Sarah looked on with disgust as the dark-haired Abbey sat on a rock with a clump of teenage males at her feet. They looked up at her with bright eyes as they told her all that had happened. Jake, Reb, and Josh sat in the front row with the Oldworld creatures not far behind. As Abbey smiled at them, there was an audible gasp from the audience.
“Well, Sarah,” Crusoe said, watching her keenly “Don’t you want to help our newest recruit get acquainted with Nuworld?”
Sarah knew Crusoe read her jealousy, but she couldn’t hide her disgust. “Look at them staring at her.” She stamped her foot impatiently. “Here we are about to be caught, sentenced to certain death, and all those fools can do is drool over a pretty face.”
“Well, she is a fine-looking girl, Sarah.” Crusoe smiled. “She can’t help that, can she?”
“No, but she could—she could—oh, I don’t know!”
Suddenly Sarah began to feel tears stream down her face. She threw herself into Crusoe’s thin arms.
Sarah had endured heat, hunger, danger, and other terrible things. Why would she cry over this girl she hardly knew?
Crusoe did not seem particularly worried. He smiled and murmured, “Don’t worry, Sarah. Abbey is a beautiful girl, but you have the ornament of a humble, yet proud, spirit. That’s what Josh—and the others—see in you.”
Sarah wanted to say, “I’d rather have her long eyelashes.” But instead she said, “Mr. Crusoe, what will happen to us? I mean, there’s no way that we can get away if the Hunters are right.”
“Not in the practical sense, child,” Crusoe said. “But you know, I found out one thing about this world, and no one wants to hear it.”
“I do,” said Sarah, leaning against him.
“Well, you will hear it then. Boiled down to one sentence, here it is: We learn little from good times, Sarah. We learn through difficult times.”
Sarah suddenly laughed. “Well, we ought to be learning now!”
She left Crusoe, and soon the group around Abbey broke up and re-formed around the small campfire.
“Ain’t it dangerous to have a campfire?” Reb asked.
“I don’t think so,” Crusoe answered. “If the attack force of the Sanhedrin is coming this way, they will find us.”
“What will we do then?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know, Josh. But this may be our last time together, so I want to say one thing to all of you—especially to you Sleepers. Something is being shaken in Nuworld. And you are at the heart of it.”
They all leaned forward to listen to the old man. Only the lonely sound of a desert fox broke the silence.
“Tomorrow may bring grief, but you must learn to kiss joy as it flies. Do not try to hang onto pleasures. They are all of the moment.” He looked at them with a prophetic fire in his fine old eyes. “The world is bent and ruined. It has been waiting for something—all of creation is standing on tiptoe, waiting! You are the hope of the world.”
“But we’re likely to be dead or in jail tomorrow,” Jake protested.
“Goél has caused you Sleepers to be protected and to be raised up at this time and in this place. It is your hour. It is the hour of the House of Goél.”
“What is that?” Sarah asked.
“The House of Goél is man—man as he should be. In these days, all peoples on earth will come to fill his house. And you stand as a sign, my children, that the House is ready, the doors are open. The invitation is in your hands.”
This speech seemed to have drained the old man of his frail strength, for he slumped back onto his blanket. The others looked at him, then at one another.
Finally Reb hesitantly remarked, “My land, looks like we’re somebody, don’t it?”
None of them slept much that night, and, just before dawn, Sarah felt Josh come to sit beside her as she stared into the east, waiting for sunrise.
She could not resist saying, “Well, did you finally get Her Majesty brought up to date?” Instantly, she regretted her cheap and mean remark.
Josh didn’t answer for a moment. Then he sighed and asked, “Are you mad at me, Sarah?”
“No,” she said and hurriedly averted her embarrassed face. “I’m just silly and tired and selfish. Don’t pay any attention to my moods.”
“Sarah,” Josh said slowly, “I might as well tell you. I’m scared to death.”
He hung his head and grasped a handful of sand in his fist. “I know I ought to be brave and all that—but I can’t help feeling scared,” Josh continued. Slowly he let the sand trickle through his fingers.
“Well, join the club.” Sarah gently slipped her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t you know we’re all scared?”
“Not Reb or Jake,” Josh objected. “And Dave wouldn’t be, either.”
“Oh, no? You’re just being honest.” She paused, then said, “Josh, just in case something happens tomorrow—and I know everything will be fine—but anyway, I want to tell you something. I want you to know how much I like you. I always have liked you, Josh, even in the other world.”
“You do!” Josh sat up and looked at her. “But I’m so plain and ordinary. I’m always saying the wrong thing—”
“And you’re always putting yourself down,” Sarah finished. “I just wanted to tell you—just in case—”
Josh seemed to want to say something to Sarah, but after her confession she hurriedly slipped away, and the opportunity passed.
∗ ∗ ∗
Soon the sun was up, and one of the Hunters—the one with the bulging eyes—said something that Josh couldn’t understand. He looked where the Hunter was pointing and saw a thin stream of dust. Josh jumped to his feet.
“Here, everyone. Get your bows ready. You have your swords? Now, Volka, you watch that side, and the Hunters …”
He continued to post them around the pile of rocks that formed a natural circle, but Mat said, “Josh, we won’t last five minutes.”
“Well, that five minutes will be ours and not theirs.” Josh’s rebellious spirit began to infect them all, and soon the company had developed a defense strategy.
By the time their plans were complete, the procession marching across the desert had come so close that Josh and his group could see the glint of their steel-tipped spears. The procession stopped, and the enemy began to fan out in a circle.
“They’re going to surround us,” Josh warned. “Be ready.”
