False Dawn (7 page)

“If the road isn’t overgrown, then it’s used sometimes,” she said. “Maybe they still use it. Maybe someone else does. The Pirates don’t come this far yet.” She said the last with little conviction.

“Yes. But they will. That’s why we have to keep going.” He spoke with calm certainty. He had planned to increase the range of the Pirates years ago, and Cox was more ruthless than he had ever been. “I taught them, remember that. They’re following my orders, even though Cox gives them.”

Thea said nothing, looking at the farm below. The sounds from the barnyard, the cackle of chickens, tantalized her, making hunger twist in her like a trapped animal. Smoke rose, lamb-flavored, from the main house, and the armed men patrolling the wall turned toward the smell. Thea closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“I know,” Evan said, realizing that the tang in the air meant that the meat was wine-basted. Each delicious entity of that smoke stirred memories in him. There had been lamb that night in Barcelona; he couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and his father was accepting yet another honor. A Portuguese rosé was served with the lamb, and the man beside him was a somber Egyptian who smelled of sandalwood and something else …

“Evan!” Thea said sharply, and he was back on the ledge over-looking a walled farm in the canyon.

In a short while a bell rang and the guards changed. Thea turned to Evan and shrugged. It was decided.

They awoke in the end of the night to the sound of shooting and a roar of engines. Scrambling to the edge of the ridge, they could see the fight below them A gang of perhaps twenty men on motorcycles was circling the high wall enclosing houses and barns As Thea and Evan watched, the defenders blasted one rider from his cycle with a shotgun The machine crashed into the wall dragging its bleeding rider behind it. The reserve gas cans exploded as the cycle hit, sending fire speeding up the walls The rider twitched once as he began to burn.

“Pirates?” Thea asked in a whisper.

Evan shook his head. “Nope. They’re no one I know. They must be one of the independents, looking for excitement as well as food or loot. Under their beards, they’re kids. And sloppy ones at that.”

The fire was spreading, tonguing the roof of the nearest barn and panicking the stock inside Women ran from the main house toward the fire, the sounds of their voices carrying over the terrified cries of the animals.

Now one of the cyclists broke through the burning wall trailing sparks as he roared by the defenders His snub nosed shotgun caught the nearest defender full in the chest. By the time the farmers killed him he had run down two of the women and clubbed them with the butt of the shotgun.

“They’re low on ammunition,” Evan remarked critically.

Thea said nothing, thinking of all the burning towns she had seen, all the bodies festering in the open, unmourned. She closed her eyes, but this did not help, for though she shut out the horror below her, the other images were brighter in her mind.

Soon the fire had a full hold on one barn and was spreading down the wall to the next building. Two more of the men on cycles had breached the walls and were chasing after the farmers, yelling with the joy of slaughter. The fire colored their faces red, turning their features to devil masks.

One woman waited as she was ridden down, then calmly tossed a lighted oil lamp into the reserve gas cans as the cycle careened into her. She, her attacker, and his motorcycle erupted in flames.

“Come on,” Evan said to Thea, pulling her toward him. As always, she drew back, but he kept his grip on her arm. “We’re going down there. It’s our only chance.”

Thea nodded, taking hold of the sharpened file that was her only weapon. “The second barn,” she told him, sliding in his wake down the steep wall of the canyon. They clutched the brush around them to slow their descent, watching the battle below with growing concern, If they were discovered, it would be impossible to escape… They would be easy targets for the people below them, and their vulnerability was increasing with the daylight that hung expectantly in the east, making ghosts of the granite rising upriver.

One of the houses was on fire now, sending heavy smoke rolling up the canyon toward the crossroad. Four horses had escaped from the larger of the barns and were lunging about, mad with fright, adding to the confusion that was already making the farmers’ defense a farce.

More than half of the marauders on their motorcycles were inside the walls, running down the farmers, clubbing those who ran, capturing others. Two of them confidently dismounted from their machines and ran after a woman who had come out of a burning house. One of the men threw himself onto the farm woman, tearing at her clothes. She screamed, pushing against his chest and hammering at his face with a trowel, drawing blood and cracking bone in her wild resistance.

