“Dodo was obviously important,” said Paul, “but he was just an accessory, a means to an end. Lambert was the Prime Mover here. He had to be spared a martyr’s death, and clearly they have found a way to do that without the horse being involved at all. So we’re tilting at windmills here. The Pushpoint is somewhere else now, still a loose twine, but no longer the rein of that willful beast as we assumed.”
“If it ever was,” Robert chided.
“Then what do we do?” Kelly fidgeted, looking at the time. “We’ve been yakking here for ten minutes. In another ten minutes, our time, three hours will have elapsed in the altered Meridian. It will be 9:00 P.M. there, and Maeve should be back on her original manifestation coordinates if all went well. I can pull her out if the reading on her physical location matches up, otherwise we wait until midnight.”
“No,” Paul said decisively. “Don’t pull her out just yet. We’ll need her there.”
“For what?” Kelly complained. “There’s nothing more she can do in this situation. Hell, she doesn’t even know things have changed.”
“Right,” said Paul, up off his chair. “So I’m going back to warn her.”
Kelly blinked at him, somewhat surprised. “What? Another shift?” he said. “Look, we barely have the quantum fuel for Maeve’s retraction and perhaps one more re-entry to that milieu, unless you want me to forget about our fallback plan concerning Lambert. I’ve had the Golems working on those new coordinates and I can put someone very close to Lambert’s villa if we have to take more drastic action.”
“Keep that on ice,” said Paul. “Let’s hope we don’t need that shift. But can you manage a Spook Job? Can you put me on our original manifestation point for maybe ten seconds? That would give me enough time to warn Maeve about this variation, and perhaps she can do something about it from her end. We’ll have to postpone her retraction scheme.”
“Ten seconds? How are you going to explain all this to her in that much time?”
“Easy,” said Paul. “We’ll write it down—Robert, get busy with that, will ya? We’ll write it down and I can just appear and throw out the note.”
Kelly gaped at him. “Then what?” he asked, incredulous and obviously still worried about Maeve.
“Then Maeve has three hours in the altered Meridian to figure something out,” said Paul, “and if I know her, she will.”
Maeve was riding hard now, away from the farm toward the river bank. When she first bolted away, she had turned south, thinking to avoid any possibility of encountering Dodo and his men should they be in the area. The farmer, or whoever the man was, might also take one of the other horses and try to follow her. Though she had little doubt that she could out run him in that instance. Neither the mare nor the brown plow horse could possible hope to catch her, but she nonetheless took a southerly route, thinking to double back and confound any pursuit once she reached the river.
When she first reached the Meuse she came to a small ferry where the river narrowed and seemed more shallow. After giving some consideration to using it to cross over to the east bank, she discarded the idea and decided to just wade into the shallows to mask her trail and reverse her course, heading north. There was no guarantee that she would find another easy crossing point south of the city, and fussing with the horse on the small wooden barge tethered to the tree stump there seemed more than she wanted to try and manage at the moment. She could not risk being trapped on the east bank, away from the point where she had shifted in with Robert and Paul. Kelly was trying to track her position, but that was a new program, untested and possibly unreliable at this point.
Satisfied that the farmer had not taken up pursuit, she was soon picking her way north along the river’s edge. At times she had to skirt inland around thickets of plants interspersed with heavy riverside brush and stands of trees. Yet she was making good progress and, after a while, began to veer inland, hoping to take up the old Roman road again as she drew near to Heristal.
The Arabian still seemed very skittish, snuffing the cold air and moving on with a guarded, sometimes halting gait. She noted the horse’s ears were moving this way and that, intent on something.
Maeve tried to calm the horse, but then caught sight of a few dark shapes in the dim light, just ahead. Then came a howl, and a low threatening growl, and she realized at once that she had come across a roving pack of wolves.
Kuhaylan snorted, his tail swishing fitfully. Afraid the horse was about to rear, Maeve softened the grip of her legs and kept her hands soft on the reins. A less experienced rider would have done just the opposite, communicating yet more fear and distress to the animal, but Maeve knew exactly what she was about. The Arabian seemed to sense her confidence and settled down somewhat, but it was clear to Maeve that she may be in some danger. A horse’s best defense was speed, she knew, and so she urged him forward, speaking softly. “Ride on, Kuhaylan. No one can match you. Run boy!”
The horse surged forward, leaping smartly over a fallen log and Maeve had to stoop low to avoid an overhanging tree branch. She heard a snarling growl and caught the flash of sharp white teeth beneath amber eyes in the shadow of a hedge. One wolf made as if to lunge at the horse as it came on, but the Arabian was enormously strong, leaping up again, well out of harm’s way and then accelerating so fast that the rabid pack could do little more than howl in futile pursuit. The powerful horse easily outpaced the wolves and, satisfied that the danger had passed, she soon settled the Arabian to a slower, steady gait.
In time she found the road, following it north in the dark, confident that she would not be likely to encounter anyone else at this hour, though wolves were known to scavenge even in the midst of human settlements at this time. The continent was still deeply wooded, a wild, untamed land. It would be another 600 years before many of the great woodlands had been settled and cleared, even in the most populous areas of Gaul.
It was not long before she spied a dark shape ahead against the starry horizon, and she made it out to be the livery where she had first met the blacksmith and purchased the mare. There was no sign of life or activity there now, and no sound of his hammer ringing on the cold night air. Being close to the entry point, she veered off to skirt the road and look for the low stump that had marked the place in her mind. It was not far.
A few minutes later she was off the Arabian, steadying him and feeding him an apple that she still had in a pocket of her robe. She tied the horse off on the branch of a nearby hedge, and studied the ground, squinting in the dark to see if she could find the exact place where she had manifested. The soil here was thick and sodden in places and, to her surprise, the ground was marked with many footprints. Booted feet had made many deep impressions here, not long ago from the look of them, and that thought made her very uneasy.
The horse was skittish as well, snuffing the night airs and chafing a bit. He soon became so disquieted that she went quickly over at took hold of the reins, afraid he might break loose and bolt.
At that moment there was a cellophane crackling sound and the palpable odor of ozone. The Arabian whinnied, and started to rear up, but Maeve took a firm hold and calmed him with a reassuring touch and low whisper. “Easy boy, easy…”
Then the place where she had been kneeling a moment ago seemed to shimmer with a rippling blue light, and it was immediately obvious to her what was happening. Someone was shifting in, but she could not think why. They should be monitoring her mass pattern and preparing the retraction by now. Why risk another entry… unless something was very wrong, she thought suddenly.
She kept a firm grip on Kuhaylan, watching with amazement as the image of a man in monk’s robes seemed to manifest in the blue haze of the breaching point. In a flash of recognition she saw that it was Paul, but the image seemed to waver and loose substance, and she immediately feared that there was a problem on the shift, until something came flying out of the haze, landing with a thud on the grass at her feet.