Ashes of the Earth (46 page)

"Most
of the salvage teams," Sebastian added, "get paid in credit
at Sauger's tavern. Liquor, food, and women." He quieted a
moment, seeming to consider Hadrian's words. "I don't know who
helped Shenker kill your friend Jonah, if that's what you mean to
ask. Sometimes there'd be meetings with people from Carthage, but
usually they were far out on the lake. Two or three of the steamers
would meet and then new orders would be issued. Men would be needed
to help unload grain. We would be sent to Carthage to pick up
supplies to take by horseback to the factory."

"Where
in Carthage?"

"A
horse farm south of town. A wagon would meet us at the docks and
drive us there. A big place, with racehorses. Sometimes the owner
would be there, but we weren't ever in his company."

"You
mean the Dutchman?"

"Not
him. He's dead. Some of the fishermen still laugh about how he died.
The new owner. From Carthage."

Hadrian
leaned toward the First Blood. Sebastian was speaking about the last
piece of the puzzle, the keystone, the invisible link to the
government. "You've never seen him?"

"Never.
Comes at night, in a black carriage, stays at the big house and has
some of those jackals for guards. In Carthage they always do the
security. On this side Sauger likes us to do it. A group from my
tribe is waiting at New Jerusalem, to escort Kinzler's big shipment."

"Sauger
relies on your people. Your mother, you say, is building a new place
in the forest."

Sebastian
stared at him. "I don't understand."

"You
could be a founder, Sebastian. You and your mother and your surviving
brothers. Tell your people what Sauger is doing. Destroying children
in Carthage. Driving us to starvation. You could cut him off from his
salvage. If he sends others, you would know how to stop them. We
don't need more salvage in this world. We need to be our own people.
You could have good friends in Carthage. There's an old priest I
would like to introduce to your mother."

An
owl called from the forest behind them. They listened to another
answer, far below.

"When
I was young," Sebastian said, a strange ache in his voice now,
"my grandfather used to sit at a campfire and burn fragrant
wood. Cedar, apple when he could get it. He said the smoke attracted
the spirits of our ancestors and their old gods. Once I asked if I
could stay with him, to speak with them, and he said I was too young
to learn all the words that must be spoken, that he would teach them
to me when I was older. I left but hid in the trees. He sat there for
hours, waving his hands in the smoke, calling out old words, sacred
words. We have had ancestors in these lands for thousands of years he
told me once, and their spirits were close by when we needed them.
But all those who knew the words for summoning died in the shifting.
Now after so many years those spirits think we have forgotten them.
All I can do is borrow my mother's spirits now," he said,
raising the rosary.

"I
think the words are waiting in your heart," Hadrian replied. "I
think when you find them the spirits will hear."

In
the morning Sebastian was gone.

The
ice freighter
bound
for St. Gabriel still sat in the New Jerusalem harbor when they
arrived, small kegs that appeared to be the last of her cargo being
loaded from sleds. With the compound burnt down, the drugs inside the
kegs would have to be refined in St. Gabriel, but once they were,
there would be enough for hundreds of doses. As the pilot knocked ice
from the rigging, Hadrian counted at least eight men on or around the
boat and not for the first time that day wished he could have
persuaded Sebastian to stay with them after reaching the shoreline.
At least two of the crewmen had rifles slung on their shoulders. He
paused and surveyed the shore, recalling that there were supposed to
be even more guards. Sebastian had said his tribesmen were to escort
the shipment to St. Gabriel, but they were nowhere to be seen. He
looked back at the warriors in his own party. Jori had her pistol,
Bjorn the shotgun, and Dax the bow and quiver given to him by
Sebastian.

Hadrian
surveyed the harbor from the edge of the woods, desperately seeking
some means for blocking the boat. A team of horses with an empty
sledge stood by the lake. A small, sleek ice bullet was tethered to
the dock. A large brazier burnt at the foot of the dock, with half a
dozen children gathered around it, watching the activity at the large
vessel.

As
he turned to tell his companions to dismount so they could approach
more stealthily, a buckskin mare charged past him.

"Nelly!"
Hadrian's cry was futile. She had no intention of stopping, or of
being inconspicuous. When her horse balked at stepping onto the ice,
she flung herself off and began running to the freighter.

"They'll
kill her!" Hadrian shouted, and kicked his horse forward as
Nelly slipped, falling, and two of the crewmen intercepted her.

It
was Bjorn who reached the ice first, leaping off his horse and
unslinging his shotgun as he ran. As her captors dragged Nelly onto
the boat and other men began leaning on the struts, sliding the
vessel into the wind, Bjorn began shooting. His shots went wild. He
emptied the gun and tossed it aside, then charged, resembling nothing
so much as a Viking berserker. Hadrian watched with sudden hope as
Nelly struggled free. But she did not jump off the boat, she leapt
onto a diminutive figure sitting in the cockpit, draped in furs. As
she knocked the man's hat away Hadrian recognized his gold-rimmed
glasses and narrow pockmarked face. Instead of fighting back Kinzler
began gesturing frantically for the crewmen to drag her away. Hadrian
could not hear the questions she fired at the chairman, but her
enraged tone was unmistakable. Kinzler had no interest in her words.
He had his precious cargo on board and was destined to conquer
Carthage with it. He slapped Nelly and shook his head as a sailor
roughly pulled her away.

The
sail began to swell as the freighter caught the wind and turned
north. Bjorn continued yelling, pulling down a crewmember who was
scrambling on board. With a mighty leap from the back of the downed
man he caught the railing and pulled himself onto the deck, where two
sailors began hammering him with the poles used to steady the ship.
One of the men flew through the air, landing unconscious on the ice
as Bjorn made his way toward Nelly. But suddenly two more men
appeared, one slamming a heavy club into the Norger's arm. Bjorn
collapsed and an instant later was tossed overboard.

