False Dawn (22 page)

The first gunshots blended with the breaking up of the ice and the moaning of chains as Thea struggled with the crowbar; Evan had not heard the sound of the attack when it began, or if he did, he paid it no attention. He did not want to think of the monks, or of what they were doing beyond the confines of the barn, but the disruption commanded his attention.

Then one of the Brothers outside the chapel gave a yell and rushed off, shouting for help to his fellows.

“What is it?” Thea asked, pausing in her sweat-drenched work.

“An attack,” Evan said slowly as he separated the sounds in his mind. “Pirates, I think. We knew they had to break through soon.”

“Then we
can
get out; we’ve got cover,” she said as she went back to work on the chains. “They won’t have time to burn us now.”

“Not if they see us, we can’t. Cox wants my head and you’re a Mute. Cox and Father Leonidas would agree about that: they both hate Mutes. Cox might be a little harsher, perhaps, but the end would be the same. And they’d flip a coin for the pleasure of cutting out my liver.” He leaned back and listened more attentively.

Thea stopped working once more to look at him, seeing him clearly now, seeing his face, thin under the tangle of his white-flecked sandy beard. His eyes were hollow and there was tightness about his mouth that told more than the short sound of his words of his misgiving. She could see the gray in his hair, sprinkled more heavily than when she had last studied him at Gold Lake. She could not see her own face, the scars and deep lines that had been drawn by the ordeal that was her life. There were streaks of white she had not seen growing in the dark shadows of her hair, and she had lost another tooth, making a total of three. The winter was over how, she realized. Her birthday had long passed, while they were at Quincy. She was twenty-eight years old. She felt fifty, and doubted she would ever feel young again.

“Get back to work, Thea,” he told her as gently as he could. “You haven’t got much time. They’re working on the gates.”

“And leave you to Cox or the monks?” she asked, pushing harder on the crowbar. “You’re crazy.”

“Never mind.” He watched her work as he listened to the fight growing louder. There were shouts and screams now, and the occasional splintering of wood, the rupture of gunshot and impact. Then there was the smell of smoke, drifting on the gentle wind.

With a shout Thea broke free of her leg bonds, shaking her feet and pulling the metal around her ankles open as the chain slithered through the double rings that kept the shackles closed.. “Look, Evan!” She drew the chain from the huge staple that held it to the wall. “We can use this for a weapon if we have to.”

“Take it with you,” he said, trying to keep the envy from his voice. To see her so close to escape tasted of gall to him, and as much as he hated the feeling, he knew he would rather have been the one to get free.

“Just wait. I think I can get out of this one easier,” she said as she started confidently to work on the upper chain that held her wrists.

The smell of smoke grew stronger, and from the chapel the bell began to ring, a wild desperate clanging in counterpoint to the determined snarl of engines and shouting. The Pirates were winning.

“How are you doing?” Evan asked when the smoke had begun to sting his eyes, making him cough. He knew that if he inhaled much more smoke he would be ill, and mucus would fill his nose, sinuses, and throat.

The sheep and cows were milling, almost mad, terrified by the smoke, the rattle of vans, and the crackle of the fire. They pushed against the walls of the barn, lowing and bleating, trying to break away from the threat around them.

“I’m going to make it,” Thea grunted through clenched teeth. Tears almost blinded her eyes, slowing her work and streaking her face with soot and grime. “So will you, Evan. We’ll both get away.” Using her whole body she leaned with all her strength against the chain and finally was rewarded by a small seam in the link. The smoke was growing thicker, and the animals battered at their enclosures, breaking boards with their hoofs and butting their braces until their heads streamed with blood.

“Quickly,” Evan told her as she worked. Two gunshots had come nearby and the monks were rushing from the chapel into the farmyard where their stores were gathered.

The metal groaned with Thea as she forced herself against the crowbar. Slowly, slowly the gap widened.

“Keep working, Thea,” he said as the smoke made him cough steadily. He felt a searing pain in his chest from the smoke, and thought that life was too sweet to end this way. He had come too far and endured too much.

