Homeward Bound

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jak Lauren had gone for a sec man with a table knife, cutting the man's forearm to the bone before he was clubbed to the rush-covered floor.

Ryan, J.B. and Krysty didn't resist.

Trader used to say that there was a time to fight. But more important was the time you decided not to fight.

The only casualty had been the old servant who'd blown the whistle on Ryan Cawdor.

Following the cry that identified the one-eyed man as the missing son of the ville, there was a moment of utter silence. Everyone reacted in different ways to the shock.

If Ryan had been counting the beats of his own heart, he would have reached twenty before anything happened in the banquet hall.

Harvey Cawdor lifted his porcine face from his dish very slowly, staring at Ryan with an expression of growing horror.

Lady Rachel unfolded her hands and carefully laid each one — as if it were a rare piece of porcelain — on the linen cloth in front of her. Her face didn't alter as she absorbed the news.

Jabez Pendragon Cawdor took a dozen slow steps backward in the direction of the fireplace. His eye blinked rapidly, and his hand began to creep toward the dart gun in his belt.

"Ryan? My brother?" Harvey muttered, shaking his head stupidly, bits of food spraying all around him. "How can?.."

"Dead," Jabez said quietly. "You're dead." Then loudly, "Dead for twenty years! Bones and blood, but you shall stay dead, Uncle!"

He drew the blaster and aimed it at the center of Ryan's chest, finger white on the slim trigger, lips peeled back off his yellowed teeth in an expression of tigerish delight.

Ryan had known this moment would come one day. If you lived your life by the blaster, it was certain that eventually you'd die by it. You'd hear a cold voice out of the darkness telling you not to turn around, or meet it face-to-face. In the end, they were both much the same.

He heard Krysty, sounding a far way off, calling his name, but he sat there and looked into the eyes of his nephew, waiting for the shock of death.

Which wasn't to be that day.

The old man moved first, lightning fast for his age. Mouth working, he stood there, stunned with everyone else. "Lord Cawdor, forgive me!" he shrieked, like the eldritch howl of a midnight banshee.

He threw himself at Jabez Cawdor, clawing at the young man's face. Ryan heard the distinctive hiss of the dart gun, and the servant's body jerked backward like a gaffed salmon. With arms flung out, he toppled over, blood frothing from his open mouth, darkening the front of his uniform.

He lay there, legs twitching, dulled eyes staring blankly at the vaulted ceiling of the hall as if he'd never noticed it before. His lips moved as he tried to speak, and he struggled to turn his head toward Ryan. He said something that might have been "Sorry," and then he died.

Jabez spit at him and wrestled with the stubborn mechanism for recocking the blaster. The sec men started to move in, and Jak leaped to his feet, brandishing the knife.

The stones would have been awash with blood if Lady Rachel had not acted. She raised her hand and snapped out a command that checked her son's murderous rage and stopped the sec men from opening up with their carbines.

"Alive," she shouted. "Take them all alive! Chain Ryan and lock up the others. Triple guard."

So it happened. Jak was carried away unconscious, bleeding from a gash on his temple. The others walked — escorted by sec men — back to their chambers.

On the way, Ryan looked around and saw that the tall sergeant was still in charge of them.

"One question," he said.

"What?"

"The old man who died."

"Yeah. What of him?"

"Who was he? Didn't recognize him."

"He knew you, didn't he, Lord Ryan Cawdor? You didn't even try to deny it. You sat there like a kid messed his pants."

Ryan shook his head. "Didn't intend to come and dine with Harvey. Wasn't the plan."

"What was?" The sec officer held up his gauntleted fist to halt the escort. "Come on, Lord Ryan. You'll tell me sooner anyway."

"I'll tell you anyway. Why not?"

"Murder the family and then rule yourself as the baron of Front Royal?"

"Yes to the first and mebbe to the second. You still didn't tell me his name."

The sergeant moved closer, grinning. "You'll like this, Lord Ryan. Remember little Kenny Morse?"

"Course. If'n it hadn't been for Kenny, I'd have died at fifteen. He saved me from my brother."

"And you know what..."

"He was murdered," Ryan interrupted. "I heard that recently."

"That was his brother, Will, just betrayed you in there. Funny, isn't it?"

"No."

Some miles away, deep in the forest of the Shens, Nathan Freeman was leading Doc Tanner and Lori Quint along winding paths. Picking his way carefully, he stopped frequently to listen for any sound of man or beast. They were heading toward the rambling fortress of Front Royal.

