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Reveille

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By KARL HARSHBARGER

At a little past four in the morning the American lieutenant opens the door of the German farmhouse where he rents a room and steps out onto the flat stones of the hof, or courtyard, and sees
the first glint of red edging along the horizon. From the kennel near the front of the hof next to a line of trees, the farmer’s dog begins to bark.

“Stop that,” says the lieutenant into the night.

Other animals, probably cows, have begun to move in the barn, making muffled, thudding sounds.
The lieutenant walks across the stones past the farmer’s two tractors, one large and one small, and out towards the line of trees where he can make out the low-slung outline of his car. From the barn, more thudding sounds.

The dog continues to bark. “Quiet!” says the lieutenant.

He is at his car. Beads of moisture point up the long, curved hood towards the two stubby windshields, then almost disappear along the darkness of the cockpit cover and reappear on the short shank of the trunk.

He takes out the rag which he brought with him and wipes the headlights dry, and then goes around behind the trunk and wipes the taillights dry. Then, the two windshields. They are not really windshields, or, at least, not like the windshields of ordinary cars, but two Plexiglas protrusions to deflect the wind at high speeds.

He reaches over between these windshields and pulls the zipper of the cockpit cover back towards the trunk, lifts his side of the cover away from the nubs along the dashboard and the molding around the steering wheel, and slides that half of the cover back behind the driver’s seat, leaving the cover on the passenger’s side intact.

As he lowers himself into the car he is aware the dog is still barking. But he is more aware of the feeling he now has, the same feeling he always has when he slides way down into the car, almost to the ground, not only low, but, as it were, swallowed by the car.

He inserts the key in the ignition, turns it, and hears the whir and click of the fuel pump. When the whirring and clicking stops, he pushes the starter button and the motor kicks over, coughs, and takes. He gives the pedal a little stab, a jerk up to three thousand revs, then lets the motor ease back to its idling speed. Then he waits, letting the oil warm up.

The dog keeps barking.

The lieutenant takes off his officer’s cap with its single golden bar, reaches under the cockpit cover on the passen- ger’s side, finds his baseball cap and goggles, and puts them on. He doesn’t put the goggles on over his eyes, but straps them over the bill of his cap.

To the east the band of red has intensified and to the south he can now just make out the silhouettes of the distant tops of the Alps.

He shifts into first, eases out the clutch and the car jerks forward.
The dog runs back and forth in the kennel barking ever more wildly.
The lieutenant still isn’t used to that — the jerk as the clutch engages. One instant he’s not moving and the next instant he is.

“Stop that!” he shouts one last time at the dog, and pulls out between the trees and onto the little farm lane.

Again, as every morning, he discovers the steering, how the car steadies to the slightest touch on the wheel. Also the hard ride, the headlights jarring and shifting in front of him. And, again, the way he sits down so close to the road, seem- ingly only inches above the ground.

He doesn’t speed. Not that he couldn’t, of course. This early in the morning there wouldn’t be any policemen around. And even if there were, they would never be out on a tiny country road like this. But he always starts out slowly. A sort of a self-imposed restraint. Even when he is late. As he is this morning. Again.

So he continues at a slow speed, the field smells in the air around him, the motor sputtering, the headlights jiggling up and down on the lane in front of him illuminating trees or hedges or even sometimes an open field, until he hears an- other dog barking and passes another farm and comes to the triangular yield sign for the main highway. He turns onto the highway, and since there aren’t any cars coming, stops on the pavement, reaches up and pulls the goggles down over his eyes, and rotates the baseball cap around so that the bill of the cap no longer faces towards the wind.

Then he redlines it. Up to five thousand. The motor snarling.

And jumps the clutch. The car weaves, rubber and smoke, he lets off on the gas, the tires catch, and finally there it is again, the power pushing him back into his seat. Each time he shifts the gears, a tiny respite from that pushing, until he flicks the button for overdrive and sees the speedometer climb to over one hundred miles per hour.

This is it, he thinks, home.

The wind rips and whistles past him, numbing his cheeks and ears. He sees the red taillights of a car in front of him and pulls out to the left and passes that car almost as if it were standing still. Ahead of him more of the sky reddens and the peaks of the Alps are now pink.

But the traffic signs begin to accumulate along the side of the road announcing the proximity of the Army base, most of the signs yellow and black and the words in German, but some of them black and white and in English, and off to the left he can see the lights of the little village, or dorf, where most of the other officers who work at the base make their home. So he slows his speed somewhat, the wind around him slackening, rotates the bill of his baseball cap back around and pulls the goggles up over the bill. Still, he manages a nice drift around the corner into the base.

Now that he is on the base, as it were, his own soil, all the signs are in English: “Slow Down,” “Drive Carefully,” “Military Police Gate Ahead,” “Be Prepared to Stop and Show Your Identification.” Ahead of him he sees the brilliant white lights illuminating the white concrete barricade of the military police post.

But for some reason this morning, out of all mornings, he doesn’t slow down. Or, at least, he doesn’t slow down enough. It is nothing he chooses, nothing he thinks about, it is just something that happens. The MP stepping out of the sentry box, white cap and white gloves, doesn’t even have time to salute.
A jab on the gas, again he doesn’t think about it, the bark of the motor as the speedometer climbs up to seventy, several more drifting turns, a sense from somewhere that what he has just done, is now doing, is crazy, even insane, when he sees all the low, squat battalion barracks, realizes he is going too fast to make the corner into the parade grounds, also realizes that somehow he has survived the corner, and brakes to a stop.

The dust rises around him and the soldiers cheer.

They are lined up by company and platoon, a sergeant out in front of each platoon, a master sergeant out in front of each of the four companies, and another master sergeant out in front of the whole rigmarole.

The soldiers are still cheering him, or more likely his car, or even more likely the way he negotiated that last corner, but the sergeants are shouting out the orders and bringing the soldiers to attention.
He walks out onto the parade field and stops before the master sergeant who salutes him. The lieutenant salutes back. To one side, a small military band, which, of course, has been waiting for his arrival, as has the whole battalion, plays a march, the drum louder than anything else. The sergeant doesn’t look at the lieutenant, and the lieutenant doesn’t look at the sergeant while the band plays. Rather the lieutenant looks across the flat parade ground and over rows of barracks and studies the sky which is growing redder, sees the even pinker tops of the Alps, but also sees in his mind the brilliant white light of the MP gate and the MP stepping out and not even having time to salute.

The band stops, one last heavy thud of the drum, and the sergeant salutes. “Sir, eight hundred forty-six men present, forty-six men on sick call and four men absent without leave.”

The sergeant hands a piece of paper over with this information written on it and salutes again.
The lieutenant salutes back, turns and walks towards his car, and when he gets there reaches up and discovers he is still wearing his baseball cap and goggles. Shit! He has been out there in front of the whole battalion in his baseball cap and goggles. Another kind of craziness!

He throws the baseball cap and goggles under the cockpit cover and snaps on his officer’s cap. Somehow he is feeling dizzy, as if he might fall, and steadies himself against the door of the car.
But the enlisted men have already gathered around, jostling for a better view, poking at each other.

“Morning, sir,” several of them say.

“Morning,” he says to them, opening the door of the car and sliding down into the seat, way down.

“Sir, is this here one of those Italian cars?” “British,” he replies.

“How fast she’ll go?”

But he has started the motor and lets out the clutch. The car jerks forward, several soldiers jumping out of the way, and he drives — slowly — past the sign, “A Company, 4th Battalion,” past the sign, “B Company, 4th Battalion,” past the sign, “C Company, 4th Battalion,” turns in at the sign marked “Duty Officer, Battalion Headquarters.” He stops in a small parking lot next to a low, barrack building that looks like all the other barracks lined up on the bare battalion streets. He gets out, zips the cockpit cover over the driver’s side, fastens it down over the nubs and walks over the gravel to the barrack.
Actually it is an old barrack soldiers used to sleep in but it has been converted to one of the battalion offices with desks set in double rows along the wooden floor. The duty officer’s desk is in the center way at the back. The lieutenant sits down at that desk and begins to fill out the five sets of forms for the morning’s reveille, eight hundred forty-six men present, forty-six men on sick call and four men absent without leave. As he writes these figures down he can hear the cough of artillery in the distance.

And again he sees the brilliant white light at the barricade and the MP with white gloves.
As he finishes writing the figures two soldiers wearing fatigues come through the door into the main room. One of the soldiers is large and a bit pudgy, the other small, wiry. The bigger one carries two pails of water and the wiry one carries two mops. The bigger one puts the pails of water down on the floor and the wiry one puts a mop in each pail, and they both wring out their mops and begin to work on the floor.

Again the lieutenant hears the cough of artillery in the distance.

“Sir!” the bigger of the two soldiers almost shouts.

The two soldiers have seen the lieutenant and come to attention, holding their mops at their sides as if they were rifles.

“It’s perfectly all right,” says the lieutenant. “Carry on.” “Sir!” says the larger and more pudgy of the two.

“Just carry on,” the lieutenant repeats.

The lieutenant props his feet up on the desk and watches them as they wring out their mops and begin again. From the way they work he can see their contrasting personalities. The first one, the bigger one, is the generalist. He makes wide sweeps with his mop, covering a lot of territory, but probably leaving small patches dry here and there. The smaller one, the wiry one, is the specialist. He works slowly and carefully, in and out of corners and hard-to-get-to places, leaving nothing undone.

And again the lieutenant sees the bright light illuminating the concrete barrier. A kind of craziness, certainly.

“Sir!”

It is the bigger of the two soldiers. He stands at attention, again holding his mop as if it were a rifle. The smaller one continues to work at the far end of the room.

The lieutenant pulls his legs off the desk. “Yes,” he says. “Permission to ask a question?”

“And?” says the lieutenant.

“Well, sir, that racing car out there in the parking lot?” The lieutenant nods.

“Sir, if you’ll allow me, that’s an Austin-Healey.” The lieutenant nods again.

“And it’s got hydraulic overdrive, right, sir? You don’t shift, if you know what I mean. There’s a button.”

“That’s right,” says the lieutenant.

“Yes, sir. You see, I know a little something about cars.”

“I see you do,” says the lieutenant standing up.

But somehow in standing up the he feels dizzy. He puts his hand down on the desk to steady himself. As he does so he hears the crunching sound of artillery in the distance.

“Sir …?” he hears the bigger of the two soldiers say.

Dizzy or not the lieutenant pushes himself away from the desk and walks down the aisle between the row of other desks past the smaller soldier who had stopped working and stands with mop in an upright position. The lieutenant walks all the way to the end of the barrack and steps outside into the early morning air.

To the east the sun has shown itself, and with no clouds in the sky it will turn into a hot one. Somehow, thinks the lieutenant, army bases always seem hotter than other places. Maybe it’s the lack of trees.

He looks down the battalion streets searching for the trees, but instead sees an olive-drab Army police car and two MPs standing next to his Austin-Healey. One of the MPs is writing something in a notebook and the other has reached over and is unzipping the cockpit cover.

The lieutenant strides out toward his car and when the MPs see him coming they turn toward him. When he is close enough they salute, but the lieutenant doesn’t salute back. “Good morning, sir,” the MPs say, still holding their salute. The lieutenant looks at his car seeing the long slank hood, the butt of the windshields, the flatness of the cockpit cover, and the short rump of the trunk curving back. He unzips the cockpit cover the rest of the way and slips down in. Again, home. Sitting so close to the ground, swallowed.

