Soldier at the Door (70 page)

Dormin, in the safety of the shadow of the trees, gasped.

Mrs. Yung covered his mouth with her hand. “Hush, Dormin. We’re safe now,” she said in the familiar gentle tone Dormin had known over the past year. “That was the last four we were trying to flush out. The other three will likely survive. We
save
people, Dormin. All we do is to save lives.”

She took her hand off his mouth and exhaled deeply as if to rid herself of her previously sharp demeanor. When she spoke again, she was once again an ideal rector’s wife.

“That one died to save you, and Shem will wrestle with his conscience as mightily as he did the night he killed your brother. But you, and the others, are now safe. My husband, however, isn’t. The poor man gets lost when he can’t see the mountains. Come on.” She tugged on his arm.

Dormin nodded, but took one more glance back at the still body with the long knife protruding out of his heart. Maybe it happened that quickly for Sonoforen, so fast that he didn’t even know what hit him before the ground did. That’s the way he’d want to go, Dormin thought—suddenly, like their father. He remembered telling his brother he loved him, and how ridiculously that went over. But the
Yungs told him someday he would be grateful he did. And he was.

Dormin nodded once to the body. “I’m sorry, Sonoforen. Good-bye.”

Then he dashed through a clearing behind Mrs. Yung and into a stand of scrubby oaks.

---

As Shem sprinted, he glanced behind him and saw the three men in close pursuit, but none of them could catch the dark figure that ran with greater speed and agility than a deer. Through trees, through meadows, through a river, and even through a shallow patch of steaming water they chased him, heading west.

If only the Strongest Soldier race could have been run in here at night, Shem thought wistfully.

Sometimes he slowed his gait, only enough for the men behind him to think they could finally catch him, but then he pulled out ahead, tantalizingly out of their reach. He headed down a ravine, stumbled, and struggled to recover his footing.

His pursuers took advantage of his trip and rushed towards him.

Just as the three men were to converge upon him, they were inexplicably stopped by nets and ropes, wrapping around their feet. Shem had stumbled there, too, but knew how to step out again. As the three men fought and flailed, they became more entangled, as if the ropes hidden by leaves and branches tightened with their every move. That’s because they did.

Shem, however, stood up, nonchalantly brushed off the black lining of his army jacket, and watched passively as several trees and bushes tightened the binds on the three men.

It was a trap, and one of their best.

As the three men fought against half a dozen camouflaged ca
ptors, two more men in green and brown mottled clothing emerged. Those whose skin wasn’t naturally hued brown or red had worked mud into their flesh, but it had long since dried and was flaking off. One man went to assist tying up the prisoners and gagging them into silence, while the second one, a hulking figure and already browned by the foresight of nature, made his way over to Shem.

“This should be the last of them,” he said appreciatively. “E
xcellent work! I thought there were four, though.”

“There
were
,” Shem whispered.

The man in green exhaled in understanding. “The long knife?”

Shem nodded once.

“Where’s it now?”

“Still in his heart,” the corporal said flatly. “If I removed it, it would’ve made a mess.”

“It had to be done. You know that,” his companion said conso
lingly.

“Never going to own another one again,” Shem whispered in despair. “I’m too deadly with them.”

“You killed a guilty man in order to save fourteen lives tonight,” the man in green and brown assured him. “And these three others will never reveal anything either. The way is safe again, because of you.”

“Why wasn’t it before?” Shem snapped bitterly, and began to tremble.

“Bad timing along with a few unexpected complications,” his companion explained. “It was the noise that attracted their attention. There were far more than we expected, and they wandered this far east because—Look,” he said, growing annoyed with having to justify the situation, “you
know
this is part of why you are here. Your training, your position, your access . . . you also know we wouldn’t call on you unless it was a real emergency. True, we need you to keep quiet, but every now and then you still need to—”

“I know, I know,” Shem sighed wretchedly. “Fourteen, you said?”

“Yes, now.”

Shem nodded once, knowing he had to be satisfied with that r
esponse. “So where is he?” he asked, looking around at the dark pines and leafless trees. “I need to get him back now that the last are secured.”

The man shrugged and looked behind him. “I’m not sure, but he’ll be completely exhausted. We had no idea we’d be distracting the
entire army
, too, or we would have told you to borrow those three brown cows that never moo. They crash through the underbrush just as effectively, and we could’ve split them up.”

“But once the cattle fence is up, we won’t be able to use those, either. We’ll need to find another strategy,” Shem decided. “He tried to go home early, and that’s what alerted the patrols this morning. Then rumor and fear, being as efficient as they are, blew everything out of proportion. The major’s been on high alert since early mor
ning, completely perplexed.”

“Confusion is good,” the man patted Zenos on the back. “You doubt what you see, so you make up explanations of what it
may
have been, and soon you can’t even remember what you saw to begin with. By the time this night is over, I’ll guess there’ll be about a dozen different stories, all compelling, all terrifying, and none of them accurate. No one’s imagination will ever let them believe that it was—oh, there he is. Ugh, he
is
a mess.”

Through the undergrowth came the noisiest creature to ever plod in the forest. He saw Zenos and went straight for him, collap
sing in exhaustion at his feet.

“Oh, good dog Barker!” Shem squatted and scratched the ma
ssive black dog behind the ears. “Well done, well done. Look at you, covered in burs, twigs, and what’s this? Ew, never mind. Sorry about that. Not sure if we’ll have time to brush you out before we bring you home.” From his back uniform pocket Shem pulled out a piece of jerky, Barker’s favorite.

