Ashes of the Earth (32 page)

"There!"
Jori cried, and pointed to a slender form on another, smaller piece
of wreckage, fifty feet away.

"Get
to shore!" Hadrian called to Dax, and watched as the boy grabbed
a plank from the water and began paddling.

"There's
a place I know," he said to Jori as she handed him a plank.
"Look for a trail that climbs up between two birch trees. Up to
the top of the second mountain."

But
as he began to paddle something seemed to seize his arm. His shoulder
was stiffening. He felt light-headed.

Jori
looked up and gasped. "Your shoulder!" she cried. "There's
a piece of wood in it!"

Hadrian
found himself sinking onto their makeshift raft, the cold water of
the lake washing over his legs now. "Take it out."

"Hadrian,
it's too big."

"Take
it out!" he shouted.

Jori
bent over him and pulled.

Only
then did the agony fully hit Hadrian. He had a vague sense of her
showing him a long splinter as wide as his thumb, then began to taste
the salt as his blood mixed with the water washing over their fragile
craft.

He
tried to rise, to paddle again, ignoring Jori's cries for him to
stop, but his strength was gone. He found himself lying on the broken
hull as it was tossed by the waves. It began snowing again. A new
storm, a freezing storm, was arriving. He closed his eyes, choking
every few moments on water and blood, the fire of the pain so severe
now it began to banish the terrible cold. He was weak, too weak to
move. It had been such a slender hope and in the end all he had done
was extend their lives by a few agonizing minutes. The shoreline was
still a mile away. He had lost. Wade had been right. He would never
understand. He had fought his best and lost. He could never hold on
long enough, and when he slipped off the wreckage he would sink
forever into the frigid, endless blackness below.

Pain
and fever
were
his world. Hadrian hurt so much, and burnt so hot, he knew nothing
beyond nightmarish images and sounds. Dax looked up with him with
dead, drowned eyes from the surface of the water. Carthage was being
consumed in flames. He was in the fishery being lowered into the maw
of one of the chopping machines. Jonah, grey-skinned from the grave,
chastised him for wasting his life. Nelly's body swayed in the wind
as it dangled from a gibbet. Missiles were dropping on the school of
his children.

Cries
of anguish roused him from unconsciousness. He fell on a steep, icy
trail. Snow packed into his ears. His eyelids were freezing shut. He
realized the cries were his own just before he passed out again.

He
became distantly aware of blasts of frigid air, of a dark beast
nuzzling and sniffing him, of great crackling fires and bitter tastes
on his tongue, and always the painful throbs from his shoulder,
stabbing like knife blades. Consciousness danced just beyond his
reach, never fully touching him but eventually letting him linger in
a warm, dark place.

Then
suddenly he was awake, gripping the thick beaver pelt blanket that
covered him. The walnut-colored face nodding at him was illuminated
by a single candle.

"How
did you find me?" Hadrian asked in a voice he didn't recognize.

"Not
me. She didn't know exactly where she was going when I heard her
shouting, pulling you up the trail in the ice storm." His old
friend Morgan turned to let him see Jori wrapped in a shawl on the
hearth of the big stone fireplace. "Stayed by you all this time,
nigh two weeks, breaking down into tears the first days. Helen had to
slip hellebore in her tea just to get her to sleep."

A
hand reached out from over the black man's shoulder, searching for
him. It took all Hadrian's strength to reach up and squeeze it. "You
gave us such a fright," the blind woman said. Helen bent and
pulled the heavy pelts over Hadrian as his head rolled back in
exhaustion.

In
the night, Jori was sitting on a stool beside him, watching him.

"Why?"
Hadrian asked. "You could have left me to die in the storm and
gone back to Carthage."

The
question seemed to bring anger to the sergeant's eyes. "I didn't
do it for the self-loathing bastard I know, I did it for the man who
long ago brought baby raccoons to my classroom and read Longfellow to
us." She roughly pushed his hand back into the blankets as he
reached out to touch her arm.

The
next day he was able to sit up, even reach the table where Helen was
ladling out bowls of hot pumpkin soup.

"Sergeant
Waller says people are trying to kill you." Morgan shook his
head, looking grave.

Hadrian
gazed around the snug subterranean home the couple had made more than
twenty years earlier. When Helen had started going blind, they had
been marked for expulsion from Carthage, but he and Jonah had hidden
them, then helped them escape into the steep eastern mountains.

The
smell of Helen's bread in the oven almost made him weep.

"Perhaps
I could just live here a few years," he said with a melancholy
grin. It was the most remarkable habitat he had ever known, two
adjoining caves cleverly closed off from the outside with stones and
mortar to blend with the cliff face, with access to gardens and
stables on the ridge above them through shafts and stairs cleverly
utilizing a network of sinkholes. He looked down at Jori's sleeping
form by the fireplace. "Has she been farther in?" he asked.

Helen
gave a knowing smile. "No one stays unless Aphrodite approves,"
she reminded him.

Morgan
extended one arm to steady Hadrian, then picked up a candle and led
him down a tunnel into a musky chamber at the rear. The caves had
been empty during the summer Morgan had found them. By the time their
proprietor had shown up for hibernation, the two humans had settled
in and were not inclined to move.

