Without Rhythm (The Lament) (18 page)

After a while she reached the tree line and really didn't have a lot more that she knew how to do. Her martial arts skills weren't going to help her much. Scrabbling under a bush she found a slender stick that wouldn't even make a good switch for a naughty child. It would have to do, since she couldn't find anything else in the dark. The cloak she wore was catching on the brush, so she took it off and threw it, trying to get it to spread out like a net over the bush next to her. That way she'd be able to find it later. It wasn't hers after all.

"Think Pran, what to do..." It was hard, the excitement filling her, heart racing and lungs straining from the activity.

She
knew
what to do, when she thought about it. It was all the Guardians had really taught her yet. Pay attention as well as she could and act without rhythm.

She ducked without warning, for no reason, and crawled under another bush, working her way deeper into the woods. After a while she heard someone speaking. Yelling.

"Retreat! We're losing people in this damn dark. Retreat!" The voice was male, but other than that she couldn't tell anything about it. Well, it wasn't Clark, and from the light crashing sounds there were several people that started running, deeper into the woods. The popping sounds stopped then, so it was probably whoever had attacked them. One of them made a noise, like they'd been hit, but nothing else came at all.

She just froze and waited, in case it was a trick. It seemed a lot less dangerous than trying to close with the people after all. What she'd been thinking Pran didn't know. Running toward the people attacking? She must be suicidal. It was a consideration, she realized. So much had changed in her life in the last days, and she wasn't comfortable where she was at all...

But that didn't mean she wanted to die. She just wanted the life she'd worked for back. Plus, her head was cold. After a long time there came a call from the edge of the woods.

"Back in! Front line back to town!" That was Clark, his giant voice booming powerfully.

"That must be me." She muttered, not knowing what a front line was at all, but thinking it was a fine excuse to try and collect her cloak, if possible. Ben's cloak. The bright yellow showed in the dark nicely. She couldn't see herself, but it was a good bet that the dress she wore was ruined. Pran would have felt worse about it, but decided to wait on that and see what Claire said first. It might just be that to the Judge's mind she wouldn't be to blame for this one. After all, Pran hadn't attacked anyone.

Still, it was a good dress, or had been.

She found the cloak easily enough, but wadded it up under her right arm and tried to move quietly through the brush, which didn't really work too well, since she couldn't see most of it. About ten minutes later she found the edge of the woods and slowly jogged back toward the people illuminated by the fire. The Mayor wasn't moving at all, but Paul was standing, something wrapped around his middle, a dark splotch on one side.

Claire was tending someone else that Pran didn't recognize, a townsperson no doubt and Bard Benjamin was standing back, not moving at all. She went to him, taking his arm firmly.

"Snap out of it. We need to do something." She had no clue what that would be, but it was important. Just standing wasn't going to help at all.

"Huh?" The man was clearly in shock.

That was pretty fair, since she was too. She looked around, not knowing what to do at all.

"Um, we need to guard Claire and get the wounded someplace safe. Can you drive a wagon?" Pran knew it wasn't part of the training at the art school, but surprisingly Ben nodded.

"Yes." He didn't elaborate.

"Good, get to town and get the carriage and the wagon... Anything else you can find too. Then we'll get everyone someplace safe. The ship." Was that a safe place? She didn't know, but it felt safer than being next to a burning building on the edge of the unfamiliar town.

Ben wandered off, heading in the right direction, carrying his instruments. That was just like a Bard after all. He had the ones lent to her too, with nothing left behind. The things were too important to lose.

She was tempted to follow, not knowing what to do, but then she remembered herself. She was a Guardian now. After a fashion at least. That meant she should... Guard something.

Someone.

The Judge.

Nearly tripping on a rock she bent and dug it out quickly, finding it big enough to make a good, if awkward, weapon and then ran to where Claire was busily talking to a downed man. He groaned a bit, but her tone was calm and soothing.

"Shhh. We're safe. See here's one of the Guardians now, here to keep us safe. I know your leg hurts, but you'll live. We have a very good Doctor on our ship. Doctor Millis. We just need to get you there. I'm sure that..." There was silence then as both Clark and Mara suddenly showed up, making the man on the ground boggle a bit, in pain or not. It did make for an interesting effect after all, people just appearing like that.

Mara spoke quickly, not explaining anything overly.

"They lost three people in the woods. We need to move to a secure location, but we followed them for about two kilometers. They didn't seem to be stopping, but we thought that the first time too."

Clark grunted.

"We need to move quickly."

"Ben, Bard Benjamin, is coming with the wagon and trying to get other transport around. Should we move the Judge now?" It felt really exposed, but oddly enough Clark shook his head.

"We need to move as a group. Otherwise it will just point out who the important people are... There's the wagon now."

The thing wasn't visible yet, but the sound was unmistakable in the dark.

Ben didn't just have the one wagon and the carriage, he had four other things as well, being driven by townsfolk. True one of them was a goat cart, but that would carry two people. That counted right now. They loaded the wounded carefully, but tried to be fast about it. They had three people that needed care from a Doctor and two dead. At first they didn't know what to do with those, but Claire ordered them to be taken back to the meeting hall by one of the men in his personal wagon. The Mayor and the man that had died shortly after he had were both put on the thing by Clark, which meant she needed to help. She'd never touched a dead person before, so it was creepy, but she tried to block that part of it out and not notice how terrifying the whole thing was. She didn't have time for that. It was her job to...

Pran didn't have a clue.

