by Eric Flint
That remark caused both Anton and Cathy to choke off whatever words they had been about to speak and glare at Jeremy. The ex-slave bore up under the burden with no apparent effort.
"Those who speak the truth are always despised," he added, turning to Robert. "Isn't that so?"
Tye said nothing, but the smile on his face as he reached for his coffee indicated his full agreement. Anton and Cathy looked back at each other. Cathy seemed to flush a bit. Anton didn't—his complexion was quite a bit darker than her ivory pale skin—but he did straighten stiffly and clear his throat.
"I am simply concerned for the Countess' safety," he pronounced.
"Isn't that what I just said?" asked Jeremy. "Why else would a proper Gryphon highlander give a damn about the well-being of an idle parasite?" He cocked an eye at Cathy. "Well . . . parasite, at least. You can hardly accuse the lady of being idle."
Anton restrained his temper. Partly, by reminding himself of his daughter. Partly—
Damn the imp, anyway! But there was a trace of humor lurking under the irritation. Anton could not deny that the impudent little man—like a sprite, he was, both in size and demeanor—had cut rather close to the truth.
Bull's-eye, actually, admitted Anton, as his eyes moved back to the countess. This morning, Cathy was not wearing an expensive gown made of thin material. She was dressed in much heavier garments—pants and a long-sleeved shirt—suitable for outdoor hiking. The outfit was obviously well-used and fitted her comfortably.
Cathy, Anton knew, was in her fifties. But she was a third-generation prolong, with the youthful appearance that such people carried for decades. Although most people would have said her outfit did nothing for her tall, slim figure, Anton thought it made her perhaps even more appealing than the gown she had been wearing the previous evening. The practical clothing fit her plain, open face to perfection. Young, healthy, vigorous—a woman who enjoyed life to the fullest.
He found himself swallowing, and groping for words.
"I am concerned, Cathy," he muttered. "This is likely to be dangerous."
"Not for the two of you," announced Jeremy. "And her presence here is essential anyway." He gestured politely to the remaining chair at the table. "Sit, Captain Zilwicki. There is news—and a change in plans."
That announcement drove all other thoughts out of Anton's mind. He slid into the chair and leaned over the table, planting his hands on the edge. "What news?" His enormous shoulders, hunched with apprehension, made his square and blocky head look like a boulder perched atop a small mountain.
Finally, Jeremy's grin went away, replaced by a much kindlier smile. "Good news, Captain. For now, at least. Your daughter has escaped her captors."
Anton had been holding his breath. Now, he let it out in a rush.
"Where is she?" he demanded, half-rising. He had to restrain himself from reaching across the table and shaking the answer from Jeremy. Fortunately, years of habit as an intelligence officer did not completely desert him. His was the one trade which, along with philosophers, always understood the precedence of epistemology.
So, after a moment, Anton lowered himself slowly back into the chair. "How do you know?" he demanded.
Still smiling, Jeremy shook his head. "I'll not give you an answer to that question, Captain. Not that I don't trust you, of course." The impish grin made its reappearance. "Heavens, no! But after this is all over, I'm afraid you might remember that you are an officer in Her Majesty's Royal Manticoran Navy and feel compelled to strike a blow on your Queen's behalf."
Jeremy was not the first person who had underestimated the intelligence hidden beneath the Gryphon highlander's thick-headed appearance. It did not take Anton more than five seconds to make the connections.
"I was right," he stated flatly. He glanced at Cathy. "You told him our conversation?"
She nodded. Now it was Anton's turn to bestow a grin on Jeremy. And if his grin could hardly be called impish, it had something of the same devilish humor in it.
"It was a rogue Peep operation. And you've been in touch with the Peeps. The ones who aren't pleased with the rogue."
Jeremy started. Something in the expression on his face led Anton immediately to a further conclusion.
"No," he rumbled. "I've got it backwards. The operation was outside of normal channels, but it was no rogue who ordered it." His grin was now utterly humorless. A murderous grin, in truth. "It was Durkheim, wasn't it? That stinking pig. And the ones you have contact with are the real rogues."
There was no expression at all on Jeremy's face. His pale gray eyes, staring at Anton, were as flat as iron plates. Slowly, he swiveled his head and looked at Cathy.
"Tell me again," he rasped.
"You're too fucking smart for your own good," she snickered. She beamed upon Anton. "He's such a clever little man. But he always has to poke the wild animals, and sometimes he forgets to use a long enough stick." Her smile was very approving. Very warm, in fact. "Congratulations, Anton. It's nice to see him get bitten for a change."
"The reminder was good enough," rasped Jeremy. "I don't need the whole song and dance."
"Yes, you do," retorted Cathy forcefully.
Jeremy ignored her. He was back to staring at Anton with those flat, flat eyes. Suddenly, Anton was reminded that Jeremy X, whatever impish exterior he chose to project, was also one of the galaxy's deadliest men.
For a moment, he began to utter some sort of reassurance. But then, moved by his innate stubbornness and his own cold fury, he bit back the words and simply returned the stare with one of his own. Which, if it was not exactly ruthless, also indicated that he was not a man who intimidated easily, if at all.