The two MPs have dropped their salutes.

“Sir,” says the one who had been writing something down in his notebook, “we’ve received reports about this car. I need to ask for your identification.”

From far down inside the car the lieutenant looks up into the morning sun and at the MPs. He sees there is the bigger one and a smaller one. Both wear white hats and white gloves and both carry clubs at their belts.

Maybe it is the brightness of the sun, but the lieutenant feels dizzy again, as if the world is coming apart around him. “Sir …?” he hears one of the MPs saying.

The lieutenant pulls himself back to where he has been and looks at the MPs.

“Don’t you ever put your hands on my car again.”

“Sir?”

The lieutenant has already started the engine, redlining it to five thousand, the muffler barking, and jumps the clutch. The car weaves, rubber and smoke, and, as he aims at the white edges of the Alps, he feels the rush of the wind against him.

Home.

Gunpowder Trails: Chapter Thirteen

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Gunpowder Trails

By Andrew Sharp

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

As the night blackness eased into gray and orange tinged the sky in the east, they steered the canoe into a patch of reeds along the shore. Once they had thoroughly tested the hypothesis that three people could stretch out in a canoe and sleep if they arranged themselves just so, and found it false, they eventually found curled up positions that respected the laws of physics, if not the demands of comfort.

As the sun rose it chased away the chilly morning air. The warmth energized a cloud of gnats in the reeds. Finding the canoe-load of travelers, the gnats decided that here was a worthy morning’s work.

Ordinarily Charles might have had trouble sleeping, awkwardly curled up with gnats tickling his face, but he was so exhausted that he drifted off almost as soon as he shut his eyes.

He woke up thirsty around mid-morning. The sun was bright and hot, and the gnats were gone. He drank a little from his canteen and drifted off again.

The day dragged on like this. Restless sleep, waking up, shifting around to another uncomfortable position as the canoe rocked and scraped against the reeds. The others waking up, shifting, and drifting off again.

Finally the sun began to sink. They ate, then opened Warren’s bandages to check on his wound. It was swelling and the skin around the wound was turning red and puffy.

“I don’t like the look of it,” Warren said. “I don’t like the feel of it either. I’m afraid that’s the blood poison starting.”

They all knew that if the blood poison started, Charles and Marguerite would likely arrive at Easton alone.

Warren had them soak some of the leftover trade tobacco in water, then smash it into a poultice and pack it into the wound.

“My grandmother always swore by tobacco for wounds,” he said. “Also, it’s the only thing we have, so it’s worth a shot.”

He winced as they patted the nasty dark green mash into the torn muscle.

It seemed to help. Warren was able to stay sitting up as they traveled.

“We’ll freshen up the poultice in the morning,” he said. “And by then, I hope we’ll be at the bay. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I think the worst may be over on this trip.”

The bay! Charles felt a rush of excitement. It was the last barrier. Getting to the bay meant it was only a two days’ journey to Easton, barring storms, ambushes or other disasters, which seemed reckless to bar considering how things had been going.

“We’ll have to canoe across the bay at night, and sleep in the day,” Warren said. “George will probably get to his boats before we get to the bay. He’ll probably be waiting for us at the mouth of the river, actually.” He thought for a minute. “What we’ll do, is we’ll have to risk going as far as we can by water. We’ll keep sticking as close as we can to this north bank, and with the darkness that should be safe enough. And then we’ll take to the woods right before we get to the bay. We’ll go north, and carry the canoe. We can come out at a random spot on the shore, far enough from the mouth of the river to be safe, then wait till dark to launch. By the time the sun comes up, with any luck, we’ll be far enough away from whatever smugglers are left to beat them up the bay. Or at least we’d better hope so, because there’s no place to hide out on the water, and we’re in no shape to out-paddle anyone.”

They were hardly in shape to paddle at all. They started out with Marguerite doing all the paddling again, but the pace was too slow.

“We’ll be a week getting to the bay at this rate,” Warren said. “No offense, Marguerite.”

“I could try carving a new paddle,” Charles said.

“You could do that?” Warren said.

“Well, maybe. I like to carve. I’ve never tried a paddle before.”

They pulled onto the shore and stumbled among the dark trees looking for a branch to carve. Charles wished they had a torch.

Most of the branches already on the ground were too small, or too rotten. They had no hatchet to chop off any decent sized branches from the trees. Finally they found a snapped section of oak limb that was almost wide enough, and had to settle for it.

They made a small fire for the light, and Charles spent several hours carving. Finally, he ended up with a shape that resembled a paddle.

They got underway again in the wee hours of the morning. Since Charles was the worst paddler, he got stuck with the worst paddle. The canoe didn’t cruise along at anything like the pace they had made out of Harpers Ferry, but it was faster than Marguerite by herself, and she said it was easier for her too.

When it started to get light, they couldn’t find a patch of reeds, so they settled for a weeping willow hanging over the water, tying up their canoe as deep in its shade as they could get.

Charles found it easier to sleep in the shade, and it didn’t seem like much time before he was awakened near dark by Warren’s moaning. Warren’s face was hot. They opened his bandage, and saw his wound was turning purple and draining fluid. Red lines spread out from it down his arm.

Warren breathed hard through his teeth as they packed another tobacco poultice on it.

As they began the night’s journey, Marguerite caught Charles’ eye. She looked at Warren, lying on the bottom of the canoe with his eyes closed, and shook her head.

Charles frowned. No! You couldn’t just expect someone to feel great after a wound like that. It would take time to heal.

If Warren didn’t make it, Charles wouldn’t just lose a friend. He would also lose his introduction into the Builders, and Marguerite would have nobody to help her get honorable work. Their escape would have failed after all. They’d end up as beggars on the streets of Easton, and worse, they’d have no protection from George’s revenge. And George would find them.

The river now sprawled out a long way between them and the south bank. It would take a very lucky shot in the dark for anyone to hit them from there with a pistol.

Charles began to wonder if it was time to abandon the river as Warren had recommended and begin their trek on foot. If they got too close to the mouth of the river, they might run into the smugglers in the dark. But he didn’t know landmarks that would let him know he was getting close.

Warren’s voice rasped from behind him, “We’re almost to the bay. This river here, on the left, that’s the St. Mary’s River coming down. We’ll go up that river.” He had dragged himself upright enough to see over the edge of the canoe, and now he sank back down.

They swung the canoe northward. As they did, the paddling got harder, because they were now pushing against the current flowing down into the Potomac.

Warren seemed delirious. He’d pulled a necklace out of his pack and was restringing the beads. He obsessed with them, holding them up close to his face, rearranging and moving them around over and over. Charles looked back at Marguerite. He couldn’t see her face well, but she was shaking her head again.

Warren kept fiddling with the beads for hours, but finally his fingers stopped working and he sank back and closed his eyes. When Charles glanced back now and then to see how he was doing, he seemed to be asleep.

Some while later, Warren propped himself up again. “Now this should be far enough,” he said in a weak voice. “It won’t be long until sunrise. Pull in here along the bank, along these ruins. Go straight east through the woods. You can make it to the bay by dawn.”

“You’re too weak to walk,” Marguerite said.

“Yes,” Warren said. “You go ahead. I’m staying here.”

“No!” Charles said. “No, you are not.”

“I insist,” Warren said. “Better that somebody get home than none of us.”

“No,” Marguerite said. “We’re in this together. We’ll carry you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Warren said.

“Watch us,” Marguerite said. She and Charles steered to shore, got out and put on their packs. She nodded to him, and they heaved the canoe up with Warren and his pack in it.

“Hold on, set it down,” Marguerite said. “We’ll leave his pack. We can make it to Easton with just two.”

“Wait!” Warren said. “I want something out of it.” He rummaged around, fumbling at one item and then another. Charles felt the precious minutes burning away like fog. Finally, Warren pulled out the bead necklace he’d been toying with all night. “This is special to me.”

Charles sighed. All that for a necklace.

“We should be able to carry that,” Marguerite said.

The mile or so through the forest was the longest walk of Charles’ life. It felt more like twenty miles as they staggered around trees and through tangles of honeysuckle and muddy bogs. Charles’ lower back ached, and started adding a new sharp stab from time to time. He switched arms often, but before long both arms felt like they were being pulled out of his shoulder. Once he started to complain about his arm pain, but he cut himself short when he realized how that would sound to a man who’d had a chunk of his upper arm shot off and might be losing his whole arm soon.

Finally, the blackness of the trees gave way to emptiness ahead, and they staggered out onto a thin stony beach. A breeze tickled their faces, and light ripples splashed on the shore. A hint of lighter gray smudged the dark sky in the east.

“We could get out on the bay before it’s too light,” Charles said.

“Not a good idea,” Marguerite said. “We’re too tired to go all day after going all night. And besides, we’d get out there and find ourselves stuck in plain sight, and too tired to get away if anybody saw us.”

This decisive, sensible person was a different Marguerite. She’d always been so quiet, so subdued. Apparently this other Marguerite had been hiding in that slave the whole time, far more useful to the band than she’d seemed, but entirely overlooked.

She was right now about the folly of trying to travel any farther, so they looked around for a place to sleep during the coming day. The shoreline was too open, so they camped inside the edge of the woods.

To call it a camp was overstating things a little. They couldn’t risk lighting a fire now, with the smugglers possibly nearby, and they were too tired to start one anyway. So they just piled their canoe and packs on the forest floor and lay down to sleep on the leaves. Nobody kept watch.

When they woke up in the evening, nothing had eaten them and no enemy had stumbled across them.

They forced themselves to eat a little food. They tried to give Warren some too, but he refused it.

“You have to eat something,” Marguerite said. “You can’t get better if you don’t eat. And we won’t have time to feed you for the rest of the night.”

But Warren only mumbled and kept his teeth tight together when she shoved the pemmican against his mouth.

Charles ached all over and struggled to pull his mind and body into the harsh waking world. He didn’t really wake up until they hauled the canoe down the beach with Warren in it. Charles backed too far with the canoe and stepped into the water, and the cold wetness rushing into his shoes washed away the last of his cobwebs.

They shoved off, and at long last were on the Chesapeake Bay. Home lay across the water, albeit a considerably long way northeast.

The new moon rising cut a sliver of light across the waves. When the shore was barely visible behind them, the wind picked up, and real waves began to smack at the canoe. It bobbed and dipped, and Charles thought how frustrating it would be to drown after making it this far.

“You just have to balance,” Marguerite said, when he asked her about the rough water. “Don’t overcorrect, and keep the nose into the waves. Don’t worry, I’ve been out on the bay in a canoe before. It would be better to have something bigger, but we’ll make it. As far as steering, we’ll keep the moon ahead of us. We want to get close to the other side and then follow that shore north.”

And that was what they did, paddling straight into the slice of watery moon.

Eventually they saw a smudge ahead, the distant edge of the great peninsula that was divided into three kingdoms with several small vassal tribes. One of those tribes, subject to the kingdom of Salisbury, claimed the shore they could see ahead of them now, but in reality it was abandoned wilderness, home to only a few pirates and woodsmen who neglected their taxes and had an aversion to loyalty oaths.

When morning came, Marguerite and Charles steered to shore. Marguerite’s hair was matted, her muddy face sagged, and her eyes showed deep black circles underneath. Going by the way he felt, Charles figured he must look worse.

