The rumble was closer.
Chris stood frozen in place, not certain what to do.
The boy lost patience. With a disgusted shake of his head, he turned and ran off through the forest. He immediately vanished in dense undergrowth.
Chris stood alone on the trail. He looked down the path. He didn't see Marek. He looked up the path, toward the sound of the approaching horses. His heart was pounding again.
He had to decide. Now.
'I'm coming!' he shouted to the boy.
Then he turned and ran into the woods.
Kate sat on a fallen tree, touching her head gingerly, her wig askew. There was blood on her fingertips.
'Are you hurt?' Marek said as he came up to her.
'I don't think so.'
'Let me see.'
Lifting the wig away, Marek saw matted blood and a three-inch gash across the scalp. The wound was no longer bleeding freely; the blood had begun to coagulate against the mesh of the wig. The injury deserved sutures, but she would be all right without them.
'You'll survive.' He pushed the wig back down on her head.
She said, 'What happened?'
'Those other two are dead. It's just us now. Chris is a little panicked.'
'Chris is a little panicked.' She nodded, as if she had expected it. 'Then we better go get him.'
They started up the path. As they walked, Kate said, 'What about the markers?'
'The guy went back, and he took his. Gomez's body was trampled, her marker was destroyed.'
'What about the other one?' Kate said.
'What other one?'
'She had a spare.'
'How do you know?'
'She said so. Don't you remember? When she came back from that reconnaissance trip, or whatever it was, she said that everything was fine and that we should hurry up and get ready. And she said, `I'm going to go burn the spare.' Or something like that.'
Marek frowned.
'It makes sense there would be a spare,' Kate said.
'Well, Chris will be glad to hear it,' Marek said. They walked around the final curve. Then they stopped and stared.
Chris was gone.
Plunging through the undergrowth, ignoring the brambles that scratched his legs and plucked at his hose, Chris Hughes at last glimpsed the boy running, fifty yards ahead. But the boy did not heed him, did not stop, but continued to run forward. He was heading toward the village. Chris struggled to keep up. He kept running.
Behind on the trail, he heard the horses stamping and snorting, and the shouts of the men. He heard one cry, 'In the wood!' and another answered with a curse. But off the trail, the ground was densely covered. Chris had to scramble over fallen trees, rotting trunks, snapped branches as thick as his thigh, dense patches of bramble. Was this ground too difficult for horses? Would they dismount? Would they give up? Or would they chase?
Hell, they would chase.
He kept running. He was in a boggy area now. He pushed through the waist-high plants with their skunklike smell, slipped in mud that grew deeper with each step. He heard the sound of his panting breath, and the suck and slap of his feet in the mud.
But he didn't hear anyone behind him.
Soon the footing was dry again, and he was able to run faster. Now the boy was only ten paces ahead of him, still going fast. Chris was panting, struggling to keep up, but he held his own.
He ran on. There was a crackling in his left ear. 'Chris.'
It was Marek.
'Chris, where are you?'
How did he answer? Was there a microphone? Then he remembered they'd said something about bone conduction. He said aloud, 'I'm… I'm running…'
'I hear that. Where are you running?'
'The boy… the village. ..'
'You're going to the village?'
'I don't know. I think so.'
'You think so? Chris, where are you?'
And then, behind him, Chris heard a crashing, the shouts of men, and the whinny of horses.
The riders were coming after him. And he had left a trail of snapped branches and muddy footprints. It would be easy to follow.
Shit.
Chris ran harder, pushing himself to the limit. And suddenly he realized the young boy was no longer visible ahead.
He stopped, gasping for breath, and spun around in a circle. Looking-
Gone.
The boy had vanished.
Chris was alone in the forest.
And the riders were coming.
On the muddy path overlooking the monastery, Marek and Kate stood listening to their earpieces. There was silence now; Kate clapped her hand over her ear to hear better. 'I don't get anything.'
'He may be out of range,' Marek said.
'Why is he going to the village? It sounds like he's following that boy,' she said. 'Why would he do that?'
Marek looked toward the monastery. It was no more than a ten-minute walk from where they were standing. 'The Professor is probably down there right now. We could just go get him, and go home.' He kicked a tree stump irritably. 'It would have been so easy.'
'Not anymore,' Kate said.
The sharp crack of static in their earpieces made them wince. They heard Chris panting again.
Marek said, 'Chris. Are you there?'
'I can't… can't talk now.'
He was whispering. And he sounded scared.
'No, no, no!' the boy whispered, reaching down from the branches of a very large tree. He had whistled, finally taking pity on Chris as he spun in panicky circles on the ground below. And he had waved him to the tree.
Chris was now struggling to climb the tree, trying to pull himself up on the lowest branches, getting extra leverage by bracing his legs against the trunk. But the way he did it upset the boy.
'No, no! Hands! Use only the hands!' the boy whispered, exasperated. 'You are dumb - look now the marks on the trunk, by your feet.'
Hanging from a branch, Chris looked down. The boy was right. There were muddy streaks, very clear on the bark of the trunk.
'By the rood, we are lost,' the boy cried, swinging over Chris's head and dropping lightly to the ground.
'What are you doing?' Chris said.
But the boy was already running off, through the brambles, moving from tree to tree. Chris dropped back to the ground and followed.
The boy muttered irritably to himself as he inspected the branches of each tree. Apparently he wanted a very large tree with relatively low branches; none suited him. The sound of the riders was growing louder.
Soon they had traveled a hundred yards or more, into an area carpeted with gnarled, scrubby ground pines. It was more exposed and sunnier here because there were fewer trees to his right, and then Chris saw they were running near the edge of a cliff that overlooked the town and the river. The boy darted away from the sunlight, back into the darker forest. Almost at once, he found a tree he liked, and signaled Chris to come forward. 'You go
