Revenge of the Brotherhood (Book 3 in the Tom & Laura Series) (20 page)

Ebb opened his eyes and grinned at Tricky before taking Lucy in his arms and kissing her. “I guess I’m back.”

He looked down at Tom who lay unconscious on the floor. “Thanks, Tom.”

Sir Ernest Trelawney woke from his sleep and tried to figure out what had woken him. Something important had just happened. That was all he knew. A pattern had been restored. He drifted back to sleep feeling much better than he had for days.

Daisy smiled and Laura roused from her almost slumber.

“I do not see what you have to smile about. It’s only a few hours until they march us out and shoot us.”

“An important possible future just became a reality.”

“I don’t suppose it involved a lot of rebel rifles malfunctioning did it?”

Daisy shook her head, but she didn’t stop smiling.

Tricky found Dougal in the heart of the ship, filling gasbags from a metal tank.

“It is good to see you, David.”

“I ’as somethin’ for you. I only ’ad time to stuff one of them in mi pocket. The others got burned”

“I am rather busy at the moment.”

“Trelawney gave me it, for you and Tom.”

Tricky took out a creased and many times folded sheet of paper. Dougal stopped what he was doing to look at it. It was a detailed map of the border between France and Brittany and had writing next to a red cross. The words were. ‘Where General Brent-Smyth is camped looking for Laura.’

“I may kiss you, yer wee angel,” Dougal said, a smile beaming on his face. Tricky stepped back in alarm. “My geography’s good enough to get us there and the water is nearly replenished. Aye we have a chance.”

Tom woke to someone doing something very pleasurable to him. He opened his eyes to find he was naked in bed with Antonia on top. He tried to get up, but she pushed him back down onto the bunk.

“Just one last time before the love of your life takes you back,” she whispered and then she started moving in a way that took his breath away.

Antonia was dressed when Dougal ran into Tom’s cabin.

“Do you always enter without knocking, my lord? I was just checking on Tom. He is sleeping, but seems much recovered.”

Dougal shook Tom. “Are you fit to steer the ship? I have a map that shows where Daisy is.”

“What time is it?” Tom asked.

“Nearly dawn. We should be there by early afternoon if we use the engines flat out.”

“The kids?”

“Are coming with us. We just dropped off the nurse at the side of the lake.”

Tom sat up. “Then I’d better get dressed.”

“Not in front of a lady,” Antonia said tartly. “I think I might faint if exposed to your rough masculine body.” So saying, she swept out of the room.

“What was that about?” Dougal asked.

“I never really know with Antonia,” Tom replied.

Laura started to shiver when the pale glow of predawn started to light the sky. She had thought herself prepared for death, but now she wanted to shout and scream that it just was not fair. She wanted to go on living, to find and make love to Thomas Merlin Carter and to have lots of his children. All that was about to be taken away from her and it hurt.

Three men arrived a short time later. They took no chances with either of them, tying their hands behind their backs and keeping them covered at all times. They were taken back to the hall and their hands untied as a simple breakfast was placed in front of them consisting of some kind of porridge, bread and apples.

The men were terrified of Laura and their rifles rose higher when she brushed crumbs from her dress. She suspected they would shoot her if she was to put a hand in her pocket; such was their fear of a Class A Spellbinder.

Bernard Pelan arrived a short time later. He took their hands, one after the other and kissed them.

“I am sorry it has come to this, but death by firing squad is so much better than the alternative. I have also kept the crowd from coming to watch, though they insist on seeing your bodies once it is done.”

“Thank you for your consideration, Monsieur Pelan,” Daisy said.

Laura found there was a lump in her throat and she was unable to speak. She nodded instead.

Their hands were tied again, though this time in front of their bodies and they were escorted out of the hall into a cobbled yard. Eight men with rifles were waiting for them.

Pelan fastened a piece of paper onto their clothes, over their hearts, to give the soldiers somewhere to aim.

The girls were taken to the far wall and made to stand together.

“To minimize your pain you will be shot together. Four of my men have been assigned to each of you. May God rest your souls.”

“We thank you again, Monsieur Pelan,” Daisy said solemnly.

“Would you like blindfolds?”

Both girls shook their heads.

“Then let it begin. My men will shoot on the count of three.”

He spoke to his men and they lined their weapons on the girls.

“Une, deux…”

20.
              
Perils

Sighting the English Channel gladdened Tom’s heart, though it was still a few miles away. Dougal looked delighted.

“We are dead on course, Tom. That is Brighton below us; you can see the Royal Pavilion over there. That must be the most distinctive landmark in England.”

“Dawn is just breaking down there, we are making good time,” Antonia said from her chair at the attitude controls.

