The Last Pilgrims (32 page)

“Easy, old man,” Leo responded sharply. “We
need water for these men and for our horses, and
we’ll
decide if you have anything worth taking.”

The old man leaned on his stick, his face
pointed down, and he sighed deeply before he responded. “Ahh. I
see… more looters. When will y’all realize I got nothin’ left to
steal?”

“Where’s the water, old man?” Leo
demanded.

“There’s some water in the box over yonder,”
he indicated with the stick, “where the downspout runs off the
roof. Take what ‘ya need, but please don’t mess with the box on
account of it’s my only source of water.”

Leo walked up and poked the man heavily in
the chest, sending him hobbling backwards a few steps. “You don’t
tell us what to do! We tell
you
what to do!”

“Take it easy, Leo.” Troy said, with obvious
disgust in his voice.

“YOU don’t tell me what to do either,
punk!”

“We’re not all looters, sir,” Jonathan
offered. “I’ve been kidnapped and am currently being held captive
by these men.”

The old man looked up, blindly trying to
gauge where Jonathan was, his head moving from right to left. In a
moment it seemed that he had figured it out because he stared
directly at him, smiling an almost toothless smile. “Well, then!”
he said, his smile growing even wider, “you must be Jonathan Wall!
I say it is great to meet ya, sir. I’ve heard great things about ya
and I’ve been expectin’ ya!”

Leo stopped in his tracks upon hearing this
and shook his head before turning around. “What?”

The old man turned back to Leo. “What,
what?”

“What did you say? How did you know that
this man is Jonathan Wall?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I should have said something
earlier when ya first arrived. My apologies, then.”

“What the heck are you talking about, old
man?” Leo exclaimed.

The old man gestured with his thumb over his
shoulder towards the service station office. “Them folks has been
waitin’ for
him
.”

As the last words escaped the old man’s
mouth, and as Leo turned to look towards the office, a knife
plunged into the kidnapper’s chest, throwing him backwards and onto
his back.

Sensing what was happening, Jonathan—just as
he had done with the post-rider bearing the letter to the King of
the South States—reached over and with one lightning quick
movement, threw an unsuspecting Troy to the ground, immediately
covering the young man with his own body.

Arrows thudded into Atticus, knocking him
over, as the old man leaned on his staff, listening and nodding his
head in approval. The Aztlani soldier died still completely unaware
of what was going on around him.

Jonathan was yelling by this time, and it
took a few seconds for the attackers to realize that the leader of
the Vallenses was trying to save the young kidnapper’s life. When
The Hood ran up with his bow at the ready, peering down the length
of an arrow set to fly, Jonathan saw a quizzical look cross the
militia freeman’s face.

“Everyone calm down,” Jonathan yelled.
“Nobody kills this one… I think he might be one of us.”

They all thought that they were so smart.
That is the trouble with them
, he thought,
they think
they are the smartest people in the world.
All he had to do is
run down a list of all the mistakes they’d made to prove that they
weren’t as good as they seemed to be.

Phillip had allowed a spy to attack a
prisoner who was in his custody. Rollo smiled at that thought. Getz
the spy was the man who had recruited him in the first place. He
never had liked Getz and was glad that the man was dead. Silly old
fool had accomplished nothing with his sacrifice except to make
Phillip look weak.

Phillip had also let his wife and daughters
get taken by Aztlan; then, with all of his resources he had let an
entire Aztlani army sneak around him and butcher the Vallenses who
were camped up by Comanche. Then he let Jonathan get taken from
right under his nose.
Fools.

Worst of all was the fact that Phillip had
never sniffed out the spy in his own leadership! Arrogant leaders
are always susceptible to one glaring weakness… they always believe
and trust in the loyalty of their inner circle. That’s why they
always fail.
When I’m a baron… I’ll trust no one.

