“But today it is a place of slaves and thieves and killers.”
Sebastian was silent a long time. “I guess what a place is like depends on its founders,” he said. “Sauger said you were a founder, at Carthage.”
The words hurt more than Sebastian intended. “I guess it depends on which founders prevail,” Hadrian replied.
They grew silent again, watching the sky.
“Did Shenker ever speak about killing Jonah Beck?” Hadrian finally asked.
“He got drunk once and bragged about cutting the heart out of Carthage.” Sebastian looked at him questioningly.
“Shenker worshiped Sauger,” Sebastian continued when Hadrian did not reply, “said he was a genius.”
“A genius at using people, and disposing of them when he finishes with them,” Hadrian said. “You and the First Bloods do Sauger’s heaviest lifting. He convinced the merchants, the fishermen, the millers to continue what they were doing, just let him manage it for still greater returns. Only a handful at the top know the truth.”
“Most of the salvage teams,” Sebastian added, “get paid in credit at Sauger’s tavern. Liquor, food, and women.” He quieted a moment, seeming to consider Hadrian’s words. “I don’t know who helped Shenker kill your friend Jonah, if that’s what you mean to ask. Sometimes there’d be meetings with people from Carthage, but usually they were far out on the lake. Two or three of the steamers would meet and then new orders would be issued. Men would be needed to help unload grain. We would be sent to Carthage to pick up supplies to take by horseback to the factory.”
“Where in Carthage?”
“A horse farm south of town. A wagon would meet us at the docks and drive us there. A big place, with racehorses. Sometimes the owner would be there, but we weren’t ever in his company.”
“You mean the Dutchman?”
“Not him. He’s dead. Some of the fishermen still laugh about how he died. The new owner. From Carthage.”
Hadrian leaned toward the First Blood. Sebastian was speaking about the last piece of the puzzle, the keystone, the invisible link to the government. “You’ve never seen him?”
“Never. Comes at night, in a black carriage, stays at the big house and has some of those jackals for guards. In Carthage they always do the security. On this side Sauger likes us to do it. A group from my tribe is waiting at New Jerusalem, to escort Kinzler’s big shipment.”
“Sauger relies on your people. Your mother, you say, is building a new place in the forest.”
Sebastian stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“You could be a founder, Sebastian. You and your mother and your surviving brothers. Tell your people what Sauger is doing. Destroying children in Carthage. Driving us to starvation. You could cut him off from his salvage. If he sends others, you would know how to stop them. We don’t need more salvage in this world. We need to be our own people. You could have good friends in Carthage. There’s an old priest I would like to introduce to your mother.”
An owl called from the forest behind them. They listened to another answer, far below.
“When I was young,” Sebastian said, a strange ache in his voice now, “my grandfather used to sit at a campfire and burn fragrant wood. Cedar, apple when he could get it. He said the smoke attracted the spirits of our ancestors and their old gods. Once I asked if I could stay with him, to speak with them, and he said I was too young to learn all the words that must be spoken, that he would teach them to me when I was older. I left but hid in the trees. He sat there for hours, waving his hands in the smoke, calling out old words, sacred words. We have had ancestors in these lands for thousands of years he told me once, and their spirits were close by when we needed them. But all those who knew the words for summoning died in the shifting. Now after so many years those spirits think we have forgotten them. All I can do is borrow my mother’s spirits now,” he said, raising the rosary.
“I think the words are waiting in your heart,” Hadrian replied. “I think when you find them the spirits will hear.”
In the morning Sebastian was gone.
THE ICE FREIGHTER bound for St. Gabriel still sat in the New Jerusalem harbor when they arrived, small kegs that appeared to be the last of her cargo being loaded from sleds. With the compound burnt down, the drugs inside the kegs would have to be refined in St. Gabriel, but once they were, there would be enough for hundreds of doses. As the pilot knocked ice from the rigging, Hadrian counted at least eight men on or around the boat and not for the first time that day wished he could have persuaded Sebastian to stay with them after reaching the shoreline. At least two of the crewmen had rifles slung on their shoulders. He paused and surveyed the shore, recalling that there were supposed to be even more guards. Sebastian had said his tribesmen were to escort the shipment to St. Gabriel, but they were nowhere to be seen. He looked back at the warriors in his own party. Jori had her pistol, Bjorn the shotgun, and Dax the bow and quiver given to him by Sebastian.
