The Postman (29 page)

Gordon hunched down. The raiders would never find him here in the roots of this tree. Not so long as he kept quiet. When the butchery began, while the Holnists were busy collecting trophies, he could be off into the deep woods without a trace.

Dena had said there were two kinds of men who
counted … and those in between who did not matter.
Fine
, he thought.
Let me be one of those in between. Living beats “mattering” any day
.

He hunkered down, trying to keep as silent as possible.

A twig snapped—barely the tiniest click over in the direction of the camp. A minute later a “night bird” cooed, a little farther away. The rendition was understated and completely believable.

Now that he was listening, Gordon found he could actually follow the deadly encirclement as it closed. His own tree had already been left behind, and was well outside the narrowing ring of death.

Quiet
, he told himself.
Wait it out
.

He tried not to envision the stealthy enemy, their camouflage-painted faces grinning in anticipation as they stroked their oiled knives.

Don’t think about it!
He closed his eyes hard, trying to listen only to his pounding heart while he fingered a thin chain around his neck. He had worn it, along with the little keepsake Abby had given him, ever since leaving Pine View.

That’s right, think about Abby
. He tried to picture her, smiling and cheerful and loving, but the inner commentary kept on running within his head.

The Holnists would want to make sure the pickets were all finished before they closed the trap. If they had not yet taken care of the other man on watch—Philip Bokuto—they would do it soon.

He made a fist around Abby’s present. The chain made a taut line across the back of his neck.

Bokuto
 … guarding his commander even when he disapproved … doing Gordon’s dirty work for him under the falling snow … serving with all his heart for the sake of a myth … for a nation that had died and would never, ever rise again.

Bokuto …

For the second time that night Gordon found himself on his feet without remembering how it had happened. There was no volition at all, only a shrill screech that pierced
the night as he blew hard on Abby’s whistle, then his own voice, screaming through cupped hands.

“Philip! Watch out!”

 … out! … out! … out!
 … The echo rolled forth, seeming to stun the forest.

For a long second the stillness held, then six sharp concussions shook the air in rapid succession, and suddenly, shouting filled the night.

Gordon blinked. Whatever had come over him, it was too late to turn back now. He had to play it out. “They walked right into our trap!” he shouted as loud as he could. “George says he’ll take them on the river side! Phil, cover the right!”

What an ad lib performance! Even though his words were probably lost amid the outcries and gunfire and yelped survivalist battle calls, the commotion had to be setting their plans off. Gordon kept shouting and blowing the whistle to try to confuse the ambushers.

Men screamed and dark shapes rolled through the undergrowth in desperate struggle. Flames rose high from the stirred campfire, casting grappling silhouettes through the trees.

If the fight was still going on after two full minutes, Gordon knew it meant there was a chance after all. He shouted as if he were directing a whole company of reinforcements.

“Don’t let the bastards get back across the river!” he cried. And indeed, there did seem to be some hurried motion off that way. He ducked from tree to tree toward the fighting—even though he had no weapon. “Keep them bottled in! Don’t let ’em—”

That was when a shape emerged suddenly from around the very next tree. Gordon stopped only ten feet from the jagged patterns of black and white that made the painted face so hard to focus on. A slashlike mouth split into a broad, gap-toothed grin. The body below the unfriendly smile was immense.

“Pretty noisy feller,” the survivalist commented.
“Oughta quiet up for a bit, right, Nate?” The dark eyes flickered over Gordon’s shoulder.

For the briefest instant Gordon started to turn, even as he told himself that it was all a trick—that the Holnist was probably alone.

His attention only wavered for a moment, but it was long enough. The camouflaged figure moved like a blur. One blow from a ham-sized, rock-hard fist sent Gordon spinning to the ground.

The world was a whirl of stars and pain.
How
could anyone move so fast?
he wondered with unravelling shreds of consciousness.

It was Gordon’s last clear thought.

A frigid, misty rain turned the slushy trail into a quagmire that sucked at the prisoners’ shuffling feet. With hanging heads they fought the mud, struggling to keep up with the horses and riders. After three days, all that mattered in the captives’ narrow world was keeping up, and avoiding any more beatings.

