CHAPTER 10
PATHIK TOUCHED RACHEL’S cheek to wake her. She could barely see his face, floating ghostly pale, inches from hers. There was a heavy cloud cover, and the light from the moon was completely veiled. She rubbed at her eyes, and shook her head, trying to clear it. Pathik took her hand and led her through the murky dark to where the others stood together. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Rachel could see that all were ready to go.
“Does everyone understand?” Indigo looked around the group. Everyone else nodded. Rachel wondered what they were all supposed to understand.
“But it won’t go that way.” Fisher spoke softly.
“If it does go that way, you need to be ready to leave whoever gets taken.” Malgam sounded gruff. “That means any of you.”
“What are you talking about?” Rachel didn’t like the sound of it.
Malgam turned toward her. “If something goes wrong, Rachel, the most important thing is to get as many of you as possible out of that camp alive. That might mean leaving someone behind.”
“Oh.” Rachel thought about that.
“We’ll be ready to move when you return. It won’t take us long to break camp.” Indigo nodded toward Malgam. “If there’s anything we need to know, Nandy, you can show Malgam.”
“No.” Nandy looked at Malgam and even in the dark Rachel could see the love in her eyes. “You’re too worn out from last night. Don’t waste your strength waiting for me to show you anything. Either we come back fine or we don’t. And I say we’ll come back fine.”
Malgam grinned at her. “You will, love. I know you will. But in case showing me something will help, you better show me. I’ll be tempted to look anyway.”
“Did you learn nothing from Usage? That’s why there’re rules in place, so those such as you have to behave.” She singsonged her next words at him, shaking her finger in a mock scold. “No engagement without permission, unless a life’s at stake.”
“Perhaps now is one of those times when lives are at stake.” Malgam reached out and grabbed her hand. He brought it to his lips and kissed it softly. “Come back to us.”
Nandy smiled gently at him. “I will. We all will.”
THEY WENT SINGLE file, with Pathik leading. Nandy and Rachel came next, then Peter, followed by Fisher. Nipper was somewhere off to their left, slipping silently through the trees. Rachel didn’t like having Peter behind her. She touched Nandy’s hand to let her know she was dropping back, and let Peter pass her.
“All well?” Fisher’s voice was so low she barely heard it.
“Just more comfortable with friendly eyes at my back.” Rachel adjusted the laser saw where it was tucked inside her jacket. Pathik had taken it from its case and handed it to her earlier.
“You’ll be doing the cutting if it needs doing,” he’d said with a grin.
They walked as quietly as they could. With no light it was slow going, and many times they all came to a complete halt while Pathik cut through branches with his knife or passed a warning down the line about a hole or a fallen tree. Peter held a bramble away for Rachel once, waiting for her to pass by it. Instead, she took hold of the branch and told him to go ahead. He started to speak, but Fisher shushed him. Finally he just shook his head and moved on.
The stench from the Roberts’ camp intensified, filling the air, and once Rachel thought she might actually vomit. It was too dark to see well, and there were mounds of waste from the camp everywhere, it seemed. Rachel did her best to miss stepping in any of them. She wondered what kind of people would live like that. She had a bad feeling that she knew the answer.
After what seemed like forever, Pathik held up his hand. Nandy echoed the gesture, as did the rest down the line, until they all halted. Pathik dropped back and gathered them all together.
“It’s just ahead,” he whispered. “I came this far yesterday. There’s a rough wall, low, that they built around camp. I don’t know where the cage is—didn’t go any closer than this.”
“First thing we need to do is scout for sentries.” Peter crouched down, gesturing for the others to join him. “The wall will be guarded.” He pointed east. “I can check that way. Fisher, you can go west. Pathik can stay here with Nandy and Rachel. Once we’ve checked as far as we can and knocked out any we find, we come back here.”
Pathik nodded. Fisher and Peter vanished into the dark. Nandy, Rachel, and Pathik waited, crouched silent in the chill. Rachel strained to hear any noise, any indication that either Fisher or Peter had found a guard. All she could hear was Nandy’s soft breathing.
