A frisson of dread tingles up my spine. I don’t even know who I am, but there is a man out there—an enemy—who does. “Who was it? Who threw me down?”
Anna glances at her feet. “I don’t know. I only glimpsed you two, fighting each other atop the falls, and then … and then you were falling.”
“What of the other man?”
A shout comes from beyond the carriage—a distant but angry sound. Anna leans toward the window and glances out. She cranes her neck to see the height of the cliff, and her hand tightens on the windowsill. “That’s the man.”
I drop to my knees beside Anna and look toward the cliff’s edge. A man stands there—narrow and angry like a scarecrow. He holds a walking stick, and he is shouting something down at us.
“What’s he saying?”
“I don’t know,” Anna responds. She reaches over our heads to a hatch in the ceiling and props it open. “Thomas, can you tell what he’s saying?”
Thomas leans down, his face red and worried in the hatch. “He says stop or he’ll shoot. What with, I can’t tell—unless that walking stick isn’t a walking stick.” Thomas’s face tightens as he draws on the reins. The horse slows.
“You can’t stop. He wants to kill me.”
“Right.” Thomas whips the reins, and the mare picks up her pace. The carriage lurches down the road. “Another fifty feet, and we’ll be behind a bend, out of the line of fire.”
Thomas suddenly grimaces, and a second later I hear the profound boom of a rifle shot.
Thomas slumps forward onto the roof of the hansom, his eyes bulging and his cheeks swollen. The carriage veers toward the precipice.
“Look out!” I shout.
The sound rouses Thomas, and he looks up, tugging at the reins to bring the horse back in line. He grits his teeth, eyes riveted to the road. “I’ve been shot!” His left shoulder is mantled in blood.
I look up to the gunman, seeing him run atop the cliff. “He’s following us!” The man has a tall, knifelike form. He plants his feet and levels his strange rifle, and a gray puff of smoke comes from it. I yank my head back from the window, and a bullet ricochets off the metal sill and careens past my ear to punch through the compartment and clip the horse’s haunch.
The mare panics, rushing away at full gallop. Thomas grips the reins in both hands and struggles to stay upright. His eyes flutter with pain. He swoons.
I reach up through the hatch and grip Thomas’s shirt, managing to hold him in the seat.
“The horse is loose!” Anna shouts, pointing to the reins that flap furiously beside the cab. “It’ll run us into the river!”
“Reach up through here and hold Thomas. I’ll try to get control.”
Anna extends her arm through the hatch and grabs Thomas’s shirt. As soon as she has a solid hold, I let go of him and lunge for the carriage door.
The hansom is rocking terribly, the wheels roaring over rough stone, and it is all I can do to keep my legs beneath me. Beyond the door, the reins whip in the wind, trailing from the horse’s harness.
“Here I go.” I press down on the door handle. The door swings wide, smashes into a boulder, and crashes back into me. I kick the door out again and slide through the frame. Half out of the compartment, I hang with the door battering my back. The reins are just out of reach, flipping against the cliff wall. “There’s nothing for it.”
I hook my splinted arm through the door, ignoring the screaming pain, and reach outward with my other hand. Rocks hurtle by, and the mare bolts erratically between the cliff wall and the precipice.
“Hurry!” Anna calls from within. “I’m losing hold!”
With a growl of agony, I lunge out on my tormented arm. My fingers claw at empty air. The reins are just out of reach. Suddenly, the carriage bounds up over a rock. I topple, hanging beside the door. The jolt, however, flips the reins into my hand. My fist tightens. Inch by inch, I slide myself back into the compartment until I am sitting on the floor, the reins in my fingers.
“You got it!” Anna exults.
“Can’t steer from here,” I reply breathlessly, “unless we want to head into the cliff wall.”
“Well, then, get up there,” Anna suggests.
“Yes, lass, yes.” Taking a deep breath, I clamber to my feet and slide back out the carriage door. While the rugged cliff spins past, I inch my way along the side of the carriage, heading for the driver’s seat. My good arm does the double duty of hanging on to the carriage and gripping the reins. It’s now or never. I scramble up beside Thomas, brace my feet, and haul hard on the reins.
