The Hero King (15 page)

When we got close to the Illinois side of the bridge, I drew my Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic and held it close to my side, where it would be handy but not obvious. There wasn’t much cover close to the tracks on the Illinois side. I couldn’t see anyone lurking, and my danger sense had nothing to say.

“We’d better ride on for a while before we make camp,” I said when the last of the horses was back on solid ground. “We may have just hit the shift change, or suppertime.”

“Speaking of supper …” Lesh said. I looked his way, and he shrugged. “Just a reminder that we haven’t eaten lately,” he said.

“We’ll ride on for about an hour, southwest,” I said. “We’ll make camp and eat then. I want to get a little farther from the edge of this forest. We’ll ride due west tomorrow. Shawnee National Forest. It pretty much runs all the way across this end of Illinois. We shouldn’t be out in the open very much at all.”

Most people think of Illinois as just flat, open prairie, even people who live there. While I was living in Chicago I used to hear variations on the same basic joke, that you could putt a golf ball southwest along the Stevenson Expressway, Interstate 55, and it wouldn’t stop rolling until it reached Missouri. Sometimes it was a marble or a bowling ball. Same joke. But there are a few long ridges running through the state, some river valleys, and down in the southern end, some real hilly country and a lot of forest. That area looks more like Kentucky or Tennessee than it does the central and northern parts of Illinois.

“If we ride straight across, it should only take two or three days to reach the Mississippi,” I told the others. “We can follow the river north until we find a place to cross.”

“There might be a lot of people staying close to the Mississippi,” Aaron said.

“You’re probably right,” I said as we mounted and started to ride again. “I’ll give it some thought tonight.” Going on to St. Louis, we were going to run into people no matter what way we went, maybe a lot of them, and we had to look for a way to cross the Mississippi, somewhere south of St. Louis. I doubted that there would be
any
intact bridges near the metropolitan area, and if we went north to cross, we’d have to find a way across the Missouri River as well coming back south.

“How far do you suppose we are from St. Louis right now?” Aaron asked. “Straight line, not the way we might have to go.”

“I’m not sure. Probably no more than a hundred miles, maybe less.”

“We get settled in for the night, I’ll start trying to find your wife’s family.”

“Just how do you work that?” I asked. “Parthet always said he had to be able to see things for most of his magic.”

“Most,” Aaron agreed. “But I’ve seen photographs. Joy showed them to me. Snapshots. And I’ve got a good read on her. I think I can make the link to her family. But I’m still not sure how close I have to be.”

    Aaron didn’t come up with anything that night. The next morning, we did head due west. I decided that the immediate advantages of having all that forest around us were more important than the disadvantages of too many people later.

Riding through the National Forest, we didn’t see any obvious signs of nuclear war. Of course, the roads we crossed were empty of traffic, except for a few pedestrians, and there were occasional encampments of refugees, but most of the time we might almost have had the world to ourselves. That was a touchy thought.

Dad and I had talked of camping in the Shawnee National Forest a couple of times. We had even sent away for brochures and maps. But with so many place to go outdoors, we just never made it to this area. It’s not all wilderness and trees. There are small towns, villages, scattered through the area, but we stayed away from them, the way we had been staying away from any concentrations of people.

“It’s not really like Precarra,” Lesh said, early on our first full day in Illinois.

“No, not nearly as wild,” I said. “There are deer, raccoons, skunks, some other small animals.” But they probably wouldn’t last for long if masses of hungry people started foraging for survival. Hunting laws wouldn’t mean a thing now.

There were even birds in the trees.

We were riding through a thin patch of the forest when we heard the helicopter coming. There was only time to pull in close to a couple of trees and halt, hoping that we wouldn’t be spotted. A helicopter would most likely be military, and soldiers would ask too many questions if they found a group like us.

“You know that magic Parthet uses to hide people from dragons?” I whispered.

“Already working,” Aaron said.

“At least it means that there’s some sort of government functioning here,” I said after the Army chopper flew over—not nearly high enough for comfort. But there seemed to be no hesitation, no change in its course. Apparently they hadn’t spotted us.

