A FEW MINUTES after Seamus and Yuxia left him behind, Richard forced himself to get on his feet and begin hobbling up the trail. He had swallowed as much ibuprofen as his system could handle and he had swaddled the sprained ankle in strips of fabric cut from Jahandar’s garments. A long tree branch, trimmed and whittled, served as a walking staff. The high road—the climb up to the top of the big flat rock, followed by the long traversal of the talus slope—would be many hours of misery for a man in his condition. But there was another way of getting to Jake’s, a low road leading along the edge of the forest, through the old abandoned mining camp and then around a spur of the mountain into the valley of Prohibition Crick. It seemed much the better choice. So he split off from the trail shortly before it pierced the tree line, and hobbled south through the woods. He had feared that this would turn into an endless, toiling death march, but once he found his stride, he began to make reasonably good time—not a hell of a lot slower than if he hadn’t sprained his ankle.
The first leg of the journey, from the trail to the old mining camp, presented some difficult going in places. At one point, he was forced to range up and down a slope looking for the easiest place to traverse it. In the end, he found the spot by noticing a trail that had been pounded into the ground by several people who had gone before him. It was obvious from the freshness of the traces and the litter left behind that he was now following literally in the bootprints of Jones’s contingent of jihadists. Once he worked his way through the difficult bit, which involved a certain amount of scooting along on his butt, keeping his staff planted to prevent him from avalanching down the hill, he came out into a stretch of more level ground that, if memory served, would lead eventually to the mining camp. Here the jihadists’ trail spread out, as they had formed a broad front while reconnoitering the level ground. Richard chugged along freely in their wake, planting his staff with each stride.
His mind wandered. He now dared to believe that everything was going to work out okay, that Zula would have made it safely to Jake’s by this point, and that he would get there soon. That Jones would slip away into the Idaho/Montana wilderness, or else be captured, and that life for the Forthrasts would return to normal. Which got him to thinking about all the email, all the tweets that would be waiting for him, all the things left undone. And as part of all that, it occurred to him to wonder what Egdod was up to. Because, come to think of it, Richard had been logged on as Egdod when Jones had severed his Internet link. Egdod would have reverted to his bothavior, which in his case would mean trudging for thousands of miles across T’Rain, trying to get back to his mountaintop palace. This would, to put it mildly, draw lots of notice in that world. He wondered how many high-level characters had showed up to attack Egdod, and whether any of them had succeeded in bringing the old man down. He tried to recollect what the landscapes looked like between Carthinias and Egdod’s home zone. He envisioned the aged wizard wading through swamps, trudging doggedly across deserts, scaling mountain ranges, and walking through forests.
Kind of like Richard was doing. Egdod, of course, carried a wizard’s staff, just a simple stick, no fancy carvings or jewels. Just like what Richard was carrying now. Egdod’s beard was long and white, where Richard’s was just a couple of days’ gray stubble. And Egdod, of course, had no need to carry a huge, looted revolver in his waistband. Hell, Egdod didn’t even have a waistband. But despite all of those differences, Richard still found something hugely enjoyable about the fact that, at the same moment, both he and Egdod were wandering alone across their respective worlds, seeing everything close up in a way that they rarely had a chance to. Getting back in touch with the terrains from which they had sprung, autochthonously, early in their lives.
And possibly beset by unknown enemies. Richard, in his reverie, had quite forgotten to keep an eye out for the mountain lion. He executed a slow pirouette around his staff, just to see if anything was hunting him. But of course the whole point of being hunted was that you didn’t know it was happening. He stood still for a minute or two, just listening, just being aware of the place. Enjoying the moment. Because very soon this part of his life would be over, and he’d be descending into the valley of Prohibition Crick the way he had done on that autumn afternoon in 1974 with a bearskin on his back. Except that instead of finding a hidden smuggler’s cabin, he would find a nice modern cabin with Internet, full of people who would all want to talk to him.
When he was good and ready, he turned back around and followed the jihadists’ muddy footprints out of the trees and into the open plateau of the old mining camp.
A solitary man was walking toward him, a couple of hundred meters away, with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was moving with the weary, hitching gait of a man who knew he ought to be running but simply could not summon the energy. Occasionally he spun around and walked backward for a couple of steps, much as Richard had done just a few minutes before when he had been worried about the cougar. Unlike Richard, he was also scanning the sky. And indeed, now that Richard was out in the open, he noticed the sound of at least one helicopter.
The man turned forward again and froze, staring directly at Richard. It was Abdallah Jones.
Richard considered reaching around behind his back and drawing the revolver, but even with its long barrel and large caliber, it was useless at this range. No point, then, in letting Jones know that he was armed. Using the staff to ease his descent, he dropped to one knee. He and Jones were now looking at each other through a haze of scrub brush. Jones was bringing up his rifle: a Kalashnikov. Richard dropped to both knees, then to all fours, then scurried to a different position just as a few exploratory rounds hummed through the air above him and pelted into the mucky ground behind.