“Well, Hot Stuff, what do we do now?”
For a change, I had an answer for this infuriating question.
“This road has to go somewhere. Just the fact that it exists indicates we aren’t alone in this dimension.”
“I thought we already knew that,” Guido said under his breath. “That’s why we’re here.”
I gave him my best dark glare.
“I believe there was some debate as to whether or not we were being lied to about Aahz being held prisoner. If there’s a road here, it’s a cinch that neither my partner nor the ones he was chasing built it. That means we have native types to deal with . .. possibly hostile.”
“Right,” Massha put in quickly. “Put a sock in it, Guido. I want to hear our plan of action, and I don’t like being kept waiting by hecklers.”
The bodyguard frowned, but kept his silence.
“Okay. Now, what we’ve got to do is follow this road and find out where it goes. Hug the side of the road and be ready to disappear if you hear anybody coming. We don’t know what the locals look like, and until I have a model to work from, it’s pointless for me to try to disguise us.”
With those general marching orders, we made our way through the dark along the road, moving quietly to avoid tipping our hand to anyone ahead of us. In a short time we came up to our first decision point. The road we were on ended abruptly when it met another, much larger thoroughfare. My assistants looked at me expectantly. With a shrug I made the arbitrary decision and led them off to the right down this new course. As we went, I reflected with some annoyance that even though both Massha and Guido knew that I was as new to this terrain as they were, it somehow fell to me to choose the path.