Halfway up the slope above the battle, Thea blanched, stifling a scream in sympathy as she jammed her knuckles into her mouth. She stopped moving, watching and hating to watch what was happening below.

“Thea,” Evan breathed anxiously. “Come. It’s only another twenty-five feet.”

But Thea shook her head, her face rigid with fear.

“Thea.” Evan looked down, seeing what she saw. Then he reached out again and deliberately pulled her off balance, wrenching her attention away from the compound. “Don’t look.”

“She’s… She’s…”

“I know. Come with me. There’s very little time.”

The woman’s trowel connected fatally at last and the man fell away from her, his head strangely askew, blood and other things staining his face.

In the flickering light of the spreading fire, Thea and Evan could count more than a dozen dead. Two of the farmers, trapped in the second barn as the fire consumed it, were screaming, but the sound was lost in the rest of the fight. More of the cyclists came through the wall, sure of their victory now and eager for the pillage Seeing them the women fled to the main house but few of them made it to safety. Three of the cyclists fell upon one woman, two holding her down as the third pulled and tore at her trousers.

One of the farmers attacked the three marauders clubbing them with his empty rifle until the other cyclists saw what was happening and ran the farmer down slashing him with long knives. Bleeding from the deep gash in his stomach, the farmer fell across the woman. She shrieked out, a sound that destroyed her voice. Then she was still as the farmer bled out his life on top of her.

Three of the buildings were afire when the first barn fell in, sending out cascades of sparks and the stench of burned flesh. The few remaining cyclists outside the wall put themselves between the houses and the river, knowing that if the farmers were to save their buildings from the fires, they would have to come for water. The cyclists waited, certain of winning, needing only the last four defending men to have the rest of the holding and the women to themselves.

Sunlight was staining the tops of the mountains, throwing long shadows down the canyon to take the place of night. More farmers fell, one with a baling hook in his neck, another crushed by a burning beam dropping from the second barn. The few farmers left bolted for the central house, calling to the women to bring rifles from the other houses. As soon as they were secure in the central building, some of the cyclists brought flaming boards from the outer compound wall and laid them against the house, laughing as they saw the fire take hold of the wood.

Thea and Evan were nearing the second barn, coming as close to the wall as the flames would let them, keeping as much to the leaping shadows as they could. So long as the confusion held, they might be able to raid the barn and get away with precious meat before they were suspected or discovered.

The marauding cyclists let out a cheer to the sound of splintering wood, and this was followed by the crinkling of chain.

“That’s the door going,” Evan said quietly. “We’ll have to be fast. This will be over soon.”

Thea nodded numbly, shading her face against the glare of the fire. “I know,” she said after a moment. She had seen similar battles many times before and had watched them to their end. She felt the rhythm of this conflict shift toward its end. Already she could hear the sounds of the men in the house as the cyclists sought them out. Mercifully the fire and the barn blocked out the sight.

Evan pulled her around the corner of the wall and beyond the fire. There were paddocks and a couple of pigpens on this side. The paddocks were empty, but for a few hysterical chickens and a dog with a maimed leg. In the largest pigpen one angry sow guarded her litter.

“Piglets. They’re about eight weeks old, from the look of them. We can get a couple of piglets,” Thea suggested, watching the sow warily. “We might have to kill her, though.” The sound and knowledge of the slaughter behind them were fading as she thought of having food again.

“There’s a pitchfork on the wall,” Evan said as he ran his eyes expertly over the outbuildings. “We can hold her off with that and grab a couple of the piglets. And maybe a couple of chickens,” he added, looking over his shoulder to the hens squawking in the paddock.

Thea had already taken the pitchfork off its hook and was climbing cautiously over the wall of the pen. The sow made a rumbling noise and started forward. She was a large white Dorchester with close to three hundred pounds behind her threat. Thea knew enough about pigs to respect their strength, their intelligence, and their cunning. Holding her pitchfork at the ready, she called out, “You’ll have to be fast, Evan. She’s not going to be fooled for very long.”

