Post by Lorpius Prime on Dec 7, 2008 4:44:27 GMT -5
For a few seconds, Margaret couldn't move. She was the only one in the room still standing, but she was still stunned by whatever it was that had just happened. One moment, she and Martin had been prisoners of the most terrifying people Margaret had ever encountered; people whom Margaret had been sure were going to murder them in the most horrible possible way. She still didn't know what the red-eyed man had done to her, but her insides still felt sore just from having stood in his presence. But then, somehow, Martin had killed him, and killed his hunchbacked accomplice. Margaret didn't understand it; even when he had produced the gun, she had been certain that it wouldn't work, and the red-eyed man had seemed equally certain. But they had both fallen.
And so had Martin.
With a muted cry she overcame her paralysis and ran forward to where her companion was lying on the floor, shuddering from his sharp, heaving breaths. Margaret's hands were still tied behind her back, so she knelt down carefully next to Martin and nudged him with one knee.
"Colonel Holland! Colonel Holland are you all right?" she asked desperately.
"Not really," he wheezed, and rolled slightly so that he could look up at her. He smiled, but his eyes seemed unfocused, "Got a bad concussion, might have cracked my skull. And I had to break my wrist."
Margaret noticed that he was clutching his left arm to his chest. The hand had turned purple and was swelling considerably. The knotted rope their captors had used to bind his arms was still hanging around his wrist.
"Oh my God, we've got to get you to a doctor—"
"No," he half-coughed half-laughed. "I can't stand straight, but you need to get out of here. Miss Blake." His eyes cleared for a moment when he said her name, and his hard stare made Margaret think twice before she responded.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, and gave him her own hard-faced look. "I said I wasn't going to let you out of my sight again, and I meant it. Besides, I can hardly go anywhere with my hands tied up like this." She shrugged.
Martin closed his eyes for moment, grimacing.
"Here," he said, and motioned with his good hand for her to turn around.
She did, and Martin worked at the ropes for a minute with one hand. Margaret could see the corpse of the red-eyed man on the floor in front of her. The big room was still only lit by the one fireplace, but it still seemed significantly brighter, and Margaret could see the dead man. There was one black hole in the center of his forehead, just beneath his wig. Margaret knew very little about human biology, but she still thought there should have been more blood visible from a wound like that. None was apparent. It also seemed that the red-eyed man was no longer actually red-eyed. In death, the color had drained from his eyes to the point that they looked—almost—human.
The fire crackled. There was nothing odd about the hunchback's corpse, so far as Margaret could tell through the flames. She didn't know why, but when Martin had shot the red-eyed man, the hunchback had acted like he had been wounded too. Now he was burning like so much kindling, just an unusually large blackened log. She wrinkled her nose at the smell.
"There," Martin said behind her, and with a final tug the ropes around Margaret's hands fell loose. She immediately turned around and put her hands underneath his back to lift him up.
"Ow!" he twisted away from her. "What are you doing?"
Margaret set her hands on her hips, "I'm going to carry you out of here if I have to."
"Miss Blake," he was panting, "you are going to have to get out of here on your own. I was just beaten half to death, I can't keep my balance well enough to walk, much less run, and" he swallowed, "I'm rather sure I'm going to pass out in just a moment here. Go out through one of the windows and find your way back to the air station."
She shook her head hard enough for her hair to cover her shoulders, "I am not just giving up on you. Or on our whole mission—as if they were different. You still have to find Jay Thomson, Colonel Holland. Don't think I'm letting you off the hook."
Martin shook his own head, though much less forcefully. "The Herreninsel, the—whatever he was," he waved a hand at the red-eyed man's corpse, "said he was on the Herreninsel. It's an island on a lake in the southeast, big castle there, you can catch a train most of the way. My men are dead; I don't have any more information."
Margaret looked over her shoulder to the dead man, "'Whatever he was'… He didn't think you could kill him. I didn't think you could either, though Lord only knows why."
She turned back to Martin to find him looking up at the ceiling, chucking through a hysteric grin. He met her eyes, then reached up towards her with one hand. He was holding the little gun that he had shot the red-eyed man with, offering it to her.
"Silver bullets," he said, "just in case."
Margaret stared at the gun, then at him. "That's… incredibly superstitious of you, Colonel Holland. You don't strike me as the type."
"I'm not," he nodded. "But there was once… when I was in Madrid, I ran into something I couldn't explain, nearly killed me, did kill a lot of other people. Anyway, I've kept that loaded ever since, as I said, just in case."
"That's hardly a convincing explanation."
"No, but you need to leave," he raised the gun towards her again. "Take it, you might need it."
Margaret pushed his hand away, "I'll say it again: you're coming with me. Now you can keep arguing, or you can help me get you up—"
The door through which they had entered opened on the far side of the room. Despite his protests about incapacitation, Martin snapped into action almost before Margaret could even turn her head. He spun himself around with a kick and trained the gun on the door with his outstretched right arm.
One of the soldiers like those they had passed outside the palace leaned into the room. He was wearing an almost identical uniform, including an absurdly complicated blue and red coat that looked like it came out of a museum, but at least he didn't have one of those ridiculous horsehair helmets the guards outside wore. Or didn't anymore, the man looked terribly confused, like he didn't know where he was. And instead of a rifle or a pike, he was carrying a simple lantern. He held it over his head and squinted in Margaret and Martin's direction.
"Verzeihung?" His head swept over the carnage in the room, and he stepped forward cautiously, despite the pistol Martin kept trained on him. "Ahh… wie geht's Ihnen? Sind sie verletzt?"
"Stop! Halt!" Martin commanded. The soldier froze.
"Es tut… I am… sorry," the soldier said. His eyes were wide in confused fear.
Margaret didn't know what was going on. Apparently neither did Martin, because he asked, "What's going on here?"
The soldier shook his head, "Ich weiss—Ich, ahh… I am sorry. I do not know. Aber… Are you all right?"
Margaret screwed up her face in confusion. This was one of the people that had just kidnapped and nearly killed them. She looked down at Martin, but he was already looking back at her, the same question on his face.
He shrugged, and lowered his gun.
Jay regretted telling Theodore he could ride a horse. He did still know how to ride just as skillfully as ever—which was to say, not very. But Jay had forgotten how uncomfortable a saddle could be. He shifted his weight in another useless attempt to relieve the pain in his thighs.
Theodore had gotten the horses from one of the towns they had passed walking along the railroad out of Munich. Jay didn't ask how Theodore had acquired them; he wasn't sure wanted to know. But whatever his methods, Theodore had gotten the horses, and then he expected Jay to ride one of them. At the time, Jay himself had thought it would be better than walking. It was a stupid thought, of course. Over the past few weeks Jay had gotten used to walking. Without a suitcase to lug anymore, he hadn't even been breathing heavy when Theodore went for the horses.
