Watcher in the Pine (26 page)

A road has to go somewhere
, she thought fuzzily, too tired to wonder why her kidnappers had gone to the trouble of imprisoning her and then left her apparently totally unguarded.
A road has to go somewhere. And it looks like it’s flat enough to walk, thank God. So follow the road, slow and steady
.

Getting to her feet was difficult, and she had a splitting headache by the time she was upright, but standing up on a clearly marked road made her feel slightly more human. For a few minutes, walking upright was sheer joy. Then she found that it was making the contractions worse. Although it was not steep, the road was heading steadily down, and Elena hoped that this meant it led toward civilization. She stopped thinking and focused on forcing herself to go on in an endless pattern: Walk, rest through contraction. Wipe forehead. Walk again. Sometimes it seemed as if she progressed no more than a few steps between rests.

She stopped expecting to meet guards, and began instead to have the irrational feeling that she was completely alone in the valley. Somewhere an eternity ahead, the road ended where there were people, but here there was only the rustling of the wind in the trees, and the stones underfoot, and the brambles by the edge of the path. She cried out freely now when she was in pain, because there was no one to hear.
What will happen if the baby is born here with no one else around? The two of us will be alone in the valley, in the night. Don’t think about that
. Walk. Rest. Walk.
The sun will come up before then
. Walk. Rest. Walk.
You’ll reach the end of the road before then
. Walk. Rest. Walk.

Then, miraculously, the trees fell away on her left hand, and she was next to an open field, dotted with dark shapes that were oddly familiar. She stumbled forward, paused as another contraction shook her, and realized she was leaning against a fencepost. She bent over and pillowed her forehead with her hands on top of the post, crying with relief. A fence post meant people. A fence post meant civilization. She remained that way for several minutes, unable to force herself to move farther, and so shaken by her own sobs that she didn’t notice a dark shape that suddenly loomed over her and said sharply, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

Elena turned her head and made out the bulky silhouette of a man carrying a rifle. The rifle hardly gave her pause. “I’m in labor,” she said simply. “I need a midwife.”

At the time it seemed a perfectly logical thing to say, although afterward Elena could hardly blame the man for being taken aback. “Er . . . why are you in labor
here?
” he ventured.

“It wasn’t by choice,” Elena said, indignant. “Is this your land?”

“These are my herds,” he explained. “The land is common grazing pastures. I heard you and thought maybe one of the ewes was in trouble.”

“I am not a ewe,” Elena snapped.

“You sound a bit like one having trouble with a lamb.” His voice was amused, but he added, “Can you walk a little ways? There’s a shelter near here, and I can go for my wife, if you don’t mind being left alone.”

The idea of walking farther was suddenly almost unbearable, but Elena agreed. It was far easier to walk with someone to lean on and without having to worry about which direction to go. Ten minutes’ walk along the edge of the forest brought them to a windowless wood-roofed hut with a hole near the top of the stone walls for smoke to escape. An oil lamp sat in one corner of the hut, along with a blanket and an empty bowl with the remnants of stew clinging to the inside. A bale of straw lay along the opposite wall. The floor of the hut was earth, but the whole place smelled of clean straw, and stew, and to Elena it looked like a haven of safety. She gratefully sank down beside the straw, to test her theory that lying down would be a lot more comfortable. It was not more comfortable, but getting up took an energy she discovered she did not have.

“Will you be all right alone?” the man asked again. “My wife is in Congarna. I could get her. She’d know what to do.”

Elena managed a smile. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I’ve been on my own so far.”

In spite of the words, Elena was sorry when the shepherd left. The human contact had seemed like a link to sanity. Now, lying alone and vulnerable and in increasing pain, she began to fear that her rescuer would never return. He would forget about her, or be caught by the maquis or the Guardia, or an avalanche. How far away was Congarna? It was horrible to have no way of knowing what time it was, or how much time had passed. She had never thought she would have to have the baby alone. She did not know what to do. She would die here and the baby would die before he returned, before she was able to tell him her name and give him a message to send to Carlos in case she died.