Without taking time to answer, Evan vaulted over the gate into the pen, moving carefully to the squirming pile of piglets that lay near the empty water trough. He flexed his half-formed fingers carefully, feeling them still weak with their untried newness.

At their backs the fire ate steadily down the wall like invincible locusts, masking the stillness that fell suddenly inside the compound. A last wail of agony rose into the morning and then only the fire crackled and chuckled evilly.

Evan had grabbed two of the piglets by their hind legs, then swung them expertly into the wall to stun them. But the sound of the impact caught the attention of the sow, and she wheeled about with surprising speed, rushing at Evan in full maternal rage Thea cried out throwing the pitchfork at the sow. She had the satisfaction of seeing the tines sink deep into the sow’s rump but aside from making the animal even angrier, the wounds did little to halt her rush at Evan.

Quickly Evan grabbed the edge of the trough and with all his strength he pulled one end of it free of the mud and heaved it at the charging sow. He caught her full across the front and she staggered before collapsing under its weight making a grunt like metal on metal.

From the burning wall there came a shout and Thea looked up to see three of the cyclists pointing at them from the stock gate.

“Evan!” she shouted, frightened.

“I see them,” he called back motioning to her to move toward the outer road. “This way, Thea. Keep out of sight,” he ordered, waving toward the brush that lined the farm track leading to the crossroad beyond. Looping a rabbit-hide thong around the piglets, he scrambled over the fence and set out at a run.

As she raced toward the brush, Thea sensed Evan’s nearness. He still had the piglets and held the thong tight, running with the force of panic. Wordlessly he guided her toward the first bushes, nudging her to bend low. The gravel of the road tore at their feet as they went, making her stumble, lurching his body against her.

“Steady,” he panted. “You can, Thea, you can.” When she faltered, he dragged her to her feet. The answer she gave was a sob, but his words were strength to her, for she dived into the scrub with him, making new rents in her jeans as the stiff thorn-like branches pulled at her. They blundered through the brush until they were sure they had not been followed, and then they sank onto the ground sucking air into their lungs in long, shuddering gulps.

“What now?” she asked when she could speak again.

“We wait. They might not come after us with all that loot down there. I wouldn’t let the Pirates waste their time on scavengers like us.”

Thea nodded, recalling three times when the Pirates had left her alone in exchange for pillaging a few old houses, or seizing valuable food stores. It was one of the reasons she had traveled alone until now. “They might.”

“So long as we’re out of sight and quiet, they’ll leave us alone. Unless they want to come after us on foot, and that takes time they don’t have to spare. They haven’t enough ammunition to waste it by shooting at random.”

“Unless they find more ammunition in the houses. Then it might be good sport, hunting us.”

He nodded acknowledgment, but said nothing. Some minutes later he rolled onto his side. “At least we can start on these,” he said as he took the paring knife from his belt, drawing it with difficulty across the piglets’ throats. “They should dress out at about eight pounds each, maybe a little more.” As soon as the bleeding started, he efficiently gutted the two carcasses and tied their hind legs together to let them hang as they bled. The rabbit fur on the thongs was matted with blood, and sticky, but it held the piglets firmly.

“Smoke them?” Thea asked as Evan finished his work.

“Probably the best way; otherwise we’ll have to gorge on them before the meat turns,” he agreed. “As soon as we can get out of here—”

There was a roar from three of the cycles that interrupted them and made Thea jump. “They’re coming. I guess they found that ammunition?’

“But they aren’t going to catch us,” Evan promised. He slung the piglets on his belt and pointed up the hill. “We can cross the road up there and make our way back to the ridge. We’ll go quietly, and they won’t be able to find us.”

“You do think they have more ammunition, don’t you?” she asked as they started the grueling crawl up the slope.

For an answer, buckshot sprayed into the brush behind them. “I guess so,” Evan said dryly. “We’ll have to zigzag to keep them confused.”

It was slow going, and the advancing light made it worse. The tight branches and flat leaves offered good protection; their jeans and neutral-colored shirts provided some concealment as well, but once in full sunlight they would not match the shadows and it would be an easy matter for the cyclists to pick them off as they emerged from the brush.