My hands were throbbing again—they hadn’t ever stopped, I supposed, but I hadn’t had attention to spare for them. Now I did, and momentarily welcomed the shooting pains that outlined each nail with liquid fire, for distraction from the deadly stiffness spreading down my neck and through my shoulder.
The muscles of my neck jumped and spasmed; I gasped, lost my air, and arched my body bowlike, fingers dug into the binding ropes as I fought to get it back.
A hand came down on my arm. I hadn’t heard him approach. I turned blindly, butting at him with my head. I didn’t care who he was or what he wanted, provided he would remove the gag. Rape seemed a perfectly reasonable exchange for survival, at least at the moment.
I made desperate noises, whimpering, snorting, and spewing gouts of blood and snot as I shook my head violently, trying to indicate that I was choking—given the level of sexual incompetence so far demonstrated, he might not even realize that I couldn’t breathe, and simply proceed about his business, unaware that simple rape was becoming necrophilia.
He was fumbling round my head. Thank God, thank God! I held myself still with superhuman effort, head swimming as little bursts of fire went off inside my eyeballs. Then the strip of fabric came away and I thrust the wad of cloth out of my mouth by reflex, instantly gagged, and threw up, whooping air and retching simultaneously.
I hadn’t eaten; no more than a thread of bile seared my throat and ran down my chin. I choked and swallowed and breathed, sucking air in huge, greedy, lung-bursting gulps.
He was saying something, whispering urgently. I didn’t care, couldn’t listen. All I heard was the grateful wheeze of my own breathing, and the thump of my heart. Finally slowing from its frantic race to keep oxygen moving round my starved tissues, it pounded hard enough to shake my body.
Then a word or two got through to me, and I lifted my head, staring at him.
“Whad?” I said thickly. I coughed, shaking my head to try to clear it. It hurt very much. “What did you say?”
He was visible only as a ragged, lion-haired silhouette, bony-shouldered in the faint glow from the fire.
“I said,” he whispered, leaning close, “does the name ‘Ringo Starr’ mean anything to you?”
I WAS BY THIS TIME well beyond shock. I merely wiped my split lip gingerly on my shoulder, and said, very calmly, “Yes.”
He had been holding his breath; I realized it only when I heard the sigh as he released it, and saw his shoulders slump.
“Oh, God,” he said, half under his breath. “Oh, God.”
He lunged forward suddenly and caught me against him in a hard embrace. I recoiled, choking as the noose round my neck tightened once again, but he didn’t notice, absorbed in his own emotion.
“Oh, God,” he said, and buried his face in my shoulder, nearly sobbing. “Oh, God. I knew, I knew you hadda be, I knew it, but I couldn’t believe it, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! I didn’t think I’d ever find another one, not ever—”
“Kk,” I said. I arched my back, urgently.
“Wha—oh, shit!” He let go and grabbed for the rope around my neck. He scrabbled hold of it and yanked the noose over my head, nearly tearing my ear off in the process, but I didn’t mind. “Shit, you okay?”
“Yes,” I croaked. “Un . . . tie me.”
He sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and glanced back over his shoulder.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “The next guy who comes along’ll see.”
“The next guy?” I screamed, as well as I could scream in a strangled whisper. “What do you mean, the next—”
“Well, you know. . . .” It seemed suddenly to dawn on him that I might have objections to waiting tamely like a trussed turkey for the next would-be ra**st in the lineup. “Er . . . I mean . . . well, never mind. Who are you?”
“You know damn well who I am,” I croaked furiously, shoving him with my bound hands. “I’m Claire Fraser. Who in bloody hell are you, what are you doing here, and if you want one more word out of me, you’ll bloody well untie me this minute!”
He turned again to glance apprehensively over his shoulder, and it occurred to me vaguely that he was afraid of his so-called comrades. So was I. I could see his profile in silhouette; it was indeed the bushy-haired young Indian, the one I had thought might be a Tuscaroran. Indian . . . some connection clicked into place, deep in the tangled synapses.
“Bloody hell,” I said, and dabbed at a trickle of blood that ran from the raw corner of my mouth. “Otter-Toof. Tooth. You’re one of his.”
“What?!” His head swung back to face me, eyes so wide the whites showed briefly. “Who?”
“Oh, what in hell was his real name? Robert . . . Robert th-something . . .” I was trembling with fury, terror, shock, and exhaustion, groping through the muddled remnants of what used to be my mind. Wreck though I might be, I remembered Otter-Tooth, all right. I had a sudden vivid memory of being alone in the dark, on a night like this, wet with rain and all alone, a long-buried skull cupped in my hands.
“Springer,” he said, and gripped my arm eagerly. “Springer—was that it? Robert Springer?”
I had just enough presence of mind to clamp my jaw, thrust out my chin, and hold up my bound hands in front of him. Not another word until he cut me loose.
