Flash Gold - Hunted Part 8

She rose on her tiptoes, pressing the drill higher. Cedar would have to take over soon if she didn't reach- A draft of fresh air whispered across her cheek. Her grin broadened. The resistance disappeared, and the drill poked through.

"I'm going to need a boost." Kali widened the hole so Cedar's broad shoulders would fit through.

"I'll go first and pull you up."

She cut off the drill and nodded toward the hole. "Not interested in handling my hips again?"

"Oh, I'm interested, but let's make sure n.o.body's waiting to put a bullet in your head first."

"Or drop a grenade on it," Kali muttered.

Cedar grabbed both sides of the hole and pulled his head through. Long seconds pa.s.sed while he hung, boots dangling above the ground. At first, she marveled that he could hold himself in that position so long. Then she lost patience and wanted to shove him out of the way so she could look.

Elsewhere in the tunnel, the screams had abated, and she doubted it would be long before some of the men climbed out, if only to tend to each other's wounds.

Finally, Cedar pulled himself up, slithering over the edge without a sound. Only a trickle of dust marked his pa.s.sing.

As promised, he soon extended a hand for her. Kali plopped the handle of the drill into it. With their ammo gone, it was the best weapon she had. Besides, she would not leave it behind with precious flash gold embedded in it.

Cedar lifted the drill out, then lowered his hand again. She gave him her pack, which he also pulled free.

"What's going on up there?" she asked, wondering how much time they had.

"Ssh," he whispered and wriggled his fingers.

Kali grabbed his hand and bunched her legs, preparing for a good jump, but he simply pulled her out as if she weighed no more than a snared rabbit. She settled beside him where he crouched above the ragged hole.

Dawn had come to the river valley, revealing more stillness than expected, considering the activity of moments before. As she had hoped, they were in the trees above the rocky bank. The engine and boiler that marked the mine entrance sat downhill twenty meters away. Several bodies lay on the bank, unmoving, and Kali swallowed, numbly aware of the carnage they had caused. More dead must be buried in the rubble beneath them. A concave depression marked a cave-in, right about where the still would have been. She clenched her teeth, resenting Sebastian all over again for starting her along this path where bounty hunters-and simple prospectors-vied to turn her in for a reward.

"Stay here," Cedar whispered. "I'm going for my pack and ammo." He pointed to Sebastian's camp. His mangled bedroll lay visible on the rocky earth. "Keep an ear open. I thought I heard some mechanical noises in the forest behind us when I first poked my head up."

"Blazes," Kali said. "That woman again?"

Why couldn't she have gone back to Dawson to rest, like a normal just-shot person?

Cedar left her side to follow the tree line toward Sebastian's claim. The spring foliage soon hid him. Kali took a few steps from the hole and put her back against a spruce. The undergrowth should hide her from anyone who came out of the mine.

She closed her eyes for a moment, both because looking at the bodies made her uncomfortable and because she wanted to listen for suspicious noises.

Kali did not have long to wait. In the woods behind her, a soft click-whir grew audible. It repeated, steady and regular, like the ticking of a clock. Oddly, the sound seemed to come not from the ground but from the trees, perhaps ten or twenty feet in the air. It couldn't be the flyer; she and Cedar had crashed that. The noises were not the same either.

She craned her neck, her eyes probing the canopy. Though birds should have been chirping to welcome the dawn, no animal sounds drifted from the woods. Water rushed by in the river, and a soft breeze rattled tree branches, but nothing warm-blooded stirred.

Click-whir, click-whir, click-whir.

It was definitely coming from the treetops.

Movement rustled a clump of needles high up on a spruce. Kali squinted. Another breeze? No. The other branches remained still.

She chomped down on her lip, tempted to investigate, but she should wait for Cedar's return. If that woman was responsible-and who else would be out here with things that clicked and clanked?-Kali would need help against her.

She checked on Sebastian's camp and did not spot Cedar, but his packsack had disappeared. The first man was crawling out of the mine entrance. Time to get going.

Something sharp stabbed Kali in the b.u.t.t, and she gasped in pain, almost dropping the drill. She glared behind her, thinking Cedar was playing a joke. The pain had been enough to bring a tear to her eye, and she planned to give him a mouthful of vitriol.

n.o.body stood behind her.

She patted her rump, expecting shrapnel or a dart protruding from it. That had been too powerful to be a bug bite, especially given the thickness of her trousers.

