The third day after they ditched the hauler, Val began to think about sleep, about keeping watch with his friends, and what would happen when he did one and, because of it, stopped being able to do the other.
They'd pulled over in Antrasia for fuel, and to let Skocz, Wastagh, and Zedric purchase proper gear and clothing while the others stayed in the hauler. Footwear, outerwear, canteens, blankets. No climbing gear, Val had said. And no tents, lanterns, or food stuffs. Nothing that would persuade the store clerk to report to his upland baron, his patron, that a pack of outsiders were "taking to the land" in a place where people "faded" for one reason or another and were never heard from again. As an added precaution, Val warned Skocz to ask directions to the ruins in Ulcinja, which was a small, unremarkable temple in an upland valley-- reachable by road --that managed, occasionally, to attract scholarly interest. He also had Skocz overspend the credit wand, which, Skocz duly reported, he did with appropriate embarrassment. Forced to lay off the spare pair of boots and the extra fleece vest, Skocz exhausted his credit and the clerk's patience. He and his shopping mates acquired the stigma of "prof," which, Skocz told Val, was what the clerk called him at the final ring-out.
"What's that mean?" Siris asked when Val chuckled and nodded with approval.
"It means he dismissed Zone here as an underfunded university type. He won't bother to guess his accent, he'll take Zone's nationality as whatever the wand said it was. Zone's from out of country, without credit, too stupid to know he's out of bounds, and not worth bothering because he's got nothing anyone wants. The clerk expects our group to come down from the ruins in a day or so, glitter-eyed at having digitally photographed something that's been photographed a million times, at which point we'll be avoided by everyone for all the silly questions we're expected to ask. We'll use the Antransia exchange to contact our embassy, get our wand recharged to its previously pathetic level, and fuel up so we can wheel back the way we came. Good job."
Smiles all around, and up they went.
Serdice was behind them, Malino up ahead. The last village was called Getrini. They motored through on fumes, which was just as well. Ten kilometers later, they ditched the hauler off the dirt track that had become too narrow for it. Val made them cammo the vehicle against casual interest.
Skocz asked, idly, if the hauler was in danger of being stolen.
"Not likely."
"If we're not hiding it from the doggers"-- the bad guys --"what're we hiding it for then?" Skocz wondered.
"To cover up the way we went," Val said, "from casual eyes."
"The locals won't steal it?" Siris questioned.
Val repeated, "No."
"Why not?"
Val looked upward through the deep shade of the forest. The smell of sap, soil, and mold filled his lungs. The canopy was high, permitting only glimpses of a mild spring sky. They were two nights and a day from the farmhouse, and he was breathing mountain air.
"We're among the Goranegi," he answered. "No one up here needs an old hauler. No one up here with interest in motorized vehicles is poor."
The first night, before they lost the light, the soldiers scrounged for ferns and branches and in short time brought together what they needed to put up three shelters. No one but Siris thought of a fire, and because she did, Val rearranged the sleeping assignments so that she was with him. The soldiers were used to Hephaestion and understood. One soldier went up a tree to guard the camp. The rest ate food bars and then helped Val bury anything that might smell good to a predator, of which there were likely to be a few. In his shelter, he made Siris take off her new coat and then lie back on the coat. When he put his hand on her shoulders, he let his warmth pass through his skin to her body.
She said it was like lying near a heater.
He passed the first and second night occasionally lying his hand against her, keeping his senses open to the life of the forest around them, and trying not to wonder how good it would be if they made it to the Daranic and got out without paying for their folly with pain. But if he got out of this easily, then the device would still be out there and every moment after he joined these people in Brianovia would be stolen against some inevitable catastrophe.
He got up early, earlier than the soldiers, before daylight flickered in the canopy. Without light, the soldiers couldn't see. The forest made a dark that was like a wall, or a pit, for them. Val picked his way silently through the tall brush, over leaves and pine needles. There was no longer any sign of the moons, and the forest was quiet with only the haggard, hungry breath of it stirring above him. He stood at the edge of their rough little camp, staring. It was the second morning that he spoke to the blurring darkness.
"I feel you." The words, much more than the surety of the others' presence, goosed his flesh.
