Chapter VIII

The sleep-wrapped city was dark and silent. Kesley raced down the quiet streets, cutting laterally once to avoid the yellow glare of a wandering patrolman's swinging sodium lamp.

He knew he had to move quickly. The city's gates would, of course, be barred, and he had no desire to try the lakefront way of leaving Chicago. He was no swimmer, and the lake, unguarded though it was, seemed endless. There was only one way out.

Pulling his richly-brocaded cloak around him, he looked ahead for some sign of the night patrolman who had just passed. Finally he found him, far down the opposite street, swinging his lamp as he made his routine rounds.

Cautiously, Kesley began to advance.

The watchman's broad back was turned; a heavy truncheon hung at his side, and the butt of a pistol gleamed in a holster. His lamp cast long shadows down the empty street.

Kesley sidled up behind him and clubbed downward efficiently with the side of his hand just as the watchman noticed the advancing shadow behind him. The man had half-turned when Kesley's hand cracked sharply into the column of his neck below his left ear and jawbone, and the watchman emitted a feeble gagging cry and fell. Kesley caught him neatly, grabbing the all-important lamp.

Moving quickly and smoothly, he stripped the patrolman, donned his clothes, and bound the unconscious man with his ambassadorial robes. The guard stirred; Kesley stunned him with a blow of the truncheon and dragged him into the courtyard of a small, private dwelling. Stuffing him into a garbage bin that stood outside the door, he straightened his clothing and stepped back into the street, swinging the lantern nonchalantly.

Moments later, horses' hooves thundered down from the Palace, breaking the quiet. Acting the part of a good watchman, Kesley ran out into the darkened street, holding his lamp up so its brightness would blur his face.

"What's going on? Where are you coming from?"

Two or three riders passed, ignoring him.

"I say, stop!"

A fourth rider leaned down from his horse. "Duke's guard, watchman. We're chasing an assassin!"

"Assassin? The Duke dead?"

"Heaven forbid. No; it's one of those South Americans. The Duke ordered him executed, but he escaped!"

"Dreadful," Kesley exclaimed, and released the bridle. The horse sped away into the night as another wave of riders followed down. Winslow, aroused, was probably sending his whole guard corps out to search for the fugitive.

Lights were going on all over the city now. Sudden bright, yellow eyes winked down from unshuttered windows. Kesley stepped back into the shadows and let five more horsemen go by.

A sixth came down the road. Kesley flagged him down with his lantern.

"What's going on, friend?"

"Haven't you heard? We're chasing an escaped assassin."

"What's that?" Kesley assumed an expression of horror. "What did he look like?"

"Big man in royal robes. One of those South Americans."

"No! I just saw one go into that house over there." He indicated a home which had not yet awakened to the clamor of the streets. "I'm sure it was the South American," Kesley continued. "I was going to ask him where he was going, but then I saw he was an ambassador and--"

There was no need to chatter further. The horseman, his mind set on medals, was dismounting.

"Which house?" he asked tensely. "That one?"

Kesley nodded. "Want me to help you?"

"That's all right," the guard said. "Stay out here and tend my horse. I'll go in and look around."

"Good luck," Kesley said. He let the man take six steps toward the silent house, then whipped out his truncheon and brought it down with skull-crumpling force. Hastily he dragged the man behind a low, bunchy shrub, ran back to the street, and clambered aboard the waiting horse.

As the animal began to move, yet another wave of guards swept down from the Palace. Kesley fell in with them, peering grimly forward into the night as they rode. They dashed on, clattering up the main street and splitting off there to explore any byway where the fugitive might be hidden. Atop his horse--a scale-covered, dusky mutant with many-jointed legs--Kesley choked off a chuckle and forced his face into the solemn mask of the dedicated pursuer.

In the morning, the elaborate, half-mythical tracking devices would be brought into play: the needle-snouted, mechanized bloodhounds of legendary dread, the whirling radar parabolas, the ingenious screens and devices inherited from a culture long dead. It wasn't much of a secret that the Dukes maintained many of the taboo devices of the Old World, and used them for their private ends. Miguel's closed-circuit TV, Kesley thought, was an example.