Theodore was pulling ahead of him again. Jay sighed and tugged his horse's gaze away from the grass at the edge of the road. The path curved around a stand of trees, and then opened up onto what Jay would call a small town, although it was far larger than most of the tiny hamlets they'd been passing through.
"Ah, we are almost there," Theodore said. He looked to his right, then twisted around to look over his shoulder at Jay, who was still trying to coax his horse into a faster pace. Theodore waved a hand in front of him, "This is Prien am Chiemsee. Our destination is the village of Stock, just on the other side. We will take the ferry from there, Mr. Blake."
"We have to take a boat?" Jay asked as he pulled up alongside the other man.
"The Herreninsel is an island, Mr. Blake. Would you rather swim?"
"No thanks," Jay said. "I just thought there'd be a bridge."
Theodore chuckled. "Is something the matter with a boat? I thought all you British were supposed to love the water."
"That's a common misunderstanding. The Royal Navy has so many warships because we're all deathly afraid of the sea and everything in it."
Theodore laughed in earnest now, and Jay smiled at his own joke. Now that they were well away from the shouting and the explosions of the city, Jay was able to relax somewhat. It was a sunny day and the town they were passing through looked cheerful, its people apparently unaware of what was happening just fifty miles away. They passed a baker selling rolls from a cart outside his shop. Theodore traded him a coin for four of the buns, and handed one across to Jay.
Jay tore off a little piece to chew on, then stared as he saw Theodore stuff one whole into his mouth.
"Hungry," the German said simply.
It was not yet noon when they reached the little dock by the side of the lake and looked for a place to draw up their horses. The lake was a shade of blue only slightly darker than the sky. The mountains in the distance were themselves a barely-visible washed out blue, so that they nearly hid the boundary between the sky and Earth. Jay could see several small boats tied up at the dockside in front of them, but at the moment none seemed to be out sailing on the water. It left the lake a tranquil appearance that was pleasant just to look at. The people of this area were extremely fortunate to live here, Jay thought. He took a deep breath of the air coming in off the lake. It smelled much nicer than most water in Britain did, too.
They quickly found out why no one was sailing on the lake.
"Nein," said the fourth person Theodore talked to about getting a boat over to the island. "Es tut mir leid," he shook his head and made a sharp gesture across his chest.
"Still no luck?" Jay asked.
Theodore kept talking to the old man, who was wearing a heavy wool overcoat that could not have been at all comfortable, but the man just kept shaking his head and saying more things which Jay could not understand, but sounded distinctly negative.
"Bah," Theodore finally threw up his arms as the old man turned to walk away. "Apparently the military has closed off the island; they don't want any boats on the lake."
"Maybe we will have to swim, then."
Theodore just grunted.
Jay glanced around, "I don't see any soldiers. Is someone really going to stop us if we take a boat over?"
"The garrison is on the island," Theodore pointed across the lake. "But the people here have heard about the fighting in Munich; or rumors of it, at least. No one wants to risk getting shot to make the trip."
"Okay," Jay glanced around again, then sighed. "So what do we do?"
"We figure out how much it will cost to bribe someone into making the trip anyway."
Jay frowned, "Why do we want to bribe someone? You just said we'd get shot."
"We're not going to get shot," Theodore waved a dismissive hand. "They can't possibly have completely closed off the island, they'd run out of food within a day."
"Well maybe they only closed it down for a day, we could wait."
"We may not have a day," Theodore said. He brought his horse to a stop at the edge of a tiny dock which berthed a handful of tiny sail- and rowboats. The German slid off his horse, and gestured for Jay to do the same. "You may have noticed," he said, "that we are still not all that far from Munich. It will not take long for Karl's men to reach this place if they are coming."
Jay got off his horse less easily than Theodore, although he did manage to avoid stumbling outright. "Maybe it isn't that far, but neither is that island. Or do you think these people can't swim?"
"We will be safe," Theodore said, and tied the reins of his horse to a post with a quick knot. Several people were loitering around the dock, talking or fishing. Theodore waved his arms in their direction and called to no one in particular, "Hallo! Ich will ein Boot leihen."
An older man who was leaning against a small wooden shed took a cigarette out of his pocket, "Nein," he said, "nicht Heute. Sie sind verboten."
Theodore shook his head and gestured over his shoulder towards Jay and the horses, "Ich will meine Pferde verkaufen, um ein Boot zu leihen. Und… ah, zwanzig Pfund," he patted his coat pocket, jangling some of the coins he kept there. Jay was starting to wonder just how wealthy Theodore was, he seemed to spend money like water.
Several people stood up to look at Theodore after that offer, and they all seemed sorely tempted. But after a few glances between the horses and the island in the distance, they all shook their heads and muttered refusals.
Jay finished tying up his horse alongside Theodore's, and walked over towards his companion. Theodore had crossed his arms and was tapping his foot, apparently unhappy with this outcome. Jay was about to suggest again that they just wait a day when someone shouted.
"Oy! Herr reicher Mann!"
Both Jay and Theodore turned toward the voice. It was coming from a small sailboat that was floating just off the beach, but was not tied to the dock. Inside, a boy was excitedly waving one arm, trying to get their attention.
"Wir haben ein Boot," he called. "Wir haben keine Angst!"
A second boy appeared from behind the mast in the center of the boat and began waving as well. They both looked like they were about fifteen.
"Aha!" Theodore chuckled, and he turned around to nudge Jay in the arm with an elbow, like he knew what Jay had been about to say. He shouted back to the boys in the boat, "Wir werden fünf Pfund für Überfahrt zahlen."
"Keine Chance!" the boy who had first waved shook a fist. "Wir wollen die zwanzig Pfund! Und deine Pferde."
"Ach so!" Theodore laughed again, loud enough for the boys on the sailboat to hear. "Abgemacht, meine Freunden."
"Dann, ahh…" the first boy turned and said something to his companion, gesturing at the little dock. Then he turned back to Theodore and waved again, "Komm an Bord."
"Theodore, what are you doing?" Jay asked.
Theodore turned around and shrugged, "He was a tough negotiator, I had to sell the horses."
Jay blinked, "What? No, I mean—you're not seriously planning on making these kids take us over there, are you?"
"No, I am paying them twenty pounds and two horses to do it. Which means this may be the last job they do until they're thirty."
"It's going to be the last job they ever do if they get killed. Didn't you hear the other guy? The boat is verboten! What are you doing bringing kids into this?"
