She dropped the gear bag; it landed on pine needles with a solid thump, and after a moment, so did she. She brushed herself off, hoisted the bag over her shoulder, and angled off to meet up with Ruger.
“Okay?” he asked, watching her with narrowed gaze. He still held something of the wild about him—a quality of movement, a look in brown eyes gone pale.
“You?” she asked, as if she’d answered.
He noticed, of course. He might even have asked again, had not someone from behind them snapped off a rifle shot that thunked hard into a tree to their right. Ruger grabbed her hand and tugged her onward—completely unnecessary, at that. She stumbled over nothing and caught up with him, even as another shot flaked bark to their left; together, they flinched away.
She might have called it coincidence, had it not happened again.
Right, left.
::Don’t like this,:: she told Ruger, not wasting her breath on spoken words.
Right, left.
Without warning, Ruger ducked behind a tree, yanking her around to do the same. She thumped up against him and they struggled to quiet their breathing, still gulping for air—listening behind, and belatedly understanding. ::They’re herding us!::
::Yes,:: he agreed, a snarl still lingering in his thoughts. ::We’re not supposed to figure that out. We’re supposed to run straight out.::
::Let’s not.::
“No,” he muttered out loud, “let’s not.” He crouched low, one knee on the ground—drawing her down with him, albeit less abruptly than before. He nodded to their right—the direction that would allow them to circle out behind the Core—and pushed off, staying low.
White-hot slamming noise—
The forest exploded in front of them—sound and fury and shredding trees, flashing the world into chaos. Ruger pushed Mariska to the ground, landing on top of her—shielding her. ::Watch yourself!:: she cried, terrified for him—understanding now why they’d been herded. ::Watch—!::
Another explosion, closer—close enough to wash her mind with a concussion of sound, to slam the breath out of her lungs. Her ear stabbed with pain; Ruger jerked against her with a grunt she felt rather than heard.
::If we’d kept running...:: she said, dazed enough to let the thought trickle out.
::Then that would be us.:: His weight lifted from her, his hand lingering on her arm to give her a tug—not bodily lifting her, as he’d done before, but suggesting this time. ::Double back. They had this corridor set up. They’ll be out to look for us.::
::Double back,:: she agreed, her gaze caught on the wreckage ahead of them. Only with effort could she resolve the jumble to perceive the shattered remains of a once-massive pine. ::Come up on them from behind.:: She pushed to her feet, staying low—staggering a step or two with the noises of her movement coming muffled through ears still ringing with shock. She cursed at herself—that, too, came strangely filtered.
Ruger’s expression echoed her own—annoyed, a little off balance. He nodded at a nearby cluster of bushes. ::Can’t hear a thing—watch behind, and I’ll get us there.::
::Go!:: she said by way of agreement—checking over her shoulder as he slipped his hand in hers and drew her along. He stumbled, righted himself and threaded them between a tree and the bushes—solid wood at their backs, sheltering leaves before them. Ruger leaned against the tree. ::See anything?::
::A glimpse,:: she said, spotting black and camo movement along that same corridor—a single man, easing forward with unconvincing stealth. ::He’s moving onward...didn’t even look this way.::
::Hold on. They could be flanking us.:: He scowled as he straightened, and said as though for the first time, ::Can’t hear a damned thing.::
Something in his mind-voice made her look twice. ::You okay?::
Puzzlement surfaced in his eyes—a part of him clearly still dazed. He shuttered it away. ::Still blasted into stupid.::
::How long until my ears stop ringing, that’s what I want to know,:: Mariska grumbled. She returned her attention to the forest, raking it for movement—seeing only the retreating glimpses of the first man. ::Anything?::
::Either I missed him or they didn’t send someone. Not many posse members want to defy their
drozhar,
never mind the Septs Prince. They were probably leftovers from Gausto’s inner circle,:: Ruger said, his voice distant. ::Already in the same situation as Forakkes.::
::Disgraced and hunting redemption,:: Mariska agreed. ::The end justifies the means.:: Then she murmured, “It’s all clear here.”
“And here.”
