Ahinadab then gestured to the standing men who broke up to go to their assigned tasks or to return to watchful idleness.
Praxus sank to the deck, limp and shaking. Caroline crouched by him.
“I feared they would come for me next.” His eyes were empty and staring.
“You did nothing wrong,” she said.
“Now I am free of that old man.” Praxus’ quivering lips formed a smile.
“Dum spiro, spero,” she said and touched his arm. While I breathe, I hope.
Praxus turned to face her, amused.
“I am free while you will be sold a slave.” He grinned, his eyes moving over her face to gauge her reaction. “Soon to have a strange cock up your ass.”
Praxus yelped as Xin took him by the back of the hair and growled in his ear before tossing him to the deck. Xin walked sternward with the bloody ax on his shoulder. Praxus rose from the deck with fists to his eyes. The boy was sobbing.
“What was that?” Caroline said.
“I am to be sold when we reach Rhodes,” he stammered, eyes streaming. He turned from them and ran down the steps to the shadows of the hold.
Caroline felt pity for him. The literal author of all their troubles had tasted freedom for perhaps five minutes. He was an obnoxious little asshole, but he was still a kid.
“The past sucks,” she said. “Remind me next time I want to go into the Tube.”
“As if you’d listen,” Dwayne said.
52
Colossus
They spent the following week closely watched by Xin during the day and secured with manacles to the mast during the nights with only a sulking Praxus for company. Caroline was grateful that they’d not been returned to their former place in the dank hold. It was even more miserable below with the sand ballast gone and the bilge constantly awash over the keel boards despite frequent bailing.
Caroline made a fight of it the first time they placed the manacles on her wrist. That earned her a clout from Xin that dropped her dazed to the decking.
“Not here. Not yet.” Dwayne’s voice.
He explained that there was no way to improve their situation while on the open sea. They would wait until they got to Rhodes.
“You’d think these bastards would be the least bit grateful,” she said with her aching head resting back on the mast. “You practically saved the ship and everyone on it.”
“They didn’t try and castrate us again,” he said. “That’s enough gratitude for me.”
She nodded, but it only sharpened the pain in her cheek where Xin’s fist had connected and opened the skin.
“We get to Rhodes and see what looks promising,” Dwayne continued. “We’re still on the same course as in the book even though we’ll get there later. Morris and Jimbo will follow the template. They’ll be waiting for us in Rhodes.”
“I hope so.”
“You have to believe it,” he insisted.
She tried.
At night, bound to the mast, Caroline engaged Praxus in conversation. She was trying to share in Dwayne’s dogged optimism that they would make it out of this and back to their own time, so she was not going to miss an opportunity to learn more about this world from an inhabitant. Her spirits weren’t lifted, but her compulsive personality helped focus her thoughts away from the place they were in.
The slave boy mostly did not feel like answering questions. His replies were terse and sullen. To try and draw him from his mood, she told him stories. Caroline was surprised that, even though Praxus was well-read for a boy of his age and circumstance, he had never heard of Homer. She found herself in the ironic situation of recounting the tale of the Iliad and the Odyssey in Latin to an ancient Greek. The blind poet’s epic, as much of it as Caroline could recall, helped to distract Praxus if not lift him from his mood.
Each night he would drift off to sleep as Caroline told him of Cassandra and Helen, Achilles and Hector, and brave Odysseus. She would pick up the next night where she left off. It was of some comfort to him and helped keep her mind from what the days ahead might bring.
As much as she tried not to think of what might happen when this voyage ended, Caroline could not help bringing it up to Dwayne.
“You have to stop fussing over it,” he said. “Concentrate on right now and keep your eye on me. When the time comes to make a change in our plan, I’ll let you know.”
This was Dwayne’s area of expertise. She was more than content to let him take the lead. That they’d survived this long was due to his resourcefulness and toughness, toughness of mind as well as body. But there were still so many things that might go wrong, so many variables and misadventures that lay between them and any possible return to the future. The Now, as the Rangers called it.
“But still, something could happen,” she said.
“Anything can happen. If I didn’t know that before I sure as shit know it after meeting you and your brother.”
“We might not make it home. We could stay here. Die here.”
“I wish you’d stop thinking about that, Caroline.”
“I’m not thinking about it. I’m accepting it. Tell me you haven’t prepared for that possibility. Mentally, I mean.”
“I’ll make a Ranger of you yet.” She could hear the smile in his voice despite the darkness that hid his features.
“Then there’s something I need to tell you, Dwayne.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I’m serious.”
“Look, if this is how you feel about me, then you should know that—”
She cut him short: “Rick Renzi didn’t die.” Dwayne was silent.
Caroline told him about her friend Jane in London and what she’d learned by studying the skeletal remains of Richard Renzi.
“There’s no way we can go back for him. I’m so sorry,” she concluded.
“Yeah. The barrier. These last trips made a wall in time we can’t cross,” he said.
“If I had only found out a few days sooner. I’m so terribly
