The fugitives rendezvoused at a dry creek bed in a side canyon where Amaya had cached their packs. Behind them was a confused yelling and the glow of fire. The three men were scraped and bruised from hastily sliding down the rear of the rock tower, Tucker limping painfully from a sprain. The women were panting. When they'd slipped by the cluster of boulders where they'd originally planned to meet, they saw more of Rugard's men waiting there and ran. Ico had obviously told the Warden where their supplies were supposed to be stored. It was good Amaya had moved them.
'Little snitch,' Raven now muttered.
'Are they going to burn?' Amaya asked worriedly, looking back at the flickering orange.
'Just held up a bit, and angry as hornets. We have to move fast if we're going to get away and signal for rescue. You've got it, right?' She turned to Daniel.
'How did you know to pen them in like that?' he asked her instead.
'When Ico disappeared I got suspicious. Then I found the activator was gone. Amaya and I got a log to brace the door shut.'
'But you let them lower me into the cabin anyway.'
'Yes. Because we needed the transmitter. If I'd warned you off, our position would be hopeless. Now we can still get back.'
'Don't you mean you can get back?'
'Ethan and I are your best hope.'
'You're ruthless, you know that?'
'I'm practical. Besides, it was your friend who betrayed you, not mine.'
Daniel was quiet at that.
'Can we just go, please?' Tucker said impatiently.
They shouldered their gear and fled into the canyon of the women's camp, brushing by a few confused occupants who'd turned out groggily at the noise and confusion. They paused at a cook hut to snatch a last few bites of food, but even as they did they heard the call of a cattle horn. One of the women was blowing an alarm to relay their direction, so they hurried on. As the fugitives reached the end of the canyon they saw the torchlight of a posse entering its head. Many of the convicts were drunk or unconscious, but not all.
'We're in a race,' Tucker panted. 'I'm slowing you down.'
'Amaya's cooked up something to slow them down,' Raven replied.
'If it works,' the second woman said.
They entered a gorge at the upper end of the women's valley. The defile wasn't much more than a slit in a huge rock that looked like it had been split asunder, but it was a door leading to the desert east of Erehwon. Narrow as a corridor in places, the cleft's floor was sand and its lower reaches stained dark where past floodwaters had swirled through. Only a wedge of sky with a scattering of stars, hundreds of feet above, shed any light. Ethan and Raven had used the passageway to slip away before and now were using it again, but this time pursuit was only a mile behind.
'What will they do if they catch us?' Tucker asked, limping along.
'I've been through this before,' Ethan said. 'We get away, or we kill ourselves. Surrendering is not an option.'
A fall of rock had almost plugged the slit at its midway point with a wall of boulders difficult to climb over. Floodwaters had carved a low sandy tunnel under the rocks that Raven and Ethan had earlier crawled through.
'This is the place I told you about,' Raven said to Amaya.
The other woman nodded. She stooped to dig in her pack as they paused to catch their breath. They could hear the calls of pursuit behind them, like the baying of hounds.
'Why are we stopping?' Daniel asked. 'We have to move.'
'Raven and I think we might slow them down with this,' Amaya said. She took out a leather skin shaped roughly like a sphere and slightly smaller than a basketball. Cord and a coating of hardened fat helped seal the outside.
'What the devil is that?'
'It's a bomb.' She announced it as proudly as she would a baby.
The men looked at her in confusion.
'I got the idea when we saw the stables. If we set this off at the right moment it should block this gorge and scare hell out of them too. It will buy us time.'
'You're serious, aren't you?' said Tucker.
'Remember the sulfur spring? That was one ingredient of gunpowder. Have you ever made it?'
'Not in the last couple of days.'
'It's simple, really. All you need is sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate in the right proportions.'
'Charcoal?' Tucker asked.
'From the fires. Nitrate from the urine deposits in the stables. Calcium nitrate, actually, which works in a pinch.' She regarded her invention. 'Maybe.'
'Tomorrow she splits the atom,' Daniel said. 'How do we use it?'
'In the tunnel. The explosion should collapse it, and maybe jar more rock loose besides. I'll wait to light it.'
'No,' said Tucker quickly. 'I'll do it.'
'It's my idea, Tucker. My risk.'
He shook his head. 'I'm the slowest, with this bum ankle, and the strongest. They'll hesitate with me.' Tucker looked up at the sky, a slim silver band high above. 'This is the pass to make a stand, I think. Like Daniel's Spartans.'
'What?'
He sounded excited. 'The Greeks and the Persians! Remember, Daniel?'
'Tucker, you're not a damned Spartan.'
'How do I know if I've never tried?'
'You have no training!'
He looked back down the defile. 'It's the perfect place, the perfect time, and the perfect person.'
Daniel looked at him worriedly.
'I'll back them up a bit, light the explosive, and run,' Tucker reassured. 'Or at least hobble. With any luck they'll decide we're not worth chasing.'
There wasn't time for argument. 'All right. Light it and crawl like hell. We'll be waiting on the other side.'
'No, don't wait! Make all the distance you can! I'll catch up!'
'He's right,' Ethan said, dropping to the sand to wriggle through. 'We can't risk any delay.'
Raven went next and Amaya ducked to follow.
Daniel put his hands on his friend's shoulders. 'You be sure to come, promise?'
'I've got to see the rest of Australia.' He grinned.
Amaya was through and the others were calling. Daniel hesitated a moment more and then fell on his belly to crawl, his head and back bumping against the overhanging rock. Ethan helped drag him out the other side.
'Okay, he's buying us time,' Daniel said. 'Let's run like hell.'
'They're going to tear him to pieces if he doesn't get through that hole,' Ethan said soberly.
'He knows that,' Daniel said. 'If his courage is going to mean anything, we have to get away.'
The canyon widened slightly on the other side of the blockage and they trotted down it toward the eastern opening that showed a gray horizon. There was already a barely detectable blush in the sky. Dawn was coming.
The bomb would have to work.
The canyon walls were so steep that it would be difficult to get around him, Tucker was betting. It might take hours to circle the enclosing rocks. Precious minutes, at least. If he could hold Rugard's men here for a while, the others would have a chance.
He studied Amaya's bomb. A fuse extended from one end, and tied to it, wrapped in leaves, were two of their
