Warstalker's Track (16 page)

It was hard work, though, for the bolts were barbed and the planking very dense. More troubling was the fact that the barbs were coated with a thin, shimmery liquid which, if its effect on organic matter matched its stench, was damned potent poison indeed. Aife avoided touching it like the plague, and the boards where the older shafts had entered were already corroded. Those shafts alone came free easily. David collected a clumsy handful, but when he made for the gunwale to toss them over, a cry from Aife stopped him. “Dangerous they may be, but we would be more than fools to abandon potential weapons before Nuada has seen them.”

David cast about for something in which to cache them, but Aife flung him part of her cloak. He wrapped the arrows carefully and had started to add Aife’s to the stash when the boat shuddered again: the most violent yet. Fionchadd swore—or such was the sense of the word David caught only as a slash of Faery speech accompanied by a flood of frightened anger.

Oblivious to the preposterous surroundings, David ran back there, fighting hard to resist the notion that his footsteps sounded not on any horizontal surface but on a wall. Ruthlessly, he forced his gaze to the deck. And almost brained himself on the tiller before skidding to a halt.

“Finno? What’s—?”

The Faery’s face was hard with concentration, as though more than hands on the tiller steered them along their fantastic path. “The ship dies,” he said through clenched teeth. “Already I must direct it as much with my mind as with this mechanism, and its pain is my pain. But it
is
dying. My only hope is that we can reach our destination before it succumbs.”

“How much longer—farther, or whatever?”

“Not long, I hope. Now leave me. I have no time for this.”

David started to voice another of the countless perfectly reasonable questions that had welled up in his mind, but before he could choose among them he felt hands on his shoulders, drawing him away. Aife—of course.

“What’re you doin’?” he demanded. “Can’t you see—”

“I can see that we are slowing and veering away from the Track, which means we must be nearing our goal.”

Curiosity got the better of David. He dared a glance at the route ahead, noting that the flames beneath them were now the same familiar gold as the Tracks, but, more to the point, they were edging away from that flaming path onto one less well defined. Unless he was mistaken, too, the flames beneath them were thinner, neither as substantial as heretofore nor as hot.

Another jolt wracked the boat, and they left the Track entirely. For a moment, David thought he was about to fall, or slide across the deck, or simply go hurtling off into space; for up and down, in and out, and all such things briefly held no meaning—or all those meanings at once. Abruptly, like a swimmer’s hand slicing into water, the vessel entered the flame in truth—or sank within it, or slid through.

David held his breath as the fires reached up to enwrap him; closed his eyes as he felt them brush his hair and face with molten fingers that miraculously did no damage.

Another jolt. Up and down shifted again, and profound darkness replaced the light, and when David’s eyes popped open, the Track was gone.

Wherever they’d emerged, there were stars overhead—
familiar
stars: the ancient constellations of summer in his World. “We’re back,” he gasped. Then, more doubtfully, “Aren’t we?”

Aife nodded and started back toward the cabin. “Best we get below.”

Instead of following, however, David dashed over to the nearest gunwale and studied the landscape passing beneath.
Beneath,
for they were easily several hundred feet above terrain that looked hauntingly familiar. The mountains were identical to those back home: worn-out old things wrapped in thick robes of forest as though to shut out the chill that came of being older than dinosaurs. Lakes quicksilvered the lowlands, and a network of roads slashed them, like sunlight on morning spiders’ webs. There were lights, too: a town to the north, but not a big one. Smaller patches were freestanding businesses or such facilities as schools and…
hospitals!
His heart leapt at that, the first real hope that they might actually be able to save his father.

Again he hesitated, torn between seeing what evolved and going below to check on a parent who could as easily be dead, awake, or dying. Still, if anything were amiss, someone would summon him. Thus, he remained in place, gazing over the gunwale as the boat continued northwest, lower now, almost brushing the trees that crowned the nearer peaks. He hoped no one bothered to look up.
UFO
would be the most logical thing anyone would say. And with Silverhand below and largely out of commission, and Tir-Nan-Og in shambles, who knew when anyone would spin-doctor such things again.

Restless—or desperate—he stretched forward along the figurehead, in search of some surer clue as to their destination.