Then, a shuffle of leaves on the forest floor, a twig snapping, and Fisher appeared, breathless.
“One down,” he panted. “He never even saw me. I hit him on the head and stuffed his mouth with my scarf. Tied his wrists too.” Fisher looked around. “Where’s Peter?”
As if in answer Peter returned, as breathless as Fisher had been.
“Nothing.” He looked at Fisher. “Did you find one?”
Fisher nodded. “Not too far.”
“I went pretty far.” Peter shook his head. “No way to know if there was more than one on this side of the camp, but I’m betting not.”
“We move in, then.” Pathik rose. “I just wish we knew where the cage was.”
“We do.” Nandy pointed to the trees, where Nipper was emerging. “At least one of us does.”
The Woolly slunk up to Nandy, rubbing against her knees briefly. Nandy leaned downed and scratched Nipper’s forehead.
“Can you lead us, Nipper? Take us to Daniel?”
Nipper reared up and batted at Nandy’s hair. He sat down and gazed up at her.
“Hrrrmmmmmm.” Nipper sounded troubled.
“I know.” Nandy stroked Nipper some more. “But we have to get him out.”
The Woolly growled low in his throat. He snuffled at Nandy, nudging her hand. Finally he sighed, as if he knew he wouldn’t be able to change her mind. Then he leaped away, looking back once before moving slowly west toward the low wall.
The group followed.
The low wall was formed from what looked like mud bricks. They cleared it easily, after peeking over it to see what they could of the camp. There was little light, just the smoky embers from a large central fire pit. There were huts here, but they were nothing like the huts in Indigo’s camp. These were tiny, sloppily built, and ill-kempt. Some looked deserted. There was no sign of a cage.
“Nipper?” Nandy whispered the Woolly’s name.
Nipper strode back to her and rubbed her knees again. Then he walked away, toward the fire pit.
“Malgam said he saw the fire at a distance.” Nandy stopped to think. “The cage must be on the other side of the fire pit, the other side of camp.”
“Nipper may be able to walk right through their camp, but we stay low, next to the wall. We’ll skirt the camp as best we can to get to the other side.” Pathik began to move along the wall in the direction Nipper had gone.
They edged along, trying to stay as low and stealthy as possible. The wall began to curve away from them, and as they rounded the bend, the cage rose before them. There was no sign of any guard.
The cage was smaller than anything designed to hold a human, and divided into three cells. It looked like a picture Rachel had seen in a book—one of the old-fashioned, real books her mother liked so much—of a cage in a zoo. Like the zoo cage had been somehow set down in the middle of the clearing. Rachel wondered if there had been a zoo here once, long ago, long before the bombs and the Line and Away.
The back wall of the cage was built up on the outside with rocks, just as Malgam had seen. Each cell was completely exposed to the weather; there was no roof besides the bars, and no shelter within the cells. As they drew near, a break in the clouds allowed the moon to shine through, and Rachel could make out a crumpled shape on a dirt floor in the first cell. It looked like a pile of old rags. She approached with a sense of dread, which quickly became horror.
A skull gleamed in the pale moonlight. Its cheek rested on the perfectly preserved bones of a hand, in an oddly comfortable way, as though the former owner had curled up for a nap there. There was long, brown hair still attached to the skull. Rachel gasped when she saw it. For a moment she wondered if it belonged to her father. But the bones had been picked clean by some sort of scavenger long ago, and Malgam had seen through her father’s eyes only yesterday.
“Nipper, old boy.” A whisper, scarcely louder than a breeze.
Rachel saw Nipper at the third cell, poking his nose through the bars. A filthy, bloody hand reached out, trembling, and ruffled the fur on the Woolly’s head.
Pathik motioned to Fisher and Peter to keep watch and scrambled to the cell. Rachel stayed where she was, suddenly frozen.
“Daniel?” Pathik barely breathed the words.
“Pathik.” The voice sounded so weary.
“How do we open it?” Pathik ran his hand over the bars until he located a lock.
There was no reply for the longest moment. When it finally came, it was bereft of hope.
