The Forever Hero (82 page)

By the time she was together, boots and belt in place, she realized that he had also dressed, though she did not remember him changing from the robe back to the gray tunic and trousers.

The late afternoon light was flooding the cabin with the dull red that preceded twilight when she stepped outside the door.

In another quick move, he was at her side.

She looked down. The stunner was back in her holster. Neither acknowledging the weapon's return nor flinching at his speed, she took a deep breath and opened the door.

His right arm held her back, went around her shoulders, and she found herself against him again, face-to-face, the strange spice scent of his skin and breath still fresh.

His fingers relaxed as he kissed her neck and brushed her cheek with his lips.

“Good-bye, Caroljoy. Thought you'd never come. Good-bye.”

He released her, standing there, face impassive, as she slipped out
and onto the wide stone slab that comprised the top step on the long stone staircase down to the old highway and her electroscooter.

The tears she could not explain cascaded down her cheeks, a few splashing the dust from her boots, a single one staining the last step of the stairway.

Her carriage perfect, she did not look back, but felt the door close, felt that as it closed it sealed away a forgotten chink in the past as surely as though she had destroyed the sole copy of a priceless history text.

Eyes still blurring, she started the scooter back toward the base.

“Incoming. EDI tracks. Corridors two and three.”

The senior lieutenant relayed the report from his screen to the Ops Boss, both on the audio and through the datalink. He did not altogether trust the ancient and patched-together equipment, but there was no new equipment and nothing left to cannibalize.

“Understand EDI track. Incoming Cee one and Cee three.”

“That is affirmative.”

“Interrogative arrival at torp one range.”

“Unable to compute,” the lieutenant responded. “Synthesizer is down. Data fragmentary.”

The lieutenant wiped his forehead.

“Interrogative arrival estimate,” repeated the disembodied voice of the Ops Boss.

The lieutenant ran his thick hand through his thinning hair, wishing he could undo the brevet that had jumped him from senior tech to full lieutenant, wishing he were back in the old days when the Service had really been the Service.

“Data is fragmentary,” he repeated. “I say again. Data is incomplete.”

“Understand data limitations. Interrogative
estimate
of incoming at torp one range.”

The lieutenant sighed to himself. “
Personal
estimate, based on trace strength and standard incoming combat closure. Personal estimate of incoming ETA at torp one range in less than point five stans.”

“Understand arrival in less than point five stans. Interrogative incoming classification. Interrogative incoming classification.”

“Data incomplete.
Personal
estimate of incoming is uniform three delta.”

“…damned Ursan cruiser…,” muttered the rating at his elbow, “…coming in for the kill…”

“Understand Ursan heavy cruiser.”

“That is current estimate.” The lieutenant wiped away at his damp forehead, unable to keep the sweat from the corners of his eyes, with the building heat in the orbit control defense center. The station's internal climatizers were just as old and patched as the nonfunctioning synthesizer and the unreliable defense screens behind which they all waited for the inevitable.

Two red stars flashed on the display panel. The lieutenant swallowed. Both corridor control centers destroyed—more than an hour ago, with the data only arriving at light speed, not all that much ahead of the incoming Ursans.

“Control Alpha and Control Delta. Status red omega. Status red omega this time.”

“Interrogative…”

The audio request and the display panel before the lieutenant blanked. The lieutenant sat gaping as the lights overhead dimmed, then went out. The hiss of the ventilators whispered into nothingness. Only the dim red glow of the emergency light strips remained.

The orbit control center had been the last functioning base between the Ursan raiders and New Augusta itself. The last, and it no longer functioned.

“…raiders…just damned raiders…not even a fleet…,” muttered the sour-faced rating.

“Begin evacuation plan delta. Evacuation plan delta…”

The lieutenant, out of habit, touched all the shutdowns before easing himself from behind the screen, shaking his head in the gloom as his fingers slipped across the age-faded plastic surfaces.

The ten month winds came. Came with the black clouds that whistled death, as those clouds had whistled death through all the cen
turies they had struck the easternmost hills of the continent-dividing mountains. Came and whistled death for those who ventured out into the violent gusts, bitter cold, and ice arrows that attacked with the force of a club.

None of the hill people, nor the high plains farmers who lived downside of the hills, left their dwellings while the ten month winds blew, but huddled inside their well-braced homes. The hardy might dart forth in the lulls between storms, but always kept an eye toward the west and an ear cocked for the low moaning that preceded the devilstorms.

Cigne, from neither high plains nor hill stock, had waited, and waited. This time she had played coy, forcing down her nausea, then, as her chance came, she had bolted from Aldoff into the low wailing that foreshadowed the winds. Praying that the killer gusts would arrive in time, she had scrabbled from the tiny cottage Aldoff had acquired for them. Clawing, stumbling, falling, and staggering up, stumbling again, she had scrambled into the hillside trees before he had managed to get his other leg back into his trousers and his heavy boots back on.

Cigne hated those heavy brown boots. To think she had once thought him rugged and handsome!

Less than two hundred meters into the trees she fell headlong.

“Oooohhh.” A stone gouged into the purpled bruise on her left thigh.