Anton heard Cathy suck in a breath. In his peripheral vision, he saw Robert Tye's sudden stillness. But his eyes never left Jeremy's.
And then, after perhaps three seconds, the moment passed. Depth seemed to return to Jeremy's gaze, and the little man leaned back in his chair.
"Ah, but you wouldn't, Captain. Would you, now? It's that highland sense of honor moves you. You'd keep the knowledge that there was an opposition amongst the Peeps to yourself, and not pass it on to your superiors."
Anton snorted. "We've known for years that there was disaffection among the Havenites."
Jeremy's gaze didn't waver. After a moment, Anton looked away. "But, yeah, this is the first time there's ever been any concrete indication that it extends into SS. And the first time—given the relatively small size of the Peep contingent here—that we could probably pinpoint the individuals."
He drew in a deep breath, swelling his chest and squaring his shoulders. Then: "From the highlands, as you say."
"A life for a life, Captain," said Jeremy softly.
Anton understood the obscure reference at once. For some reason, that made him feel oddly warm-hearted toward the man across the table from him. A concrete sort of fellow. Much like himself, whatever other differences separated them.
"Yes," he murmured. "The daughter for the mother, and I'll take the knowledge to the grave."
Jeremy nodded solemnly. "Good enough." And now he was back to being the imp. "And good it is, boyo! Because it'll be those selfsame wretched rotten Peeps who'll get your daughter. Not you or me."
Anton goggled him.
Imp. "Oh, yes—for a certainty. We've other fish to fry."
Goggled him.
Damned imp. "But it's as plain as the nose on your face, man! They can get close to her, through the manhunt. Girlhunt, I should say. We can't."
Anton was clenching his fists. "Then what—"
Jeremy shook his head. "And to think he was so shrewd not a moment ago. Think it through, Captain. The rotten wretched Peeps—Peep, I should say—can get the girl. But that's not to say he can get her out."
Again, it didn't take Anton more than a few seconds to make all the connections. He turned his head and gazed at Cathy.
"And that's why you're here. To distract them, while"—a stubby forefinger shot out from his fi
st, pointing at Jeremy—"he settles his accounts."
"Long overdue accounts," murmured Jeremy. The flat, flat eyes were back.
Anton leaned back in his chair, pressing himself against the table with the heels of his hands. Slowly, the fists opened.
"That'll work," he announced. "If the Peep's good enough, at least."
Jeremy shrugged. "Don't imagine he's really all that good. But he doesn't have to be, now does he, Captain? Just determined enough."
Helen
Not for the first time, Helen bitterly regretted the loss of her watch. She had no idea how long it took her and her two companions to finally make their way into Berry's "special place." Hours, for a certainty—many hours. Just as Berry had feared, making the upward climb—and, even more so, the later descent—had been extremely difficult. Berry, for all that she had tried heroically, had simply been too injured and feeble to make it on her own. And her brother, for all his own valiant efforts, too small and weak to be of much assistance. So, for all practical purposes, Helen had been forced to make what would have been an arduous enough trip for herself burdened by the weight of another strapped to her back.
By the time they finally got to their destination, she was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. If it hadn't been for the years she had spent in Master Tye's rigorous training, she knew she would never have made it at all.
Vaguely, with fatigue-induced lightheadedness, she tried to examine her surroundings. But it was almost impossible to see anything. The two small lanterns they had taken with them from the vagabonds' lean-to were too feeble to provide much illumination.
They were resting on a large pallet under a lean-to. Both the pallet and the lean-to, Lars told her, had been built by him and his sister after their mother disappeared (some unspecified time since—months ago, Helen judged) and they had found this place. The lean-to nestled against some sort of ancient stone staircase. It was the buttress of the staircase, actually. They had come down very wide stairs to a platform, where the stairs branched at right angles to either side. At Berry's command, Helen had taken the left branch and then, at the bottom, curled back to the right. There, thankfully, she had found the lean-to and finally been able to rest.
Now, lying exhausted on the pallet, Berry nestled against her right side. A moment later, dragging a tattered and filthy blanket out of the semi-darkness, Lars spread it over them. A moment later, he was nestled against Helen's left.
Helen whispered her thanks. She didn't really need the blanket for warmth. In the depths of the Loop, the temperature never seemed to vary beyond a narrow range, which was quite comfortable. But there was something primordially comforting about being under that sheltering cover, even as filthy as it was.
No filthier than me! she thought, half-humorously. What I wouldn't give for a shower!
But that thought drew her perilously close to thoughts of her father and their warm apartment. Always warm, that apartment had been. Not so much in terms of physical temperature—in truth, her father preferred to keep the climate settings rather low—but in terms of the heart.
Oh, Daddy!
