False Dawn

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Get ready,” Evan said to her, his head thrust to the melon-sized hole in the wall.

  From the open door there came a yell. “Hey, Davidson! There’s a couple of monks in the barn! Tell Mackley!”

  He flung up the barrier to the animals. “Here comes dinner!”

  “How many monks?”

  “Two, I think.” The Pirates were as close to the door as the flames would let them come. “That fire’s going great.”

  “Let ’em fry!” was the answer and the Pirates hurried away toward the panicked animals and the sheds containing the monastery’s valuable food stores.

  In a final effort Thea threw herself against the wood, shoving Evan and the crowbar hard on the weathered boards. The old wood splintered and came away in jagged sections. So great was the force of her attack that she tumbled through the hole into the slushy mush of the poultry yard. Dazed, she lay on her side, bewildered, her face inches from the melting snow that framed the muddy patch where a few bedraggled chickens clucked nervously. Her hands were scraped; the manacles had opened the sores in her ankles and wrists. For the first time she felt the pain of it as she pulled herself onto her knees and stared back at the barn, now half in flames and concealed by smoke and the dusty from the straw inside. She was out. She was free.

  8

  It was a moment before Evan realized what had happened. His head was muzzy and thick with smoke and the first resigned cloudings of approaching death. He stood at the edge of the hole, staring stupidly while Thea got to her feet and brushed at the stinking mud that plastered the habit she wore.

  “Come on!” she shouted to him hoarsely, for the sound of the fire and the battle were growing louder. “We can get away now!”

  A new burst of gunfire brought him to his senses. He grabbed the wood which held his chain and flung it through the hole, then clambered out himself. He skinned his knees as he almost fell into the small pond in the poultry yard.

  The air was acrid with burning and the hot breath of the fire scorched them. Not far away, stretched on the ground, were the mangled bodies of three monks, caught from behind by Pirate shotguns. To the right, the remains of the chapel, now burning the last of its wood, sent occasional sparks into the air as it was consumed. Thea stood watching the fire, her face showing mottled fear that surprised Evan until he realized that she, just like himself, was seeing the way she would have died at the hands of the monks.

  “We’d better hurry,” he said in a croak.

  Shaking herself, she turned toward him, making an effort to shut out the sight of the flames around them. “You’re right,” she muttered, then cast about for the safest way out of the valley that would be least likely to attract the notice of the Pirates. “There’s a pasture through those gates. And then the stock trails run into the hills. That’s best.”

  The Pirates had gathered around the monks they had captured and were busy tying them up, enjoying their victory.

  “We’ll go that way, then.” Evan pulled at her sleeve. “We can follow the highway if we have to, but it would be better to find a route more hidden than the road. The Pirates won’t clean up here for a couple of days yet. They’re after the grain stored in the sheds and any metals and tools they can salvage.”

  “The crowbar!” she cried out suddenly.

  “Right here.” He lifted it, his chains clanging against it. Although he did not want to, he cast a look back over the wreckage that burned behind them: then, gathering up the chains, he started away from the barn toward the gate and the pasture beyond.

  Thea stopped long enough to grab some rags drying on the fence, then came quickly after him, not taking energy and breath to speak as she fell in beside him.

  “Don’t look back; they’re occupied for the time being,” he recommended, knowing what a temptation it was, and how good a target they made crossing the open pasture. “If they get us, they get us. Don’t make it easy. Don’t stop walking.”

  She nodded and moved faster, gritting her teeth against the hurt that flared with every step she took.

  That pasture stretched out like eternity, and the twenty minutes it took them to reach the safety of the red-needled pines felt to both of them like the journey of days. They were winded and weak; smell of burning followed them, and the sounds of slaughter mixed with the soft chorus of monks who had given up to their captors and were praying.

  “Inflammatus et accensus per te, Virgo, sim defensus…” drifted up to them as they at last found the welcome shadows of the trees where they could lose themselves.