“Maybe they’re checking air samples,” I said after we started riding again. “I saw something like that in some movie about World War Three, and they did a lot of that kind of sampling after the
Coral Lady.”

After hiding from the helicopter, I started picking our path with more of an eye to cover, but even with that, we almost rode out of the forest about the middle of the afternoon. We stopped, then turned and headed farther south to keep trees around us and, as much as possible, over us. Riding alongside an oiled-gravel secondary road, we stumbled on a little village that had been burned. The fire was recent. Although the ashes and remains were cool, the fine soot and ash was still loose, swirling along the ground.

“Nobody dropped a bomb on this place,” Aaron said.

“No.” I stopped my horse and dismounted. The others followed my lead. We walked along the road, the only real street the village had boasted, leading our horses. There was nothing left but charred remains—a couple of cars, the foundations of several houses, the axles and metal underframes of a couple of mobile homes, odds and ends like the twisted and blackened frame of a child’s tricycle.

“Bodies.” Lesh pointed off to the side. Back behind the foundation of a house we found two dozen bodies, all huddled together. Some were burned beyond recognition. The stench was overpowering.

“Someone herded them all together and killed them,” Lesh said.

“Raiders, thugs like those people at the bridge,” I guessed. Lesh grunted.

“I suppose there are a lot of people like that,” Aaron said.

“And if the Army or National Guard spots us, they’re sure to think that we fit the description,” I said. Reasonable pessimism.

“We’ll just have to make sure they don’t spot us,” Aaron said. After a slight hesitation, he added, “Or if they
do
see us, we’ll have to make them think we’re something they really don’t believe.”

“You have an idea, I take it?”

“We might as well be those Four Horsemen. Folks want to think we are anyway.”

“Disguises?” I asked.

“Just my kind of disguise,” Aaron said. “If I can remember—let’s see, a white horse, a red horse, a black horse, and a pale horse.”

“That still leaves two horses,” I reminded him.

“The packhorses. They won’t count. You got the sword—one of the riders is mentioned with a sword, maybe more. And we’ve got to look like something that can’t be, real movie-monster stuff. Let’s find us a place away from these bodies and I’ll take care of it.”

“Hang on a second. How many different magics can you hold on to at one time?” I asked.

“I don’t know. How many names do-you remember?”

“It can’t be the same.”

“No. Wait, you said you studied computers?” I nodded. “Do you remember any of the programs you wrote?”

“Nothing longer than a half-dozen lines,” I said.

“Oh.” Aaron shook his head. “I guess that comparison won’t work then. It doesn’t matter. Most of the magics don’t need my constant attention. I start them up and they run, they keep running. Sometimes I have to goose ‘em a little later on. Only a few are more demanding. The big ones, mostly.”

I still didn’t understand, but he was the expert.

We followed the road out of the little village, still on foot, leading our horses. When the road bent a little and took the ruins out of sight, Aaron turned off the road, into the trees. About fifty yards in, we stopped, near a creek.

“The horses should be cool enough to drink their fill right off,” Lesh said. “We been walking ‘em long enough.”

“Okay, you and Timon take care of it. But stick close.” I wanted to watch Aaron do his stuff. Magic still fascinated me.

“I’ve got to see you all to do this,” Aaron said.

He sat under a tree and rested his back against it. He stared at me when he started chanting. After a moment, he turned his attention to Lesh and then to Timon. Finally, he stared at each of the horses we were riding, in turn. He chanted the entire time, and the tingling of active magic was so strong that I had to fight the urge to scratch. Before Aaron stopped, he moved over to the creek and knelt next to it. He leaned over so he could see his own face reflected in the water.

When he got up, he cleared his throat and looked my way.

“I think that’ll do it,” he said.

“Do what?” I asked. “I don’t see any disguises.”

“We’re not trying to hide from us,” Aaron said. “We’re inside the magic, not looking in.”

“Then how can you be sure it’s working?”

“It’s my
job
to know,” Aaron said, with an unusual firmness to his voice.

I nodded. “Let’s get a few more hours of riding in,” I said. “I don’t want to camp anywhere near that village.”

We went back to the road and followed it, staying off to the side so the horses wouldn’t have to contend with all that oiled gravel. The road went southwest, deeper into the forest, just what I was looking for. I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of cover. But we would have to head west again before long.

“There’s a car up ahead,” Lesh called out after we had gone about three miles farther.

“I see it,” I said. “Let’s be careful about this. The people who burned that village may have run out of gas.”

“You
feel
anything, sire?” Timon asked.

I hesitated long enough to take stock of my danger sense. “Nothing special,” I said.

But we slowed down anyway. The car was intact, a rarity along this ride. As we got closer, Aaron said, “You want to see our disguises? Look in the rear window of this car when we get right up to it.”

The four of us bunched up. I guess the others wanted to see what the magic had done too.

Until we saw it.

I looked down into the rear window and saw the reflections of four skeletons draped in ragged, bloody robes.

10
The Camps

I didn’t sleep well that night. I was haunted by the reflections I had seen in that car window. It was worse than the Congregation of Heroes dream, or vision, whatever
that
was. Lesh and Timon had both been hit hard by the reflection too, perhaps even harder than I was. They were more thoroughly Varayan, a land where myth and superstition lies much closer to reality than in the land I was raised in. We rode on in almost total silence after looking in that car window. The silence continued when we finally camped. There was only the most essential conversation. Aaron erected his nightly shield. We lit a fire and cooked our supper. And we kept a close watch on the sky.

Rain was threatening again, so we pitched tents, lightweight nylon jobs that had come from the sporting goods department at Marshall Field’s in Chicago. As usual, I took the first watch of the night. When the rain came, I pulled down the bill of my Cubs cap and stood next to a large tree, leaning back against the trunk, trying to escape as much of the falling water as I could. It was a steady, heavy downpour that fell almost silently and blotted out any normal night sounds. There was no wind to drive the rain, no thunder and lightning to divert attention from the soaking.

It was a thoroughly miserable night. I missed Joy. I worried about the way she had carried on, forcing this expedition. I worried about the extra moons that I couldn’t see because of all the clouds and rain, the Doomsday they were supposed to presage. Several times, I fancied that I saw the four skeletal faces staring at me out of the rain.

When the downpour seemed to slacken off, just a little, I woke Lesh. He replaced me next to the tree trunk and I crawled into my tent, trying to leave as much of the water outside as I could. That didn’t work very well, but I went through the motions. I crouched at the end of the tent and stripped off my weapons, boots, and wet outer clothes before I got into my blanket. I had dry clothing in a saddlebag, but I didn’t want to get into it until I had to—preferably after the rain stopped. If an alarm came in the night and I didn’t have time to get dressed, I would just have to meet it in my underwear.

Even though I was exhausted—every day of riding and moping left me feeling more drained than the day before—sleep took its own time and some of mine before it arrived. Rain hit the tent. When I closed my eyes, I saw the four specters staring at me, mocking me, laughing at me.

But, eventually, I did sleep.

And sometime later, I saw the face of the Elflord of Xayber hovering over me.

His face was as clear, as sharply defined, as it was when we talked in Castle Basil, but only his head and shoulders appeared this time. He was speaking, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. I had a long, suspended bout with panic, fearing that I would miss the most vital message in history. Only gradually did I realize that this was only a dream, not the message I was waiting for.

Only a dream
. If only the whole mess would turn out to be no more than that! But even after my logical self decided that this visitation from the elflord was only a dream, my heart continued to flutter. I needed more convincing. The dream woke me. I lay awake for ages, nervous, keyed up, heart pounding, caught in the real adrenaline rush of my dream fear.

The rain had stopped, for a while at least. We had ridden through a lot of rain the last few days, off and on—dirty rain, heavy rain, as the atmosphere started to reject much of the dirt and debris forced on it by the nuclear explosions. The sky had even cleared now, for the most part, and we hadn’t seen much of clear skies since we left Varay. I looked out through the tent flap. Aaron was on guard….