Ashes of the Earth (44 page)

Bjorn
found him at one of the open windows, looking through the vines.

"She's
not in her blankets," he announced. "She didn't eat
tonight."

Hadrian
puzzled at the tone in the policeman's voice. It was not anger, but a
mix of worry and disappointment. "Nelly needs time to herself,"
he said. "As much as she needs food."

Bjorn
stepped to his side and gazed out the window. "She reminds me of
my grandmother."

Hadrian
paused, not certain he had heard right. "You remember your
grandmother?"

"My
mother had a photograph she had brought with her, from before. A
strong face like Nelly's, with eyes like burning wicks. My mother
would speak of her so often she was like another member of our
household when I was young. My grandmother was a bold woman. Lived
alone and had a dory she rowed out in the sea to catch codfish.
Always made sure people did the right thing. They said she was the
conscience of the village."

It
was an extraordinary speech for the big Norger, the most words
Hadrian had ever heard him string together at one time. Nelly was no
longer his prisoner. "You're right, Bjorn. She is the conscience
of the village."

"Sometimes
I watch her when she sleeps. It makes me ..." Bjorn struggled
for words. "It makes me feel peaceful. But when she is awake I
think sometimes she is afraid of me." There was chagrin in his
voice now.

"She
just doesn't know you well enough," Hadrian ventured, realizing
that perhaps he too did not know the Norger well enough.

"She
would listen to you. This is a place of death. Not safe."

At
last Hadrian grasped the plea in Bjorn's words. "Of course. I
will find her," he replied. His companion gave a relieved nod.
He refused to take the shotgun from him, as if Hadrian would have
greater need of it.

Hadrian
grew more concerned as he searched the open rooms of the floor. He
found a gap in the vines over one of the shattered windows and leaned
out over the town. The moon was bright now, bright enough to show a
narrow track through the thickets that once had been streets, bright
enough to cast a silvery pall on the statue that sat atop an
outcropping in the middle of town.

He
heard, but did not see, the creatures that stalked him as he moved
along the trail, cursing himself for not bringing a lantern. When he
reached the broad clearing, he saw it was strewn with outcroppings of
various sizes, none more than a dozen feet tall. As he climbed onto
the one he had seen, it gave a strangely hollow sound. He pushed his
foot through the loose snow and matted vegetation to a metal surface.
A truck. The mounds were all vehicles abandoned in the town square,
covered with two decades of plant life.

Nelly
did not seem to notice him. She was staring down the ruined street,
the moonlight washing her face. She had been weeping.

He
froze as he bent to sit beside her, then quickly swung the shotgun
up. A few feet below her sat a black wolf, gazing intently at her.
She pushed the gun barrel down. "He's been here for an hour,"
she said. "He likes my singing."

Hadrian
knelt beside her, keeping the gun ready. The animal was huge, larger
than any wolf he had ever seen. He opened his mouth to warn Nelly
that the rest of the pack must be close by when she suddenly began to
sing.

There
was no stopping her once she had started one of her chants. Indeed,
after a few moments, he had no interest in doing so. Her deep,
lilting song-prayer seemed to wind out into the world like one of the
vines, wrapping its tendrils around the heart of any creature that
listened. Hadrian stared at her. The wolf stared at her. More tears
began streaming down her cheeks but still she sang. Her breath hung
about her in the cold air, like a halo in the moonlight.

Hadrian
thought he heard segments of old folk ballads, of rock songs, of
earlier dance tunes and hymns, all woven into one rich tapestry of
sound. She seemed to sing impossibly long between breaths. An owl
landed on a nearby tree, turning its horned ears toward her.

When
she finally stopped, the silence was like a sacred thing, the time
between priests in a cathedral. Hadrian wanted to throw his gun away.

"How
often have you come out into the lands?" he asked after a long
time.

"Never.
I knew I couldn't bear it." Hadrian recalled her brooding
silences on the iceboat, on their trek along the trail. She had been
harboring her fear, not of the jackals, not of the wild animals, but
of the ruins she knew she would finally have to encounter. "I
still can't bear it, Hadrian. Ever since we arrived there's been a
terrible weight pushing down on me."

The
wolf below gave a low utterance that hinted of impatience.

Melancholy
overtook her face. "It's his world now," she said
peacefully. "I won't come back again."

Suddenly
Hadrian understood her song. It had been a eulogy for the lost world,
a farewell that had taken all these years to give.

"We
should go back," he suggested. "Bjorn was worried."

"A
sweet boy. I can see it in his eyes. I can see his pain. When you
grow into an ox everyone expects you to be an ox, even if you are
something else inside."

Restless,
hungry cries came from the brush. The wolf uttered a low growl of
rebuke and the sounds stopped.

"We
should go back," Hadrian repeated.

"I
can't. Go. You need your sleep. I am not done."

"Then
I am not done."

Nelly
smiled again and studied him as if for the first time. "Put down
your gun, Hadrian," she said softly, then gestured him to rise
so she could reposition him. They sat back to back, legs folded under
them, and she began a new litany. After the first few minutes he
found himself making humming sounds, as if something inside him
anticipated the rhythm, had somehow recognized the song. He lost all
track of time. He realized other sounds were coming out of his
throat, sounds that came out as if of their own volition and somehow
harmonized with those of Nelly, sounds that sometimes continued
during the long minutes when her song choked away and she sobbed in
pain. When he looked down, two smaller wolves were watching from his
side of the old truck.