The horse fights me, bucking against the leather thongs. With steady pressure, however, I rein in its panic and my own agony. The beast slows from a gallop to a trot to a canter. Only then do I dare look up behind us.
On the cliff top, farther back but still distinct, stands the man who threw me from the top of the falls, the man who shot Thomas—the man who wants to kill us, still. He squeezes off another shot, and I cringe down as it sails by overhead. He’s too far back for accuracy. He breaks into a run.
“Yah, there,” I say to the mare, giving her some rein. The beast begins to trot, ears pricked high for the next gunshot.
Anna looks up through the hatch, her eyes wide. “What are you doing, Silence?”
“Fleeing,” I say tightly.
The man above us still runs in pursuit.
“Simply fleeing.”
DESPERATION
I
’d been desperate plenty of times during my travels. In fact, the morning’s negotiations with the rat had been one of those times. But I’d never been this desperate—never been shot.
My left shoulder was a mass of blood and muscle and bullet.
I clung to the rattling top of the rattling coach, clung with my good arm while my bad one seeped a red puddle out across the bonnet. Silence crouched beside me, alternately whipping the poor mad horse and reaching over to save me from tumbling off. Intermittently, Anna’s terrified face appeared in the hatch of the carriage, and she advised us to “slow down!” or “watch that rock!” or “duck!”
Again a bullet whistled by. Again came the report of the rifle, rankling among the canyon walls.
“Damn,” Silence growled. The reins leaped in his grip, and the horse’s hooves leaped as well. We descended into a trough in the road and then climbed a hill on the other side. The carriage fairly vaulted over the ridge, and the road dropped out beneath us. My heart lodged in my throat. The wheels came down all aclatter.
Silence glanced back. “He’s lost behind the ridge!”
“Look out!” Anna cried.
Silence turned to see a great boulder dead ahead: a fork in the road.
“Hold on!” he shouted, hauling the horse away from the rock. The beast screamed as it narrowly missed the stone, and the fenders of the carriage screamed as they narrowly hit it. Metal wrenched loose from the carriage and flew out into the air. It tumbled, wreckage in our wake.
“That’s the wrong way!” Anna shouted. Her objection was punctuated by another bullet. The slug struck the carriage just two inches beyond my clutching fingers and pinged away into an alpine wood nearby. “You’re taking us up to cross his path.”
Silence nodded with grim frustration. “You want me to turn around?”
The horse galloped faster, even though the road rose steeply. The air grew colder and thinner, and overhead, daylight was abandoning us. I took a glance back at the man—half a mile away now but still running. At least he wouldn’t be able to shoot us at that distance. Barring a disaster, we could outrun him … .
Then I glimpsed the disaster. Ahead of the gunman, farther along the ridge, another man sat astride a horse. This second man seemed to be watching us in our mad dash along the canyon. He didn’t, therefore, see our pursuer top the rise, plant his feet, level his rifle, and fire.
The horseman clutched his chest and toppled from the saddle. He fell over the cliff and tumbled down its rocky face. His body vanished among the trees at the base of the cliff as the sound of the gun reached us.
The gunman ran to the rearing horse and grasped its reins. He calmed the beast, steadied it, and hauled himself up into the dead man’s saddle.
“There’ll be no outrunning him now,” Silence said.
“Take the right fork,” Anna called out, and I looked ahead to see another branching way. Yes. If we took that, the man
would have to ride a mile past us and double back to the fork. Perhaps then we could at least lose him in these upper paths through the mountains.
Silence complied, steering the carriage through a pine forest. After the first half mile, he eased his grip on the reins, letting the frantic horse slow to a trot and catch its breath. The road climbed amid encroaching trees and wound so that all we could see were pines and the darkness between pines.
“Well, Silence,” I said, struggling to sit up, “you’ve seen him now—the man who threw you from the falls. Who is he?”
Silence’s eyes looked empty.
