whispered, “I can’t... He is stronger than I. I feel his will pressing on me... his strength... The talismans he has made... Ach, that strength...”
Dimly, blue lights began to flicker and weave among the black pine needles overhead.
Saltwood handed Sara the rifle and dragged Leibnitz to his feet. “Move!”
Behind them someone yelled.
Lights were bobbing everywhere now, the yellow lances of flashlight beams springing on, zagging wildly among the trees. Tiny balls of witchlight, purplish flecks of St. Elmo’s Fire, swirled like fireflies overhead, and against him Saltwood could feel Leibnitz sobbing for breath as they ran. The lights broke and scattered, but it was like trying to elude a swarm of softly shining hornets—they reformed, drifted, darting here and there in a numinous cloud. Had Sara been Saltwood’s only companion he would have told her to head in another direction to split the pursuit, but he knew she was as exhausted as he and unable to manage her father’s unwieldy bulk alone.
Leave her. He could just hear Hillyard saying it. It’s your duty to warn England, your duty not to be taken, no matter what the cost...
Stick my bloody duty. He shoved aside the image of the RAF Spitfires crashing on the Sussex beaches in flames. Rhion had said, I didn’t risk what’s going to happen to me to work for the people who were dropping those bombs...
The words echoed in his mind. What the hell’s the point of defeating the Nazis if you become one inside? “There anyplace to go?” he gasped, as they thrashed their way up the high ground, dodging trees and flashlights, stumbling over rocks half buried in the pine mast and ferns. “Cover, anything?”
“Not with those frigging lights overhead there’s not!” In the blue glow, the sweat made points of her dark hair around that pale triangular face, moisture gleaming on her cheeks in spite of the cold that turned their breath to steam.
Creepers, wild ivy and morning glory, snagged at their feet, branches slashed their faces as they stumbled on. Leibnitz gasped “...strength is growing... talismans... all those deaths... He can use it... equinox... midnight...”
Midnight! It must be close to that. Rhion would walk slap into the ring of SS troopers on Witches Hill... von Rath would head for Ostend in the morning with the Spiracle to take part in the invasion... The British wouldn’t get so much as a warning as to what was coming up the beaches, out of the skies... until their pilots bailed out because of imaginary cockpit fires or imaginary monsters chewing on the wings. The lights poured around them in a bluish cloud. Stumbling under Leibnitz’ weight, Saltwood couldn’t imagine why they hadn’t been shot yet.
The ground fell out from under them so abruptly it was only Saltwood’s hair-trigger reflexes that kept them from going over. He felt the gravelly clay crumble under his boots before he actually saw anything but darkness ahead, and flung himself back, catching Sara and her father. Beyond the last overhanging thickets of dead and dying undergrowth the road lay at the bottom of a twelve-foot bank where it cut through the saddle of land between the hills. Blue light flooded them as they skidded to a halt on its brink, searchlight-bright, only it blazed from over their heads: the glow of witchfire, of magelight... of magic.
There were two covered trucks and an open Mercedes down on the road below, with half a dozen Storm Troopers grouped around them. Baldur—the godlike golden SS Baldur, not the podgy, bespectacled Baldur Twisselpeck from Berlin—was at the wheel of the car, and as the guards leveled their submachine guns on the fugitives, Paul von Rath stood up in the backseat, Lucifer ascendant in fire and shadow and rage.
Twenty-seven
“BRING THEM DOWN.”
Saltwood had already heard the men come up behind him, crowding out of the shadows of the trees. With a bitter oath Sara turned, bringing up her rifle, but the range was already too close. A Trooper tore it out of her hand and shoved her backward over the edge of the bank. Saltwood, hampered by Leibnitz’ full weight, was only starting to turn when three rifle barrels thrust into his back and then he was falling, too, rolling down a slide of desiccated ivy and fern in a tangle of arms and legs.
He landed hard in a cold puddle of water, started to rise, and was struck over the back of the head by somebody’s gun butt, driving him to his hands and knees. Gun and