“How far away is Brittany?” Tom wasn’t totally sure where Brittany was though he has seen it enough times on maps. Somewhere across the channel and south was his best guess.

“I’m going to take us over France to save time,” Dougal explained. “We are heading for Caen in Normandy and then towards Rennes. Rennes is at the edge of the map Tricky brought and from there I will be able to guide us to the border.”

“Will the French shoot at us?” Antonia asked.

“We are too high at the moment. When we descend to follow the border we will become vulnerable to the rebels and the French.”

“Now that is a wonderful thought,” Tom said. “How do you plan to locate the girls, assuming they have managed to escape the General’s grasp?”

Dougal grinned. “I was leaving that one to you, Tom. Any ideas?”

“A couple, but I need the children for them and they need to sleep. I’ll wake them up when we get to Rennes.”

“That will take some time, we have a forwarding wind and assuming that stays constant we may reach Rennes in seven hours. I am not going to tell you how fast we are travelling, it would scare you.”

Tom looked at the air speed indicator and saw it was reading 67 knots per hour. The engines had been running flat out from the moment they left the lake. If they were going faster than that then Dougal was right, he did not want to know.

“We might reach Laura and Daisy by four or five this evening?”

“Or later,” Dougal said grimly.

Laura had her eyes tightly shut as she waited for the final word and death. She thought she could keep her eyes open, but it had proved impossible. Pelan was being cruel, holding out on the final number of the count.

Seconds past and she could bear it no longer. She opened her eyes to see the eight rebel squad and Pelan lying on the ground, apparently asleep.

“Did you do that?” Daisy asked.

“I told you, I have no idea how to put people to sleep.”

“Keep your voices down,” a voice hissed from the door to the hall. Laura identified it at once. Dominican Snood ran to the men to check they were asleep and then took an eight inch knife from his belt and advanced on Laura.

“Give me your hands,” he demanded and cut Laura’s bonds.

“Thank you, Mister Snood,” Daisy said in a whisper as her hands were freed. “We are even more in your debt.”

“How did you manage that bind?” Laura asked excitedly. “I cannot work out how to put people to sleep.”

Snood took a piece of parchment from his pocket and handed it to her. Laura saw much more than words on paper. She saw the intent behind the words in a manner that only another Spellbinder could truly understand. It was so elegant and simple that Laura resisted an urge to whistle. She had known for some time that Snood was more than the Grade 3 he had been assigned, but this was Grade 1 magic.

“This is beautiful, Grade 1 at least.”

Snood smiled before waving the girls to follow him back to the hall.

Their bags were by the door. Daisy picked hers up and rifled through it. Everything was still there.

Snood got them to put their heads close to his. Then he whispered.

“You must be quiet. There is a mob outside getting increasingly impatient to see your corpses. I know a side door and I will show you the way to get to the border. My life depends on getting back to the mob before anybody notices me missing.”

“But they will know a Spellbinder was involved,” Laura protested.

“They will think it was you. You must have heard the rumors that Class A’s can bind without paper or ink. They will think you were toying with them.”

Laura offered back Snood’s bind.

“Keep it. Make sure it is destroyed. Do you have pen and paper?”

Daisy patted her dress. “I’ve had them all the time. We never had the opportunity to use them.”

“Do not let that happen again. The border is three miles from here. Use a bind to ensure safe crossing. Now follow me.”

Snood led them to a small door, less than four feet high. It opened onto a meadow.

“Go that way. Try to leave no trail.”

Laura hugged him, to his considerable embarrassment.

“Go now.”

They stepped out of the hall and heard Snood bolt the door behind them.

“You never know with people, do you,” Daisy said in a whisper, as they ran across the field to the woodland beyond.

Snood made his way to a ground floor window and slid out of it to take up a position just behind the angry mob.

“Where have you been?” Andre asked him. Andre was on of the liaison committee Snood was working for.

“Taking a leak,” Snood replied in impeccable French.

“Why is it taking so long to shoot them?”

“Perhaps Pelan has changed his mind. You know how keen he was to use the Class A as a bargaining chip. Should we storm the Hall?”

Andre looked suspiciously at Snood. “You seem most anxious to see her dead.”

“I was ordered to kill her back in England by the Brotherhood, but I failed. She has the luck of the devil, that one. I
long
to see her dead.”

“The woman who convinced everybody last night is going into the Hall,” Andre noted.

The mob surged forward as they all tried to follow her in.

Daisy and Laura came to a stop and leaned against a tree, both out of breath and exhausted. They had been running through woodland for at least half a mile. Laura took Snood’s bind from her pocket and gave it one last admiring look before tearing it in two. It burst into flames and she let it drop into the undergrowth, which was wet with morning dew.