“I heard that,” she said, with some relief, rubbing the ear that had stabbed with pain at the explosion. “At least, I think—”
He gave her a sharp look. “It’s probably perforated. We generally heal fast from that injury, but don’t count on hearing from that ear.”
“Don’t assume there’s not something out there to hear, you mean.” She made a face. “You’ll have to be the ears, I guess.”
“I can—” Why he stopped, she didn’t know—just caught another glimpse of that earlier puzzlement. He shook his head slightly and completed the thought. “I can do that. Ready to move?”
“Before they come back.” A distant sound caught her attention; she tipped her head at it, wondering if she’d really heard it.
Ruger sent her a darkly amused look. “They’re frustrated because they haven’t found us.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s frustrate them some more.”
But when he turned from her to lead the way to the next cluster of trees and stiff, prickly bushes, her satisfaction dissolved to horror, her chest clenching strangely around her lungs so for a startling moment, she couldn’t even draw breath. “Ruger!”
He paused with one hand on the tree for support to look back at her, and for the first time she saw the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the rough Ponderosa bark. For the first time she knew to look.
For the first time, she understood what she thought he still did not—that while his back was peppered with small chunks of wood shrapnel around the now healed cut from the facility attack, one of those missiles had struck deep.
It
still
struck deep, leaving room for a mere trickle of escaping blood, the skin closing around the small protruding shard that remained.
Mariska felt the blood drain from her cheeks in a tingling flush and breathed deeply, forcing herself to think. They were too close to their original path to stop here, and he was still on his feet. He needed to
stay
on his feet until they reached a safer spot. “Never mind,” she said. “Let’s get away from here.”
“You’re okay?” he asked sharply, though his voice bottomed out a little with strain.
She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “As okay as I was before.”
It wasn’t saying much. Two wounded Sentinels, trying to save the world. Or at least to save their friends.
I’m sorry, Ian. And Sandy. And Heckle, too.
We made the wrong choice. We should have hiked out for help.
Chapter 20
R
uger didn’t believe her.
Not even as she continued to watch their backs while he led them onward. She’d hidden things from him before, when she’d thought it was best—she’d hidden them with purpose.
The difference was, this time he knew she was doing it.
But he knew, too, that arguing about it wasn’t the best course. And maybe it was only fair. He was hiding things, too.
Not that he could have articulated those things. Just that he was still reeling from the concussive effects of the grenades, when he didn’t expect to be. That he ached strangely, that his legs grew more rubbery and not less, and he’d broken out into a clammy sweat in the afternoon heat.
“Ruger,” she said, tugging back gently as they reached the best of shelters, the angled root disk of a pine torn from the earth and resting cocked against another tree. Her expression gentled. “You’re hurt, Ruger. We need to take care of you. Right here.”
Hurt?
Hell, yes, he hurt. He looked down at himself, saw nothing but his own hairy chest and worse-for-wear jeans.
“Your back,” she said. “We need to— No! Don’t—”
He’d found it, running his hand over his back, his ribs—a shard of wood where it didn’t begin to belong, dammit, and how the hell had that happened, anyway? His fingers scrabbled over it, got a grip—
“Don’t!”
Mariska cried.
The wood yanked free with a sucking sound and a flood of warmth and a bolt of shredding pain that knocked him to his knees. His lungs burned for air and his torso seized up—but when he finally drew breath it came with a bitter, coppery taste.
“Dammit, Ruger!” Mariska turned on him, grabbing at the bag she still carried and throwing it down beside him. She plucked the wooden shrapnel from his unresisting fingers and held it up in front of him, pine stained dark and so much longer than expected, the point of it as sharp as any spear. “Here,” she said urgently. “
This
is what you just pulled out, and now you’re bleeding like the proverbial pig.”
Well, hell.
She grabbed his jaw with strong fingers and turned his head to look directly at her, crouching to eye level. “
Look
at me, dammit! What did this thing do to you? What are we up against?” She held it to her side, approximating position and angle. “Ruger!
Don’t make me hit you.
”
Shock. Of course he was in shock. And his brain wasn’t working and his body was torn and his mouth was full of blood—
She hit him.