“Surely you remember something?” I panted.
He seemed to be looking through me into some deep well of memory. “Surely … I do …”
“Tall? Thin? A gun? A great shot?” I prompted through gritted teeth. “Does any of that strike a chord?”
“A chord …” In his reverie, his hands eased on the reins, and the blown-out beast dropped immediately into a walk. “Yes. A feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“The feeling of a chess match,” Silence murmured. He blinked apologetically.
“A chess match with guns.” Well, it was something. “You have a feeling how long this match has been going on?”
“A long time. Maybe a lifetime. That contest at the head of the falls—that was just one part of the match. This is another.”
A sudden pang gripped my shoulder, and I grimaced as it passed. “Do you have an idea how … how we’re supposed to … what we can do to …”
I woke up midfall, sliding down the side of the coach and leaving a smear of blood in my wake. Silence lunged to catch
me, but his fingers closed on air. Anna screamed. I struck the ground on my good shoulder, which exploded with pain, and then I rolled, limp as a rag doll.
“Whoa, there,” Silence called.
The horse stomped to stillness, and Silence leaped down from the driver’s seat. He circled round and crouched beside me. A moment later, Anna arrived as well.
“Oh,” she said as Silence rolled me onto my back. “Oh,” she repeated as she brushed dead pine needles from my face and then from the wound on my shoulder. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Despite my pain, I smiled up at her. “I’m fine.”
“You’re delirious,” she replied.
Silence meanwhile prodded my head and neck. “Seems to be intact. Let’s get him inside so you can tend him …” He glanced behind us. “And so we can keep moving.”
Silence stooped down, set his shoulder to my waist, and hoisted me up over his back. I was surprised how strong he was. Anna hurried in front of us, opening the carriage door, and Silence stooped into it and levered me onto the bench.
“Sit tight, there, Thomas. You’re in good hands.”
Anna clambered up beside me and sat down, pulling the door closed behind her. A moment later, the carriage lurched into motion again. The weary horse snorted as it took up its clip-clopping pace.
“Oh,” Anna said again. The space was small for two people—small especially with me slouching bonelessly in one corner. Anna bit her lip and leaned forward to study the bullet hole in my coat. “I should see what I can do … .”
“Please,” I said.
Anna drew the coat sleeve back from the bloody shirt.
“Use my dirk,” I said, nodding toward the basket that yet lay in the corner. “Cut away the shirt.”
Anna retrieved the knife from the basket and set to work, slicing the fabric. She pulled the sleeve off my arm and craned to see the back of my shoulder. I tried to slump forward to give a better view, but the motion made me dizzy. I almost slid off the seat onto the floor.
“Maybe,” Anna began quietly, “maybe … you should—lie down … across my lap—so I can see this wound.”
“I … couldn’t … .”
“You’d better,” she said, pulling me across her knees. I lay with one arm draped over her and the other trailing down beside her feet. My chest pressed against her blue skirt, and I was afraid of getting blood on the white lace. “Now, hold still.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
Anna set to work with the knife, gently pressing back the edges of the wound and peering within. “I see it—deep in there.”
I drew a breath. “It has to come out.”
“Yes.” Anna eased the blade into the bullet wound. The tip probed down until it scraped against the butt of the bullet. I shuddered and clenched my eyes against the pain. Anna stroked my hair. “Easy now.”
“I’m sorry about all of this.”
“You … sorry … ?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “You … you came out to grieve. Just wanted a quiet moment to remember … your father. Then … all this …”
“It wasn’t your doing,” Anna said. With little nudges, she eased the bullet up the oozy socket. “It’s Silence’s and … and that other man’s doing. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Or you,” I responded. “If I hadn’t delayed you … you’d have never seen those men fight. You’d have been back at the chalet now, safe in some inglenook beside a bright fire.”
The bullet popped from the wound, tumbled across my shoulder, and fell to bounce on the floor. That blood-crazed hunk of metal looked so small, so … inconsequential. Anna sighed. “I’d have been safe beside a fire, but Silence would’ve been facedown in the Reichenbach River.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“I just wish that there was some way to sterilize this.”