Summoning what strength remained, Helen drove the thought away. She could not afford that weakening. Not now. But, as it fled, some residue of the thought remained. And Helen realized, as she lay there in the darkness cuddling two new-found children of her own, that she finally understood her father. Understood, for the first time, how courageously he had struggled, all those years, not to let his own loss mangle his daughter. And how much love there must have been in his marriage, to have given him that strength. Where another man, a weaker man, might have felt himself weakened further by his wife's self-sacrifice, her father had simply drawn more strength from it.
People had misunderstood him, she now realized—she as much as any. They had ascribed his stoicism to simple stolidity. The resistance of a Gryphon mountain to the flails of nature, bearing up under wind and rain and lightning with the endurance of rock. They had forgotten that mountains are not passive things. Mountains are shaped, forged, in the fiery furnace. They do not simply "bear up"—they rise up, driven by the mightiest forces of a planet. The stone face had been shaped by a beating heart.
Oh, Daddy . . . She drifted off to sleep, as if she were lying on a continent rather than a pallet. Secure and safe, not in her situation, but in the certainty of stone itself. Her father would find her, soon enough. Of that she had no doubt at all.
Stone moves.
The Sixth Day
Victor
When they found the bodies, Victor had to restrain himself from grinning. Whoever had cut the three men had done so with as much enthusiasm as lack of skill. So far as Victor knew, there was no antonym for the word "surgical." But if there was such a term, the half-severed heads of the wretched vagabonds lying sprawled in the middle of the dry channel exemplified it perfectly.
The small mob of Scrags accompanying Victor and his squad of SS troopers were convinced that the girl had done it. And that was the source of Victor's humor. He wasn't sure what amused him the most: their fury, their bewilderment, or—the most likely source—their obvious relief. As in: There but for the grace of God . . .
There was more ferocity than genuine humor in Victor's suppressed grin. The Scrags were notorious, among other things—the females as much as the males—for their predatory sexual habits. Victor had no doubt at all that they had planned to rape the Zilwicki girl when her immediate purpose was served. Before killing her.
Now, looking at the corpses, the thoughts of the Scrags were not hard to read. Easier said than done . . .
Victor leaned over the sergeant's shoulder. "And?" he asked.
Citizen Sergeant Kurt Fallon shook his head. "I don't think it was the girl cut 'em, sir." He pointed to the small pools of blood which had spread out from the wounds. The blood was dry and covered with insects, as were the corpses themselves. "They didn't bleed much, as you can see. Not for those kinds of wounds. She couldn't have cut 'em any time soon after she killed 'em. And why would she wait?"
"Did she kill them?" asked Victor.
Fallon nodded, pointing to the small tracking device in his left hand. Victor was unable to interpret the readings on the screen. The chemo-hormone sensor was a highly specialized piece of equipment. As rare as it was expensive. That was the reason, Durkheim had told Victor, that he was assigning Fallon to the squad. The citizen sergeant was an expert with the device.
"Her traces are all over them," said Fallon. "Adrenaline reading's practically off the scale. That means either fear or fury—or both—and as you can see . . ." He shrugged. "She didn't have much to fear. Besides—"
He pointed to the head of one of the corpses. The filthy, bearded thing was unnaturally twisted. "Broke neck." He pointed to another. "Same." Then, at the third, whose throat had clearly been crushed as well as slit. "And again."
Fallon rose. "Didn't know the girl had training, but that's what you're seeing." He studied the sensor screen. "But there's someone else's readings here, too. Besides her and the croaks. Male readings. Prepubescent, I'm pretty sure."
Victor glanced around. The Scrags had now collected in a body around them, staring at the tracker in the sergeant's hand. For all their strutting swagger, and their pretensions at superhuman status, the Scrags were really nothing much more than Loop vagabonds themselves. They were clearly intimidated by the technical capacity of the SS device. During the hours in which they had organized a search for the girl after discovering her escape, before they finally admitted their screw-up to their Mesan overlords, the Scrags had accomplished absolutely nothing. After they found the bodies and the lean-to, the girl's trail seemed to have vanished.
"Can we follow her?" Victor asked. "Or them?"
Fallon nodded. "Oh, sure. Nothing to it. Won't be quick, of course. But—" He cast a sour glance at the nearby Scrags. "Since they at least had the sense to come to us before too much time had gone by, the traces are still good. Another couple of days, and i
t would have been a different story."
"Let's to it, then."
They set off, following the traces picked up by the sensor. Victor and Citizen Sergeant Fallon led the way, flanked by the other three SS soldiers in Fallon's squad. Victor and Fallon didn't bother carrying their weapons to hand. The other SS soldiers did, but they held the pulse rifles in a loose and easy grip. The Scrags trailed behind, with their own haphazard weaponry. For all the bravado with which they brandished the guns, they reminded Victor of nothing so much as a flock of buzzards following a pack of wolves.
He glanced sideways at Fallon. The citizen sergeant was too preoccupied with reading the tracker to notice the scrutiny. There was no expression on his lean-jawed, hatchet face beyond intense concentration.
Like a hawk on the prowl. Which, Victor knew, was an apt comparison. Fallon was a raptor—and he was hunting bigger prey than a fourteen-year-old girl.
