I lowered myself until I hung from my hands and then dropped the two feet to the ground. Out here the rattling chatter of the zeppelin’s Gatling gun was louder, along with shouts and screams and the sound of scattered small arms fire in the town. Above me Jovo and Mirjana helped Gabrielle out and lowered her by her hands. I reached up and held her by her waist.
“Got her. Take the weight on your good leg, Gabi.”
I eased her to the ground.
“This is foolish. I cannot keep up. You must leave me.”
“No chance.”
Above me the bright square of the window darkened, filled with Thomson’s head and upper body. From behind him I heard loud rapid knocking on the house’s front door.
“Laddie, you’ve got to stop Tesla. He has enough liftwood to have built an engine of enormous power. If the earth’s orbital velocity slows even slightly, we move closer to the sun. Temperatures will rise, and it will take very little to produce disastrous results. It—”
“Yeah, melting icecaps, rising oceans, killer storms, mass extinctions—got it. Now close the window, Uncle Sasha. I’ll take it from here. And watch out for yourself.”
“God be with you.”
The shutters closed, and the world turned black.
Stop Tesla. Did I even want to do that? I supposed I did, but I also needed Tesla for . . . everything else. Putting those two things together was going to be a really good trick, and I could hardly wait to find out how I was going to pull it all off.
For that matter, Tesla was a smart guy and so far as I knew not suicidal. Wouldn’t he have figured out all this end-of-the-world stuff? That was something to ask him, when the time came, but first we just needed to get away. When I faced Tesla, it wouldn’t be as a prisoner. Not if I could help it.
We had to get to the edge of the slope, then start down, but my night vision was shot. I put my arm under Gabrielle’s shoulders to support her, and we started slowly toward the valley.
“Leave me,” Gabrielle said, her voice almost pleading. “I will be all right. You have a better chance by yourself. I do not believe Tesla will harm me.”
“Based on what, his record of restraint?”
“He does not harm women.”
Huh. Was that true? I thought about it for a couple seconds while we walked.
“He kills people he sees as obstacles, Gabi. In your world most women aren’t empowered enough to constitute an obstacle. You are, so no more argument. Pay attention to the trail.”
I had enough night vision by then to see faint gray highlights on the ground beneath us against the deeper black of the open sky ahead, where the ground fell away. There was no abrupt drop-off, simply a gradual descent which grew more pronounced at a certain point, and continued to grow steeper with every step until we had to struggle to keep our footing.
We stopped, and despite Gabrielle’s protests I picked her up in a fireman’s carry, settled her weight so she was balanced, and began backing down the slope using my free left hand as a support against the ground. The hillside was rocky, with woody scrub and vines. It tangled my feet but also gave me good handholds when my feet slipped. I lost my footing several times and slid a foot or two down the slope, I skinned my knees up and felt a couple thorns and splinters in the palm of my left hand.
My gloves were in the pocket of my overcoat, back at Jovo’s house. Gabrielle’s overcoat and the jacket for her riding habit were back there, too. Being out here in worsening weather without adequate clothing worried me. Hunger and thirst don’t kill many people in the wilderness—exposure does. Fortunately Mirjana had had the presence of mind to grab a blanket for us. I liked Mirjana, even though the feeling didn’t seem to be mutual. I liked Jovo, too. I hoped Tesla wasn’t going to be too hard on them, but sticking around wouldn’t have made it any easier.
My feet slipped again in loose shale, and I slid three meters down the slope before I got a good handhold. I stopped for a moment, panting for breath and smarting. The knees were gone from my pants by now, and I could feel my legs bleeding. The fireman’s carry is a good way to handle weight if you are upright, but leaning forward like this put a lot more stress on my neck and left arm, and my lower back ached from trying to compensate.
“Okay, we need to change position.”
“You should rest a few minutes.”
“Can’t. Look up there.”
She looked up and caught the tail end of a flare rising over the village. Somebody had fired a Very pistol up in the air.