“Actually,” I said, “there’s a flask in my rucksack—”
“Thomas!” she blurted, sounding scandalized. “You should’ve said so before I started digging in your shoulder.”
I snagged the rucksack and dragged it toward me. My fingers flipped back the familiar latches and slid expertly through the organized jumble to grab the flask. With a quick spin of my thumb, I unscrewed the cap and lifted it to my lips for two stinging swallows. Then I passed the liquor up to Anna.
“Gin?” she asked.
“Whisky.”
She took a mouthful and then poured a bit more over the wound. Sudden pain tore through me. I gripped her knee, my knuckles going white.
“Easy!” she said.
“Sorry.”
Anna cut my shirtsleeve into long linen strips and bound my shoulder, making sure not to cut off the circulation. Then she eased my arm back into my father’s coat and said, “That’ll have to do for now.”
“Thank you,” I said, wiping off my dirk and stowing it in my rucksack.
Knuckles rapped the top of the carriage. “Hold tight!” Silence shouted. “Here he comes. Yah!” The horse whickered and broke into a run.
I slumped back into the corner of the carriage as Anna
leaned to peer out the side window. Her face grew pale. “I see him, Thomas. He’s riding at full gallop, three bends back. A lantern high … a look on his face …”
“What kind of look?”
“Hatred,” she said.
What a miserable ride! Anna and I clung to the coach handles; the horse’s head pitched against the reins; the carriage reeled among pines; Silence shouted and cursed; and behind us, the man with the gun closed in. Worst of all, the night had grown so thick that Silence could not tell where the trail was.
The carriage veered suddenly, the wheels thumping. “What was that?” I hissed.
“We’re off the path, in a field,” Anna said from beside the door. “Maybe we can lose him.”
Beyond the carriage came the thrash of the horse’s legs against the tall grass, the squeak of the springs, and the growing fear that we were about to run out of meadow.
“Whoa,” Silence called quietly, pulling on the rein. “Whoa.”
The winded horse gratefully slowed. Its hooves pounded ground a few more times, but then it pulled to a stop and stood, wheezing. I had never heard so loud a horse … or so silent an evening.
Silent but for the distant approach of hooves.
I turned to peer out the window, to see our pursuer.
He galloped from the woodlands, and his lantern shone across a sour face with glaring eyes. Next moment, the man stood in the stirrups and reined hard. The horse beneath him planted its hooves, skidded to a halt, and reared. Expertly, the man kept the saddle, his lantern trained on the road.
“Let’s go,” Anna said even as she slid out the door. The carriage jolted as Silence, too, leaped down. I went to the door but froze as I looked back at our pursuer.
He peered down above the telltale tracks of our wheels. A slow, satisfied smile crossed his face. Lazily flipping the reins, he guided the horse off the road and headed directly toward us. The man’s smile solidified into a mask of steely determination. The light of his lantern laid its glow dimly across the rear fenders of the coach.
I pulled my rucksack over my good shoulder, eased open the carriage door, and slid slowly, silently, out onto the grass.
“Hold it—” the man said, halting his horse and leveling his rifle at me, “unless you’d like a second bullet to match the first.”
Last time, he had shot me from two hundred feet with the carriage at a gallop. This time, he was twenty paces away, and we stood stock-still. I had no delusions he might miss.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“You seem to have misapprehended your situation, young man. I have the gun. I ask the questions.” He grinned humorlessly. “Where are the others?”
I glanced over my shoulder—I couldn’t help it—but there was no sign of Silence or Anna. “I don’t know.”
The gunman clucked softly to his horse, which edged closer. “For a young man, you’re not a very good liar.”
“I don’t know,” I repeated angrily. “It’s the truth. I don’t even know who the man is that you are hunting.”
The gunman seemed surprised. “And yet you rescued him from the water, bound his wounds, helped him escape …”
“It’s what anyone would do.”
“Not what I would do.”
“Anyone decent.”