Guil was mad. He was damned mad. He was scared, deep down. He had to get out to meet Burn by sundown, or Burn was going to get dangerously restless. He didn’t think the guard was going to back his story. And it didn’t look good from where he stood.
“He’s got a knife,” the guard said.
“You know,” Guil said disgustedly, “you’d be a lot smarter to wait to tell them that, until they find the key.”
“Hand the knife out,” one of the uniformed police said.
“You can come get it.”
“I said hand it over.”
Hell, he thought, he wouldn’t improve the ambient by arguing the point with four rifles aimed at him. He walked over to the bars and took out the knife, tossed it out through the bars.
“He’s a borderer,” a cop said. “He’s got more than one.”
“You want the other?” He bent and took it from his boot, tossed it out. “That’s all.”
“Don’t believe it,” the cop said.
Steps sounded fast behind him. He turned to side-step the fool rushing him, and something jabbed him in the back of the head. Stars exploded. The guard hit him, knocked him against the bars: hands grabbed him, held him.
Second crack across the head. He jerked to get free and more hands than two men had grabbed him through the bars and held him there. The guard hit him in the gut.
It was a stand-still when the man came back with the key. He didn’t move and they didn’t hit him until they had him outside the bars.
Then the guard thought he’d get one more in. Guil dumped the rightside man over his back, got a clear target with the guard staring stupidly at him and decked him.
Before an oncoming rifle barrel swung into his vision.
Chapter xii
THE PAIN BLURRED THE SKY. BUT THAT SKY WASN’T BLUE. IT WAS A wooden ceiling, a bare electric bulb for a sun. He had no idea where he was.
<Burn,> Guil sent. Always, on waking, the awareness of Burn, first reality of his world.
But Burn wasn’t there.
And on that stomach-dropping realization, he panicked, staring into this electric, burning sun, trying to reconstruct his route to this place.
Aby was dead, up above Tarmin. That was how everything connected. He was lying on his back on a bare board floor with days-old pain in his leg and recently inflicted pain at various points about his skull.
<Moving darkness at Shamesey gates. A flash of fire, out of that crowd-shadow at the edge of night.>
He’d not realized what it was. Not until the second shot.
<Telling Burn to run away.>
He’d slid down, given Burn no choice… he’d thought.
But Burn had charged the mob instead of running away—gone at the townsmen mob dead ahead, and, dirty nighthorse trick, wasn’t where he imaged he was.
He’d… damned well been where the mob had thought he was: third shot, and he’d caught it—it had knocked his leg out from under him and sent him sprawling downhill on the dry grass. He remembered.
<Lying there, hands burned on the grass, the camp gates opening… riders coming out—>
He thought they were coming to rescue him, he’d thought they wouldn’t let the town take him: camp rights over town marshals—
< People shouting at each other, while he faced the down-slant of the hill, trying for his very life to get up…
He didn’t remember, after that. For a moment the next connected instant seemed here, under the electric light.
Aby was dead. More… more than that. Aby had died.
But he couldn’t go into that pit yet. There was something in there he couldn’t deal with, a darkness he couldn’t escape if he went in there without understanding where he was now…
He drew a deep breath, about to move.
And knew the smell. Anveney’s stink.
<Desolation, bare, gullied earth. Himself and Burn, approaching Anveney. Meet—at the rider-stone. Burn waiting.>
How long ago? God, how long ago?
He rolled over fast, leaned back on his hands as the change of altitude sent pain knifing through his skull. Dizziness sprawled him back onto the floor, onto the lump on the back of his skull.
Stars and dark a moment. He tried it again more slowly, made it halfway.
No furniture in the room, except a bucket. Shut door. No window.
< No window.>
Didn’t even know he’d gotten up. He was plastered face-to on the wooden wall as if he could pour himself through it, arms spread, shaking like a leaf—and deaf, absolutely deaf to Burn’s existence. The whole world had left him: sound, sense, everything.
But the raw, rough wood under his hands was real. It proved heexisted.
He could still smell the stench of Anveney around him. That proved something, too, but he couldn’t hear a living soul.
His heart was pounding. Sweat stood cold on his skin. He couldn’t let go of the wall. Couldn’t keep his legs under him, otherwise… couldn’t depend on his balance.
First thing a rider knew: panic killed. Panic led to crazy. Panic gave the advantage away, free to all takers. The sane, thinking man knew he was in Anveney, knew Anveney had no horses in reach to carry the ambient… but… God, he’d never in his life waked up deaf to it; he’d never been in a room without windows, he’d never not known how he got to a place…
He persuaded his knees to hold him—edged along the wall, unsure even of his balance, to try the door.
Locked and bolted from outside. Of course.
He tried to shake it. He slammed the center of the door once, hard, with his fist, and heard only silence, inside his head and out.
Burn—
Burn would be in deadly danger if he came near the walls, and Burn would do that if he didn’t get back before dark.
Burn would come for him, knowingthe danger, within range of the rifles that guarded the town… but Burn wouldn’t care. Burn would come in.
He didn’t know how long he’d been out. He couldn’t, in this damn box, tell day from dark, no more than he knew east from west, and he couldn’t count on any rescue. There was no rider camp outside Anveney walls, no camp-boss to negotiate him out—in autumn, there probably wasn’t another rider within 10 k of here, nobody to know if he didn’t come out of this town.
Nobody but Burn.
Townsmen would know there was a horse out there waiting for him. They’d know the hold they had on him—that whatever they wanted, he’d do, rather than have harm come to Burn. That was surely why they’d shut him away like this; they surely had to want something from him, besides some stupid townsman penalty because a rider inconvenienced a bank that shouldn’t have handed out money to a man that didn’t have any right to it—
He remembered. Damn Hawley!
And to hell with the money. He’d have walked out once he knew they weren’t going to give it to him—he’d have left their damn town. He didn’t think he’d pulled any weapon on them. He didn’t remember any. They didn’t need to lock him up in a box and shoot at Burn, who was—surely—surely old enough and wary enough to give them hell without putting himself straight-off into some wall guard’s riflesights.
But he couldn’t depend on that. Hehadn’t done too well at escaping town guards, himself.
He staggered along the wall, one side to the other, wasn’t sure what it contributed to the solution—his leg hurt, his head hurt. It seemed moving might clear his thinking, maybe; maybe hurt less than standing still. But if it helped, he couldn’t tell it.
He bashed the door again, hammered it with his fist, in case someone could heair. He didn’t think all that much time had passed, but he wasn’t sure: it could be getting dark. Burn could be getting restless, waiting for him.
Saner to sit down. Didn’t want to stop moving. Had to have something to do, not to think, didn’t want to think…