But the bloodhounds wouldn't be called out till later. Right now the reaction was one of simple hysteria; heads would be rolling at the Palace if Kesley were not found at once. And, he thought, riding atop a Ducal horse, clad in Ducal uniform, it wasn't too likely that they were going to find him.

He glanced ahead. The guards were riding together, forming an anxious little circle. Evidently someone had called a halt and was about to organize a systematic search.

Further ahead, the towers set in the wall ringing the city were lit; the guards there had been roused as well, it seemed. Kesley surreptitiously cantered out of line and cut off down a dark side-alley, taking care that none of the guards were following him.

A few minutes later he reached the West Gate--smaller than the other three, and lightly guarded. Drawing his horse up before the guard-tower, he shouted: "Open the gate, you idiots! The assassin's escaped, and he's heading west."

"What are you saying?"

"I said _open the gate_. I'm Duke's guard. You're holding things up. The assassin's out there at large someplace!"

The door swung back.

"Thanks," Kesley yelled. He kicked the mutant's scaly hide to make the beast spurt ahead. He raced through the open gate and out of Chicago. The confused shouts of the guards echoed faintly in the distance as he urged the horse on.

Breaking out into the flat country that ran westward, he rode hard without any direction or destination in mind. Once he looked around and saw three riders about two and a half miles back, pelting steadily after him.

They were on to him then. He hadn't fooled them completely. But it had worked well enough to get him clear of the city and, if he could put more space between himself and Chicago before they turned the hounds on him, he'd be all right.

The road veered suddenly and split into a network of forks. Almost without thinking, he grabbed the south fork and urged the horse on. He didn't know the country at all down there, but there were cities--Peoria, St. Louis, Springfield, Cairo way down on the river. Somewhere between those empty names, he had heard there was a Mutie City--a regular refuge for mutants, a walled city of some sort where not even Duke Winslow's hand could reach.

He bent low over his horse's stringy mane and urged the gasping beast on. Glancing back, he saw his pursuers--and dim in the night was something dull and metallic grinding toward him down the flat road.

Bloodhound.

They had the hounds out after him already. Winslow wasn't going to let him escape lightly.

Shortly after sunup, his exhausted horse stumbled and fell, pitching him to the ground. Kesley rolled to his feet, glanced once at the animal's splintered leg doubled beneath its body, and looked back. No sign of his pursuers now.

He destroyed the horse with a single bullet and started moving, on foot, through the underbrush. He had no idea where he might be, except that he was somewhere south of Chicago.

Through the rest of the morning he hacked his way through the wild vegetation that had sprung up in this uncultivated area. Exhausted finally, he stopped near noon to rinse some of the sweat from his face at a clear blue brook.

Wearily, he scuttled away from the brook and started to get to his feet, without success. He remained kneeling, staring at the quivering tips of his fingers, smelling the warm morning air and listening to the singing of the untroubled birds, and finally slumped forward, face down in the fertile soil, and slept. He had been awake almost fifty hours.

* * * * *

Later, Kesley felt gentle hands slide under his body and scoop him up. Foggily, he opened one eye and fought to focus it. Deep in his mind, he was struggling toward wakefulness, acutely aware he should flee but unable to make his exhausted body respond.

"Let go of me," he murmured, clawing fitfully at the hands that held him. He blinked. "Where are the hounds? Don't let the hounds near me."

"There are no hounds," a purring voice told him. "Winslow's men turned back hours ago."

Some of the cobwebs cleared from his brain. "No hounds? You're not from Winslow?"

"Look at me and see."

The hands released him and slowly Kesley turned. Standing behind him, arms extended uneasily in case Kesley should topple, was a graceful, seal-like creature with glistening, golden-brown skin. A slit-like mouth was bent into a clumsy smile; narrow yellow eyes gazed warmly at him.

"I'm ... very tired," Kesley said.

The mutant nodded gently. "You should be," he said. He took a step forward, and caught the exhausted Kesley just as he began to fall.