Look Behind You (The Order of the Silver Star) (11 page)

“There is actual topography around here somewhere,” he noted as they got going again.

“Not my point, and you know it.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying, this isn’t the Panhandle.”

“This map shows no topography that would prevent there from being a road that goes directly from Dunkirk to Lillers.” The way Martinez pronounced the latter town name was almost certainly wrong, but Matt didn’t think he could do better himself. “Is there such a road?”

They jumped a fence and chorused, “Of course not.”

“Blame the aristocracy, I guess,” Matt continued.

“Usually a good guess.”

Grouching about roads aside, the two of them had fallen into a fairly good routine by the end of the first day. Every mile or so, they’d lob a sachet of spell-breaking herbs (Matt refused to call it a
hex bag
) as far as they could to either side of their route; every five miles, or sooner if needed, they’d stop to build a cleansing fire with sage and some other herbs and do a little song and dance that would counter most generic anti-personnel spells. Martinez was part Apache, so he did the chanting, but he insisted that Matt join him in the dance part. Matt felt silly but complied. Out here in the middle of mostly nowhere, there was no one around to laugh at him. And when they came to a town, Martinez would circle the outskirts chanting counter-spells and placing bags, and Matt would ride through town to see if more specific measures were needed.

That, at least, was the plan. And it was a good plan, from what Matt could tell; although he could tell something was off in the places they were riding through, he wasn’t feeling any ill effects beyond occasional lightheadedness that was generally eased by the sage smoke. That one symptom, which grew more frequent as the other Rangers fanned out but never rose to even the intensity of a one-beer buzz, was enough to convince him that they were actually doing some good. Still, he was tempted to assume that the entire ride to Paris would be pretty much a cakewalk….

…until just after sunset, when he pitched a bag and it struck something invisible in midair and burst into flames.

The horses spooked and ran, and the riders hunkered low and let them have their heads. Martinez chanted counter-spells in Apache and Comanche while Matt prayed in German and kept an eye out for corporeal attacks. Finally, one or the other of them said the right thing, because the sense of danger snapped like a cord and the horses slowed down and stopped.

“Um,” said Martinez once he’d caught his breath. “Maybe we’d better camp here.”

Here
was the middle of a wheat field, totally exposed with neither trees nor houses in sight. But Matt’s horse kept twitching her ears forward and laying them back, and he didn’t feel any easier about trying to keep moving than she did. So he nodded. “Yeah. Reckon we’d better.”

The farmer had left a pile of rocks about a hundred feet from where they’d stopped, so while Matt started clearing a space to start a small fire, Martinez started bringing rocks over to set around both the fire and the campsite. The horses stayed put within the larger circle of rocks, and the men put sage on the fire and chalked wards on the border rocks. They didn’t talk much during the meal beyond deciding who should take which watch, and even when Matt rested, he didn’t sleep deeply. They didn’t see or hear anything all night—but first light revealed a swath outside the campsite about fifty feet wide that was as brown and dry as if it had been transplanted from Castell in mid-August when it hadn’t rained since March.

“
Verdammt noch mal
,” Matt breathed.

It took a moment longer for Martinez to find his voice. “I haven’t seen anything like this since… since Abuelita told me the neighbor whose lawn was so brown was a
brujo
.”
19
He ran a hand over his mouth. “His house burned down, and he didn’t make it out. They didn’t know what caused it, but Abuelita… sh-she always figured he called up the wrong demon.”

Matt’s fists clenched seemingly on their own. “Any demon is the wrong demon. If that’s the kind of power Hitler wants, I say we bring it down on his head.”

Martinez blinked. “What—how?”

“Draw the enemy’s fire. They want us; let them follow us to Berlin and wreak their havoc where it’s deserved, in God’s name.”

That pronouncement was met by a rumble of thunder.

Martinez took a deep breath and let it out again. “Can you eat and ride?”

Matt nodded.

“All right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

They added more herbs to the fire and did their song and dance, finishing just before the rain bore down on them.
Smoke from the fire swirled around them as they rode away… but as Matt glanced back, he thought he could see some of the parched wheat plants beginning to green up again.

#####

1
9
Male witch

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*****

Supernatural trouble remained plentiful after that, but encounters with humans were mercifully few and relatively peaceful. There were occasional chases when farmers caught sight of them trespassing, but somehow, even in town, Matt seemed to be largely invisible despite looking like he’d just ridden out of a Roy Rogers movie.

The first real trouble they had with humans came toward the end of the third day. Clearing Moreuil and Morisel had taken up most of the day, leaving them once more in the middle of nowhere with night approaching, and they were debating where to camp when Martinez spotted a farmhouse about half a mile south. The straight line they were following would take them right past the house anyway, so they decided to chance getting at least a meal there.

Matt’s skin began to prickle and itch the closer they got, and his horse became restless. One reason why became apparent as they came within shouting distance of the house. “Place sits at a crossroads,” he noted aloud. “Wonder if—”

But he never got to finish the thought, because a young man rushed out of the nearby field to attack them—without weapons and with bleeding scratches on his face and arms, howling like a madman. It took five shots, including a rifle shot to the head, to bring him down. And no sooner had the kid died than an intense wave of dizziness and nausea swept over Matt, and he had to brace himself on his saddle horn.

“Schneider?” Martinez asked in alarm.

Matt shook his head. “Something’s wrong,” he wheezed. “Something’s here… it’s bad….”

“Better get you under cover, then, to the house.”