Warren had spent much of the night moaning on the bottom of the canoe. When they pulled off his bandage to dress his wound again, Charles gagged and almost vomited at the dead smell. He gritted his teeth together and helped Marguerite wash it out and pack it with more poultice. It was the last poultice, unless they could find some herb growing somewhere. They were out of tobacco.

“Where are we?” Warren asked, his eyes closed.

“We’re across the bay,” Marguerite said. “I’m not sure where exactly. Not to the Choptank River yet. The bay’s still pretty narrow here.

“Almost home,” Warren said. “My mind isn’t working very well right now, so I want to say something to you something before I can’t.” He struggled to sit up.

“You settle down,” Marguerite said. “You’re fine. Just get some sleep.”

“No,” Warren said. “First I need to tell you something. This necklace here. You have to give it to the Builders.”

“You give it to them,” Marguerite said.

“I’ll try,” Warren said. “But if I don’t, you have to. Please. Promise.”

“Of course,” Charles said. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but Warren was obviously slipping. What a thing to worry about at a time like this, a trade necklace. Warren’s request raised a troubling point, though. “Uh, if you … if you don’t …”

Warren’s lips twitched upward. “If I die, will the Builders take you in? Is that what you want to know? That’s what the necklace is for.”

“What?”

“Our code,” Warren said. He was silent for a long time. “What was I talking about?” he said finally. “It was important.”

“Something about a code,” Charles said.

“He’s getting delirious,” Marguerite whispered.

“Not so delirious I can’t hear,” Warren said. “You show a little respect, young lady. Code, code. Oh yes, the code. It’s the beads, you know.”

“Shhhh,” Marguerite said. “That’s enough talking.”

“You shhh,” Warren said. “And just listen, will you? I’m too tired for this. We send messages with beads. The combinations. The colors. You give them that necklace. I put a message in those beads. I asked them to send you to school to become a Builder, Charles, because of the service you’ve given me and because of your potential too. Marguerite, I asked the same for you.”

She gasped. “Me? But I haven’t had any schooling. I could never …”

“It will take time,” Warren said. “But you are very smart and I think …” he trailed off again, and then began to ramble. Then he seemed to snap back. “You can learn. You have to at least try. You promise me that. And then if you don’t make it, they’ll find some way for you to serve. A way that fits your abilities.”

Marguerite was silent. She kept folding and unfolding her hands.

“I’m sorry,” Warren said, “that I said that about getting you a job as a servant.”

“No,” Marguerite said. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I was wrong,” Warren said. “I realize that now. I’ve instructed them to find what you’re good at.”

“That’s a lot to put in a necklace message,” Charles said, beginning to wonder if Warren’s mind had given him a final, comforting delusion.

“Why do you think I took so much time with it?” Warren said. “But you’d be surprised … lots you can say in those things. And it just looks like a bunch of beads. You can hand it to an enemy as a gift and he never knows he’s passing your message along. We’ve done that.”

“Well, it’s nice you’re giving us the necklace as a backup, in case something happens,” Marguerite said. “But it’s only a backup, unless you keep talking and talking and use up all your energy. You can give it to us as a keepsake when we get home. Now you get some rest.”

Warren tried to obey, but kept waking up saying he was thirsty. When they tipped the canteen into his mouth, though, he had a hard time swallowing and Charles wasn’t sure he was getting much. Sweat dampened Warren’s buckskin clothes and soaked his face.

Charles and Marguerite dragged the canoe, with Warren in it, up out of the water, through the mud flats along the shore and up onto higher ground, where a stubby pine tree in the sand offered slight shade.

The flies and late-season mosquitoes that hummed out of the marsh made a long day far longer. The flies swarmed over Warren’s wound, and Marguerite and Charles took turns shooing them away. But the flies returned, and returned, and returned, only one goal in their tiny minds: Find the source of that smell. Once, Charles went into a frenzy, clapping and smacking and running after them. He missed every fly, and they came back as if nothing had happened. He slumped against the tree.

“I’ll take a turn,” Marguerite said.

The air cooled as the sun began to set, and Warren became more alert. He finally managed to swallow some water.

“We’re almost home,” he said, seeming to forget they’d already discussed this. “Do you know how far we have?”

“We already passed that big shallow bay, the one we go past before we get to the Dorchesters’ territory,” Charles said.

“Ah, Blackwater Bay,” Warren said.

“Now we’re on a little island on the edge of another bay a little north of that one.”

“Little Choptank Bay,” Warren said. “It won’t be long before we get to the Choptank River. We’ll have to be careful, that’s where most of the Dorchesters live. It’s good we’re traveling at night, because we won’t have to have a fire. There won’t be any fishing boats out at night either.”

“The Dorchesters pay tribute to Easton,” Charles said. “They wouldn’t attack us, would they?”

“I never trust a Dorchester,” Warren said. “They don’t even listen to their own chief. If they knew they could get away with it, they’d shoot us full of arrows and sink our canoe without giving it another thought. Besides, we’re not really what you would call honored subjects of the king of Easton.”

“They don’t know that,” Charles said.

“They won’t have to be a genius to guess,” Warren said. “Anyway, we’ll be pretty safe at night.”

“How long do you think we have?” Marguerite asked.

“I bet we can make it home tonight. It will be about twenty miles to Easton now, give or take. If you make good time paddling, we can do it.”

Charles liked Warren’s increasing use of “we” instead of “you.” His voice sounded stronger too. If they could just get him to a doctor, they might be able to clean up his wound before he got poison blood. And even if he had a touch of it, people had survived poison blood before. The doctor could take out some of the bad blood and set him straight.

“Are you excited Charles?” Warren said.

Charles snapped back to the conversation. “About what?”

“About your new start. About getting away from the smugglers.”

“I don’t know,” Charles said. “I mean yes, some. But I’m just hoping I’ll be able to make it. I’m worried about the Builders’ school. I know it’s really tough.”

“What do you have to be worried about?” Warren said. “If you can survive what you have this trip, university will be no problem.”

Charles wasn’t sure it was that simple, but it was still a comforting thought.

“There’s also George,” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’ll be out to get me. He’ll know where I am.”

“I think,” Warren said, “now that the Builders’ little plot to sabotage the band has failed — or actually, the person they sent to carry out their plot has failed — George may have more to worry about than taking revenge on an escaped slave.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Builders will be out to get him now more than ever, and they might be more direct about it this time.”

“Still, unless they catch him, I’ll always have that fear in the back of my mind,” Charles said. “I’m not sure I want to live like that. I just want to be left alone and live my life, but nobody will ever let me do that. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Charles,” Warren said, “nobody is left alone. That’s life. Not the king or the nobles or anybody else gets a fair shake, and none of them is their own master either. Everybody goes through life afraid of what’s waiting around the corner, and if we’re not, we haven’t been paying attention. You’ll make the best of it, I’m sure.” He lay back and closed his eyes.
The sky blazed red and orange in the west, then faded to pink, then gray. Warren woke up when they pushed the canoe through the black sucking mud of the marsh, then fell asleep again as they shoved off.

It’s our last night. Our last night. Our last night, Charles repeated to himself as he paddled.
They pushed hard all night, too eager to finally reach the end of their journey to pace themselves. Occasionally they had to stop and rest their paddles across their laps and simply drift along until they could get energy to go on.

They crossed the mouth of the mighty Choptank without seeing anyone. When the sun rose, it shone on the water of the wide Tred Avon River. Along the banks of the Tred Avon, only a few miles away, was Easton.

“Too close to stop now,” Marguerite said.

Charles nodded. He had almost no energy left, but was too excited to stop and rest.
Sea gulls flapped along the shore, screaming at each other over shellfish and minnows. A dark osprey glided overhead, then plunged down into the water and splashed back up with a fish. An eagle watched them pass from the branches of a dead tree. A fisherman coming down to his dock looked them over, and when they said good morning in the Easton language, he smiled and waved.

“Warren’s slept so peacefully tonight,” Marguerite said. “I think he’s turned the corner.”
Charles looked back at him. Warren was fast asleep, his face more relaxed than it had been for many days. The sweat was gone from his face. Then Charles looked again.

“Marguerite,” he said.

She froze, and her eyes opened wide. “Oh no.”

Charles reached back and held his hand in front of Warren’s nose. There was no breath.

“He’s gone.”

Charles’ throat tightened, and he turned around and gouged the water with his paddle for a while. The river grew blurry. Behind him, Marguerite was as silent as Warren.

After a while, Charles regained his composure and looked back. Marguerite paddled a steady beat, staring straight ahead past him. Her expression was familiar, the old Marguerite, deadpan and empty.
The docks in Easton got their share of strange travelers: traders from distant shores, long-haired miners, tribesmen from the back woods. But two emaciated people in backwoodsmen’s clothes, with a corpse in their canoe, drew a crowd of watermen and traders when they pulled in.

Out of the babble, Charles realized he was hearing words in Easton. After months abroad, he had stopped expecting crowds of people he met to speak his native tongue.

“Where are they from?”

“What happened?”

“Did the Dorchesters attack you?”

“Do they speak Easton?”

People in the back of the crowd tried to elbow their way in to see.

It had been years since Charles had been to Easton, and though some of the faces looked familiar he didn’t remember any names. He had only been a boy when he left, so none of them would remember him.
Charles gently pried the bead necklace out of Warren’s fingers, then looked up at the people gathered around.

“This man was a Builder,” he said, wishing he could come up with something more profound and solemn for the moment, the kind of eulogy that Warren deserved. But he was no public speaker.
Fear came into many of the faces, and the crowd began to chatter. A dead Builder meant trouble.
“I have a message for the Builders,” Charles said. “Can someone take me to them?”

The crowd backed away as he and Marguerite climbed out of the canoe onto the dock, stretching their stiff backs. It seemed all wrong that only two of them were getting out of the canoe, that Warren’s journey had already ended with no fanfare sometime in the night.

Now Marguerite and Charles were just two young runaway slaves in a big city, with no protector and nobody to vouch for them.

The crowd began to part, and a stern man with a close-cropped beard, wearing a plain woolen suit, stepped up to Charles and Marguerite. “What message do you have for the Builders?”
Charles held up the necklace, and the man’s face changed as he reached out and took it. His lips moved slightly as he counted, bead by bead. Then he scrambled to the edge of the dock and peered down into the canoe.

He knelt there for a long time, staring down at Warren’s body. Then he looked up at Charles and Marguerite. His eyes were moist, and he spoke gently.

“You are welcome here,” he said. “Come with me.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Warren had said in their last conversation. Charles wasn’t so sure about that, but it was beginning to seem that he might finally have made it home.

He and Marguerite looked at each other, then followed their guide into the city.

The End

The Knowledge of the Queen: Chapter Six

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By Juan Ersatzman

The Knowledge of the Queen is a serial novel, debuting with chapter one in January 2016 and slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Previous chapters:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five

Chapter Six

“Okay, I’m going to comment on the technological aspect of this, and not in the way you think. It’s not about any one revolutionary technology. Rather, I’m thinking about how we think about technology in general.

This discourse I’m thinking of was first brought to my attention by a professor back in the day who taught a course on the formation and development of modern society. He wasn’t a history professor — it was a geography Gen Ed. Topic of the class aside, he was a brilliant lecturer, so it was easy to forgive him the occasional polished digression into matters he didn’t know much about, and shouldn’t have spoken on authoritatively.