  The first rise of land that led over the next pass slowed them down, but in a matter of yards they were shoulder-deep in the scrub and could afford to stop for breath and take stock of themselves. Smoke from the burning monastery drifted above them and in the distance, barely competing with the rattle of the fight and flames that now consumed the barn where they had been captive, was the distant sound of the river and breaking ice.

  “What have we got?” Evan asked when he had caught his breath and wiped his streaming face on his sleeve. He suspected his face was black with soot, and his hands were blistered, but neither of those things mattered because they had got out.

  “You’ve got the crowbar and I’ve got some rags for our feet.” If she was discouraged, she did not show it.

  “Anything else?”

  She bit her lip, and some of her buoyancy deserted her. “That’s it.”

  He nodded and found solace in her challenging eyes. “Then we’d better find some shelter.” He turned up the slope. “There’s a lot of snow around.”

  “We’ve been in snow before,” she said easily, knowing that they did indeed need shelter, but not worried or beaten now. A snowbank was preferable to that barn. She remembered the years she had survived alone, with little but her wits to sustain her but her wits and her crossbow. She was not frightened. “Snow’s better than that,” she said, pointing back down the hill toward the ruined monastery.

  “Yes,” he agreed before turning his back on it.

  The going was hard, for although the snows were melting the ground was icy wet underfoot and the water quickly soaked through the rags that bound their feet. Just under the surface the earth was still frozen and there was little relief from either the hardness or the cold. Most of the trees had shed their burdens of snow and now swayed, whispering, in the north wind.

  As they climbed, Thea watched the ground ahead of them and once brought them both to a halt.

  “What is it?” Evan asked, seeing a soft indentation at the edge of a shaded snowbank.

  “Bear,” Thea answered, her eyes dark with concern. “They must be coming out of hibernation now. They’re grouchy when they first wake up, and hungry. I hope there are deer around for them.”

  He understood her implication, and at the moment he bitterly missed their lost crossbows. To have hungry bear about was a serious danger, and to be unable to hunt brought hunger back to him with crushing rapidity. He remembered then that they had had no food that day. The monks had not fed them well after he had smashed Brother Roccus’ head with his chain. No wonder they were both tiring rapidly.

  “We’d better keep moving,” she said as he paused, deep in thought.

  “Keep your eye out for dried wood.” He gave her what he hoped was a friendly smile. “We’ll need some protection, and the monks did all right with their walking staves. God, I wish we had matches.”

  She nodded, but said nothing. She, too, was hungry, and knew far better than he the risk they had taken. But it was better than dying in the monks’ fire, or at the hands of the Pirates. She set her teeth against the pain in her ankles and wrists and kept walking.

  Nightfall found them above the snow line once more, with Sierraville far behind them, Thea pulled down pine boughs and wrapped them around Evan and herself for the night; the cold and the rustlings of animals in the brush kept them half awake as the long hours ran their course.

  She found her thoughts straying, not back to the community
at Camminsky Creek or her years of wandering, but to her first meeting with Evan, and for the first time she felt an odd, anguished regret that she could not bring herself to accept Evan’s body. The few times he had suggested sharing even so little a thing as a mattress she had recoiled as if she had been branded. Her loathing of Lastly grew, and she began to have contempt for herself. She knew she was maimed, disfigured, and she despised it.

  Evan slept heavily, seeking the oblivion of dreams that were insubstantial fragments of the world he had lost.

  They woke shortly after dawn to a distant muffled roar that seemed to come from the very bowels of the mountains, a sound that penetrated to their bones, that shattered the air, that made even the trees bow and tremble, to silence the few pitiful cries of little animals that had echoed forlornly across the morning.

  “What was that?” Thea asked as she scrambled out of her pine nest. She was haggard and dirty and the mark that Brother Roccus had left on her face was sullen purple. The manacles on her wrists caught the morning light and flashed back at her, dazzling her eyes.

