sunup. So he climbed into a tree and found a secure place to sleep until dark.
He almost laughed, remembering how he'd fallen out of trees a few times before he perfected this sleeping method. It wasn't comfortable, but it was definitely safer. Men hunting him tended to study the ground. He made a habit of leaving footprints heading away from the tree. The dried leaves still hanging to the branches offered him some cover, but the ones on the ground offered him an alarm system if anyone walked near.
Drum slept. In his dreams he couldn't push Sage to the back of his mind. She was with him, cuddled against his side.
The wind kicked up in late afternoon, and the air turned to freezing. Drum barely noticed the cold. His mind was full of what he had to do. He slipped silently down from the tree and moved as a shadow across the pasture.
When he reached the dark side of the barn, he stood and listened as he watched the house Daniel Torry had said looked as if it could be where Luther's wife and child might be staying.
Nothing. Not a sound. If she and the boy were inside, they'd gone to bed before dark.
Drum waited until all sounds died in the village, then he walked the shadows toward the big house. The count's house.
A guard sat on the corner of the front porch railing, his gun over his leg as he smoked.
Moving around back, Drum wasn't surprised to find the second guard asleep by the back door.
Silently, he slipped to the side of the house and climbed up to the second floor. People often lock their doors and windows on the first floor but rarely on the second. The third window he tried opened easily.
He slipped into the room, which was cold and dark. Furniture was scattered about among boxes. Crossing carefully, he opened the door and saw a lamp burning low outside the last door.
He walked down the hallway and opened the last door. The smell of a sickroom floated on the stale air as he looked in. A man, thin and pale, lay in the middle of a big bed. He looked asleep, but even awake, he didn't look strong enough to fight.
Drum slipped his gun from its holster and moved inside.
Candles burned on both sides of the man, but the rest of the room was dark. A fire crackled in the corner fireplace. A teapot, giving off the smell of burned berries, sat on the bricks of the hearth.
Drum moved to the bed, knowing what he had to do.
'If you shoot him.” a voice came from the shadows, 'half the men in town will be waiting for you when you step out of this place.”
Drum fought the urge to fire into the darkness. 'Who are you?'
'I'm Myron, the count's butler.” He took a deep breath. 'And I'm a prisoner here, Mr. Roak, just as you will be unless we are both very careful.”
A short, chubby man moved into the light. His clothes were worn but clean, and Drum noticed bruises fading on his face. He'd been beaten recently.
Myron must have known what Drum saw, for the man raised his head slightly. 'He's been too weak to beat me for a week. He's left orders that I'm to be killed when he dies as if I'm not more than a pet to him.”
'How do you know who I am?' Drum remembered Sage speaking of Myron. She'd said he'd tried to help her. That fact was all that was keeping the butler alive right now.
'Luther told me you'd be coming.' Myron smiled. 'How is the little doctor?'
Drum wasn't here to pass the time of day. 'If you know who I am, you know I've come here to kill him. Arresting him and getting him out of here would be impossible.'
Drum watched the man in the bed, who showed no sign of waking. 'What's wrong with him?'
Myron held his hands palm up. 'I've been poisoning him for weeks. Just enough to make him weak, not enough to kill him. Luther said you'd come, and when you did, we'd have to be ready to go out a secret way with you.”
Drum frowned. 'I don't take passengers.”
'You have to. When you kill him, I have to escape, and Luther says he can get his family out in the chaos that follows.” Footsteps sounded.
'That'll be the guard change at midnight. Step into the shadows.'
Drum kept his gun on the door, but he did what Myron said.
The door opened, and the guard Drum had met weeks ago stepped in. 'How's the count?' Luther mumbled as he closed the door.
'Drum's here,' Myron whispered.
Luther's body stiffened, but he didn't go for his gun. 'How'd you know I would come?' Drum asked.
Luther glanced around the room, trying to locate the direction the question had come from. 'I knew the minute the count came up with the scheme to go after the boys. He might have been able to pull it off, but he wanted the doctor too, and I knew you'd never allow that. I also figured you wouldn't want her living with the fear of the count trying to kidnap her. So your only option was to come back here and end it all”
'And the price of your silence?' Drum asked.
'You take us with you. The next guard change is at noon. We've no time to waste”
Drum looked at the count. Killing a man in a gunfight or who was about to kill someone else was one thing. Killing a man in cold blood was something he'd never done.
'We take him with us.' Drum knew it wasn't smart, but it was his only choice. 'He'll stand trial for what he's done” He looked at the two men. 'It's the only way I'll take you with me.'
Luther nodded. 'My wife and son are sleeping next door in a storage room. I'll go get them and be right back. They've been packed and waiting every night for a week”
Myron went to the fireplace. 'We can tie him on a stretcher. He's lost so much weight, he won't be hard to carry. I'll give him a dose of tea that will keep him sound asleep”
Drum crossed to the windows. What he was about to do was crazy. He got in, he could get out without too much trouble, but it would be near impossible with others along.
Myron produced a lantern full of oil with the wick burning low. 'I thought I'd put this by the front door. When anyone opens the door, it'll spill and cause a fire. That should give us a little more time.'
'Good idea.' Drum doubted it would help, but the little man was trying.
Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, Luther returned. He not only had his wife but three other women and several children.
'We can't take all of them,' Drum said, not wanting to hear their stories. He could see it in their faces. They'd all been abused. 'We can't”
A little boy moved under Luther's arm. Frightened eyes silently stared at Drum.
None of them moved or begged. Drum shook his head. 'You all have to know, if you go with me there's a good chance you die. If they get within firing distance of us, we'll all be shot”
'We're dead already here,' one woman said.
Luther and Myron were strapping the count to the stretcher and covered him with a dark blanket.
Luther whispered as he worked, 'I'm the back guard tonight. No one will check on me until after first light. I figured out you released the horses in the pasture when you escaped before because that's the way you went, but I can't find any way out. I've crawled over those rocks for days”
'North,' Drum answered. 'Straight north over the rocks and into a small tunnel to a cave.'
'I've got a wagon out back. If we stay on the road, well leave no trail until we have to leave the wagon and start climbing.'
'Good enough” Drum looked at the women. 'Everyone including the children carries water.'
They moved silently down the back stairs and out into the night. Once the stretcher was loaded, the women crowded into the wagon, and Myron took the bench with Luther.
'I'll meet you at the rocks,' Drum said. He didn't need to explain that he didn't trust either man. He knew he could run straight across the pasture in half the time Luther could circle around. That gave him a few minutes to set up more lanterns in the house, the storage rooms, and the laundry. The buildings were so close together, there was a good chance that if one burned, others would catch as well.
Luther nodded and headed down the back alley toward the north.
Drum climbed to the roof and watched the house for a while to make sure no one saw the wagon leave, then he climbed down and ran toward the pasture.
The wagon was there when he arrived. He looked at Luther. 'I'll move the women in and come back for you. Meet me up there,' he pointed a hundred feet above, 'after you get rid of the wagon”
