Johnson stepped toward the window for a “look-see” of his own, but Mitchell got there first. Mitchell paused by the window, then darted his head out for a lightning quick look. “What do you see…” was all Johnson had managed to get out before Mitchell sagged sideways, dropped to his knees, then fell over backward. Another arrow was embedded in Mitchell’s forehead. “Holy shit!” Johnson heard himself say. “Stay away from the windows!” he shouted, then tried to think of a plan to deal with this problem.
Johnson looked around and saw a small mirror that had belonged to the farmer’s wife. He snatched it up and returned to the window. Holding the mirror by the corner, he lifted it up and peeked out the window using its reflection. Somebody was running through the cornfield away from the house. A minute later they burst out the other side of the cornfield, a man and a woman. Something looked familiar about the woman’s hair… “Dammit!” he said, looking around, “Where’s that bitch Toler’s been doing?” With dawning despair, he said, “Where the hell’s Toler?”
Sure as hell, when Johnson opened the front door a crack, he saw Toler sprawled by the outhouse, the now familiar fletching of an arrow sticking up out of his head. “Shit!” Johnson shut the door. Then he closed his eyes, hoping for inspiration. When he opened them, the four men still alive in the little farmhouse with him were staring at him with wide eyes. “Anybody got any ideas?” He asked heavily.
Three of them shook their heads. The fourth simply turned to stare almost catatonically at Everts’ body.
***
Daussie stumbled. When Waxman jerked on her leash she fell clumsily to the ground. Waxman turned and hauled her back to her feet, “Watch your step,” he growled.
Daussie said nothing, but once Waxman had his attention forward again, she loosened her grip on the small pinecone she’d picked up. Even with her hands bound together she could pick the seed scales apart. She placed different sizes of seeds in the webs between each of her fingers, then cast the pinecone aside.
Reaching out with her ghost senses, she felt Waxman’s left carotid artery. The seed between her index and long finger on her right hand would be best for that size artery she decided, but she’d keep all of them in case she dropped one.
Daussie kept hoping something would happen that would allow her to get close enough to Waxman to transport the seed into his artery. Surely he’d take a break at some point, Daussie was beginning to feel exhausted.
Waxman trod onward, seemingly indefatigable. Realizing that she had a better chance with just Waxman than she did if they reached the raiders’ camp, Daussie began to worry that she was going to have to try to do something to get herself close to him now. With revulsion, she considered trying to offer herself to him. Then with dismay, she realized she didn’t even really know how close she had to be to transport something the size of one of the seeds into something moving like Waxman. She knew that she could transport more in less time if the distance moved was short from her experiments that first night. She’d been able to transport many teaspoonfuls of stomach acid from just inside the stomach to just outside of it in a minute or so. She had no idea how long, or even whether it was possible to move a pinecone seed a foot or two. If she lived through this, she was going to have to spend more time learning about her own abilities.
Light filtering through the trees up ahead signified their approach to an opening in the woods. A meadow? Or could it be the farm where the raiders were staying?! Daussie cleared her throat to say something to Waxman. She had to get him to stop and somehow she would have to get close to him before they arrived.
Before she spoke, Waxman stopped so suddenly she bumped into him. Then he grabbed Daussie and jerked her around in front of him. Ahead, Daussie saw a man with a drawn bow, silhouetted against the light at the edge of the woods.
Tarc!
Waxman laid his blade against Daussie’s neck. “Throw the bow down, or I’ll kill her!”
Daussie trembled. She knew Tarc could put an arrow in Waxman’s eye right over her shoulder. With his accuracy he wouldn’t hold back from shooting just because she was in front of the man. But if Tarc loosed the arrow, would Waxman slit her throat before it arrived? She stilled her tremors and tried to remember the confidence and self-assurance she’d held recently.
Tarc eased the draw off his bow, lowered the point of his arrow, and tossed the bow aside.
Waxman said, “Now toss that big knife too.”
Tarc pulled the work knife out of the sheath on his thigh and tossed it as well.