She was near hysteria when the door to the cabin opened again, and two figures entered. Elena recognized the first as the shepherd who had guided her. The second one was a woman wrapped in shawls, carrying what looked like a bundle of blankets in her arms. “Now then,” the woman said, casting an experienced eye over Elena. “There’s no need to be crying yet, dear. When did you start having pains?”

“I don’t know,” Elena admitted.

“Is this your first?” The woman knelt by her, unwrapping the bundle as she spoke.

“Yes.”

The woman clicked her tongue. “And at your age. Well you just lie comfortable, and do what I tell you, and everything will be fine. How did you ever get into this mess?”

Elena smiled faintly. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, if this is your first, we probably have time for it,” the woman said briskly. “Go ahead and talk, dear. It’ll take your mind off the pain.”

Chapter 21

T
ejada set off along the highway toward Espinama on foot, regardless of the risk. Going back to the post to take his horse would have taken too much time, and would have involved another encounter with Corporal Battista. Besides, more mounted men tonight could only endanger Elena. He walked quickly, restraining himself from running only by force of will and the knowledge that if he exhausted himself too quickly he would be of no help to Elena.

He did not bother to turn on the flashlight. He knew the road well by now, although he had never walked it in the dark before. The distance seemed blessedly short at night. Only a few minutes brought him to the turnoff to Santo Toribio. “Check around Monte Viorna,” Father Bernardo had said. He turned left sharply, and began to head up the hill, his blood pounding in his ears. The maquis had hidden their arms along Monte Viorna. It was logical to hope that they had hidden Elena there as well. He would have liked to follow the path he had taken with Elena when he had found the hidden arms, but he was not at all sure that he could find it in the dark, and he was afraid of getting lost. Gaining as much altitude as possible and then working downward seemed like a logical plan.
I never took Elena up here
, he thought grimly, as the road wound up the mountain in long lazy curves.
I promised to take her to the monastery and then I never went with her. If I hadn’t found the arms that time we would have gone. If I hadn’t found them, the maquis wouldn’t need replacements now. We shouldn’t have taken that shortcut. If I hadn’t made her talk about Montalbán we would have come this way, and I wouldn’t be here now. Oh, God, why did we have to pass the spot where Montalbán was killed on our way to the monastery? Why did it have to upset her?

Somewhere an owl hooted. Tejada hoped it was an owl and not a man signaling to someone. He took off his tricorn, since he knew the silhouette made him instantly recognizable, even by night. But the wind blew cold, and he disliked having his hands occupied, so after a few steps he put it on again.
We’ve been lucky so far
, he told himself.
We just have to keep being lucky
. He tried to concentrate on his good fortune, instead of feeling guilty about taking Elena past the site of Anselmo Montalbán’s death, but it was difficult. Suddenly, the subterranean stream of thought gushed to the surface, and mingled with his over-counted blessings. A murky pattern began to emerge in the depths of his mind.
Divine guidance
, he denied desperately frightened by his conclusion.
Father Bernardo would say it was divine guidance. Every time we’ve been on the verge of disaster something has happened to save us because God is on our side. That was why we found the dynamite. That’s why there have been no more thefts from Devastated Regions. Because we’re blessed. It’s a lack of faith to think otherwise
.

It was a lack of faith, but alone in the darkness before dawn, with Elena still a prisoner of the maquis, and his own officers in open rebellion against him, Tejada could not help thinking of a secular explanation. He walked faster as his mind worked, occasionally breaking into a jog trot without noticing it, until the road opened out before the looming bulk of the monastery. Then he stopped. He had no proof, and nothing more than a series of coincidences that seemed logical at two in the morning but would probably look as insubstantial as mist in the sunshine. And none of them helped him find Elena.