The others had come from upland. Daranic was the name of Malino's baron's castle, and it was four days upcountry in cliffs that overlooked a bend of the river. How far away were the ones who were watching? Two kilometers, maybe. Not much farther than that. Val had only a faint sense of them.
He made his way to Skocz's shelter.
Skocz got up. "How many of the doggers are there?"
"More than five, less than ten."
Phanuff and Zedric were waking up. Skocz signaled Wastagh down from his post.
Val collected the doctor, who'd slept poorly and showed it. Her eyes were like a wound, wide and worried. He told her about the others, warned her to speak quietly when she had to speak, and to be careful what she said.
After getting down some meal bars and water, the soldiers and Siris followed Val away from the camp. The Alinan border was days away and, as expected, they weren't going to make it.
Around midday, Val felt the presence of men two kilometers out of sight and at their rear. Six, seven hunters, coming on straight, using the ground to hide their movement. They came through the brush gently as a breeze, like Goranegi who lived off the land.
Any moment now, Val thought. He looked over his shoulder at the doctor, saw her next to Phanuff, trying to keep up. Siris was strong, with wiry runner's legs and good lungs, but the air was thin now and she was struggling. He sighed. There was no need to hurry. As they stopped to rest, Val headed back to lean with Siris against a cool boulder that was getting a little sun. He took out a meal bar and chewed, washing down the gooey substance with a capful of canteen water.
Siris swatted at insects, patted her damp face, and regarded him. "You're getting tired, aren't you?"
He leaned his face toward her, eyes on the ground. "Very."
"Should we stop early tonight, so you can get ready?"
Skocz tramped back to them. "What's the matter?" Like Siris and Val, he was whispering.
Val said, "I'm running out of time."
Skocz and Val exchanged the briefest of glances. Skocz turned away.
Siris sipped from her canteen, looked about. "Time is on their side."
Val faced the north. How many people would Burgolt Manegold have told about the crushing pain Val had inflicted to his heart? And the way he, Val, had troubled the helicopter? Not many, to be sure. So, then, Val realized, the trackers weren't Daranic men, not if they were afraid to close in on him while he was awake. Not if they knew about the long sleep, and how to use the time that Val was unconscious to hurt things Val might want to protect.
He gave Siris his hand, and they headed out.
With just a couple hours left of daylight, Val needed to sit down.
While the soldiers and Siris put up a crude camp around him, Val rolled the muscles under his skin, tried to keep his vision sharp. The lethargy was like a wave coming up from his core. He fought it, aware, now, of only himself, and the way his biology betrayed him.
Siris went through her pack, took out a med injector, and approached him. He glimpsed Wastagh moving up on his side.
"This isn't right," he uttered.
Siris settled on her knees next to him. "We all knew this was going to happen. Let me help you."
He nodded, and she extended the med injector gently against his neck.
Val clenched and unclenched his fists. "Maria," he gasped.
* * *
"Yes," said Siris. To John Manegold's questioning look, "You called me by my fam name," she pointed out. No need to ask how he learned of it. He was an affarite. "John?" There was a fog, now, behind his eyes, and almost no comprehension. His brow had wrinkled with a frown. "Marea," she tried to help him. "You called me Marea." Too late. Although he continued to stare, he was more than half gone. She sighed. "Stop fighting it ..."
His eyes glassy, John turned a sluggish look over his shoulder. Wastagh had knelt behind, ready to catch him.
The Manegold slumped, his head sliding forward. Wastagh threw his arms around the tumbling shoulders. Siris cradled John's head. They lay him on the ground. Her heart was a hammer and her throat was dry but she stayed on her knees, John's face in her arms, looking from the unconscious man to the dusky avenues between the trees. The others moved around her, pretending to tend to the evening camp. While Siris waited, and while there was still a little of the light left, men with guns came through the trees. A lot of men, a lot of guns. Her arms tightening around her patient, she was relieved, at least, that she didn't scream.
* * *
Looking down, the men stopped in an arc, their boots planted on a patch of sloping ground among the leafy brush slightly above the rugged little camp. Siris made an attempt to count the men and stopped at twelve. Four or five had their business-like automatic rifles-- stubby, black, deadly machines --pointed at her, and at the soldiers. The rest carried their pistols and automatic rifles at the hip.
