They are coming, Little Brother, the big cat said without making a sound, the words appearing in Jak’s mind.
Knew would be, Jak thought back. How many?
Fourteen pairs of feet.
That all? We seven, eight with you…
I cannot help you fight them.
Jak was astonished by this revelation.
Only men with blasters, he thought. You stronger. You faster. Is it this place? Bad place?
It has nothing to do with them, or with these woods. It is what’s coming, what waits for you all over the mountaintop.
The lion gently placed its huge paw on his shoulder. Little Brother, I am not afraid. I just know how it ends, and I know I have no part in it.
How know? How can know if hasn’t happened yet?
Time as we know it is an illusion. It’s an artifact of the physical forms we currently inhabit, of their hardwiring, if you want to look at it that way. The truth is, everything that has ever happened, that ever will happen, is always happening. All of history takes place in the same endless instant. There is no past, no present, no future.
If can see it, tell what happens.
I cannot tell you.
I live? You live?
It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Nothing ever dies, Little Brother.
Wife Christina, baby? Jak thought at once, a great lump rising in his throat.
They are with you, and with me.
The albino shook his head, grimacing. They weren’t. If he knew anything, he knew that much. He had buried them with his own hands.
Not understand.
But you will, Little Brother. Listen. They are close now.
A second later, Jak heard footsteps crunching on road. Many men were running uphill in a skirmish line.
We go, Jak thought as he holstered his handblaster. He ran soundlessly up the road, sprinting on his toes and high kicking. The lion loped easily along a few steps behind.
When Jak rounded a turn and glanced back over his shoulder, the great cat was gone. Simply gone.
There was no crashing noise as it plunged deep into the tangle of deadfall.
No twinkling dust trail spiraling up into the slanting rays of sunlight that pierced the forest canopy.
No goodbye.
“IT’S JAK,” Dean called softly to his father’s back.
Ryan stopped jogging and turned in the middle of the road, as did the others, watching as the albino raced up to him, out of breath. The lion was nowhere to be seen.
The one-eyed man said nothing about the lion; he had other, much more important questions. He listened, grim faced, to the answers Jak gave. They were pretty much what he had expected. The carny chillers were still pursuing them. They were on foot and about a quarter of a mile behind. There were as many as fourteen in the band.
Ryan had three choices, as he saw things. The first was to lead the companions over the mountain at top speed and keep on running, figuring that the coldhearts would eventually wear down and abandon the chase. That outcome was something he knew he couldn’t count on, especially with the Magus giving the orders. There was also the problem of his not knowing the terrain; with a full-out run there’d be no time for recce, and he could get his people boxed in.
Permanently.
His second choice was to find the highest ground and spread his force out to defend it. This would work, he knew, but only if they had enough ammo to do the job, and enough time to reach the peak. Ryan couldn’t tell how far off the summit was because of the densely packed trees. It was possible that the pursuit could overrun them before they reached it.
His last option was to locate a suitable place for an ambush and bushwhack the murdering bastards as they came up the road. That seemed the best course of action to him. At the very least, it would reduce the number of the opposition, and the massed fire might scatter, or even turn the rest back. There was also the possibility that the companions might nail them all—the odds were only two to one. It also gave him the choice of the chilling ground, which was a big plus as far as he was concerned.