Chapter Nineteen

Zeb had just enough time to feel a metallic thrill of fear, then his back hit solid ground—a surface that was slightly yielding, not stony. The impact sent slivers of pain through the sore muscles in his back, but he knew he'd fallen only a couple of yards. He wasn't injured.

He lay there a moment, dragging in a couple of pained breaths, then sat up.

He was in a ditch. The road beside it turned leftward, and the car's taillights were still readily visible. The vehicle had pulled to a halt and a pair of Sonnenkrieger guards had advanced, one of them speaking to the driver.

Zeb stared at what was beyond the guards. He sighed. It wasn't worth cursing. Just another obstacle. One he'd have to get past fast.

The guard talking to the driver saluted and straightened. The car moved forward, across the narrow wooden bridge, through the gateway, into the castle beyond.

Ritter dismissed the man he'd introduced as Major Tryg, then conducted Swana from the car through the manor house doorway carved with wooden reliefs showing tall, long-haired women gardening or playing on a riverbank. Beyond the door was a small anteroom, and beyond that a hallway lined by standing suits of armor and tapestries showing long-dead warriors on a boar hunt in dark forest. There was dust in the air but none to be seen on the armor or the floors. "Surely your memories are returning to you now," Ritter said.

Swana considered her answer. "Not so much memories," she said, "but I feel happy here, for no reason I can remember." She was pleased with the lie. It sounded convincing to her.

"A good sign, a good sign." He led her down the hall, through a door to the left, up the flight of wooden stairs beyond it. A hall on the second floor brought them to a room that had to be a laboratory or workroom of the manor's owner. It was filled with tables, each one covered with books, papers, stones carved into primitive manlike shapes. On the walls were hung maps of the Burian lands and the world. Among them was a map showing what the ancients thought the outlines of the world to be. Also on the walls, curiously, were bows and quivers full of arrows.

Swana offered Ritter a smile she didn't feel. "Messy as ever."

"Some things never change." He took a pile of books and a winter coat from a low stuffed chair and deposited them, with complete disregard for the papers and goods already there, on a table. "Please. Sit. I'll fetch your father."

"Thank you." She sat.

As soon as he was gone and the door closed behind him, she jumped up again. Maybe, in this moment of their inattentiveness, she could escape. Or perhaps she could find out something that would be of value to the Foundation members. But which? She didn't have much time.

Glass doors opened onto a small curved balcony. She opened them and stepped out. The balcony overlooked the small cobblestone courtyard at the heart of the castle. Ritter's car was still parked before the manor doors, the driver leaning against it, lighting a cigarette. He glanced up and saw her, gave her a friendly wave. She waved back.

There were ground-level doors leading up into the wall towers, the bigger opening leading through the wall and to freedom beyond . . .

And a shadow. It walked like a man across the cobblestones, a black silhouette like the god of death. Its head was flanked by two black bars protruding from its shoulders. Silently, it headed straight for the driver. But it stopped for a moment, looking up at her.

She felt a thrill of fear. Zeb, it had to be Zeb, and the bars had to be rifles on his back. But how could he have gotten into the castle, past the guards, without alerting anyone? Perhaps it was the spirit of Death after all.

It turned its attention from her and began its slow movement toward the driver again. Released from its spell of fear, Swana turned away and moved quickly back into the room.

No, she couldn't think that way. It had to be Zeb. And if he was there, risking his life for her, she had to make his risk worth something.

With frantic speed, she moved from table to table, looking at everything, trying to sort the important from the irrelevant.

From one table lit by a desk lamp she took a handful of handwritten papers on which the words for god and sun appeared often. These went under the waistband of her skirt.

One table was covered with odd objects. Black rubber egg-shaped balls. Stuffed toy bears. Puppets—some of Sonnenkrieger, some of peasant men and women—the size of a hand but not connected to controlling strings. Each one was in a small wooden box without a lid, and also in each box was a sort of paperweight—a gold arrowhead encased in glass. The paperweights were of a curious shape, with four indentations along one edge. She took a puppet of a handsome Sonnenkrieger, superior to many of the others for the quality of its making, the extraordinary skill that had gone into the painting of its face; she slid that into one garter under her skirt and picked up the corresponding paperweight. The ridges now made sense; her fingers slid into them, giving her a secure hold on the smooth glass. She nested the paperweight between her breasts, pushing it further down in her brassiere.

On another table she found more papers, these bearing wax seals, one of them bearing Aevar's signature; she folded them and tucked them into the other garter.

And she fancied she heard a faint cry, a dull impact, from below the balcony.

The next sound could not have been the product of imagination. Male voices outside the door grew in volume, one of them bearing the distinct accent of the lower class of the Burian northlands: " . . . feed her first, I think, you idiot."

Ritter's voice suggested that he didn't take the insult seriously. "Well, of course. I meant, after."

Swana hurried back to the chair Ritter had cleaned for her. She sat and composed herself even as the door handle lowered.

The door slammed open, propelled by a heavy, red-faced man. He looked young enough, but his expansive stomach and gold-rimmed glasses suggested that he was of middle years. He wore dark green pants and a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up in cuffs at his elbows, and his smile was bright enough to add illumination to the room.

"Adima," he said, his voice booming, "welcome . . ." Then his voice trailed off and his smile faded.

He turned to Ritter. "What sort of joke is this?"

Ritter frowned at him. "Joke?"

"This is not Adima."

Ritter looked at her, disbelief on his face.

Swana hardened herself for what was to come and gave him a little nod, apologetic but not conciliatory. "It's true," she said. "But you were very sweet, General. Adima is a very lucky girl." Or would be, she thought, if she weren't dead. 

The other man's face reddened further. He advanced on Swana, head lowered, like a wrestler moving in on an opponent. "Where is she?"

"Where you won't find her if you treat me badly."

The man grabbed her upper arms. She jumped at the contact but did not look away from him. "You have no idea of how badly we could treat you," he shouted. "Where is she?"

Ritter moved up so his face was just over the shoulder of the other man. From Swana's position, it looked as though the other man had just sprouted a second head. "Ordinarily I might object to a lady being treated this way," Ritter's head said. His voice was oddly reasonable. "But you have made me look ridiculous. I do not appreciate it. So I may permit Doctor—this man to do exactly as he wishes to you."

"That would be foolish." It was taking every bit of her concentration to keep Swana from flinching away from their threats, their experienced intensity, but she was managing. For the moment.

Then she smelled it. A stray breeze entered through the balcony doors she'd opened, bringing with it the odor of soot. Of char.

There was a thump from the balcony, heels hitting stone, and suddenly he was there—a silhouette, the spirit of Death, black from head to toe except for his eyes, a pistol in each hand. The bars were gone from its back. "Move away from her," the specter said in the language of Cretanis.

They hesitated. The older man glanced at Swana, and in that moment, she knew his thoughts. He would grab her, haul her up as a shield before Zeb could fire—

She shoved him. Suddenly off balance, he staggered back a step, bumping into Ritter. His moment gone, he glared at her and raised his hands. Ritter raised his as well.

Zeb glanced at her. "Come here. Don't get between me and them." She could tell his voice was deeper, harsher than she'd heard it before. He was obviously trying to disguise it. He couldn't disguise his strange New World accent, though.

She rose. As she did, Ritter grabbed the edge of the nearest table, toppled it forward, began to dive behind it—

The older man lunged for Swana—

Zeb fired. Swana heard and, in the confined space of the room, even felt the force of the explosion from the gun. The older man folded, whether hit in the stomach or some place further down Swana could not tell.

Ritter's table crashed down, Ritter behind it. Swana could barely hear the sound of its impact. Ritter's hand came up over the lip, his own pistol in it. He began firing in Zeb's direction, not exposing his face to return fire.

Zeb opened up, firing from each gun in turn, his shots blowing holes in the tabletop, sending splinters in all directions.

Zeb stepped to the side as Swana reached him, continued pouring fire into Ritter's table, and shouted to be heard: "Over the rail!"

She moved out onto the balcony and stepped out of line of the opening so Ritter's return fire would not hit her. She heard bullets whistle by less than a pace to her right.

Below the balcony, the car that had brought her here waited, idling. Around the courtyard, from doors to other buildings and the tower entrances, men were emerging—some in incomplete Sonnenkrieger uniforms, one with a bib still around his neck and the cooked wing of a bird still in his hand.

There was just no time to be afraid. Swana kicked off her shoes, sat on the rail, swung her legs over it, and jumped.

The impact with the car's roof was hard and she fell to her knees, sending sharp pain through her kneecaps. Then she slid off the roof to the front right, dropping into the driver's seat.

Another impact rocked the car and Zeb dropped into the passenger side of the compartment. The slides of both his pistols were locked back, showing the front few fingerspans of the barrels they normally hid. Men were running toward the car. "Go, go," he said.

She put the vehicle in gear and aimed it for the way out. A soldier stood before her, waving his arms, then thought the better of it and dove out of the way as she drove through the space where he'd stood. A moment later they were rattling across the wooden bridge and on the road beyond. Swana took her glasses, with lenses that were flat and corrected no problems with vision, and threw them out the window. She'd never need them again. She'd never be Teleri again.

"Where are the guards who were there?" she asked. Shorter than the car's last driver, and now lacking heels to increase her height, she had to sit forward in the seat to manage the pedals.

"In the moat." Zeb pocketed the pistols and leaned forward to fumble around in the darkness of the floorboards.

"Drowned?"

"Moat's dry." He straightened. There was now a rifle in his hands. In the faint light the moon gave him when tree branches were not overhead, he looked at the action, checked the bolt.

"Where did you get that?"

"From the guards in the moat." Zeb looked over his shoulder. Swana checked the rearview mirror. There were no lights following them.

"The guards," Zeb continued, "were there to stop and challenge cars. They weren't really thinking in terms of someone arriving on foot. I got as close as I could, and then I got lucky. It was just a matter of time, really. One of them lit a cigarette for the other one. When the match flared, I knew they'd be night-blind for a second. I rushed them. Managed to take them out before they got a shot off."

"They're going to call the village, the train station," Swana said.

"Yep. Is that where you're going?"

"It's the only place I know how to reach. I paid attention to the road as we were driving to the castle."

"Good for you. That's the right answer. They'll have set up something to stop us, but with any luck we haven't given them enough time to set up much."

The road led them through another few turns, then the trees fell away to either side and Zeb and Swana could see the village before them. Zeb hadn't seen it from an upright position before; it was small, a little valley town, a concentration of buildings graduating into a scattering of farmhouses. He saw the small train station, a cluster of hemispherical one- and-two-story brick buildings well-lit by streetlights that had to be the center of the community, and the one road leading through it all and out the other side.

On the near edge of the village, a mere few hundred yards away, a dotted line of lights crossed the road.

Zeb swore.

"What is it?"

"Roadblock. They've pulled up a bunch of cars side by side to block the road. We're looking at their headlights."

"What do we do?"

"Head toward 'em at full speed. Maybe we'll see some way to get through when we're closer. If we don't, we turn around and head back the way we came. Maybe we can ditch the car and get away on foot."

Swana did as she was told, accelerating on the straightaway toward the cars, searching for some way past. But it looked as though the roadblock spanned not just the road but the shoulders and open space beside the shoulders, all the way to trees on either side. She could see no way through, though now she could see silhouettes of men behind and around the cars. Probably soldiers, she thought, and could not keep from shuddering at the thought of their rifles.

She was a few ticks of the clock from having to spin around and head back. She heard Zeb say, "Okay, turn—"

Then one of the roadblock cars pulled back and away from the line, opening a gap. There were flashes of light and loud snapping sounds from its vicinity—gunshots, she thought. It pulled back and aside enough to make a clear path through the roadblock.

Zeb pointed. "Go, go, go!"

She floored the accelerator, leaning forward and rocking as though it would help her go faster. The roadblock's headlights were closer and brighter, and as she reached the gap she realized that she couldn't really see it, could only estimate its size by the hole left in the row of headlights—maybe it was too small, maybe she'd hit a car on one side or the other—and then she was through, looking at a few village streetlights and open country beyond.

"It's Noriko," Zeb said.

"What?"

"In the car that pulled back."

"Are you sure?"

"No. But I'm sure that it's the same type of car as our roadster. And it's the only thing that makes sense."

In the rear-view mirror, Swana saw that the roadster was accelerating behind them, gaining quickly on them, and that the roadblock was breaking up, its cars turning in their wake. "They're coming."

"It's okay. I've reloaded."

The roadster pulled up alongside them. Swana saw its driver, visible only as a woman in a dark outfit with flaring sleeves, wave. Then the roadster pulled out ahead of them and took the lead.

"I hope that means she knows the way back to Bardulfburg," Zeb said.

Rudi was first aware only of a sensation. It rose and ebbed like the tide, yet it somehow was not soothing. Then he discovered the sensation was pain, a slow throbbing in his head; at the peak of each wave, it hurt so much that he could not hear, could not think, could not keep himself from groaning aloud.

He was moving, held between two men. They gripped him by his elbows; his hands were tied behind him. There was cloth over his eyes so he could see nothing more than a little light.

They sat him in a chair and whisked his blindfold away. Though waves of pain still regularly made it difficult for him to see, he could make out his surroundings—a smallish room with irregular stone walls, a naked light bulb in a socket hanging from the ceiling, high narrow windows toward the ceiling. They had been painted black. Rudi did not see but inferred a set of wooden stairs leading upward; this had to be a basement.

The two men who'd dragged him here still flanked him. They were tall lights in sharp-looking overcoats. A third man, also a light and very fair-haired, sat in a chair opposite him. This man was dressed in workingman's clothes, rust-brown pants and vest with a light short-sleeved shirt, but his build and haircut suggested he was military.

There was a little table beside the man. On it were Rudi's automatics.

The man offered what looked like the weary smile of a bureaucrat faced with the day's fortieth little problem, then spoke to him. The words were Burian. Despite the pain, Rudi attempted to look interested, cocked his head, nodded occasionally, and waited for this discourse to end, which it did on what sounded like a question. Then he said, "Sorry, eamon, I don't speak Burian."

The man lost his smile for just a moment, then it returned. "My apologies," he said. His speech was heavy with the Burian accent. "I was not aware of your deficiency. You are obviously alert enough. We have questions for you."

"Who is `we'?" Rudi asked.

The man to his left slapped the side of his head. Ordinarily it would have done little more than sting. But with the pain Rudi was already experiencing, the blow was like being hit by a hammer. His head swam, his vision closed down for a moment and he sagged in his chair.

He was able to keep his jaw shut, able to keep from crying out, just barely. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

His questioner continued as though he hadn't spoken. "Your name and home?"

"Vorti Conna, of Lackderry." These were the false details Doc had insisted he come up with. He was glad he'd committed them to memory. Even now, with his head ringing, he could recite them with a measure of confidence.

"Where are your identity papers?"

"Me wallet and passport are in me breast pocket."

The man to his right looked at the questioner and shook his head.

"I'm afraid they are not," the questioner said. "Now, where might they be?"

"I was hit over the head," Rudi said. "Maybe the robber has them."

The questioner sighed. "Who is the young lady you were with, and how do you know her?"

"Her name's Teleri Obeldon." Rudi shrugged and took the opportunity to flex against his bonds a little. They felt like tough cord, well tied. He doubted he'd be able to break them, nor could he exert himself fully against them with three men watching. "I think she's me boss's woman. He hired me in Beldon to watch her, to keep her from runnin'." Rudi remembered Doc had said this would be part of the story they'd concoct, a story that would lead investigators to people and places Doc would specify. But they hadn't had time to do it last night on account of Casnar's party and Doc's exhaustion; they were supposed to get those details in place tonight. Now it was too late.

"Who is your employer?"

"His name's Duncan Blackletter." There, that ought to confuse them. The Bergmonk Boys had worked for Blackletter in the past. Rudi knew him well enough to convince people that he had spent time in his company.

For once, his questioner seemed taken aback. "Describe this Duncan Blackletter."

"Tall old man. A light, probably the lightest light I ever saw, you included. Skinny. Tough and mean as leather boiled in poison, but he's always solicitous of his people. Asks how you're doing, if you've had enough breakfast, that sort of thing."

"You have failed to mention that he's dead."

Rudi managed a toothy smile, his first of the interview. "You know, when he hired me, he said that a lot of people thought he was dead. I took it as a joke."

For a moment, the questioner looked a trifle more disturbed, then his expression returned to cheerful curiosity. "Where are you staying?"

"We just arrived this morning. We haven't been able to find rooms. That's what Goodsir Blackletter is doing now—looking for rooms for us."

"How were you to find one another?"

"We were supposed to meet at a beer garden." Rudi gave them the address of the place from which Swana had made her talk-box call. "At half-past three bells." Rudi didn't know what the clock was now, but it had to be that time or later, depending on how long he'd been unconscious.

His questioner looked over Rudi's head, then nodded to the man to Rudi's left. That man took off at a dead run, and Rudi heard, with a measure of satisfaction, the man's footsteps pounding up a wooden staircase.

"Goodsir Conna," the questioner said, "I fear I do not like your answers."

"They're the only answers I have." Rudi tried to sound reasonable.

"Look at it from my, ah . . ."

"Perspective."

"Perspective. Thank you. When I ask many questions and I get many answers, and yet they all lead to phantoms—no papers, no address, no knowledge—do you know what I think?"

That your subject's lying as though it were all the rage. Rudi had been questioned too many times by local authorities to think he'd fooled the man; he'd merely played a single round of the questioning game. But he said, "No, what?"

"That there is deception at work." The questioner stood and took the place of the man who had just left. "I don't wish you to deceive us. I wish you to be helpful, informative. In fact, I wish to improve you. And that is just what I am going to do now." He seized Rudi's arm; the other man grabbed his other arm and they hauled him to his feet. "In just a few moments you will feel like a new and better man. And I suspect you will be more cooperative."

They swung him around to face the rear wall. There were the stairs up, there was the clock on the wall . . . and, to the right of the clock, there was another of those mechanisms like the one they'd found in the business that had been Teleri's base of operations. It had the same cylindrical base, the same array of glass tubing on the top of the case.

Rudi felt his mouth go dry. He forced a smile anyway. "What's this? A talk-box? Do I get to make a call?"

"Not exactly," his questioner said. The two men moved him toward the case.

The pursuing cars gained on Zeb and Swana. When he heard the first crack of a rifle, he said, "Keep down. It's time." He stood, bracing himself against the partition between driver's and passengers' compartments, and aimed his rifle back at the pursuing vehicles.

The jolting and swaying of their motion kept throwing his aim off, but in a brief few seconds when the road was steady, he centered his aim on the left front windshield of the car immediately behind and fired off a shot. He saw no reaction from the vehicle and cursed to himself. Right side, dummy, right side is where the driver is. 

The driver of that vehicle fired back, apparently holding a handgun out his window. The bullet came nowhere close. Someone in the next car back also opened up with a firearm—two, three, four shots, from a rifle by the sound of them. Zeb heard something hammer dully into the back of his car.

He switched his aim to the driver's side of the closest pursuer and began squeezing off shots whenever he felt he had a chance. He fired his fifth shot before he saw any reaction: That vehicle suddenly veered, then went straight off the road and smashed into some sort of standing stone the height of a man, knocking it over. The car continued rolling, then came to a halt against a dark mound Zeb assumed to be a haystack.

Gunmen in the next car in line continued to fire. Zeb heard more thumps against the rear of his car, then heard the rear window shatter.

Zeb worked the bolt on his rifle, ejecting the fifth shell, and discovered it was empty. He dropped beside Swana and groped around in the floorboards for the second of three rifles he'd taken from guards at the castle. "One down," he told Swana. "Five or so to go."

"Do you have five more rifles?"

"Don't be snide." Second rifle in hand, he stood once more.

The closest pursuer had moved up. Its front bumper was less than a yard from Swana's rear bumper, and the vehicle was sidling up to pass Swana on the right.

"Don't let him come alongside!" Zeb shouted. Swana glanced in her rearview mirror and swung the wheel to the right, too sharp an angle. Zeb was thrown off balance; he fell against the top of the left-side door and hung there, half his body suspended over roadway, teetering toward a fatal fall . . .

Which also gave him the opportunity to see the next car, which was coming up fast on the left side.

He felt something seize his left ankle and yank it down to the seat. His feet found purchase but he didn't straighten or push off from the window; he stayed leaning out over empty space and took a shot at the car on that side. There was a tinkling of glass and its left headlight went out. He swore, adjusted, and fired as fast as he could work the bolt action. He thought it was on his third shot that the car began to swerve, but he kept firing until he was sure, until that car sideslipped to bang against the car to its right, then slid leftward and went off the road into a low stone fence.

Two down. Zeb dropped again and began fumbling for the third and last rifle. It was more difficult; Swana was swerving all over the road, doubtless trying to keep the other cars from passing. "Thanks for the grab."

"It was nothing."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're brave and smart?"

"No."

"Well, they should. You are." Rifle in hand, he stood. He saw the taillights of Noriko's car, still leading them by fifty yards or so, and he turned.

The next car back was still right on their tail, jockeying to pass, but no one in it was firing. Perhaps its driver had no guns. The next two back had no such limitations; they fired almost continuously, and both the partition glass and the windshield between Swana and Zeb blew out. She ducked; he swore.

He returned fire against the nearest of the cars shooting at him, but he went through his entire five-round clip without seeing any reaction from the driver. Aggravated, he hurled the useless weapon at the nearest pursuer.

The whirling rifle smashed in through the driver's-side windshield. The vehicle veered right, then rolled, its distinct automotive lines becoming somehow blurred and confusing as it flipped, side-top-side-bottom. Zeb saw pieces fly loose—a door, small broken bits, a larger mass that might have been a man.

The other three cars parted and managed to get around the disintegrating thing without suffering further damage themselves. Zeb shook his head over their driving skill—one more thing he did not need to have going against him—and drew the automatics from his pockets.

They were the weapon he'd first taken from Noriko's trunk back in Neckerdam and another just like it that he'd picked up as he and Noriko were formulating their plan to divert Rudi's and Swana's shadow. They were heavy things that fit his hands admirably, and he'd just reloaded them. Each carried seven shots in its clip and another in its chamber.

The next two cars came on side by side. They hung back for a few moments, so close to one another that passengers could easily have stepped from running board to running board. Then they parted, accelerating—and their passengers, at least three in each vehicle, opened fire on Zeb's car. A sound like golfball-sized hail hammered against the car's rear panel; more glass shattered throughout the vehicle; Swana's rearview mirror exploded and she cried out.

Zeb ducked for cover, keeping his head low. "You all right?"

"Yes." But the steering wheel was shuddering and she was having to use all her strength to keep it under control. "I think—I think a tire is hit. I can't keep up the speed . . ."

Zeb growled something inarticulate. He could see, back through the passenger compartment, that one of the pursuers was coming alongside on the driver's side. He glanced back out his own window to see the second pursuer coming up on his side. They were timing their approach, coming up together, and still firing continuously into the passenger compartment. Only the fact that the passenger and driver compartments of this car were separate, and built of good sturdy metal, had kept him and Swana from catching rounds in the back so far.

"Veer right," Zeb said. "Force him off the road." Then he prepared to stand, to lean out left, to exchange fire with the passengers of the car there until he took a bullet in this cross fire.

"I can't," Swana said. "She's—"

Noriko's roadster slowed into view, dropping into position on Swana's side, its deceleration so rapid that the pursuit car on that side smashed into its rear. Zeb saw Noriko turn the wheel to lean the roadster into the side of Zeb's car. Then Noriko stood, one hand on the wheel, and turned to face backwards. She raised her own handgun and fired into the windshield of the pursuit car, shooting as fast as she could get the weapon back in line after each shot.

Zeb let out a wild cry of jubilation. He leaned out his window and fired, almost point-blank, into the driver's window of the car pulling alongside. He saw a handgun raising to aim at him, saw the driver drop it, saw the driver's body and head jerk as Zeb's sustained fire poured into them. There was someone in the seat beside the driver, a muzzle blast from that man, an impact against Zeb's door, and then Zeb switched his aim to that enemy.

That car drifted to the left, onto the shoulder of the road and beyond.

Zeb saw the telephone pole ahead of it a split second before it hit. Then the car was gone, vanished into the distance behind them like it had been swept from the scene by a vengeful god.

Zeb looked back. The car that had just hit the pole burst into flame. The fire illuminated the car Noriko had fired into; it had crashed nose-first into another low stone fence. The headlights of the final car were still there, steady in pursuit, gaining.

Zeb's car was still slowing. He glanced over. Swana was struggling less with the wheel. Noriko was still alongside.

Zeb pocketed his automatics. He grabbed the side of the steering wheel. "Get into the roadster. Now."

"What, jump?"

"Jump."

"I can't!"

"Have you forgotten that you're brave and smart? A brave girl wouldn't be afraid of jumping. And a smart one would figure out that she'll get killed if she stays in this rolling wreck."

She glared at him, then slid against the window. Zeb slid more into place behind the wheel. He felt Swana stand, felt her legs against his shoulder as she reached over to the roadster and grabbed at it—then one of her legs rose past his face, clipping his nose and the brim of his hat, and she was gone.

He stood on the brake and Noriko's roadster shot on ahead. With the last of his vehicle's momentum he slewed around leftward, putting the car across two lanes. He killed the engine and hopped out to stand on the driver's side running board. He drew his pistols and aimed them across the roof at the oncoming car.

Muzzle flares erupted from its passenger side. He returned fire into the driver's-side windshield, emptying both pistols, hearing thumps and slams strike his own vehicle.

The oncoming car veered left and then right, as though the driver were indecisive about whether to pass Zeb on the right or the left. Then the car leveled off and steered straight at Zeb, and he realized the driver was probably already dead.

Zeb dove clear, hit the pavement with a bone-jarring thump, heard the shrieking collision as tons of metal met violently.

Then he was up on his feet, turning to face the wreckage, which was still sliding. He noticed absently that his left-hand gun had its slide locked back. It was empty. He pocketed it. He had no idea how many rounds he had left.

He moved up to the wreckage as it came to a stop. It was a roadster. There were two men in the front seat. Both wore Sonnenkrieger uniforms. The driver was covered in blood, his chest pinned to the seat by the steering wheel.

The other man was hunched forward over the dashboard, unmoving, blood all over the side of his face. Zeb thought he had to be dead, too, but as Zeb came close his eyes opened.

His lips moved. Zeb couldn't understand the words. "Speak Cretanis," Zeb said.

"Who . . . are you?"

I'm a black man with guns and I despise your whole political party and everything it's trying to do. But Zeb simplified the thought for the injured man. "I'm your worst nightmare," he said.

Then he took off after Noriko's car, which was parked about fifty yards up on the side of the road. He wanted to run, but the best he could manage was a hobbling trot. Still, he didn't feel too bad about the way things had ended here.