The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  I managed to push myself to my knees, then scramble to my feet, but the second I put weight on my injured ankle I screeched and collapsed to one knee. I pushed again and limped a few steps but quickly knew my ankle was at best twisted or sprained, possibly broken. Either way, my running was over for the foreseeable future… maybe forever.

  I stole a look back; the two men were less than sixty feet from us, closing fast. They’d be on us in less than ten seconds.

  Without missing a step, the archer slipped his bow over his shoulders, then pulled a long dagger from a belt around his waist. Both men were sweating profusely, but the look of cruel triumph on their faces told me everything I needed to know about their intentions.

  “Go!” I hissed at Chou. “Take Albert and run. I’ll try and delay them long enough for you to get away.”

  With Albert still clinging tightly to her, Chou wordlessly assessed her choices, then sprinted away… only to stop at a nearby oak and lower Albert to the ground behind its wide trunk. “You must be a brave boy and stay here,” I heard her tell him.

  Albert nodded, his eyes wide with fear.

  Chou spun around, ran back to where I lay, and placed herself between me and the attackers. She took a long, deep breath, exhaled slowly… and launched herself at our pursuers, moving faster than I had ever seen anyone run in my life.

  The two men, suddenly faced with a six-foot-tall Amazonian warrior charging at them, stumbled to a confused stop. The swordsman took up a defensive stance, his sword held out in front of him, while the archer dropped back ten feet and began pulling his bow from around his shoulders again.

  Chou surged across the last few feet, dodged right, leaped into the air, and used the trunk of a tree to propel herself at the swordsman. She held the spear Albert made for her above her head with both hands as she crashed knee first into the swordsman’s face, sending him sprawling to the ground in an explosion of dirt and dried leaves. Chou landed next to him, used her momentum to roll away, leaped back up and lunged at the swordsman’s back with her spear.

  The man’s reactions were almost as fast as Chou’s, and he managed to bring the flat of his weapon around in time to deflect Chou’s attack. Jumping to his feet, he brought his sword up in a whirling attack aimed at Chou’s neck that was so fast the blade became a blur of liquid silver.

  Chou ducked under it and rolled away.

  The archer had unslung his bow, an arrow nocked and ready; the bowstring pulled back to his shoulder, ready to let fly the second his friend was free of the woman who ducked and dived so nimbly around him. The archer’s face was a picture of frustration as he moved the bow left and right, trying to draw a bead on Chou, but she was just too fast… and too close to his friend for him to be able to risk a shot.

  Chou feinted at the swordsman’s face, waited for her opponent’s move to block her attack, then twisted the spear past his guard and drove the tip into the man’s unprotected leg, just above his right knee.

  The swordsman screamed in pain, teetered, but remained standing. Reversing his swing, he slammed the rounded base of the sword’s pommel against Chou’s temple, sending her staggering away.

  Chou picked herself up, wobbled as if she was concussed and moved back a couple of feet, lowering her spear. The sword-wielding man took two quick steps toward her, a smile of victory on his face as Chou took another small step backward, her eyes moving left and right. She wobbled and dropped to one knee.

  I looked on in horror as, with both hands wrapped around the pommel of his weapon, the swordsman raised the sword above his head. He held it for a second, took another step forward and began to bring the blade down in a swooping arc that would remove Chou’s head from her shoulders.

  Chou turned to face her attacker, and the look of defeat melted away. Her mouth set in a wicked grin, I instantly understood she had lured him into the overconfident move. The swordsman tried to sidestep, but it was too late, he was committed to his attack, the weight of the sword and its momentum carrying him forward.

  In one lightning-fast movement, Chou leaped up and forward, placing herself almost nose to nose with the swordsman, and thrust the spear up in a short jab, driving the fire-hardened tip into the man’s unprotected chin and then up into his brain.

  The sword flew from the man’s hand and landed in the leaves near the archer as the swordsman’s lifeless body continued forward, colliding with Chou and knocking her to the ground, covering her in a spray of arterial blood that gushed from his neck.