The chain around Ryan's throat bit into his skin and was drawn so tight that breathing was difficult. It held his head still, strained up and back. The steel of the handcuffs was pitted with age, but the action was greased and clicked home, and squeezed so hard that the ends of his fingers were swollen and sore. But he'd felt worse.

At least the sergeant hadn't taken the opportunity to give him a beating, merely checking that the cuffs and the throttle chain were secure. He fixed the end of the links to a heavy iron ring that was built into the stone of the wall.

"Now you wait, my lord."

"I wasn't going to move, anyway. Could you put out the lamps? They'll disturb my sleep."

The man laughed at that, tweaking him by the cheek with the thick leather glove. "If you weren't who you are... and if you weren't going where you're going... I swear I could almost like you."

"When will my brother come?"

The sec man sniffed as he straightened up. "Baron's not well, seeing you come up like a skeleton out of the tomb. Had himself some drink, did the baron. On the morrow he has to ride out to Fishers' Hill. There's a hunt fixed. Boars. Baron wouldn't miss that. And it'll give you a day to sweat on it."

"Tomorrow night, then?"

"Figures. There, I've dimmed all the lamps but one. Need that to watch you through the judas hole in the door. Sleep well, Lord Cawdor." Somehow, that time, there didn't seem the same element of sarcasm when he called him by the title.

The door closed with a solid thunk, and Ryan heard the key turn in the lock. A double bolt slammed home. The sec man had told him that the other three were also locked in their rooms, but none of them was to be tied. And Jak had recovered consciousness from the blow to his head.

They would all take their turn being interrogated by Baron Harvey Cawdor.

There was a warm glow from the lamp that stood on an old, polished round table near the barred window. The draperies had been closed, leaving only a chink near the top. It was full dark outside.

From where he lay on the floor of the chamber, Ryan could hear the noises of the ville as life went on. He guessed that the news of his return would already have raced through the big building until the meanest scullery boy would know that Ryan Cawdor was back at Front Royal.

"Oiled and ready to tear some ass," Ryan said out loud, managing a wry grin. He was resigned to that fact of his imminent death. It was simply a question of how and when. J.B., Jak and Krysty would also perish. That was also destined. There was a slim chance that Doc and the girl might get away. Ryan hoped so. He liked Lori, but he was coming to love the eccentric old man.

The only hope left now to Ryan was that they might get careless at the end and give him a chance to at least settle the old debt by killing his brother. He could do it easily enough with his bare hands, given just a couple of seconds and a scant yard of space.

Somewhere he could catch the distant sound of a piano playing, and he wondered who was at the keyboard. An aunt of his had come to the ville when Ryan had been eight years old, an immensely tall, skinny woman whose name escaped him. It was some sort of flower, he thought. She'd loved dancing and had teased the solemn young boy by snatching him as they'd passed in one of the long corridors. Pressing him to her flat, bony chest, she'd called out, "Heel and toe, heel and toe, one-two-three, one-two-three. Lovely, Ryan, lovely."

As the wasting sickness that had killed her had begun to set its teeth in her body, she'd grown more melancholy. Once she'd been playing an old tape of music, a dance tune called a tango. She'd looked up at him from the thin birdlike face, with eyes bright and fevered, the bones scraping at the inside of her skin.

"They say the tango is a merry rhythm, Ryan. It is not. It is infinitely mournful."

She'd died a week later and been buried in the family plot with the rest of the line of Cawdors, back to the long winter.

Ryan didn't recognize the tune the piano was playing. After a while it ceased, and he slipped into an uneasy sleep.

The rattle of the spyhole woke him, and he peered across the room. The lamp was burning low, near to guttering out, and the chamber smelled of oil. There was a momentary flash of brighter light as the door opened a narrow crack and then closed again. Someone slipped through the gap, and for a split second Ryan allowed himself a glimmer of hope, knowing the foolishness of such a thought.

He heard a voice, speaking with a frighteningly cold intensity. "On your life, trooper. I'll spill your heart blood myself. Not until I knock to be let out. Understand?"

One of the sec men murmured his assent as the door closed.

There was plenty of light for Ryan to immediately recognize Lady Rachel Cawdor, wearing the same dark clothes and carrying the same worn leather purse. Without a word she knelt at his side, drawing a slim-bladed stiletto from her belt. The point rested for a moment on the material of his pants, just above his groin. She began to push, the steel slicing through the material, touching cold on the flesh of his stomach.

"Now," she said.