drone of engines crawling across the upturned bowl of the empty sky.
Yul stopped and turned round. He grinned broadly and pointed at the nearest tree. “See? I’ve been here before.”
Huw nodded. “Good going.” His headache eased slightly. “How much farther is it?”
“About six markers, maybe a couple of hundred meters.”
“Right.” Huw glanced round at Elena. “You hear that?”
“Sure.” She chewed rhythmically as she reached up with her left hand to flick a stray hair away from her eyes. She didn’t move her right hand away from the grip on the P90, but kept scanning from side to side with an ease that came from long practice—she’d done her share of summer training camps for the duke.
“Lead on, Yul.” Huw suppressed a shiver. Elena—was she really as brainless as she’d seemed over breakfast? Or was she another of those differently socialized Clan girls, who escaped from their claustrophobic family connections by moonlighting as manhunters for ClanSec? He hadn’t asked enough questions when the duke’s clerk had gone down his list of names and suggested he talk to her. But the way she moved silently in his footsteps, scanning for threats, suggested that maybe he ought to have paid more attention.
Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Yul stopped. “Here it is,” he said quietly.
“I have the watch.” Elena turned in a circle, looking for threats.
“Let me see.” Huw knelt down near the tree Hulius had pointed to. The undergrowth was thin here, barely more than a mat of pine needles and dead branches, and the slope almost undetectable. Odd lumpy protuberances humped out of the ground near the roots of the tree, and when he glanced sideways Huw realized he could see a lot farther in one direction before his vision was blocked by more trees. He unhooked the folding trench shovel from his small pack and chopped away at the muck and weedy vegetation covering one of the lumps. “Whoa!”
Huw knew his limits: what he knew about archeology could be written on the sleeve notes of an Indiana Jones DVD. But he also knew asphalt when he saw it, a solid black tarry aggregate with particles of even size—and he knew it was old asphalt too, weathered and overgrown with lichen and moss.
“Looks like a road to me,” Yul offered.
“I think you’re right.” Huw cast around for more chunks of half-buried roadstone. Now that he knew what he was looking for it wasn’t difficult to find. “It ran that way, north-northeast, I think.” Turning to look in the opposite direction he saw a shadowy tunnel, just about as wide as a two-lane road. Some trees had erupted through the surface over the years, but for the most part it had held the forest at bay. “Okay, this way is downhill. Let’s plant a waypoint and—” he looked up at the heavy overcast “—follow it for an hour, or until it starts to rain, before we head back.” He checked his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon. “I don’t want to get too far from base camp today.”
Hulius rammed another transponder spike into the earth by the road and Huw scraped an arrow on the nearest tree, pointing back along their path. The LED on top of the transponder blinked infrequently, reassuring them that the radio beacon was ready and waiting to guide them home. For the next half hour they plodded along the shallow downhill path, Hulius leading the way with his hunting rifle, Elena bringing up the rear. Once they were on the roadbed, it was easy to follow, although patches of asphalt had been heaved up into odd mounds and shoved aside by trees over the years—or centuries—for which it had been abandoned. Something about the way the road snaked along the contours of the shallow hillside tickled Huw’s imagination. “It was built to take cars,” he finally said aloud.
“Huh? How can you tell?” asked Yul.
“The radius of curvature. Look at it, if you’re on foot it’s as straight as an arrow. But imagine you’re driving along it at forty, fifty miles per hour. See how it’s slightly banked around that ridge ahead?” He pointed towards a rise in the ground, just visible through the trees.
They continued in silence for a couple of minutes. “You’re assuming—” Yul began to say, then stopped, freezing in his tracks right in front of a tree that had thrust through the asphalt. “
“What?” Huw almost walked into his back.
“Cover,” Yul whispered, gesturing towards the side of the track. “It’s probably empty, but…”
“What?” Huw ducked to the side of the road—followed by Elena—then crept forward to peer past Yul’s shoulder.
“There,” said Hulius, raising one hand to point. It took a moment for Huw to recognize the curving flank of a mushroom-pale dome, lightly streaked with green debris. “You were looking for company, weren’t you? I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”
It wasn’t the first time Miriam had hidden in the woods, nursing a splitting headache and a festering sense of injustice, but familiarity didn’t make it easier: and this time she’d had an added source of anxiety as she crossed over, hoping like hell that the Clan hadn’t seen fit to doppelganger her business by building a defensive site in the same location in their own world. But she needn’t have worried. The trees grew thick and undisturbed, and she’d made sure that the site was well inland from the line the coast had followed before landfill in both her Boston and the strangely different New British version had extended it.
She’d taken a risk, of course. Boston and Cambridge occupied much the same sites in New Britain as in her own Massachusetts, but in the Gruinmarkt that area was largely untamed, covered by deciduous forest and the isolated tracts and clearings of scattered village estates. She’d never thought to check the lay of the land colocated with her workshop, despite having staked out her house: for all she knew, she might world-walk right into the great hall of some hedge lord. But it seemed unlikely—Angbard hadn’t chosen the site of his fortified retreat for accessibility—so the worst risk she expected was a twisted ankle or a drop into a gully.
Instead Miriam stumbled and nearly walked face-first into a beech tree, then stopped and looked around. “Ow.” She massaged her forehead. This was bad: she suddenly felt hot and queasy, and her vision threatened to play tricks on her.
The nausea got worse abruptly, peaking in a rush that cramped her stomach. She doubled over to her right and vomited, whimpering with pain. The spasms seemed to go on for hours, leaving her gasping for breath as she retched herself dry. Eventually, by the time she was too exhausted to stand up, the cramps began to ease. She sat up and leaned back against the tree, pulled her suitcase close, and shivered uncontrollably. “I wonder what brought that on?” She mumbled under her breath. Then in an effort to distract herself, she opened the case.
The contents of the hidden drawer were mostly plastic and base metal, but they gleamed at her eyes with more promise than a chest full of rubies and diamonds. A small Sony notebook PC and its accessories, a power supply and CD drive. With shaking hands she opened the computer’s lid and pushed the power button. The screen flickered, and LEDs flashed, then it shut down again. “Oh, of course.” The battery had run down in the months of enforced inactivity. Well, no need to worry: New Britain had alternating current electricity, and the little transformer was designed for international use, rugged enough to eat their bizarre mixture of frequency and voltage without melting. (Even though she’d had a devil of a time at first, establishing how the local units of measurement translated into terms she was vaguely familiar with.)
Closing the suitcase, she felt the tension drain from her shoulders.
Another tree, another two hours: this time in the right place for the return trip to the side alley behind the workshop. Miriam settled down to wait.
