Timeline. Part 46

"Really? Maybe he's not as stupid as I thought. We should hire him." He paused. "So: are you telling me we'll get them back after all?"

"No. I'm not sure about that."

"What's the problem?"

"They're keeping their earpieces turned off."

"They are? But why? The earpiece batteries have plenty of power to go thirty-seven hours. There's no reason to keep them off." He stared. "Do you think? You think it's him him? You think it's Deckard?"

"Maybe. Yes."

"How? It's been over a year. Deckard must be dead by now-remember the way he kept picking fights with everybody?"

"Well, something something made them turn off their earpieces...." made them turn off their earpieces...."

"I don't know," Doniger said. "Rob had too many transcription errors, and he was out of control. h.e.l.l, he was going to jail."

"Yes. For beating up some guy in a bar he'd never seen before," Kramer said. "The police report said Deckard hit him fifty-two times with a metal chair. The guy was in a coma for a year. And Rob was definitely going to jail. That's why he volunteered to go back one more time."

"If Deckard's still alive," Doniger said, "then they're still in trouble."

"Yes, Bob. They're still in plenty of trouble."

09:57:02.

Back in the cool darkness of the forest, Marek drew a rough map in the dirt with a stick. "Right now, we're here, behind the monastery. The mill is over here, about a quarter mile from where we are. There's a checkpoint we have to get past."

"Uh-huh," Chris said.

"And then we have to get into the mill."

"Somehow," Chris said.

"Right. After that, we have the key. So we go to the green chapel. Which is where, Kate?"

She took the stick, and drew a square. "If this is La Roque, on top of the cliff, then there's a forest to the north. The road's about here. I think the chapel is not very far-maybe here."

"A mile? Two miles?"

"Say two miles."

Marek nodded.

"Well, that's all easy enough," Chris said, standing and wiping the dirt from his hands. "All we have to do is get past the armed checkpoint, into the fortified mill, then go to some chapel-and not get killed on the way. Let's get started."

Leaving the forest behind, they moved through a landscape of destruction. Flames leapt above the Monastery of Sainte-Mere, and clouds of smoke darkened the sun. Black ash covered the ground, fell on their faces and shoulders, and thickened the air. They tasted grit in their mouths. Across the river, they could just make out the dark outline of Castelgard, now a blackened, smoking ruin on the hillside.

Walking through this desolation, they saw no one else for a long time. They pa.s.sed one farmhouse to the west of the monastery, where an elderly man lay on the ground, with two arrows in his chest. From inside, they heard the sound of a baby crying. Looking inside, they saw a woman, hacked to death, lying face down by the fire; and a young boy of six, staring at the sky, his innards sliced open. They did not see the baby, but the sounds seemed to be coming from a blanket in the corner.

Kate started toward it, but Marek held her back. "Don't."

They continued on.

The smoke drifted across an empty landscape, abandoned huts, untended fields. Aside from the farmhouse with its slaughtered inhabitants, they saw no one else.

"Where is everybody?" Chris said.

"They're all in the woods," Marek said. "They have huts there, and underground shelters. They know what to do."

"In the woods? How do they live?"

"By attacking any soldiers that pa.s.s by. That's why the knights kill anyone they find in the forest. They a.s.sume they're G.o.dins G.o.dins-brigands-and they know that the G.o.dins G.o.dins will return the favor, if they can." will return the favor, if they can."

"So that's what happened to us, when we first landed?"

"Yes," Marek said. "The antagonism between commoners and n.o.bles is at its worst right now. Ordinary people are angry that they're forced to support this knightly cla.s.s with their taxes and t.i.thes, but when the time comes, the knights don't fulfill their part of the bargain. They can't win the battles to protect the country. The French king has been captured, which is very symbolic to the common folk. And now that the war between England and France has stopped, they see only too clearly that the knights are the cause of further destruction. Both Arnaut and Oliver fought for their respective kings at Poitiers. And now they both pillage the countryside to pay their troops. The people don't like it. So they form bands of G.o.dins G.o.dins, living in the forest, fighting back whenever they can."