Cedar slipped out of the foliage to her side, glanced at her hand placement, and raised an eyebrow. "Problem?"

She yanked her hand away from her backside and glowered suspiciously at him, but the angle of his approach was wrong. Whatever had attacked her had come from behind. Behind and maybe above.

Click-whir.

Kali lifted her eyes. Leaves shuddered. "Something's up there."

Cedar knelt beside her and plucked something from the mud. A tiny metal sphere, perhaps a third of the size of an old musket ball, glinted in the palm of his hand.

Low voices came from the mine entrance. Another man had crawled out. Blood stained his sandy hair and saturated his shirt.

Weariness dragged Kali's shoulders down; she had grown tired of this adventure and wanted to go back to the city where she could rely on the defenses in her workshop to protect her. And where no one need be injured. Or killed.

"We can go back to town," Cedar said, perhaps guessing her thoughts. "Wilder...isn't going to pan out. He isn't with Cudgel any more."

"Didn't you say his head is worth money in its own right?"

"I'm not collecting on it. He says he's gone straight, and I believe him. He's up here with his pregnant wife and one-year-old son. They're hoping to find enough gold to make a fresh start."

"Oh." Kali did not know what Wilder had done to earn his bounty, but she could not argue for killing a man with a new family to provide for. "Sorry the trip was a waste for you."

"Not a total waste. I got kissed."

"By Wilder?"

Cedar snorted. "By you."

"I know about that. I was just making sure I didn't have compet.i.tion. This Wilder might be a looker."

He waved away her goofy comments. "Wilder did say he agreed with me in that Cudgel was probably on his way up to Dawson. He's too greedy to miss an opportunity like this." He spread a hand to indicate the river and the claims.

A thud sounded beside Kali's ear, and shards of bark flew off the tree beside her. A gouge appeared in the trunk.

"Time to go," Cedar said.

"Do we face the angry humans by the river or the unknown somethings in the forest?"

"Your choice. I have ammo now.

"We can cut back to the trail through the trees." Kali glanced at Sebastian's injured men. "I'm tired of hurting people."

"You want to hurt machines?" Cedar led the way into the forest.

"No, but I want to see them up close."

"Even if they're shooting at you?"

"I'm odd," Kali said. "I know." She wanted to know what powered them and what directed them to move-and shoot. Nothing natural. That much she knew.

Something glided out of the branches. Before Kali got a good look, burning pain lanced into her abdomen. She hunched over, clutching her stomach. Again, the wound was not enough to break skin or rip clothing, but she would have a bruise before long.

"You all right?" Cedar gripped her shoulder. "I saw it. It's a foot long and looks like a big b.u.t.terfly with wings made of the same mesh as the flyer."

"If you saw it, why didn't you shoot it?"

"Don't we want your friends to believe we were caught in the cave-in?"

Right. Weapons fire would give them away. "All right," she said, "let's get out of here. That thing is aiming for me."

They broke into a jog with Cedar leading the way. Though no trail meandered through the forest, enough people had clomped around their claims that Kali and Cedar could maneuver between the trees, following paths of trampled foliage. Their footfalls drowned out the click-whirs of the mechanical creature, but she feared it was not far behind. Between the packsack b.u.mping on her back and the drill snagging on branches, she was not moving quickly. More than once, Cedar glanced back and slowed his pace for her.

Without warning, another tiny projectile hammered Kali in the jaw.

"Tarnation!" she blurted, grabbing her chin. Without the protection of clothing, that one hurt more than the others. Warm blood dribbled through her fingers. "How'd it get in front of us?"

"I don't know. Another quarter mile, and I'll risk a shot."

They kept running. Though the b.a.l.l.s did not cause overbearing pain, the face shot made Kali aware of the possibility of getting one in the eye.

The next stab of pain came from the side. She growled in frustration and gritted her teeth.

Sword in hand, Cedar darted in front of her and crashed into the undergrowth. He leaped into the air and whipped the blade upward so quickly Kali could not track its path. Metal clashed against metal, and something slammed into a tree trunk. Her eyes finally caught up with the action when the contraption clattered to the ground.

"Keep running," Cedar said. "There's more than one."

But she sprinted over to check out the device. It was worth a few more b.a.l.l.s in the b.u.t.t if she could take one home to study.

