Fateri shook his head slowly. Steve peered at the settlement for another long moment and then gestured the party on. ';**
Full dark had fallen by the time they reached it, and Vale was tired. They huddled together, chafing cold faces and frost-clogged nostrils as Fateri crept around the outskirts. Vale wished they'd have time enough for Fateri to teach him how to move so easily through snow, and creep around noiseless and unseen.
When the breed returned, shaking his head, Steve motioned to Peter and Samuel. They walked right up to the nearest building, then cautiously inspected it. Peter tossed twigs toward it but nothing happened. Finally Peter walked right up to one. Peered around its corner, disappeared behind it, and then reappeared on the other side. Just then lights began to appear on all the buildings like an advancing wave. Instinctively they all ducked down, to be roused by Peter's shout.
"It's automatic. C'mon, cowards."
Cautious still, Steve rose, motioned the others toward Peter and Samuel.
"There's no one here. I tripped an automatic relay when I reached the front," Peter said, grinning.
"What kind of place is this, then?" Samuel asked, peering closely at the doorway.
"Could be some kind of unmanned power station," Steve said, but his tone was dubious. He stood squarely in front of the door now, examining the frame, the inset handle. He looked around at the other buildings in the same circle, their blank door-mouths indistinguishable from the one he faced.
He hunkered down, eyeing the doorframe until, with a grunt, he passed his hand over the threshold. Nothing happened. He rose and, using the handle of the power beam, touched the door handle. He gave another grunt and then, as if he expected no result, tried the door.
He dropped where he stood. So did Peter and Samuel. A huge hand grabbed Vale by the shoulder. He was pulled violently off his feet and propelled back the way they had come so fast that his head rocked on his neck. He had kaleidoscopic jumbled impression of Peter, Samuel, and Steve sprawled in the snow by the door, of the circle of lights, of the dark slopes beyond the settlement, of Elric's staring eyes and gaping mouth on one side of him, of Fateri, plunging and lurching through the snow on the other.
This confused him, for he distinctly remembered seeing Fateri, flat on the snow, and Elric staggering and shouting. Now the three of them were racing away from the others as fast as they could. By the time they reached the safety of the darkness beyond the ring of automatic lights, Elric was gasping and groaning. Here Fateri stopped them, pushing Elric and Vale flat into the snow while he crouched, his attitude one of intense concentration. Vale made himself look back, where Peter, Samuel, and Steve lay, plainly visible and just as plainly motionless.
"Are they dead?" Vale asked, trying to keep his voice a whisper, only it came out in a broken rasp.
Fateri gestured abruptly, listening. Suddenly he whirled, his eyes so wide they seemed all whites. He pointed urgently up the slope, pulled at Elric, who was heaving for breath, and taking Vale's arm in cruelly tight fingers, led the way up to the cellar.
"We can't just leave them," Vale protested, trying to pull free. "They may not be dead." "Bad sound," Fateri said, jabbing a finger to the southern sky.
"We can't leave them!" Vale struggled harder.
"No! Chloe say you come. You safe!" Elric said, capturing Vale's other hand and yanking him along.
"Go!" the half-breed urged. "Fast!"
There was no use resisting, so Vale tried to keep up with Elric's long stride and Fateri's jog trot. They did not relinquish their tight holds on him, though he reassured them he wouldn't be silly anymore. It was doubly humiliating: to be half helped along because his legs were shorter than Elric's and less powerful than Fateri's, and because they wouldn't trust him to walk... to run... alone.
They had reached a concealing slope when the bad sound Fateri had heard materialized into a stolplane. It circled the settlement twice at low altitude before squatting down, blocking from the watchers all sight of the fallen men, and of whoever emerged from the vehicle.
Fateri waited no longer but renewed his grasp on Vale's right hand and started to move. Elric did not, and Vale felt as if his other arm would come out of its socket. His cry of pain stopped Fateri, and both of them stood looking down at the fallen bulk of the Viking, his fingers seemingly welded to Vale's forearm. Fateri knelt down and began to slap the man's face.
"What's wrong?" Vale asked, his voice breaking again as he imagined himself forever locked to the giant.
Fateri grunted as he rose and began to pry the thick fingers loose.
"Is he dead?" Vale demanded, slapping at Fateri's hands.
"Not dead. Sleep. Not duck good."
"Asleep? We can't leave him. He'd die in the snow."
"He not die. They find. We go. Go fast."
Fateri got Elric's fingers loose but their viselike grip was nothing to Fateri's claw-hold, nor the supple strength of the breed as he dragged the reluctant Vale onward.
"We can't leave them all. We can't, Fateri. I'll help you with Elric. We can't leave him."