“You don’t. I’ve tried every way.” Daniel laughed softly, the sound colored with anguish. “They have a key somewhere for that lock, but who knows where. I told Malgam not to come.”
Rachel saw his hand—her father’s hand—take hold of Pathik’s wrist.
“You need to go, Pathik. You and whoever else came, get out of here as fast as you can. They have patrols out at night. If they find you . . . Just go.”
His voice sounded so broken, nothing like the voice Rachel had so often imagined in her daydreams.
“We’re not leaving you, Daniel.” Nandy crept forward so Daniel could see her. “How bad are you hurt?”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t get out of this cage, Nandy. The bars are steel—” Daniel fell silent and stared at the lowest corner of his cell, where a line of light traced its way across the bars. The light bloomed in the night.
“That’s a laser saw!” Daniel forgot to whisper.
“Shhh.” Pathik looked behind them, then turned back to Daniel. “Yes. We . . . we thought we might need it.”
Daniel lowered his voice. “Where did you get a laser saw? Who’s the girl?” Daniel lowered his voice even more, to a confidential whisper meant for Pathik alone. “Is she from the Roberts? They’re . . . Pathik, they’re doing some things with the government, things we hadn’t even suspected.”
Rachel looked up at that, and stared at her father. He was crouched in the cage, unable to stand. He looked back at her, the way a person looks at someone they don’t know, and don’t trust.
He didn’t know her.
But then, why should he. She wouldn’t have known him, not the way he looked now. She went back to work on the bars.
Pathik didn’t waste time trying to explain. “Right now we just need to get you out of here, Daniel. We can talk later.” He eyed Daniel’s bloody hands, and the bruises mottling his face. “Can you walk?”
“I can run, if you can get me out of this cage.” Daniel grinned, but he shook his head at the same moment. “I may need some help.” He edged toward the bar Rachel was working on and grasped it below the top cut she had made. He grimaced as he closed his hand around it, pain from his injuries twisting his face.
“It might clang if it drops, once you finish that bottom cut.” He met her eyes. “I’ll hold it so it won’t.”
Rachel nodded, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t want her voice to betray the emotions she was feeling. She didn’t even really know what they were. Daniel pulled the section of bar carefully away when she finished her cut and laid it on the ground.
Time surrounded Rachel, pressing at her, pushing in, making her hand shake when she tried to cut the next bar. She felt it like a change in the air pressure, the need to hurry, the urgency of the situation. She adjusted her grip on the laser saw and took a deep breath.
“You’re doing great.” Pathik was smiling at her when she looked at up. He reached out and touched a bar. “Just to here, don’t you think?”
She looked; it was only one bar out from the one she was about to tackle. It did look like a man—especially a man as gaunt as Daniel appeared to be—could wriggle through the space three cut bars would make. She nodded at Pathik, and smiled as she realized he had given her the moment she needed to recover her composure. She applied the laser saw to the second bar with a steady hand. Time receded, leaving her to her work, and the world beyond the glow of the saw dimmed to a set of indistinct shapes.
When she made the last cut and her father laid the last section of bar in the dirt, it felt to Rachel as though there should be some sense of relief, but there was only fear. Her father was alive, his escape from horrible peril imminent, but he could be taken from her all over again, this time in front of her own eyes. She moved away from the opening in the bars and looked up at him.
“Come out,” she whispered. “Come out now, and be careful. Be careful.”
Daniel gazed at her, puzzled. He didn’t move. The strength of her emotion reached him; he felt it in all its heat. The cadence of her voice sang to him, like the memory of some other voice. He knew it; he knew it was . . . something.
He was tired. He was half starved. He’d been beaten daily for weeks. He didn’t know the name of the song he was hearing. Still, it stunned him, and he crouched in his cell, motionless.
“Daniel.” Pathik reached through the opening and took hold of Daniel’s arm. “Time to go.” He pulled. And Daniel blinked, released from his reverie. He shook himself, more a shudder than anything, and lowered his head to the opening of the cell. In seconds he had wriggled through to freedom.
