Two in the Field (42 page)

Then LeCaron arrived.

I was hauling frantically on the trailing rope, thinking to reach a safe height before dropping it again, when from the corner of my eye I caught movement and turned to see him in midair coming at me over the gondola’s rim. LeCaron’s shoulder drove into my ribcage and knocked me backward. The basket tipped crazily as he shoved off me. I twisted and brought the hatchet up just in time to keep him at bay. His knife blade gleamed dully in the moonlight. His eyes glittered and his rot-gapped teeth were bared in a wolfish grin. He’d been dreaming of this for a long time.

This balloon had far less capacity than Donaldson’s. We ascended above the rooftops with dreamlike slowness, a breeze wafting us toward the lake. Facing LeCaron made my fear of
heights seem almost silly. Neither of us spoke. No need to. At least one of us wasn’t likely to come out of this alive.

LeCaron took his time, made a few feints, established his balance on the wicker floor. We both knew that my hatchet was good for only one blow. With his snakelike quickness, LeCaron would be on me before I could use it a second time. My advantage in size and strength wouldn’t last very long with his blade in my vitals.

The basket swayed as we lifted higher, the lights of Saratoga growing smaller. Moonlight silvered the bottom of the balloon and the lines that secured the basket to it. We hit a sudden downdraft and sank for a second or two, a stomach-lifter. LeCaron involuntarily glanced downward.

He’s afraid too
.

No sooner did I have the thought than he stepped forward and the knife flicked out. I jerked back in time and launched a kick at his nuts. He twisted away. The basket lurched and we clutched at the support lines, leaving only one hand free. A plus for him because the knife was so much faster.

Where are you, Colm?
came the desperate thought.
Where the hell are you when I need you?

“You’re gonna die,” LeCaron grated, the words venomous. He looked like he was entering some altered state, mouth fixed in a harrowing grin, eyes unblinking. He shifted his feet rhythmically, his gaze focused on my chest, about to make his move.

I thought I heard a bird cry out. Some night denizen far away over the lake. Too distant. Too late. And maybe only inside my head.

LeCaron snickered, his feet still shifting maddeningly.

And then I snapped. I went nuts. Unable to stand it, nerves screaming, I went for him. In a desperate way it might even have been calculated: I couldn’t afford to let him take the initiative.
But mostly it was pent-up feelings bursting out, terror transmuted into berserker fury. I planted my left foot and threw the hatchet at him, then followed it, bellowing. LeCaron screamed in the same instant, his face contorting as he saw the hatchet in the air between us.

Die, you fucker!

But he didn’t.

I’d gotten too much rotation on my heave. The hatchet’s head struck LeCaron’s chest instead of its cutting edge. Even so, it should have checked him long enough to give me an opening. A high-pitched sobbing noise escape him—but it came as he ducked sideways from my charge.

And brought up his knife in a blurring arc.

Pain erupted somewhere near my belt as I closed with him. He twisted violently to keep me from clasping his knife arm. I managed to get my right hand on his skinny neck and bend him backward over the basket rim, probing for his jugular with my thumb. Where was the damn knife? Pinning his right arm against the rim with my shoulder, I released his throat and with both hands tried to snap his arm stick-like over my knee. The knife dropped to the bottom of the basket.

Somehow he squirmed loose and then we were at each other, clawing and kneeing and gouging. He went for my eyes and tore a chunk of skin loose over my eyebrows. I tried for his neck again but he dodged and ducked for the knife. I nailed him with a right to his face and tried to follow with another, but suddenly my arms were leaden and I felt a spreading numbness. I wiped blood from my eyes. It seemed odd that the crotch of my pants was sodden.

LeCaron came up holding the knife.

Below us all was dark now; we were over woods or water.

Cait … I’m going to die up here in the dark
.…

Sensing my weakness, LeCaron paused to savor it. Then he
crouched slowly, deliberately, teeth bared, knife poised. The extra seconds allowed me to spot the line to the rip panel dangling above me. I reached and yanked—and abruptly we began to drop. LeCaron looked astonished but still came with the knife. I threw myself backward, tilting the gondola so that he fell toward me. The knife sliced into my arm as I enfolded his thighs. With the last of my strength I threw him through the support ropes.

“No!”
His voice was shrill with fear as he dangled head-down over the side. I pushed his feet through the lines. With a catlike turn he somehow managed to get his hands on the rim. I pried the fingers of one hand loose and blocked them with my elbow as he tried to regain his grip. I began working on his other hand.

“I don’t swim.…”

I twisted his fingers up until he lost his grip and plunged downward. I watched him all the way. We’d drifted over Saratoga Lake and were still a hundred feet or so above the rippled surface. LeCaron’s impact sent an iridescent circle spreading outward, and I saw—or imagined I saw—a thrashing form at its center. Was the bastard swimming after all? Hadn’t the impact finished him? I strained my eyes. The surface looked still.

This had to be the end of him.