Daussie reached her hands up towards Waxman’s arm, but he growled, “Don’t, touch, my, arm!” She stopped with her hands on her upper chest. She focused on the pinecone seed between her fingers and Waxman’s carotid. It was only a foot or two and close to her head. She should be able to make it jump that far pretty easily. She started trying, but Waxman was slowly shoving her forward towards Tarc and placing her feet on the rough ground distracted her.
Tarc started to put his hands together. Daussie again lost her concentration on the seed as she realized that if Tarc’s hands came in contact, he’d be able to pull a knife out of his forearm sheath and throw it. Could such a knife arrive in Waxman’s eye before Waxman cut her throat? Might he cut her throat anyway, during the convulsion that so many of Tarc’s victims went through?
Before she’d had much time to worry about it Waxman growled again, “Hands back down at your side!” At first Daussie thought Waxman was talking to her, but before she moved them Tarc slowly lowered his hands and Daussie understood Waxman’s command. She focused again.
Suddenly, the seed was gone from between Daussie’s fingers. A quick check with her ghost showed it to be in Waxman’s carotid, shooting upward in the blood flow. It jammed in place then flopped sideways blocking the artery.
Would it work?
Would Waxman know something had happened and cut her throat anyway?
Was blocking one carotid enough, or would flow through the other arteries keep Waxman’s brain going?
Daussie started working to send another pinecone seed into Waxman’s right carotid. Then the knife sagged away from her neck.
Waxman stumbled and fell to the side, dragging Daussie with him a little, but she’d already grabbed his wrist and held the knife away from her neck.
One more stumble and Waxman fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Tarc had lunged forward, pulling one of his throwing knives out and cocking back to throw. He let it drop to his side, “What happened to him?”
Daussie was about to explain about the pinecone seeds when a woman ran up behind Tarc. “How did you do that?!” she exclaimed.
Tarc turned to her and shrugged, “Looks like he had a stroke. Lucky timing for us.” Tarc turned to Daussie and raised an eyebrow.
She raised one back.
Daussie looked around, “Where are the others?”
“You’re looking at ‘em.” Tarc said, darkly.
“You came by yourself?!”
Tarc shook his head, “No, Daum and Lizeth came with me. But once we’d found the raiders’ camp, they went back to see if they could talk the caravan into sending some men. They didn’t think we could take the raiders on by ourselves.”
The woman frowned, “Do they have any idea how well you shoot?!”
Tarc shrugged, “Kinda.” He looked at Waxman, then at Daussie. He jerked his head to the side, “We’ve got a hiding place over there. Let’s go there and you can tell us what happened to you.”
Daussie frowned, “Why don’t we just start back to the caravan? I don’t want to stay here any longer than I absolutely have to.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Those bastards still have my daughter!”
Daussie’s eyes flashed to Tarc’s and saw the truth of the woman’s statements reflected there. “But… but we can’t take on all the raiders, just the three of us!”
“You haven’t seen him shoot!” The woman said, with an admiring glance at Tarc.
&nb
sp; “This is my sister, Daussie,” Tarc said dryly. “She has some idea how well I can shoot.” He indicated the woman, “Daussie, this is Nyssa. Her husband and son were killed by the raiders. She and her daughter were taken captive. I promised her that I’d help her get her daughter back.”
A tremor shot down Daussie’s spine and her breath caught in her throat. Just when she thought this nightmare was over! “Well, if we have to stay here,” she knelt by Waxman’s corpse and picked up his knife. Reaching under his jacket she cut loose a bag of jerky. “I’m starving, how about you guys?”
Waxman also had a water bag, but it was nearly empty. The first thing they did was go to a stream to rinse and refill it. Tarc pretended he had found the stream on his way to the raiders’ camp so he wouldn’t have to tell Nyssa that he and Daussie could sense it with their ghosts.
Once they were back in Tarc’s hiding place, Nyssa wanted to discuss their plan of attack for the night. Shortly after saying she wanted to talk about it, she had a realization and narrowed her eyes “Why are we waiting until dark? You won’t be able to see to shoot your arrows.”
Tarc and Daussie looked at one another, unsure how to deal with the question. Finally he said, “I can see better than almost anyone in the dark. It’ll give us a huge advantage.”