“Cigne! You bitch! I find you…” Aldoff's voice carried above the low wail of the dark winds sweeping in from the west.

She jerked herself back to her feet, ignoring the shock that ran from her hip to her calf, and tottered uphill, willing herself toward the taller spruces and the darkness beneath them. Moving uphill, her breath leaving sharp white puffs, Cigne staggered on, winced at the sharp small stones that had invaded her shoes and had sliced even her callused feet. Blood welled out of a dozen cuts, leaving the thin town shoes she wore slippery from within, and making each step less and less certain.

Whhhppp!

The first ice missile crashed through the spruce overhead.

The cold air chilled further, as if winter had arrived instantly with the ice. The afternoon gloom deepened, as though twilight had descended. The wind's low whistle lowered into a deeper moan, rattling the branches above and around her on the hillside.

“Bitch! Bitch! Cigne! Get self down here!”

She had put more distance between them, for his voice, even at full bellow, was fainter.

Just because she had not been able to conceive—was that any reason to turn against her? With every other woman having the same problem? It was not as though she were some freak. And Aldoff refused to believe it might be his problem—not big, bull-strong Aldoff.

Stumbling again, she reached out instinctively. Her hand touched a boulder nearly waist-high. With a sharp breath of cold air, she halted and looked around. She looked up. Looked up and took another, fuller breath, in an effort to repress a shiver.

The overhead sky boiled black, black as night, as it erupted gouts of ice and flung them at the earth and forests below.

Cigne steadied her grip on the rocky outcrop and glanced around her, searching to see if she could find a better shelter than the pair of upthrust boulders no higher than her waist. The two slanted toward each other and would provide some protection.

Whhhpppp! Whhhppp!

With the sound of the ice missiles, she scrabbled under the outcroppings, burrowing as far under the larger as possible, huddling with her left leg, the still one, as covered as far as she could stretch the leather skirt.

Aldoff had sold her leather trousers, the ones provided by her family. Then, she had not known why, she had not protested the cavalier actions of her rugged husband.

Whhhpp! Whhhppp! Whhhppp!

The ten month winds struck the trees, struck from the black clouds with ice and gusts that splintered branches and ripped bushes from exposed hillsides. Struck from the black clouds that represented destruction, that condemned all those unsheltered to near-certain death.

Whhhp! Whhhppp! Whhpp!

With and through the winds flew the ice spears, whistling death from the blackness above, as they had for all the centuries since the Great Collapse.

Cigne flattened herself still farther into the depression under the outcropping. Already the spruces were bending in the shuddering gusts of the winds. In the distance she could hear the wailing moan of a devilmouth spout as it raced through the heavens toward the high plains east of the hillside where she lay.

The spouts never touched the hills. But the killer winds did, pulling spruces and golden trees out by their roots, smashing entire stands of trees flat, hillside by hillside.

After the winds lifted, before the snows drifted across the desolation, the woods crafters would come, picking the best of the downed
timber for furniture and for the vans and simple machines that could be fabricated without metal, or with minimal use of metals. Then would come the builders, to take their timbers and planks from the second cull. Then, finally would come the fuelmakers, to salvage what remained for alcohol and stoves. Even the chips would be put to use, for paper and kindling blocks.

At last, in the spring, when the snows melted, months after the annual devastation, would come the planters, armed with seedlings and the spores and knowledge to rebuild the hillside.

Cigne huddled under the rocks, shivering with each ice chunk that rebounded from the trees against the thin jacket that had been all she could grasp as she had fled. Each impact would leave a bruise, she knew. More bruises. As if a few more would matter now.

“Cigne! Bitch-woman! Down come!…Freeze until spring, bitch!”

In the lull between gusts, she could hear Aldoff's bellow, as he stood at the base of the hillside.

Whhppp! Whhppp! Whhppp!

Another wave of ice missiles clipped smaller branches from the upper limbs of the spruce. The wind shrieks peaked momentarily, then dropped off.

“Hope you die!…”

Cigne shuddered between the rocks as she listened to Aldoff's parting words.

She likely would die, lying on a hillside she scarcely had seen from her confinement in the hut Aldoff had called a cottage, lying in the chill of the ten month winds. But go back to Aldoff and his rages?

Snap! Craaaaacckkkk!

A spruce uphill from her broke at the base, and she winced, waiting for the tree to fall into the narrow space between the boulders and crush her.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Trees were now falling like lightning around her, one after the other as the winds scythed the hillside with nearly the precision of the ancient lumberjacks.

Whhhppp! Whhp! Whhhppp! Whhhppp!

Without the taller trees to intercept the ice chunks, more of the smaller missiles and ricocheting fragments began to strike Cigne's exposed back and left leg, the one Aldoff had kicked so hard she could not bend it to get under her.

She shivered continuously as the ice pelted her, as the wind whipped around her, and as the darkness swallowed her. Dragged her
into the night she knew would be endless, the night she fought even as she wondered why. The chill seemed warmer, but as she drifted toward the darkness, she tried to move immobile muscles, tried to push away the seductive warmth of that darkness.