But the house would provide no easy refuge. Not being one for horror fiction, Matt didn’t know if what he was seeing came from
White Zombie
or the likes of H. P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith. All he did know was that the three remaining members of the family who owned the house were so far out of their right minds as to no longer seem human, that they were bent on tearing him and Martinez limb from limb, and that killing them—while both necessary and merciful—seemed to strengthen whatever evil influence was hanging around the place. Once the onslaught was over, Martinez wasted no time in building a fire in the middle of the crossroads and doing the song and dance, which helped to clear Matt’s head but didn’t drive back the problem as readily as it normally did.

Once Matt declared himself well enough to work again, Martinez sighed. “We’ve got to get these bodies buried, but if this is some kind of curse placed locally….”

“We can build a smudge out back,” Matt suggested. “That would keep the sage smoke going long enough for me to get the graves dug while you look for the source of the curse.”

Martinez nodded slowly. “That could work.”

So they built the smudge with damp wood that would smolder nicely, and Matt set to work on digging the graves while Martinez searched the house for hex bags. He found one and burned it, but the oppressive sense of evil only lessened. Adding three more fires roughly equidistant from the intersection helped some as well. After those precautions were taken, Martinez helped Matt with the burial and tried digging around the crossroads, uncovering and then burning a box of a type used to summon a crossroads demon. Even that wasn’t enough to resolve the problem, however, and in the end, it took two more Apache rituals plus one Kiowa ritual done at the stroke of midnight to break the enchantments altogether.

“That was crazy,” Matt sighed as they finally went into the house for a long-delayed supper.

“And also sloppy,” Martinez agreed. “Five different curses all meeting in one place.”

“Mutually incompatible curses, at that. No wonder the poor people here lost their minds.”

“Think they did that on purpose?”

“No, you’re probably right. Hitler’s warlocks didn’t think things through, didn’t catch the overlap. And what’s worse, they probably wouldn’t have cared if they had known.”

Martinez shook his head. “Well, may the Lord grant those people rest and mercy and quick release from Purgatory.”

“Amen. Hey, as late as it is, what would you say to just putting up wards for the night and getting some shut-eye?”

“
Amigo
, that sounds like a plan.”

So they did, and again the night passed without incident. But as careful as Matt was to douse the cooking fire after breakfast, they had gone scarcely a quarter mile onward when he glanced back and saw the farmhouse entirely engulfed in flames.

*****

Because of the size of the Creil area, Matt actually parted from Martinez after lunch the fourth day at the outskirts of Villiers St. Paul. He was a little nervous about trying to continue on his own, but so far the plan of attack was working well enough in most places, and towns seemed mostly free of the kind of heavy-duty spell
-work that would prevent him from doing what he needed to do. Plus, it was only another eighteen miles or so on to his rendezvous point for meeting Hercules.

Still, as Matt rode into Creil, he found his skin prickling in a way that signaled far more earthly danger. And as he turned the corner into a shopping district, he saw why. A gang of young men was throwing rocks at the windows of a particular shop, yelling what were probably obscenities and occasionally letting a rock miss the shop and hit its elderly female owner. A bunch of other civilians had gathered around to gawk and add their own insults to the poor woman’s injuries. No other police, French or German, appeared to be nearby.

There were seven kids. There was one of Matt. One riot, one Ranger. He drew his sidearms and charged.

For the first time, people looked genuinely startled to see Matt bearing down on them. One of the kids started to throw a rock at him, but Matt shot it out of the kid’s hand. That scattered some of the crowd, but the rest didn’t seem inclined to disperse. So when he reached the shop, he jumped out of the saddle and let his horse plow into the crowd while he put himself between the old woman and her assailants. The kids were stupid enough to try to rush him, but he beat them back without firing another shot. Finally, one ran off with a broken nose, another with several broken teeth, a third with a probable broken rib, and the rest with assorted bumps and bruises and the sense not to test him again.

“
Na, also
,” he said to the remaining crowd, “
was is denn hier los?
”
20

There was a stunned pause before a man near the front of the group replied in halting German, “Why are you protecting that woman? You are German. She is a Jew.”

The trembling, sniffling old lady tottered around to where Matt could see her in his peripheral vision. Sure enough, he could see a flash of yellow felt on the left side of her navy blouse.

Matt had been mad enough when the violence had seemed random. Knowing the reason for it only made him angrier. “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he stated in German, “I’m wearing a star of my own.” And he holstered his left-hand gun and flashed his badge.

The crowd fell back a few steps with a loud collective gasp. Murmurs of “
Un Ranger Texan!
” went up, along with a lot of other French Matt couldn’t understand. But most of them looked like they were scared spitless.

Matt decided to try one of the few French phrases he did know. “
Allez-vous-en!
”
21

And it worked. The crowd broke up.

As his horse returned, Matt holstered his other gun and turned to the old lady, touching the brim of his hat to her. “
Parlez-vous Anglais, madame?
”

Sniffling, she nodded. “
Oui, un petit peu
.”
22

“Do you have somewhere you can go? You’re not safe here.”

She shook her head. “
Non
. I am alone.”

He sighed, but before he could figure out what to do for the poor lady, another woman who’d been at the edge of the crowd walked over to them. She was cute, petite, and dark-haired, but as she seemed to be wearing the latest red-and-black thing from Paris, she hadn’t stood out much. “Excuse me, Ranger,” she said quietly—in English with an American accent. “I believe we have a mutual friend, by the name of Hercules.”