Fateri only grunted at his protests, jerking him roughly forward if he slowed so much as half a step behind. Suddenly Vale realized that Fateri was striking off to the lower end of the forest, where they had been garnering boughs scant hours before.
"That's not the way, Fateri. Where are you taking me?"
"They follow. No find track."
Fateri was jogging faster now, because the thick ever-greens had kept the ground remarkably clear of snow. Fateri came up against a huge trunk and stopped. He motioned for Vale to climb up into the tree and then roughly boosted the boy to the splintered end of the first limb.
"They'd find us here, Fateri," he protested. His buttocks were sharply prodded to make him climb higher.
"Stop." Fateri reached the same limb and then stepped around him. The breed took one of Vale's hands and fastened it around his wide leathern belt. Then guided the other to the limb directly below them. "Hold. Follow."
Scared, resentful. Vale did as he was told. At least Fateri moved cautiously, giving Vale time to find his own footing before moving on. Then suddenly, they were both in the air, a scream wrenched from Vale's mouth, to be cut off abruptly as he hit the ground. Or rather the thick myrtle bushes into which Fateri had launched them.
"Hurt?" Fateri asked with no sympathy in his voice.
"No!" Vale was too filled now with hate and anger to allow room for pain.
When he would have waded out of the thicket, Fateri directed him deeper into the growth, carefully moving the branches so as not to leave further evidence of their passage. Twice more, Fateri had them aloft and once, when they had to traverse a wide clearing, he pushed Vale on ahead, then brushed the snow with an evergreen branch to cover their footsteps.
Once Fateri was evidently satisfied that they had confused pursuers, he began to trot purposefully through the still dark forest. Shaken emotionally by the double desertion. Vale doggedly kept up.
Suddenly they emerged on a slope, the ridge that sheltered the cellar, black above them. Below, the settlement was still bathed in light. It was too far away for them to make out details such as bodies by an entryproof door, but the thud-whomp of the stolplane was audible on the thin cold night air. Fateri grunted, then pointed out the cluster of colored winkers that outlined the stol as it quartered the slope they had left.
"They'll find Elric!"
Fateri grunted and, taking Vale's hand, jerked him forward. Vale didn't take his eyes from the winking lights: red/ green/blue/white, the blue delineating a narrow PVA as the stol went into hover.
Was Steve inside that? And Peter and Samuel? Wasn't it better for Elric to be found than for him to freeze to death? Why had they all so easily assumed that the people of this time were unfriendly? Surely property must be protected from asocial activities but that did not mean general inhumanity. The thought of the cellar without Steve, even without Peter and Samuel - with Fateri the only other male - was suddenly unbearable.
As if Fateri sensed Vale's thoughts, his grip tightened and he gave him an admonitory yank.
"Fast!"
They were nearly to the cellar. He could see the narrow line of light. Would Chloe be watching? Had she seen? Had she known what would happen? The thought burned Vale's mind so fiercely that he gave a cry and stumbled.
"Vale! Thou'rt not hurt?"
Chloe's voice was clearly audible. Audible, too, in Vale's mind was Steve's mistaken assurance. "I'm in no danger as long as the heir apparent is along."
Stunned by the realization of what Steve had meant, Vale did not resist as Fateri pulled him up the final snow-slick rise to the cellar.
"Elric, too, Fateri?" Chloe asked as the breed dragged Vale the last few feet.
"You knew!" Vale found his voice. And found strength enough to free his arm. "You knew what would happen to Steve. And Peter and Samuel."
"Vale, sweeting." In Chloe's soothing voice was an oddly disturbing note. "Vale, come in, dear heart. Come, we've hot fish stew to give thee strength."
Chloe even took a step toward him... a step out of the cellar! She took another step and grabbed his hand, sweeping him into her arms and back into the cellar. As she pressed his cheek against hers, her hands were burning warm on his half-frozen flesh. They ran up and down his body before embracing him tightly again.
Chloe was glad he was home. She had hot food for him. She had actually stepped out of the cellar to greet him.
Then she held him from her and looked deeply into his eyes. Looked with an expression in their blue depths that made him very nervous somehow. And he was frightened. More frightened than he had been when the last shift started, or when Steve had fallen by the door, or Fateri had pushed him off the tree branch. Frightened to the very marrow of his bones. He had seen that look before, seen Chloe look at Steve that way, and Burleigh, and, once, even Elric. And each of them had been shifted, with no warning. Shifted into a time not their own.
Before either Chloe or Fateri could stop him, he ducked out of the cellar, his feet skidding on the trampled snow. Even as he stumbled and slipped, sobbing, his only thought was that in a society that protected its belongings, there would be order and congeniality. There would still be a Mother for him somewhere.
The End