They left them there. All but one man who seated himself on the sand well outside their reach. He sat with a sword across his knees and eyed them with mild curiosity. Caroline sensed he was waiting for someone as well as guarding them.
There were so many other ways common to this era that they could have used to restrain her and Dwayne—severed hamstrings or slashed Achilles’ tendon or even blinding. Caroline was grateful for this small blessing of simply being bound and shared it with Dwayne.
“Glass half full,” she said.
“Of shit,” Dwayne managed, his throat clotted with bloody phlegm.
“The gun?”
“I’m fine. How are you?” Dwayne said and hawked to spit.
“I’m such a geek.” She blushed. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“I don’t think I’m concussed. Of course, that could be the concussion talking. You know, we plan, and we plan, but it always comes down to some fucker with a rock.”
“You’re lucky it was a rock. They molded lead pellets for their slings that could punch through armor.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but it’s not helping me stay awake. Should we be talking in front of him?” He nodded toward the swordsman watching them and winced at the effort.
“No one will understand our language for another thousand or so years, and probably not even then,” she said. “Now, what about the gun?”
“I don’t know. I lost it when I got hit. It’s still lying out there. Don’t worry about that.”
“I have to worry about it. As an anachronistic artifact, it’s significant. If it were found in the future, it would throw the world out of kilter. If it were found now, it would create a—”
Dwayne cut her off.
“Fuck that! Fuck all of that! We found a fucking city of man-eating Stone Age ape-men living in Nevada, and no archeologist found a trace of them. I think we can count on my Kimber staying in the cosmic lost-and-found for fucking ever.”
“How’s your head?” she asked.
“I’ll get by. Just hurts like shit. Sorry. Any idea why they haven’t killed us yet?”
“Curiosity? Fear? Maybe both.”
“Fear?”
“You blew that guy’s head off. They didn’t look for the gun, so they have no idea how you did that.”
“I got two more before one of them David-and-Goliathed my ass.”
“Even more reason to kill us. But they seemed more annoyed at carrying you than the fact that you killed three of their crew. They think we’ve got some bad mojo. Killing us could bring a curse down on them or maybe they think we have powerful friends.” She rolled her eyes upward.
“The gods smile on us? With our string of luck? That’s a laugh.”
Caroline pulled up a pant leg to examine her calf. An angry black bruise was forming where the slung rock struck her.
“They hit you?” Dwayne said.
“Brought me down with a stone.”
“They do anything else? I mean like—”
“Rape me? No. I guess the reputation of horny sailors is overrated.”
“Or they don’t know you’re a woman.” Dwayne cast a glance at their guard, but he was engrossed in vigorously picking his nose.
“Say again?” Caroline said.
“Those baggy BDUs and that football sweater hide all your goodies. Your hair is cut short. That’s probably not the fashion for the ladies these days. And you’ve got dried blood all over your face.”
She touched her face with her fingers. They came back with a dark gummy mess smeared on them.
“You’ve looked better, trust me. They probably think you’re a boy,” Dwayne said.
“They’d rape me just the same.”
“Probably. But they have boys on board for that. They find out you’re a girl, and that changes the equation. Let’s keep your gender to ourselves as long as we can.”
Their guard eventually lost all interest in them and fell asleep on the filthy sand.
Dwayne tested the rope bonds. The guys that tied him up were sailors. They knew their knots. With enough time, he could loosen the ring bolt from the hull. He couldn’t turn his head enough to see it. But it probably was a match for the one Caroline was chained to. A wrought iron cleat secured to a rib beam by thick wooden pegs. The wood that he could feel with his fingers was wet. Maybe it was rotten.
Caroline was curled on the sand, sound asleep in a post-adrenaline crash.
If he could get them both free while the boat was still anchored, they had a chance. Once this tub took off, they’d be lost forever. Dwayne braced his legs and applied some outward pressure to the ropes. He only managed to twist the ropes into his wrists enough to draw blood.
He tried rocking the cleat back and forth and feeling back to the heads of the wooden pegs to see if he could work them loose with his fingers. Between the pain in his head and the gentle rocking of the boat, he was lulled into closing his eyes, and then time slipped away from him.
34
The Diviner’s Boy
Caroline came awake in the dark. She felt rather than saw Dwayne by her. He was snoring noisily. There were voices coming through the decking above. The sounds of shuffling feet descended the planks into the hold. She kicked a foot out to awaken Dwayne. He sat up with a grunt.
A young boy, probably twelve or so, was in the lead. He wore a skirt and sandals and a faded wool tunic that looked several sizes too large on him and was belted with a length of cording. He held a lit oil lamp in one hand and a basket under his other arm.
Following behind him was an old man with long white hair and a scraggly beard. The old man wore a patched and faded robe cinched about him with rope. There was a hemp sack slung around his bony shoulders. He descended the steps cautiously, placing both of his bare feet on a step before proceeding to the next and reaching for any available handhold. His back was bent nearly double. Untreated scoliosis, Caroline guessed.
The boy