And almost fell overboard when something jarred the boat from beneath. It bucked like a shying horse, then continued its slow earthward glide.

Lower.

Something snapped: important-sounding, and aft. Another of Fionchadd’s curses followed on its heels. David glanced back to see the Faery’s fists pounding what was clearly a broken tiller.

Another crash, another jolt, and David decided sitting might be wise, and managed to wedge himself into the vee behind the prow. He could still see enough to note that they’d entered the less populated end of whatever state this was—it looked like Georgia—and were shadowing a big north-south highway that resembled Georgia 129, which connected, among other things, Athens, Georgia, and Knoxville, Tennessee, by way of countless tourist traps.

Another jolt put them lower yet, and was he dreaming, or was the ship listing to port? Suddenly, all he cared about was finding something solid to hang on to and the waning hope that they might somehow crash (for surely that was about to occur) in the open, in lieu of the woods or one of those no-longer-so-friendly-looking peaks.

Treetops beat at their keel, each prompting the ship to lurch, and a few now rose higher than the gunwale. “Land ho!” Fionchadd cried right behind him, grabbing his arm as the ship cleared the last of what was probably national forest and sailed into the scanty airspace above a clearing on the knees of yet another mountain: maybe two acres of open land, vaguely tended and sprinkled with tumbledown outbuildings, centered around a worn-looking house he thought he might recognize if seen from the ground in daylight.

He was still trying to fit a name to this all-too-familiar stead when the hull jolted one last time, bounced, came down hard on its prow—and then kept on bouncing as, wood screaming across rocky earth, the ship heeled over—and stopped.

It took David a moment to get his bearings, and another to elbow a breathless Fionchadd off him so that he could take stock of surroundings that actually stayed put; didn’t burn, make noise, smell bad, or make him sweat; but were instead a small, rather run-down farm tucked somewhere in his own north Georgia mountains.

Surrounded by moonlit darkness (there was no security light), it was hard to tell much about the house facing them roughly fifty yards away, save that it had been built midcentury at best and had more the look of a cabin erected on impulse than a purpose-designed dwelling. Briefly, it was one story, with a tin roof and faded vinyl siding that might once have been cream or white but which now more closely matched the dusty, ill-trimmed yard. Nor was there any real architecture to speak of, the structure’s main claim to fame being a simple frame porch across two thirds of the front, with a set of concrete block steps leading up to it and a room flush with its forward edge on the right-hand side.

And then David noticed the details.

Old Harley Electraglide in a lean-to shed along one wall. A wind chime made of bones depending from the roof rail. Assorted herbs hanging along the porch in drying bundles. A pair of muddy military boots set neatly by the door. A dark brown bottle with no label that had likely held home-brewed beer.

And the lean, middle-height, dark-haired man who’d just eased the screen door open to stalk carefully into the yard, a double-barrel shotgun resting across his left forearm. Moonlight darkening the man’s jeans to black, while washing all color from his bare feet and what torso showed beneath an unbuttoned flannel shirt.

And the stump of featureless flesh that terminated that man’s left arm at the wrist.

Which could only mean one person.

“John!” David yelled. “Hey, man! It’s me, David!”

The figure still looked wary as he squinted into what must strongly resemble an explosion in a sawmill with a crazy man trapped in the middle. Not until he’d come within speaking distance did he relax: comfortable country grace replacing the taut military precision he’d previously affected—which extremes pretty well defined him, if one threw poet into the mix.

“Interesting…entrance,” John Devlin drawled carefully, then set the shotgun down and ambled over to where Aife had just flung the boarding ladder over the side. As it was, the gunwale was barely above the man’s eye-level.

“I try,” David retorted. “Hang on.”

“Never mind. I’ll come up.”

“Without your h—” David began, then caught himself, remembering something more important. “You got any medical trainin’?”

A curt nod. “Comes with the turf—went with it, anyway.” David noted that Devlin had neither remarked on their presence nor on the means of their arrival.

“Nice ride—or was,” Devlin observed when Fionchadd had helped David hoist the former Ranger onto the sharply listing deck. “Who’s the patient?”