Pathik took one arm and Rachel the other, and they supported him as he stood, for the first time since he had been locked in the cage. He stumbled; his legs were leaden and numb. They took small steps and he seemed to gain some strength. He cried out on the third step and grabbed his leg. Rachel could see blood seeping through his pant leg. But he straightened, determined, and went on. After they had covered a few feet he stopped them.
“The saw.” Daniel looked at Rachel. “Get it out.”
She had put it back inside her jacket. She reached for it, brow furrowed.
“Why?”
“It’ll cut flesh as well as steel. We may need to cut some.” Daniel whispered the words, but Rachel could hear the hatred in them.
Rachel shook her head and closed her jacket. She looked at her father’s bloody hands and his bruised face. She wondered how many beatings it would take before she felt the kind of hate she heard in her father’s voice.
“He’s right.” Peter appeared behind them. Fisher was with him. “Give it to me, Rachel, if you don’t want to use it.”
Daniel turned and stared.
“Peter?” He squeezed his eyes shut tight, then opened them again. He blinked rapidly. “Peter?” He turned to Rachel, a stunned expression on his face.
“Did he call you Rachel?” The words were faint, but Rachel could see her father looking at her as though he might know who she was, might remember her after all the long years, might see a three-year-old child in the girl standing before him. Might see his daughter.
“We have to get out of here,” said Pathik. “Rachel, you and Nandy run and tell them we’re coming. See if they can rig a pallet of some sort so we can carry him back to camp. We’ll be right behind.”
Rachel carefully transferred her father’s arm to Peter, letting go only when she was sure he was firmly supporting Daniel. She shook her head at Pathik.
“You go ahead of us. We’ll make sure nobody follows.” With a pointed look at Peter she took the laser saw out from her jacket and held it tight, her finger on the activator button.
Pathik started to protest, but Nandy cut him off.
“She’s right—they could pick you right off. Just start moving, and we’ll watch the rear. We need to get out of here now.” She dropped behind Rachel, taking out her knife and holding it low and close. Fisher joined her, unsheathing a similar weapon.
With Peter and Pathik in the lead supporting Daniel, they made slow, painful progress through the darkness. Rachel held the laser saw with both hands, and it still shook. She walked sideways, holding the weapon out toward the rear, scanning the blackness for any sign of someone following. Nandy and Fisher did the same.
They tried to be silent, but failed. Every footstep seemed to land on a branch, every breath rasped in Rachel’s ears. Daniel cried out once, and they all froze in place. Six sets of ears strained to hear the sound of footsteps; six sets of eyes strained to see as far behind them as they could. After a long, tense interval, they set off again. The stench of the Roberts’ camp hung heavy in the night air. They stopped occasionally, when Pathik raised a hand, to let Daniel rest. No one spoke.
Daniel did not cry out again, though his face twisted in pain. As they put more and more ground between them and the cage, Rachel felt her shoulders lower, and her breath came easier. She began to think maybe they would make it, maybe they would get back to the others safe. She looked at Fisher, and then at Nandy, trying to see their eyes in the gloom, to see if they felt the same sense of hope. She couldn’t really tell.
Then she heard it.
It was fast, and worse, it was close. Pounding feet, hitting packed dirt, and the crackle of brush as men broke through it not far away. There were no shouted threats, no other sounds at all.
“Go!” Fisher gestured to Pathik and Peter. “Take Daniel and go. Hurry!”
Pathik hesitated. He looked at Rachel, torn.
“Pathik, please, get him out of here!” Rachel turned away as soon as she saw him start to move.
“Watch your side,” whispered Nandy. She stood between Rachel and Fisher, her knife ready. Fisher reached into his jacket and pulled out a second knife. He held one knife in each hand, slightly out from his body, loose and ready. Rachel tightened her grip on the laser saw and braced herself.
