Gunwitch (20 page)

Her trousers, made heavy and wet, dragged on her legs and pulled their way down to her hips. With her arms held too wide apart most of the time, and chaffing now and beginning to blister where her skin rubbed against the clenched fingers of the women, she could not reach down to pull her trousers up. So she walked with the additional fear that she would lose even the old and dirty clothes she had now. At least the cuffs under her feet provided some protection as she walked.

The sun poked at her from between tree trunks, trying to make her close her eyes, then it was there in full as the trees moved behind her and she could see an expanse of water spread in front of her, a small lake lying across their path.

They walked straight into the lake. The heads of the people–and worse–in front of her disappeared under the surface of the water as they continued their straight path.

She tried to shout, but the gag muffled her. She pulled against the women’s hands, hard enough to break the skin of the blisters, but the women held her as tightly as ever.

The water splashed around their feet, and especially her feet, as she tried to dig in and keep them from going further. For an instant they paused, and she thought she had stopped them, then the people behind pushed against their backs and her back and the water rose to her ankles, then her knees, and on up to her thighs. She thrashed and fought and pulled but the strength of the women and the weight of bodies behind her pushed her forward.

Her thrashing seemed in slow motion under the water. Her hair streamed about her face as she swung her head back and forth and pulled against the hands that still held her, still pulled her deeper into the lake. She kicked and she found herself horizontal. Her feet tried to find purchase against the naked cold bodies of the women, but she only slipped and twisted and struck against the other bodies near her.

Her lungs burned from the exertion and the need to breathe.

The gag and the tie blocked the water from her mouth, but not her nose. Water came in her nostrils and hit her throat and she choked. She tried to scream, and choked again.

Shh
.

Like a whisper in her ear, the sound penetrated the water into her brain and sent a warm thrill into her chest that eased the pressure there.

The water against her face became warm, and bright, and flowed against her face, brushing her hair back gently.

We are coming, Margaret Laxton
.

Another whisper, like the sound of a forest stream, then a tingling sensation on her forehead, as if soft lips had kissed her there, and the warmth of the water was like arms around her, holding her safe.

* * *

The women held her, sagging and still shaking with the occasional sob, while two men, one white and one black, both of them wearing worn trousers that had been cut off at the knees and no shirts or shoes, put up a black tent like the one she had slept in the night before. These men did not move with the jerky motions she had seen all day, nor had they been grievously wounded. Their backs showed the stripes of a lash, but their muscles moved the way muscles were supposed to, smooth and strong beneath the skin, and their hands showed dexterity as they spread the canvas and tied off the ropes. They finished and backed away, never once looking up or meeting Margaret’s eyes.

She expected the women to throw her into the tent, but nothing happened. The men disappeared into the trees in the direction of the larger camp that she had been carried through. She could still hear the sounds of tent stakes being driven into the ground, the infrequent shouts of orders, and the stomps and hisses of grunzers. But her captors only stood there, holding her upright between them. She sagged in their grips and looked at the tent with a longing that surprised her.

Her legs were tired and her feet hurt and her trousers and her layered shirts remained damp and clung to her. Her hair fell in thick strands across her face that she was unable to push back. The gag in her mouth felt slimy and tasted like mud, and the strip of cloth holding the gag in place had shrunk as it dried, pulling painfully against the corners of her mouth. Her arms felt on fire from the grip of the two women, and her fingers tingled from reduced bloodflow.

She wanted nothing more than to lay down in that tent and sleep. She did not want to eat, despite the hunger that gnawed in her stomach. After everything she had seen the past two days, her appetite no longer existed. Only the gag had prevented her from vomiting, forcing her to keep down the food Mr. Thomas had fed her the night before.

But the women only stood there and forced her to stand there with them.

* * *

“That’s thinking like a soldier on the march, Margaret.” Mr. Thomas’ voice startled her and she jerked awake. Her sudden motion caused one of the women still holding her to take a step forward. “Sleep whenever you get the chance.”

Margaret tried to orient herself, and squeezed her eyes open and shut. She could see Mr. Thomas’ face only as a white smudge in the darkness. Night had fallen. How long had she been standing there? She would have rubbed her eyes had she been able to. Standing again, she noticed that both of her arms had gone numb. She tried to wiggle her fingers but they barely moved. She thought she smelled cooked meat. Her stomach convulsed and the gag stopped her from vomiting yet again.

“Put her in the tent,” Mr. Thomas said.

The women shifted their grips and pulled her toward the tent. The pins and needles of renewed bloodflow started at her fingertips and extended to the grips on her forearms. A thousand pinpricks crawled across her skin and she whimpered.

She stumbled as she was pushed through the tent flaps. Her arms could not move fast enough and she fell face first into the tarp that made the floor of the tent, hitting her nose and forehead and sending sparks of pain across the backs of her eyes. She tried to bring her hands to her face, to rub her nose, to remove the gag, but her fingers slapped cold against her skin, still alive with the pinpricks, still not responding.

“Sit up,” Mr. Thomas said. He had followed her into the tent. “Let me help you with that.”

He pushed aside her hands and lifted her into a sitting position. He held her head with one hand and untied the gag and pulled it away with the other.

Margaret coughed and spit out the nasty cloth in her mouth. She rubbed her right hand under her nose. Her nose hurt like it was bleeding, but she saw no blood on her fingers. She noticed Mr. Thomas had stepped out of the tent and she breathed a sigh of relief. There was no pile of clothes in the tent, so she picked a corner away from the front of the tent, and curled up to sleep.