Barker looked up at Shem, his tired eyes drooping, his drool running, but his tail wagging whip-like and thrashing the long dry
grasses behind him. He gulped down his reward.

His two handlers for the night appeared a moment later, winded.

“He always hears your voice, Shem, and heads straight for you. He could sniff you out from anywhere in the forest, couldn’t he?” One of the handlers, dressed in a dark brown mottled jacket and trouser, grinned.

The second handler in brown gestured to the three being bound. “Looks like good hunting tonight, eh?”

The three captives stared at them, stunned by the appearance of two more men as if the trees had just spat them out, along with an abnormally huge dog that could have been spawned by a gurgling black cavern.

One of the captives
managed to cough out his gag. “Who are you?!” he demanded. “And whose side are
you
on, anyway, Quiet Man?!” he said to Zenos.

The man in the black jacket stared at him for a moment before saying, “Get them out of here.”

He turned, took the dog by the rope around his neck, and said, “Alongside, Barker. One more problem in the woods tonight. Alongside, alongside.” And he jogged down through the trees back towards the east in what he hoped was the direction of Mahrree.

Fourteen innocent lives, he reminded himself as they weaved through pines and
scrubby oaks.

Fourteen.

In his mind a scale presented itself: the fourteen on one side, and the one man lying dead on the other. The fourteen clearly outweighed the one, but when Shem stepped on to the scale with the fourteen, suddenly it was all out of balance.

It was his duty. It was why he was there. He was guilty only of eliminating the guilty. In the mathematics of it all, that made him innocent. In a few hours he might believe it. His initial training would take hold of both his heart and mind, and reassure him that this was all right.

But for now the deed was still so raw in his mind.

At least it was dark. As long as it was always dark when he does such things, he might be able to live with the memory of what he didn’t see. It was his graphic imagination that haunted him.

Fourteen innocent. Fourteen innocent. Because of him.

---

Mahrree sat at the edge of the forest curled up under an evergreen bush that was so pungent she knew she’d never forget its scent, no matter how hard she tried. And it would always be tied to her memory of that night. She sobbed silently, shamefully, with the horrible realization.

She was
a coward.

Just like everyone else.

-
--

Shem did his best quiet jog through the woods trying to discern where she might be. Along the edges, most likely. But he didn’t dare get too close. The soldiers were still patrolling, looking for large dark objects moving strangely through the forest. Crashing through the bushes next to Shem was the world’s noisiest spy—the very beast every man in the army had been futilely looking for since dawn. Through the trees he could see the dim movements of soldiers and horses, and watched the uneven pattern of their passing.

Shem slowed his progress and caught Barker by the rope around his neck.

“Halt, Barker,” he whispered when he knew a gap in the patrols was beginning. “Down there.” He crouched down next to the dog. “That rock in the distance? That’s not supposed to be there. Watch it for a moment . . . see? It’s quivering slightly. That’s Mahrree. Now Barker, you need to go down to her and take her home, all right?”  He slipped the rope off of Barker’s neck. “Away from me. Home, home, home,” he commanded as he had so many times before, and pushed him in the right direction.

Shem held his breath as Barker first decided to water a pine tree, then started in an unwieldy lope through the trees.
The effect was precisely what Shem had hoped for. Barker’s awkward jog through the dried leaves sent the ‘rock’ Shem identified to her feet, terrified that something was coming.

“That ought to cure your curiosity about the forest for a time,” Shem whispered as Mahrree, panic-stricken, backed up quickly out of the woods. She collapsed to her knees and covered her head with
her arms just as Barker lumbered out of the forest and flopped on her. Mahrree’s cry of terror was muffled by the thick black fur of her rescuer.

“Sorry about that, Mahrree,” Shem whispered and shook his head sadly, “but you really don’t belong out here. Someday, though. Someday we’ll come for you, too.”

-
--

“Get off! Get off, please!” Mahrree cried and flailed as the massive weight overwhelmed her. She kicked and pushed and tried to remember some of the defensive techniques Perrin had taught her, but she was useless.

Panicked, cowardly, and now useless.

It was the licking that completely startled her.

“What?” she gasped, scrambling to stand up. She pushed back her hood and looked at her attacker. “Barker?
Barker!
What—? Where—?”

For once in her life she was grateful to see the ugly beast. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the dog, not ca
ring that he was dripping drool on her shoulder as he panted happily to see her.

“I don’t believe it! You were in the forest? Was that you, all the time, scaring the soldiers? Oh, Perrin’s going to kill you! Not
really
,” she assured the dog as she pet him for the first time in many moons. Her hands ran across all kinds of prickly pokey things, and along something else mucky that smelled fouler than nature should. She kept reminding herself she could wash up with lavender soap when she got home, maybe even use up the entire bar.

“It
wasn’t
only you, was it?” she whispered, clinging to the animal while her heart calmed down again. “There are more, aren’t there?” She slumped down realizing, again, that the woman was right about her. “I found the hard truth, Barker, and it’s this: I really
don’t
want to know the truth.” She sighed miserably and stood up. “Come on. Walk the most cowardly, stupid woman in the world home.”

It was well past midnight when Mahrree knocked rhythmically on her front door. She did it two more times to wake up Sareen, who eventually opened the door and yawned a giggle. It was a remarkable
thing to witness, and Mahrree hoped she’d never witness it again.