“What does it mean?” she asked, and even as she said it the stutter of the Gatling gun died away.
“Tesla’s men have firm control of the upper village. That must have been their signal for the zep to cease fire, so they can move south and clear the other half. We need to get some distance between us and the town. Then we can rest.”
I had her put both arms around my shoulders and ride piggy-back as we resumed our descent. That let me use both hands, which was an improvement. After another fifteen minutes all sound of fighting died away, although the drone of the zeppelin’s engines remained, growing louder and softer as it circled the town. I wondered if Gordon and the others had fought their way clear. I wondered if Jovo’s ruse had kept Thomson safe. Mostly I wondered how much longer I could keep this up.
Another ten minutes gave me my answer. My legs and arms trembled uncontrollably, and when I lost my footing again, I slid on bare rock and scraped my knees so badly it brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t get back up. It was as if my legs no longer received the electrical signals from my brain. I lay there panting for a while, Gabrielle still on my back.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I slapped the ground beside us with my right hand.
“Camp here.”
We rested for a while. Gabrielle started to shiver. With nothing on above her waist but a silk blouse, it was no wonder. I unrolled the blanket to wrap it around her shoulders, and my appreciation for Mirjana grew. She had not simply rolled up a blanket for us. In it she had included a small bag of dried meat, one of dried fruit and nuts, a thin loaf of hard bread, a jar of ointment for Gabrielle’s wound, clean linen bandages, and a dozen wood matches tightly wrapped in a small square of rubberized canvas.
“What?” I said, examining our treasure. “No Serbian-English phrase book?”
“I think this was very thoughtful of Mirjana,” Gabrielle said in her defense.
“Me, too, Gabi. I was joking.”
“Ah,” she said, as if she understood.
We ate a little bit, and Gabrielle rubbed some of the ointment on my bloody knees. She wanted to bandage them as well, but I wouldn’t let her use all the linen for that. I tore a small square for each leg, just a patch, and pressed them over the ointment. Then I used my pocket knife to cut about a four-inch strip off one end of the blanket, cut that in half, and used each half to wrap around my knees to hold the linen patch in place, and for padding.
I checked her leg as well, but there was no sign of bleeding on the bandages, so the stitches were holding.
“Well, as we sophisticated classical scholars like to say, tempus is fugit-ing. Let’s get some distance between us and the town by dawn.”
We rolled our supplies back up, got Gabrielle positioned on my back, and started down again. She dangled her good right leg down and took up some of the weight when the ground allowed it. My night vision was good now, and I’d gotten used to the repetitive motion of the climb. The brush was much thicker here and tore at our limbs and clothes, but gave me better handholds as well, and I could use the resistance of the brush to ease our passage down. We made better time, and my strength lasted longer. We took another ten-minute break after an hour, then started again. We descended for perhaps twenty minutes more before I heard the first shrill hunting cries of the azhdaja.
THIRTY-FOUR
October 11, 1888, near Brezna, Serbia
My first instinct screamed at me to keep moving down the ridge, deeper into the valley,
but that was flight panic talking. Instead, I stopped. Gabrielle’s arms tightened around my shoulders, and I felt her breathing come faster, in shorter pants. She had more reason than I did to panic, having already been laid open once by one of them.
“Azhdaja,” she gasped. “What should we do?”
I dropped to my hands and knees and eased her off to the right side, on her uninjured leg. Then I took her upper arms in my hands and squeezed, and put as much calm in my voice as I could.
“We’re going to take a minute and think.”
I looked up the slope. The lights of Brezna glowed in the darkness, marking the top of the ridge. Being able to see it made it seem that much closer, even after all this time, as if we were running in a dream but not getting any farther away. If the valley twisted, if there had been a spur of ground between us and the town, it would have felt more distant. More importantly, if I used Gordon’s revolver on the hunting azhdaja, nothing would block the muzzle flash from observers up there, or muffle the report.
