And when the shadow screamed “Down, Cass!” she threw herself to one side and screamed as two pistols roared simultaneously.
The shadow did not move.
Lambert stood open mouthed, his firing only an instinctive reaction. He looked up, tried to raise his pistols again, and again the shadow fired. Lambert was lifted off his feet as though a giant had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him disdainfully into the center of the hall. His black hat skidded to rest against the door. A black stain spread from his chest to the floor.
“I told you, Cass,” David said triumphantly. “I told you I wasn’t going to lie this one out.”
She had no chance to reply, no chance to laugh, no chance to weep.
As David took his first step down, the double doors exploded open in fire and smoke, and she flattened herself against the wall when the shooting filled the hallway. Two men fell immediately, one of them over Lambert’s body, and another, who, wounded in the leg, began a pitiable moaning. But David had not escaped.
The invaders had fired blindly in and up, and standing in the middle of the staircase as he was, he had not been able to move out of the way. He staggered against the banister, his revolver dropping from his hand and thumping down the steps. Cass tried to get to her feet to help him, but another man came through the door and fired three times in succession so rapidly that it sounded as though the shots were one.
David whimpered, grabbed hard for the banister, then shook his head as though he knew it was no use, and collapsed.
Gerald Forrester laughed.
I am going to die, Cass thought in amazement, and thus could not believe her eyes when Forrester suddenly tipped his gray hat to her and backed out through the smoke and smoldering fire his men had made of the doors. A nightmare. He’ll come back and shoot, vanish again, come back and shoot again, vanish again …
She crawled up the steps, numb and oddly cold, and sat beside David. She did not touch him. She knew he was dead. In one way or another he had twice saved her life and had twice given his own; there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do even to begin a repayment. Slowly, she reached down two steps and picked up his weapon, snapping it automatically to the ready when footsteps pounded down the corridor below her. Through the banister railing she saw Judah running, and smiled at him weakly when he looked up and spotted her. One glance was all he needed to understand the situation, then he was gone again and back with Billy and Edward and buckets of water to douse the fire.
Meanwhile, she had risen to legs that barely held her and made her way down to the foot of the stairs where she grabbed onto the newel post and fought to keep from fainting. Though she realized that this was on a much smaller scale, she suddenly understood what it was that Geoffrey had gone through, what forces yanked at a man’s mind and made it scream, made it struggle, made it search desperately for a way to hide from this hell. She felt as though she were apart from it all, and she took refuge in that sensation while Judah and Cable dragged the bodies of the riders out of the hallway and into the dining room, and directed those men who were left—where is Marcus? she wanted to ask, and decided she didn’t want to know—to the windows on the northern and western sides of the house. Two thick tables were stacked in front of the now open door, and it wasn’t until that was done that Judah, without saying a word, grabbed her arm roughly and brought her back to the kitchen.
A man was lying by the hearth, and when Rachel placed pennies over his closed eyes Cass turned away abruptly. Melody was at the back window, a gun in her hands, tears pouring from her eyes. Alice she could not see, but when she realized that Amos was gone she imagined they had taken the old man out of the way, to a dark place where he could recover from Lambert’s attack and return in dignity.
It was silent. There was no firing.
A quiver of panic made her turn abruptly. She was nearly out of the room when she realized that Judah, or Alice, would have had the windows all shuttered by now, to keep the inevitable torches from finding their marks. She wondered if anyone had been stationed at the second-floor windows, smiling without mirth when she did a rapid count in her head of the men she had left.
A single shot sounded outdoors, and Melody collapsed on the floor, wailing until Rachel strode angrily over to her and slapped her twice, hard, across the back of her head. Judah looked at Cass quizzically.
“No,” she said, “he hasn’t quit. He’s doing the same thing we are—counting losses.”
“Mebbe I should try to get to … Mister McRae?”
Cass would not consider it. “If we were going to get help from our neighbors,” she said bitterly, “it would have come by now. Besides, you’d never make it past the house.”
“I could try.”
“And you could die, too, Judah. And what good would that do us?”
She sagged against the wall and let out a sigh, her arms leaden, her head dizzy from her efforts to keep insanity at bay. Everything was moving too rapidly for her to comprehend. She had hoped that events would take their time, moving as though in a shadow-play, one step at a time, with each step considered and each step tested. Yet, once the nightmare had spilled over the landscape she had not had two minutes to herself. She ran. Everywhere. And everywhere she ran were the dead and the wounded.
She felt herself beginning to breathe harder, her chest rising and falling as though she were running. With a deliberation that made her want to scream, she wiped a sleeve over her face and tucked David’s revolver into her belt. She pushed away from the wall and had taken two steps toward the center of the room when she heard a voice calling to her from outside. It was Hawkins.
“Means no good,” Judah whispered, as if the man could hear him. He looked around the room carefully. “You gets him in the light, Missus, I could—”
“No,” she said. “No. I have no intention of becoming like him, not even to save myself. You stay by me, just in case. But you do nothing unless I tell you to, you understand?”
Judah nodded with great reluctance and followed her to the back door. Melody, still on the floor, was shoved roughly away and Rachel grabbed her shoulders and dragged her into the passage.