"No one is going to get killed, Mr. Blake, do not worry. Even if this does not work, the worst that will happen is the guards will yell at us and force us to turn back for shore. But the guards will not even see us. The town is on the North side," he pointed across the lake, then moved his hand slightly, "so we will land on the forested side. Once we are on the island, there should be no problem."
He started walking down the little wooden dock to where the two boys were holding their boat. Jay followed after him, but said, "If it were that easy, then why didn't any of these other people take your offer?"
The other people in question were mostly still standing around, looking at Jay and Theodore with amused expressions. Jay ignored them.
Theodore walked to the edge of the dock, turned around to face Jay, and held up his hands. "I am taking this boat over to the Herreninsel, Mr. Blake. You are welcome to come along. You are also welcome to stay. You may even be safe here; I cannot predict the future with absolute certainty."
The most infuriating thing was the smile on his face as he said these words, as if he knew full well that there was no way Jay would choose not to keep following along. After all, what choice did he have? Jay couldn't very well wait here with no money, no friends, and God-only-knew-what chasing after him. Once again, he was stuck following someone else.
He didn't have to like it though. Theodore, still grinning, stepped backward onto the sailboat. Jay went ahead after him, muttering. The boy holding onto the sail lines gave him one strange look before turning his attention back to his work. The other boy shoved them away from the dock. Jay picked his way carefully to the back of the boat, where he could sit out of the way of anything important. Theodore took a minute to explain to the two kids where he wanted to go. Neither of them seemed the least bit concerned.
The boy who had first shouted to Theodore came to the back of the boat and sat a few feet away from Jay to work the rudder. "Hi," he said.
"Uh, hi," Jay said.
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Haben Sie Angst?" he asked, and laughed as if Jay had said something terribly funny.
"I don't, ahh…" Jay started to say, "Ich spreche nicht—"
He was interrupted when Theodore sat down next to him. "Engländer," Theodore said to the boy, and pointed at Jay.
"Ah![/i] the boy said, and nodded. Then he said something Jay couldn't follow.
"He said his father says that all Englishmen are rich snobs."
Jay snorted, and turned to the boy, "Actually," he said, and furrowed his brow, "Ich habe... nein, uh, Geld."
The youth frowned for a moment, then shrugged, "Also, du bist noch Engländer.
"But you're still English," Theodore translated with a chuckle.
Jay sighed, and leaned back against the side of the little boat. "I guess there's no escaping that one," he said.
It took them about twenty minutes to get across the little stretch of water to the island. And to Jay's immense relief, it was an uneventful journey; they could see nothing on their destination except trees. The two boys, Adam and Jörg (Adam was the one whose father thought all Englishmen were rich snobs) even offered to drop them off farther north, closer to the town which was Theodore's ultimate goal. Once they got within a few hundred yards and still couldn't see any signs of humanity, Theodore agreed. That way they wouldn't have to cross the palace grounds, he said. Jay simply shrugged; he was just along for the ride at this point.
Eventually, they found a spot where the water was deep enough to let the boat pull right up to the beach. Jay hopped off first, and still managed to get his pants wet when he landed in several inches of mud. Theodore came next, after signing a little piece of paper, recording the sale of the horses to the two boys; he landed slightly more gracefully than Jay, although he still kicked up a fair amount of mud. Adam dropped down after them to help push the boat back out into the lake before getting a hand up from his friend.
"So long, Engländer," he said from the bow. Jay just rolled his eyes and waved.
"Well I hope they spend some of the money on something other than beer," Theodore said after they were out of earshot, "but I suspect that is a lost cause."
"I'm sure they'll buy some hard liquor too," Jay said, and Theodore laughed.
"Well, here we are," the German said, and turned around to look at the island. There wasn't much to look at. They were at the bottom of a fairly steep chest-high hill, the top of which was lined by trees which obscured their view of anything else.
"And we weren't even shot," Jay said humorlessly, "I should never have doubted you. What now?"
"There should be a town just over this hill," Theodore said as he started walking towards the trees. "It was a place for all the servants and government officials to relax and shop. It used to be a monastery, and now it mostly houses the museum staff, as well as some soldiers and bureaucrats from your country."
"And this is a place you want to be?"
Theodore stood at the base of the hill and grabbed onto some tree roots that were sticking out of the ground above him, then looked for a foothold he could use to pull himself up.
"It is still a large enough town that we will not be noticed." He stopped what he was doing for a moment to look over his shoulder at Jay, "And I have a lot of friends here, besides." He grinned.
Jay grimaced, "Like your 'friends' back at the Opera?"
"Less extraordinary." Theodore found what he was looking for, and hauled himself most of the way up the hill before he had to drop onto his belly and squirm the rest of the way up. It looked terribly undignified, and Jay sighed because he knew that he was about to have to do the same thing. "But there are more than enough of them, and they are all very loyal," Theodore said, once he was secure on top of the hill. He brushed some dirt from the front of his coat.
"Okay," Jay said. He grabbed onto the roots himself now, and tried to plant his feet in the same place Theodore had. The first two times he tried to pull himself up, however, he was foiled when his muddy boots slipped out from under him.
He made it up on the third time, however, and didn't even have to belly-crawl the rest of the way; Theodore grabbed him by one arm and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet.
"Thanks," Jay said. Theodore nodded. They walked the few feet to the edge of the little stand of trees.
"Hmmmm," Theodore said.
Jay shared this sentiment. Beyond the trees was an open field that stretched for a couple hundred yards. Beyond that was a small village that looked like so many of the others they had passed through on the way here: squat stone buildings with red roof timbers along little neat streets.
What was drawing Jay and Theodore's attentions, however, was the platoon of red-jacketed soldiers who were advancing from the edge of the town up through the field. The soldiers were walking very nearly straight towards the trees where the two men were hiding. They were all carrying rifles, and although none of them had yet unslung the weapons from their shoulders, Jay found this fact small comfort.
"So they were waiting for us to land before they shot us?" Jay said. He began edging his way back towards the ledge they had climbed up, and tried to shrink behind a tree.
"I think they are just patrolling. It is unusual, but I do not believe they are looking for us specifically. We can avoid them if we are quiet and move carefully." Theodore crouched down and moved behind a tree himself.
"They're coming right at us," Jay hissed.
"Softly," Theodore said. "They are bearing slightly right, which is good. Going left will bring us closer to the town anyway. Come." He began walking along the top of the hill. To Jay's eyes he was crossing right in front of the soldiers' path, but none of them seemed to have noticed yet. Jay swallowed very hard and tried to imitate Theodore's movement.
They picked their way across about twenty yards in this way, and it was starting to seem as if they would make it out of the soldiers' line of sight. But then someone shouted.