“These things are nocturnal hunters,” I said, talking to myself as much as to Gabrielle. “They probably have better night vision than we do, so being out in the open does us no good. We want to be where the ground is close and there’s a lot of undergrowth. That way we can hear them if they get near.”
I looked at Gabrielle, but I couldn’t make out her expression in the starlit darkness.
“How does that sound?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered, voice trembling but under control. She bit her lower lip in thought and scanned the countryside below us, then raised her arm and pointed.
“Is that a wood down there?”
“Yeah. A little far away if they decide to close on us.”
She nodded and looked again. An azhdaja shrieked, closer this time and from a different direction, but not in attack distance yet, as far as I could tell. Gabrielle looked toward the sound of the shriek, then looked in the opposite direction.
“There,” she said and pointed to a streak of dark shadows, closer than the woods and slightly to our right. I’d already spotted it. I wasn’t sure if it was really what we needed or just a freak shadow from a fold in the ground, but we had to try something.
“Okay, mount up, Gabi.”
Between the short rest and the adrenaline, I got us over to the dark ground in no time. It was better than I’d hoped for, a very broken arroyo with crumbling shale banks about five feet high right here and lots of tangled thorny brush as tall as our heads, maybe taller. I put Gabrielle down and was about to slide down the bank when I saw her back in the starlight.
“Damn, Gabi! Why didn’t you say something?”
I looked closer. I’d been backing us down the ridge for over an hour, through tangled scrub and thorn bushes, with Gabriele on my back and nothing on her back when we started but a silk blouse. There wasn’t much of that left now.
“It is all right. We have to hurry.”
Heaven deliver me from stoic women. I slipped the blanket roll over my head and then stripped off my jacket.
“Put this on. No talk, just do it.”
While she did I lifted the blanket roll back over my head and listened to two azhdaja call to each other—one far away and lower down the valley, one pretty close. I wet my finger in my mouth and held it up, felt one side cool in the light breeze. At least the closer one was upwind. It hadn’t caught our scent yet.
I slid down the shale embankment as quietly as I could, but the shale was what climbers call rotten, crumbling and coming apart under my feet. It sounded like an avalanche to me, but I couldn’t tell how much of that was proximity and fear-heightened senses. I helped Gabrielle down the bank, and then we listened for half a minute, maybe longer. At first there was no sound. Then the closer hunting bird shrieked, a different, more insistent call, and was answered by three or four others from below us and to either side.
“They’re hip to us,” I said and pulled her toward the brush. The thorns formed a nearly impenetrable tangle, especially in the darkness. I tried pushing into what felt like a weak spot, maybe a gap between two bushes, but after the foliage gave a little, it locked up. I heard azhdaja make their hunting shriek again, all of them closer and the one now nearly on us.
“Down,” Gabrielle said urgently. “We must crawl under the branches.”
I dropped to my knees, and she had already nearly disappeared into the tangle. It was easier down here. The root clusters were easier to see, and there were several inches of clearance before the branches met and formed that impenetrable web. It wasn’t hands-and-knees crawling, though; it was right down on your belly stuff, dragging yourself from one root cluster to the next by your hands. After a few yards in, the shale gave way to wet sand and then black mud, still sticky from the heavy rains a few days earlier.
I heard more hunting shrieks, this time seemingly right on top of us, and I felt panic seize at my throat, choke off my breath. A root broke off in my hand. I grabbed at another and felt Gabrielle’s muddy boot. She cried out in terror and kicked wildly.
“It’s okay! It’s just me. Keep going.”
Behind me I heard the bushes rustle, and an azhdaja squawked in hunger and frustration—at least that’s how it sounded to me. The bushes rustled again, and I knew it was coming through.
I reached for another root cluster but felt nothing but mud, groped right and left—we had reached a small clearing. I crawled in next to Gabrielle, who lay prone in the stream bed, panting in fear and exhaustion. Around us I heard at least two, perhaps three of the hunters crashing through the brambles.