"And this farmhouse?" Kate said. "How does that happen?"

Marek shrugged. "Maybe your father was killed in the forest by peasant bandits. Maybe your brother had too much to drink one night, wandered off, and was murdered and stripped naked by peasant bands. Maybe your wife and children were traveling from one castle to another and vanished without a trace. Eventually, you are ready to take out your anger and frustration on somebody. And eventually, you do."

"But-"

Marek fell silent, pointing ahead. Above a line of trees, a fluttering green-and-black banner moved quickly to the left, carried by a rider galloping on horseback.

Marek pointed to the right. They moved quietly upstream. And they came at last to the mill bridge, and the checkpoint.

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On the river bank, the mill bridge ended in a high stone wall with an arched opening. A stone tollbooth stood on the other side of the arch. The only road to La Roque ran through the arch, which meant that Oliver's soldiers, who controlled the bridge, also controlled the road.

Above the road, the limestone cliffs were high and sheer. There was no alternative but to go through the arch. And standing by the arch, talking with the soldiers by the tollhouse, was Robert de Kere.

Marek shook his head.

A stream of peasants, mostly women and children, some carrying a few belongings, was walking up the road. They were heading for the protection of the castle at La Roque. De Kere talked to a guard, and glanced at the peasants from time to time. He didn't seem to be paying much attention, but they could never walk past him undetected.

Eventually, de Kere went back inside the fortified bridge. Marek nudged the others, and they set out on the road, moving slowly toward the checkpoint. Marek felt himself start to sweat.

The guards were looking at peoples' belongings, and confiscating anything that looked valuable, tossing it onto a heap by the side of the road.

Marek reached the arch, then continued through. The soldiers watched him, but he did not meet their eyes. He was past, then Chris, and then Kate.

They followed the crowd along the river, but eventually, when the crowd turned into the town of La Roque, Marek went in the opposite direction, toward the river's edge.

Here there was no one at all, and they were able to peer through foliage at the fortified mill bridge, now about a quarter of a mile downstream.

What they saw was not encouraging.

At each end of the bridge stood ma.s.sive guard towers, two stories high, with high walkways, and arrow slots on all sides. Atop the nearest guard tower, they saw two dozen soldiers in maroon and gray peering over the battlements, ready to fight. There was an equal number of soldiers atop the far tower, where the pennant of Lord Oliver snapped in the breeze.

Between the two towers, the bridge consisted of two different-size buildings, connected by ramps. Four water wheels churned below, powered by the flowing stream, which was accelerated by a series of dams and watercourses.

"What do you think?" Marek said to Chris. This structure was, after all, Chris's particular interest. He'd been studying it for two years. "Can we get in?"

Chris shook his head. "Not a chance. Soldiers everywhere. There's no way in."

"What is the building nearest us?" Marek said, indicating a two-story structure of wood.

"That's got to be a flour mill," Chris said. "Probably with the grinding wheels on the upper floor. The flour goes down a chute to bins on the bottom floor, where it's easier to sack the flour and carry it out."

"How many people work there?"

"Probably two or three. But right now"-he pointed to the troops-"maybe none at all."

"Okay. The other building?"

Marek pointed to the second building, connected by a short ramp to the first. This building was longer and lower. "Not sure," Chris said. "It might be for metalwork, a pulper for paper, or a pounder for beer mash, or even a woodworking mill."

"You mean with saws?"

"Yes. They have water-powered saws at this time. If that's what it is."

"But you can't be sure?"

"Not just by looking, no."

Kate said, "I'm sorry, why are we even bothering to talk about this? Just look at it: there's no way we can ever get in."

"We have to get in," Marek said. "To look at Brother Marcel's cell, to get the key that is there."

"But how, Andre? How do we get in?"