"Jay Thomson!"
Jay fell onto his stomach, shaking with terror. Then he blinked. The call had come from his left, from the beach, not from the soldiers.
"Jay Thomson!" the call came again. "Jay Thomson Blake!" It was a woman shouting.
It took Jay a moment to recover his senses and lift his head back up out of the dirt. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Jay looked in front of him. Theodore had kept moving after Jay had stopped, and was now several yards ahead. Jay didn't know if he hadn't heard the shouting or was just ignoring it.
"Theodore," he said in the loudest whisper he could manage. He glanced nervously over to the soldiers, who were still making a path uncomfortably close to where Jay was lying.
"Jay Thomson!" the woman on the beach shouted again, and Jay winced sharply. What he really wanted was to crawl into a tiny hole somewhere and disappear, but that was hardly an option. He looked again at Theodore, who still seemed frustratingly oblivious, and was now threatening to disappear from sight behind the trees.
Jay noticed that he was threatening to hyperventilate. He tried to slow down his breathing, but only managed to turn it into a low, nervous groan. When the woman shouted out his name yet again, Jay set his jaw and began crawling as rapidly as he could towards the noise. Whoever it was, she had to stop.
He reached the ledge to the beach again, and pulled himself up to sit on top, ducking some low branches. It was a longer drop at this point, but the slope was slightly less steep. There were also more trees, Jay tried to peer through the branches, but couldn't see whoever was out there.
"Jay Thomson!" came the cry once again.
Jay groaned again in frustration, then pushed off to slide down the hill, holding onto a branch above him with one hand. The branch was very little help, since it broke almost immediately. Jay stumbled and would have fallen on his face if he hadn't run into a tree trunk first. It was not a comfortable landing, but at least he managed to stay upright.
Now standing, he hobbled onto the beach to find the woman shouting his name and to shut her up. Out of the tree cover, Jay could see that the sky had clouded over after he and Theodore had landed. The air had gotten colder and the lake was slightly foggy, like a fast-approaching rainstorm.
"Jay!" the voice said again, and Jay fell over onto one side. She hadn't shouted this time, at least, but she had spoken almost directly into his left ear.
He rolled over in the mud onto his back to look up at the woman who was causing him so much grief.
Jay had never seen her before. She had copper-colored hair that fell behind her shoulders and spread out to hang almost like a cape around her ankles. Her actual clothing consisted of a single simple gown that might have been white or silver, depending on the angle of the light. She wore no shoes, but had somehow avoided covering her feet in mud. Her arms were bare—although it was difficult to tell because her skin was nearly the same color as her dress—and she had them folded in front of her. She was giving Jay a rather stern look.
"What?" Jay said. He meant to say What the hell do you think you're doing? but could only manage the first word. She was looking at him like a schoolteacher that just caught a child misbehaving, and Jay's guilty conscience got the better of him.
"What are you doing here, Jay Thomson?" she asked. Even after she spoke, her words continued to ring for a moment inside Jay's head, like a slight echo.
"What am I doing here?" Jay scrambled back to his feet, while the woman made no effort to help him up. He brushed at his coat, but his hands were almost as muddy as the fabric now.
"We need you back, Jay Thomson."
"Huh?"
"You need to come home, we need you back." She leaned forward very slightly as she said this, emphasizing the words.
"I… well I'd love to come home," Jay said honestly—why not? "But I'm sort of having some difficulties on that account." He gestured over his shoulder with one thumb. Hopefully the soldiers hadn't come through the forest to spot him already.
She shook her head, "You can't get involved, Jay. It's not your battle."
"What are you talking about? Don't get involved with what?"
"With this," she unhooked one of her arms from beneath her shoulder and swept it across her body, waving at the whole island behind Jay, "all of this. None of it concerns you, Jay Thomson. You're needed back home."
"None of this concerns me?" Jay could hear his voice rising, but couldn't stop himself. It was like he'd suddenly found an outlet for all of his frustrations over the past weeks. "Tell that to the people who've chased me across half a country! I don't want anything to do with it, but I think it's too bloody late for that. Just who are you?"
"Here," she said, and she unfolded her other arm from across her waist, "take this." Jay hadn't noticed it before, but she was holding something in her hand, a black rod of some sort. Before he could react she had stepped forward and pressed it into his right hand. She put her left hand on his shoulder and leaned in close enough to Jay's face that he could feel her breathing on his nose. Jay also had not noticed that she was taller than him.
"Don't get involved," she said again, and looked unblinking straight into Jay's eyes. Her own irises were a faded blue, almost grey. "And come home, because you're needed back, and there's not much time left."
They stood like that for a moment, Jay too stunned and too afraid to move. But just as it was starting to become awkward and Jay was finding the courage to speak again, a wind picked up and howled across the beach. And then Jay heard something else.
"Freeze! Halt!"
"Owf! Nein! Hey!"
Jay didn't recognize the first voice, but the second was Theodore's.
"Theodore!" Jay broke out of the strange woman's grasp and spun around. The shouting had come from a little ways down the beach, and Jay hurried towards the noise, still holding onto the object he had been handed.
He started around a little stand of bushes growing off a rocky portion of the hill, then stopped and ducked. On the other side, just a few yards away, Theodore was wrestling with three British soldiers in red uniforms. Jay leaned over the bushes again, trying to decide what to do. Two of the soldiers were trying to grab Theodore's arms, while the other was just standing back with his hand on a pistol at his hip. None of them were looking in Jay's direction, but Theodore twisted his shoulders around, and caught sight of Jay looking over the bushes.
The German man's eyes went wide for a second, and then he grimaced.
"Stay back!" he shouted, and twisted one arm free so that he could punch one of the soldiers in the chest.
The soldier staggered back a step, then stood up again.
"Right," he growled, and took his rifle off of his shoulder. Theodore didn't even raise his hand to defend himself when the soldier started bludgeoning him with the butt end of the weapon.
Jay squawked, and dropped back down behind the bushes. He turned around and put his back up against the hill, breathing hard. He didn't think the soldiers had seen him, but they were taking Theodore. They were arresting him, but Theodore had told Jay to keep away. Jay thought that Theodore had meant that for him, anyway. Maybe he was just being a coward, but what could Jay possibly do against three armed men except get arrested himself? On the other hand, Theodore had been Jay's guide, what was he going to do out here? Jay turned and peeked back out over the bushes.
Two soldiers were dragging a limp Theodore towards the hill. The other patted his pistol and nodded towards them, then started to turn around. Jay shrunk back down. He couldn't do it. He was stuck here. Alone.