“Cassandra!”
As the fire darted its gold-red light, the room seemed to move, to sway, to leap back and forth as the shadows sought for a way to remain still. The black iron kettle over the flames frothed and muttered to itself; whoever had been posted behind the tables at the front door shifted and kicked aside something small and metallic. From the scullery off to the right came a low, melodious humming: Amos, coming around and reaching for the only solace he knew when he was stalked by what he called the dark angel’s sword. A woman’s voice joined him and the humming became words, words that were lost in the musket-like crackle of the logs on the hearth. A simple harmony. An even simpler tune.
Hawkins called again, and Cassandra opened the door.
He was sitting on the dapple, wearing his captain’s dress uniform. Braid and spangles, and a harsh bright sword hanging in its sheath at his side. His hat was crowned with silver roping, and a long, white, dashing plume swept back and was caught by the rising night wind. He had his hands folded tightly over the pommel, not moving an inch when the horse backed off, and was stopped by the pressure of his cavalryman’s knees. The firelight spilled into the yard and framed him, flashing an unnerving red from the wide and excited eyes of his mount. He urged the horse a few steps nearer, a slight smile crossing his face when Cass reached for the door and pulled it to her, giving him only a profile of her figure, a shadow-mask of her face. “A considerate general,” Hawkins said, “always allows the opposition the opportunity to reconsider what even God knows is folly. You have that chance. Now.”
“You’ve given me quite a lot of opportunities … Captain,” she said.
“And you have taken none of them.”
“I wanted none of them.”
“You could have had a great deal, Cassandra. A great deal more than you’re going to h
ave.”
“Such impatience,” she said, shaking her head mockingly, “The law would have given you Riverrun soon—”
“The law,” he sneered. “There are only two kinds of law, Cassandra—yours and mine. And it happens now that mine is the stronger.”
“You talk as though you have an army out there.” She poked her head out farther and made a great show of searching the darkness. “But if you had an army, you would have taken me by this time. I’m sorry, Geoffrey, but it seems as if we’re more even than you’d like me to believe.”
“You are insane, woman!”
She gnawed at her lips.
He edged a step closer, and the firelight was reflected like a ribbon of flame on the curve of his high black boots. “You have my sympathies, madam. And you have exactly half an hour to talk with your people. Whoever of them wishes to retire into the forest, will be given immunity. The others—” And he shrugged.
“There’s only one of us who would accept that offer,” she said, “and it’s too late for that. His name is Simon, and his body is carrion now.”
Hawkins did not react at all.
Cass gave him credit, and much more of her hatred. “I think we’re finished, Captain,” she said.
Without a word, he saluted her briskly, put his heel to his mount, and rode back into the darkness. She stayed at the door for several seconds more, watching the ghostlike after image of his departure fade to gray, then to black, until all she could hear was the sound of the dapple’s hooves. Then they too were still, and nothing moved.
A finger hooked into her belt and pulled her gently backward. Reluctantly, she returned inside and closed and bolted the door. Judah, his face gleaming with perspiration, shook his head at what he still thought was her foolhardiness—then grinned broadly.
“Don’ s’pose you gonna tell the others what he said?”
“Do I have to?”
“Ain’t no one goin’ anywheres, Missus.”
She smiled and rested a hand on his arm. “I didn’t think so, Judah. But you just don’t know how grateful I am to hear that, anyway.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
War at Riverrun.
It seemed hours before the boy’s words had sunk in, hours more before Eric was able to react to them. He turned immediately to Jennings who could only spread wide his hands in ignorance. Eric scowled, then scrambled into the chestnut’s saddle and dug in his heels. His first thought was to ride immediately to Cassandra, but before he had ridden halfway through town he knew that his presence alone would not help to insure her safety. Yanking on the reins, then, he nearly spilled the horse and himself as he turned it about and rode for the sheriff’s office.
Garvey was standing outside, his hat off, his jacket and waistcoat unbuttoned. There were several men standing around him, and they scattered like leaves before a tempest when Eric rode directly at them.
“You heard?” Garvey said. His lips were quivering, and his face was drenched in perspiration.
“I heard, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”
The man made a weak gesture back toward his office. “Ain’t got but a few deputies. Ain’t gonna do much good askin’ them to fight against odds like that. Best thing we can do is wait a while and see—”
Eric was on the ground before he could finish; he shook off several hands reaching to detain him, grabbed the sheriff’s shirt, and yanked him close. “You bastard,” he said, just loud enough for the others to hear. Garvey grabbed for his wrists, but he was not strong enough to break the grip. “You bastard, I want to know what you’re going to do about it!”
“Ain’t none of our affair,” one of the men said, and several others agreed with him as yet another group, seeing the disturbance, strolled toward them, puzzled and ready to be angry.
“Listen to me, Garvey,” Eric said while the others pressed close around them, “there are people dying out at Riverrun because you haven’t had the courage to enforce what you call the law around here. You let one insane man come in here and take you over as if you were nothing more than a baby afraid of the dark, and you haven’t the guts to turn on the light.”
