The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [510]
Roger stood motionless, gathering his strength. His legs felt like rubber, and while breathing was still a joy, each breath burned and tickled in his lungs. He wouldn’t go fast or far, if he had to run.
The argument stopped abruptly. The tall man turned and made a sharp gesture toward the door, saying something that made the other men grunt with surprise and disapproval. Still, they went, slowly, and with much muttered grumbling. One short fellow with his hair in knots glared back at Roger, bared his teeth, and drew the edge of a hand across his throat with a hiss. With a small shock, Roger saw that the man’s teeth were jagged, filed to points.
The ramshackle door had barely closed behind them when the woman clutched his sleeve.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Not so . . . fast.” He coughed again, wiping spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand. His throat was seared; the words felt like cinders, forced burning from his chest. “You get . . . me . . . out of here. Then . . . I’ll tell you. All I know.”
“Tell me!”
Her fingers dug hard into his arm. Her eyes were bloodshot from the smoke, and the brown irises glowed like coals. He shook his head, coughing.
The tall man brushed the woman aside, grabbing Roger by a handful of shirt. Something gleamed dully, too close to Roger’s eye to see clearly, and amid the stench of burning, he caught the reek of rotting teeth.
“You tell her, man, or I rip you guts!”
Roger brought a forearm up between them, and with an effort, shoved the man back, stumbling.
“No,” he said doggedly. “You get . . . me out. Then I tell.”
The man hesitated, crouched, the knife blade wavering in a small arc of uncertainty. His one eye flicked to the woman.
“You sure he know?”
The woman had not taken her eyes off Roger’s face. She nodded slowly, not looking away.
“He knows.”
“It was . . . a girl.” Roger looked at her steadily, fighting the urge to blink. “You’ll know . . . that much . . . yourself.”
“Does she live?”
“Get me . . . out.”
She was not a tall woman, nor a large one, but her urgency seemed to fill the hut. She fairly quivered with it, hands clenched into fists at her sides. She glared at Roger for a long minute more, than whirled on her heel, saying something violent to the man in the odd African tongue.
He tried to argue, but it was fruitless; the stream of her words struck him like water from a fire hose. He flung up his hands in frustrated surrender, then reached out and snatched the rag from the woman’s head. He undid the knots with quick, long fingers, and whipped it into the shape of a blindfold, muttering under his breath.
The last thing Roger saw before the man fastened the cloth round his eyes was Fanny Beardsley, hair in a number of small greasy plaits round her shoulders, her eyes still on him, burning like embers. Her broken teeth were bared, and he thought she would bite him, if she could.
THEY DIDN’T GET OUT without some argument; a chorus of angry voices surrounded them for some way, and hands plucked at his clothes and limbs. But the one-eyed man still had the knife. Roger heard a shout, a scuffling of feet and bodies close by, and a sharp cry. The voices dropped, and the hands no longer snatched at him.
They walked on, his hand on Fanny Beardsley’s shoulder for guidance. He thought it was a small settlement; at least, it took very little time before he felt the trees close around him. Leaves brushed his face, and the resin smell of sap was heightened by the hot, smoky air. It was still raining fairly hard, but the smell of smoke was everywhere. The ground was lumpy, layers of leaf-mold punctuated by upthrusting rocks, studded with stumps and fallen branches.
The man and woman