Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) Read Online Free Page B

corner and start to run our way.  Other
guards were flying down the stairs, barely touching the ground, shouting commands. 
Without a word, we turned again and ran for the door.  Maaike didn’t bother to
fumble for her keys, but met the door with a well-aimed kick without breaking
stride.  The latch shattered and the door swung wildly on one intact hinge.  We
burst through and ran straight ahead, toward a stone gate about a hundred paces
away.  There was a guard between us and the gate, already drawing his sword and
readying himself for our arrival.  We were unarmed. 
     
    Maaike
didn’t slow her pace.  As we ran, she began to speak in short, calculated
phrases between gulped breaths:  “Beyond the gate…the hill rises…beyond the
hill…a party awaits…whatever happens…meet the party….don’t stop…don’t slow. 
You must live!”  By that point we were a mere ten paces from the gate, and the
guard.  He held a wide stance, hilt of his blade planted at his hip, tip
pointing at us.  Before I knew what was happening, Maaike threw herself onto
his blade.  I saw it emerge from her back, just under her ribs.  She wrapped
her arms around the guard and pulled him close, receiving the blade fully, and
clung to him, unrelenting in her death embrace.  She never made a sound.  I
tried to scream, but no sound emerged from my constricted throat.  I stumbled
but didn’t fall.  I remembered her words; I would not let her die in vain. 
Grasping my companion’s sleeve, I mounted the base of the hill.  I never looked
back.  My eyes tried to well, but I fought it, ran harder.  Seconds seemed to
drag into minutes, until finally, we crested the hill.  There, I could see
something. 
     
    A
small group of people stood around a vehicle, an SUV.  Dilapidated and many
times patched, I was a little surprised when it started.  There were three men
and a woman.  I saw the woman’s eyes scanning the hilltop, possibly for
pursuers.  They ushered us quickly into the back of the vehicle, the men
staring at me as if in disbelief.  “Maaike …,” I started, but one of them, a
young, bearded man with dark, curly hair, silenced me with a gesture.  “She
would have come if she could,” he said.  “I know what she must have done.”  At
this the woman began to sob bitterly.  Then I remembered where I had seen her
face before.  Add a pair of glasses, a different hairstyle, and she would have
looked just like the girl who had challenged Maitland in class.  That unhuman voice
had spoken of parallel worlds and alter egos; maybe Maaike had been a
doppelganger of that girl.  I guess she was destined to be brave in any world. 
My accomplice spoke after a time, extending a hand, “I’m Jeyt.”

 
    4
     
    We
rode through a dead wood, following a rut that might once have been a road.  I
had so many questions, but my mind was swimming with the whirlwind of events
that had led me to this point, and I couldn’t manage to formulate a coherent
thought.  I suppose I had also lost a fair amount of blood during my
imprisonment.  Consciousness came and went as it pleased.  I saw glimpses of
trees, outcroppings of stone, flashes of yellow sunlight.  At one point I felt
we had stopped, and I tried to look around.  We were at an abandoned gas
station.  Two of the men from our party were bending back some saplings that
had erupted through the concrete platform and claimed the pumps.  After some investigation
it became apparent that the pumps were dry.  A pack of crows laughed at us from
the roof of the former cash booth.  The few vehicles scattered around the lot
were in far worse shape than our own, seeming to be made of paper-thin sheets
of rust that were perforated in numerous spots, rubber tires almost completely
disintegrated.  Across the road the remains of two massive oil tanks resembled
a pair of beached whales, forever trapped on this sealess strand.
     
    We
resumed our progress, and I fought to remain