Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 22

Blion gnawed on a bit of dried rabbit meat as wandered along the narrow path.  He quite enjoyed the smoked flavor, but felt guilty about eating the cute little animal. Tissue cloned meats were much more humane.

Daevik's warnings were well founded, the path got very hard to follow in spots.  The crumbled bits of asphalt here and there were all that was left to guide him.  Fortunately, there were spacious meadows for most of the time, fields, once in a while, but when the brush and trees got thickest, they had been hatcheted back by benevolent travelers before him.

When he emerged from one particularly thick forested area into an open field, a novel sight met his eyes: a great wall stretching off into the invisible distance.  The wall ran parallel with the road in one direction and perpendicular to it in the other.  Broken glass was embedded in concrete at the top, a clear enough sign that visitors would not be welcome.  The wall was over ten feet tall, too high to jump over.

Blion continued walking along the road, wondering if this was the Boggen's place that Daevik had marked on his map.  He had not yet come to Peterborough but suspected he might soon.  He entered another pocket of woods.  The trees here looked old, mostly eucalyptus and pine.  At least the wall's guidance made it easy to follow the road.  In the distance behind him he hear men talking and dogs barking viciously.  Could it be the Sheriff had come after him?  He started looking for places to hide.  More dogs!  The first one, the timid one he had fed had been cute enough but he was getting kind of sick of them.  The Ancients had kept certain kinds of dogs particularly for their ability to smell humans and hunt them down.  Was this their purpose?

He began to run quickly along.  There was nowhere to hide.  "They've got his scent!" yelled one of the men.  Blion recognized it as the Sheriff's voice.  He could hear a clomping sound.  He had heard recordings of them in an Ancient historical video and been intrigued by the creatures they came from.  The men might be riding horses.  He had greatly wished to ride one of those large mammals but never gotten a chance to even see one.  They survived in the wild somewhere in the world, he forgot where.  Perhaps somewhere in the plains of North America.

The dogs were closing in.  A moment later, he could see them.  They saw him, big dogs with black and brown coats and long snouts.  They charged towards him.  He look at the wall and saw his salvation: a big tree had fallen on the wall breaking the two tiers of bricks off it and coming to rest with its trunk parallel to the wall.  The dogs would not be able to scale it and neither would the horses.  He threw his staff and the sack that Daevik gave him over the wall.  The dogs were coming at remarkable speed.  He clambered up on the tree trunk and jumped to grab the top of the wall.  He was starting to pull himself up when the first dog reached him.  As his left leg was pulling up, it lunged towards him and grabbed his pant leg pulling him back down.  He kicked and struggled and the dog broke free with a bit of his pant leg in it's mouth.  He climbed over the wall and stood there deciding which way to run. His bag and staff a were short distance away.  There were short shrubs and grass nearby and large oak trees a ways away from the wall. The ground was littered with leaves and twigs.  He took a step forward and to his horror and surprise, the twigs gave way and he dropped an additional two body lengths down into a pit.  It had been a trap.

There he was sitting in the bottom of a big hole.  His leg ached and he was a bit scratched up but otherwise ok.  Very lucky, in a way.  He could hear the horses arrive outside the wall, their sounds muted by the wall and the pit.  "He's must've jumped over the wall."  It was the deputy's voice speaking.