Then his attention was drawn to the alleyway, where he heard running feet and the clatter of armor. Through the fence he saw Robert de Kere with seven soldiers. The soldiers were looking in every direction as they ran — searching for them.
Why? Chris wondered, peering around the vat. Why were they still being pursued? What was so important about them that de Kere would ignore an enemy attack and try instead to kill them?
Apparently the searchers liked the smell in the alley no better than Chris did, because soon de Kere barked an order and they all ran back up the alley, toward the street.
“What was that about?” Chris whispered finally.
Marek just shook his head.
And then they heard men shouting, and again they heard the soldiers running back down the street. Chris frowned. How could they have overheard? He looked at Marek, who seemed troubled, too. From outside the courtyard, they heard de Kere shout: “Ici! Ici!” Probably, de Kere had left a man behind. That must be it, Chris thought. Because he hadn’t whispered loudly enough to be heard. Marek started forward, then hesitated. Already de Kere and his men were climbing over the fence — eight men altogether; they could not fight them all.
“André,” Chris said, pointing to the vat. “It’s lye.”
Marek grinned. “Then let’s do it,” he said, and he leaned against the vat.
They all put their shoulders against the wood and, with effort, managed to push the vat over. Frothing alkali solution sloshed onto the ground and flowed toward the soldiers. The odor was acrid. The soldiers instantly recognized what it was — any contact with that liquid would burn flesh — and they scrambled back up the fence, getting their feet off the ground. The fence posts began to sizzle and hiss when the lye touched them. The fence wobbled with the weight of all the men; they shouted and scrambled back into the alley.
“Now,” Marek said. He led them deeper into the tanning yard, up over a shed, and then out into another alley.
:
It was now late afternoon, and the light was beginning to fade; ahead they saw the burning farmhouses, which cast hard flickering shadows on the ground. Earlier, there had been attempts to put out the fires, but they were now abandoned; the thatch burned freely, crackling as burning strands rose into the air.
They were following a narrow path that ran among pigsties. The pigs snorted and squealed, distressed by the fires that burned nearby.
Marek skirted the fires, heading toward the south gate, where they had first come in. But even from a distance, they could see that the gate was the scene of heavy fighting; the entrance was nearly blocked by the bodies of dead horses; Arnaut’s soldiers had to scramble over the corpses to reach the defenders inside, who fought bitterly with axes and swords.
Marek turned away, doubling back through the farm area.
“Where are we going?” Chris said.
“Not sure,” Marek said. He was looking up at the curtain wall around the town. Soldiers ran along it, heading toward the south gate to join in the fight. “I want to get up on that wall.”
“Up on the wall?”
“There.” He pointed to a narrow, dark opening in the wall, with steps going up. They emerged on top of the town wall. From their high vantage point, they could see that more of the town was being engulfed in flames; fires were closer to the shops. Soon all Castelgard would be burning. Marek looked over the wall at the fields beyond. The ground was twenty feet below. There were some bushes about five feet high, which looked soft enough to break their impact. But it was getting hard to see.
“Stay loose,” he said. “Keep your body relaxed.”
“Loose?” Chris said.
But already Kate had swung her body over and was hanging from the wall. She released her grip, and fell the rest of the way, landing on her feet like a cat. She looked up at them and beckoned.
“It’s pretty far down,” Chris said. “I don’t want to break a leg. . . .”
From the right, they heard shouts. Three soldiers ran along the wall, their swords raised.
“Then don’t,” Marek said, and jumped. Chris jumped after him in the twilight, landed on the ground, grunting and rolling. He got slowly to his feet. Nothing broken.
He was feeling relieved and rather pleased with himself, when the first of the arrows whined past his ear and thunked into the ground between his feet. Soldiers were shooting at them from the wall above. Marek grabbed his arm and ran to dense undergrowth ten yards away. They dropped down and waited.
Almost immediately, more arrows whistled overhead, but this time they came from outside the castle walls. In the growing darkness, Chris could barely make out soldiers in green-and-black surcoats on the hill below.