The winged, bronze and steel creature had a finely wrought carapace, and Cedar's blade had sliced its body in half. When she picked up a piece, its lightness surprised her.

"Go, go." Cedar pulled her to her feet and gave her a shove.

He was staring past her shoulder, and she risked a glance before running the direction he indicated. And she gulped. No fewer than ten of the flying creatures were descending from the trees and angling toward her, like a swarm of bees.

Still clutching the broken one, she took Cedar's advice and ran. There were no clear trails, and she stumbled on roots and rocks. Branches whipped her face and snagged her hair. She almost dropped the drill, but she did not have time to dig the flash gold out, and she refused to leave a piece of that on the forest floor.

Footsteps thundered behind her. Cedar.

"They're staying out of sword reach," he said.

"They're smart."

"Flash gold smart?" He must have also realized no natural explanation could account for the autonomous creations.

"Maybe." Flash gold was her father's invention, and she did not think much of it was out there in the world, if any. She had read of witches animating inanimate objects and controlling them, and thought that a more likely explanation for the swarm, but she could not be sure. She lacked the breath to share her speculations.

Cedar grunted, then cursed. He was running directly behind her and taking the hits.

"You don't have to...do that," she said.

The effort of holding the pace was catching up with her. Without the packsack, she would have an easier time, but she was unwilling to leave her tools behind. She could have dropped the drill or the metal carca.s.s, but she might find another use for the former, and she had to check out the latter as soon as there was time. This woman's work was incredible.

"Veer right," Cedar said. "The river bends ahead, and we'll run into some rapids if we keep going straight."

"It'd be nice if...someone would have...made a trail for us."

"We'll meet up with it soon."

When Kali tried to follow his instructions and run right, movement in that direction made her falter. Two of the creatures swooped out of the canopy.

Cedar's rifle cracked. One of the constructs flew backward, smashing into a tree. The other returned fire. The bullet was too small to track, but Cedar cursed and dropped his rifle. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and caught up with Kali.

"They're herding us," he said.

Yes, she was getting that feeling. "To corner us...at the river? I'm hot and tired enough to jump in and...take my chances with the current."

"With all that gear?" Irritating that he did not sound out of breath. "You'd sink like a gold bar."

Before she could think of a retort, the trees and undergrowth ended, and she stumbled onto a granite bank, damp with spray. In the center of the river, white rapids frothed and churned, but Kali's gaze went to a shallow niche filled with calm, dark water-and a brown-clad figure standing in a metal boat. No, not a boat. The lower half of the flying machine, the half they had not found in the wreckage. The furnace and boiler appeared undamaged, and puffs of gray wafted from a narrow smokestack. Some sort of screw-style propeller kept the flying-machine-turned-land-vehicle-turned-boat from drifting out into the rapids.

Kali slowed down, not sure what to do next. Stop and talk? G.o.d knew she was curious about this woman. Or turn right and run downriver, taking her chances navigating the treacherous slabs of rock framing the waterway?

Cedar had no trouble deciding what to do: he fired his rifle.

The transparent barrier still protected the piloting area, but since the woman was standing, her torso rose above it. The bullet slammed into her chest. Or it should have. It clacked, as if hitting rock, and ricocheted off without the figure reacting. Actually she did react. She tilted her head and gave Cedar a look that managed to convey, even with goggles covering her eyes, pity for such a simple creature whose only solution to problems was gunfire.

He seemed to get that message too for he growled like a bear roused early from hibernation.

Click-whirs grew audible over the roar of the rapids. The flying constructs drew closer, forming a tight semicircle at Kali and Cedar's backs. One buzzed a couple of feet from her ear.

"What do you think of my cicadas?" the figure called. The head wrapping did not cover the speaker's lips, so the voice came out clearly. It definitely belonged to a woman, an older woman, Kali guessed. "Incase you're thinking of fleeing, I should inform you that you've experienced only Setting One of their firepower. There are three settings."

"Who are you?" Kali asked. Maybe the question should have been, "What are you?"

Though the voice and the swell of a bosom beneath the brown wrapping made femininity clear, Kali struggled to believe this was a mere woman. Cedar had shot her the day before-they had seen blood-but no sling cradled the arm, nor did the figure appear wounded now.

"Who do you think I am?" the woman asked, a smile in her voice.

Kali glanced at Cedar, but his face was masked, and he said nothing.