For
a moment the man at the tiller turned toward Hadrian and Jori, now at
his side, showing a scarred, sneering face partly covered with an eye
patch.

"Give
her up, Fletcher!" Hadrian demanded.

The
captain offered a mock salute. "Another thousand in bounty!"
he retorted, and seemed about to turn over the tiller to a crew
member when he was abruptly thrown off balance, stumbling onto one
knee.

Jori
gasped in surprise. Hadrian followed her gaze to Bjorn, standing now,
with one arm limp at his side but the other arm wrapped around the
trailing tether line. He had pulled the rope so hard he'd jerked the
bow of the boat off course, swiveling it on the glassy surface. As
they stood watching in disbelief, the Norger twisted, winding the
rope around his body and pulling once more, jerking the bow toward
him again.

"Give
her up!" Bjorn roared, then, incredibly, began stepping
backward, pulling the ship with him.

It
had been a long time since Hadrian had heard a rifle, and at first he
didn't recognize the flat crack as it echoed off the ice. But then he
saw Bjorn's leg jerk, saw the blood spurt from it. He tried to run to
the Norger but his sudden movement caused him to slip and fall. As he
struggled to get to his feet everything seemed to move in slow
motion, in the freeze-stop movement of old film. The rifle spoke
again and Bjorn's body jerked as a bullet struck his belly. The boat
began to turn back with the wind. The rifle cracked once more and his
second leg erupted with blood. As Bjorn collapsed the boat began
pulling him forward.

Hadrian
ran, slipping and sliding, but reached the bleeding man too late.
Bjorn held out a bloody hand and Hadrian leapt for it, grabbing it,
then just as suddenly lost his grip. Bjorn fixed him with a desolate
grin. "Don't let them take her," he said. Then he was gone.
The freighter found her wind and slipped away with a burst of speed,
dragging the Norger behind.

No
one spoke. He stared at the speeding boat and then looked down at his
bloodstained hand.

It
was Jori who finally stirred. "So close," she said as she
steadied Hadrian. "I thought Bjorn was shooting at the men at
first."

"What
do you mean?"

"I
thought he was aiming for the crew and missing. But he hit what he
was aiming at, every time."

"I
don't understand."

"The
strut. He was shooting at the center of the rear strut, trying to
collapse it. I think he almost succeeded. I saw splinters flying."

Hadrian
looked up with a dazed expression.

"They're
fast," she said, then pointed at the little bullet boat. "But
we can go faster. They're staying close to shore, worried about the
fog interfering with navigation. They won't catch the full wind.
Farther out we can go much faster. We can sail out and then back at
them. If we can ram the weakened strut they'll lose the outrigger."

Hadrian
and Dax began running toward the ice bullet.

Hadrian
knew enough
to
stay out of Jori's way as she piloted the sleek little vessel. He
kept his arm around Dax and leaned as far back in the single
passenger seat as he could. Ice crystals thrown from the runners
stung his face. The wind tore at the rigging until it seemed certain
it would rip away, and still the boat increased speed. He recalled a
lecture years earlier, when the first ice bullets had been built, in
which one of his math teachers had used diagrams and formulas to
demonstrate why the bullets could travel at least five times the
speed of the wind. The canvas on such small iceboats did not function
so much as a sail as a vertical wing.

He
lost all sense of time as they hurtled out onto the lake, watching
the clouds soar overhead, keeping an uneasy eye on the fog banks that
crept along the shore. Surely it would be impossible to calculate the
navigation and speed precisely enough, surely they were more likely
to get lost in fog or hit one of the patches of thin black ice that
appeared unexpectedly on the lake and sink. But then he saw the
savage determination in Jori's eyes. He pulled the blanket tighter
around the boy and listened to the song of their passage.

Then
abruptly Jori swung the rudder and the vessel veered toward shore.

"We've
got her!" she exclaimed, and Hadrian bent upward to see the big
mast, perhaps two miles away, no more than half a mile from the
shoreline. "Fletcher's staying even closer to the shore than I
expected, which means he's risking even more patches of thin ice."
As she adjusted the sail for still greater speed a new grimness
appeared on her features. "Behind the boat," she said. "The
bastards are still dragging Bjorn. What's left of him. Like a
trophy."

Moments
later Jori began to explain how Hadrian and Dax would have to roll
off at her signal, how she would stay with the boat until the last
second to be certain the bullet collided with the strut.

Hadrian
wanted to protest, to point out the terrible odds against their
survival, to remind her that their enemy had rifles, that with his
near-frozen limbs he could not move as fast as she wanted. But he saw
the glint in her eyes and said nothing.

It
happened in an instant. He heard someone shout from the freighter as
the bullet boat was finally spotted. He felt Jori's shove as she
cried for him to roll off, saw the bullet careen wildly as it lost
the weight of its two passengers, saw her fight to stabilize it, then
in an explosion of wood splinters the two vessels collided.

The
freighter spun violently about, losing its wind, throwing two
startled crew members onto the ice. A shrill voice rose from the deck
of the ship. Kinzler, rising from a small mound of furs, flung curses
at Jori, at Fletcher, at Nelly and the crew. Fletcher began barking
orders for his men to pull away the remains of the bullet. The
freighter still stood upright. The bullet had slammed into its target
and cracked the strut, but it was still holding.

No
one seemed to notice as Nelly lowered herself to the ice and ran back
to the end of the tether rope. She froze as the bloody mess came into
focus. Hadrian prayed Bjorn had died quickly. Most of his clothing
had been peeled away by the ice. Much of his skin had been shredded
as well.