Marek stared silently at the bridge for a long time. Finally, he said, "We swim."

Chris shook his head. "No way." The bridge pylons in the water were sheer, the stones green and slippery with algae. "We'd never climb there."

"Who said anything about climbing?" Marek said.

09:27:33.

Chris gasped as he felt the chill of the river. Marek was already pushing away from the sh.o.r.e, drifting downstream with the current. Kate was right behind him, moving to the right, trying to align herself in the center of the stream. Chris plunged after them, glancing nervously toward the sh.o.r.e.

So far, the soldiers hadn't seen them. The gurgle of the river was loud in his ears, the only sound he heard. He turned away, looking forward, toward the approaching bridge. He felt his body tense. He knew he had only one chance-if he missed, the current would sweep him downstream, and it was unlikely that he would ever make his way back up again without being captured.

So this was it.

One chance.

A series of small stone walls had been built out from the sides of the river to accelerate the water, and he moved forward more rapidly now. Directly ahead was a watercourse slide, just before the wheels. They were in the shadow of the bridge. Everything was happening fast. The river was white water, a rushing roar. He could hear the creak of the wooden wheels as he came closer.

Marek reached the first wheel; he grabbed hold of the spokes, swung around, stepped onto a paddle and rose upward, carried by the wheel, then was lost from view.

He made it look easy.

Now Kate had reached the second wheel, near the center of the bridge. Agile, she easily caught the rising spoke, but in the next moment she almost lost her grip, struggling to hold on. She finally swung up onto a paddle, crouching low.

Chris slid down the angled watercourse, grunting as his body bounced over the rocks. The water around him boiled like rapids, the current carrying him swiftly toward the spinning water wheel.

Now it was his turn.

The wheel was close.

Chris reached out for the nearest spoke as it broke water, and grabbed-cold and slippery-hand slid on algae-splinters cut his fingers-losing his grip-he grabbed with his other hand-desperate-the spoke was rising into the air-he couldn't hold it-let go, fell back in the water-grabbed for the next spoke as it came up-missed it-missed it-and then was swept relentlessly onward, back into the sunlight, going downstream.

He'd missed!

d.a.m.n.

The current pushed him onward. Away from the bridge, away from the others.

He was on his own.

09:25:12.

Kate got one knee on the paddle of the water wheel and felt herself lifted clear of the water. Then her other knee, and she crouched down, feeling her body rise into the air. She looked back over her shoulder in time to see Chris heading downstream, his head bobbing in the sunlight. And then she was carried up and over, and into the mill.

She dropped to the ground, crouching in darkness. The wooden boards beneath her feet sagged, and she smelled an odor of rotting damp. She was in a small chamber, with the wheel behind her and a rotating set of wooden-tooth gears creaking noisily to her right. Those gears meshed with a vertical spindle, making the vertical shaft turn. The shaft disappeared up into the ceiling. She felt water splatter on her as she paused, listening. But she could hear nothing but the sound of water and the creaking of the wood.

A low door stood directly ahead. She gripped her dagger and slowly pushed the door open.

Grain hissed down a wooden chute from the ceiling above and emptied into a square wooden bin beside her on the floor. Sacks of grain were piled high in the corner. The air was hazy with yellow dust. Dust covered all the walls, the surfaces and the ladder in the corner of the room that led up to the second floor. She remembered that Chris had once said that this dust was explosive, that a flame would blow the building apart. And indeed, she saw no candles in the room, no candle-holders on the walls. No sort of fire.

Cautiously, she crept toward the ladder. Only when she reached it did she see two men lying among the sacks, snoring loudly, empty wine bottles at their feet. But neither gave any sign of awakening.

She began to climb the ladder.

She pa.s.sed a rotating granite wheel turning noisily against another below. The grain came down a sort of funnel and entered a hole in the center of the upper wheel. Then ground grain came out the sides, spilling through a hole to the floor below.