Thorn, Fred Saberhagen [bearly read books .txt] 📗

      The young man, also somewhat relaxed now, was looking in at Helen, who had finally rolled her window down. “We’d really appreciate it,” he said with feeling. “I guess it was kind of crazy, our trying to get through here, especially at night. Where are you guys headed?”

      “Just riding.” Helen sounded cool and remote. “I’m Helen, this is Pat. Actually there was something I wanted to show him, out this way. You want to come along?”

      The young man called Bill was silent, as if he didn’t quite understand. Pat could hear a night-bird somewhere. The thin moon was down by now. He could see about a million stars, but not a man-made light in sight other than the one pair of headlights.

      “Sure we will,” said the girl called Judy. “Or I will, anyway.” She looked over the top of the car at Bill, and something passed between them.

      He shrugged. “Okay.” And he moved to open the Subaru’s back door.

      “No,” said Helen, surprising them all. “From here we walk.”

      “Walk?” All three of them said it.

      “It isn’t far. Come on.” And she turned off the car’s lights and engine and got out. She seemed to Pat to be perfectly calm and serious. She moved to the uphill side of the road and paused, evidently waiting for the others to follow.

      Pat and the others exchanged puzzled looks, as well as they could by starlight, then he moved to Helen and the other two followed. In single file they began to climb.

      The ground was rough and pathless, but Helen moved as if she knew her way. Pat looked down at her feet and realized with a chill that they were still bare. She had to be crazy … he didn’t know whether he should appeal to the newcomers for support, demand they call a halt, or what. He himself was crazy, that much he knew already. As if there were no other choice, he kept quiet and let himself be led.

      The hill at least wasn’t high. Soon they were going down its other side, now completely out of sight of cars and road. Then partway up another hill, and along its twisting flank.

      Judy wondered aloud: “Does anyone think we’ll be able to find our way back? Where are we going, anyway?”

      “You don’t know?” asked Bill.

      Helen paused calmly and turned back. “There’s a sort of settlement where we’re going. They have a phone there. I know you can’t see it from here. But it’s just over this next hill.” Her voice sounded completely reasonable.

      “Oh,” said Judy. They went on. Pat had lost track of how far or in which direction they had come. He kept on, following Helen’s soundless feet. He hadn’t thought, on first seeing her this evening, that she was high on anything—Pat could almost invariably tell—or that her head was screwed on wrong. But now he was dead sure that something wasn’t anywhere near right.

      Once he paused, turned back, almost determined to call a halt.

      The girl, Judy, walking close behind him, shook her head minimally and pushed him gently on. Her eyes were focused past Pat, on the darkness ahead where a low mass of shadow now seemed to indicate trees. She knew, on some level, what she was doing.

      He turned again, and walked, one foot loose in its shoe with the broken lace.

      “Here,” said Helen quietly, turning long enough to utter the one word, then pushing on. And the way began to slope down, the ground underfoot smooth enough to indicate a path. The sound of running water drifted upward, very faint at first. There was at least a respectable trickle.

      They came in among the first trees, and darkness deepened. Judy asked: “What is this place, anyway?” Pat could now see buildings of some kind, faintly visible in tree-shaded starlight.

      “There used to be a mission here,” said Helen. She came slowly to a halt, looking ahead into blackness. “But you said there was a phone. Didn’t you?”

      “There is. It’s a radiophone of some kind. I guess some special, secret kind.”

      “What?”

      “We’ll ask Gliddon if we can use it.” Helen’s voice was still dream-calm.

      “What? Who?”

      A new voice, harshly male, said: “Don’t move. All four of you freeze, right where you are.” And light sprang at them, a blinding beam of it from each side. Pat, as soon as he could begin to see again, made out the ski-masks and the shotguns; and he devoutly wished that he could immediately go mad.

Chapter Twenty-One

      I rode with Helen, across a countryside infected with war as with a plague. Before we had ridden two hours toward Florence, a small band of brigands appraised us, then let us pass by, though we two were quite alone. Colleoni’s soldiers were behind us in the village, where before leaving I had ordered all of the remaining hostages released; I hoped that some of those peasants at least would have wit enough to abandon their homes and flee with their families before whoever was appointed my successor took control and rounded them all up again.

      To have thus breached my signed contract with Colleoni did weigh somewhat on my conscience. I was not one to break any solemn agreement lightly, though it was common for mercenaries of the time to do so and change sides. But my conscience found relief in an excellent argument, namely that my loyalty to King Matthias must take precedence over any such temporary pact made for money; and so, by extension, must my duty regarding the king’s sister and my wife, now that I had located her again. As to exactly where my duty with regard to Helen lay, I had not yet made up my mind. Certainly, I told myself, it was not the kind of problem I wanted to deal with offhandedly, whilst I was distracted with carrying out some lunatic persecution of the poor.

      Helen, mounted on a spare horse that I had commandeered, rode beside me and just a little