The tent flaps pulled away again and she heard Mr. Thomas come back inside, and the smell of cooked meat filled the tent. Her chin trembled as she tried not to throw up.

She heard the sounds of him slicing off strips of meat and chewing. And later of him pulling apart bones and blowing on his fingers from the heat and more chewing.

“I’ll be sleeping in here with you tonight, Miss Laxton,” he said, the words separated by sounds of him licking his fingers. “I do hope you don’t mind.”

“I mind,” she said. “And my father. He would mind.”

Mr. Thomas laughed. “Yes, I am certain he would. However, his being not here, I will just have to use my own judgment. I expect we’ll have visitors by morning, and it’s best if I’m here to keep you. Safe,” he added.

After a few moments of silence, he said, “You haven’t asked about our visitors.”

Margaret continued to not ask. Her mind hovered just over the edge of sleep, and his voice kept pulling her back. She could not make him leave her alone, but she wished he would be quiet.

He did not say anything else. Another few minutes passed and he went out of the tent. He startled her awake again not more than ten minutes later, coming back into the tent and noisily spreading blankets. He cast one blanket over her, then he settled down to sleep.

* * *

An explosion, like a cannon going off over her head caused Margaret to leap up. She tripped over her cuffs and a blanket that had wrapped itself around her and fell back to the floor. She could not see Mr. Thomas in the darkness, but she could hear him sitting up, and chuckling.

“I told you we’d have visitors,” he said. “I think Rose just found your little friend. And my friends have found her, I think.”

She drew in a deep breath. “Miss Ro–”

He must have been waiting for her to do exactly that, because she barely had her mouth open before he had stuffed the gag into her mouth. Then he held her down and wrapped her with blankets, pinning her arms to her sides.

He chuckled as if he could read her thoughts, and knew how powerless they were. Then he moved in a squat to the tent flaps. “You stay here,” he said. “I’ll go see what our trap has caught.”

There were more gunshots, and a woman screamed.

Chapter 10

Chal

Bayuk

12.6.5.8.5 L.C.

Chal sat on the patch of grass, her back to the bayuk channel, facing the handsome young Major Haley and the pretty young Janett, facing the direction Rose had gone. She saw them all, the two in front of her, and, not with her eyes but with the senses of the water and the grass and the trees around her, the figure of her friend getting further away with every step. Farther away from her, and closer to the …
wrongness
… that accompanied the man Ducoed.

As she sat, as Rose moved past the fringes of Chal’s awareness, the wrongness stirred memories, bringing back to her a time that … she had never known? A time thought ended and past. Buried. The first glimpses, mere sensations, had caused twinges, small shocks that provoked reflection but not recollection. The more she and Rose and the children had followed the footsteps of Ducoed’s force, the more painful the shocks and the twinges had become. And the more she … remembered?

They were not her memories, not directly. They were more like sediments from the mountains, brought down by the river through the ages and settled in the pool of her own mind and experience. Ducoed … or those he was with … had stirred the sediment, clouded the waters, and brought back faint traces of what had gone before. And what was coming again.

Visions of men welded to stone, neither dead nor alive, screaming, fighting, dying, killing flashed in her mind. Not what was now, though. What had been. The history of her people stretched back and back. Time and enough for great successes of which few traces remained, as well as time and enough for tragic mistakes which lingered.

She had agreed with Rose: Margaret must be rescued. The attempt must be made. She would have gone herself, but Rose had claimed the right because of her promise to the general. They could not both go, not with the major and Janett to look after. So Rose went, and Chal awaited her return.

Or not.

Chal twirled her fingers in the long blades of grass, and through them listened to the waters. The waters called to her, as they always did, beckoning her to join them, but they also sang for her. She listened to their songs of the bayuk and the river and the oceans beyond and took comfort.

“Rest,” she told the two children. “Sleep while you can. In two hours, we will follow Rose.” And what? Rescue her? Possibly. Recover her body? Perhaps. She could not see the future, nor could the waters sing of it to her.

Water flows, my child
. The voice of the Water Mother came to her, from her past, from across time and distance.
It does not tell the future, nor does it wish to. Water caresses and shapes what is there. It does not judge. It does not create. Even life, which springs like a well from the heart of Alaghom-Naom, is not created by water. Only nourished and carried by the flow
.
You cannot ask the waters where they will flow, only where they flow now.

“Follow Miss Bainbridge?” Janett asked. “But she specifically told us to wait for her here.”

The major nodded. “The sergeant–Miss Bainbridge–did request …” He stopped, and his head cocked to the left as he looked more intently at Chal. “Have you sensed something?”

Chal stroked the grass, feeling the life within the green stalks brush against her fingers as she replied. “Nothing that I have not already told you, Major Haley. And Rose, as well.”

“Then why are we going to follow her? That would be disobeying a direct order.”

Chal smiled. “Major Haley, Rose is my dear friend and my beloved sister through the cutting of our hands and the mingling of our blood, but she is not my commanding officer.” The major opened his mouth to say something else–probably to apologize, Chal thought; the boy was too easily cowed by a woman’s stated will; Janett had had him to herself for too long–but Chal held up a hand to stop him. “Rose does what she thinks is best, and so do I. Rose could best approach unseen and unheard without the rest of us. But afterward …” She shrugged. “Rest, now. I will sit watch.”