Traitor's Chase (11 page)

Greg knelt by the crater. In the center of it was half of a metal casing, about the size of a baseball. It had apparently been blown in two. The other half was nowhere to be seen.

“He didn't throw fire,” Greg told the Musketeers. “He threw a grenade.”

“A grenade?” Aramis asked.

“A small explosive,” Greg explained. “A metal casing filled with gunpowder. Dinicoeur just had to light it and throw it and it'd blow up whatever it hit. It's definitely not magic.”

“How about the ability to put men to sleep?” Athos asked.

“Not magic either,” Greg replied. The fisherman's mention of the “magic cloth” had helped him figure it out. “He used chloroform, a chemical that can be used to knock people unconscious.” Greg strained to remember a class lecture on chemistry the year before. “Dinicoeur must know how to make it. If you put a little on a cloth, and press that to someone's face so that they're forced to inhale it, they'll fall asleep.”

“Sure sounds like black magic to
me
,” Porthos said.

Athos returned his attention to the townsfolk. “We are not like the others who passed through here before. We are honorable men who serve the crown. If you sell us your boat, we can find these traitors and avenge the terrible deeds they perpetrated here.”

To his surprise, the fisherman laughed derisively. “Do you take us for fools? You'll never catch them. They have a two-month head start on you!”

“We have tracked them this far,” Aramis said. “And we have a good idea where they are going. Now, we need that boat. The fate of our country hangs in the balance.”

“The fate of
your
country, perhaps,” said a diseased-looking woman. “Our town has had nothing but ill fortune since Louis took the throne.”

“I assure you, your king is not responsible for any of your misfortune,” Milady announced. “He has only your best interests at heart.”

“Ha!” The woman spat on the ground. “He may be
your
king, but he's not mine.”

The rest of the village responded in kind, with hoots and catcalls.

“If you do not respect the king, then perhaps you will respect a good deal,” Porthos said. “We will trade our horses for that boat.”

Silence fell over the crowd. The other Musketeers and the girls wheeled on Porthos, startled by his offer. “Are you insane?” Athos hissed angrily. “We'll need these horses to get to Spain!”

“And how do you propose to get them on that boat?” Porthos replied.

Athos looked back at the boat and frowned, realizing Porthos had a point.

The young man stepped forth again. “No matter what you offer, we have no interest in selling that boat to the likes of you.”

The other villagers responded with hoots and catcalls again.

Except for one. A gnarled old man emerged from his home. “Speak for yourselves,” he snapped at the crowd. “That's my boat, not yours.” Cautiously, he approached the Musketeers and examined the horses, running his hands over their bodies, feeling the muscles underneath. He took Greg's horse by the reins, stared into its eyes and then checked its teeth. Finally he nodded with satisfaction. “These are good, healthy steeds, and I can always build another boat. I'll take you up on your offer.”

“Excellent!” Porthos said. “Then six of them are yours.” He pointed to the fisherman. “The others are for you, as restitution for the boat that was stolen.”

The fisherman beamed. “Perhaps we have misjudged the crown,” he said.

Although Aramis and Athos were annoyed with Porthos for offering the horses, now that the deal had been offered, there was no rescinding it—and they needed the boat. The trade was made, and Greg and the others loaded their gear onto the barge and set off down the river.

As the plagued village faded into the distance, Milady turned to Porthos and asked, “Once we reach the end of the river, exactly how do you plan to get to Spain without horses?”

Porthos shrugged. “We'll have to fall off that bridge when we come to it.”

“Don't you mean ‘cross that bridge'?” Milady asked.

“Whatever.” Porthos propped his back on a sack of gear, stuck his arms behind his head and sighed contentedly. “I say we just enjoy this while we can. Beats the daylights out of sitting in a saddle all day.”

“You're a fool,” Milady told him.

“Perhaps, but at least I'm a fool with a boat.” Porthos laughed, tipped his hat over his eyes, and soon fell asleep.

ELEVEN

G
REG SNAPPED AWAKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, FEELING
as though he was freezing to death. His teeth were chattering and his fingers were numb. As he wrapped his arms around himself, he discovered that his clothes were soaking wet.

Greg's fear quickly gave way to annoyance. He looked down at where he'd been sleeping. Sure enough, water had oozed through the planks in the barge, pooling around him while he'd slept. Now the night winds blowing down the river had combined with his damp clothes to chill him to the bone.

He fumbled around the barge, looking for a dry blanket. In the inky darkness of the moonless sky, he could barely make out the forms of the other five passengers. Everyone else was asleep. Which was a problem, given that Porthos was supposed to be on watch.

Now Greg felt himself growing angry. It wasn't hard to pick Porthos out from the sleeping bodies; his snoring was as loud as a jet engine. Before Greg even realized he was doing it, he'd booted Porthos in the leg.

“Huh?” The portly Musketeer struggled to open his bleary eyes. “D'Artagnan? Is that you?”

“Yes,” Greg hissed. “You're supposed to be on watch. Seeing as Valois and the assassins might be plotting to ambush us again.”

“I am?” Porthos wasn't conscious enough to register concern. “Well, as long as you're awake, why don't you take over for me? I'm beat.” He closed his eyes, and, to Greg's astonishment, was snoring again within seconds.