Santo Toribio was dark and silent. It had apparently been undisturbed by patrols. Who, after all, would suspect the guardians of the
lignum crucis
of protecting the maquis? Tejada stood in the shadows of the trees by the side of the road and inspected the building. Turned in on its cloister, it had the unfortunately fortresslike quality of many secluded religious communities. The chances of finding Elena there were slim, and the time it would take to rouse the inhabitants, explain his errand, and search the building would kill the rest of the hours before dawn, even if the monks were cooperative. Remembering Elena’s narration of her day at Santo Toribio with Father Bernardo, Tejada kept to the edge of the woods, giving the buildings a wide berth and searching for a path that led into the forest.

There was a grassy hill that sloped down to the monastery’s grounds and what seemed to be an opening between the trees. Tejada thought a moment, and then decided that the flashlight was worth the risk. He switched it on and held it out toward where he thought the path might be. It was definitely a path, and definitely recently used. The rain had made it muddy, and there were traces of footprints. He inspected the grass. It was a meadow, probably used for grazing, with no apparent tracks. He turned off the light, allowed his eyes to adjust once more to the night, and then started up the path.

It led steadily upward, curling around the back of the monastery into Monte Viorna. Then, quite suddenly, the path ended along with the forest, and he was in an open field, with a trail running perpendicular in both directions to the path he had followed.
Shit
, the lieutenant thought.
Which way now
? His own instinct was to keep to the woods. The maquis would want cover. Both they and their prisoner would be too exposed on the tableland opening ahead of him and to his right. He turned left and continued up the mountain until he was well into the trees again. Then he took a deep breath and flicked on the light, prepared to turn it off and dive for cover.
The time it takes three men to light a cigarette is the time it takes to aim
, he thought. He flashed the beam along the path, feverishly looking for further signs of use, and mentally extending a match toward a cigarette. Let it catch, pass the match to the next man, let it catch. There were footprints here, too, and where the road curved suddenly— Tejada forgot about the three-match rule and trained the flashlight on the brambles by the side of the path, fascinated. They were wicked-looking spiked blackberries that had curved around a nearly dead tree branch that stuck out into the bend in the path a little above waist height, ready to treacherously catch at any unwary traveler. Suspended among them, sparkling in the faint electric light like dew in a spider’s web, was a single diamond, set in a tiny gold cross.

Tejada reached out and gently untangled the necklace from the brambles. The fragile chain had snapped, and it fell into his hand like a dead thing. He knew now that he was looking in the right place. Elena had been here, perhaps had stumbled carelessly from weariness and lost the chain. Or perhaps she had been dragged unconscious or—
unconscious
, the lieutenant decided, refusing to consider other options—and her captors had not noticed that her necklace had snagged here, betraying them. He pocketed the necklace and switched off the flashlight, uncomfortably sure that he had left it on for far too long.

He waited a few minutes for his eyes to readjust to the dark before going on, straining his ears for the sounds of anything unusual in the forest. There was no sound. He was about to start up the path again when he heard a faint moan. He froze.
It’s a sheep
, he thought.
They always sound human. The meadow I passed must be grazing grounds. It’s
only
a sheep
. The moan was repeated. He crept back down the path in the direction he had come. It would do no harm to check that it was in fact some lonely and wakeful sheep.

He turned off the path before he reached open ground, and worked his way through the woods. There were definitely dark shapes outlined against the meadow that were the right size for sheep. There was also—he sniffed the air—the smell of wood smoke. Someone human had built a fire nearby. The clouds were clearing, leaving a faint glimpse of the moon. He could see a house silhouetted against the meadow. That had to be where the smoke was coming from. Tejada took a deep breath.
It isn’t illegal to pasture sheep
, he reminded himself.
They could just be there with the spring flock
. He crept closer, expecting to hear the sharp bark of a guard dog. A lamb bleated, sounding eerily like a child crying, and the lieutenant relaxed. He had heard a sheep, and nothing more. A shape stepped out of the shadow of the house and became a man. Tejada felt his pulse speed up. The man was carrying a rifle.

Then Tejada heard the moan again, much closer, and his doubts vanished. No sheep made noise like that. He pushed away the thought that the only humans he had ever heard make noises like that had been under interrogation for several hours, and crept toward the house.
One outside
, he thought.
With a rifle
.
And at least one inside. Probably armed as well. I suppose a rifle’s better than a machine gun. I could take him out from here. But that would alert them, and if they decided to hurt her—hurt her
more
—they’d have too much time before I could get inside. I have to get them all together
.

