“Horses,” Scout whispers.
We pause and then I hear them, too. A few snorts, but no running hooves. There are voices, also, low and a bit distant.
“We need to get off the trail,” I tell him.
The woods here are not nearly as dense as those near the mountain pass, which makes them easier to move through, but more difficult to find someplace to hide.
A glow of flames tickles the top of a rise just ahead. Pausing, I motion for Scout to take a look around while I check on Lidia again. She’s also stopped, but much closer to the camp.
We creep up the rise and then drop to the ground when we reach the crest. There’s a clearing just ahead, and in the center, a campfire with maybe four or five men sitting around it. In the light of the flames, I can see the lumps of at least a dozen other riders sleeping on the ground.
Scout taps me and points ahead at a spot just inside the trees. Another human shadow, this one kneeling behind a bush.
Lidia.
She is within thirty feet of the nearest Mongol, and it’ll be near impossible to grab her without drawing attention. While it’s a concern, it’s not a deterrent. All we need to do is get our arms around her, unslave my chaser, and then jump out of here.
Scout scans the area for anyone else who might be awake and walking around as I work out my plan. When I’m ready, I mime to him what I want to do. He looks dubious, but nods, deferring to me.
Slowly we push back to our feet, but remain in a crouch — well, for me, as best a crouch as my leg will allow — and move along an arc that puts us behind Lidia.
It’s weird. I’ve had a few glimpses of her here and there as we’ve jumped around, but this is the first good view of Lidia I’ve had since we were separated by the glass in the doorless cell she built, before we’d even gone to 1939 Germany.
As much as I know she’d hear me coming, it’s hard not to rush forward and try to grab her. Closer first, I caution myself. There’s still a good hundred feet between us. Twenty would be okay to stop worrying. Ten would be better.
As I pick my way over the ground, I see her reach toward a shadow sitting against a tree next to her. Her rucksack, I realize after a moment. Her hand clasps around a stick jutting out of the top, and pulls it out. Setting it on her lap, she fusses over it for a moment. Then I hear a metallic click, the same metallic click I heard in Kentucky, where a man named Abraham Lincoln and his son were killed.
The automatic rifle.
I had forgotten all about it.
I break from Scout and start to run toward her, my adrenaline drowning out any protest my leg might be making. But I’m not even halfway to her when she pulls the trigger.
The sound of automatic gunfire rolls across the clearing like a continuous thunderstorm. I stumble forward and fall to a knee as bullets fly.
The men by the campfire are the first to go down, not a single one of them able to get to his feet before being hit. Those who’d been asleep jump up among shouts of confusion and anger, but their bodies are no more bulletproof than their companions’ were. It is the most direct role Lidia has taken in affecting the time line that I have witnessed. Clearly she’s decided to take things more into her own hands than she has in the past. Why, I don’t know, but it’s a turn in events I don’t like at all.
“No!” I shout. “Stop!”
But Lidia doesn’t even flinch.
I’m up again and moving toward her when the shooting and the shouts suddenly stop.
Lidia twists around and points her rifle at me. “Not a foot closer, Denny.”
I halt.
At the sound of a footstep in the trees behind me, Lidia jerks her rifle a few inches to my left and sends three rounds flying into the darkness.
“Don’t shoot!”
Lidia looks at me, her eyes narrowing. Though the voice is mine, it didn’t come out of my mouth. At least not the mouth of this me.
“Lidia, please. Don’t,” I say.
She raises her voice. “Come out where I can see you.”
The look of disgust on her face tells me the exact moment Scout comes into view.
“That’s far enough,” she orders him.
She glances back and forth between Scout and me. It must be the bloodstains on my pants that give me away as the one who brought her grandson to 1952.
She sneers at me. “Picked up a little help, did you? Cute.”
Just then, several mounted soldiers ride into the clearing — sentries, no doubt, responding to a noise that they’ve never heard before.
Lidia takes a quick peek in their direction and then looks back at us and mouths, “Don’t move.”
She keeps her weapon trained on us until the sentries pull to a halt at the campfire and jump off their mounts. Once she has a clear shot at all three, she whips the rifle back around and fires a burst that takes down not only the sentries but their horses, too.
Even if I’d been able to move, I couldn’t have taken more than two steps before the weapon is pointing back on me. But the massacre before me in the meadow, the unimaginable deviation to the time line she’s caused, cements me in place.
Behind the rifle, Lidia smiles. “It’s been a fun time, hasn’t it, Denny?”
“Put the weapon down, Lidia.”
“I think not.” The hint of laughter. “Have you enjoyed the journey?”
“What’s next? You take down Rome? Maybe the Greeks?”
“Oooh. Good suggestions. But I’ll be honest. This has been exhausting. Fun, but I could use a little time off. Thinking I might find a deserted beach somewhere. Relax for a while. What do you think?”
“That sounds great. Let’s go.” At least she wouldn’t be able to do any harm there.
There’s no hiding her laughter this time. “Oh, Denny. Really? Do you think you’re going to piggyback with me forever? I’m glad you’ve been able to witness the work I’ve been doing, but it’s almost time for you to get off.”
I hear something, faint, beyond the field on the other side. At first I think it’s just the wind, but then it’s there again, loud enough this time that Lidia notices it, too. It’s the pounding hooves of a single horse heading our way.
“Almost?” I say, hoping to distract her.
But she’s having none of it. “On the ground, both of you.” Neither Scout nor I move. “I have no problem killing either of you.”
I believe her so I lower myself to the ground and nod to Scout to do the same.
“Good. Now stay,” she says.
The horse comes in fast from the other side of the meadow, but pulls up as soon as its rider sees his dead companions. In the split second before Lidia sends a burst of bullets flying in his direction, the sentry gives his horse a kick and they gallop off to the left. The shots miss their mark by only feet. The sound has terrified the rider, but instead of trying to figure out what has caused it, he veers his horse into the trees.
Lidia pulls the trigger again, but there’s only the click of the hammer closing on an empty chamber. With a frustrated growl, she throws the gun to the ground and rips her chaser out of her bag.
I brace myself, ready to jump again, but then realize I don’t have my device.
“Denny!” Scout yells.
He reaches out to me, and I throw myself at him, making contact just a second before everything disappears.
I hear a voice as soon as we come out of the jump. Lidia’s, but it’s coming from behind me, yet I can see her thirty feet in front of me. A quick scan reveals that physically we’ve only moved into the woods on the other side of the body-filled meadow, and I realize that the Lidia I hear is the one who’s about to tell me that our travels together are almost over.