David nodded toward the cabin. “My pa. Down there. Major league stick in the back, courtesy of a little altercation. I think it’s plugged things up enough to prevent much blood loss—outside. Inside? Who knows?”

“I will, in a minute.”

“You don’t look too surprised,” David dared, when Devlin reached the top of the stairs.

“Figured you’d show up, just not right now.”

“Bad time to ask?”

“Wouldn’t argue with that.”

The cabin door, which appeared to have been jammed, was almost literally ripped from David’s grip by a worried-looking LaWanda. “’Bout time,” she told David. “It’s your dad. He—” She paused, studying Devlin. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? And am I to assume we’ve finally got somewhere?” she added to the tired-faced Fionchadd, behind them.

“Talk to her, Finno,” David sighed—and ushered John Devlin into the cabin.

Fortunately, the various impacts of what had passed for a landing didn’t seem to have wrought nearly as much damage to Big Billy as they had to the vessel. But as David scooted around so that Devlin could join him at his father’s back, he realized at once what had caused LaWanda’s consternation.

“No!”
he shouted as Devlin reached out to touch the stake that lay so perilously close to Big Billy’s spine.

Too late. Or was it? Devlin’s hand had halted just shy of the splintered wood—which now evinced an odd sort of transparency, as though it were not entirely present. He stared at it critically. “You didn’t pull this out ’cause you were afraid he might bleed to death, right? That was smart thinking. Unfortunately, it’s…dissolving.”

“Iron,” Fionchadd spat, looking very puzzled. “Only iron could affect it so.”

“There’s iron in human blood,” David gave back. “Hemoglobin. Carries oxygen to the brain.”

“What about Faery blood?” Brock wondered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Devlin murmured, then looked up at David. “Right now, folks, we’ve got a problem.”

Chapter VII: Aftermath

(near Clayton, Georgia—Saturday, June 28—late)

“This man needs a hospital
now
,”
John Devlin said flatly, not looking up from where he was gently probing the swelling around Big Billy’s wound.

“Sorry,” David grunted, offhand.

“’Bout what?” Devlin shot back. “I doubt your dad volunteered to have a piece of kindlin’ rammed into his tenderloin.”

“Better call an ambulance,” Aikin inserted. “Just point me to the phone.”

Devlin shook his head. “Bad idea. One reason you’re standin’ on. The other is that it’ll take time to get one down here—which he may not have.”

David eyed him warily. “You got wheels, then? Besides the Harley, I mean?”

Devlin gestured toward the side of the house opposite that on which the bike was sheltered. By straining on tiptoes to peer through the door, David could just make out the front of a small pickup. Black, old and rusty: probably a Mazda. “Truck somebody gave me in trade for a ride to town when it blew a hose. Nothin’ to write home about, but it’ll get you to Clayton faster’n an ambulance can get here and back.”

“Mind if I, uh, borrow it? Unless you wanta go.”

“Don’t mind, but it’s not real smart for
you
to leave just now. Folks are after you, if this guy next to your dad’s who he looks like. You’ve clearly lost ’em—for a while—and comin’ back this side’s probably the best thing you could do in the short term ’cause folks like that don’t like to draw attention to themselves, plus there’s the Power thing. But a hospital’s no place to draft battle plans, and you’d have to leave eventually. And”—the man hesitated briefly—“here you’d at least have
some
protection.”

“But my pa,” David protested. “I gotta be there—”

“No,” Devlin countered firmly. “He has to
get
there. You’re part of bigger things.” He glanced around, gaze finally settling on LaWanda. “You drive a stick?”

“I can drive a bulldozer if I have to!” she snorted. “You get me directions, I’m your woman.”

“I’ll go too,” Aikin volunteered. Then, when David would have protested: “No, think, Dave: You guys have things to figure out, but I know your dad better than anybody here except you, plus he knows me, plus…I’m a guy, and a man needs other men around for stuff like this.”

Again, David started to speak, then gave up. “You’re right—dammit! But please call as soon as you get there.”

“What about the stake?” Brock wondered. “It’s vanishing. Won’t that be a problem?”

“Not ours,” David retorted, decisive again now that the crucial matter had been resolved for him.