The man with the rifle was watching the path along the woods, not the woods themselves. He paced back and forth and then walked into the shadow of the building. Tejada made his way to the edge of the trees, holding his breath. A match flared, and a moment later there was a pinpoint glow of a pipe. The sentry made no effort to cover the glow with his hand. He was inexperienced, or self-assured, or both.

There was another semihuman groan. Tejada was close enough now to hear it die away into quiet sobbing. This time he recognized his wife’s voice definitely, distorted as it was by agony. For a moment he was glad she was still alive and conscious. Then his stomach knotted with rage at the indifference of the smoking sentry.
They’ll get back everything they’ve done to her
, he promised himself fiercely.

The man walked restlessly out toward the perimeter of the woods again. Tejada forced himself to wait until the sentry turned his back. Then he sprang forward. His plan was to yoke the sentry’s neck with one arm, and subdue his arms with the other. If the lieutenant had been less exhausted and fearful and furious it might have worked. It might have worked anyway if his cloak had not billowed behind him in the breeze at the last second, slowing him down infinitesimally and making a soft flapping noise that alerted his prey.

The sentry spun around just as Tejada brushed his shoulder. The lieutenant realized his miscalculation at the last minute and was able to knock the rifle out of his opponent’s hands, but before he could draw his own weapon the watchman’s fingers closed on his throat. Tejada fought desperately to break his enemy’s grip, cursing himself for missing his opportunity to catch his foe off guard, for coming without reinforcements, and for failing Elena at the last minute. He managed to break the choke hold, but the sentry was an experienced wrestler, and he was fighting on his home ground. Tejada gained a hold for a moment, and then the sentry stepped sharply backward and sideways, and the lieutenant sprawled over a half-buried stone, losing his grip on his enemy and falling forward heavily. By the time he righted himself, a rifle was pointing at him. “Don’t move!”

Tejada knelt and brought his hands away from his sides, palms outward. He had lost his tricorn in the struggle.
He’ll be able to say he thought I was a bandit
, the lieutenant thought dully.
He didn’t see the uniform by moonlight and I didn’t say who I was
.
They won’t believe him, but he’ll be able to say it
. He heard Elena cry out again, and some inner core of self-control melted and gave way. “Stop hurting her,” he said hoarsely. “You won’t get the arms through her. She’s not a valuable enough hostage. I am. Take me instead. But stop hurting her.”

“And who are you?” The words were suspicious.

Tejada closed his eyes. “I’m the commander of the Guardia Civil post in Potes.” He choked. “Please. The Guardia will care more about one of their own officers than about her. She . . . she’s always been one of you anyway.”

“And where’s your partner, then?”

“I came alone.”

There was a pause of several heartbeats. Then the sentry said quietly, “Stand up, and keep your hands where I can see them.” Tejada obeyed. “Walk forward,” the man said, backing toward the shelter of the house.

Tejada walked toward the house with him, reflecting bitterly that the maquis were considerably more competent in their handling of prisoners than his own men.
At least I’ll get to see her
, he thought, as the maquis reached the wall, never taking his eyes off his prisoner.
I’ll get to say good-bye to her
.

“Inside.” The sentry flattened himself against the wall, and swung the rifle sideways. “I’ll be behind you.”

Pride kept Tejada’s footsteps steady as he walked toward the door and opened it. Then he stopped. A small lantern flickered over the inside of a shepherd’s hut. A kettle was set on a fire in one corner. His wife was lying in a mass of blankets. A woman was kneeling beside her. No one else was there. Befuddled, Tejada looked for instruments of torture. Elena saw him and held out her hands. “Carlos!”

He dropped to his knees beside her, giving her one of his hands and wiping off the curls plastered against her forehead with the other, speaking so quickly he was almost incomprehensible. “Elenita-precious-darling-love-I’m-sorry-forgive-me-what-have-they-done-to-you-I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry.”