The wood on the far side of the barn began to smolder.

“Got it!” she shouted as the link gave way at last. Then, sobbing from the effort and choking with smoke, she fell forward onto the hay.

“Get up! You’ve got to get up, Thea!” The urgency of his voice brought her to her feet faster than the sight of the first lick of flames on the wall. She drew the rough fabric of the habit across her face and stumbled toward the door of the barn. Evan watched her go with regret.

She flung open the door and stood back as the maddened animals bolted through it, their panic sending them into the mass of monks who were running for the storage sheds on the opposite side of the yard.

There was a great crashing roar as the bell tower collapsed, and with it came the shouts of the Pirates as the first of their modified vans rushed into the farmyard.

Thea grabbed a hatchet off the wall by the doom, then turned and scrambled back through the smoke to Evan. Without a word, she began to chop at the couplings that held his chains to the wall. The fire moved hungrily nearer and the heat became intense. She paused only to wipe her eyes, now reddening from the smoke.

“Thea,” he said as she hacked at the wall. “Thea, please, get out of here.” As he said it, he knew he meant it. The smoke was making him dizzy now and the heat prickled his skin. She paid no attention to him, continuing her steady efforts with single-minded purpose.

Outside, the Pirates started to run down the livestock that had bolted from the barn, and they slung the carcasses into the beds of their vans as they pursued the monks.

Most of the far end of the barn was on fire now, and the beams above them were charring, ready to kindle. Evan tried to push Thea away, hut she shouted at him. “You fool! Stay still!” She staggered back through the smoke and returned with her crowbar. Gasping for breath, she gave it to him, motioning him to help her.

They worked together against the metal as the fire ate its way nearer. At last she kicked the gouges she had made with the hatchet and part of his chain came away, a piece of the wood still attached to the cleat. With this break came fresh air, and it eased their breathing as it fed the fire in the rafters.

“Get ready,” Evan said to her, his head thrust to the melon-sized hole in the wall.

From the open door there came a yell. “Hey, Davidson! There’s a couple of monks in the barn! Tell Mackley!”

He flung up the barrier to the animals. “Here comes dinner!”

“How many monks?”

“Two, I think.” The Pirates were as close to the door as the flames would let them come. “That fire’s going great.”

“Let ’em fry!” was the answer and the Pirates hurried away toward the panicked animals and the sheds containing the monastery’s valuable food stores.

In a final effort Thea threw herself against the wood, shoving Evan and the crowbar hard on the weathered boards. The old wood splintered and came away in jagged sections. So great was the force of her attack that she tumbled through the hole into the slushy mush of the poultry yard. Dazed, she lay on her side, bewildered, her face inches from the melting snow that framed the muddy patch where a few bedraggled chickens clucked nervously. Her hands were scraped; the manacles had opened the sores in her ankles and wrists. For the first time she felt the pain of it as she pulled herself onto her knees and stared back at the barn, now half in flames and concealed by smoke and the dusty from the straw inside. She was out. She was free.

8

It was a moment before Evan realized what had happened. His head was muzzy and thick with smoke and the first resigned cloudings of approaching death. He stood at the edge of the hole, staring stupidly while Thea got to her feet and brushed at the stinking mud that plastered the habit she wore.

“Come on!” she shouted to him hoarsely, for the sound of the fire and the battle were growing louder. “We can get away now!”

A new burst of gunfire brought him to his senses. He grabbed the wood which held his chain and flung it through the hole, then clambered out himself. He skinned his knees as he almost fell into the small pond in the poultry yard.

The air was acrid with burning and the hot breath of the fire scorched them. Not far away, stretched on the ground, were the mangled bodies of three monks, caught from behind by Pirate shotguns. To the right, the remains of the chapel, now burning the last of its wood, sent occasional sparks into the air as it was consumed. Thea stood watching the fire, her face showing mottled fear that surprised Evan until he realized that she, just like himself, was seeing the way she would have died at the hands of the monks.

“We’d better hurry,” he said in a croak.