“Those’re Arnaut’s men!” Chris said. “Why are they shooting at us?”
Marek didn’t answer; he was crawling away, his belly flat to the ground. Kate crawled after him. An arrow hissed past Chris, so close that the shaft tore his doublet at the shoulder, and he felt a brief streak of pain.
He threw himself flat on the ground and followed them.
* * *
28:12:39
“There’s good news and bad news,” Diane Kramer said, walking into Doniger’s office just before nine in the morning. Doniger was at his computer, pecking at the keyboard with one hand while he held a can of Coke in the other.
“Give me the bad news,” Doniger said.
“Our injured people were taken to University Hospital. When they got there last night, guess who was on duty? The same doctor who treated Traub in Gallup. A woman named Tsosie.”
“The same doctor works both hospitals?”
“Yes. She’s mostly at UH, but she does two days a week at Gallup.”
“Shit,” Doniger said. “Is that legal?”
“Sure. Anyway, Dr. Tsosie went over our techs with a fine-tooth comb. She even put three of them through an MRI. She reserved the scanner specially, as soon as she heard it was an accident involving ITC.”
“An MRI?” Doniger frowned. “That means she must have known that Traub was split.”
“Yes,” Kramer said. “Because apparently they put Traub through an MRI. So she was definitely looking for something. Physical defects. Body misalignments.”
“Shit,” Doniger said.
“She also made a big deal about her quest, getting everybody at the hospital huffy and paranoid, and she called that cop Wauneka in Gallup. It seems they’re friends.”
Doniger groaned. “I need this,” he said, “like I need another asshole.”
“Now you want the good news?”
“I’m ready.”
“Wauneka calls the Albuquerque Police. The chief goes down to the hospital himself. Couple of reporters. Everybody sitting around waiting for the big news. They’re expecting radioactive. They’re expecting glow in the dark. Instead — big embarrassment. All the injuries are pretty minor. Mostly, it’s flying glass. Even the shrapnel wounds are superficial; the metal’s just embedded in the skin layer.”
“Water shields must have slowed the fragments down,” Doniger said.
“I think so, yes. But people are pretty disappointed. And then the final event — the MRI — the coup de grâce — is a bust three times running. None of our people has any transcription errors. Because, of course, they’re just techs. Albuquerque chief is pissed. Hospital administrator is pissed. Reporters leave to cover a burning apartment building. Meanwhile some guy with kidney stones almost dies because they can’t do an MRI, because Dr. Tsosie’s tied up the machine. Suddenly, she’s worried about her job. Wauneka’s disgraced. They both run for cover.”
“Perfect,” Doniger said, pounding the table. He grinned. “Those dipshits deserve it.”
“And to top it all off,” Kramer said triumphantly, “the French reporter, Louise Delvert, has agreed to come tour our facility.”
“Finally! When?”
“Next week. We’ll give her the usual bullshit tour.”
“This is starting to be an ultragood day,” Doniger said. “You know, we might actually get this thing back in the bottle. Is that it?”
“The media people are coming at noon.”
“That belongs under bad news,” Doniger said.
“And Stern has found the old prototype machine. He wants to go back. Gordon said absolutely not, but Stern wants you to confirm that he can’t go.”
Doniger paused. “I say let him go.”
“Bob. . . .”
“Why shouldn’t he go?” Doniger said.
“Because it’s unsafe as hell. That machine has minimal shielding. It hasn’t been used in years, and it’s got a history of causing big transcription errors on the people who did use it. He might not even come back at all.”
“I know that.” Doniger waved his hand. “None of that’s core.”
“What’s core?” she said, confused.
“Baretto.”
“Baretto?”
“Do I hear an echo? Diane, think, for Christ’s sake.”
Kramer frowned, shook her head.
“Put it together. Baretto died in the first minute or two of the trip back. Isn’t that right? Someone shot him full of arrows, right at the beginning of the trip.”