What exactly was a fake Guardian expected to do in a situation like this? Follow orders most likely, but so far no one had really told her to do much at all, probably because she wasn't really expected to do anything. She tried to focus and think about what she'd do if she were just playing the part of a Guardian. What would she do if this was on stage or something like that?

The only idea that came was to do something stupid and heroic that would get a real person killed. At first. After a bit she decided that there might be a bit more she could do, if it were all make believe.

"Get on the wagons. If you're going to The Lament, get on a wagon. We're leaving now. Move... No hesitation..." She kept muttering this and slapping people on the arms until they were all on board, then, rock still in her hand, started trying to do a walking guard. It wasn't working too well and she jogged more than she should have, just trying to keep up. After a few minutes Mara joined her, but didn't tell her to rest.

No, what she said, in a low voice as she passed was a lot more practical than that.

"Right side. I'll take the other three directions." Then she vanished into the brush.

It made it easier, but still hurt a lot as she gasped and tried to move like she was supposed to. After a bit she just dove into the brush, letting it slap her in the face, eyes closed. Inside the bush she was invisible, right? Or would have been if she wasn't wearing bright white clothing. The thing pulled at it making something tear as she pulled out, her shoes, which were short boots with hard soles, not making a lot of noise on the ground at least. The rest of the trip was a battle of a different sort. Her mind didn't want to focus at all and her body wanted to just lie down and rest for a while, even as she pushed herself to keep going, not stopping for more than a second, even if she wanted to.

She really did though. Everything screamed for it, begged for her to do it. To quit and let go. She wasn't a real Guardian and asking her to pretend to be one was just stupid. She was a moron for having tried at all, even if only to avoid selling herself on the street. Every single step she took in the dark now showed her that. She ended the trip just running slowly, zigzagging a little, not able to make herself do more, even as Mara did the lion's share of the work.

She didn't stop when the wagon did for all that, running in to get the Doctor. A bell rang when she was about half way to his room door, the older man coming out tentatively, without his medical gear.

"We have wounded. Combat wounds... Um like from a rifle? I didn't recognize the weapons. It seemed like that." She didn't try to explain more, the man vanishing inside his room, running out, a shuffling jog of his own, thrusting a large leather bag into her hands as he did it.

"How many?"

"Four." She didn't add the part about the dead, that wasn't his concern after all. Not that day at least.

It turned out to be three, since one of the men, the one with Claire earlier, had died during the trip. Captain Mina looked at the scene and growled something, but it wasn't until she started yelling that Pran understood the order.

"Prepare to take off. If you're not going with us, best to leave now. Prepare for aloft!"

That got Paul to try and stagger forward, the Doctor grabbing him to stop the man from running off.

The First Mate made a soft moaning sound.

"Sorry Doc, I have to... I'm needed to run the line crew. We can't skip that. First Mate's job." The voice from the darkness startled Pran, but only a little. It was the Shipman with the spider veins on his nose, who sounded nicely sober at least.

"I have that. Go with the Doctor. Roy, see to the engines. Carver, Lynne, get the others for immediate take off. Go!"

It was Doctor Millis that ordered her to help Paul get inside while Ben and the regular carriage driver did something to secure the wagon and horses. For all the haste, the ship wasn't ready to move for half an hour, which seemed slow to her, but didn't get anyone else to seem that worried. After helping to get Paul inside she ran to the weapons locker and signed out a rifle, not certain she was on the right line for it on the paper in the dim light. It reminded her of the day before, when Dovish had wanted something to eat. She had to sign for the bullets and an air canister too of course.

She also didn't know where Dovish was.

She hurried, her body protesting the movement, her lungs actually aching already when she got to the front of the ship then angled herself to face the main road and knelt down, trying to make herself a smaller target and rest at the same time. Clark ran to her, shone a beam light in her face and nodded at the rifle.

"Good..."

She didn't preface her words in response.

"Dovish. Seen him?" There was a gasping quality to her voice that she couldn't control at all. Clark didn't respond, just vanishing, moving toward the back of the craft. A few minutes later there were six bells in a row and Clark was there again.

"Load up. Dovish is either inside or in town. If he's inside, we don't have a problem. In town... We can't wait for him. He wasn't one of the dead or injured." There was a shrug with it, but Pran nodded. It wasn't like he would be in danger. No one would harm the man after all. Not once they realized how innocent and sweet he was. She hoped that was the case at least. If not it wasn't something she had control over, so she followed Clark on board and, tired or not, remembered to set the safety and point her weapon at the floor. Shooting anyone else wouldn't go over well, she didn't think. Well, it never would, but at the moment it would be even worse, since the Doctor was so busy.

They took off, but they weren't headed to another location, Mara assured her, looking at the rifle in her hand.

"We'll just circle high enough that no one will be able to hit us. We need to call in reinforcements now. It looks like we uncovered a techno-cult. I'll explain that later, but it isn't a good thing. It probably explains some other strange events in the area, depending on how wide spread their activities have been." Then, frustratingly she wandered off, leaving Pran in the hallway.

In a ruined dress. She shook her head a little and then jogged to her own room, slipping into her black outfit just in case anything else came up. Then, hoping she wouldn't be needed, she spent fifteen minutes scrubbing her head and face in the washroom. It probably didn't get all the orange make-up off, but it would lend an air of credibility to anything else she did. Looking like a freak worked on stage, but everywhere else it was just different. People respected things they recognized in normal day to day life. So black clothing and a rifle. That should work better.

She hadn't even been missed at all and had to search to find anyone she knew, that being Claire, who was in with the Doctor, his sick room being directly next to his quarters, two doors down from Ben's. The Bard sat with the door open, looking scared and like he didn't know what to do.