Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) (24 page)

Tarc sent his ghost out into the farmhouse. He was close enough now to tell men from women. There were eight men and six women in the small four room shack. Two of them were having sex.

It didn’t seem consensual.

Tarc sent his ghost over to the barn. It held three draft horses, eleven men, and seven women. One of the women lay unmoving, spread eagled in a stall. With horror, Tarc suspected she was tied into that position.

The farmhouse had small windows, probably made from re-melted ancient glass like many other homes had. As Tarc sat there watching and sensing, one of the men walked from window to window looking out through them. Presumably he was acting as some kind of sentry to make sure no one snuck up on them across the farmland.

Tarc considered shooting the man when he looked out the window toward the cornfield. The arrow would be deflected as it broke the glass, but with the man’s head just a few inches behind it, there was little doubt that the arrow would kill him.

Tarc cast out with his ghost in all directions at its farthest distance to make sure that no one was approaching to surprise him. There were no changes.

When he focused back on the house, he realized that one of the men inside had gotten up. He and one of the women crossed to the door of the farmhouse and opened it. At first Tarc couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but then they headed toward the outhouse and it became obvious.

The woman looked to be about twenty-five to thirty years old. She was pretty, or would have been if she didn’t appear so beaten down. She opened the door to the outhouse, stepped inside and reached back to try to pull the door shut behind her. However, the man held it open, denying her that small scrap of privacy.

Seething, Tarc drew an arrow and slowly nocked it, careful not to push the cornstalks around. Motion like that was all too likely to intrude into the man’s consciousness.

He waited. Best the woman be allowed to finish her business.

When a flash of motion in the door of the outhouse told Tarc the woman had finished and was about to leave, Tarc slowly drew his bowstring. As the woman stepped outside, Tarc loosed the arrow.

When the arrow crunched through the man’s skull he convulsed violently. The woman clapped her hands to her mouth and crouched, but didn’t start screaming. She looked frantically around.

Tarc parted the cornstalks and waved to her, then pointed at the woods in an effort to get her to run. Instead she ran to him, diving into the corn right next to him. Tarc urgently sent his ghost into the house to see whether the man peering out the windows was looking out on their side. Fortunately he was looking out a window on the opposite side of the house. Tarc turned to the woman, “Go!” He pointed, “Hide in the woods!”

The woman shook her head, “They’ve got my daughter in the barn. She’s only twelve.” The woman looked Tarc up and down and frowned, “
You’re
the archer?”

“The archer?” Tarc said, feeling a little confused. He wondered if the woman had heard of Daum. Daum had been called “the archer” for years.

A little impatiently, the woman said, “Yes. The one who shot all those horrible men in their tents last night. I’ve heard them talking about it. Someone shot them right through the walls of their tents.” Almost reverently she said, “Not a single arrow missed!” She looked over at the body lying near the outhouse. “You shot him in the head rather than the body, why?”

Tarc shrugged, “Shot in the body, even if he was dying himself, he might still give the alarm.”

She looked him over once more, “You must be awfully confident in your ability to hit what you shoot at.” After a pause, evidently having concluded that he
was
the archer, she continued, “How do you hit them inside their tents?”

Tarc merely shrugged and turned to look back at the house. After a bit he said, “One of them looks out this window every so often. What do you think they would do if I shot him?”

“
Shit
themselves.”

Tarc turned to look at her.

She stared him in the eye, “They’re already scared half to death. If you shoot one of them through the window, they’d really panic then.”

Tarc turned to look back towards the house. “Would they hurt the women?”

There was a long pause and Tarc finally turned to look at her. She was staring at the house with a troubled look that wavered between fear, hate, and desperation. Finally she said, “They might. Most likely… they’ll try to
use
the women, really they’re mostly girls, as hostages.” After a pause she whispered, “They’re
horrible
people. They’ve killed
all
the men and most of the women over twenty-five. If I wasn’t pretty I’d be dead too. My husband… my son…” She choked to a stop.

Tarc didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

After a while, she said in a tone that seethed with hate, “I say you
should
shoot him. Pretty soon they’re going to find Toler out by the outhouse with an arrow in his head. When that happens they’ll start using the girls as hostages anyway.”

Tarc studied the house. The man was peering out a window on the other side at present. He turned to the woman, “I’m Tarc.”

“Nyssa,” she said.

“When he looks out again, I’ll shoot him. Then we’ll run for the woods so they can’t negotiate with us.”

“But what about the rest of the girls?!”

“We’ll come back after dark.”

She blinked at him for a few moments then said, “Promise?”

Tarc nodded solemnly.

After a few more moments she said, “Okay. Her name’s Iris.”

“Whose name?”

“My daughter… The one you’ll be leaving there to
die
if you don’t come back.”

Tarc swallowed, but then gave another nod, “I’ll come back.”

“
We’ll
come back.”

Tarc nodded again. Then he slid out a few arrows and laid them in front of him, their butts held up over the leaves of some cornstalks so they’d be easily accessible. He nocked one on his bowstring as the man was crossing the room to the window facing Tarc.

Tarc drew.

He loosed as the man’s head moved towards the window.

As a face appeared behind it, the window exploded inward.

***

Johnson stood and stretched. He was bored with sitting in the house all day. When they’d first arrived, panicked over what had happened to them during the night, hunkering down on this farm had seemed like a very reasonable thing to do. But after the excitement of killing farmer Yates, his wife, son, and grandson, the day had stretched dully onward. Yates’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter had provided a little excitement, but now the men were second-guessing Johnson.

Hell, he was second-guessing himself.