One of those digressions, while he was talking about the role a certain technology — to be honest, I’ve forgotten the specific item or concept — but he said that technology develops in response to demand. That the theories and materials for lots of technologies exist well before the technology itself does, but we don’t get around to building the machine until it can solve a problem for us.

That’s bullshit, and I’ll tell you why: imagine that through some miracle of scientific discovery, someone in the middle ages, or even in the first half of the twentieth century had invented modern cellphones. Do you think their business would grow or fail?

I’d wager that it would boom, because immediate, independent communication is something we’ve always wanted, throughout history.

Television? Same thing.

Most technology addresses issues we’ve had since the dawn of time, and each successive development in tech reflects a slight improvement in how we go about satisfying that need or desire.

So to say that we don’t develop technologies at the pace of the science that allows us to develop them doesn’t make any sense to me, and ‘demand developed’ doesn’t strike me as a reasonable story for why technology develops when it does.

So there’s more than one question when it comes to the relationship of tech and time.”

— Edited comments from Dr. Harold Regis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New York University, delivered at the 2012 Interdisciplinary Panel on Technology and Time

“Oh, golly, oh, man, oh, heavens, oh, crumbles, oh …”

Danny kept up a steady stream of subconscious silly-swears as he twisted the steering wheel to keep the aging station wagon bouncing and rattling up the dirt-and-gravel road to Valeview.

Marigold smiled despite herself at his agitation. Danny was four years older than Marigold. His teeth were solidly into the life of his choice, he was a young father, a young farmer, and an old soul. He had inherited their late father’s even keel and solid frame, but was incapable of the old man’s gruff unflappability.

“It’ll be fine, Danny, we’ll get mom,” she said, and reached from the back seat to squeeze his shoulder through the windbreaker.

“Yeah, fine, sure,” said Danny without turning his head, “okay. Sure.”

They roared through the last sharp turn in the back-road that ran from the farms to the village, flattened against each other by the force of the turn. Settling back into place, and Marigold caught a glimpse of the parking meadow. It was overflowing with vehicles. Marigold’s throat tightened. This late in the afternoon, the parking lot was normally half full at best. Why were there still so many cars?

She was scrunched into the back seat between the prophetess and Louisa, and was wishing — for any number of reasons — that the slenderer, better-smelling Harrison hadn’t submitted meekly when the prophetess ordered him to sit up front. The prophetess’s hips were wide, and made of iron. Seemingly oblivious to Marigold’s paralyzing fear for Ma Gnowker’s welfare, she was grinning with anticipation, straining forward as if she could move the car faster by stretching her neck toward the destination. On Marigold’s right, Louisa looked relaxed, despite being folded in half between Marigold and the door. Her eyes were scanning the road ahead, but the rest of her face was motionless. The hardwood cudgel lay lightly in her hands, bouncing with the car.

Louisa noticed her gaze and smiled at Marigold.

“No worries, highness.”

Marigold nodded and did her best to breathe in deeply. The engine of the station wagon wheezed, the frame creaked, and the ancient car eased over the lip of the parking meadow, and shuddered to a stop next to the buses.

Danny turned to the back seat, his face pale.

“Where now?”

“Drop us here,” said the prophetess, “go to the carpark, and stay there.”

“Yeah, OK,” said Danny, “okay; carpark, and stay there.”

Harrison, the prophetess, Louisa and Marigold clambered out of the car, which lurched away toward the yellow ropes of the carpark. The sky, deepening toward sunset turned the buses to druidic ritual stones, looming up over their heads.

“Come on,” muttered the prophetess, and stomped off between the buses with her head thrust forward. Harrison followed with his brow furrowed, jaw clenched, gun half-raised, and eyes confused. Louisa put a hand on Marigold’s shoulder, and shepherded her forward.

“Ahead of me, highness.”

Marigold nodded, and lurched up into the ravine of shadows.

They marched out into the flat space where bus drivers should have been napping and playing cards and complaining, and paused. The field was empty. The bus drivers’ chairs sat in empty circles or individually in the shade of their buses. The card tables had been set up, and cards were scattered haphazardly across the tables, the chairs, and the grass. An ace of spades was tangled in the blades at Marigold’s feet, trembling in the breeze. Water bottles, cups, and napkins lay idle on the tables. There was no sign of a struggle, nor of any life. The parking meadow was abandoned.

Marigold felt a new wave of cold fear.

“Listen,” said Louisa and cocked her head. The dulled sounds of a public address system were booming down from the square, echoing off the clay and concrete walls of the town, filtering into an unintelligible, ominous roar.

Marigold had anticipated flashing lights and sirens; riot police and armed guards; the full muscle and vigilance of a teetering regime under threat from a girl. Not this overwhelming emptiness.

Most Saturdays, there were at least two guards standing at the King’s Avenue arch, and two more at the entrance to the square. She looked along the scrubby fencerow of brambles and bushes toward the eastern entrance into town. She couldn’t see any guards, but obscured from view by the fencerow, and tucked just outside the King’s Avenue arch was a white vehicle with a decal on the side.

“TV station,” she said.

The prophetess nodded, and met her eyes. “I have no idea,” she said. “Let’s go.” She started off again. As they began to move, the prophetess and Harrison exchanged a short glance with narrowed eyes.

They scrambled toward the arch, hugging close to the fencerow, hunched almost onto their hands.

The precaution was wise, but unnecessary; as Marigold had observed, there were no guards at the archway, nor in the street beyond. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the television van, just the gradual increase in volume from the loudspeaker in the square. The group scuttled through the arch, glancing over their shoulders, and up-and-down the empty street. The sun was inching lower, casting longer, deeper shadows across the cobblestones. Nothing stirred but the breeze.

“What the hell?” asked Louisa, now holding her club more tightly, looking up and down the abandoned thoroughfare. “What the hell is going on?”

Marigold tried again to decipher the loudspeaker, but the words kept fading into noise.

“I don’t know,” said the prophetess. “I don’t know, but I don’t trust it. I’m not about to march through that arch in the square. It’s a mouth full of teeth, I’d wager. We’ll swing around the side and creep up through the side streets. Look sharp.”

Louisa nodded, and they set off again in a halting gait that was equal parts anxiety and haste. The prophetess, who had never exhibited anything amounting to caution before, hugged walls and led them in a zigzag pattern, creeping across cobblestones, and dashing between alleys, approaching the square along almost the reverse of the jagged path Marigold had taken when she fled seven days before.

As they hurried through a residential street, Marigold glanced to the right, and glimpsed the blackened walls, yellow caution tape and plywood patches that remained of the Hotchkiss warehouse. She allowed herself a shudder, and kept close to Harrison’s back.

Half a block later, the prophetess turned toward the square. The sun had fallen below the roofs of the buildings on either side, and the shade in the alley was ink-deep. The echoing loudspeaker thundered ever louder around them. They were one street back from the edge of the square. At the end of the alley, the prophetess peered out into the street beyond, and raised a warning hand. The others pressed themselves against the wall behind her.

“K,” she whispered loudly, turning her head, “couple of ’em, skulking around in the street.”

There was a sudden sound of footsteps.

“Damn,” sighed the prophetess, “they heard me.”

At last displaying something akin to the foreknowledge of ordained events Marigold had previously expected from someone called the prophetess, she swung her pistol arm out into the street and clotheslined a black-clad assailant who’d been rushing around the corner full of violent intent. He gave a little grunting gasp of surprise, and sank toward the cobblestones. The prophetess, never one to do things by halves, swung around and kicked him in the face as he fell.

The other K was on her instantly, and all might have been disaster had the prophetess been alone, or only with Harrison and Marigold. As it was, Louisa smoothly stepped around Marigold, Harrison and the prophetess in one stride, and caught the man on the bottom of the chin with a short swing of the cudgel. He stumbled back, swinging his own club wildly in front of him, seemingly on reflex.

Louisa moved like a dancer, darting into the radius of his swing, and parrying it with her own club as though she was fencing. Dropping her cudgel, she caught the K around the back of the neck, dragging his head downward while she shoved a knee into his crotch. He gasped again, and swung his free arm in a left hook into Louisa’s unprotected side. She grunted, but didn’t let go, dragging his head lower and kneeing him again. Without releasing her grip, she swung around his back, and caught him in a headlock with her left arm, covering his mouth with her right hand. He sank to the cobblestones, sputtering through her hand and pinwheeling his limbs. Her grip tightened, until the pinwheeling gave way to desperate, feeble scratching, and then to nothing. When Louisa let go, Marigold couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The young plainswoman straightened up and looked down at her opponent, face blank.

“Should’ve killed him,” she muttered. Although the K had attacked them, Marigold couldn’t escape the impression that Louisa was the swift and deadly huntress, and the K were her lumbering prey.

The prophetess’s victim, despite a nose that had taken on a new angle and was releasing a sluggish river of blood, was only stunned. Louisa bent down, placed a hand at the back of his neck and squeezed. He gave a little sigh, and subsided into silence. The prophetess watched her work with a wide-eyed look of unconcealed envy.

“Now that,” she said, “is a neat trick.”

They dragged the limp bodies of the K into the shadows, and left them slumped against the wall. After scanning up and down the street for other guards, they darted one by one across the street to a narrow alley that led directly to the square. The passage was cramped and littered with the cast-off possessions of the adjacent buildings, degraded from status as a byway to life as a storage space. A wagon blocked the square-ward end of the alley, providing Marigold and her companions with a final layer of protection.

Leaving Louisa crouched in sentry position, Harrison, the prophetess, and Marigold picked their way through the alley, and huddled up against the shelter of the wagon. The crowd was packed to the stalls, and Harrison and Marigold were forced to crane their necks to see what was drawing the attention of the entire town.

In the center of the square, a small stage of planks and wooden crates had been built next to the fountain, with a lectern and an array of microphones in front of a flat black curtain. Black-clad guards, seemingly also members of the K, stood in formation around the base of the platform, self-importantly scanning the mob and toying with machine guns. Behind them, black tripods strained beneath the weight of gigantic loudspeakers from which the booming proceeded. Spotlights on the far side of the square competed with the dying sun. A tall, white-haired man with a stoop in his spine was speaking. Marigold could see no evidence of Ma Gnowker, nor any path of ingress through the mob.

“… And as you know,” said the man, evidently finishing off a thought, “there came a time in our history, not so long ago in the count of years, but several ages ago in the swings and shifts of society, when we faced a choice. Not we, of course, instead, for us, our king. In the interests of progress, he was confronted with a difficult choice.”

Beside Marigold, the prophetess hissed through her teeth. It was evident that she, more or less prevented from seeing the stage by the height of the wagon and of the crowd, was not pleased with what she was hearing. Her eyes were hard, and her lips drawn back into a growl.

“It is,” said the man, “the duty of a king to do what is best for his people, and this duty holds when all other bonds and considerations founder. Beyond loyalty, beyond family, beyond the final, mightiest cords of self-interest and self-preservation, nothing can dilute the strength nor alleviate the weight of this burden — to do what is best for his people. In ease, in hardship, in prosperity and in poverty, in personal gain, and in the face of personal devastation, a king must do what is best for his people. Always.