Hadrian surveyed the harbor from the edge of the woods, desperately seeking some means for blocking the boat. A team of horses with an empty sledge stood by the lake. A small, sleek ice bullet was tethered to the dock. A large brazier burnt at the foot of the dock, with half a dozen children gathered around it, watching the activity at the large vessel.
As he turned to tell his companions to dismount so they could approach more stealthily, a buckskin mare charged past him.
“Nelly!” Hadrian’s cry was futile. She had no intention of stopping, or of being inconspicuous. When her horse balked at stepping onto the ice, she flung herself off and began running to the freighter.
“They’ll kill her!” Hadrian shouted, and kicked his horse forward as Nelly slipped, falling, and two of the crewmen intercepted her.
It was Bjorn who reached the ice first, leaping off his horse and unslinging his shotgun as he ran. As her captors dragged Nelly onto the boat and other men began leaning on the struts, sliding the vessel into the wind, Bjorn began shooting. His shots went wild. He emptied the gun and tossed it aside, then charged, resembling nothing so much as a Viking berserker. Hadrian watched with sudden hope as Nelly struggled free. But she did not jump off the boat, she leapt onto a diminutive figure sitting in the cockpit, draped in furs. As she knocked the man’s hat away Hadrian recognized his gold-rimmed glasses and narrow pockmarked face. Instead of fighting back Kinzler began gesturing frantically for the crewmen to drag her away. Hadrian could not hear the questions she fired at the chairman, but her enraged tone was unmistakable. Kinzler had no interest in her words. He had his precious cargo on board and was destined to conquer Carthage with it. He slapped Nelly and shook his head as a sailor roughly pulled her away.
The sail began to swell as the freighter caught the wind and turned north. Bjorn continued yelling, pulling down a crewmember who was scrambling on board. With a mighty leap from the back of the downed man he caught the railing and pulled himself onto the deck, where two sailors began hammering him with the poles used to steady the ship. One of the men flew through the air, landing unconscious on the ice as Bjorn made his way toward Nelly. But suddenly two more men appeared, one slamming a heavy club into the Norger’s arm. Bjorn collapsed and an instant later was tossed overboard.
For a moment the man at the tiller turned toward Hadrian and Jori, now at his side, showing a scarred, sneering face partly covered with an eye patch.
“Give her up, Fletcher!” Hadrian demanded.
The captain offered a mock salute. “Another thousand in bounty!” he retorted, and seemed about to turn over the tiller to a crew member when he was abruptly thrown off balance, stumbling onto one knee.
Jori gasped in surprise. Hadrian followed her gaze to Bjorn, standing now, with one arm limp at his side but the other arm wrapped around the trailing tether line. He had pulled the rope so hard he’d jerked the bow of the boat off course, swiveling it on the glassy surface. As they stood watching in disbelief, the Norger twisted, winding the rope around his
body and pulling once more, jerking the bow toward him again.
“Give her up!” Bjorn roared, then, incredibly, began stepping backward, pulling the ship with him.
It had been a long time since Hadrian had heard a rifle, and at first he didn’t recognize the flat crack as it echoed off the ice. But then he saw Bjorn’s leg jerk, saw the blood spurt from it. He tried to run to the Norger but his sudden movement caused him to slip and fall. As he struggled to get to his feet everything seemed to move in slow motion, in the freeze-stop movement of old film. The rifle spoke again and Bjorn’s body jerked as a bullet struck his belly. The boat began to turn back with the wind. The rifle cracked once more and his second leg erupted with blood. As Bjorn collapsed the boat began pulling him forward.
Hadrian ran, slipping and sliding, but reached the bleeding man too late. Bjorn held out a bloody hand and Hadrian leapt for it, grabbing it, then just as suddenly lost his grip. Bjorn fixed him with a desolate grin. “Don’t let them take her,” he said. Then he was gone. The freighter found her wind and slipped away with a burst of speed, dragging the Norger behind.