The victors looked hardly less fearsome now, without their war paint. In winter camouflage parkas they rode imperiously on their seized Camas Valley mounts. The rearmost and youngest Holnist—with only one gold ring hanging from his ear—occasionally turned back to snarl at the prisoners and tug the tether around the lead man’s wrist, causing the whole line to stumble ahead faster for a time.

Everywhere along the trail lay trash left by successive waves of refugees. After countless small battles and massacres, the strongest held the high ground in this territory. This was the paradise of Nathan Holn.

Several times the caravan passed through small clusters of hovels, filthy warrens made from bits and scraps of prewar salvage. At every ragged hamlet a population of wretched creatures stumbled out to pay their respects, eyes downcast. Now and then an unlucky one cowered under a few lazy blows meted out for no apparent reason by those on horseback.

Only after the warriors had passed did the villagers look
up again. Their tired eyes held no hatred, only a glittering hunger as they watched the receding rumps of the well-fed horses.

The serfs hardly glanced at the new prisoners. Their lack of attention was returned.

Walking filled the daylight hours with few breaks. At night the captives were separated to prevent talking. Each was tied to a hobbled horse for warmth without a fire. Then, with dawn and a meal of weak gruel, the long walk began anew.

By the fourth day two of the prisoners had died. Two more who were too weak to continue were left with the Holnist baron of a tiny, scrabble-backed manor—replacements for serfs whose crucified corpses still hung over the trail as object lessons to anyone contemplating disobedience.

All this time, Gordon saw little more than the back of the man in front of him. He grew to hate the prisoner tethered behind his waist. Each time that one stumbled, the sudden jerk tore into the tortured muscles of his arms and sides. Still, he scarcely noticed by the time that man also disappeared, leaving only two captives to follow the plodding horses. He envied the one who had been left behind, not even knowing if the fellow had died.

The journey seemed interminable. He had awakened into it days ago and had hardly risen to complete awareness since. In spite of the agony, a small part of him
welcomed
the stupor and monotony. No ghosts bothered him here. No complexities and no guilt. It was all quite straightforward actually. One put a foot in front of the other, ate what little one was given, and kept one’s head down.

At some point he noticed that his fellow prisoner was
helping
him, taking part of his weight on his shoulders as they fought the mud. Semiconsciously, he wondered why anyone would do such a thing.

At last there came a time when he blinked and saw that his hands had been untied. They stood next to a wood-sided structure, offset some distance from a maze of teetering,
noisome shanties. From not far away came the roar of rushing water.

“Welcome to Agness Town,” one of the harsh-voiced men said. Someone planted a hand in his back and pushed. There was laughter as the prisoners tumbled inside to collapse on a filthy straw tick.

Neither bothered to move from the exact spot where he rolled to a stop. It was a chance to sleep. For the moment, that was all that mattered. Again, there were no dreams—only occasional twitching as abused muscles misfired through the rest of the day, the night, and all the following morning.

Gordon awakened only when bright sunlight rose high enough to shine painfully through his eyelids. He rolled aside, groaning. A shadow passed over him, and his eyelids fluttered like rusty shutters.

It took a few seconds to focus. Recognition came some time after that. The first thing that occurred to him was that there was a tooth missing from the familiar smile.

“Johnny,” he croaked.

The young man’s face was blistered and bruised. Still, John Stevens grinned cheerfully, gap and all. “Hullo, Gordon. Welcome back among the unlucky—the living.”

He helped Gordon sit up and steadied a ladle of cool river water for him to sip. Meanwhile, Johnny talked. “There’s food over in the corner. And I overheard a guard say something about gettin’ us cleaned up sometime soon. So maybe there’s a reason our balls aren’t already hanging from some asshole’s trophy belt. I guess they brought us all this way to meet some bigshot.”

Johnny laughed, dryly. “Just you wait, Gordon. We’ll talk rings around the guy, whoever it is. Maybe we can offer to make him a postmaster, or something. Is that what you meant when you lectured me about the importance of learning practical politics?”