Jay was clutching the thing he had been handed to his chest, but only now did he really look at it for the first time. It was not a rod; it was long, but too flattened. The strange woman had given Jay a sword, a silver-hilted sword inside a black scabbard. Jay gawked at it for a few moments, then turned to look back at the woman.
She wasn't there. The beach was empty again. There was only mud and trees and a cloud of fog receding over the water.
And so had Martin.
With a muted cry she overcame her paralysis and ran forward to where her companion was lying on the floor, shuddering from his sharp, heaving breaths. Margaret's hands were still tied behind her back, so she knelt down carefully next to Martin and nudged him with one knee.
"Colonel Holland! Colonel Holland are you all right?" she asked desperately.
"Not really," he wheezed, and rolled slightly so that he could look up at her. He smiled, but his eyes seemed unfocused, "Got a bad concussion, might have cracked my skull. And I had to break my wrist."
Margaret noticed that he was clutching his left arm to his chest. The hand had turned purple and was swelling considerably. The knotted rope their captors had used to bind his arms was still hanging around his wrist.
"Oh my God, we've got to get you to a doctor—"
"No," he half-coughed half-laughed. "I can't stand straight, but you need to get out of here. Miss Blake." His eyes cleared for a moment when he said her name, and his hard stare made Margaret think twice before she responded.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, and gave him her own hard-faced look. "I said I wasn't going to let you out of my sight again, and I meant it. Besides, I can hardly go anywhere with my hands tied up like this." She shrugged.
Martin closed his eyes for moment, grimacing.
"Here," he said, and motioned with his good hand for her to turn around.
She did, and Martin worked at the ropes for a minute with one hand. Margaret could see the corpse of the red-eyed man on the floor in front of her. The big room was still only lit by the one fireplace, but it still seemed significantly brighter, and Margaret could see the dead man. There was one black hole in the center of his forehead, just beneath his wig. Margaret knew very little about human biology, but she still thought there should have been more blood visible from a wound like that. None was apparent. It also seemed that the red-eyed man was no longer actually red-eyed. In death, the color had drained from his eyes to the point that they looked—almost—human.
The fire crackled. There was nothing odd about the hunchback's corpse, so far as Margaret could tell through the flames. She didn't know why, but when Martin had shot the red-eyed man, the hunchback had acted like he had been wounded too. Now he was burning like so much kindling, just an unusually large blackened log. She wrinkled her nose at the smell.
"There," Martin said behind her, and with a final tug the ropes around Margaret's hands fell loose. She immediately turned around and put her hands underneath his back to lift him up.
"Ow!" he twisted away from her. "What are you doing?"
Margaret set her hands on her hips, "I'm going to carry you out of here if I have to."
"Miss Blake," he was panting, "you are going to have to get out of here on your own. I was just beaten half to death, I can't keep my balance well enough to walk, much less run, and" he swallowed, "I'm rather sure I'm going to pass out in just a moment here. Go out through one of the windows and find your way back to the air station."
She shook her head hard enough for her hair to cover her shoulders, "I am not just giving up on you. Or on our whole mission—as if they were different. You still have to find Jay Thomson, Colonel Holland. Don't think I'm letting you off the hook."
Martin shook his own head, though much less forcefully. "The Herreninsel, the—whatever he was," he waved a hand at the red-eyed man's corpse, "said he was on the Herreninsel. It's an island on a lake in the southeast, big castle there, you can catch a train most of the way. My men are dead; I don't have any more information."
Margaret looked over her shoulder to the dead man, "'Whatever he was'… He didn't think you could kill him. I didn't think you could either, though Lord only knows why."
She turned back to Martin to find him looking up at the ceiling, chucking through a hysteric grin. He met her eyes, then reached up towards her with one hand. He was holding the little gun that he had shot the red-eyed man with, offering it to her.
"Silver bullets," he said, "just in case."
Margaret stared at the gun, then at him. "That's… incredibly superstitious of you, Colonel Holland. You don't strike me as the type."
"I'm not," he nodded. "But there was once… when I was in Madrid, I ran into something I couldn't explain, nearly killed me, did kill a lot of other people. Anyway, I've kept that loaded ever since, as I said, just in case."
"That's hardly a convincing explanation."
"No, but you need to leave," he raised the gun towards her again. "Take it, you might need it."
Margaret pushed his hand away, "I'll say it again: you're coming with me. Now you can keep arguing, or you can help me get you up—"
The door through which they had entered opened on the far side of the room. Despite his protests about incapacitation, Martin snapped into action almost before Margaret could even turn her head. He spun himself around with a kick and trained the gun on the door with his outstretched right arm.
One of the soldiers like those they had passed outside the palace leaned into the room. He was wearing an almost identical uniform, including an absurdly complicated blue and red coat that looked like it came out of a museum, but at least he didn't have one of those ridiculous horsehair helmets the guards outside wore. Or didn't anymore, the man looked terribly confused, like he didn't know where he was. And instead of a rifle or a pike, he was carrying a simple lantern. He held it over his head and squinted in Margaret and Martin's direction.
"Verzeihung?" His head swept over the carnage in the room, and he stepped forward cautiously, despite the pistol Martin kept trained on him. "Ahh… wie geht's Ihnen? Sind sie verletzt?"
"Stop! Halt!" Martin commanded. The soldier froze.
"Es tut… I am… sorry," the soldier said. His eyes were wide in confused fear.
Margaret didn't know what was going on. Apparently neither did Martin, because he asked, "What's going on here?"
The soldier shook his head, "Ich weiss—Ich, ahh… I am sorry. I do not know. Aber… Are you all right?"
Margaret screwed up her face in confusion. This was one of the people that had just kidnapped and nearly killed them. She looked down at Martin, but he was already looking back at her, the same question on his face.
He shrugged, and lowered his gun.
* * *
Jay regretted telling Theodore he could ride a horse. He did still know how to ride just as skillfully as ever—which was to say, not very. But Jay had forgotten how uncomfortable a saddle could be. He shifted his weight in another useless attempt to relieve the pain in his thighs.
Theodore had gotten the horses from one of the towns they had passed walking along the railroad out of Munich. Jay didn't ask how Theodore had acquired them; he wasn't sure wanted to know. But whatever his methods, Theodore had gotten the horses, and then he expected Jay to ride one of them. At the time, Jay himself had thought it would be better than walking. It was a stupid thought, of course. Over the past few weeks Jay had gotten used to walking. Without a suitcase to lug anymore, he hadn't even been breathing heavy when Theodore went for the horses.
Theodore was pulling ahead of him again. Jay sighed and tugged his horse's gaze away from the grass at the edge of the road. The path curved around a stand of trees, and then opened up onto what Jay would call a small town, although it was far larger than most of the tiny hamlets they'd been passing through.