  Chou pushed the dying man’s body away and jumped to her feet. Her face fixed in a grimace of determination, made all the scarier to me by the blood splattered across her clothing and smeared in long stripes over her cheeks. She placed a foot against the man’s leather-clad chest and pulled her spear from his body, took a step toward the archer… then screamed, knocked back as an arrow struck her above her left hip. Chou stumbled then collapsed to the forest floor.

  The archer dropped his bow, pulled his knife from his belt and advanced on Chou.

  Chou forced herself to a sitting position, grimacing as the shaft of the arrow thumped against her knee, sweat dripping from her forehead. She gripped the spear with both hands, holding it out in front of her like a lion-tamer keeping an unruly beast at bay.

  “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch,” I screamed at the archer.

  He glanced over his shoulder, sneered at me, and backed away from Chou. For a moment, I thought he was coming to slit my throat. Instead, he ran to where his friend’s weapon had fallen, searched amongst the fallen leaves, found what he was looking for and hefted the sword. Striding confidently to where an immobilized Chou sat, he knocked the spear from her weakened hands with the flat of the sword and kicked her hard in the solar-plexus, forcing her onto her back. He pinned her to the ground with one sandaled foot on her chest, switched his grip on the sword, so the tip of the blade faced down, and lifted the pommel to eye level, preparing to drive it point-first into her heart.

  I flinched as two deafening explosions split the air a half-second apart behind me, their echoes moving through the woods like restless spirits. Two corresponding spurts of blood erupted from the archer’s torso. He grunted and spun sideways, the sword dropping from his hands point first into the ground where it swayed back and forth. The archer’s body crumpled next to it, twitched once… twice… and was still.

  As the echoes of the two gunshots faded, I heard Albert’s desperate sobbing from behind the tree where Chou had left him. I scuttled crab-like on my butt, my throbbing ankle all but forgotten, repositioning myself to face where I thought the shots had originated.

  Around fifty or so feet away, a man sat on a horse. The horse was a brown and white dappled male, young and strong looking. Beautiful to behold. As if it had psychically sensed my silent compliment, it whinnied fiercely and raked at the ground with a hoof, kicking up leaves. The rider looked like… well, he looked like a cowboy, complete with a black, wide-brimmed hat that hid his eyes in shadow. He sported a thick straw-colored mustache and long shoulder-length auburn hair, not as red as mine but just red enough to guarantee he would stand out. He wore a dark green frock coat that stopped just above his knees, beneath that a white frilled shirt. In his hands, he held a lever-action rifle, smoke rising from the muzzle. The rifle was pointed at me.

  I held my breath, waiting for the stranger to shoot me, too. Instead, the cowboy slid the rifle into a leather sheath on his saddle. He kicked his heels gently into his mount’s flank. The horse trotted in my direction, stopping when it was ten feet away. The cowboy silently looked us over, then he pinched the front brim of his hat between thumb and forefinger and nodded.

  "Morn’in," he said in a deep, gravelly voice, thick with a heavy mid-western accent. "Name's James Hickok, but you ladies can call me Wild Bill."

  Nine

  “Come on out from behind that tree, boy,” the man who said his name was Wild Bill Hickok yelled; not unkindly, but still with a tone that conveyed he expected to be
obeyed.

  I was still processing this latest insanity, but the fact that the stranger who had just saved our asses shared the same name as the legendary cowboy was not lost on me, but at that moment, it was the last item on a pretty long list of craziness.

  “Come out, Albert,” I called, wincing at the pain in my ankle. “It’s safe. I don’t think this man’s going to hurt us.”

  Albert hesitated for a few moments, his hands planted firmly against the trunk of the oak he was hidden behind as if it were his mother’s skirt, then he ran to where I sat, his eyes never leaving the cowboy.

  “That’s better,” said Hickok. “Are there any more of you hiding around here?”

  None of us said a word.

  Hickok sighed. “Do any of you speak American?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “I speak English,” said Albert, quietly.

  “No,” said Chou, grimacing with pain.

  Hickok gave Chou a look that said he thought she might be a little loco.