“Why did you do that?”

“That is our one link to Snood. I did it to protect him.”

“It will bring Pelan after us,” Daisy pointed out.

“I expect the mob has already discovered we are gone.”

Pelan woke to pains across his body. The woman who had spoken so eloquently the night before, kicked him again.

“Wake up!”

“What happened?”

“You let the witch escape, going to sleep on the job.”

Pelan let that sink in. “She bewitched us without pen or paper? How is that possible?”

Pelan was surrounded by the mob. There was some pushing and shoving before Snood appeared in front of him. This gave Pelan the time to get to his feet.

“The French Spellbinder? Tell me how she did this?”

“I warned Andre she was tricky. She escaped me a year ago and I never found out how. There is a rumor that Class A’s do not need tools to bind, but I always thought it nonsense.”

Pelan looked at Snood suspiciously. “Then why did she not use her powers to escape earlier?”

Snood shrugged. “I am not a Class A. I have no idea what goes on in their minds. But I know that if she chooses, she could kill us all.”

“We should go after her,” the woman said. The mob behind her seemed to be reluctant.

“They say the British are waiting to kill her at the border,” Snood said. “Perhaps we should let them take all the risk?”

There were murmurs of agreement to that. Everybody had heard rumors of what a Class A could do when angered.

Pelan rubbed bruised ribs. “Those of you who wish to pursue her should do so now. I, for one, am going to put some liniment on my chest.”

“You are all cowards,” the woman yelled when it became clear that if Pelan was not joining the hunt, nobody else was either.

People turned away from her and returned to their homes, leaving her fuming.

Lieutenant Alan Kincaid left the mess tent and walked morosely around the perimeter of the camp. Breakfast had not been a pleasant affair. As time went by the officers became harder and more vicious in their descriptions of what they would do to the Spellbinder and the Precog when they found them. Corporal Wainwright was seeing to the horses and Kincaid found himself talking to the man.

“Will they kill the women when they catch them, do you think?” he asked

Wainwright gave him an appraising look before answering. “Unless someone stops them.”

“What can I do? I have told Eric what they plan. I did it off the record, but he can still pass it on.”

“If you haven’t got the guts to report them, what are the chances that your brother will?”

Alan had no answer for that. Wainwright put a hand on his shoulder. “You are sixteen years old and the only reason you are here is because Telepaths are rare birds. But it doesn’t matter if you are sixteen or sixty. What makes a man is what he does when he has a chance to do it.”

Alan did not understand, but it sounded comforting all the same. He nodded his thanks and left Wainwright to deal with the horses.

Daisy’s visions were of pain, personal terrible pain. She could not see what would cause it or if there was a future beyond it, because it dominated her thoughts.
 
Her estimates were that they were still a mile from the border, but it was time to get Laura to writer her bind and offer them some protection.

“It is time, Laura. Are you going to immobilize those close?”

Laura smiled. “Not now I know how to send them to sleep. Snood is a genius. He should never have been treated so badly by Military Magic.”

Daisy felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. They were in dense woodland and she could see and hear nothing unusual, but despite that she was worried.

“Write it quickly. I have a strange feeling.” She handed Laura the special pen and the sheets of paper and Laura braced her back against the tree as she began to write.

The sound of a rifle cocking is unmistakable and Laura paused mid-bind as birds took to the air in fright.

“Put the pen and the paper on the ground. If I see the pen touch the paper again I will blow your head off.”

The voice was speaking in English and sounded vaguely familiar. Laura looked to Daisy who indicated she should do what she had been told.

“Both of you stand against the tree with your hands in the air and your faces against the trunk. The first one of you to move will be shot.”

They did as they were ordered. Laura heard rustling in the undergrowth followed by a crunching sound.

“You will not be using that pen again,” the voice said triumphantly. “Now put your hands behind your backs so I can tie them.”

A minute or so later their hands were tied. “Turn around.”

Daisy recognized the man at once.

“Captain Muldrow, you are looking well.”

“Feeling better since I caught the two of you. And there I was getting forty winks and you walked right past me. Who would have thought I could get so lucky.”

“We thought the border was a couple of miles away,” Laura said.

Muldrow shrugged. “Who knows? This is at the edge of our search zone. We made our own border. My horse is a couple of hundred yards away in that direction. Get moving.”

With their hands tied behind their backs there was little they could do but obey Muldrow’s orders. It didn’t take long to reach his horse.

He mounted it and pointed in another direction. “It is about nine miles back to camp. Start walking ladies. This is going to take some time.”

Annelise Shultz was annoyed when Miss Talbot entered the Military Magic building and took up residence in reception. Of all the places her chosen victim could have picked to work, that was the worst.