"Ah, we are almost there," Theodore said. He looked to his right, then twisted around to look over his shoulder at Jay, who was still trying to coax his horse into a faster pace. Theodore waved a hand in front of him, "This is Prien am Chiemsee. Our destination is the village of Stock, just on the other side. We will take the ferry from there, Mr. Blake."
"We have to take a boat?" Jay asked as he pulled up alongside the other man.
"The Herreninsel is an island, Mr. Blake. Would you rather swim?"
"No thanks," Jay said. "I just thought there'd be a bridge."
Theodore chuckled. "Is something the matter with a boat? I thought all you British were supposed to love the water."
"That's a common misunderstanding. The Royal Navy has so many warships because we're all deathly afraid of the sea and everything in it."
Theodore laughed in earnest now, and Jay smiled at his own joke. Now that they were well away from the shouting and the explosions of the city, Jay was able to relax somewhat. It was a sunny day and the town they were passing through looked cheerful, its people apparently unaware of what was happening just fifty miles away. They passed a baker selling rolls from a cart outside his shop. Theodore traded him a coin for four of the buns, and handed one across to Jay.
Jay tore off a little piece to chew on, then stared as he saw Theodore stuff one whole into his mouth.
"Hungry," the German said simply.
It was not yet noon when they reached the little dock by the side of the lake and looked for a place to draw up their horses. The lake was a shade of blue only slightly darker than the sky. The mountains in the distance were themselves a barely-visible washed out blue, so that they nearly hid the boundary between the sky and Earth. Jay could see several small boats tied up at the dockside in front of them, but at the moment none seemed to be out sailing on the water. It left the lake a tranquil appearance that was pleasant just to look at. The people of this area were extremely fortunate to live here, Jay thought. He took a deep breath of the air coming in off the lake. It smelled much nicer than most water in Britain did, too.
They quickly found out why no one was sailing on the lake.
"Nein," said the fourth person Theodore talked to about getting a boat over to the island. "Es tut mir leid," he shook his head and made a sharp gesture across his chest.
"Still no luck?" Jay asked.
Theodore kept talking to the old man, who was wearing a heavy wool overcoat that could not have been at all comfortable, but the man just kept shaking his head and saying more things which Jay could not understand, but sounded distinctly negative.
"Bah," Theodore finally threw up his arms as the old man turned to walk away. "Apparently the military has closed off the island; they don't want any boats on the lake."
"Maybe we will have to swim, then."
Theodore just grunted.
Jay glanced around, "I don't see any soldiers. Is someone really going to stop us if we take a boat over?"
"The garrison is on the island," Theodore pointed across the lake. "But the people here have heard about the fighting in Munich; or rumors of it, at least. No one wants to risk getting shot to make the trip."
"Okay," Jay glanced around again, then sighed. "So what do we do?"
"We figure out how much it will cost to bribe someone into making the trip anyway."
Jay frowned, "Why do we want to bribe someone? You just said we'd get shot."
"We're not going to get shot," Theodore waved a dismissive hand. "They can't possibly have completely closed off the island, they'd run out of food within a day."
"Well maybe they only closed it down for a day, we could wait."
"We may not have a day," Theodore said. He brought his horse to a stop at the edge of a tiny dock which berthed a handful of tiny sail- and rowboats. The German slid off his horse, and gestured for Jay to do the same. "You may have noticed," he said, "that we are still not all that far from Munich. It will not take long for Karl's men to reach this place if they are coming."
Jay got off his horse less easily than Theodore, although he did manage to avoid stumbling outright. "Maybe it isn't that far, but neither is that island. Or do you think these people can't swim?"
"We will be safe," Theodore said, and tied the reins of his horse to a post with a quick knot. Several people were loitering around the dock, talking or fishing. Theodore waved his arms in their direction and called to no one in particular, "Hallo! Ich will ein Boot leihen."
An older man who was leaning against a small wooden shed took a cigarette out of his pocket, "Nein," he said, "nicht Heute. Sie sind verboten."
Theodore shook his head and gestured over his shoulder towards Jay and the horses, "Ich will meine Pferde verkaufen, um ein Boot zu leihen. Und… ah, zwanzig Pfund," he patted his coat pocket, jangling some of the coins he kept there. Jay was starting to wonder just how wealthy Theodore was, he seemed to spend money like water.
Several people stood up to look at Theodore after that offer, and they all seemed sorely tempted. But after a few glances between the horses and the island in the distance, they all shook their heads and muttered refusals.
Jay finished tying up his horse alongside Theodore's, and walked over towards his companion. Theodore had crossed his arms and was tapping his foot, apparently unhappy with this outcome. Jay was about to suggest again that they just wait a day when someone shouted.
"Oy! Herr reicher Mann!"
Both Jay and Theodore turned toward the voice. It was coming from a small sailboat that was floating just off the beach, but was not tied to the dock. Inside, a boy was excitedly waving one arm, trying to get their attention.
"Wir haben ein Boot," he called. "Wir haben keine Angst!"
A second boy appeared from behind the mast in the center of the boat and began waving as well. They both looked like they were about fifteen.
"Aha!" Theodore chuckled, and he turned around to nudge Jay in the arm with an elbow, like he knew what Jay had been about to say. He shouted back to the boys in the boat, "Wir werden fünf Pfund für Überfahrt zahlen."
"Keine Chance!" the boy who had first waved shook a fist. "Wir wollen die zwanzig Pfund! Und deine Pferde."
"Ach so!" Theodore laughed again, loud enough for the boys on the sailboat to hear. "Abgemacht, meine Freunden."
"Dann, ahh…" the first boy turned and said something to his companion, gesturing at the little dock. Then he turned back to Theodore and waved again, "Komm an Bord."
"Theodore, what are you doing?" Jay asked.
Theodore turned around and shrugged, "He was a tough negotiator, I had to sell the horses."
Jay blinked, "What? No, I mean—you're not seriously planning on making these kids take us over there, are you?"
"No, I am paying them twenty pounds and two horses to do it. Which means this may be the last job they do until they're thirty."
"It's going to be the last job they ever do if they get killed. Didn't you hear the other guy? The boat is verboten! What are you doing bringing kids into this?"
"No one is going to get killed, Mr. Blake, do not worry. Even if this does not work, the worst that will happen is the guards will yell at us and force us to turn back for shore. But the guards will not even see us. The town is on the North side," he pointed across the lake, then moved his hand slightly, "so we will land on the forested side. Once we are on the island, there should be no problem."