Nyssa blinked at him, then glanced at Daussie as if to ask if Tarc were kidding.
Daussie gave her a little nod.
After a pause, Nyssa said, “I’ve seen you shoot and that’s unbelievable. I guess if I can come to grips with that, I should be able to believe that you can see in the dark.” A moment later she looked at him and continued, “As long as your plan isn’t to disappear into the dark when I can’t see you.”
Tarc shook his head, “No, I promised,” he said solemnly.
Daussie picked up a pinecone and started twisting the seed petals off of it. After a while, she said, “If we’re going to get up in the middle of the night to carry out an attack, we should try to get some sleep.”
Chapter Eleven
Nyssa crept quietly through the cornfield behind the two siblings. Her heart was thumping so loudly that it seemed the men in the farmhouse would surely hear it. Shortly before they’d started back to the farmhouse in the darkness, Nyssa had developed a conviction that the raiders had killed all their women captives already. She reasoned that the raiders wouldn’t want the women to interfere in the upcoming fight. She tried to tell herself that instead of killing them, they would keep the women to use as hostages in case of need.
Surely Iris would make a good hostage because of her youth.
Wouldn’t she?
When Nyssa had awakened from her nap she’d found Tarc and Daussie whispering to one another. Of course, they could just have been whispering so that they wouldn’t wake her up. Or to speak of family secrets. Nyssa couldn’t shake a terrified conviction that they had been discussing how to run away and leave Nyssa and Iris to deal with the raiders alone. Uneasily, Nyssa thought that if she were in their shoes, she wouldn’t stay to help a stranger and that stranger’s child deal with deadly criminals.
However once it had come full dark, the siblings had risen from their little hide and started out. Evidently, Tarc could see in the dark because he made his way quietly and surely through the woods across the field and into the cornfield with nary a stumble. Daussie had trailed Tarc and held Nyssa’s hand, guiding her well enough that Nyssa hardly faltered either.
Now Tarc and Daussie had stopped at the edge of the cornfield. Heads together they were whispering, presumably about what they could see. Nyssa could see nothing.
Tarc turned back to Nyssa, “We’re going after the farmhouse first…”
Nyssa interrupted him, “But Iris is in the barn!”
Tarc put his hand on Nyssa’s forearm, “Quietly please. We know Iris is in the barn. But the windows on the farmhouse make it easier to attack. We’re most likely to get the women there free without harm and they deserve that chance. Besides, the farmhouse is between us and the barn.”
“What if they kill us before we even get to the barn?!”
Tarc chuffed a sad little laugh in the darkness, “That’d be… awful.”
“But…” Nyssa stopped. She shouldn’t tell this man… young man… well, kid really, what to do. He was doing the best he could. More than she would have thought anyone could do. She sighed, “What do you want me to do?”
“Take this knife.” Nyssa felt the hilt of a large work knife pressed unerringly into her hand. He really must be able to see in the dark. “I’ll take you to the front door. If anyone comes out of it, stab them.”
Aghast, Nyssa said, “What if it’s one of the women?!”
After a pause, he said, “If one of the women runs for the door, Daussie or I’ll shout ‘Woman!’”
Tarc took Nyssa’s hand and led her out of the cornfield while she was still wondering how he’d be able to tell it was one of the women that was running for the door. They crossed unerringly to the house without even a stumble. Tarc lifted Nyssa’s hand and whispered, “Up” at a little rise in the terrain. Eventually he murmured, “Here,” and placed her fingers on what proved to be a door jamb. How he knew where it was, she had no idea. “It’ll be a while, be patient,” he whispered. It was so dark on this cloudy, moonless night that only a slight crunch in the dirt told her he had walked away.
Tarc and Daussie crept around the house. Two of the five raiders inside were sitting near the exterior walls. Tarc paused by one and Daussie by the other. The pauses were quite long while Tarc stopped the flow in the man’s left carotid artery and held it long enough for the brain tissue it supplied to collapse beyond recovery. In Daussie’s case, it took quite a while for the pinecone seed she held against the wall to disappear from under her finger.