They should’ve gone over and attacked the caravan, killing everyone in it.

They should have stayed at the farm they had and defended it.

They should have gone further than
this
farm if they were going to run.

Lt. Toler hadn’t had any brilliant ideas, though the chickenshit bastard was in the camp that thought they should’ve gone further away than Yates’ farm. Johnson worried that the men were going to think he was a wimp. If so, he’d be challenged. Then he worried that if he tried to make them attack whoever the son of a bitch was that had been shooting those arrows, they’d desert.

Being captain of the company had seemed easy when all he had to do was bitch about how stupid the current captain was.

Running the company himself was driving him crazy. He’d even contemplated just walking away and striking out on his own.

Johnson sighed. He’d dreamed for years about being the captain. He wasn’t about to give it up this fast.

He decided he needed something to distract himself. He leaned down and grabbed one of the girls by the elbow. Her eyes widened and she panicked, then started to struggle and thrash around. Johnson heaved her onto the bed, feeling powerful.

Johnson spun around at the sound of breaking glass. Behind him, Everts was flopping on the floor like a beached fish, an arrow through his head! Johnson’s bowels seized in a painful cramp as he stared at the window Everts had just peered out of.

Johnson stepped toward the window for a “look-see” of his own, but Mitchell got there first. Mitchell paused by the window, then darted his head out for a lightning quick look. “What do you see…” was all Johnson had managed to get out before Mitchell sagged sideways, dropped to his knees, then fell over backward. Another arrow was embedded in Mitchell’s forehead. “Holy shit!” Johnson heard himself say. “Stay away from the windows!” he shouted, then tried to think of a plan to deal with
this
problem.

Johnson looked around and saw a small mirror that had belonged to the farmer’s wife. He snatched it up and returned to the window. Holding the mirror by the corner, he lifted it up and peeked out the window using its reflection. Somebody was running through the cornfield away from the house. A minute later they burst out the other side of the cornfield, a man and a woman. Something looked familiar about the woman’s hair… “Dammit!” he said, looking around, “Where’s that bitch Toler’s been doing?” With dawning despair, he said, “Where the hell’s Toler?”

Sure as hell, when Johnson opened the front door a crack, he saw Toler sprawled by the outhouse, the now familiar fletching of an arrow sticking up out of his head. “Shit!” Johnson shut the door. Then he closed his eyes, hoping for inspiration. When he opened them, the four men still alive in the little farmhouse with him were staring at him with wide eyes. “Anybody got any ideas?” He asked heavily.

Three of them shook their heads. The fourth simply turned to stare almost catatonically at Everts’ body.

***

Daussie stumbled. When Waxman jerked on her leash she fell clumsily to the ground. Waxman turned and hauled her back to her feet, “Watch your step,” he growled.

Daussie said nothing, but once Waxman had his attention forward again, she loosened her grip on the small pinecone she’d picked up. Even with her hands bound together she could pick the seed scales apart. She placed different sizes of seeds in the webs between each of her fingers, then cast the pinecone aside.

Reaching out with her ghost senses, she felt Waxman’s left carotid artery. The seed between her index and long finger on her right hand would be best for that size artery she decided, but she’d keep all of them in case she dropped one.

Daussie kept hoping something would happen that would allow her to get close enough to Waxman to transport the seed into his artery. Surely he’d take a break at some point, Daussie was beginning to feel exhausted.

Waxman trod onward, seemingly indefatigable. Realizing that she had a better chance with just Waxman than she did if they reached the raiders’ camp, Daussie began to worry that she was going to have to try to do something to get herself close to him
now
. With revulsion, she considered trying to offer herself to him. Then with dismay, she realized she didn’t even really know how close she had to be to transport something the size of one of the seeds into something moving like Waxman. She knew that she could transport more in less time if the distance moved was short from her experiments that first night. She’d been able to transport many teaspoonfuls of stomach acid from just inside the stomach to just outside of it in a minute or so. She had no idea how long, or even whether it was possible to move a pinecone seed a foot or two. If she lived through this, she was going to have to spend more time learning about her own abilities.

Light filtering through the trees up ahead signified their approach to an opening in the woods. A meadow? Or could it be the farm where the raiders were staying?! Daussie cleared her throat to say something to Waxman. She
had
to get him to stop and somehow she would have to get close to him
before
they arrived.

Before she spoke, Waxman stopped so suddenly she bumped into him. Then he grabbed Daussie and jerked her around in front of him. Ahead, Daussie saw a man with a drawn bow, silhouetted against the light at the edge of the woods.

Tarc!

Waxman laid his blade against Daussie’s neck. “Throw the bow down, or I’ll kill her!”

Daussie trembled. She knew Tarc could put an arrow in Waxman’s eye right over her shoulder. With his accuracy he wouldn’t hold back from shooting just because she was in front of the man. But if Tarc loosed the arrow, would Waxman slit her throat before it arrived? She stilled her tremors and tried to remember the confidence and self-assurance she’d held recently.

Tarc eased the draw off his bow, lowered the point of his arrow, and tossed the bow aside.

Waxman said, “Now toss that big knife too.”

Tarc pulled the work knife out of the sheath on his thigh and tossed it as well.

Daussie reached her hands up towards Waxman’s arm, but he growled, “
Don’t, touch, my, arm!
” She stopped with her hands on her upper chest. She focused on the pinecone seed between her fingers and Waxman’s carotid. It was only a foot or two and close to her head. She should be able to make it jump that far pretty easily. She started trying, but Waxman was slowly shoving her forward towards Tarc and placing her feet on the rough ground distracted her.