He started walking down the little wooden dock to where the two boys were holding their boat. Jay followed after him, but said, "If it were that easy, then why didn't any of these other people take your offer?"
The other people in question were mostly still standing around, looking at Jay and Theodore with amused expressions. Jay ignored them.
Theodore walked to the edge of the dock, turned around to face Jay, and held up his hands. "I am taking this boat over to the Herreninsel, Mr. Blake. You are welcome to come along. You are also welcome to stay. You may even be safe here; I cannot predict the future with absolute certainty."
The most infuriating thing was the smile on his face as he said these words, as if he knew full well that there was no way Jay would choose not to keep following along. After all, what choice did he have? Jay couldn't very well wait here with no money, no friends, and God-only-knew-what chasing after him. Once again, he was stuck following someone else.
He didn't have to like it though. Theodore, still grinning, stepped backward onto the sailboat. Jay went ahead after him, muttering. The boy holding onto the sail lines gave him one strange look before turning his attention back to his work. The other boy shoved them away from the dock. Jay picked his way carefully to the back of the boat, where he could sit out of the way of anything important. Theodore took a minute to explain to the two kids where he wanted to go. Neither of them seemed the least bit concerned.
The boy who had first shouted to Theodore came to the back of the boat and sat a few feet away from Jay to work the rudder. "Hi," he said.
"Uh, hi," Jay said.
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Haben Sie Angst?" he asked, and laughed as if Jay had said something terribly funny.
"I don't, ahh…" Jay started to say, "Ich spreche nicht—"
He was interrupted when Theodore sat down next to him. "Engländer," Theodore said to the boy, and pointed at Jay.
"Ah![/i] the boy said, and nodded. Then he said something Jay couldn't follow.
"He said his father says that all Englishmen are rich snobs."
Jay snorted, and turned to the boy, "Actually," he said, and furrowed his brow, "Ich habe... nein, uh, Geld."
The youth frowned for a moment, then shrugged, "Also, du bist noch Engländer.
"But you're still English," Theodore translated with a chuckle.
Jay sighed, and leaned back against the side of the little boat. "I guess there's no escaping that one," he said.
It took them about twenty minutes to get across the little stretch of water to the island. And to Jay's immense relief, it was an uneventful journey; they could see nothing on their destination except trees. The two boys, Adam and Jörg (Adam was the one whose father thought all Englishmen were rich snobs) even offered to drop them off farther north, closer to the town which was Theodore's ultimate goal. Once they got within a few hundred yards and still couldn't see any signs of humanity, Theodore agreed. That way they wouldn't have to cross the palace grounds, he said. Jay simply shrugged; he was just along for the ride at this point.
Eventually, they found a spot where the water was deep enough to let the boat pull right up to the beach. Jay hopped off first, and still managed to get his pants wet when he landed in several inches of mud. Theodore came next, after signing a little piece of paper, recording the sale of the horses to the two boys; he landed slightly more gracefully than Jay, although he still kicked up a fair amount of mud. Adam dropped down after them to help push the boat back out into the lake before getting a hand up from his friend.
"So long, Engländer," he said from the bow. Jay just rolled his eyes and waved.
"Well I hope they spend some of the money on something other than beer," Theodore said after they were out of earshot, "but I suspect that is a lost cause."
"I'm sure they'll buy some hard liquor too," Jay said, and Theodore laughed.
"Well, here we are," the German said, and turned around to look at the island. There wasn't much to look at. They were at the bottom of a fairly steep chest-high hill, the top of which was lined by trees which obscured their view of anything else.
"And we weren't even shot," Jay said humorlessly, "I should never have doubted you. What now?"
"There should be a town just over this hill," Theodore said as he started walking towards the trees. "It was a place for all the servants and government officials to relax and shop. It used to be a monastery, and now it mostly houses the museum staff, as well as some soldiers and bureaucrats from your country."
"And this is a place you want to be?"
Theodore stood at the base of the hill and grabbed onto some tree roots that were sticking out of the ground above him, then looked for a foothold he could use to pull himself up.
"It is still a large enough town that we will not be noticed." He stopped what he was doing for a moment to look over his shoulder at Jay, "And I have a lot of friends here, besides." He grinned.
Jay grimaced, "Like your 'friends' back at the Opera?"
"Less extraordinary." Theodore found what he was looking for, and hauled himself most of the way up the hill before he had to drop onto his belly and squirm the rest of the way up. It looked terribly undignified, and Jay sighed because he knew that he was about to have to do the same thing. "But there are more than enough of them, and they are all very loyal," Theodore said, once he was secure on top of the hill. He brushed some dirt from the front of his coat.
"Okay," Jay said. He grabbed onto the roots himself now, and tried to plant his feet in the same place Theodore had. The first two times he tried to pull himself up, however, he was foiled when his muddy boots slipped out from under him.
He made it up on the third time, however, and didn't even have to belly-crawl the rest of the way; Theodore grabbed him by one arm and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet.
"Thanks," Jay said. Theodore nodded. They walked the few feet to the edge of the little stand of trees.
"Hmmmm," Theodore said.
Jay shared this sentiment. Beyond the trees was an open field that stretched for a couple hundred yards. Beyond that was a small village that looked like so many of the others they had passed through on the way here: squat stone buildings with red roof timbers along little neat streets.
What was drawing Jay and Theodore's attentions, however, was the platoon of red-jacketed soldiers who were advancing from the edge of the town up through the field. The soldiers were walking very nearly straight towards the trees where the two men were hiding. They were all carrying rifles, and although none of them had yet unslung the weapons from their shoulders, Jay found this fact small comfort.
"So they were waiting for us to land before they shot us?" Jay said. He began edging his way back towards the ledge they had climbed up, and tried to shrink behind a tree.
"I think they are just patrolling. It is unusual, but I do not believe they are looking for us specifically. We can avoid them if we are quiet and move carefully." Theodore crouched down and moved behind a tree himself.
"They're coming right at us," Jay hissed.
"Softly," Theodore said. "They are bearing slightly right, which is good. Going left will bring us closer to the town anyway. Come." He began walking along the top of the hill. To Jay's eyes he was crossing right in front of the soldiers' path, but none of them seemed to have noticed yet. Jay swallowed very hard and tried to imitate Theodore's movement.
They picked their way across about twenty yards in this way, and it was starting to seem as if they would make it out of the soldiers' line of sight. But then someone shouted.
"Jay Thomson!"
Jay fell onto his stomach, shaking with terror. Then he blinked. The call had come from his left, from the beach, not from the soldiers.
"Jay Thomson!" the call came again. "Jay Thomson Blake!" It was a woman shouting.