  “It’s not gunfire,” Evan said after a bit, as the noise rumbled on. “I don’t think it’s dynamite.”

  “It’s not thunder.”

  “No, it’s not.” He got awkwardly to his feet, trailing his chain and the wood with the cleat. “It must be some kind of blast, but who would be blasting? And what?” He wondered if the Pirates were trying to break through the passes, but knew that this was a greater explosion than anything they could have achieved.

  “Maybe there’s someone in the mountains back of Sierraville? Someone who saw the Pirates come to the monastery yesterday? It could be that, couldn’t it? They might want to close their passes. Seal themselves off from Pirates.”

  “But why? The noise would only call attention to them.” He shook his head and draped his chain over his shoulder to make the carrying easier. He listened as the bellow of the explosion lost itself and the ground steadied.

  “It’s over, whatever it was.” Thea pulled the crowbar out of the pine branches and handed it to him. “Find a stump or a rock. I’ll get you out of that thing. I can’t get rid of these yet”—she shook the manacles that she wore—”or yours, hut I can get the wood off and the chain broken, maybe.”

  Absently Evan nodded, his mind divided between the strange sound that had wakened them and the job of putting his hunger out of his mind.

  It was while they were breaking through his chain that the strange sound came again, the same bellowing roar, but this time longer, more sustained, a little more as if it were a cry of the earth itself. Shortly afterward another tremor shook the mountains, like a giant turning in its sleep, and a heavy pall of high smoke spread itself over the sky, drifting on the upper winds and giving the sun an evanescent halo. By midday the distant sound was fairly constant and the ground quivered continually underfoot, slowing their progress and turning the northern quarter of the sky a lurid shade of violet.

  Thick, dark smoke extended all across the northern sky as Thea broke through Evan’s chain. Her determination had almost outlasted her strength, and she sagged when the task was done, only then permitting herself to ask, “Do you know what’s happening?”

  He stared at the sky. “Maybe,” he said, his eyes narrowing. He took up the chain as a weapon and they headed along in the underbrush about a quarter of a mile from the old highway, keeping out of sight in the bushes, but staying near the road. He felt that it was their only hope now—to stay close to the road, but hidden.

  The stream ran in front of them, an unexpected break in the scrub-covered slope. It was bright, shiny, living on the melting snow.

  “We can drink now,” Thea said after sniffing the water carefully.

  “Some water isn’t good even when it’s this fresh. And we still can’t eat snow. There’s too much risk of freezing.”

  Evan had already knelt to drink when the sound burst through the mountains again, rolling down the spine of the Sierra in awful intensity. He stopped, his hands full of water. “Lassen,” he said quietly. “Or Shasta. Probably Shasta. But they’re both possible.” He found that his hands were shaking and he had to fill them with water again before he could drink. “Christ,” he said as he lifted the water to his mouth.

  “Lassen?” she asked.

  “Lassen and Shasta. They’re both volcanoes. Lassen is closer and it was still in business. Even fifty years ago they would occasionally close down the park around it because it was belching smoke and ashes, and its last eruption was about a century ago. Shasta’s acted up, sometimes. There was a real scare in the late seventies. I remember reading about it. They thought Shasta was going to blow then.”

  She scowled, looking back over her shoulder to the obscured sky. “I think Jack Thompson said something about that. There’s a whole chain of them, isn’t there? Right along the Pacific Coast?”

  Evan had busied himself with the water, washing the dirt from his face at last, and so did not answer her immediately. He could feel the grime peel away like a mask and it heartened him. “Yeah,” he said at last. “All the way from Alaska through South America. You wash up, too, Thea. You’ll feel better.”

  She did as he bade her, but refused to put aside the question of the two volcanoes. “What’s the nearest one? Are we too close?”