  “Well, alright then.” He looked directly at me. “Would you mind kindly answering my first question: Are there any more of you that I should know about?”

  “Just… just our friend, Phillip.” I nodded at the bodies of the two men who had attacked us. “I think they killed him. He’s back that way.” I pointed. “Please, you have to let us go check. He could still be alive.”

  The cowboy pushed the rim of his hat up an inch then pulled it back down again, looking through the trees in the direction I’d just indicated, but said nothing. He pulled the rifle from its leather holster, then, to the accompanying creak of oiled leather, dismounted, dropping nimbly to the ground. Wild Bill walked to where Chou lay. She’d crawled to the same oak Albert had hidden behind and now sat with her back resting against its trunk. She tried to get to her feet, but the pain was too much for her and, wincing, slipped back down between the roots.

  “Ma’am, there ain’t no reason for you to get up right now. I don’t mean you or your friends any trouble. I’ve had compadres who been stuck with arrows before, maybe I can help, if you let me.” He nodded in the direction of the two dead men. “Now, those bandits don’t look like no Sioux I never seen, but I’m guessing the idea’s the same.” He nodded at the spear Chou clutched to her chest. “Are you going to stick me with that thing if I try to take a look?”

  Chou hesitated, then placed the spear on the ground next to her within easy reach.

  Hickok knelt beside Chou and traced the shaft of the arrow with his fingers. There was a tearing sound as he ripped the fabric of Chou’s pants around the arrow’s shaft and leaned in to examine where it had penetrated her flesh.

  Albert continued to stare openmouthed at Chou and Hickok. I tapped the kid on his thigh to get his attention. “Help me up,” I said. Albert crouched down, and I used him as support to pull myself upright, then as a crutch to lean on while I hopped closer to Chou and the cowboy. Albert gasped when he saw the blood spatter on Chou’s chest, sleeves, and hands.

  “Most of it is his,” Chou said between gritted teeth, nodding at the body of the dead swordsman.

  Only a small amount of blood trickled out of the wound where the arrow had penetrated her hip. I don’t have any medical training to speak of other than general first aid and CPR, but I was confident lack of bleeding was probably a good thing.

  “Alright. Now, next, I’m going to have to roll you over just a little and check your back.” Hickok didn’t wait for Chou to answer. Instead, he placed one hand on her butt and moved her slowly onto her right side.

  Chou hissed in pain, clenching her teeth so hard I thought they would crack.

  “Almost done,” said Hickok. He moved the palm of his other hand to her lower back and began to slowly move it around as though he were petting a dog. “There she is,” he said a second later. He tapped at a slight bulge protruding from the material just above her left butt cheek. “Arrow head’s out your back. That’s a good thing, at least for when we get around to removing it. Can’t speak to what it’s done to your insides, but there’s folks back at the garrison that can take a shot at patching you up. I’d bet a month’s wages you’re gonna be just fine.”

  “Back at what garrison?” said Chou. Her words came out from between her clenched teeth like gas escaping from a pipe.

  Hickok leaned back on his haunches. “So, you do speak English?”

  “No,” said Chou, “I do not.”

  Hickok closed his eyes for a second. Shook his head slowly from side to side as if he was trying to clear it, then stood up and turned to face me. “You said you had a friend who might still be alive?”

  I nodded. “He’s back that way,” I said, pointing again. “About a quarter mile, maybe. Near where the forest ends.”

  Hickok looked in the direction I was pointing, then turned and walked over to his horse. He swung himself into the saddle. “I’ll go check on him.” Then with a “Ha!” and a kick of his heels, he rode off to look for Phillip.

  I watched until Hickok and his horse disappeared in the trees, then turned to Chou. “How is it?” I asked urgently, not knowing what else to say.

  “Painful,” said Chou, more calmly than I would have if it'd been me impaled by a two-foot-long arrow. “I believe the arrowhead may have clipped my hip bone.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Probably as well as you can without Albert’s assistance,” Chou replied.

