Escape (42 page)

“And what, mister Poloski?”

Brathus was frowning in confusion. “I'm not sure
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“That's
not
a very convincing story.”

“It's the truth!”

“That's for the patrollers to decide. I'm sorry mister Poloski. You and your friend are in for some trouble. I would recommend you confess to your obvious collusion with the enemy and try to cut a deal. Shoni can be very understanding when we want to be. For instance, if you can tell us why all the remaining Union ships flew straight for the planet once the battle was over, that would go a long way to securing your release.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the hundreds of interceptors which landed all over our world and whose pilots subsequently dissapeared. Not one has been captured, mister Poloski! Were those fighters even manned? What are they doing here?”

Brathus shook his head slowly, rocking it from side to side on his pillow. “I don't know anything about that. You're not a nurse, are you?”

The woman smiled thinly and made a few stabs and swipes on her data pad with her sylus. “We'll be seeing you shortly, mister Poloski.” And with that, she turned and strode away.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Brathus demanded.

She gave no reply, and the shiny white door clicked shut behind her.

Brathus tried to sit up, and found with a sudden spike of confusion that he could not. There was a strap across his chest holding him down. He tried to raise a hand to unstrap himself, and found it held down by a similar strap. He arched his back and strained both arms against his restraints in a sudden burst of effort. They were unyielding. He roared in frustation and slumped back against the bed. The metal frame rattled, and he yelled to whatever recorders were in the room:

“You can't keep me here! I haven't done anything!”

A calm, female voice answered from a speaker hidden somewhere in the room. “That is yet to be established, mister Poloski.”

“Let me go!” he roared. His dry throat caught up to him and his voice broke hoarsely on the last word.

“Would you like a glass of water, mister Poloski?”

Brathus glared impotently at the ceiling. “Yes,” he answered through clenched teeth.

The disembodied voice returned sweetly: “Perhaps if you'd tell us why your confederates have landed ships all over our world only to abandon them, we might be able to spare someone to get you a glass of water. Until then, however, we are understandably short-staffed.”

Brathus's face grew red. Heedless of his dry throat, he began yelling again, hurling curses and imprecations against the walls, which bounced back unanswered from the shiny surfaces.

* * *

It had been several hours of riding at top speed through the freezing temperatures, driving snow, and depthless night, and still the journey wasn't over. Jilly's legs felt numb from the constant bucking of her mount, and it was only by a enormous exhertion of will that she was managing to stay atop her mount. It was impossible to see, so she had long since buried her face in her wolvin's coarse gray fur, trusting him to know where to go. The smell of the beast's fur was not so bad, just a faint musky odor, but even if it had smelled as awful as the wolvin's rancid, rotting-meat breath, she would have kept her nose buried there. It was the only thing keeping her face from succumbing to frostbite. She'd long since instructed Ferrel to do the same, but she couldn't see if he had taken her advice.

Having nothing to do but hold on for dear life, Jilly's mind had turned to Kieran. His awful, sudden death, and the hours leading up to it. She began to understand what had happened in the Constantic Temple. Why she and Kieran had been fighting was obvious: yet another symptom of whatever plague had infected them. The codices had revealed that much. But what had ever since puzzled her was Kieran's reaction to that latently building aggression. He hadn't attacked her physically as Dimmi had done to him, but rather, he had kissed her. Granted the force of that gesture had been somewhat violent, as her own reaction
—
biting his tongue
—
had been. But now that she thought back on it, the conclusion was inescapable, and only served to torment her more now that he was dead.

He'd told her she was one of the most ignorant people he knew, and then he'd kissed her. Given their history together, repeated bouts of sudden, unhinged passion between long stints of friendship, she could only conclude that he had feelings for her. That maybe he always had. And as she thought about it, and her own repeated lapses from platonic to passionate, she understood something else: she had feelings for him, too.

And now he was dead.

Jilly stifled a sob against her wolvin's neck, and grabbed tighter fistfuls of its coarse fur. The beast didn't seem to mind or notice. It had been running at top speed for over two hours, without a hitch or a pause, and likely the burning in its lungs was more of a distraction than her yanking his fur. She could hear the animal's heavy, rythmic breathing, coming in time to the pounding of his paws across the now-snow-covered turf of Da Shon. The wolvins were frighteningly powerful creatures, running through the shoulder-height grasses for hours on end. Their stamina was mind-boggling, even more so when she considered the dizzying speed with which they were moving.

Ferrel's thoughts cut into hers:
I'm sorry about Kieran, Jilly.

Suddenly worried how much of her thoughts he'd read, Jilly thought back:
Have you been prying into my mind?

The tone of Ferrel's thoughts turned hesitant.
It's hard not to
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
You're practically screaming at me.

Jilly frowned into her wolvin's fur, and sniffled soundlessly. The wind and rustling grass of their passage kept her numb ears from hearing anything else.
Well, try to ignore me.

Okay.

Suddenly Jilly felt her wolvin slowing down, and she sat up. Her face immediately froze, and her breath came out in little white puffs. The snow was still driving as before, and she could see all around her that the darkened green grass was now much brighter, covered with a downy carpet of snow. A handful of snowflakes drove into her mouth and melted on her tongue, exciting a thirst Jilly hadn't realized was there. She couldn't see their guide ahead, but that wasn't saying much with the visibility what it was.

“Lystra?” she called, screaming at the top of her lungs to be heard.

