False Dawn by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Page A

here were unprepared to do what they had to to preserve what they had built, there was no chance to save Quincy now that the Pirates had seen it and wanted it. Quincy was doomed, no matter what he did.
    “I’ll talk it over with Thea. I promise I will go. I cannot speak for her.” He rose and left the dining room, going to the room off the kitchen where he and Thea had slept together and apart, for the nine weeks they had been in Quincy. He looked over the small pile of belongings they had and thought wistfully of the joy of houses where it was possible to have more than what you could carry on your back. Kneeling, he touched the shoes Rudy Zimmermann had made for him. Those shoes would have to take him a long, long way, he thought.
    “Evan?” Thea had come into the room behind him, silently.
    “They’ve asked us to leave. They say we make it too dangerous for them, now that the Pirates are coming. They think they can bargain with Cox.”
    “But there are Mutes here…
    The Pirates won’t—”
    He cut her off. “I know. And who knows? Perhaps they realize what they’re up against.” Turning to her, he saw her dark eyes grow distant under her straight dark brows. “What is it, Thea?”
    “Nothing. I thought this might happen. We can go to Gold Lake now. We don’t have to stay here.”
    “I’d forgotten Gold Lake,” he said sadly. He did not want to pin his hopes on so little, for he felt that Gold Lake was as remote as the Land of Oz.
    But Thea did not hear him. “Here. It’s yours, like I promised you.” With those jumbled words she thrust a crossbow into his hands, then turned abruptly and went into the kitchen, reaching for one of the muffins that had been set out for them.
    Evan was still, turning the crossbow over in his hands. It was made from a rifle stock, with the crank from an old coffee mill scavenged from the abandoned houses on the south side of town. The trigger release was better made than the one on Thea’s own crossbow. He touched the metal groove; it had been painstakingly fashioned from the barrel of a 30-gauge shotgun. The wood that held it was polished and carved in clumsy designs of leaves and animals. There was a small sack tied to it containing a dozen quarrels formed from garden tools. “Thea.”
    He came and stood in the kitchen, wondering what to say to her.
    Without facing him, she said, “I won’t stay here if you don’t. I’m going with you.”

4
    Hobart advised them to stay away from the roads and to seek the high country. “I know it’s tough up there, what with the rocks and snow and all, but the water is pretty pure and no one goes up there, except maybe to hunt. The Pirates won’t follow you. They’ll stick to the river and follow the highways. You’ll be okay up there.”
    “And you?” Evan asked, adjusting the pack Zimmermann had given him. It was a large affair, holding several pounds of supplies and attached to a sturdy frame that fastened, harness style, to his back.
    “I’ve got a job here still.”
    “After that, Honey? What if the Pirates come? They will come, you know. They won’t negotiate, they’ll attack.”
    “You’re probably right,” he allowed, rubbing at his nose.
    “You can go into the high country. Join us at Gold Lake.”
    “Well, I might. If we can’t hold out here, Winter’s almost on us, and it looks to be a long one, judging from the signs. There’s lots of berries where the berries still grow.” He stepped back from Thea and Evan. “Take care of yourselves. And maybe you can come back in the spring, if you like, when things are better,” he said rather foolishly. “Well, good-by.” And he turned to walk back into his town.
    Evan buckled his jacket tighter as he looked toward the rising mountains south and west of them. “It’s a climb,” he said.
    “I’m ready.” Saying that she came as close as she ever did to smiling.
    So they backtracked westward into the Sierra Nevada, to the spin of the range, to its