Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

He led her out of the room and toward the foyer, to the stairs that led to the second story. “You go upstairs, and go back and forth between the windows. Draw all the curtains if they aren’t drawn already, but do it carefully. Keep from being seen. I don’t want anyone spying your shadow and taking a shot at you.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”

“And I want you to watch for men who might be sneaking up on us from different sides. If you see such a man, fire a shot through a window in his general direction. Don’t worry about hitting him, just let him know that you saw him.”

“All right. I can do that.”

“I know you can. And don’t try to open a window—just shoot right through it. Glass isn’t that expensive. You’re worth more than the window, you hear me?”

She blushed, and even the dwindling firelight couldn’t hide it. “Thank you, sir.”

When she was gone, Gideon said to Lincoln through the still-open door, “I’m going to check the other end of the hall, then work my way back. If you have any trouble, fire a warning shot, but fire it into those books. Anywhere else, and it might bounce in this little room.”

“I’m not an idiot, Gideon.”

“I’m only thinking out loud,” he assured him. In the quiet that followed, he really should’ve turned and left; but, like Polly, he found himself reluctant to leave Lincoln alone. “Is there … anything I can get you? Anything you need?”

“I need for my friends to believe I’m still a capable man,” he said. “I will be fine, and so will the rest of you. With you and Grant defending the place, I’m confident that it will stand.”

Gideon wished he hadn’t said that, even if he agreed. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and he stalked off down the hall, praying their best would be enough.

“I thought we’d landed closer to the road than this,” Maria grumbled, tripping over a tree root and scraping her already-raw hand against a trunk when she caught herself.

“So did I.” Henry grimaced with pain, so often that it seemed his whole face was set that way in a permanent expression of discomfort. But a broken arm was plenty of excuse, to say nothing of the assorted scrapes, bumps, and bruises that plagued them both.

Maria ached in places she rarely thought of, and she bled from more injuries than she let on. Besides the cut on her head, under her coat she hid a hard puncture that had made it past her corset stays. She didn’t know how deep it went, and she didn’t know what had caused it. Part of the Black Dove, as they’d kicked free of its tumbling wreckage? A tree branch on the way down? Something else, when she’d landed?

The wound was under her rib cage, on the right side. It left a great stain on her dress, so she kept her coat fastened around herself, even tighter than before. Now it wasn’t just the cold. She needed for Henry to believe that she was all right, because if he thought otherwise, he’d attempt to coddle them both and they’d never get anywhere.

Just this once, she was glad for the cold.

It kept her numb enough to keep walking, hiking between the trees and around them. She hoped they were headed in the right direction, but had no way of knowing for certain. She had no compass, only Henry’s gut feeling; and she did her best not to second-guess him, because she had no idea herself.

Finally, they saw a line where the trees thinned. When they stumbled up out of the woods, they found themselves on a road. It amounted to little more than four sets of ruts in places, but the rain that season had been bad, and it was no secret that the Confederacy was low on money. Public works were suffering along with everything else.

No other vehicles or travelers were present, a fact that bothered Maria. She’d hoped to find carts—of the motorized or horse-drawn variety, she did not care which—and use her wiles to flag one down for a lift. She was exhausted and sore. Henry surely was in no better condition, though he also seemed to be hiding the worst of his pain.

So they trudged forward, southbound and surly, until a benevolent farmer heading in the right direction came along. Maria bribed him with sorrowful eyes, and Henry sealed the deal with the few Confederate coins from his pocket that hadn’t rained across the Georgia countryside as he’d fallen to earth.

The ride was faster than walking, and it gave them time to rest, if not recover.

When the farmer took a turn for the west, he left them on the road and they continued on foot, thankful for the help but wishing for more assistance. It didn’t come.

The day grew later, and the shadows grew longer. Maria didn’t know what they’d do when night fell. They had almost nothing in the way of supplies, much less any source of light, and roaming along a road at night was a surefire way to get robbed or murdered … or so she’d always been told.

She squeezed the battered satchel that still hung around her neck, and yes, her gun was still there. But none of her bullets had survived the trip, so whatever was in the wheel was all she had left. Henry had done better for himself: His shoulder holster was under his coat, and therefore his firearm and supplies had survived the trip more completely.

She doubted their guns would be of much use against the Maynard device, but they made her feel better all the same.

Another hour passed, and her feet were blocks of ice. Her nose had lost all feeling, and her injuries hurt terribly. Henry was flagged as well: His ordinarily fair complexion had gone positively white, his glasses were long gone, and when he wiped at his nose with one torn sleeve, it left a damp, bloody streak on the back of his arm.

And then they heard voices, accompanied by the crush and roll of large wheels on uneven turf. Not far ahead, there were people. Carts. Horses.

And then the dome of the big black cargo dirigible came into view.

Henry stopped and took her arm. “Let’s leave the road. Come around to the side.”

“You want to sneak up on them?”

“I want to watch them before we try to engage. We might learn something. Spot a weak point. If we walk up to them now, they’ll shoot us before we get close.”

She wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t fight him when he led her off the tracks that passed for a highway and back into the trees. They circled quietly around, staying just beyond the clearly visible road, until they were within earshot.

The caravan had stopped. Only a few minutes of eavesdropping told them why.

“God damn this road! How does anyone ever move anything?”

“There’s not much left to move,” someone said wryly, but not loudly. “The state’s bankrupt—the whole country ’s bankrupt. Hell, I’m just I’m glad there’s any road at all. We could be stuck hacking our way through the woods, and then what?”

“Then we’d be stuck in this hellhole forever,” griped someone close. “How are we going to get this thing going again? Frank said we can’t push the crawler’s motor any harder, or we’ll blow it.”

“Then we won’t push the crawler’s motor any harder,” said a new voice—someone who spoke with a commanding bent.

Maria strained to see him, but between the trees she saw nothing but a flash of gray uniform and a shock of hair beneath a cap that looked like it might be red. “There’s the man in charge,” she guessed aloud to Henry, who nodded.

The man in charge said, “We’ll have to dig ourselves out.”

“You’re sure the ship can’t lift us?”

“You saw us try it. Did it work? No? Then yes, I’m sure the ship can’t lift us. We can’t burn through its hydrogen, anyway. Not if we want a way home, when all’s said and done.”