William Dietrich - Getting back

"Who the hell is that?" their first recruit, Peter, asked in bewilderment.

"I recognize them from Erehwon," Ethan muttered. "Rugard's clan."

"Who?"

"There's some convicts who know we have the transmitter," Daniel reluctantly explained. "We thought we'd left them far behind, but obviously we didn't."

Peter looked at the trio with alarm. "We've got the morally impaired after us?" he asked in disbelief. "We have to fight for it?"

"If we want to get back," Daniel replied grimly.

"You didn't tell us about this!"

"No, I hoped we wouldn't have to. Now we have to decide what to do."

The three convicts stood shoulder to shoulder at the end of the dam like an impassable wall. "You left without saying goodbye!" one of the ominous trio called. Gallo, Daniel thought his name was. Extortionist, if memory served. Bullying or sniveling, depending on who he was with. The man pointed toward the groaning Ned with the tip of his spear. "So we dispensed with hello, as well! That's just a warning!"

"A warning of what?" Daniel said, trying to think as he stalled.

"There's a toll for crossing this particular waterway! One stolen transmitter!"

"Daniel, let's rush those bastards," Ethan growled. "We outnumber them."

"No, we're not ready for that." He glanced back. "We haven't talked this over, and there are a lot of women. I don't want to get anyone killed. Maybe we can find another way around them." His group quickly filed back across the catwalk in retreat. Yet even as they did so, four more of Rugard's men appeared at the other end of the dam. The tallest one was easily recognizable, his scarred face memorable. Wrench, Daniel remembered. A brutal enforcer before he came to Australia.

"The toll is the same this way too!" Wrench called.

They were trapped, and without cover or room to maneuver on the crest of the dam.

"How the devil did they get ahead of us?" Ethan wondered. "And behind us? And where's Rugard?"

"We haven't been moving that fast," Daniel said. "Somehow they guessed where we're going: maybe Ico helped them. Who knows? I was foolish not to hurry, but I thought they'd have given up by now."

"Why would they give up? We've got the only way back." Ethan's tone was gloomy.

"What are we going to do?" a woman named Iris asked plaintively. She was looking from one end of the dam to the other.

Daniel was silent, thinking.

Raven came up out of the gearhouse.

"Rugard's goons are here," he told her quietly. "It's your transmitter. Your ticket home. And these people's lives. Do you want to fight for it, or not?"

She glanced around quickly, taking in the situation.

"Better hurry before the Warden gets here!" Gallo shouted. "The toll goes up then!"

"If we give it up and Rugard uses it, he'll simply disappear," Amaya warned. "The world will never know what's happening here. Or believe him, even if he tells."

"But we didn't tell these people about this danger," Daniel added. The others had clustered around. "It's a terrible place for a battle."

Raven shook her head. "I can't ask you to fight so I can get back."

"Damn right," the injured Ned said. "It wasn't right not to tell us about this."

"I didn't want to worry anyone," Daniel said. "You've had worries enough."

No one said anything.

"Well, it's a group choice," he went on. "We can give up the transmitter."

They considered that.

Finally Ned sighed and spoke up again, his voice strained from the pain in his shoulder. "Daniel, you weren't right for not trusting us with the full story, but I'm also tired of being picked on by men like these. These are the kind of bastards who killed my best friend. Their force is divided and we outnumber both groups combined."

"Yes," Ethan said. "Let's fight."

Raven had been looking about. "There's a better way," she said quickly. "Let's just jump into the river."

The others looked down the face of the dam, as high as a three-story building. "That's a good drop," Iris objected.

"And the river's sluggish," Daniel said. "We can't swim faster than they can run. They'll just follow us down the valley and we'll lose all our supplies too." He glanced around, trying to summon some of the tactics he'd once studied on dry, dead pages. They outnumbered their antagonists, yes, but the narrowness of the dam crest made it impossible to flank Rugard's watchdogs and bring their superiority to bear. It was like the narrow defile at Erehwon except here the situation was reversed: it wasn't Tucker holding Rugard off, it was Rugard's men holding them in place until the Warden could arrive with reinforcements. "Maybe a few of the men could swim downstream and circle back around," he thought aloud. "Take them from behind."

"We don't have time for that," Raven said. "Who knows when Rugard might show up? And we didn't come all this way to give away everything, either. Amaya, do you think we could get those spillway gears working?"

"Maybe with that old wheel and the levers. They're rusted, but with enough men pulling…"

"What good will that do?" Ethan asked.

"The catwalk supports are half rotted," Raven explained hurriedly. "We lash our supplies onto the decking, use the tools we've picked up to hack at its base, and send the platform over the dam. With any luck it becomes a raft that people can cling to on their way downstream."

"Meanwhile," Amaya added excitedly, grasping her idea, "we open these gates for an instant flood. That pushes us downstream and leaves Rugard's men stranded on either side of the dam. Maybe it buys us enough time to get to the coast and try the transmitter!"

Daniel looked at his two female strategists with wonder. "Let me get this straight. You want to start our own torrent and jump into it? With our supplies lashed to a rotting catwalk?"

They nodded.

He shrugged. "Makes sense to me. Ethan?"

He looked down the gearhouse steps. "We'll have to hold them off while we work. There's some deck gratings down there. Maybe we can pry them up for temporary shields."

Daniel smiled. "Okay. Two men behind each shield. Women to chop down the catwalk. The rest of the men down here on those levers." He began snapping out names, the authority coming naturally to him now, glancing at the blocking convicts at either end of the dam. "It's time to leave again without saying goodbye."

The fugitives pried up two of the steel floor gratings on one side of the gearhouse and carried them up the stairs, putting one on each side of the central catwalk. Two men took position behind each grating, spears pointed out. Meanwhile the old tools salvaged from the ruins were rapidly distributed. Some of the women dropped down into the shallow water running over the spillway and cautiously felt their way under the catwalk, holding on to its posts as they moved. Other women carried their packs to the decking of the catwalk overhead, hastily lashing their belongings in place even as their sisters began hacking at the posts beneath them. With each blow, the wooden bridge trembled. Meanwhile the remaining men descended into the gearhouse to pry at the frozen workings of the dam spillway gates.

Rugard's men watched uncertainly. Belatedly, Wrench and Gallo realized that the entire party they were hunting had disappeared as easy targets: some men were crouched behind some kind of metal mesh, others had hidden in the gearhouse, and the last of the women were dropping down to muck about in the spillway underneath the catwalk, almost entirely hidden as they bent over. Something was going on, and it wasn't surrender. The men glanced nervously at each other: none had forgotten the shocking roar and concussion of the bewildering explosion back at Erehwon. Did the transmitter thieves have more witchery up their sleeve? While the convicts had the fugitives pinned, their quarry outnumbered them. Gallo wished Rugard were here, but it would take a couple of days to find and bring him. Maybe they should just back off and trail these troublemakers.