  I frowned. “There’s no way we can outrun that guy. He has a horse,” I continued, then asked, “Do you think he really is the Wild Bill Hickok?”

  “Yes,” said Albert, as though the question had been directed at him. “He looks like the pictures I’ve seen of him in history books of the wild west.”

  Chou raised an eyebrow. “On any other day, I would vehemently argue the probability of that being possible. But, given the three of us…”

  I stood up. “This is all just so… crazy. What do we do when he comes back?” I was torn; part of me wanted him to come back because he had that gun, the other part of me wanted to just vanish into the trees because, well, that gun. “I guess he did save our asses,” I said, finally.

  “He has not shown any aggressive behavior toward us,” said Chou. “And none of us would be able to escape him and his animal.”

  “It’s a horse,” I said. “If we can’t get away from him, unless he’s willing to just leave us be, I suppose we’ll have no other option but to go with him to this garrison. Whatever that is.”

  “It’s like a fort. A kind of military outpost,” Albert piped up. “He said there were people that could help Chou. We should go.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t feeling particularly confident about either choice we faced.

  “It’s not like we have any other option,” Chou said. “Unless this arrow is removed, and I receive medical treatment, I will, in all probability, expire. And you, Meredith, you are barely able to walk. Albert is too young to be able to help us. I see no other way. We will go with him when Wild Bill returns.”

  As if the mention of his name had summoned him, the silhouette of the cowboy materialized from the trees, moving through the forest in our direction.

  “Your friend is dead,” Wild Bill said when he pulled up alongside us, with only a hint of emotion in his voice. “Here.” He tossed something at Albert, who caught it deftly, despite me still leaning heavily on the boy’s shoulder. It was a bundle of clothes. Phillip’s clothes.

  “What!” I hissed. “You stripped him?”

  Wild Bill dismounted and began to rummage through one of his saddlebags. “Well, he ain’t gonna need ’em no more,” he called back over his shoulder.

  “That’s… that’s…” What exactly was it? I finally came up with “Sacrilegious.” The word sounded dumb even as I spoke it, but it got my point across.

  Wild Bill turned and looked at me. “Ma’am, if you have any idea where we are, how we got here, or when we can expect to find civilization again, especially gi
ven the peculiarities of this locale that I am sure you would have to be blind not to have noticed…” he jabbed skyward with his right index finger “…or when we’re likely to find an outfitter capable of replacing your clothes and sundries, then I’d suggest that you make a habit of picking up anything you think might be useful to our well-being and comfort. And seeing as you have no problem already dressing like a man, I figured you might want your friend’s clothes, too.” He didn’t say any of this with any kind of arrogance or malice; it was all delivered in a very matter-of-fact way, as if he were explaining it to a child. As Wild Bill talked, he strode over to where the body of the archer lay sprawled on the ground. He undid the belt holding the man’s knife and slung it over his shoulder, then began removing the dead man’s chain-mail and leather armor. “Now, I’ll take what I can from this hombre, and I’d suggest you and the boy do the same to that other fellow, over there.” He nodded at the body of the dead swordsman not ten feet from where Albert and I stood. “When we’re done, we’ll get your friend here situated, then I’ll take you to the garrison.” He continued pulling pieces of clothing from the dead man.

  He was right, of course. We still had no idea where we were or even when we were, but after my first look at that sky, one thing had become very clear to all of us: this could not be Earth. And drawing from that obvious conclusion, dear Toto, we most definitely were not in Kansas anymore, so to speak. Which meant that unless I was right, and whatever intelligence had brought us here had plans for us and had made some kind of provision for our well-being, we were on our own. Or, at least, we were on our own along with a couple of hundred or so other humans who had been dropped on the island alongside us. Better to err on the side of caution and expect the worst.

  “Okay,” I said. “Albert, stand still for a second, will you?”

  Albert nodded.

  I kept my right hand on his shoulder, then eased a small amount of weight onto my injured foot. There was pain in the ankle, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been, which gave me hope. I took a tentative step, winced, which made Albert (bless his heart) throw an arm around my waist to support me. I smiled and shook my head at him.