Eerily, the term "paramilitary" came to mind. She wasn't sure if it applied, but the thought that it might fit added clarity to her fear.
The men weren't uniformed, although every one appeared to be in woodland camouflage combat boots. Most wore fleece or cotton but one wore a knee length leather coat, black, unbuttoned to reveal a red linen shirt of some quality and a thick leather belt with a large gold buckle. This was the one who called down to them.
The group had been getting by as Borazji workers, their cover serving as explanation for their poor grasp of the Volodyan language. Hephaestion had been fluent, but he was fluent in every language that was spoken to him. John, it seemed, had the same knack. As a unit, they'd spoken Ollano at the farmhouse, even during the meeting with the Holland-Tchey. Borazji, Ollano, and Solonian, the latter the state language of the UKSB, was the extent of Siris' accomplishments. When the gang leader spoke, she knew he was speaking Volodyan, but she did not know what he was saying. She responded with silence.
Skocz and Phanuff understood a smattering of Volodyan, but they stood silent as well.
The man said, "Who speaks for you?" in Solonian, a language he would have learned if he'd had any formal education whatsoever.
Skocz replied in kind. "I do."
"Are you carrying weapons? Don't lie, now. A lie might prove needlessly fatal."
"Yes."
"I shall require all of you to disarm, and be quick."
Skocz appeared to think it over, then said in Borazji, "Put down all weapons."
The soldiers went about it with care, gingerly lifting coat flaps, settling pistols and combat knives on the ground.
The gang leader watched impassively. Clinically, Siris suspected he was a sociopath. His stillness might have been professional detachment, but in his eyes there was a glimmer. She half-suspected he was going to murder them no matter what, and then he did. Murder someone. He raised his pistol and fired, shooting Zedric through the chest. It was an act that felt, and probably was, random. To show his power, or for the enjoyment of it. Maybe both.
When Siris performed her medical residency in the UKSB, she'd been friends with a man who liked to watch the live pay-for broadcasts of judicial executions. Occasionally, she'd been in the room when he indulged his morbid interest. The medical center, too, had its share of losses, and during her emergency bay rotation she'd seen the remnants of violent death.
This was different.
The violent discharge of the gunman's weapon was assaultive. She startled in her skin. And then Zedric stumbled. At first there was nothing, and then blood bubbled darkly from the puncture. Zedric, shocked but not surprised, lifted up one hand, and then toppled. Skocz, Wastagh, and Phanuff were soldiers. Although they cursed, and their faces blazed with wrath, they chose not to tempt the killers to kill again and so did not move. Lacking appreciation for the jumpy nature of gunmen, Siris scuttled immediately to Zedric's side.
It was a fatal wound. She saw that right away. Though his eyes were open and he seemed to look at her, Zedric was gone.
"Now that we have that lesson out of the way," said Zedric's killer, "you will acknowledge that I am in charge. My men will bind you, and you will accompany us without talking and without resistance. You. You-- are you a medical person?"
Siris flung an enraged look over her shoulder. She said nothing.
"What is this one's medical status?" He indicated John.
"He's sleeping," she ground out.
"What is your medical opinion as to why my gunfire did not wake him?"
"He has a medical condition. He can't be awakened. He sleeps for as long as he has to, then he wakes on his own."
The shooter nodded, satisfied. "Good. How long will he sleep?"
She stood, Zedric's blood on her trousers and her hands. "Ten hours, perhaps more."
"You have given me nothing but good news-- I thank you. Now we should head out. Be still and be quiet, and this will be over quickly."
The shooter's men tramped down to the camp and put plastic ties on the soldiers' hands, on Siris and John too. The leader squatted beside John, took John's chin between fingers and thumb, and squinted at John's face.
"No more baby fat," he said absently, but in Solonian, as though he wanted his audience to hear. "He's all grown up."
A medic's board came down to camp, carried by two brawny men. They set the board down, scooped John onto it, and strapped John in place. The gang leader stood, and his men too, elevating John with a grunt.
-- Next Chapter
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