Once their ghosts told them that the two men slumped bonelessly unconscious, they met at the window of the room that held two more of the men. That was the window Tarc had already broken with an arrow. The raiders had jammed it with a couple of pieces of firewood. Tarc pulled his throwing knives out of his boots and forearm sheaths while Daussie worked one of the pieces of firewood loose. She hoped to get it loose and pull it out through the window, then pull out the other one as well. Instead, while she worked on it, the second piece of wood suddenly fell into the room with a loud thump. The two men on the bed sat bolt upright. When one of Tarc’s knives buried itself in the first man’s eye with a meaty crunch, the second man scrambled off the edge of the bed. For a second, he cowered there. Then he raised his head, “Johnny?”
In the darkness, he had no idea the second knife was coming…
Johnson, the last living man in the farmhouse, sat bolt upright in the other room. He’d heard some thumping. “Roger? Johnny? Abe?” There was no answer. He stood and crept by feel to the door. He waited a moment, then slammed the door open and started to run for the barn.
It felt like something punched him in the chest.
He ran on a few steps before he felt the pain.
It hurt all the way to his back!
As he fell, his hands found the hilt of the big knife buried just under his breastbone…
Nyssa crouched in the dark hoping that the body she’d just stabbed with the big knife had been one of the raiders and not one of the women. Because the women were mostly wearing skirts and she hadn’t felt any cloth brush by her, she felt fairly confident, but not completely. She desperately wished she had another knife.
Tarc’s voice came quietly out of the darkness, “You got him Nyssa. Thanks.”
Astonished that he sounded so sure when it was so dark, Nyssa thought of thanking him. Instead she said, “I need another knife.”
“Okay,” Tarc said, “but wait a little bit. All the men here in the farmhouse are dead. We need to go in and try to calm the women in there. I think it would be better if we didn’t have big knives in our hands when we did it.”
Nyssa felt a hand on her wrist. From its size she could tell it belonged to
Daussie. Daussie gently pulled Nyssa behind her. In a moment, from the feel, Nyssa could tell she was back on the hard-packed dirt floor inside the farmhouse where she’d spent the afternoon.
A lamp glowed to life. Nyssa wondered how that had happened. No one had pulled a burning splinter out of the cook stove. Nyssa didn’t even think there was a fire in the stove. She hadn’t heard the scratch or seen the sparks of a match. Besides no one could afford matches except the very rich.
As the lamp glowed brighter, Nyssa saw that Tarc was holding it. The chimney was on it already! Certain that she would have seen him putting the chimney back on once its flame was lit, she wondered with even more astonishment if he’d somehow lit the flame without taking the chimney off. As the light brightened, Nyssa saw Evelyn sitting wide-eyed on the floor. Evelyn’s arms were tight around her knees as she stared at Tarc. Nyssa realized that to Evelyn Tarc would have simply appeared to have coalesced out of the darkness.
Nyssa said, “It’s okay Evelyn, we’re here to rescue you.” Evelyn’s eyes turned to Nyssa. Even in the dim light of the lamp Nyssa saw Evelyn’s eyes suddenly widen, then gleam with tears. The girl scrambled to her feet and ran to Nyssa, throwing her arms around her and hugging her intensely.
Evelyn didn’t want to let go of her, so Nyssa pulled her along as she followed Tarc and the lamp into the next room. Tarc handed the lamp to Daussie and knelt. To Nyssa’s amazement, she saw he was working a knife out of Johnny’s eye socket. As Tarc had said, all seven of the men left in the farmhouse after Toler’d taken Nyssa to the outhouse earlier in the day were dead.
Two had arrows in their heads. The ones Tarc had shot earlier in the day. Those two had just been pushed into a corner rather than taken outside, presumably out of fear that there might be more arrows waiting out there. Two had knives in their eye sockets. One was outside, with Nyssa’s knife buried in him. The creepiest thing, however, was that two of them sat slumped near the wall of the cabin. Nyssa didn’t see a mark on them. She couldn’t even be sure they were dead in the poor lighting. They weren’t moving, but she thought they might still be breathing. She wanted to go check, but she had her hands full calming the five young women they’d just rescued.
Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) Page 22