Gordon was too weak to strangle Johnny for his incredible, jarring cheerfulness. He tried to smile back instead, but it only made his cracked lips hurt.

A scuttling movement in the corner opposite them showed that they were not alone. There were three other prisoners in the shed with them—filthy, wild-eyed scarecrows who had obviously been here a long time. They stared back with saucer eyes, obviously long past human.

“Did … did anyone get away from the ambush?” It had been Gordon’s first lucid opportunity to ask.

“I think so. Your warning must have buggered the bastards’ timing. It gave us a chance to make a pretty good fight of it. I’m sure we took out a couple of them before they swamped us.” Johnny’s eyes shone. If anything, the boy’s admiration seemed to have increased. Gordon looked away. He didn’t want praise for his behavior that night.

“I’m pretty sure I killed the sonovabitch who smashed my guitar. Another one—”

“What about Phil Bokuto?” Gordon interrupted.

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know, Gordon. I saw no black ears or … other things … among the ‘trophies’ the crumbs collected. Maybe he made it.”

Gordon sagged back against the slats of their pen. The sound of rushing water, a roar that had been with them all night, came from the other side. He turned and peered through the gaps in the rough planks.

About twenty feet away was the edge of a bluff. Beyond it, through ragged shreds of drifting fog, he could see the heavily forested wall of a canyon cut by a narrow, swift stream.

Johnny seemed to read his thoughts. For the first time the young man’s voice was low, serious.

“That’s right, Gordon. We’re right in the heart of it. That down there’s the bitch herself. The bloody Rogue.”

The mist and icy drizzle turned back into flurries of snowflakes for the next week. With food and rest, the two prisoners slowly regained some strength. For company they had only each other. Neither their guards nor their fellow captives would speak to them in more than monosyllables.

Still, it wasn’t hard to learn some things about life in the Holnist realm. Their meals were brought by silent, cowering drudges from the nearby shanty town. The only figures they saw who weren’t emaciated—besides the earringed survivalists themselves—were the women who served the Holnists’ pleasure. And even those worked by day: drawing water from the frigid stream or currying the stable of well-fed horses.

The pattern seemed well established, as if this was an accustomed way of life. And yet Gordon became convinced that the neofeudal community was in a state of flux.

“They’re preparing for a big move,” he told Johnny as they watched a caravan arrive one afternoon. Still more frightened serfs trudged into Agness, pulling carts and setting up camp in the swelling warren. Obviously, this little valley could not hold such a population for very long.

“They’re using this place as a staging area.”

Johnny suggested, “That mob of people might offer us an advantage, if we find a way to bust out of here.”

“Hmm,” Gordon answered. But he didn’t hold much hope for aid from any of the slaves out there. They’d had
any spirit beaten out of them, and had problems enough of their own.

One day, after the noon meal, Gordon and Johnny were ordered to step out of their pen and strip naked. A pair of shabby, silent women came and gathered up their clothes. While the northerners’ backs were turned, buckets of cold river water were thrown on them. Gordon and Johnny gasped and sputtered. The guards all laughed, but the women’s eyes did not even flicker as they left, heads bowed.

The Holnists—dressed in green and black camouflage, their ears arrayed with golden rings—competed in lazy knife practice, flipping their blades in quick, underhand arcs. The two northerners clutched greasy blankets in front of a small fire, trying to stay warm.

That evening their cleaned and patched clothes were returned to them. This time one of the women actually looked up briefly, giving Gordon a chance to see her face. She might have been twenty, though her lined eyes looked far older. Her brown hair was streaked with gray. She glanced at Gordon for only a moment as he dressed. But when he ventured a smile, she turned quickly and fled without looking back.

The sunset meal was better fare than the usual sour gruel. There were scraps of something like venison amidst the parched corn. Perhaps it was horsemeat.

Johnny dared fate by asking for seconds. The other prisoners blinked in amazement and cringed even farther into their corners. One of the silent guards growled and took their plates away. But to their surprise he returned with another helping for each of them.