It took Jay a moment to recover his senses and lift his head back up out of the dirt. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Jay looked in front of him. Theodore had kept moving after Jay had stopped, and was now several yards ahead. Jay didn't know if he hadn't heard the shouting or was just ignoring it.
"Theodore," he said in the loudest whisper he could manage. He glanced nervously over to the soldiers, who were still making a path uncomfortably close to where Jay was lying.
"Jay Thomson!" the woman on the beach shouted again, and Jay winced sharply. What he really wanted was to crawl into a tiny hole somewhere and disappear, but that was hardly an option. He looked again at Theodore, who still seemed frustratingly oblivious, and was now threatening to disappear from sight behind the trees.
Jay noticed that he was threatening to hyperventilate. He tried to slow down his breathing, but only managed to turn it into a low, nervous groan. When the woman shouted out his name yet again, Jay set his jaw and began crawling as rapidly as he could towards the noise. Whoever it was, she had to stop.
He reached the ledge to the beach again, and pulled himself up to sit on top, ducking some low branches. It was a longer drop at this point, but the slope was slightly less steep. There were also more trees, Jay tried to peer through the branches, but couldn't see whoever was out there.
"Jay Thomson!" came the cry once again.
Jay groaned again in frustration, then pushed off to slide down the hill, holding onto a branch above him with one hand. The branch was very little help, since it broke almost immediately. Jay stumbled and would have fallen on his face if he hadn't run into a tree trunk first. It was not a comfortable landing, but at least he managed to stay upright.
Now standing, he hobbled onto the beach to find the woman shouting his name and to shut her up. Out of the tree cover, Jay could see that the sky had clouded over after he and Theodore had landed. The air had gotten colder and the lake was slightly foggy, like a fast-approaching rainstorm.
"Jay!" the voice said again, and Jay fell over onto one side. She hadn't shouted this time, at least, but she had spoken almost directly into his left ear.
He rolled over in the mud onto his back to look up at the woman who was causing him so much grief.
Jay had never seen her before. She had copper-colored hair that fell behind her shoulders and spread out to hang almost like a cape around her ankles. Her actual clothing consisted of a single simple gown that might have been white or silver, depending on the angle of the light. She wore no shoes, but had somehow avoided covering her feet in mud. Her arms were bare—although it was difficult to tell because her skin was nearly the same color as her dress—and she had them folded in front of her. She was giving Jay a rather stern look.
"What?" Jay said. He meant to say What the hell do you think you're doing? but could only manage the first word. She was looking at him like a schoolteacher that just caught a child misbehaving, and Jay's guilty conscience got the better of him.
"What are you doing here, Jay Thomson?" she asked. Even after she spoke, her words continued to ring for a moment inside Jay's head, like a slight echo.
"What am I doing here?" Jay scrambled back to his feet, while the woman made no effort to help him up. He brushed at his coat, but his hands were almost as muddy as the fabric now.
"We need you back, Jay Thomson."
"Huh?"
"You need to come home, we need you back." She leaned forward very slightly as she said this, emphasizing the words.
"I… well I'd love to come home," Jay said honestly—why not? "But I'm sort of having some difficulties on that account." He gestured over his shoulder with one thumb. Hopefully the soldiers hadn't come through the forest to spot him already.
She shook her head, "You can't get involved, Jay. It's not your battle."
"What are you talking about? Don't get involved with what?"
"With this," she unhooked one of her arms from beneath her shoulder and swept it across her body, waving at the whole island behind Jay, "all of this. None of it concerns you, Jay Thomson. You're needed back home."
"None of this concerns me?" Jay could hear his voice rising, but couldn't stop himself. It was like he'd suddenly found an outlet for all of his frustrations over the past weeks. "Tell that to the people who've chased me across half a country! I don't want anything to do with it, but I think it's too bloody late for that. Just who are you?"
"Here," she said, and she unfolded her other arm from across her waist, "take this." Jay hadn't noticed it before, but she was holding something in her hand, a black rod of some sort. Before he could react she had stepped forward and pressed it into his right hand. She put her left hand on his shoulder and leaned in close enough to Jay's face that he could feel her breathing on his nose. Jay also had not noticed that she was taller than him.
"Don't get involved," she said again, and looked unblinking straight into Jay's eyes. Her own irises were a faded blue, almost grey. "And come home, because you're needed back, and there's not much time left."
They stood like that for a moment, Jay too stunned and too afraid to move. But just as it was starting to become awkward and Jay was finding the courage to speak again, a wind picked up and howled across the beach. And then Jay heard something else.
"Freeze! Halt!"
"Owf! Nein! Hey!"
Jay didn't recognize the first voice, but the second was Theodore's.
"Theodore!" Jay broke out of the strange woman's grasp and spun around. The shouting had come from a little ways down the beach, and Jay hurried towards the noise, still holding onto the object he had been handed.
He started around a little stand of bushes growing off a rocky portion of the hill, then stopped and ducked. On the other side, just a few yards away, Theodore was wrestling with three British soldiers in red uniforms. Jay leaned over the bushes again, trying to decide what to do. Two of the soldiers were trying to grab Theodore's arms, while the other was just standing back with his hand on a pistol at his hip. None of them were looking in Jay's direction, but Theodore twisted his shoulders around, and caught sight of Jay looking over the bushes.
The German man's eyes went wide for a second, and then he grimaced.
"Stay back!" he shouted, and twisted one arm free so that he could punch one of the soldiers in the chest.
The soldier staggered back a step, then stood up again.
"Right," he growled, and took his rifle off of his shoulder. Theodore didn't even raise his hand to defend himself when the soldier started bludgeoning him with the butt end of the weapon.
Jay squawked, and dropped back down behind the bushes. He turned around and put his back up against the hill, breathing hard. He didn't think the soldiers had seen him, but they were taking Theodore. They were arresting him, but Theodore had told Jay to keep away. Jay thought that Theodore had meant that for him, anyway. Maybe he was just being a coward, but what could Jay possibly do against three armed men except get arrested himself? On the other hand, Theodore had been Jay's guide, what was he going to do out here? Jay turned and peeked back out over the bushes.
Two soldiers were dragging a limp Theodore towards the hill. The other patted his pistol and nodded towards them, then started to turn around. Jay shrunk back down. He couldn't do it. He was stuck here. Alone.
Jay was clutching the thing he had been handed to his chest, but only now did he really look at it for the first time. It was not a rod; it was long, but too flattened. The strange woman had given Jay a sword, a silver-hilted sword inside a black scabbard. Jay gawked at it for a few moments, then turned to look back at the woman.
She wasn't there. The beach was empty again. There was only mud and trees and a cloud of fog receding over the water.