Hadrian
did not approach the ragged old she-bear, who watched him groggily as
he knelt several feet away. Aphrodite, on a thick bed of cedar
boughs, was preparing for her six-month sleep. The standoff when the
bear had first returned to her cave had been stressful, but Helen and
Morgan had resolutely claimed the outer cave and eventually Aphrodite
had decided there was room to coexist. Since then, the three had
become faithful companions.

"She
recognized you," Morgan explained, "even came over and
licked you when she woke up that first day. Jori almost lost her wits
but eventually she let the old girl smell her."

Once
Jonah had commented to Hadrian that visiting their old friends Morgan
and his sightless wife was like walking into a fairy tale.

"Exactly!"
Morgan had exclaimed when Hadrian repeated the words. "Which
gives me hope for all else."

"You
need to get her back," Hadrian said, still looking at the bear.
"Jori could find a way to be safe, once she's with the police
again."

"No,"
came Helen's thin voice. Hadrian turned to see her at the chamber
entrance. "She's not ready. She is terribly disconnected."

"Disconnected?"
Hadrian asked.

"We
speak sometimes. Everything she's been through—in both Carthage
and the north—has shattered her view of the world. She's lost
her anchor."

"Anchors
are luxuries we've learned to live without."

"Don't
talk foolishness, Hadrian Boone. And don't speak so harshly of that
wonderful girl. She practically died saving your life. She wouldn't
take care of herself until she knew you would recover. You damned
fool, you are becoming her anchor."

As
Morgan turned and left the chamber with his wife, Hadrian lingered.
The weary old bear opened an eye and stared in reproof at him.

The
next day
as
Jori slept Hadrian joined Morgan in the chores on top of the ridge.
As soon as they left the cavern behind, he asked his friend about the
message from Jonah left by Dax at the trailhead.

"I
was hoping for some news from one of you," Morgan said, "but
that was not so much a message as a shopping list. Plants.
Hard-to-find herbs."

"Plants
for what?"

"No
idea. Jonah was always experimenting. I spent most of the week
looking for them but I was glad to do it, after all you and he had
done for us." Morgan handed Hadrian a narrow spade and pointed
to a row of onions.

Hadrian
remembered a lively barnyard, with goats, roosters, and hens in pens
along the rough palisade wall that kept predators out. As they pried
onions from the frost-heaved ground, Hadrian paused to study the
empty pens. "You've reduced your livestock," he observed.

"As
a gentleman farmer," Morgan grinned, "Helen always said I
was more of a gentleman than a farmer. I can reach the outermost
farms in an hour. They are always ready to trade produce for pelts or
fresh game."

Now
there were no roosters and only two old milk goats. "Helen
always loved those cocks," he recalled.

"Too
loud," Morgan muttered.

He
lowered his bucket of onions. "You mean you're back to hiding
your life here?"

"Life
moves on. Things change everywhere. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

Hadrian
stepped closer and put a foot on the shovel Morgan was using. "What
happened?"

"Nothing.
We are survivors. The roosters made a grand stew. The other goats are
enjoying their freedom in the high peaks."

"What
happened?" Hadrian repeated.

Morgan
looked out toward distant clouds. "It was over six months ago. I
was hunting, tracking a big stag for a couple hours, getting closer
to the settlements than I usually like to go, when I heard a terrible
screaming. I ran to help but when I saw the men I dropped behind a
stump and pulled out my binoculars. Six of them, plus the poor soul
they had tied to a log. They were slicing him like he was side of
beef, using a huge knife cut down from a sword." Morgan paused,
clearly unsettled by the memory.

"The
Dutchman? You saw them kill the Dutchman?"

"You
forget how many years we've been gone, Hadrian. I don't know many
faces, or names, from the colony. It was the one with the big farm
off to the south who raised racehorses."

"The
Dutchman they called him. Van Wyck."

"Van
Wyck," Morgan repeated. "He didn't die well. For a moment I
was ready to charge them but there was no saving him by then. And
those bastards would have done the same to me if they caught me
watching."

"Were
there others being tortured? Or just Van Wyck?"

"As
I watched they brought up two men, well-dressed townsmen, with their
hands tied. They forced those two to watch. I didn't dare move for
fear of being seen."

"Did
you see the martens come?"

Morgan
looked at him in surprise.

"I
was there last month when they found the body. I saw the signs of
martens."

The
memory clearly chilled Morgan. "The piranhas of the forest."

Hadrian
looked back around the barnyard. "But that was many miles from
here."

"We're
only ten miles from his farm. Van Wyck's farm. Even closer to the
trail taken by the riders."

"I
don't understand."

"They
started staging out of his farm after that day. Like salvage patrols.
Every week now."

"Salvage
parties have been riding out of Carthage for years."

"Not
like these. And salvage patrols go out with empty packhorses. These
horses always carry heavy loads. They're tough, heartless-looking
bastards, some of the same men who killed that Dutchman. If they
caught wind of Helen and me, we wouldn't last five minutes. They'd
take everything." One of the rooms in the burrowed labyrinth was
Morgan's secret vault, his personal warehouse of salvage, mostly
nineteenth-century mechanical devices. They would be nearly priceless
in the salvage markets.

"Helen
knows?"

"She
seldom goes beyond the gardens now. No need for her to know what I
saw. She believes the goats escaped and the roosters were taking too
much of our hard-won grain."

"You
know the land as well as any salvage rider. Where are they going?"
Morgan himself had led several salvage expeditions out of Carthage in
the early years and still did his own searching for his personal
collection.