall I stand before that tree, so that you may play the role of executioner? Or will you permit me to treat your wound and lead you, and your son, to safety?"
"I'm not so sure I would mind seeing your blood mingled with that of these other animals," Javas replied, nodding at the carcasses of the three dogs. "And I don't need your help to reach safety."
"Oh?" asked Brendan. "With your integrator still blocked?"
His father's eyes widened in stunned surprise at the admission. How had he known?
Brendan cocked his head in the direction of the road. "Have you wondered why they haven't caught up with you?"
Javas looked at Eric, clearly puzzled as to what the man was suggesting, and lowered the revolver slightly.
Eric listened carefully. The dogs still barked in the distance, but it was clear that they were not coming any closer. "They're no longer following us," he said.
"There is no need for them to be," he responded, pointing at his father's injured arm. "They didn't expect you to get very far. The purpose of the horsemen and dogs was to drive you in this direction, keep you from doubling back to the road until the rest of them came around the estate—much more quietly—from the other side." He gazed up the path in the same direction the cave lay. "They're not far, Sire. It should only be a matter of minutes before they reach this point, which"—Brendan looked back to Javas, an eyebrow raised—"doesn't leave you much time, does it, to make a choice?"
Javas lowered the gun the rest of the way and tucked it into his belt. "Let's go, then."
Brendan turned his back to them without a word, and stepped into the brush in the same direction he'd started a few minutes earlier.
Can I trust you? Eric wondered, trying to sort out his feelings for Brendan. Surely you're aware of how much my father hates you, and yet, you knew he wouldn't fire the weapon; you knew he'd trust you to lead us to safety. How can you be so sure of human nature? Are you really the traitor you've been painted to be? "Just a moment, I know of a—" Eric began, unsure of how much to reveal. "I know of a place of safety, less than a kilometer up this path. Can we make it that far before they reach us?"
Brendan scanned the woods around him, listening carefully for several moments before shaking his head. "I don't think so. But we can make good time through this section of the backwoods here," he said, waving his arm to the east. "We'll stay clear of the main trail, but I think we can join one of the secondary trail systems far enough down that we can get to a comm facility before they realize we've left the area." He looked from Javas to Eric, then back to his father and added, his voice softer, "How is your arm, Sire? Will you be able to travel for a while before I take a look at it?"
"I think so." He nodded in the direction Brendan had indicated. "This way, then?"
The three of them headed into the backwoods, tramping through the brush and speaking only occasionally to one another. Because of the relentless thickness of the undergrowth, their progress was slow, and Brendan was forced to stop more frequently than he would have liked to check their direction and compare notes with Eric on their surroundings. His father had said nothing at all, although Eric couldn't be sure if his silence was due to his contempt for Brendan, or because of the pain he must be suffering. He cradled his arm constantly as he walked, holding it close in to his chest, and began sweating profusely with the effort of the hike. He held up the pace well, however, and they managed to cover a good deal of terrain before Brendan insisted on stopping long enough to tend to his wound.
"How did you know my integrator was being blocked?" his father asked matter-of-factly as Brendan finished bandaging his arm. Although there was little emotion in his words, it marked the first time the Emperor had addressed him directly since their confrontation back at the path.
"When I was your father's personal medical attendant—How does that feel? Is it too tight?" Javas shook his head. "My implants were linked directly to his integrator," he continued, "at exactly the same wavelength. Everything I did for his care—to stabilize medication levels, adjust his intensive-care equipment, even simply to monitor his condition—I channeled through him. When he died—"
The Emperor pulled his arm away suddenly, a look of cold anger sweepin
g across his features, and appeared about to say something but instead stared out through the trees.
Brendan shrugged, making no attempt to defend himself from Javas' silent accusation, and began collecting his things, replacing them carefully, but hurriedly, in the medical kit as he spoke. "When he died, my implants became inactive. I could no longer access the Imperial systems any more than I could his medical files. But my implants are still there, still intact." He closed the kit and stashed it in the backpack, then slipped it back on. "We'd better get moving."
"Your implants are still functional?" Eric asked as he fell into step behind the other two.
"They are, Young Prince, and I am constantly aware of their presence, but they were tuned to operate only through your grandfather. Yesterday afternoon, at almost the exact moment your shuttle approached, I sensed a numbness in my head as if they had suddenly gone inoperative. There's some kind of jamming signal covering this area"—he swept his arm around him to take in the entire backwoods—"like a heavy blanket."
His father stopped in his tracks. "You were near the House when we crashed?" he asked suspiciously. "You've not been in service to House Valtane for nearly three years. Why were you in the vicinity?"
"Your intelligence information is very good. I did leave House Valtane when Reid reached eighteen." Brendan kept his pace going, not bothering to turn back as he answered. "I live in the backwoods—I'm taking you to my home now."
His father was about to ask another question, but at the mention of his brother's name Javas fell silent once again. They continued on, finally reaching a narrow trail where their pace increased considerably on the smooth, growth-free surface. Sure of his surroundings now, Brendan no longer needed to reorient himself and they stopped only twice: once to check the dressing on Javas' arm, and again when the sun was directly overhead.