His hope lay in the archers, but there were only four who were adept with bows, and arrows were scarce. Volka could destroy anything in his reach, but he would never be able to get close enough under the enemy’s bow-fire.
Finally the circle was complete. The enemy started to close in. Arrows began to whiz over the travelers’ heads, but Josh told the group to hold its fire. “Wait until they’re closer!”
The enemy was well-trained, however. They were not wasting men or ammunition. They drew back after one of them was wounded by an arrow from Mat’s bow.
“Reckon they’re going to wait us out,” Reb said. “Sure wish I had my old .30–30 for ’bout five minutes. I’d settle their hash.”
All morning they waited and grew more and more thirsty. Finally the long-sighted Hunter spotted more dust to the east and spoke to Crusoe.
“I would say they’re bringing up heavy equipment—shields and rolling turrets, I’d guess.” Crusoe spoke without a trace of despondency, and yet Josh’s heart ached when he heard the fatigue in the old man’s voice.
Crusoe’s astuteness hadn’t dimmed, however. He seemed to guess Josh’s thoughts and softly remarked, “No, Josh, there must always be some hope.”
Josh knew the rest had all been pretending to believe that hope remained. They had been calling out encouragement to each other all the long, undying morning. But now, with this new threat, it all seemed futile. The arrows fired by the enemy snapped at the rocks.
Josh’s thirst grew almost unbearable. And the dust cloud grew larger. “They’ll be here in an hour,” he croaked.
Then something happened. One of the enemy stepped out and called, “Adams! Joshua Adams!”
“What is it? Who wants me?”
“You are trapped, Adams,” the soldier said. “In thirty minutes we will have protection, and you will all be either dead or captured. I will make you a proposition. If you will surrender now, I will help you. The Chief Interrogator will listen to me. Why should you die uselessly? Surrender!”
“Don’t listen to him, Josh,” Sarah pleaded.
“I won’t—but he’s right. We only have a few minutes. I—I wish I could do something. We’ve gone through all this, and I don’t want to die for nothing—”
Suddenly there was a cry. “Look! Look up in the sky.”
Josh looked up and thought he was losing his mind, for coming from nowhere was a large flight of eagles!
“The eagles come,” Volka said in his deep voice. “Just like the promise.”
Now they were closer, and Josh could see that a number of the huge birds had something around their necks. Then he saw that small people were riding on the backs of the eagles.
“What kind of bird is that?” Jake asked in stunned amazement.
“I guess they’re the kind that’s going to get us out of here,” Reb said. Then he gave a rebel yell and threw his straw hat as high as he could. “I shore wish Uncle Seedy was here to see this!”
“Look at the enemy!” Mat said. “They’re running!” And so they were. As the eagles circled above, their tiny riders fired a deadly rain of arrows on the Sanhedrin’s Servants. Bodies began to drop. The survivors fled the scene like so many rabbits.
With open mouth, Josh watched one large bird land ten feet in front of him.
A voice said, “I bring eagles, just like old book say, eh?” A crumpled figure slipped from a saddle on the mighty bird’s back and ran forward to grab Josh.
“Kybus!” Josh cried out and hugged the little gnome in a wild dance. “But where did you come from? And what are these birds?”
“My people sometimes called Birdpeople. We tame birds, and they serve us. We their friends. These our riding birds.”
They were not true eagles, Josh saw, but some kind of condor. Even in the Oldworld, eagles had been very large, but these birds had wings that must have spanned twenty-five feet. They had beaks large enough to bite a man in two, but they did not seem fierce at all.
“When I hear ‘bout eagles, I know I can go to my people, and they come for us. Come, we go now.”
“Go where?” Josh asked.
“To seventh Sleeper. There!”
Kybus pointed across the deserts to snowcapped peaks.
“Beyond mountains is place you show on map. No can walk—we fly. Come, everyone get one, and we fly.”
The other travelers had come close enough to hear. Soon it became clear that they were going to have to mount the huge birds and ride them high in the sky.
“I get airsick,” Abbey complained.
“Then you better take a plastic bag,” Josh said coolly. “We’re all going, and that’s the end of it.”
“Whoooee!” Reb shouted. “I been to three county fairs and four snake-stompings, but I ain’t never seen nothing like this!”
In no time, they were all mounted. It was rather frightening, Josh found, to meet the beady eyes of the bird he mounted and to be so close to that steely beak. But at the same time, it was fun to feel the soft, feathery body filled with muscles, muscles as taut and strong as steel wires, ready to lift its rider to freedom.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What about Volka? He’s too big for an eagle to carry—and we can’t leave him here.”
“No worry,” Kybus said. “He go with us. You watch.”
Then Josh saw that four of the large eagles had been yoked together with a sort of harness, all the lines running to Volka, who was wearing something that looked like an old-fashioned corset.
“He heavy cargo,” Kybus said, “but they carry him. Now, we go! Is time!”
Then, just as the heavy equipment of the enemy came into range, there was a ruffle of mighty wings, and Josh felt the body of his great condor tense. In a second, he was airborne!
The earth faded away, and the wings beat down, then rose again. The air cooled his face. Josh and his friends soared higher and higher. He smiled as the tiny men below shook their fists. Their curses faded as the eagles soared upward.
Josh glanced across at the closest bird and saw Sarah, her face pale but a look of wild joy in her eyes.
“I guess the book was right,” she called out. “I like this mounting up with wings of eagles.”
Josh nodded and turned to see Volka being towed along easily by the four great birds. All the others were clinging to the backs of their eagles, and Reb was sitting straight up, waving his straw hat over his head.
“Hi-yo, Silver, away!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Oldworld, Josh thought, had never been like this!