“Don’t ask them anything,” Krisuk said disgustedly. “She’s at Satok’s. You can bet on it. He took her.”
“Then I’m going to get her,” Diego said.
“You can’t!” Iva said. “He can kill youkill us allhe might turn the planet against us again, make it swallow us up. He’s too powerful for any of us to fight.”
“He sure is if you just sit there,” Diego said. “And the planet has no reason at all to like him. If you looked a few yards beyond the ends of your noses, you’d know that.”
“You’re not going alone,” Krisuk said.
“No?”
“No. Come on, Da, Mother. You kids,” Krisuk added addressing his younger brothers and sisters. “You go wake the neighbors. Bring them to the meeting cave.” His siblings looked up at him as if they’d been stunned, unmoving till his five-year-old sister, Marie, jumped to her feet.
“I’ll go!”
“Me, too,” one of the younger brothers said.
Diego had stripped one of the quilts from the beds to cover Dinah, while one of the older sisters began cleaning the dog’s wound.
Seeing that the dog was in good hands, Diego grabbed a knife from its hook above the stove and ran out the door again and up the path.
“Wait!” Krisuk said. “Diego, not that way. You’ll be too good a target.”
“I’m not going to just let him have her because you’re all scared of him,” Diego shouted back, never shortening his stride though the wind battered him. He didn’t hear what Krisuk said in response.
Diego was about to pass the cave entrance when Krisuk caught up with him and pulled him back.
“Look, you can’t just go confront him,” he hollered above the wind. “But remember the upper passage? I’ll bet it leads up to his house.”
Diego paused for a moment. He had read a lot of hard-copy books, and many of his favorites had secret passages and tunnels in them, something he had previously related only to the ventilation systems in ships and space stations. “Maybe so,” he said. “But if it doesn’t, we lose a lot of time. We don’t know how much we’ve lost already.”
Krisuk said, “According to Da, they heard Bunny hollering about an hour ago. Look, I can get them to follow me into the cave. I want to show them what Satok’s done. But they’re too scared to go to his house. It’s a strong house and he’s armed.”
Diego shook his arm loose. “If you want to go that way, then you go that way. I’m going straight to the house. I’m not going to risk Bunny’s life again because your folks don’t want me to stand up to Satok.”
“Okay then, I’ll try the cave and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll come up and help you, so take it easy, okay? Unless you see he’s actuallywell, unless she really needs you right then, don’t jump in until I get there “
Diego was already striding forward. “I’ll handle it,” he said, and began to climb up the hill leading to Satok’s.
The house was visible from the top of the path, a stone building about a half a mile away set back in a meadow. The windows were lit, and as Diego approached, a banshee chorus of howls heralded his arrival.
Satok pinned Bunny to the mattress and snatched at the band of her trousers. She tried to kick him, but he’d pinned one of her knees down with one of his own. Her right arm, stuck between her back and the mattress, groped for her weapon, which was digging into her hip.
All of a sudden the dogs began to howl. Satok swore and rose, grabbing a weapon as he turned toward the door. Almost as an afterthought, he turned on Bunny. As he struck her open handed across the face, her teeth bit into her cheeks with an explosion of pain.
“Don’t move,” he said, waggling his finger with mock playfulness.
Of course, she did move the moment he threw the bolt on the door. It was hopeless to dart past him into the night, and the trap door was too far away, but at least she was able to pull out her ice pick.