Thank god, because otherwise I’m sure he would have tried to shoot me for sure. He probably would have used up every last bullet he had – and with 200 at his disposal, even Weaver might have gotten lucky once.
I was guessing that, in his brief absence, he’d seen that his three captives were no longer in their pen.
I could only imagine how it had gone down.
Had Lelia and the others all traveled down the snowdrift on their snowshoes, like I had told them to?
Had the lone skiris sentry kept his back to them the entire time, wondering what was going on with his friends who had followed Weaver to the mountain cliff? Had he maybe run off to join them, thinking that the three elven women wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave their cage?
Or had he remained?
And had Lelia and the six other women shot six arrows into him all at once, as I’d told them to?
I imagined the scene once the skiris was dead. I imagined them rescuing the women in the pen – the crying, the hugging, the tearful reconciliation.
Then I imagined Lelia and the others running down the hill as fast as they could towards the woods. The snow was hardpacked from the logging and the skiris’ constant weight, so it would have been easy to cover the entire distance.
All they had to do was reach the woods. Once they got past the logged area and the snow became fluffy and deep once again, they could switch to snowshoes – and at that point, Weaver and the skiris wouldn’t be able to catch them.
I was hoping that Weaver hadn’t seen them fleeing…
…but apparently he had.
“YOU THINK YOUR LITTLE BITCHES CAN GET AWAY FROM ME THAT EASY?” he screamed. “OH YEAH – I SAW ‘EM RUNNING! YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER – INSTEAD OF SAVING THREE OF ‘EM, ALL YOU DID WAS GIVE ME A LOT MORE! MY BOYS’LL GO GET ‘EM AND BRING ‘EM BACK – AND WHEN THEY DO, I’LL HAVE EVEN MORE OF THEM TO FUCK! I SHOULD THANK YOU, YOU DUMB PIECE OF SHIT!”
“Go fuck yourself, Weaver!” I shouted.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY FROM ME?” Weaver screamed. “I’M GONNA FEED YOU TO MY BOYS, JACK! I’LL HAVE ‘EM RIP OFF YOUR NUTS WHILE YOU’RE STILL ALIVE! I’LL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR GARTERS, YOU DIPSHIT!”
“Suck a bag of dicks, Weaver!” I yelled. “Make that skiris dicks – that’s all you’ll have to put up your ass after we’re gone!”
If he’d been mad before, he became completely unhinged.
He started firing at me, even though he didn’t have a chance in hell of hitting me.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
Showers of rock fragments cascaded down the mountainside as I kept climbing down.
Man, what I wouldn’t have given for all that gunfire to start up an avalanche to carry him over the side of the mountain.
Unfortunately, there were no peaks directly above him. No huge supply of snow just waiting to be knocked loose.
So I kept climbing.
His voice faded into the distance as I kept descending the mountain, but I could still hear him, as enraged and impotent as ever.
“I’M GONNA KILL YOU, JACK! I’M GONNA KILL YOU IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!”
31
It took me three hours, but I made it to the bottom of the mountain.
From the base of the mountain, it was only a couple of hundred feet to the timberline. Unfortunately, that was wide-open space where Weaver could shoot me.
Of course, now I was probably 800 feet away from where he was on the top of the mountain. He didn’t have a shot in hell of aiming at me and hitting me… but if he decided to spray and pray, who knows, maybe the devil would grant him one last request. After all, even a blind squirrel occasionally gets a nut.
My guess, though, was that Weaver wasn’t on top of the mountain. He was probably descending the slopes with his small army of skiris at that very moment. Either he’d gone after Lelia or the others… or he was coming after me.
For the women’s sake, I hoped he was coming after me. I’d certainly done my best to piss him off and make him lose all rational thought, just so he would try to exact some revenge.
Well, and I’d done it because it felt good to taunt a rapist shithead who’d done a shit-ton of evil things.
I just hoped he didn’t get the chance to do any more.
I moved along the base of the mountain until I was fairly sure I had as much of the mountain between Weaver and me – and then I put on my snowshoes and hustled towards the forest as fast as I could.
I moved through the woods as fast as I could, heading in the same direction I’d told Lelia to travel.
I was pretty sure Weaver and the skiris would travel fairly slowly once they hit the woods beneath the logging area.
For one thing, the snow was deep. The skiris would have to bodily plow through the drifts, while Lelia and the others were walking on top of the snow.
For another thing, the trees were thick enough that the skiris would have to weave in and out of them. Again, not a problem for Weaver, but it would slow down their overall progress.
Only problem was, Weaver would be able to follow Lelia’s and the others’ snowshoe tracks like breadcrumbs. They would just have to do it slowly, that’s all, going around all the trees they couldn’t barge past.
Me? I could go fast and straight as the crow flies, and on top of the snow. My only hope was to overtake Weaver, pass him, and join up with the women later.
For the first hour, I made pretty good time. I made sure not to push myself to the point where I was sweating; after all, sweating in cold weather meant death. As soon as the perspiration freezes, you’re done for.
So I kept right at the threshold where I was moving fast, but