Shaking herself, she turned toward him, making an effort to shut out the sight of the flames around them. “You’re right,” she muttered, then cast about for the safest way out of the valley that would be least likely to attract the notice of the Pirates. “There’s a pasture through those gates. And then the stock trails run into the hills. That’s best.”

The Pirates had gathered around the monks they had captured and were busy tying them up, enjoying their victory.

“We’ll go that way, then.” Evan pulled at her sleeve. “We can follow the highway if we have to, but it would be better to find a route more hidden than the road. The Pirates won’t clean up here for a couple of days yet. They’re after the grain stored in the sheds and any metals and tools they can salvage.”

“The crowbar!” she cried out suddenly.

“Right here.” He lifted it, his chains clanging against it. Although he did not want to, he cast a look back over the wreckage that burned behind them: then, gathering up the chains, he started away from the barn toward the gate and the pasture beyond.

Thea stopped long enough to grab some rags drying on the fence, then came quickly after him, not taking energy and breath to speak as she fell in beside him.

“Don’t look back; they’re occupied for the time being,” he recommended, knowing what a temptation it was, and how good a target they made crossing the open pasture. “If they get us, they get us. Don’t make it easy. Don’t stop walking.”

She nodded and moved faster, gritting her teeth against the hurt that flared with every step she took.

That pasture stretched out like eternity, and the twenty minutes it took them to reach the safety of the red-needled pines felt to both of them like the journey of days. They were winded and weak; smell of burning followed them, and the sounds of slaughter mixed with the soft chorus of monks who had given up to their captors and were praying.

“
Inflammatus et accensus per te, Virgo, sim defensus…
”
drifted up to them as they at last found the welcome shadows of the trees where they could lose themselves.

The first rise of land that led over the next pass slowed them down, but in a matter of yards they were shoulder-deep in the scrub and could afford to stop for breath and take stock of themselves. Smoke from the burning monastery drifted above them and in the distance, barely competing with the rattle of the fight and flames that now consumed the barn where they had been captive, was the distant sound of the river and breaking ice.

“What have we got?” Evan asked when he had caught his breath and wiped his streaming face on his sleeve. He suspected his face was black with soot, and his hands were blistered, but neither of those things mattered because they had got out.

“You’ve got the crowbar and I’ve got some rags for our feet.” If she was discouraged, she did not show it.

“Anything else?”

She bit her lip, and some of her buoyancy deserted her. “That’s it.”

He nodded and found solace in her challenging eyes. “Then we’d better find some shelter.” He turned up the slope. “There’s a lot of snow around.”

“We’ve been in snow before,” she said easily, knowing that they did indeed need shelter, but not worried or beaten now. A snowbank was preferable to that barn. She remembered the years she had survived alone, with little but her wits to sustain her but her wits and her crossbow. She was not frightened. “Snow’s better than that,” she said, pointing back down the hill toward the ruined monastery.

“Yes,” he agreed before turning his back on it.

The going was hard, for although the snows were melting the ground was icy wet underfoot and the water quickly soaked through the rags that bound their feet. Just under the surface the earth was still frozen and there was little relief from either the hardness or the cold. Most of the trees had shed their burdens of snow and now swayed, whispering, in the north wind.

As they climbed, Thea watched the ground ahead of them and once brought them both to a halt.

“What is it?” Evan asked, seeing a soft indentation at the edge of a shaded snowbank.

“Bear,” Thea answered, her eyes dark with concern. “They must be coming out of hibernation now. They’re grouchy when they first wake up, and hungry. I hope there are deer around for them.”

He understood her implication, and at the moment he bitterly missed their lost crossbows. To have hungry bear about was a serious danger, and to be unable to hunt brought hunger back to him with crushing rapidity. He remembered then that they had had no food that day. The monks had not fed them well after he had smashed Brother Roccus’ head with his chain. No wonder they were both tiring rapidly.

“We’d better keep moving,” she said as he paused, deep in thought.

“Keep your eye out for dried wood.” He gave her what he hoped was a friendly smile. “We’ll need some protection, and the monks did all right with their walking staves. God, I wish we had matches.”