“Shit,” he muttered again, and with another hasty glance behind him, fumbled for his knife. He wasn’t skillful with it. If I had needed any evidence that he wasn’t a real Indian of the time . . . but he got my hands free without cutting me, and I doubled up with a groan, hands tucked under my armpits as the blood surged into them. They felt like balloons filled and stretched to the point of bursting.
“When?” he demanded, paying no attention to my distress. “When did you come? Where did you find Bob? Where is he?”
“1946,” I said, squeezing my arms down tight on my throbbing hands. “The first time. 1968, the second. As for Mr. Springer—”
“The second—did you say the second time?” His voice rose in astonishment. He choked it off, looking guiltily back, but the sounds of the men dicing and arguing round the fire were more than loud enough to drown out a simple exclamation.
“Second time,” he repeated more softly. “So you did it? You went back?”
I nodded, pressing my lips together and rocking back and forth a little. I thought my fingernails would pop off with each heartbeat.
“What about you?” I asked, though I was fairly sure that I already knew.
“1968,” he said, confirming it.
“What year did you turn up in?” I asked. “I mean—how long have you been here? Er . . . now, I mean.”
“Oh, God.” He sat back on his heels, running a hand back through his long, tangled hair. “I been here six years, as near as I can tell. But you said—second time. If you made it home, why in hell’d you come back? Oh—wait. You didn’t make it home, you went to another time, but not the one you came from? Where’d you start from?”
“Scotland, 1946. And no, I made it home,” I said, not wanting to go into details. “My husband was here, though. I came back on purpose, to be with him.” A decision whose wisdom seemed presently in severe doubt.
“And speaking of my husband,” I added, beginning to feel as though I might possess a few shreds of sanity after all, “I was not joking. He’s coming. You don’t want him to find you keeping me captive, I assure you. But if you—”
He disregarded this, leaning eagerly toward me.
“But that means you know how it works! You can steer!”
“Something like that,” I said, impatient. “I take it that you and your companions didn’t know how to steer, as you put it?” I massaged one hand with the other, gritting my teeth against the throb of blood. I could feel the furrows the rope had left in my flesh.
“We thought we did.” Bitterness tinged his voice. “Singing stones. Gemstones. That’s what we used. Raymond said . . . It didn’t work, though. Or maybe . . . maybe it did.” He was making deductions; I could hear the excitement rising again in his tone.
“You met Bob Springer—Otter-Tooth, I mean. So he did make it! And if he made it, maybe the others did, too. See, I thought they were all dead. I thought—thought I was alone.” There was a catch in his voice, and despite the urgency of the situation and my annoyance at him, I felt a pang of sympathy. I knew very well what it felt like to be alone in that way, marooned in time.
In a way, I hated to disillusion him, but there was no point in keeping the truth from him.
“Otter-Tooth is dead, I’m afraid.”
He suddenly stopped moving and sat very still. The faint glow of firelight through the trees outlined him; I could see his face. A few long hairs lifted in the breeze. They were the only thing that moved.
“How?” he said at last, in a small, choked voice.
“Killed by the Iroquois,” I said. “The Mohawk.” My mind was beginning, very slowly, to work again. Six years ago, this man—whoever he was—had come. 1767, that would be. And yet Otter-Tooth, the man who had once been Robert Springer, had died more than a generation earlier. They’d started out together, but ended in different times.
“Shit,” he said, though the obvious distress in his voice was mingled with something like awe. “That would have been a real bummer, especially for Bob. He, like, idolized those guys.”
“Yes, I expect he was most put out about it,” I replied, rather dryly. My eyelids felt thick and heavy. It was an effort to force them open, but I could still see. I glanced at the fire glow, but couldn’t see anything beyond the faint movement of shadows in the distance. If there actually was a lineup of men waiting for my services, at least they were tactfully keeping out of sight. I doubted it, and gave silent thanks that I wasn’t twenty years younger—there might have been.
“I met some Iroquois—Christ, I went looking for ’em, if you can believe that! That was the whole point, see, to find the Iroquois tribes and get them to—”
“Yes, I know what you had in mind,” I interrupted. “Look, this is not really the time or place for a long discussion. I think that—”
“Those Iroquois are some nasty tumblers, I tell you, man,” he said, jabbing me in the chest with a finger for emphasis. “You wouldn’t believe what they do to—”
“I know. So is my husband.” I gave him a glare, which—judging from the way he flinched—was probably rendered highly effective by the state of my face. I hoped so; it hurt a lot to do it.
“Now, what you want to do,” I said, mustering as much authority into my voice as I could, “is to go back to the fire, wait for a bit, then leave casually, sneak round, and get two horses. I hear a stream down there—” I waved briefly to the right. “I’ll meet you there. Once we’re safely away, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
In fact, I probably couldn’t tell him anything very helpful, but he didn’t know that. I heard him swallow.