“Twenty-two years ago,” the man went on, “our king faced an impossible choice. Far-seeing, and bound by tradition and the inherited wisdom of his royal antecedents, he knew the dangers of the approaching future, of the shifts that were to come in governance, in thinking, in technology. Our king could see what was best for his people, and knew that, in the interest of freedom, it was best for his people to rule themselves. That independent of his reign, they would soon themselves demand to be free.

“Of his own volition, and in the interest of peace, he gave them what they would soon have asked. Placing their good above his own, our king forsook the palace, and forsook his reign. His scepter was given to the people, and his power turned over to the parliament.

“We have seen then, for twenty years, what becomes of a country in the absence of its king.”

The crowd, which up until this moment had been strangely quiet, now rustled in agreement. The old man’s voice rose. “Into the vacuum of our monarchy have rushed cowards and self-interested confidence tricksters. Men and women who concentrate power for themselves, and for their families. In these twenty years, what have we seen? A more prosperous, more peaceable, more unified nation? Ha!”

He barked a sharp laugh, and a few cries of “No!” echoed from the crowd.

“No! We have seen the power concentrated in the hands of a few, who huddle together in the capital taxing and exploiting the coastline, the plains, and these mountains —” he gestured about himself. “They rejoiced to see the end of the king, but now they strive to replace him! Each would be king or queen in his place!”

This was not at all the speech Marigold had anticipated. Beside her, Harrison was nodding. The prophetess was biting her lip.

“They steal our land, they steal our taxes, they steal our young men and women — we are enslaved!” shouted the man, his face reddening. Really, thought Marigold, this speech was Harrison all over. She wondered again, as she had when Harrison had made the same claim: was life in the city, with its cellphones and trains and parties and apartments, slavery? A curious and comfortable kind, at worst.

“Only a fool,” said the old man, “only a fool would say that this has been best for the people. Our money, our work, our children — none of it is our own. They belong to a few small men and women in Embritton who take, and take, and take, and never give.”

The prophetess gritted her teeth.

“A king,” said the man, “must do what is best for his people. There is no change of law, there is no change of rule that can break this solemn duty and bond. Two decades and two years ago, our king in his wisdom knew that what was best for his people was to give them a chance to lead themselves — to carve out in the living earth their own course, and to chart a destiny through new stars of their own.

“For two decades,” said the man, “the people have charted their path. And for two decades, the path has been one of foolishness, waste, and avarice. For two decades, in secret, our king has mourned the path his people choose. He has watched from the shadows as our best and brightest are wasted, as our capital city becomes a stronghold of thieves and robbers, and as the unity of our regions to the whole of our nation has turned to fractiousness and fighting.”

Marigold looked around. Fully half of the crowd was composed of tourists from the capital city, the region presently being denounced at top volume from the stage. Some were looking enthusiastic, others indifferent, and most of them looked afraid. She wondered where the children were.

“A king must do what is best for his people. And tonight, people of Trevenland, our king knows what is best for his people.”

The crowd rustled uneasily; what king? A cool wind, hastening down the slopes, stirred their hair and collars and swept across the square to Marigold. She cast a glance at the prophetess, who shook her head. Harrison looked wide-eyed at Marigold.

“And he has chosen,” said the man, his voice rising to a hoarse bellow. “Our king has chosen. People of Trevenland — downtrodden, forgotten, robbed and enslaved, rejoice! The fog is lifting! The clouds part! He returns to us now — I give you your king! King Hiram returns!”

Silence greeted this pronouncement. The crowd rustled uneasily. The wind whispered among the people, their eyes wide, searching the stage and each other’s faces for some sign of what was to come.

The old man uncoiled the stoop in his spine and stood erect, arms raised. From behind the makeshift curtain, another figure swept into the glare of the spotlights.

This man was hunched over grotesquely. He wore a military dress uniform of pure white, beneath two capes — one silk, and one fur — both crimson, trimmed in white and gold. His head bent beneath the weight of a crown, which resembled a headdress, an elephantine bulb of red velvet squeezed into a gold-and-silver filigree. The tracery followed the same pattern as the lines of the amulet hanging against Marigold’s sternum, and resolved above the man’s forehead in a golden cross with a ruby at its center. At each joint of the precious metals, a diamond caught the glow of the spotlights and the dying sun.

It was the costume of a king, but not the figure. Besides his stoop, the man’s eyes shone yellow and crafty in the light, his legs bowed and his hands stretched out from the military coat with pale skin wrinkling around the bones like the talons of a raptor.

Now the crowd began to babble. It was a buzzing, starting on the western side of the square, the furthest from the platform. The noise rushed through the square, growing in volume and intensity.

“No,” said the prophetess, who had pulled herself up on the side of the cart, “no, no, no,”

With an attempt at a regal smile that revealed crooked, yellowing teeth, the king motioned for quiet. The clamor grew louder and louder.

The king shook his head, and slowly, deliberately reached into the bosom of his lily-white dress uniform. After a moment he withdrew from the pocket a disc of metal, glinting in the red light of the sunset and the white glare of the spotlights. But at the touch of his hand, spidery lines along the disc began to glow until, from afar, it looked as though his hand ended in a star. It was the amulet of succession — talisman of the royal family.

The noise grew softer and softer, and died away. Tourists and villagers and bus-drivers alike were gawking slack-jawed at the stage. The wind, growing colder and stronger as darkness encroached, rattled hair and collars, and rippled in the curtain behind the king.

As the crowd fell silent, Marigold felt her heart throbbing, and blood pounding in her ears and in the accumulated wounds of the past week.

“Good god,” said Harrison softly, staring.

“Holy shit,” said Louisa.

The prophetess ground her teeth together.

Marigold said nothing.

It started with the villagers, and it started with the oldest. One wizened old man at the front of the crowd, his brown skin furrowed by the years, pulled off his winter cap, and dropped to his knees. His eyes were cast down, and he clutched the cap tightly to his chest. His lips moved without noise.

Around him, other elders of the village were kneeling, bareheaded. And then the young villagers, and finally, the whole crowd was quiet, on its knees in the square.

Marigold, Harrison and the prophetess ducked below the top of the wagon. Marigold, drawn by the spectacle, crawled on her belly under the wagon until she could see the stage again.

The man stood before the crowd, the amulet raised above his head, eyes alight, teeth glowing in a snarl of triumph.

Marigold’s breathing was shallow, and her heart was beating a wild tattoo, thumping against the amulet she wore, identical to the one this would-be king now raised as his sign in the square. Was she the queen? Did she want to be the queen? Could she be the queen? The questions were meaningless, now.

Standing on the stage, a glowing figure poised above the subservient masses, Hivelgott was the king.

To be continued

Gunpowder Trails: Chapter Twelve

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Gunpowder Trails

By Andrew Sharp

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015, and is slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Charles had pictured Washington as a bustling city with thousands of people, since he knew it was the source of most of the metal in the known world. But when he, Marguerite and Warren shoved the canoe off downriver from their morning camp and traveled further into the heart of the ruins, they found the banks of the Potomac mostly empty.

They floated past more tree stumps on the riverbank, along with piles of ash and charcoal, and one empty foundry, its chimneys cold and dead. But they saw only one or two miners, who looked them over but didn’t seem too interested, and a handful of watercraft — three men on a raft with a load of steel, a woman fishing from a canoe, and a large trading vessel tied up at a dock.

Inland, Charles counted three or four different smoke plumes from foundries, nothing like the black fog he had imagined. Washington seemed to be mostly just an immense ruin with a few people here and there extracting all the easy metal they could find and melting it down.

“Does it bother the Builders, people tearing down cities like this when the Builders are trying to bring them back?” Charles asked Warren, mostly to break the tense silence. “Seems like it would help if they didn’t have to rebuild everything.”

“Well, it bothers them to have grubby miners stomping all over their archeology sites,” Warren said. “No telling how many priceless treasures get broken and thrown out in the garbage. But we just don’t have enough archaeologists to go over everything, and even if we did there’s not much we could do to stop the mining without sending an army over here. And that would really mess up the artifacts.

“The cities are really too far gone to do much rebuilding as far as that goes,” he said. “Look at the buildings you see. Mostly just pieces of wall and piles of rubble and dirt. From that standpoint there’s no harm in these guys salvaging the metal and turning it into something useful. These cities would have to be rebuilt anyway.”

“That’s kind of depressing,” Charles said.

“Yeah. And by the time we have enough people to put in the cities, these buildings will be even more broken down. Even if the Builders succeed in all their projects, it’s going to take really a long time. And you think of a city like Easton as big. Well, that’s nothing like the amount of people they had in this city. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe millions.”

“Millions? In one city?” Charles said. “There aren’t even a million people in the world, probably.”

“Probably not,” Warren said. “We can’t even really imagine what it must have been like back then. People crammed in every little spot. And that’s why you find ruined houses everywhere you go. Anyway, about rebuilding, it’s just not practical. Any reasonable guess is it would take thousands of years of record population growth to even have enough people to fill a city like this. By then, there will really be nothing left, miners or no miners. So we’ll just salvage as many artifacts as we can.”

“And then what?” It was the first thing Marguerite had said since the unpleasantness of the night before. She’d been paddling up front in the canoe, back stiff, ignoring them all morning. Now she turned around, her paddle hanging in the air and dripping into the river.

“Not sure I follow,” Warren said.

“I mean, what’s going to happen after you bring back the golden days? So you get your big city full of people with wonderful technology, then what?”

“And then people will be reasonably happy and have decent, comfortable lives,” Warren said.

“And then everything will fall apart again.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“You sound like Charles,” she said. “He must have been getting his ideas from you. Well I don’t buy it. The Builders, they’re just trying to make the same old mistakes all over again and see if it goes different. Fools.”

“Wow,” Warren said. “Way to look on the bright side.” He tried to laugh. Marguerite didn’t join him.

“Well what would you do, then, Marguerite?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t do anything,” she said.

They paddled along without talking for a while.

“Well, Marguerite,” Warren finally said, “I guess that’s just not good enough for me. I want people to be happier.”

“People will never be happy,” Marguerite said. “If they’re rich, they want to be richer. If you come up with a great invention, you want to come up with a better one.”

“Well, maybe,” Warren said. “Sure. But I’m happy enough. You may not be very happy, but don’t think everybody’s experience is like yours. And I don’t mean that as some kind of insult. I’m just saying not everyone has had the challenges you have.”

“You don’t know anything about my experiences,” Marguerite said.

“I have read,” Charles said slowly, “in the books in George’s library. There’s some history books, the ones they translated from back then. From what I can tell, there was plenty to be miserable about back before the Fall.”

“Ah, well,” Warren said. “Those are historians. They’re such a gloomy bunch. All they write about is the bad stuff. You can’t let that worry you too much.”

“So you think,” Charles said, still chewing on the ideas, “we can make the ideal world.”

“I don’t think it’s good to overthink it,” Warren said. “It’s not about making the perfect world where everybody is happy all the time. It’s just making it as good as we can. I’m sure we can agree there’s room for improvement.”

“That’s not what the Builders tell everyone,” Marguerite said. “They’re building heaven on earth.”

“Oh, ha, well, we might get a little carried away sometimes,” Warren said. “You have to get people fired up, and the rhetoric might get a little over the top sometimes. But overall I think we’re being realistic. We should at least aim for the ideal world, right, even if we never get there?”

“So by realistic,” Marguerite said, “you mean delusional.”