I was too far gone to feel relief or anything else. The balloon was dropping more rapidly. I looked around for ballast bags to throw off but there weren’t any. It looked like I would come down very near the southern edge of the lake. Tilting this way and that, like riding a giant swing, I fell through the blackness. The glistening water drew closer, the shoreline a darker curve beyond. I heard air hissing, saw the bag sagging in on itself, felt myself falling even faster. Was it better to hit the water or the shore?

No matter. I couldn’t control it.

Trying not to panic, trying to remember Donaldson’s instructions, I braced myself.

 TWENTY-THREE 

My last recollection was of trees rushing upward. The branches must have eased my fall to the soft loam bordering the lake. I woke up with one foot in the water and blood caked on my face, upper arm, rib cage and abdomen. From an agony of throbbing there, I knew that bones were broken in my right leg. The sky looked brighter than before. I managed to sit up and saw the reason: a three-quarter moon had risen. My pocket watch said three-thirty. Which meant I’d been unconscious several hours. The numbers on the dial swam in and out of focus. Concussion?

The collapsed balloon and basket were beached nearby. Dragging my right leg, I managed to crawl over and untangle several lines from bushes, then I shoved the whole mass into the water; it floated easily and began to drift off toward the center of the lake.

“Hallo, hallo,” a voice was saying.

I looked up. Sunlight in my eyes was filtering through greenery. A very fat man wearing a black robe had pulled back a branch so that he could see me. His hair was yellow and his eyes a merry blue. In his robe and cowl he looked like a Nordic Friar Tuck.

“I stopped to fish here or I’d never have heard your groans,” he said, “even so near the road.”

“What road?” I tried to bring his face into sharper focus. “Who are you?”

“Brother Ambrose.” He bowed slightly. “I was traveling the road to White Sulphur Springs, where I obtain our medicinal water. And you …?”

I started to tell him my name, then checked myself. “Will Scarlet,” I mumbled.

“Would you care for me to examine your wounds, Brother Will? I possess some modest skills as a healer.”

With surprisingly gentle fingers he touched the wound above my eye. When he opened my shirt, I raised my head and saw an oozing, bloody mess above my hipbone. His fingers traced it and moved to the slash on my arm and ribcage.

“Something ripped you,” he said mildly.

I didn’t answer.

“Good clotting,” he remarked. “That’s in your favor.” He pressed gingerly on my ankle, which was now swollen purple. When his fingers probed my leg, I cried out. “Sorry,” he said, “but there’s at least one break. It needs to be set.”

“I can’t go to a hospital.”

“Ah, I see.” He sat on his haunches and nodded owlishly. “You needn’t worry on that score. We in the Society do not acknowledge temporal authority; therefore, we naturally eschew doctors appointed by human laws.”

Given the state of contemporary medicine, I had trouble deciding whether this was good news or bad.

“I’ll fashion a splint,” he said briskly, “and attend to your wounds.”

I needed badly to sleep. “Why would you do that?” I said wonderingly

“We believe that Good Samaritan opportunities are divine gifts.” With closed eyes he moved his fingertips along my throbbing leg, seeming to take in information. “Therefore you are, quite literally, a godsend.”

He hadn’t pried into my identity. Or asked how I’d been hurt. Or how I’d come to lie in thick brush with no foot-prints or vehicle tracks anywhere around.

“Who’s ‘us’?” I asked.

“We simply call ourselves the Society,” he said. “We acknowledge no power before God, and we try to serve others.” He stood up. “Now, Brother Will, shall I take you to our sanctuary?”

A tremor of anxiety pulsed through me. Morrissey and McDermott would have men looking everywhere. Worse yet, I imagined LeCaron, somehow spared his watery grave, stalking me. The truth was that I feared leaving this place.

“How many fingers do you see?” Brother Ambrose said when I didn’t answer. He held up his hand.

“Three.”

“Hmmm …” he said, and I knew I was wrong. “It’s probable that you’ve bruised your brain. Perhaps you shouldn’t be moved yet. I’ll bring blankets and food. The summer nights are mild and this place is sheltered from the heat of day. I’ll nurse you until you can travel.”

I found my wallet still buttoned in its pocket, and pulled it out. It bulged with bills from Slack’s big hand and what I’d saved from my wages—over a thousand dollars in all. “I can pay for your services.”

“We shun monetary rewards,” he said mildly, “and prefer to barter for our worldly needs.”

“But I don’t have anything.”

“Don’t fret.” He moved away. “God will provide.”

Two hours later he was back with blankets and a culinary combination that would become very familiar: fresh fruit, jerked beef and Graham Crackers. While I ate, he wrapped my leg in a cloth saturated with vinegar and salt, then strapped on paddle-shaped slats to serve as splints and keep my knee from bending.

“We’ll watch for mortification,” he said, swabbing my stab wounds with an evil-smelling lotion.

“What’s in that stuff?”

“Soap, sugar, beaver oil and castoreum.”

It was the beaver oil, I suspected, that stank.

He handed me a squared-off brown bottle. “Drink some of this each day.”

I took a swig and gagged. “Home brew?”

“A tonic from barks.” Smiling angelically, he ticked them off on his fingers: “Willow, poplar, wild cherry, white ash, prickly ash, bloodroot—all chopped fine and cured in whiskey. The customary dose is a teaspoon.”