She thought she heard a muffled reply, and a minute later she saw his tan-furred wolvin appear through the swirling mist of snow. The beast was seated in the grass, and its enormous jaws were snapping up great clumps of grass and snow, simultaneously quenching both thirst and hunger, assuming it could digest the grass. Jilly's wolvin further slowed to a saunter, and then stopped of it's own accord and plonked its rear in the grass beside its packmate. She fell limply out of the saddle, and the tall grass, lightly-coated with snow, swallowed her with a welcoming embrace. She lay there for a moment, staring up into the falling snow, letting it fall and melt on her face, her numb legs slowly coming alive with prickling sensations.

Then she heard Lystra speak: “Short break. I believe we are little more than ten minutes from Crater City now. Relieve yourselves if you need to. You may eat the snow if you're thirsty, else you'll find water in your travel bags. You'll also find some food in there if you are hungry.”

Jilly considered any and all of those options, feeling like she could use both water and food, but her overwhelming fatigue took precedence and she just lay there, staring up at the pinwheeling snowflakes, feeling vaguely as though she were still moving, bucking up and down with the wolvin's sprinting. Her eyes crossed as a pair of giant snowflakes landed on her nose, and she wondered absently how she could see anything at all with no stars or moons to light the darkness.

Then Jilly heard a rustling sound and saw Ferrel's face appear overhead, peering down at her. He smiled, and for the first time Jilly noticed that his eyes were actually glowing. They weren't merely a vivid red, as she'd seen before, but actually somehow lit from within. Jilly frowned, and sat up. Ferrel sat beside her, scooping a handful of snow from the tops of the grass and began eating it.

Jilly mimiced him, using the action to mask her unease at having seen Ferrel's glowing eyes. She wondered if her eyes were just as daimonic.

Ferrel answered those thoughts with a mouth full of snow and unmoving lips:
They are. I suspect the reason we can see so well in the dark is that our eyes produce some of their own light, and somehow use that to amplify what little ambient light there may be. Kind of like the flash on a stillcorder.

Jilly's thoughts grew quiet at that explanation, and she unslung the pack from her shoulders. After a moment of digging through it, she withdrew a thick and heavy cloth-wrapped package. Hoping to find some food inside, she unwrapped it
—

And frowned. It was just another one of the dried-meat steaks that Lystra had fed to the wolvins to saddle them. A gamey odor began wafting from the meat, stealing her hunger with it. Jilly began to rewrap the package, but then she caught Ferrel looking hungrily at tough, red meat. “What?” she asked.

He tore his glowing eyes from the meat with a visible effort and looked at her, his lips slightly parted, expression intense. “Can I have that?”

Quietly revolted Jilly unthinkingly recoiled from him and continued wrapping the meat. Ferrel's expression darkened suddenly, and he lunged toward her, snatching the heavy steak from her and burying his teeth into it an instant later. Jilly watched him
feed
, her eyes blinking wide with horror. Ferrel was attacking the side of meat, tearing great gobs of flesh from it, and barely pausing to chew before swallowing. She was almost certain that the meat was raw, and yet he hadn't given a second thought before snatching it from her and sinking his teeth into it.

Perhaps most disturbing, the nearest wolvin, Ferrel's black-and-white-streaked beast, had scented the meat and was now padding slowly toward them, head bowed low and sniffing, its teeth slightly bared. Great strings of drool began to drip from the beast's snout, and it gave a low growl.

Ferrel paused in feeding long enough to fix the animal with a terrifying stare. The beast snarled and stepped closer. Ferrel bolted to his feet and snarled back, not the least bit afraid. The wolvin paused, suddenly uncertain.

Jilly stared open-mouthed at Ferrel, unspeakably horrified by the animal display. She'd expected it from the wolvin, but from Ferrel? Where was that old man when she needed him? She felt sure he could prevent the developing confrontation with a sharply whistled command to the wolvin. As it was, she would have to try. Jilly climbed unsteadily to her feet, and stepped closer to the Ferrel.

“Ferrel, why don't you share some of that with your mount. I'm sure he's hungry, too.”

Ferrel turned his gaze upon her, and snarled again. His lips were red with blood, adding to his terrifying countenance. She gazed steadily into his glowing red eyes, trying to find some spark of understanding there, but all traces of humanity had left his demeanor, and now he seemed more beast than man. For a terrible instant she felt certain that Ferrel was about to attack her. Then, Lystra Deswin appeared out of the swirling snow. He was grinning broadly, his white, snow-dusted beard blowing in the wind.

“Hello,” he said.

Ferrel's head snapped around, and he snarled again. Meanwhile, seeing his chance, the wolvin began padding slowly forward, slinking closer to the hunk of meat clutched in Ferrel's whitened knuckles.

“It's good to see you again,” the old man said. He stopped before Ferrel and nodded to the steak he was clutching. “That looks good. May I have some?”

Jilly's head cocked abruptly to the side and she fixed Lystra with a narrow-eyed gaze. “You think it looks
good?
”

Lystra regarded her evenly, his smile still in place. “Don't you?”

And that was the moment the wolvin chose to pounce.

Chapter 23

F
errel was knocked down by the beast and promptly swallowed by the long grass. Jilly watched, paralyzed with fear, as the long blades of grass rustled violently. On the other side of the confrontation, Lystra Deswin stared dispassionately into the rustling grass, seeming neither shocked nor worried. Jilly heard vicious snarling and wondered whether it was coming from the animal, or Ferrel. Then, suddenly, a victor emerged: the wolvin slunk away with his meat, and Jilly feared the worst.

She ran to the spot where Ferrel had fallen just in time to see him spring to his feet, eyes flashing. Her jaw grew slack as she noticed the odd angle at which his left arm was hanging. Then she saw the long, bloody furrow where the sleeve of his tunic had been torn away. The snow around them was mottled red instead of the pristine white it should have been, and blood was dripping in a steady pitter patter from Ferrel's crooked arm to further stain the remaining white. Jilly started toward him.