The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [74]
But she didn't kill him. She sat and rocked his head in her lap, stroked his head.
“Your heart came back?” she asked.
“Yes,” he gasped. “It may go again—kill me.”
“No. I will keep you, with or without a heart.”
Some time later, he heard warriors coming.
“Help me stand,” he told her. “Help me lean against this tree. I will not have them see me like this.”
Together, they managed it. Heartbeats later, he recognized Minko Chito coming along the path.
“Victory,” the chief said. “We will cover our scalp pole from top to bottom.”
“It looks like victory,” Red Shoes told him, forcing the words, the stupid, useless words.
“Smells like it and feels like it, too.”
Red Shoes shook his head. “It isn't. We've barely touched their army, and we lost how many warriors?”
“No telling,” Minko Chito grunted. “Not as many as they did. That is victory, isn't it? We are few and we attacked many, and they came out much the worse.”
“I failed, which means we lost. Do you know what they will do next? Salvage their big guns, mount them on the opposite bank. Shell and burn this forest until nothing remains alive while they finish building their bridge. We surprised them—we won't get that opportunity again.”
“The Sun Boy survived?”
“Yes. I overestimated my power.” That was putting it mildly, but it was the truth.
Minko Chito shrugged. “We kept them from crossing once—we can do it again.”
“No. They will kill us all, and we will slow them only by a few days.”
“Then what? Return home?”
“Even worse. No. The best we can do is to make them go where we want them to go.”
“Where is that?”
“New Paris.”
Minko Chito looked puzzled. “So they will kill the French instead of the Choctaw?”
“No. Because there we will have one last chance to beat them.”
The chief considered that. “They won't all follow you down there.”
“I know. But it's the only thing left to do.”
He turned at the hiss of moccasins on the forest floor. It was the boy, Chula.
“One of the sky boats fell on this side,” he told them excitedly. “Some of them still live.”
“The other spider,” Red Shoes muttered.
They both gave him puzzled looks.
“Let's go and see them,” he said, leaning on Grief.
Adrienne tasted blood in her mouth and wondered what that could mean. She wondered, also, what the strange sounds all around her were. It was dark, and she was wet. It wasn't cold, but she was shivering.
She couldn't seem to remember what had happened. It was like one of those strange night terrors, when you awoke not knowing where you were, panicked, only gradually realizing that you were in your familiar room, that your sleep-addled brain had played a trick on you.
Except that somehow she felt that this place would never be familiar.
She commanded light.
Nothing happened.
She called for her djinni. There were none.
She might have slept, for she didn't remember seeing a light approach; but there it was, suddenly, a few feet away. And in its light, a familiar face framed in copper.
“Veronique?”
“My God. Adrienne.” Crecy fell to her knees in the mud— she was lying in mud!—and pressed against her. The redhead was weeping. “I'm sorry,” she gasped. “I let you go. Like I let Nico go. I always fail you, when—” She pushed back at Adri-enne's groan, and raised her voice. “Hercule! I've found her! She's still alive.” She looked back down at Adrienne, her tear-filled eyes sparkling. “Still alive,” she said more softly.
“Thank God!” Hercule shouted from somewhere unseen above her.
“Where are we, Veronique? Why does my leg—”
“Your leg?” Crecy knelt and pulled Adrienne's skirt up. It caught on something underneath—a branch perhaps—and ripped a little. Then she had exposed the leg.
Or a leg. It did not look like hers. It was strangely bent, covered with blood, and from the distorted thigh, a sort of bloody pipe protruded, the thing her dress had snagged on.
“My God,” Crecy murmured. “Dear God.”
Hercule's face appeared now. He was less religious, when he saw. “Fuck!