“Oh, come now,” Warren said. “I like the term optimistic better.”

“Delusional,” Marguerite said.

“I don’t believe that,” Warren said. “Good Lord, girl, lighten up. What’s wrong with coming up with some medicine to treat the plague, or enjoying the challenge of inventing something new? I like to think having a goal to work toward is what it’s all about. That’s where you get your sense of fulfillment.”

“You’re not inventing something new,” Marguerite said. “You’re just doing the old thing all over again.”

It was strange, but Warren was sounding a lot like Marguerite, Charles thought. If just having a goal was the point, there was no real purpose in the end. You basically distracted yourself with a hobby so you could forget that. Whereas Marguerite just said the hell with it and gave up.

The God people — the pagans, the Christian sects, the handful of Muslims and Jews — all claimed that the missing ingredient was God (or god, or goddess). But many of them spent all their time trying to amass power or wealth, so apparently God didn’t scratch the itch for them.

Some were different, of course. He recalled the old monk he had known as a child, who pottered around the marketplace in rags, sweeping up the stones in exchange for a little food from the vendors. He always had a smile on his face.

Once Charles had been out on an errand to the market with his master, who had stopped to talk to the monk. They seemed to know each other somehow, and Master had offered to help the monk find a better job and a place to live.

“What makes you think I want anything more?” the old man asked, smiling. “Do I look miserable?”

Charles’ master hemmed and hawed a little, and said no, don’t be silly, just trying to help.

“God’s the only thing I need,” the monk said. “The simple life is best. You already have all you need to be happy, if only you knew it. Has all that science and fancy stuff you work on made you happy yet? God is just waiting for you to notice it hasn’t. He’s what you really need.”

Charles’ master rolled his eyes. “Oh, no, not the old lecture about the corrupting influence of technology,” he’d said, clapping the old man on the back. “Here’s a couple wampum beads. Take a break from the sweeping for a few weeks, OK?”

The monk just shook his head and smiled. “You ought to take a break from the race with no finish line for a few weeks,” he said.

As they walked away, Charles looked back and saw the monk hand all the wampum to a passing beggar, who snatched it and ran as if he were afraid the old man would change his mind.

They’d found the monk frozen solid on a back street one cold winter morning, covered with snow and a smile on his face.

In a way, maybe the old monk had given up on life as much as Marguerite and Warren had. They just all had a different way of dealing with it.

What was that Bible verse? “‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,’ says the preacher,” or something along those lines.

Surely living in abject poverty and freezing to death on a street corner didn’t solve that riddle any more than getting rich did.

They all sat quiet with their thoughts. Marguerite handed Charles the paddle, and he and Warren kept the canoe shooting forward at a steady pace.

They glided by ruins, pillars sticking up out of the water like dead trees in a swamp. They passed one enormous building that had once been capped with a dome, most of it collapsed now. The skeletons of towers many stories tall teetered in different states of collapse.

Charles and Marguerite gaped at these.

“Look how tall they are!” Charles said. “That one’s …” he paused to count. “Eleven stories. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Oh, they get taller than that,” Warren said. “Speaking of which, look there, there’s the Obelisk. Quite the landmark. I saw it once on an archaeology trip we took way back when I was a student.”

They looked where he was pointing and saw a stone needle rising up out of the water of a shallow bay far up into the sky, thin but solid. Charles realized his mouth had fallen open and he shut it with a snap. He’d heard of the Obelisk, and seen a drawing of it once, but that hadn’t prepared him for the sight in real life.

“Why’d they build it in the water?” he asked.

“I imagine,” Warren said, grinning at him, “that the water was lower back then.”

Charles’ face grew hot. Of course. But it still didn’t make sense. What would have made the water level go up so much?

“The miners worship the Obelisk, they say,” Warren said. “It does inspire a certain amount of reverence.”

“How did they do it?” Charles asked. “How could they possibly build that?”

Warren shook his head. “Wouldn’t I like to know. Imagine being able to do that.”

They drifted in the canoe, taking it in. “What a world that was,” Warren said. “What a world.”

The ruins went on for miles. The thought of people living in all of them was staggering. Millions of people. Charles couldn’t come up with a picture of that. It was just too big. And where they would have gotten food for so many people was even harder to imagine.

A small barge passed them. The crew, two men and a woman, stared at the canoe and its oddly dressed occupants.

“Where do you hail from?” one of them asked in the trade language.

“Easton,” Warren said.

“Why, we just came from there,” the woman said. “Are you traders?”

Warren hesitated a beat. “Why, no. Diplomats, on our way back from a journey here to talk about trade.”

“Ah,” the first man said. “Well, that’s always a happy subject. I hope you were successful.”

“Indeed,” Warren said. “Most gratifying.”

“A happy return voyage to you,” the woman said.

“Thank you.”

The barge drifted past. The crew spoke in low voices to each other, and Charles caught the word “diplomats,” spoken with a skeptical tone.

“Well,” Warren said, once they were well past the barge, “I suppose we are a little ragged looking for diplomats, at that. I’ll have to come up with a better story.”

They reached a junction with another river, and the Potomac sprawled out wider and deeper.

“That’s the Anacostia,” Warren said. “We’ve crossed it sometimes when we take the northern route, remember?”

Charles nodded.

From time to time they passed the ruins of bridges, rows of concrete islands that had formed the foundations. Below these in the water, piles of stone and steel rose toward the surface, swarms of fish darting along their edges.

Gradually fewer ruins marred the forests along the shore.

Their shadows stretched across the water ahead as the sun dropped into the trees behind them, so they found a spot on the riverbank to spend the night where a small clearing opened in the trees.

“Won’t the light from the fire be too obvious here?” Charles asked.

Warren shrugged. “Well, since the smugglers have to go around the city, they’ll lose a lot of time. We still need to keep pushing ourselves to stay ahead, but I don’t think we have anything to worry about tonight.”

These sounded to Charles a little too much like famous last words. He slept restlessly when he wasn’t on watch, dreaming of being chased, but when morning came they were alone on the river except for a few turtles on a log.

When they got underway again the river began to take them around long, lazy bends. This was another reason it was better to walk, Charles thought, besides avoiding the blisters on your palms. You could save a lot of time going in a straight line, assuming you didn’t hit any briar patches. No, now that he thought about it, he’d take the river.

The paddle flew out of his hands and splintered into pieces, jolting him out of his reverie. A split second later, a tremendous “boom” rolled over the water. All three of them turned to look, and Marguerite screamed. A cloud of smoke hung around a tree on the south riverbank.

“Go! Go! We’ve got to get out of here!” Warren said, his eyes wide, seeming to forget that he was the only one with a workable paddle. He began to paddle as hard as he could, steering for the north shore of the river.

A fusillade of gunfire poured from the woods behind them, smoke puffing out from brush and behind boulders. Bullets zipped past them and ricocheted off the water with a whine. One whacked into the canoe above the waterline, inches from Marguerite’s knee.

Even in the chaos, Charles found a moment to admire the speed Warren was managing, paddling by himself. Water churned and foamed behind the canoe.

The smugglers emerged from their hiding places and stood on the shore, aiming their pistols. George, and Old Harry, and Gary and James, they were all there. But the smugglers didn’t have a boat. If they could just make it to the far shore alive, they could get away.

“Get down!” Warren gasped.

Charles and Marguerite ducked, and again the whine of the bullets came, ricocheting off the water and kicking up spray.

“Stay down!” Warren said. “I’ll paddle, you lay low.”

The firing continued, and Charles waited for a bullet to smack into him. But when the canoe rammed into the bank, he scrambled out, still untouched.

“Let’s take the canoe with us,” Warren said.

A couple of shots echoed across the water, accompanied by puffs of smoke on the far shore, but most of the smugglers appeared to be reloading.

Warren and the slaves heaved the canoe up on their shoulders and staggered off into the trees. The firing continued behind them but then died down.

“They don’t have a boat,” Warren said. “We just have to run along shore for a while. When it’s safe, we’ll get back in the water. They can’t cross the stream.”

“But they can run along the riverbank. And the canoe is going to really slow us down. We won’t be able to get ahead of them,” Charles said. “Why don’t we just go on foot the rest of the way?”

“Because, Charles, we will need the canoe to get across the bay.”

“We could hire a boat.”

“Not very safe,” Warren said. “Lots of pirates.”

“We need to get to the bay first,” Marguerite said. “And we can’t carry the canoe the whole …” Then she pointed at Warren. “You’re bleeding!”

He looked down at his arm. A chunk of flesh hung off his bicep, and blood dripped down his elbow.

“What? They hit me. I didn’t even feel it,” he said.

“We have to tie that up right now,” Marguerite said, “or you’ll bleed out.” She took out her knife and cut the entire sleeve off Warren’s damaged arm, leaving a jagged edge above the wound. She cut several strips off the severed sleeve, then bound Warren’s wound tightly and tied the makeshift bandage with more strips.

Warren winced. “I feel it now. That really stings. Feels like my heart is beating in my shoulder. Wow, that’s really starting to hurt.” He stopped and sat down, leaning against a tree, one hand holding onto his wounded arm.

“Looks like it missed the bone,” Marguerite said. “You’re lucky.”

“We’re all lucky,” Charles said. “We’ve survived two ambushes on one trip. That’s pretty good.”

“So far,” Marguerite said.

“Shhh!” Charles said. “What was that?”

They all froze.

The sound came again. Splashing noises.

“Shit!” Warren said. “I should have known they’d swim after us. We could have shot at them and kept them on the other side.”

“They can’t all even swim,” Charles said. “I’m pretty sure George can’t swim.”

“Well, sounds like some of them can,” Warren said. “We’ve got to run.”

“We have to leave the canoe,” Marguerite said.

Warren wavered. “We won’t leave it. We’ll hide it, then hide in the woods until they give up chasing us. We’ll come back and get it later.”

“They’ll find it,” Marguerite said.

“We have to try.”

They shoved the canoe down the riverbank into a muddy tangle of reeds, where it wouldn’t drift off into the current, then ran into the forest. A crashing sound behind them told them some of their pursuers had reached the shore.

“We can’t split up,” Warren said as they ran. “They know all the bird call signals, so if we try to get back together, like as not we’d meet one of them. We’re safer staying together anyway. If it comes to it, we can try to fight them.”

Half those shots, Charles thought, would be more of an intimidating banging noise than deadly fire, given his talents with a pistol.

About a quarter mile into the woods, Warren began to gasp and double over, blood leaking out of his bandage.

“I’ve got to stop for a second,” he said.

Twenty minutes later, he had to stop again. He moaned. The crashing sound behind them came nearer.

“Go ahead,” Warren said. “I’ll stay behind.”

“Not a chance,” Charles said.

“No,” Marguerite said.

They helped him over to a tangle of branches in the top of a fallen tree. It wasn’t a perfect hiding place, but it would give them a little cover when the time came to make a last stand.

More crashing and shouting came from the trees, and then wild gunfire.

They looked at each other.

“What are they shooting at?” Marguerite whispered. Warren shook his head.

Then they heard screams.

“Are they attacking each other?” Charles whispered.

Warren shrugged, then winced.

They still couldn’t see anything, but sounds of a melee kept coming out of the trees nearby.

Bang!

Crashing.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bang-bang!

Then a snarl.

“Cats!” Warren hissed.