Another cold breeze made Greg shiver. He quickly peeled off his wet shirt and wrung it out. It seemed like half a gallon of water poured out of it. Greg realized he must have been pretty exhausted himself to sleep through a soaking that bad, but then, life on the river had been far more exhausting than anyone had expected.

They'd all expected it to be easy: The current and the wind would carry them downstream, and all they'd have to do was steer now and then. Unfortunately, the barge had been built for short trips and wasn't nearly as seaworthy as everyone had hoped, and it didn't steer well at all. In fact, it seemed to have a mind of its own, either heading for the most treacherous parts of the river, which could be terrifying, or the slowest. The Musketeers had spent two hours that day shoving the barge off a mud bank. Twice.

In addition, there was no shade on the barge. The days out on the open water, under the direct heat of the summer sun, were broiling and sapped everyone's energy. By nightfall, everyone was usually worn out and desperate for bed—only, getting a full night's sleep on the barge was virtually impossible. It pitched and yawed wildly, and as Greg had just learned for the umpteenth time, it also leaked.

Despite all this, however, the worst thing about traveling on the river was that it exacerbated everybody's conflicts.

When all six of the travelers had been on horseback, they'd been free to spread apart at times. But that was impossible on the barge. Instead, arguments tended to start over the smallest issues and flare up into major blowouts. After three days on the river, everyone was testy and peevish.

The only respite came when food ran low. Every afternoon, when the sun was at its worst out on the open water, they would dock the barge on the side of the river and search for provisions. At these times, Athos and Porthos would head off to hunt while everyone else combed the woods for edible plants. After an hour, they would all return with what they'd found. Greg always hoped that everyone's spirits would be refreshed after their time alone, but it was never long before an argument broke out again. And so everyone had begun to keep to themselves, carving out their own personal spaces on the barge as it drifted downstream.

Greg finally came across a blanket that was, by some miracle, mostly dry. He wrapped it around himself and finally stopped shivering. Then he plunked himself on the deck and looked out at the riverbank, casing it for assassins.

Not that he'd even be able to see them. The riverbank was pitch-black, and the assassins weren't going to be carrying torches. And yet everyone felt that they couldn't drop their guard completely. Someone had to stand watch every night.

Greg found Aramis's rucksack and dug around in it until he came across the map Milady had brought to them—Richelieu's map of Paris—and made yet another attempt to decipher the strange runes on it. He'd done this before. In fact, he'd done it every time he'd had the night watch, to no avail. He couldn't make any sense out of them. His first thought was that it had been a cryptogram, a simple code where one symbol stood for A, another stood for B, and so on, but two nights before, he'd tried every combination he could think of and nothing worked. So what did it mean? Why was it half letters and half weird symbols? To Greg's frustration, he had a nagging sense that he'd seen some of these symbols before, but he couldn't place where or when. If he could just remember that, it seemed, he could figure out what the inscription meant, but try as he might, he kept coming up blank.

The sound of a twig snapping echoed across the water.

Greg swiveled toward the riverbank, searching for whatever had made the sound, wondering if he should wake the others. To his surprise, day was beginning to break. Even though the sun was a good fifteen minutes from poking over the horizon, the sky to the east was lightening.

Greg couldn't see anything moving on the riverbank, but twigs didn't just snap, did they? Something must have been out there. He reached toward Athos, only to discover his fellow Musketeer already awake. His eyes were wide-open, riveted on the riverbank.

“Did you hear that?” Greg whispered to him.

Athos sat up and nodded. “Someone's watching us from shore.”

“Do you think it's the assassins?”

“I'm guessing it's not.”

“Why?”

“Because no one's tried to kill us yet.” Athos stiffened suddenly. “What's that?”

It took a moment for Greg to see what Athos had. Up ahead, at a bend in the river, a large oak tree was marked with a bright slash of white.

Greg suddenly got the sense that someone else on the boat was awake. He spun toward the others. Everyone else was still out—although Greg felt that, just possibly, Milady had snapped her eyes shut just as he'd turned around. He was leaning toward her, trying to tell if she was merely pretending to sleep …

… when Athos sprang to his feet behind him, grabbed the rudder, and began to steer the barge toward the oak.

Greg turned toward him, forgetting all about Milady. “What are you doing? You think there's someone watching us, and you're heading
toward
them?”

“I'd rather confront my enemies than wait for them to attack,” Athos replied.

“Okay, that's your choice. But there are other people on this boat who might not agree.”

“This is for all of our benefit, D'Artagnan. Trust me.”

Greg decided to wake the others to let them have a say but found they had all been roused by the conversation.

“What's going on?” Catherine asked, blinking in the dawn light. “Why are we so close to shore?”

Athos answered before Greg could. “Someone's keeping an eye on us, and I intend to find out who.”

“What?” Porthos gasped. “Are you insane?”

A second later, the barge grounded in the shallows of the river, coming to a stop so quickly that everyone was thrown to the deck. Athos sprang into the thigh-deep water and raced to shore, despite everyone's shouts for him to stop.

Before Greg knew what he was doing, he'd grabbed his damp shirt and his sword and followed. The others were right on his heels.