There
was a blush of dawn in the east when Hadrian finally turned and, with
a hand on her knee, quieted her. The wolves were gone.

"We
had a whole world once, didn't we," she said, her voice quite
hoarse. "Now everything goes dark."

"Not
everything, not for us," he said as he reached out and helped
her stand. "Surely you don't forget."

"Forget?"

"You
and me and Jonah. We are the ones who rage against the dying of the
light."

CHAPTER
Fifteen

They
were thirty
yards
from the entrance to the factory when an arrow hit a boulder beside
them and exploded. A tall muscular figure emerged from the shadows,
nocking another arrow in his bow. Sebastian said nothing as he
circled the group, studying them with more amusement than alarm. Jori
and Hadrian were in the front, hands tied with their shoelaces, Nelly
behind them holding Jori's gun, Dax in the rear holding the baseball
bat they had found in the garage.

"I
was sad when I heard you had died," the First Blood said to
Hadrian.

"Me
too. I wanted to stay alive to get even with you for drugging my
drink."

Sebastian
grinned. "You needed the sleep."

Somehow
Hadrian found it hard to resent the man. "I didn't think we'd be
greeted with artillery," he said, pointing to the blackened
rock.

Sebastian
extracted one of the strange arrows from his quiver. "Something
Kinzler devised. Good for scaring away wolves. They're thick as flies
around here." The arrow ended not with a point but with a
shotgun shell mounted in a sleeve. "The shell slides back when
it strikes, slams into a pin that fires it. Shenker calls it a toy.
You can't go in there," he added, as Nelly pushed Hadrian toward
the entrance.

Nelly
straightened up and spoke with an unusual tone of authority. "Of
course I can. You know damned well I'm a member of the Tribunal of
New Jerusalem, Sebastian. One of your many brothers cuts my firewood.
I have important messages for Kinzler. These two followed me after I
escaped from Carthage, so the boy and I got the jump on them. They
need to be interrogated." She put her hand on the door handle.

Sebastian
put his foot against the door and fixed her with a solemn gaze. "I
heard you last night," he said to Nelly. "I didn't believe
my brother Nathaniel when he told me about your singing. He said the
dead from the old world spoke through you." There was an odd
tone of invitation in his voice.

"Who
I speak for today is the Tribunal. Where is Kinzler?"

"You
missed him. They're taking a shipment back for Sauger. The biggest
one yet, the one they've been waiting for. Kinzler left yesterday, to
rendezvous with Fletcher at the harbor."

"Then
you will take my prisoners and let me rest before I set out to catch
up with him."

Sebastian's
skeptical gaze shifted back and forth from Hadrian to Nelly, then
rested on Jori. "You still a policeman?"

"I
am sworn to the service of Carthage," she replied defiantly.

Sebastian
grinned. "I like her," he said to Hadrian, then pointed to
the sword-knife in Hadrian's belt. He silently handed it to him.

Nelly
did not resist when he reached out and took the gun from her hand.
Sebastian handed his bow and quiver to Dax, trading for the bat.
"Guard the door, boy," he said, and pulled the door open.
As he stepped inside, Hadrian resisted the temptation to look about
for Bjorn, waiting in the rocks.

Lifting
a lantern from a table by the wall, Sebastian directed them down a
long, descending corridor whose aged carpet was caked with mud and
mildew. They walked past several dimly lit chambers packed with large
stainless steel tanks connected to a web of pipes, in the last of
which a man in a tattered lab coat was leaning over a vat. Hadrian
heard the low hiss of steam running through pipes overhead. He
remembered the smoke he had seen the day before.

Some
elements of the factory were frozen in time. Safety stations with
fire extinguishers and fire axes were built in the walls, covered
with the grime of many years. A bulletin board displayed notes for a
church social, a bake sale, a company picnic. A faded banner boasted
we are proudly saving lives all over the world.

At
last they reached a brightly lit conference room, one of the chambers
under a skylight.

"Idiot!"
a man shouted from the shadows at Sebastian as they entered. "No
one is ever allowed to—" Shenker's words died away as he
stepped forward and recognized the intruders.

"You'll
be pleased to know I escaped again," Nelly declared.

Shenker's
face showed no pleasure at all. "Of course."

"An
impressive facility," Hadrian observed. "We never would
have imagined one of the old factories could be rehabilitated."

The
scar on Shenker's cheek moved up and down as he clenched his jaw,
looking from Nelly to Hadrian. He gave a grunt of satisfaction as he
spotted the sword-knife at Sebastian's waist and pulled it away. "I
thought I'd never see this again. A gift from my one-eyed friend."
He looked back at Hadrian and replied. "Adapted. Only a small
part of the equipment was still usable. But it was enough."

"The
miracle," Hadrian suggested, "is that you manage to make
chemicals that don't kill a person outright."

Shenker
offered a lightless grin. "There were startup difficulties. We
don't have the ability to run lab simulations. There had to be
experimentation."

"Human
trials, you mean."

"Salvage
crews are accustomed to high attrition in their ranks."

Hadrian
considered Shenker's cold announcement. "St. Gabriel salvagers
being sacrificed by exile scientists. Interesting way to build an
alliance."

"Not
Sauger's people," Shenker shot back.

Sebastian
went very still. The only thing that moved were his eyes, slowly
shifting from Hadrian to Shenker. The salvage teams had been largely
composed of First Bloods.