He bared his teeth at her, swaying on his knees. “Liver,” he said hoarsely. “Bleeds like hell. Hepatic artery? Wouldn’t survive that. Diaphragm. Lung—” He proved that one by doubling over with a sudden hack of a cough that sprayed blood everywhere.
“The shirt,” she said, tossing the wood aside and grabbing at the gear bag. “I need to stop the bleeding—”
“Not where you can get to it,” he told her faintly, and sweat flushed anew across his forehead, between his shoulder blades. “Mariska...I think...”
She swore resoundingly and dropped the bag. “That’s our cave,” she told him, jabbing a finger at the fallen tree and the hollow where the roots had torn from earth. “Me and you. Get your ass in there before you pass out, because you’re too damned big to carry.”
“Too late,” he said, and knew only that she was there to catch him when he fell.
* * *
::Ruger.::
It was very far away, that voice.
::Ruger. Get back here.::
Too far away, really.
::Ruger Bear, get your ass back here!::
His eyes cracked open of their own volition. He showed her his teeth, putting a little growl beneath it. The display had no effect whatsoever, as he expected.
That’s why you let yourself do it.
Understanding came with unexpected clarity in his dully confused state. With no one else had he ever been able to release the underlying nature of the bear, simply because no one else would have taken it in stride.
Mariska only said, “Yeah, grrr. Now haul yourself awake and get to work.”
He lay on his side in cool shadow, surrounded by earthy scents—dirt and dampness and the strong, sappy scent of pine. The root disk loomed above them, sharply angled and closing them in. “How—?” he asked, no less befuddled than before.
“I didn’t drag you, if that’s what you mean.” Her comforting hand on his shoulder belied the matter-of-fact nature of her words. “Let’s just say I encouraged you along.”
He scowled, lacking energy as it was. “You poked me.”
“You’ll never know, will you? Now, you ready to work? We’ve got things to do.” But still her hand was gentle, caressing him minutely before she reached to brush dirt off his face and lightly scrape her fingers through the hair over his ear.
“Sludge—” He caught his breath on a sudden shard of pain, fighting a cough—unable to hold it, as short on air as he was. The coughing took him over and he rolled into it, curling around himself and coincidentally around Mariska. He barely felt her hold him close, or her hands stroking along his back, firm and comforting and...
Possessive.
Possessive.
He liked that. He liked the warmth of it, the comfort of it, the—
“Ruger!”
“Ah, hell,” he muttered, floundering back to the surface again. “Sludge,” he said again, on a gasp. And, “Wrong side. Help me turn.”
“But—”
“Mari.”
It was all the argument he had left in him, gasping out on not nearly enough air.
She stopped arguing, delaying only long enough to grab a remnant of his shirt from the gear bag and hold it to his side as he turned, protecting it from the hard, sand-clay dirt. It left her kneeling at his back, her hands familiar on his body—one resting on his hip, one on his arm. “Better?”
He couldn’t quite catch his breath against the tearing pain of movement, the outraged reaction to the pressure against the wound. But he sent her an affirmative anyway. ::Better.:: It would be; he was already breathing easier, even as his blood soaked into the dirt.
Not even a Sentinel healed fast enough to offset an injury of this magnitude—the shock, the blood loss. He knew it, and he thought she might know it, too.
She might well have been reading his mind. “Sludge isn’t going to be enough.”
“Not enough,” he agreed, and the words came in gulps of air. “Change of plan. Head to high ground. Get a signal. Get Annorah. Or Maks.”
“Think again.” But she had no argument in her voice, only regret. When he drew breath to respond, she closed her hand over his arm, staying him. “I hear you, Ruger Bear. But it’s not an option. Before the Core blew you up, they got me. There’s not much left of me.”
::The amulet working,:: he realized, remembering how drained she’d looked when they’d met up in the woods.
“We still have to go after the bastards,” she said. “
You
need to go after them. You drew them out—we know pretty much where that entrance is, no matter that they obscured it. So we need to be enough of a problem to buy time. It might not be soon enough for Ian and Sandy, but if Forakkes is ready to launch that new working of his on Sentinels, every moment we can buy brevis is critical.”