When she woke, half-surprised, Cigne could not feel her hands, nor her feet, but she was moving, being carried.

“NO!!!!” she croaked.

She jerked, trying to get out of his arms, for it had to be Aldoff, carrying her, carrying her back to…

“Gentle…”

At the sound of the voice, a light baritone, and because she could not move against the steellike arms that held her, she collapsed, half in shock and half in relief that her rescuer or captor was not her husband. She let the darkness reclaim her.

An unaccustomed warmth woke her the second time, that and the pain of having the bruises on her legs being touched.

She could smell a bitter, but faint, odor, the one she associated with the visiting medical teams from her childhood.

“Oooohh.”

“Tried not to hurt, but could be some infection here.”

Although she tried to sit up, Cigne found a firm but gentle hand on her shoulder, holding her down.

“Don't move. Concussion.”

“Concussion?” The word meant nothing, and the subtle lilt in his voice told her that he was from somewhere else, certainly from no district she knew.

“Head bruise.”

After forcing herself to relax, Cigne waited until his hand left her shoulder. Then she shivered.

Without lifting her head, she shifted her eyes around to see where she might be. The eye movement alone left her head throbbing.

The muted roar of the wind and the warmth told her she was sheltered. The first savage onslaught of the ten month winds had passed. A steady yellow illumination meant a glow lamp, and a glow lamp meant her rescuer was no ordinary farmer or woodsman.

She hoped the man was her rescuer, and not something worse. With that thought, she shivered again.

She appreciated the warmth of the coverlet that he drew up to her chin, although she did not try to look at him, not with the pain behind her eyes.

“Relax…quiet…you need to sleep…”

“No. Aldoff. He will find me.” Her voice was no more than a raspy whisper.

“No one will find you. No one will take you.”

The chill certainty in his tone made her shiver, even as she slipped back into sleep, as she realized she had yet to see his face.

When she woke, for the third time since she had bolted from Aldoff, Cigne did not move, but slowly opened her eyes, waiting to see if the throbbing resumed within her skull.

The place where she lay was no longer lit by a glow lamp, but by the diffuse, grayish light of afternoon, of a ten month afternoon. She could still hear the background hum of the wind, as low as it ever got during the tenth month.

Slowly…slowly, she inched her head sideways, toward the strongest light. Overhead, she saw the vaulted ceiling, one composed of beams supporting fitted planks, all of golden wood. While she was not a crafter, she recognized the workmanship as the sort that only skilled crafters or the merchants who sold and traded their works could afford.

Her eyes focused on the strange oval window, framed carefully within golden wood as well.

Through the clear off-planet glass, she could see trees, not the brittle bud spruces, but firs with heavier and darker trunks and, between the dark spruces, heavy bare-limbed trees. She had heard of the trees that had leaves that shed like the scrub bushes, but had never seen any so large before.

Click
.

Her head jerked toward the sound. She winced as a muted throbbing began behind her eyes.

The man who stood inside the heavy door he had just eased shut could not have been much taller than she was. Slender, wiry, with golden hair curled tightly against his skull, he studied her without stepping toward her, without moving a muscle.

“How do you feel?”

“Not good.” Her voice rasped over the two words.

“Thirsty?”

“Yes.”

He turned toward a narrow alcove.

Cigne heard the sound of running water. Running water—she thought she had left that luxury when Aldoff had insisted they leave the Plains Commune for the woods beneath the mountain hills.

“Here.”

She had not heard him, nor seen him move, but he was kneeling next to her, offering a smooth cup.

Cold—that the water was. The chill eased the soreness in her throat, a soreness she had not felt before.

As close as he was, she could smell him. A scent of spice, a clean scent, so unlike Aldoff, and so different from the odor of sweat and dirt that had cloaked her farmer father and brothers.

Rather than dwell on his scent, she fixed her thoughts on the smoothness of the cup, with its simple yet elegant curves, and comfortable handle. A handle heavy without seeming so.

The glazed finish of the pottery held within it a web of fine lines, indicating it was hardly new.

Cigne had not realized how tightly she had gripped the cup until her fingers began to tremble.

“You can have more later…”

She surrendered the cup reluctantly and tried to keep from tensing her muscles as he eased her head onto a single thin pillow.

“Shouldn't lift your head at all, but your eyes are clear.” He spoke softly, as though he were talking to himself, rather than to her.

With the pillow under her head, she took in the room more fully.

She lay on an elevated double width pallet, under a soft gray and red coverlet. On the far side of the large central room were two of the strange oval windows, wider than any she had seen—one opposite her. Before the other stood a desk. From the simple lines and the flow of the wood, Cigne saw it was the work of a master crafter, just like the rest of the woodwork she could see.

Even the grains of each plank in the wall between the twin off-planet windows seemed identical. Her mental efforts to compare the planks intensified the throbbing in her head. Cigne closed her eyes, still listening.

She could feel the man moving away from her, although she could not hear footsteps. When she eased her eyes back open, he was setting the old cup upon the desk.

She shivered, despite the warmth of the coverlet. But she could feel her eyes getting heavier.

The dwelling remained silent except for the moaning of the ten month winds.