Old Harry now appeared in the trees, moving at a much better clip than Charles could ever remember seeing him move before. Gary sprinted right behind him. Neither of them had weapons now. Two cats sped through the woods behind them, covering ground in that lithe way cats have without seeming to try much.

The lead cat, a tabby, was fifty yards, twenty yards, five yards from Old Harry and Gary, and then it sprang on Old Harry, pinning him flat in its paws. The other cat, black with a white mitten, grabbed Old Harry’s leg in its jaws and tugged. Old Harry screamed. The tabby put its ears back, hissed, and swung a paw at the black cat. Then it snapped Old Harry’s neck in its jaws. The screaming stopped and the tabby dragged the body away.

All this had happened in a few seconds. Gary kept running, and the black cat reached him in a couple of bounds and flattened him.

Charles lifted his pistol, then hesitated. The thought flashed through his mind that there might be more cats behind these. Shooting this cat might be the same as whacking a hornet’s nest with no plan for how to get away. In the split second he thought this over, the cat bit down on Gary, and he went limp.

They sat motionless, unable to look away, although Charles always wished afterward he had.

The cat sat atop Gary’s body, but it didn’t bite him again. What was it doing? It seemed to be growling, a low constant rumble. Charles realized to his horror it was a sound of contentment. It got off Gary’s body and sat, watching it, crouched, yellow slit eyes wide, tail twitching.

Then it pounced again, batting the body around and leaping after it, frisky as a puppy.

“We have to get out of here,” Warren whispered, “before they smell us. Before they smell me.” He nodded at his dangling arm and bloodstained bandage.

They crept out of the branches, the sounds of crunching bone coming from behind them.

Charles stepped on a twig, and it snapped.

They froze, and looked back at the cats, which stared at them. The closest one opened its mouth in a bloody snarl, and hissed. Then they went back to eating, keeping an eye on the three as if they were going to try to steal the meal.

“Walk, do not run,” Warren whispered. And so they walked away, waiting for the sound of running paws. It didn’t come.

They hid by the river until it got dark. They were ready to jump into the canoe and paddle away, braving the gunfire, rather than face death by cat. But no cats came, even though it would have been easy to track their smell to the canoe. The cats were apparently sated for the evening.

When the darkness was complete, except for the starlight shining in the water, they pushed the canoe as quietly as they could out of the muck and shoved off into the water. Marguerite sat in the back, steering with the one good paddle.

The far shore was dark.

“I think the smugglers left,” Warren said quietly. “Must have heard the screaming and shots, and when nobody came back, they would have known what happened.”

“Think they’ll follow us?” Marguerite said. She seemed oddly relaxed after the scene of carnage they had just escaped, even energetic.

Warren shook his head. “I doubt it. George probably assumes the cats got us too. Anyway, he has no way of checking. He’s lost the ones who can swim, and nobody’s going to want to swim across the river to see what the cats are eating anyway.”

Charles shuddered.

“We’ll stick to canoeing at night now, just to be safe,” Warren said. “We’ll sleep in the daytime. We can find some reeds like these along the bank here and just stay in the canoe all day. It won’t be comfy, but it will be reasonably safe.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

“I know it’s tough,” Warren said. “Nobody should have to see those things. But those cats probably saved our lives. The smugglers came across that river to kill us, you know.”

Charles didn’t regret Old Harry’s demise, but when he thought about Gary’s life ending the way it had, he felt sick.

Warren looked sick. His head drooped forward now, and his breathing was fast and loud. Charles helped him lie back on the bottom of the canoe, where he took up most of the space, his head almost on Marguerite’s feet. It took Charles a long time to stack the packs around Warren to make everything fit and balance.

The only sound now was the dip of Marguerite’s paddle as the canoe moved over the river, gliding for hours into the night.

To be continued

Gunpowder Trails: Chapter Eleven

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Gunpowder Trails

By Andrew Sharp

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015, and is slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

It would have been nice to just sit and be pulled along by the current, after walking for months and hundreds of miles, but with a crowd of angry people paddling behind them it didn’t seem like the best time to rest. And another angry crowd would be on its way shortly when Gary got back to the smugglers’ camp with his tale about the runaways. It was too pretty an afternoon for so many angry crowds.

Warren and Marguerite dug their paddles into the water in quick unison, a wake surging behind the canoe. With Warren steering, the canoe flowed perfectly between the rocks. The Harpers Ferry crowd should have had an advantage, being familiar with about every rock in the river, but Warren seemed to read the water like a printed page.

One canoe behind them, a gray-bearded man in the front, grew closer a little at a time.

“They’re gaining on us,” Charles said.

“Get your gun out,” Warren said.

Charles fumbled for his pistol and tried to pull the hammer back.

“Just wait,” Warren said, breathing hard as he paddled. “If they get too close, or pull out any weapons, let them have it. Otherwise, we’ll race ’em.”

After twenty minutes of hard paddling, the lead canoe was within forty yards.

The man with the gray beard said something to his canoe mate, then put down his paddle and began stringing an arrow on a longbow.

Charles raised his pistol and pointed it over Warren’s shoulder. Warren ducked.

He fired. The shot echoed over the water, and the man with the gray beard flinched and shot his bow at the same moment. His arrow whistled far overhead.

Charles shot again. Neither of their pursuers reacted as if they’d been hit, but the canoe began to drop farther away, as did the rest of the canoes behind it.

“OK, don’t waste shots,” Warren said. “Just keep — discouraging them — if they get too energetic.”

He and Marguerite both gulped air now, and their paddle strokes slowed down.

“I bet they don’t — have any gunpowder,” Warren said. “Or don’t want to — waste it on us.”

Charles and Warren didn’t have much gunpowder either. Charles dug around for the powder horn and started to measure out a new load.

“Not in shape for this,” Warren said. “Been too long. You’ll have to learn Charles. Fast. Take a turn from Marguerite.”

“Hold it like this,” Marguerite said. “There, this hand on top of the handle and your other one here. Now dig in and pull toward yourself. No, not like that, straight down. OK, good, but turn it sideways when you pull it out of the water, or you’ll just throw water all over Warren.”

Charles felt like he was trying to write left-handed, but he yanked hard on the paddle.

“Don’t push it out like that at the end of your stroke, that pushes the canoe sideways,” Warren said. “Just pull it straight out of the water.”

“Dig deeper,” Marguerite said. “If you don’t put your paddle down in you don’t get any bite.”

Charles’ shoulders began aching, but he pulled together all the energy he had left and prepared to burn it up. His arms felt like they were on fire and his back began to knot up.

After a while, Warren gave out in the back, and then Marguerite had to steer from the front, while Charles kept paddling in the middle. They dropped a lot of speed that way, and the canoes started gaining on them again. But the Harpers Ferry crowd was tiring as well, and didn’t have the advantage of being able to pass the paddle when they got tired.

The next time Charles had a turn to rest, he turned around again to see how far ahead they were. Warren stared past him at the river ahead, digging into the water with rapid strokes, whirlpools forming behind his dripping paddle.

Their pursuers had dropped even farther back.

“We’re really starting to gain on them,” Charles said.

Warren nodded. “They’re getting farther — from home. Probably no supplies.”

After what seemed like another hour or maybe twenty, when Charles could hardly feel his hands anymore, the canoes behind them began to drop away. But a few stubborn ones kept on, and even began gaining on them again.

Every time it was his turn to take a break, Charles felt sure he had given every bit of useful energy he had, but somehow when he got the paddle again he always managed to keep his arms moving. Marguerite’s paddle strokes grew tepid as well. But Warren somehow found more energy in reserve and kept his pace up.

Handing away the paddle, Charles checked behind them again. Just one canoe still followed, manned by the man with the gray beard and his companion. Now they stopped paddling, and gray beard picked up his bow again.

“Watch out!” Charles said. He lifted his pistol to shoot, but the man had already loosed the arrow.

Warren and Marguerite paused their paddling and turned around to look as the arrow arced toward them. Marguerite ducked down, and Charles covered his head with his hands. Warren swerved the canoe hard.

The arrow whacked against the side of the canoe and sliced down into the water. It raised a cloud of mud when it hit the bottom, then bobbed back up again.

Charles fired his pistol several times at their pursuers, who swung their canoe around and began paddling upstream. They had a long way home, and it was already afternoon. The man with the gray beard paused his paddling for a moment and raised his hand over his head, one finger sticking up. Then he began working against the current again.

The angry smugglers had slipped to the back of Charles’ mind, but now they rushed back to the front, waving torches and guns.

Warren seemed to have a similar thought.

“Good thing we had those guys behind us all morning; they kept us going at a pretty good pace.”

“Ugh,” Charles said. He rubbed his palms and counted blisters. Three.

“We need to keep it up, though,” Warren said. “Rest while you paddle.”

“Ugh,” Charles said.

And so they kept on, digging and pulling, digging and pulling, and Charles’ hatred of canoes grew with the ache in his arms.

They kept to the middle of the river as much as possible, giving any would-be sharpshooters on shore as tough a mark as possible.

“I don’t think anybody has caught up with us, but I prefer no surprises,” Warren said.

Once or twice they had to navigate closer to shore to get around the piles of roiling water Warren called haystacks, stirred up by stones underneath the surface. Warren tried to teach Charles to read the river, showing him how to see submerged rocks in the water by the v shape they created downstream. He tried to teach Charles to steer, but that resulted in too much zigzagging, so he gave it up.

The afternoon dragged on. On his breaks, Charles cupped his hands to dip water out of the river. He also began to get hunger pangs, and chewed on some stringy pemmican.

For a while, Charles enjoyed watching the riverbank slide by while he rested. Once they passed an elk, its long forked antlers still in velvet, standing in the water weeds. It lifted its head, chin dripping, and watched them go by. Leaving that much fresh meat just standing there seemed like a crime.

Eventually, though, Charles was too tired to pay attention to where they were going, and when he wasn’t paddling he just stared down at the bottom of the canoe and listened to the soft slurp of the paddles.

He wondered what would happen if the canoe capsized. Assuming they made it to shore, they’d have no food or supplies, and the guns would be useless with wet gunpowder. They would die unless they made it to a road and somehow found a farm or a small village. But you could walk for weeks between villages out here. They’d seen no sign of any human since the last canoe behind them had turned around.

The lonely shore made Charles increasingly uneasy. He didn’t much like the idea of just the three of them spending the night there. A fire would keep the animals away but draw the smugglers like moths. He thought of the Appalachies’ hammocks and wondered if there were a way to string one out from some tree branches over the water, where you could sleep safely in the dark.

As the sun at their backs dropped down to the horizon, and the shadows stretched out ahead, the river divided around a large wooded island.

“This would be a good place to spend the night,” Warren said. “Of course, that’s probably just where they would look if they were after us.”

“They won’t chase us at night, will they?” Charles said. “Too dangerous.”

“Won’t they?” Warren said. “You’re assuming that George is sane.”

It was a good point.

They paddled alongside the island for almost a mile.

“Well I’ll be darned. There’s another island up ahead there,” Warren said. “Let’s check it out. It might not be rational, but I’d feel better if we don’t stay on the first island. Let’s at least make them look for us a little.”

They paddled along the second island for a mile or more. Beyond it lay yet another island.

They could see most of the way across the islands, the ground clear and parklike under the huge trees. They kept going until they came to a section where several monster oaks had fallen and a snarl of brush grew up in the opening in the canopy.