No one spoke. He stared at the speeding boat and then looked down at his bloodstained hand.
It was Jori who finally stirred. “So close,” she said as she steadied Hadrian. “I thought Bjorn was shooting at the men at first.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought he was aiming for the crew and missing. But he hit what he was aiming at, every time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The strut. He was shooting at the center of the rear strut, trying to collapse it. I think he almost succeeded. I saw splinters flying.”
Hadrian looked up with a dazed expression.
“They’re fast,” she said, then pointed at the little bullet boat. “But we can go faster. They’re staying close to shore, worried about the fog interfering with navigation. They won’t catch the full wind. Farther out we can go much faster. We can sail out and then back at them. If we can ram the weakened strut they’ll lose the outrigger.”
Hadrian and Dax began running toward the ice bullet.
HADRIAN KNEW ENOUGH to stay out of Jori’s way as she piloted the sleek little vessel. He kept his arm around Dax and leaned as far back in the single passenger seat as he could. Ice crystals thrown from the runners stung his face. The wind tore at the rigging until it seemed certain it would rip away, and still the boat increased speed. He recalled a lecture years earlier, when the first ice bullets had been built, in which one of his math teachers had used diagrams and formulas to demonstrate why the bullets could travel at least five times the speed of the wind. The canvas on such small iceboats did not function so much as a sail as a vertical wing.
He lost all sense of time as they hurtled out onto the lake, watching the clouds soar overhead, keeping an uneasy eye on the fog banks that crept along the shore. Surely it would be impossible to calculate the navigation and speed precisely enough, surely they were more likely to get lost in fog or hit one of the patches of thin black ice that appeared unexpectedly on the lake and sink. But then he saw the savage determination in Jori’s eyes. He pulled the blanket tighter around the boy and listened to the song of their passage.
Then abruptly Jori swung the rudder and the vessel veered toward shore.
“We’ve got her!” she exclaimed, and Hadrian bent upward to see the big mast, perhaps two miles away, no more than half a mile from the shoreline. “Fletcher’s staying even closer to the shore than I expected, which means he’s risking even more patches of thin ice.” As she adjusted the sail for still greater speed a new grimness appeared on her features. “Behind the boat,” she said. “The bastards are still dragging Bjorn. What’s left of him. Like a trophy.”
Moments later Jori began to explain how Hadrian and Dax would have to roll off at her signal, how she would stay with the boat until the last second to be certain the bullet collided with the strut.
Hadrian wanted to protest, to point out the terrible odds against their survival, to remind her that their enemy had rifles, that with his near-frozen limbs he could not move as fast as she wanted. But he saw the glint in her eyes and said nothing.
It happened in an instant. He heard someone shout from the freighter as the bullet boat was finally spotted. He felt Jori’s shove as she cried for him to roll off, saw the bullet careen wildly as it lost the weight of its two passengers, saw her fight to stabilize it, then in an explosion of wood splinters the two vessels collided.
The freighter spun violently about, losing its wind, throwing two startled crew members onto the ice. A shrill voice rose from the deck of the ship. Kinzler, rising from a small mound of furs, flung curses at Jori, at Fletcher, at Nelly and the crew. Fletcher began barking orders for his men to pull away the remains of the bullet. The freighter still stood upright. The bullet had slammed into its target and cracked the strut, but it was still holding.
No one seemed to notice as Nelly lowered herself to the ice and ran back to the end of the tether rope. She froze as the bloody mess came into focus. Hadrian prayed Bjorn had died quickly. Most of his clothing had been peeled away by the ice. Much of his skin had been shredded as well.
Hadrian stepped to Nelly’s side and led her away, toward Jori, who sat on the ice, stunned from the collision.
Fletcher lowered himself from the hull and walked along the tether line, pulling out his belt knife to cut it. As he did so, a howl rose from the now fog-shrouded shore. He turned to Hadrian with a heartless smile. “Wolves. They smell the blood. They’ll be here soon. Ten, twelve, maybe more. They can run a lot faster on the ice than you can.” He paused to study the damage to his boat, muttering a curse. “You’re not worth the bullets it would take to finish you. I told Sauger to let me kill the two of you that night at St. Gabriel but he wouldn’t have it. Doesn’t like to foul the nest where he lives.”