I sat up, pulled the blanket roll over my head, and laid it on Gabrielle.
“If one of them gets in, use this as a shield.”
I pulled Gordon’s revolver from the covered holster, took a breath to calm myself, and waited.
The clearing was actually the center of the streambed. The stream ran sluggish and muddy now, but two or three days ago it had probably been a couple feet deep. Most of the undergrowth had hung on, but the very center of the stream—no more than a meter wide—was clear of brush. The azhdaja squawking and struggling in the bushes where we had crawled in made the most noise, but didn’t sound like it was making much progress. I figured the main danger was from downstream. That’s where most of the screeches had come from, and once the hunting birds got in the middle of the stream, they would have a straight shot at us. I sat facing downstream.
Tactical breathing, in and out. Settle down.
I waited for a clear target, but as I started thinking about it, I wondered why. I didn’t really care if I killed any of them. If a shot or two frightened them away, that was fine by me. I decided to take a shot at the bird to my right, the one making all the noise, when I heard scrabbling to my left and higher up.
Gabrielle sat up and clutched the blanket roll.
“What is that?” she whispered.
The answer came in an eruption of flapping and squawking, followed by an explosive crash of brush to my left. One of the azhdaja had jumped from the high bank, trying to clear the brush and get to us. Pretty smart, but he’d fallen short.
“Close your eyes!” I shouted to Gabrielle. I turned, closed my own eyes, and fired twice into the noise. A high-pitched screech of pain followed the second shot. Not bad for firing blind, and we’d kept our night vision.
Then a second azhdaja leaped from the bank, and this one cleared the brush.
Gabrielle saw him, screamed, and raised the blanket roll, held it up and away from her. The rear talons of the bird ripped into it, and Gabrielle collapsed back under the sudden weight. The bird pitched forward, screeching and flailing, and somersaulted into me—eighty pounds of angry teeth, talons, and feathers.
The impact stunned me, knocked me back into the mud. The bird and I rolled, slashing and striking at each other. A part of my mind told me its legs were the most danger, and when I saw one kicking inches from my face I grabbed it, and then somehow had the other leg—thick, leathery, and musc
ular—in my other hand. The calm and distant part of my brain reminded me that meant I no longer had my revolver.
The bird twisted in my grip and snapped at me with its teeth, nipped my thigh. I could hold its knifelike leg spurs at bay this way but couldn’t do much else.
“More come up the stream!” Gabrielle shouted. “Shoot them!”
“I dropped the pistol!” I shouted back.
She groped the streambed near me, and for a moment Gabrielle, the bird, and I all rolled and struggled together—the bird to kill us, Gabrielle to find my pistol in the shallow water, and me to just break even.
I tried kicking the bird in its face but had to draw my knee up so far to get my foot even with it that I had no strength in the kick. Finally I drew both knees up and got my feet on either side of its head. It wriggled free, but I got its head between my feet again, this time with one foot under its jaw, and pushed down, straightening my legs, pulling its hind legs with my arms as hard as I could. It stretched out, and then I felt a snap. The azhdaja, its neck broken, continued to struggle, but deliberate attack changed to random twitching and flopping.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Click, click, click.
Gabrielle had found the revolver. I pushed the still-twitching carcass off of me.
“Give it to me. I’ll reload.”
She handed it over. I tried to break it open, but it seized up. I tried again and it made scraping, grinding noises but still wouldn’t open more than a half inch. I felt at the hinge—it was Gordon’s revolver, with that complicated-looking lever arm below the barrel, and the lever was caked with gritty mud.
“Goddamned worthless Enfield piece of shit!” I shouted in frustration. “Where’s my Webley?”
I frantically swished it in the shallow water of the stream and worked it back and forth until it popped open. With trembling hand I pulled cartridges from the leather pouch on my belt, dropped two or three of them, but managed to get the revolver loaded and snapped shut.
I looked up but couldn’t see much, Gabrielle’s firing having blown out my night vision.
The Forever Engine Page 27