The Roberts burst through the low bushes. There were two of them, and they had evidently expected to encounter backs, not faces. When they saw the three waiting, bristling with weapons, they came to a momentary halt. For a fleeting moment Rachel thought they would turn and run the other way. Instead, one leaped upon Nandy, pushing her to the ground. He had a club, and he raised it high above her. Fisher shot over to him and Rachel saw the flash of a knife blade, heard the man scream. His club fell and he grasped at his side. Rachel saw him rear back but then something hit her, hard, and she hit the ground.
The other man was on top of her, his fingers knotted through her hair. He smelled so strongly that Rachel felt nauseous. He had only one eye—the other was gone, an angry red scar in its place where someone had once done crude surgery.
He yanked her head up, exposing her neck, and when his other hand came into her field of vision she saw he had a knife. The blade glistened, slick with someone’s blood. Rachel tried to flick the laser saw’s switch, but he had her arm pinned to the ground. She could only watch as he brought the knife down.
There was a scream, and a blur of motion, and the man was swept off of Rachel. She scrambled to her feet, staring at a scene she didn’t immediately comprehend. The man was writhing on the ground, something covering his face—something scratching and slicing and biting at his head. The man was screaming, and the sound mingled with the unholy shrieking coming from the thing on his head.
It was Nipper.
The man rose to his feet somehow, hands scrabbling at the Woolly, trying to pry the creature off of his face. Nipper hung on, hissing and spitting and inflicting more and more damage. He screamed shrilly when the man landed a blow.
Rachel was shaking all over. She looked down at her hand and saw that she still held the laser saw, her knuckles white from gripping it so tightly. She flicked the activator switch and watched as the thin beam shot forth from the handle. Another scream from Nipper rang out, and Rachel ran forward, slashing at the man’s back with the laser. She saw his shirt split open, and his skin split just as fast. There was no blood, just a strange, red gash edged in white.
He ran then. He ran blind at first, with Nipper still riding his head. When Nipper leaped off into the bush he ran even faster. Rachel watched until she felt sure he wasn’t coming back. Then she turned to see what had befallen her friends.
Fisher was helping Nandy up. She looked shaken, but she was uninjured as far as Rachel could tell. Fisher hadn’t been so lucky; his right arm hung at his side and he winced as he pulled Nandy up with his left hand. Rachel saw some blood on his forearm.
“How bad is it?” Rachel reached for his sleeve.
“No time right now.” Fisher scanned the night. “We need to go—they’ll be gathering forces.”
“Indigo is with us!” Nandy stood with her back to them, facing the dark forest. “Indigo is here!” she shouted again. She listened hard for a moment. Then she turned back to Rachel and Fisher.
Fisher looked at Nandy as though she had just burst into gibberish. “Shhhhhhhhhhhh,” he said, holding his index finger in front of his lips in an exaggerated manner.
Nandy ignored him. “We need to stop the bleeding, Fisher.” Nandy produced a long strip of cloth. “Field dressings almost always come in handy.” She nodded to Rachel. “Roll up his sleeve, Rachel.”
“Are you crazy?” Fisher started to say more, but Nandy shushed him.
Rachel rolled back his sleeve, revealing a deep stab wound in Fisher’s arm. Blood was oozing from it.
“At least he didn’t hit any arteries.” Nandy wrapped the wound tightly. “It’s deep, though. And likely already infected. We’ll need to see Saidon when we get back.”
“If we get back.” Fisher didn’t sound afraid. He did sound worried. He kept looking in the direction the Roberts had run while Nandy finished wrapping his arm.
“They’re gone,” Rachel said as she rolled down his sleeve.
Fisher looked at her. “You were fierce. I think you may have saved Nipper’s life.”
“I think he saved mine.” Rachel was suddenly aware of the pieces of bark in her hair, and the dirt she could feel on her face, and the fact that Fisher was staring at her.
Nipper materialized silently, limping. He stood, holding one of his front feet off the ground. Nandy started toward him but he moved away, in the direction of their temporary camp.
“He’s right,” said Fisher. “We need to keep moving.”
“Let’s go. I’ll take a look at his foot once we’re back home.” Nandy strode after the Woolly. Fisher gestured for Rachel to go ahead of him, and they both followed Nandy’s lead.