As he spoke Kinzler stumbled out onto the ice, throwing splinters of lacquered wood at them, missing widely. “I’m glad you’re hurt, you damned bitch!” he screamed. Hadrian looked back at Jori, who still sat on the ice, brushing the frost from her hair with a dazed expression. No, not dazed. She was staring at the surface of the lake. The freighter had come to rest on a patch of black ice.
The cries of the wolves increased as the pack spread the news of the imminent meal. Hadrian saw shadows in the murk now, moving with the fog out onto the ice.
“You can’t be allowed to do this!” Nelly shouted from his side. He grabbed Jori’s shoulder and pulled both of them back.
Kinzler seemed amused as he climbed back onto the boat and sank into his furs. “We’ll be feasting by a fire tonight while your cold bones rattle across the ice,” he taunted.
The sound was like that of a firecracker. One of the exploding arrows had struck the ice near the bow of the ship.
Fletcher spun about to see Dax nocking another arrow. “Fool! You can play with your toys as you die!” he snapped as the boy sent another arrow in a high arc to land near the stern. Fletcher’s men mocked the boy, mouthing small popping noises as they laughed. The fog was moving quickly toward the boat now. Wolves howled again. Oddly, crows began calling from the mist.
“You had a chance at greatness, Nelly,” Kinzler told her as he tucked on his elegant fur cap. “Now look at you. You won’t run half a mile before they’re at your throat.”
A third arrow from Dax’s bow landed, then a fourth, all in a radius five feet from the boat. Hadrian pulled his companions still farther away from the corpse as Fletcher directed his crew back on board.
The crows called as loud as the wolves now. Even Hadrian could smell the blood. The fog was nearly upon the boat when suddenly there were four of the small explosions, in rapid succession, along the pattern started by Dax. Fletcher, busy with getting his vessel underway, did not seem to realize the arrows had not come from the boy. A strange grin lit the boy’s face as he saw four ghostly shapes at the edge of the fog. The lead phantom made another crow call an
d three more appeared. Dax raised his own bow. Eight arrows were aimed at the damaged struts.
“Peculiar thing about your boat, captain,” Hadrian called to Fletcher. “It doesn’t float.”
The snarl on Fletcher’s face was replaced by confusion as he saw the men at the edge of the fog. The strangers fired an instant after Dax released his arrow. The struts shuddered as the shells exploded against them, then broke away. As the hull slammed down, the weakened ice groaned and broke along the line started by Dax. The largest of the intruders skied to Hadrian’s side. Sebastian offered a grim, silent nod.
Fletcher yelled at his jackals to get their weapons and was climbing down when the slab under the boat upended.
The heavy vessel sank like a boulder. Hadrian glimpsed Fletcher trapped between the ice and the hull as he went under, saw Kinzler futilely struggle to get out of his heavy furs. A crewman trapped in a rope uttered a frantic cry, then there was only the mast, sinking into the black water.
CHAPTER Sixteen
THE LINE OF figures bent with heavy loads moved out of the fog toward the docks like a frost-covered snake. A dog barked in fear. A woman gasped and ran into the building as if to hide. A girl cried out and darted away, warning of spirits rising out of the ice.
“God be praised,” Father William, at Hadrian’s side, exclaimed as he hurried to a ladder and climbed down to the ice.
“Bring it now,” Hadrian called to Wilton. The farmer turned toward the shadows between the buildings and whistled. A heavy farm wagon pulled by a team of horses appeared, filled with burly workers.
The figure at Hadrian’s side threw off the hood of her cloak to better see the column of strangers, most bent under a heavy bag of grain, some hauling at tow ropes in front of sleds stacked with bags. “I think,” Emily said to Hadrian, a rare note of joy in her voice, “that is the most beautiful thing I have seen in years.” Buchanan’s rationing system had already taken effect, and most of the city’s population was going to bed hungry.
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