Without waiting for a reply, he released the sheriff with such a wrench that the man stumbled backward, into the arms of Proctor Johnson.
The one-legged man held the sheriff for a moment, then pushed him away like an unclean rag. “Mr. Martingale,” he said, “you got a problem?”
Eric looked around him, at faces strange and familiar, hostile and indifferent He wanted to speak to all of them as he had spoken to Garvey, cast them all aside, and forget them as quickly as he could. But as immediately that he had the impulse, he rejected it. He dared not do otherwise. This was not for himself; he had survived crises far worse than this and had come out, if not whole, at least alive. Cass, however, was far more important, and no matter whatever else he had been in his life he was not the kind of man who would desert a woman like that.
“Yes,” he said, “you know damned well I have a problem. And I haven’t got the time to give a speech about it.”
“Now see here, Martingale,” Garvey said, recovering some of his bluster, “we don’t need people like you comin’ ’round here stirrin’ up trouble.”
“Shut up, Garve,” Johnson said.
“Now you wait here just one little minute, Mr. Know-it-all Johnson. I got a right to protect this here town, and that does not include playing judge and jury when it ain’t called for. And I’ll thank you to have a little respect for this here badge, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s exactly what I have for it, Garve,” Johnson said, “little respect,” and pointedly turned his back on him. “Martingale, what’s all this nonsense about a war out to Riverrun?”
Eric took a deep breath, looked around him, and launched into a short and concise explanation of what he was positive the boy Henry had meant. And before he had finished, two other men chimed in with rumors they had heard about shooting out in that direction. There was a loud muttering, then, and an awkward shuffling of feet as Eric waited for someone to say something else. And when no one did, he took hold of the chestnut’s reins and launched himself into the saddle.
“Gentlemen,” he said coldly, “if you think Hawkins is going to stop with Riverrun, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Could you use a gimp?” Johnson said.
“If the gimp can shoot, I don’t care if he’s blind.”
He waited no more than five minutes in the center of the street. He had no idea how many others besides Johnson would join him, though he kept insisting to himself that two, at least, were far better than one. Jennings’s horse, sensing the tension that flowed through its rider, reared once and pawed at the air. A buckboard startled it into an abortive run. It snorted, shook its nearly white mane, rattled the bit like tin bells in winter. Two horsemen joined him, and pedestrians on the sidewalks began to slow and stare. A third, a fourth, and now there was a crowd. One of the riders leaned over and whispered into the ear of a grizzled old dockworker, who scowled and shook his head angrily, turned immediately to his neighbor, and began to spread the word. A fifth, and the sixth was Johnson. The one-legged merchant waved Eric on, indicating that they would be following soon enough.
Garvey came running into the street and grabbed hold of Eric’s stirrup. “You can’t—”
Eric’s boot caught him full in the mouth, and he stumbled back several paces, bouncing off other horses, his hand clamped to his face as blood ran between his fingers. Someone cheered weakly. A horse protested. Eric wasted no more time—he bolted the chestnut through the crowd and raced into the wind on the road to Riverrun.
If one man has touched you, Cass, he swore as he rode; just one man …
Cass heard the thunder just as the shooting began again. She looked around the kitchen hopefully, trying with her expression to tell the others that rain would be their salvation if it would only come soon. But Rachael, who had taken a position by the left-hand window, only
looked worried; and Judah, after emptying his pistol through the shutters into the night, only stared at her with a slowly growing fear, his eyes darting toward the front hall constantly until Cass realized that it wasn’t thunder she heard. It was horses.
“My God,” she whispered, and closed her eyes briefly.
It took only a few seconds for her to grasp the fact that the firing outside had suddenly intensified without many more bullets slamming into the walls, splintering the shutters, cracking into the floor. She scuttled across the floor, staying low, so that she could see the front. Beyond the open doorway there were figures in the yard, many more riders than she thought Hawkins had at his command Several of them carried torches, and as one group swept by in a blur she was positive she recognized the burly form of Henshaw the blacksmith. She rose and grinned, and was turning to tell Judah when suddenly two horsemen drove through the barricade. Abraham screamed as he was tossed aside. Without thinking, Cass raced to the front with Judah right behind her. She fired at the monstrous shadows, missed, and was about to fire again when one horse’s shoulder struck her hard and she was slammed into the wall, her head striking the frame of the living room door. There were lights, burning, and in that fire that did not char she saw Gerald Forrester struggling with Judah. Her legs would not obey her, her right arm dangled uselessly at her side, and she could do nothing but cry out as the black man and the white man tangled together on the floor beneath the hooves of the two horses who were panicking now that they could not find room to run. She ducked to one side, and struck out with her good hand when the first rider skidded his mount next to her to pin her to the wall. The dress sword was cold against her arm. She tried to bat it away, and failed. Hawkins slid his left hand around her waist and yanked her off her feet. She screamed, twisted, felt a stabbing in her shoulder as Geoffrey used his hook to steady her, and urged his mount into the living room where, after only a second’s hesitation, it plunged through the tall French windows and onto the porch.
Riverrun Page 43