“Let’s pull in here,” Warren said.

The tip of their canoe ground against the stones on the bottom as they ran it up onto the bank. Charles eased himself out, pain shooting up his stiff legs. Despite that, it felt wonderful to walk on land again.

They explored around the island before they decided where to set up camp. Aside from a few deer droppings, dry and light-colored with age, there was no sign of any animals except for an occasional squirrel slipping away far overhead in the branches.

“Well, it’s not too likely any cats are going to swim the river to come over here,” Warren said. “Especially since there’s really nothing over here for them to eat.”

After a little more poking around, he said, “I think the best spot will be back by the canoe, where those trees have fallen and it’s all thick. I want to find a spot where there’s a lot of branches, or a dip in the ground, so nobody can see our fire through the trees. Out here in the middle of a river, that’d basically be like a lighthouse guiding the way to us.”

“Even in a low spot you could still see the light on the tree branches,” Marguerite said. “And the sparks flying up.”

“Hmmm,” Warren said. “So you could. That’s a good thought. Well, no fire then.”

“What?” Charles said. “We have to have a fire. Just a small one.”

“No,” Warren said. “No fire.”

Charles looked to Marguerite for help, but she shook her head. “Whatever,” she said. “If the cats don’t get us, the smugglers will. May as well pick one.”

A cold rock settled into Charles’ stomach, and the hair pricked up on his neck.

“I am not sleeping without a fire,” he said.

“Then we’ll find another island to sleep on,” Warren said. “We’ll pick you up in the morning.”

“You always think you know best, don’t you,” Charles said. “You get to call all the shots. Well I’m not a slave anymore. I don’t have to do what you say.” He jutted out his chin and glared at Warren.

“OK,” Warren said. “But somebody needs to take the lead. So you go ahead.”

“Well, no, I mean, that’s not quite what I …” Charles trailed off.

Warren and Marguerite just stood looking at him.

“Fine, fine,” Charles said. “You just do everything the way you want it.”

“Nope,” Warren said. “Everybody gets input. But we’re not going to just build a fire because you throw a tantrum about it.”

It seemed all wrong, without the fire. There was nothing to sit around, nothing to stare at, no friendly warmth. They chewed on crumbly Harpers Ferry pemmican for supper, but it made Charles’ stomach tighten up and he didn’t eat much.

The sunset faded and cold darkness seeped through the trees. Crickets sang, and the Milky Way made a fiery track across the sky. With no moon, the stars seemed almost close enough to reach up and pick one. The trunks of the trees cut black swaths up into the brightness. A whippoorwill began to call, a lilting cadence, up, down and up, over and over. Whip-urr-weel, whip-urr-weel, whip-urr-weel, whip-urr-weel.

Then another sound, across the water. Like a twig snapping. Charles sat rigid, every part of his mind focused on the night sounds. He didn’t hear it again. Then far off, on the other side of the river, a distinct crashing noise. Then silence again, except for the whippoorwill and the crickets.

Warren whispered, “One of us needs to stay awake to keep watch. I’ll take the first turn.”

The fur-lined bedroll Warren had bought in Harpers Ferry felt good in the chilly night, pulling Charles toward sleep, but he resolved to stay awake and alert even when he wasn’t on watch. He wanted to have a head start for the canoe. Then he suddenly realized Marguerite was shaking him awake.

“Your turn,” she whispered.

He sat up, blinking and looking around, and saw that the Milky Way had moved. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and crawled out of the warm bedroll into the now definitely cold air.

Warren’s breathing was deep and even, and in less than a minute, Marguerite’s breathing took on the same cadence.

Charles spun the cylinder on his pistol. Every chamber had a load.

He found that his eyes were used to the darkness. It was nice to be able to see more than the usual black wall behind the firelight. He could have seen a long way if Warren hadn’t insisted on bedding down in the middle of the thicket like some kind of animal. In here, something could be a few dozen yards away and all he’d see would be a tangle of branches.

Charles stiffened. That was a voice, out there in the darkness a long way off. Or was it the water rippling on a rock in the river? He pulled apart the sounds of the woods thread by thread, searching. There it was again, a noise like only the tips of words sticking out of a river of crickets.

He should wake up the others. But he would feel like an idiot if it turned out he were imagining things. What good was a sentry if he had no idea what to do when something actually happened? He had to do something.

If it was a voice, it only meant one thing. There could only be one person crazy enough to wander around the woods at night, and crazy enough to frighten sane people into going with him. George.

Charles peered into the trees, gripping his pistol, looking for flashes of torchlight and straining to hear any more sounds.

He only heard the whisper of a light breeze stirring the leaves, and the tiny “tick” sound as a few of them came loose then rustled into the forest floor. Beyond those, the gurgle of the river.

He sat peering through gaps in the thicket for a long time. One more sound, and he’d wake up the others.

How long was it until dawn? It couldn’t be more than an hour or so.

If so, the hour lasted several days. Finally, the stars began to dim. So slowly he couldn’t see the change, details of the leaves and branches emerged out of the shadows.

At breakfast, he told Warren and Marguerite about the voice sound. They both stopped chewing and stared at him, but as he explained further, they relaxed a little.

“A tired brain can do that, especially when you’re worried. It can create the sound you’re afraid of,” Warren said. “It’s really not likely anybody was out there. We had to be safe with the fire, but I don’t really believe even George would chase us at night. And if it had been them, you’d have heard crashing around, too, not just voices.”

Charles kept thinking about it, though, as they stretched their cold muscles, loaded their packs into the canoe, and pushed out into the current again. Sometimes he knew the sound had been imaginary, and in other terrifying moments, he knew it had been real. As he listened to his memory, one minute he thought he could almost make out sentences, and the next, all he could hear was the night wind.

Regardless, no smugglers presented themselves along the riverbank, though Warren, Charles and Marguerite often glanced at the shore. Warren again kept the canoe as close to the middle of the stream as he could.

Without the Harpers Ferry posse behind them, they slowed their pace somewhat from the day before, but still kept up a steady rhythm with the paddles.

“Can’t afford to relax,” Warren said. “Those smugglers will be making darn good time on foot.”

When Charles took his turn, his upper back ached and his palms felt like they’d be getting new blisters soon. Paddling seemed awkward at first, but his muscles soon remembered yesterday’s lessons, and being in a canoe started to feel natural.

The river was no longer as rocky, so they had easy going. Charles saw a heron along the banks, and a kingfisher sitting in a dead snag. Fish swam in the clear water far below the canoe. He didn’t enjoy fishing for fun, but he wished now that they had time and fishing line. His mouth watered thinking of fresh fish fillets sizzling in a pan, maybe from a nice fat snakehead. Even bony panfish would be delicious.

Those smugglers kept coming back into his head. Their woodcraft and crack marksmanship had always kept him safe, but now meant danger.

The smugglers didn’t have any current pulling them along, but they could travel in a fast, straight line. The fugitives’ canoe could only follow the maddening meander of the Potomac.

Rounding a bend, they saw the first people since Harpers Ferry. A handful of men, waist deep in the water, looked up from their fishing nets with startled expressions. One of them spoke sharply to a group of children playing in the water along the shore, and they ran away up the bank to where a few huts stood.

Warren raised his hand in greeting, but the men scrambled out of the water. Some of them left and came back with spears, and they stared after the canoe until a bend in the river hid them from view.

“Too bad they weren’t friendlier,” Warren said. “I’d have liked to trade for some of that fresh fish, but I was afraid they’d shoot us if we got any closer. I guess maybe they aren’t on very good terms with their neighbors in these parts.”

As evening came, they passed another collection of shacks along the river, and signs of more habitation — beaten paths along the riverbank and smoke from fires further inland. Not far ahead, bigger clouds of smoke hung in the air.

“That will be Washington,” Warren said. “That smoke is from the foundries.”

The settlement of Washington was famous for its metal trade. Miners melted down metal from the huge ruins of Old Washington into bars, and traders boated them down the Potomac to sell along the Chesapeake Bay.

“They’re used to strangers here,” Warren said. “Those miners are a rough bunch, but they’re usually friendly enough. And George won’t try to follow us in here. He knows they’d be very happy to lift contraband sulfur off a smuggler. I think we can camp somewhere along the bank here without any issues and sleep easier tonight.”

Their campsite was not nearly as pristine as the island setting of the night before. They picked a spot on the bank away from any docks, where nobody was likely to bother them. Thick brush grew there among stumps of trees that had been sawed off to provide fuel for the kilns or firewood for the miners. Rubble from the old city littered the ground — chunks of tar rock from the old roadways, shards of glass, and bits of plastic shards.

When Charles stopped paddling, it was as if every bit of energy in his arms flowed back into whatever reserve supply he had borrowed it from. He dropped to the ground, and could have lain there all night without moving. But when Warren and Marguerite started gathering wood for a fire, he dragged himself up and managed to find a few branches as well before they had finished.

As they sat chewing on the pemmican, Charles was reflecting on how much he hated the stuff, when Marguerite said, “So what’s your game, anyway, Warren?”

“My game?” Warren said.

“Now that we finally have a little time, I want to know what’s going on. Why are you in such a hurry to get away from George? It doesn’t make any sense at all. If you’re tired of working for him, why not wait until we get home, get your cut and then quit? You must have done something really bad.”

Warren didn’t say anything. Marguerite sat watching him, and then her eyes began to get wider and her mouth opened into a small “o.”

“Ahhhh,” she said. “No. Not you.” For a moment, her shell slipped away and she looked hurt.

Warren sighed. “Are you interested in my side of the story?”

“Sure,” she said, the hard look coming back into her eyes. “Tell me a good story. I like stories.”

And so Warren again went over the story he’d told Charles, how the Builders had sent him to one of the most important sulfur smuggling bands to secretly try to throw it into chaos or even take it over and use it as a reliable sulfur pipeline for the Builders.

“It didn’t work very well,” Warren said. “As you may have noticed.”

“Huh,” she said. “Interesting rationale.”

Warren frowned. “Now listen —”

She waved a hand at him. “You have your game, and I have mine. I’ll go back to Easton with you guys. But I’m warning you, that’s all. Anything else you’re planning to use me for, forget it.”

“I just want to help,” Warren said. “I’m not getting anything out of you guys.”

She snorted. “Uh-huh.”

“So my question for you,” Warren said, “is what I can do for you when we get back. You can’t just wander around on the streets of Easton. Do you have any family?”

“No,” Marguerite said.

“Well,” Warren said, “I can probably get you some nannying work for a nice family, or maybe on the cleaning staff for the Builders even.”

“The cleaning staff?” she said, as if he’d suggested she might like to roll around in a pigsty.

“What? It’s not a bad gig,” Warren said. “It would give you a nice steady income.”

“Now you listen here,” Marguerite said. “Thanks for your concern, but when I want a favor, I’ll ask for it.”

“But what are you going to do?” Warren asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe something else that wouldn’t demand too much skill or smarts. Besides cleaning.”

“Now wait, I wasn’t trying to say —”

“No, you weren’t trying to,” Marguerite said. “You just accidentally said what you thought.”

“I’m sorry,” Warren said. “I’ll help you any way you want.”

“And what,” Marguerite asked, “gave you the idea I needed your help?”

They spent the rest of the evening sitting around the fire in silence.


To be continued

 

Previous chapters

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten