Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [77]
Before I could assemble my scattered wits, a surge of muddy water slapped against my chest. A figure rose up before me, blotting out the night sky as I fell backwards. My only thought was that one of the combatants had separated from the others and silently tracked me down. His hand reached out and gripped me by the shoulder before I could make any attempt to escape.
I had been caught. I squeezed my eyes shut, awaiting the inevitable pistol shot, sword, or pitchfork into my vitals. Instead, I heard a voice, familiar from far back in my memory: "Dower – heed me." The hand shook me. "Little time is there."
An obscuring cloud slid from the moon as my eyes shot open. By the thin light, I saw the dark face ornamented with its lines of scars. The Brown Leather Man gazed down at me.
11
A Great Career is Launched
"But – you're dead…"
The Brown Leather Man pulled me close to the shelter of the stream's bank, and laid a finger on my mouth, silencing any further cry of astonishment. I could see that, above the water to our waists, the upper half of his body was stripped bare. Clouds parted before the moon, the thin light glinting from his powerful chest and arms as the rivulets coursed over lines of scars such – as those that decorated his face. "Be quiet, Dower," he whispered close to my ear. "Great danger you are in."
Cowering beneath an outcropping of tangled roots, I could hear the shouts and mingled violence of the searchers, surging first in one direction, then another, like a storm-driven sea. "Yes–" My own voice was close to breaking into a sob. "The villagers… and that Mollie Maud woman–"
The dark head nodded impatiently. "She is a person of evil, the mask of good using to better hide."
"I don't understand…"
The Brown Leather Man shook me roughly, breaking off the trembling small voice of my confusion. "Now that is not important." The slitted eyes bored into mine. "Many explanations will be later. First you must escape her, and the other."
"Yes… yes, of course!" I seized his arm, the veil of my exhaustion having been pierced. "But how–"
He signalled again for quiet. "Arrangements I have made. I have been following you – hidden – until you I could help. But now all will be safe. The crossroads there." He drew me away from the bank and pointed, his dark arm shining in the darkness. "Do you see?"
A pair of the region's gnarled trees stood sentinel over a raised bank a few hundred yards away. After a moment I could discern the flat surfaces of the two roads that met by them. "Yes," I whispered.
"Go there. This water–" He jabbed a finger at the murky ooze around us. "It goes there. Curves, yes? But if in it you stay, the others will see you not. At the crossroads, wait. Down below until a carriage you hear coming. Then go up. Away it will take you, to safety." His gaze searched my face. "Is all clear?"
"I understand. But – you'll be there? With the carriage?" I desperately hoped so; his was the first voice in a long while that, despite its odd accents, seemed untinged with either hostility or dementia.
"No." He drew away from me, into the deeper part of the stream, lowering himself into it so that the water lapped up to his chest. "Later – again you will see me." Only his head was visible; then one hand broke the surface and pointed. "The crossroads – go." He disappeared entire, leaving only a circular ripple in the moonlight.
I was alone again, as if the apparent resurrection of the Brown Leather Man had been but a phantasm born of a despairing mind driven beyond the limits of its endurance. In the distance, I could hear my pursuers – Mollie Maud's bullies, the villagers, and the Godly Army all muddled into one baying pack