Gordon would have preferred to wait until the man came directly underneath, but Bezoar was no idiot. An expression of dark suspicion came over his face, and he started to look up…
Gordon leaped. The .45 swung up and fired at the same instant as they collided.
In the hormonal rush of combat Gordon had no idea where the bullet went, or whose bone had cracked so loud on impact. He grappled for the gun as they rolled together across the floor.
“…kill you!” the Holnist growled, the .45 tipping toward Gordon’s face. Gordon had to duck to one side as it roared again, stinging his neck with burning powder. “Hold still!” Bezoar growled, as if he were in the habit of being obeyed. “Just let me…”
Straining against his enemy with all his might, Gordon suddenly let go of the gun with one hand and struck out. As the automatic came down toward him his right fist smashed upward into the root of Bezoar’s jaw. The bald Holnist’s body convulsed as his head struck the floor hard. The .45 fired twice into the wall.
Then Bezoar was still.
This time the worst pain was in Gordon’s hand. He stood up slowly, gingerly, semiconsciously accounting for what had to be a cracked rib, in addition to his many other bodily insults.
“Never talk while you fight,” he told the unconscious man. “It’s a bad habit.”
Marcie and Heather spilled out of the storage room and drew Bezoar’s knives. When he saw what they were after, he almost told them to stop, to tie the man up, instead.
He didn’t, though. Instead he let them do what they would and turned to step through the back door into the storage room.
It was even darker inside, but as his eyes adapted, he made out a slender figure lying on a dirty blanket over in the corner. A hand reached up toward him and a thin voice called out.
“Gordon, I knew you’d come for me… Is that silly? …
It sounds… sounds like fairy tale talk, but… but somehow I just knew it.”
He sank to his knees beside the dying woman. There had been crude attempts to clean and bandage her wounds, but her matted hair and blood-streaked clothes covered more damage than he dared even look at.
“Oh Dena.” He turned his head and closed his eyes. Her hand took his.
“We stung them, darling,” she said in a reed-thin voice. “Me and the other Scouts.… In some places we really caught some of the bastards with their pants down! It—” Dena had to stop as a fit of coughing made her nearly double up, bringing forth a trickle of ocher fluid. The corners of her mouth were stained.
“Don’t talk,” Gordon told her. “We’ll find a way to get you out of here.”
Dena clutched Gordon’s tattered shirt.
“They found out about our plan, somehow… in more’n half the places they were warned before we could strike…
“Maybe one of the girls fell in love with her rapist, like the legends say h-happened to H-Hypermnestra…” Dena shook her head unbelievingly. “Tracy and I were worried about that possibility, ‘cause Aunt Susan said it used to happen sometimes, in the old days…”
Gordon had no idea what Dena was talking about. She was babbling. Inside he struggled to come up with some idea, any way to carry a desperately wounded and delirious woman away through miles and miles of enemy lines before Macklin and the other Holnists returned.
In agony, he knew it just couldn’t be done.
“I guess we botched it, Gordon… but we did try! We tried…” Dena shook her head, tears welling as Gordon took her into his arms.
“Yes, I know, darling. I know you tried.”
His own eyes blurred. Beneath the filth and ruin, he knew her scent. And realized — much too late — what it meant to him. He held her tighter than he knew he ought to, not wanting to let her go.
“It’ll be all right. I love you. I’m here and I’ll take care of you.”
Dena sighed. “You are here. You are…” She held onto his arm. “You…”
Her body suddenly arched and she shivered. “Oh, Gordon!” she cried. “I see… Can you… ?”
Her eyes met his for a moment. In them was a light he recognized.
Then it was over.
“Yes, I saw it,” he told her gently, still holding her body in his arms. “Not as clearly as you, perhaps. But I saw it, too.”
18
In the corner of the outer room, Heather and Marcie were busy with their backs turned as they worked on something Gordon did not want to look at.
Later, he would mourn. Right now though, there were things he had to do, like getting these women out of here. The chances were slim, but if he could see them to the Callahans, they would be safe.
That would be hard enough, but from there he had other obligations. He would get back to Corvallis, somehow, if it was humanly possible, and he would try to live up to Dena’s ridiculous, beautiful image of what a hero was supposed to do — die defending Cyclops, perhaps, or lead a last charge of “postmen” against the invincible enemy.
He wondered if Bezoar’s shoes would fit him, or if, with badly swollen ankles, he might not be better off barefoot. “Stop wasting time,” he snapped at the women. “We have to get out of here.”
But as Gordon bent to pick up Bezoar’s automatic from the floor, a low, gravelly voice spoke. “Very good advice, my young friend. And you know, I’d like to call a man like you friend.
“Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t split you open if you try to pick up that weapon.”
Gordon left the gun lying where it was and stood up heavily. General Macklin occupied the open doorway, holding a dagger in throwing position.
“Kick it away,” he said calmly.
Gordon obeyed. The automatic went spinning into a dusty corner.
“That’s better.” Macklin resheathed his knife. He jerked his head at the women. “Get away,” he told them. “Run. Try to live, if you want to and are able.”
Wide-eyed, Marcie and Heather edged past Macklin. They fled out into the night. Gordon had no doubt they would run in the rain until they dropped.
“I don’t suppose the same applies to me?” he asked wearily.
Macklin smiled and shook his head. “I want you to come with me. I need your assistance out here.”
A hooded lantern illuminated part of the clearing across the road, aided from time to time by distant lightning and an occasional moonlit glint at the edge of the rain-clouds. The pelting drisk had Gordon soaked within minutes of limping outside after Macklin. His still-bleeding ankles left spreading pink fog in the puddles where he stepped.
“Your black man is better than I’d thought,” Macklin said, pulling Gordon to one side of the circular, lamp-lit area. “Either that or he had help, and the latter’s pretty unlikely. My boys patrolling the river would have seen more tracks than his, if he’d been accompanied.
“Either way though, Shawn and Bill deserve what they got for being careless.”
For the first time Gordon had an inkling of what was happening. “You mean—”
“Don’t gloat yet,” Macklin snapped. “My troops are less than a mile from here, and there’s a Very pistol in my saddlebags. But you don’t see me hollering for help, do you?”
He smiled again. “Now I’m going to show you what this war is all about. Both you and your scout are the sort of strong men who should have been Holnists.You’re not because of the propaganda of weakness you grew up in. I’m going to take this opportunity to show you just how weak it makes you.”
With a vicelike grip on Gordon’s ami, Macklin shouted into the night.
“Black man! This is Genera] Volsci Macklin. I have your commander here… your United States Postal Inspector!” he sneered.