A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [73]
At last, he’d hauled himself up enough. Nestled under a strangely situated outcropping, he craned his head up and around the side of it. At a glance, he learned all he needed to know for the moment.
The drivers had made a campfire of scattered wood splints apart from the clustered wagons. They appeared to find the company of their prisoners distasteful-even more so than the company of their burden-beasts, who stood full-bellied and content, tethered nearby to individual formations of rock.
Geordi didn’t have to concentrate on the wagons for very long. Their relative positions seemed to correspond with the mental picture he’d made of them; his earlier scrutiny had come in handy.
Rather, he focused on the armored ones themselves. And saw that although some were still aware enough to engage in conversation, others were beginning to doze. Unfortunately, the dozers were still in the minority.
Geordi ducked down again. Damn. He could wait, sure. But it only increased the chances of someone taking a stroll and spotting him.
Should I slip farther down the slope? he asked himself. Maybe go back to the bridge and hide underneath it for a while?
The craziness of what he was doing began, for the first time since he’d conceived it, to sink in. This is suicide, he mused. Insane. If I had a rational bone in my body, I’d go back to the other side and forget the whole thing.
Maybe he was a criminal, as Beff’t-the oily-looking one-had suggested when he first woke up in this place. If he was capable of what he was doing now, he was probably capable of anything.
And yet, even all his self-flagellations weren’t prying him off the incline. Not after what he’d seen on the bridge.
The stone was cold beneath him. It began to eat through his homespun garb, to excite tiny shivers in him.
And here I am without a cloak. Of course, he couldn’t have brought it. It would only have slowed him down.
Geordi was just preparing himself for a long wait when he heard the voices above him become clamorous. For a moment, he froze, wondering if his presence had been detected after all. Then, when there were no approaching footfalls, he dared to poke his head up a second time.
What he saw almost made him want to smile. Two of the wagon drivers had stood up and begun to strip off their armor, while the others-those still awake, anyway-moved to arrange themselves in a circle. From the way the standing ones were eyeing each other, from the way the onlookers hooted and jeered and roared, Geordi was able to get a pretty good idea of what was going on.
The two on their feet were going to engage in a physical confrontation. As an entertainment, apparently, for the rest of them. But not a fight to the death; they were making too big a show of tossing their weapons away. Then what? A wrestling match?
Geordi didn’t wait to find out. He’d gotten just what he needed-a distraction. Something to hold the armored ones’ attention while he did what he’d set out to do.
As the din became even louder, he traveled sideways again, gingerly edging his way closer to the wagons, but not without a certain sense of urgency. There was no telling how long the confrontation might last.
When he’d milked his concealment for all it was worth, he crawled up off the slope and onto the flat. Half creeping, half wriggling, Geordi closed the gap between him and the nearest wagon. As luck would have it, it was one of the vehicles filled strictly with supplies. But it provided some cover for him, allowed him to breathe a little easier.
It was good that the beasts had been tethered elsewhere, apart from the wagons. Otherwise, it would have been nearly impossible to pull this off. As likely as not, he’d have been trampled before he got very far.
Geordi negotiated the forest of wooden, metal-bound wheels and came up on the far side of the second wagon. This one contained a couple of the prisoners, still sitting back to back because their bonds prevented them from shifting to another position.
One was bird-faced and dark, darker even than Geordi himself. The other