CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Amerie came down to the lakeshore where the freed prisoners were ballasting their hastily inflated boats.

“I’ve had to sedate Felice. She was ready to tear the poor noddy apart.”

“Not surprising,” Claude growled. “Once I’d thought the matter through, I was tempted along those lines myself.”

Richard was treading siphon bulbs with both feet, flooding the interstices of his and Claude’s beached dinghies while the old man loaded equipment into the two small decamole craft Richard had changed back into his pirate costume, curtly telling the nun to keep his spacer’s coverall “for the duration.” Now he glowered at her. “Maybe Dougal did us all a favor without knowing it. How do we know what Felice would turn into once she got hold of a golden torc?”

“There’s that,” Claude had to admit. “But if she’d got it, we wouldn’t have to worry about any immediate danger from the soldiers. As it is, some kind of armed force is going to be breathing down our necks any minute now. We couldn’t have been far from the next fort when the fight started.”

Amerie said, “You two come up and help me with Felice when you finish here. Yosh has been going through the baggage packs, retrieving some of our stuff.”

“Any weapons?” Richard asked.

“They seem to have left ours back at the castle. But most of the tools are there. No maps or compasses, I’m afraid.”

Claude and Richard shared a glance. The paleontologist said, “Then it’s seat-of-the-pants navigation and devil take the hindmost. You go on up, Amerie. We’ll be along in a few minutes.”

In the aftermath of the fight, when all of the prisoners had been released, they had held a hasty conference and decided that the best chance of escape lay in taking to the water, one or two people to a decamole dinghy from the Survival Units. Only the five Gypsies had ignored Claude’s warning about the dangers of riding the torc-susceptible chalikos. They had gone back to attack the suspension bridge guard post after donning the gory armor of the slain escort and taking most of the soldiers’ weaponry.

The remaining escapees had reestablished the bonding forged back at the auberge, the original Groups coming together once more to plan their collective getaway. Claude, the only person with a working knowledge of the Pliocene landscape, had suggested two possible escape routes. The one that would take them most quickly to rugged country entailed a short voyage northeast, across the narrow upper portion of the Lac de Bresse to canyons leading into the heavily forested Vosges highlands. This had the disadvantage of crossing the main trail to Finiah on the opposite shore of the lake; but if they managed to elude mounted patrols, they could reach high country before nightfall and hole up among the rocks.

The second route would have them sailing southeast across the widest part of the lake to the shore of the Jura piedmont some sixty kilometers away, then continuing south into the mountain range itself. There seemed an excellent chance that the land in that direction was completely uninhabited, since beyond the Jura lay the Alps. On the other hand, the lakeside forts were likely to have boats of their own that could be used for pursuit. The escapees might outsail the Tanu minions; but the breeze was fitful and the nearly cloudless sky suggested that the air might go dead calm as it had the day before. If the boats were becalmed at nightfall, they might attract the attention of the Firvulag.

Basil had confidently elected for the Jura route, while Claude’s conservatism inclined him to hold out for the Vosges. But the climber was most persuasive to the majority, so in the end it was decided that all of the time-travelers except the remnant of Group Green and Yosh, the surviving ronin, would go south. The prisoners had hastily unloaded their baggage from the chalikos and followed a gully down to a tiny beach below the cliff. There boats could be launched. A few of the small craft were already spreading their sails when Richard completed ballasting the two Green boats and scrambled back up the embankment in search of the others.

He discovered Claude, Amerie, and Yosh standing over Felice’s unconscious body. The Japanese warrior said, “I’ve found Claude’s woodworking tools and the knives and hatchets and saws from our Survival and Smallholder Units.” He held out a hideously stained packet to Richard. “And here are also a soldier’s bow and arrows that the Gypsies overlooked.”

“We’re grateful, Yosh,” said the old man. “The bow could be very important. We have very little food except for the survival rations, and the kits have only snares and fishing gear. The people going south with Basil will have time to make new weapons if they reach the Jura shore. But our Group will be in much more danger of land pursuit. We’ll have to keep moving and do our hunting on the run.”

“But you should go with us, Yosh,” Amerie said. “Won’t you change your mind?”

“I have my own Survival Unit and Tat’s lance. I’ll take the rest of the tools that I scavenged down to the people on the shore. But I won’t go with them, and I won’t go with you.” He gestured to the sky, where dark specks wore already circling in the morning gold. “I have a duty here. The Reverend Sister has given my poor friend the Blessing of Departure. But Tat must not be left to the scavengers. When I’ve finished, I plan to head due north on foot to the River Marne. It joins the Pliocene Seine and the Seine flows into the Atlantic, I don’t think the Tanu will bother to track one man.”

“Well, don’t hang around here too long,” Richard said dubiously.

The ronin knelt swiftly beside Felice’s limp form and kissed her brow. His grim eyes swept those of the others. “You must take good care of this mad child. We owe her our freedom, and if God wills she may yet accomplish her purpose. The potential rests in her.”

“We know,” said the nun. “Go blessed, Yoshimitsu-san.”

The warrior got to his feet, bowed, and left them.

“Time for us to go, too,” said Claude. He and Amerie picked up the pathetically light body of the girl while Richard gathered her helmet and pack, together with tools and weapons.

“I can sail single-handed,” the pirate said when they reached the waiting boats. “Put Felice in with me and you two follow.”

They shoved off, the last to set sail, and relaxed only when they were far out from land. The lake waters were cold and of an opaque blue, fed by rivers running out of the Jura and the Vosges forest to the northeast. Amerie stared at the receding shore, where carrion birds were gradually descending.

“Claude… I’ve been thinking. Why didn’t Epone die sooner from those dreadful wounds? She was literally torn to pieces before Richard and Yosh and Dougal ever got near her. She should have bled to death or died from hypovolemic shock. But she didn’t.”

“The people at the fort told you that the Tanu were nearly invulnerable. What did you think they meant?”

“I don’t know, perhaps I assumed that the exotics were able to use their coercive power to fend off attackers. But I never dreamed a Tanu could survive such physical punishment. It’s hard not to think of them as approximately human, given that breeding scheme Epone spoke to us about.”

“Even human beings without metafunctions have been mighty tenacious of life. I’ve seen things in the colonies that were damn near miraculous. And when you consider the enhancement of mental powers that the Tanu achieve with the torc…”

“I wonder if they have regenerative facilities here in Exile?”

“I should think so, in the cities. And God knows what other kinds of technology they have. So far, we’ve only seen the torcs, the mind assayer, and that frisking device they used on us when we first came through the time-portal.”

“Ah, yes. And that brings us to the lethal dagger.”