Rollo had risen up fast in the ranks of the
militia due to his wit, his ruthlessness, and his ability to be in
the right place at the right time. At first, he was just a mostly
loyal mercenary, a hireling who fought with the militia just as he
would have fought with anyone else who paid him well. Before long,
though, the adulation and adoration that Phillip constantly
received from the men started to grate on him. He silently sneered
at the thought of it. The “Ghost” was just a fallible old man.
Sure, Phillip was skilled, and he fought with some sense of purpose
and honor; but all of that was just emotional nonsense. Phillip’s
infatuation with the Vallenses had turned him into a puppet to his
own emotions and affections. Emotional attachment had no place in
the bosom of a warrior.

Just when his resentment against Phillip had
reached its peak… that was when Getz had approached him— recruiting
him as a spy for Aztlan. Getz promised to pay handsomely—Aztlani
gold now, lands and servants and titles once the Vallenses could be
wiped out and erased from Central Texas. Getz had, by the authority
of the King of Aztlan, promised him a barony, if, when the time was
right, he would cut off the head of the rebellion.

In the meantime, he had served Aztlan well.
It was he who had told the escaping spies where to find Phillip’s
wife. He had been the one who had suggested the plan of drawing
Phillip away from Bethany, and of the diversionary attack on that
village in order to get the main Aztlani force out to the east
without it being noticed. He had been somewhat disappointed in the
loss of that army, and he had hoped to be able to warn Aztlan of
Phillip’s plan of defense; but the attackers had served their
purpose well by killing off over 2,000 of the Vallenses before they
all died. Every bit of cancer that could be excised from
his
lands was a step forward in his opinion.

Cutting off the head.
That meant
engaging in a bold stroke by taking out the four major impediments
to an overwhelming Aztlani victory. Three of those
impediments—Phillip, David, and the rebellious Crown Prince
Gareth—were now dead.
They have to be.
Two shots from a
pistol, and some hemlock slipped into a cup of tea, and the brains
of the resistance were now gone.
I wish I could have watched
Phillip die.

The plan hadn’t gone off perfectly. He had
hoped to use his first bullet on Phillip from point-blank range.
But Gareth, who had always been a bit suspicious, had figured out
the plot at the last moment. Too late for Gareth, though, because
he had already taken a drink of the hemlock tea before he had
realized what was happening; but, as Rollo had run out to meet
David and Phillip, Gareth had shouted to them from his window. That
meant that he had needed to shoot before he was really ready to do
so. He could not let Phillip have even a second or two of warning.
The man was way too dangerous if he knew what was coming. So,
rather than shoot Phillip first—which he had hoped to do—and
because of their positions and his shooting angle, his first shot
had hit David square in the middle of the chest. Center mass. The
second shot had hit Phillip lower and towards his right side. Both
shots had been significant enough to knock the rider off of his
horse.
Three down… one to go.

He fled to the horse he had packed and
waiting for him by the barn. The confusion going on near the front
of the house had been a perfect diversion for his getaway. With one
posse off searching for Jonathan, and the whole leadership of the
militia now in question, Rollo doubted if another posse could be
raised and on his trail very quickly. He would finish his job and
be on the way to New Rome before they could possibly catch up to
him.

He found the posse at Harmony, where he had
expected them to be. He had laughed. Anyone trained by Phillip was
completely predictable if you knew what to expect. Militia thinking
was so regimented and regular that their biggest weakness was a
result of their biggest strength. They all thought like Phillip,
and therefore he knew exactly where they would be by the time he
arrived.

Now his challenge was to keep the group from
being suspicious of him, and to find a way to accomplish his fourth
task without getting killed. He’d hate to lose out on the barony
and all of the benefits of being a noble, just because he’d let his
guard down or did something stupid.

The posse was heading out to track Jonathan
and his captors when he arrived at Harmony. With a new, fresh
horse, he was ready to ride with them in minutes.

The party was an interesting one. Jonathan
Wall’s own daughter Ruth was part of the party.
Too bad for her
that she’s a part of this. She should have stayed home with Ana and
the rest of the Vallenses,
he thought. Not that that would save
her for very long. With the head of the resistance serpent cut off,
the rest of the creature would die soon enough. Surely another,
larger, Aztlani army was headed this way. The militia and the
Vallenses would be sitting ducks without Phillip, David, or Gareth
to lead them.

Hood was here. He was a good man and a good
warrior, but was just too blinded by his own loyalty to know that
he was fighting for the losing side. Rob Fosse was here too. Rob
was Phillip’s best friend, and probably was the man most likely to
take over the reins of the militia now that Phillip was dead… so
he’d have to go too. Call him the fifth casualty of the
decapitation of the resistance. And then there was this Marbus
Claim boy and the young man named Timothy. Harmless orphans, for
the most part. The Mountain didn’t know the Claim boy very well,
and Timothy seemed to be a dreamer and not much of a threat. The
two militia boys might live through this if they knew when to cut
and run.
If not, they’ll die for militia honor too.

The one guy he had to watch out for, and
that he did not want to mess with, was Piggy. Piggy was Phillip
times two. Phillip had been raised by the world, and had become a
militiaman as a grown man. By contrast, over 20 years younger,
Piggy had been raised in the militia and it was his natural home
and environment. Most militiamen were good fighters with strong
minds and strong wills. Piggy was an
apex predator
. He had a
mind that would dwarf some geniuses, yet he was completely at home
and happy in the somewhat simple and structured militia world. As
opposed to Piggy, Phillip was
just
a genius. Piggy was a
phenomenon. Phillip was a deadly and efficient fighter. Piggy was a
demon. Rollo himself had been forced to fight with Piggy during a
training session. It had not gone well for The Mountain, he
remembered all too well. No man - not any militia man—not even
Phillip—had remained standing for more than 10 seconds when going
into training combat with Piggy. Then, he had seen Piggy in battle.
He was a force, an efficient and effective killing machine, an
entire front of his own.

Piggy was a renaissance man, an artist and a
poet, and probably the deadliest man Rollo had ever even heard of.
He was a military Michaelangelo who could kill his enemies while
painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling and not even sense any
disconnect between the relative moral values of the two acts. He
did not seem to struggle with philosophical concepts like death and
life and meaning. He just
knew
. He existed in this
complicated and dangerous world as confidently as a giant oak or a
rainbow. Piggy just
was
. And any man who would come against
Piggy did so at his own peril.
Someone might try to sneak up on
him or get the drop on him, like I did with Phillip, but I
wouldn’t… not if I want to live.
Piggy was going to be a big
bone to be chewed. The biggest.

As they tracked westward during the late
afternoon on the 2
^nd
day after Jonathan’s abduction, it
became very clear that the posse’s task was going to be much, much
easier than they had originally thought. Timothy told him that on
the first day, the captors had made really good time. Because of
this, they had basically given up hope of actually catching them in
the desert. The posse had left Harmony resigned and expecting to
have to try to rescue Jonathan from some cell in the castle at El
Paso.

After finding a couple of dead horses, and
the obvious trail being left behind by the pastor of the Vallenses,
the posse had figured out that they were dealing with complete
ignoramuses, and that they would probably catch up with the Aztlani
party overnight.

Rollo shook his head as he checked off the
list of grave errors made by the kidnappers. First, they had
decided to take the direct route to El Paso. While that might sound
like a good idea, it was a horrible one. The straight route was
terribly hazardous, and for that reason it was the route the
militia always used. The posse would know every inch of the trail
and the route, while the kidnappers were completely ignorant of
hazards, as well as where to find water, shade, or a place to
rest.

Second, the kidnappers were trying too hard
to make good time and in doing so they were slowing themselves way
down. They had killed a couple of their horses, and now they were
evidently on foot. A slower, circuitous route would have made
tracking them infinitely more difficult.

Third, no one was watching the captive.
Jonathan Wall was marking his trail so well that he might as well
have left signs with giant arrows on them. The kidnappers were
making no effort at all to obscure their trail.