  “Lassen’s the nearest, probably, and it’s still a long way off. If there’s a lava flow, we won’t see any of it.” A frown pulled at his brows and mouth. “I’m trying to remember: with all the pollutants in the upper atmosphere, will this make the weather warmer or cooler? And how much of an eruption is it?” Suddenly he pulled his beard. “The first place we find scissors, this gets trimmed. And my hair. And your hair.” The last place he had been efficiently barbered had been Quincy. Since then he had hacked with scissors and shears, but he knew that the effect was ragged, making him even more shaggy.

  “What about the volcanoes?” she persisted.

  He made an impatient gesture and started away from the stream. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I remember.”

  “Will it make things worse?” she asked gently.

  “It sure as hell won’t make them any better.” He turned abruptly and faced south once more, motioning her to come with him. He held the crowbar awkwardly, as if it were a scepter, or a bludgeon.

  “You could sharpen one end,” she suggested when they had walked a few miles farther.

  He made no answer.

  The sunset that night displayed itself spectacularly through the smoke, lighting the whole sky with glowing radiance that turned even the dying, desolate mountains into a place of rare beauty. From the edge of the meadow Thea and Evan stopped in their cutting of pine boughs to watch, each admitting that it was a wonderful sight. The sun’s rays flaunted like banners across the sky, and the intensity of color made it almost unreal.

  But in spite of the gaudy splendor above them, there was no food that night, nor the next morning. Instead, there was a bear, snuffling around the pine nests, curious and hungry.

  Thea lay in her branches, her body wet with fear. The bear was pulling at the boughs, still not sure that it was worth his while, but scenting the sharp sweat. His stinking breath bore down on her neck and she could feel the movements of the branches above her. She wanted to call Evan to help her, but the sounds died in her throat, and she knew that any additional noise might be enough to make the bear come after her in deadly earnest. So she lay still, alone with the bear and her fright.

  Then there was a movement, a sound, and the bear rose and turned away from her. Evan, brandishing his chain, whirling it around his head like a single lethal propeller, came toward her, yelling for her to get away. “I need some room to slap him with the chain.”

  The bear rounded on Evan, teeth bared and a growl in his throat. With a vicious underhand swing, Evan brought his chain upward, full force against the bear’s jaw. There was a snapping sound, a yelp of pain, and the bear moved back, but only for a moment as rage and
fright brought him onto his hind legs, curving claws ready to disembowel, to mutilate. Evan retreated a few steps.

  “Thea! Thea! Get up!”

  In a rush the bear charged Evan: he stepped back hastily, bringing the chain around again to crash against the bear’s head. This time the impact was harder as the force of the chain cracked bone, and the bear faltered before pressing the attack, giving Thea just enough time to struggle free of the pine branches and to bring the crowbar into play. Following Evan’s lead she aimed for the head, using the crowbar for a club. Her first swing went wild and she came within inches of the long, yellowed claws as the bear reached out for her. Evan shouted, and the bear, confused, swung back his way as the chain whistled through the air again, wrapping itself around the bear’s neck.

  The bear lunged forward now, and Evan knew his danger. He tried to jerk the chain free, to get beyond range of the huge, angry animal, but the blow had been good and the chain held. The bear came on toward Evan, ready to kill. His powerful jaws gaped, showing blood where Evan’s first strike had broken teeth and battered skin. Thea screamed as she as wielded her crowbar with both hands. Pressing in close behind the furious hear, she swung the crowbar up, pounding the bear on the back as of the neck so that the metal thrummed.

  Now the bear hesitated, wanting Evan as his ready victim but plagued by Thea’s drubbing, faltered in his attack. He paused, swaying on his hind legs, pawing at the air and making a coughing growl. Evan saw his chance and leaped for the chain; as he pulled on it, Thea’s crowbar connected for the last time. There was a thick, liquid crack and then the bear waddled one or two uncertain steps before he fell forward, twitching as he died, paws reaching for something he could never catch.

  “I thought he had you,” Thea panted as she felt her knees turn to water. The surge of adrenalin that had carried her left her and weakness took its place, making her feel quite sick. She sat down abruptly.