Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground - Part two (cont)

Penelope Hill
The first thing I became conscious of was the heat.

Heat and then discomfort; my body was protesting at my position, numbed in unexpected places.

I let out a soft groan and shifted my weight, trying to fathom why my head might be pillowed on something soft when my butt was clearly resting on hard stone...

Then I remembered - and came totally awake with a sense of alarm.

I was lying on the steps under the statue, my head and shoulders cradled in another man's lap, the bulk of his body slumped back against the carved mountainside.

Lying ominously still.

I killed him, was my first and rather panic-stricken thought. I had no sense of his presence, could feel no whisper of that unmistakable fire; not even the faintest flicker of brilliance lingered within my reach.

Oh, no ...

I sat up, my heart pounding with consternation.

"Al?" I twisted myself onto my knees and reached for him, half-expecting a lifeless corpse to tumble into my arms as I did so. What I got was the barest of protesting moans.

"Al?"

There was a patterning of scars on his throat that echoed the damage McFarlane had inflicted. Beneath them fluttered the soft impression of a pulse. A little weak and thready, but most certainly there.

But no sensation of flame, no sweet enticement...

I sat back on my heels in total confusion, absently reaching a hand to wipe away some of the sweat that was gathering over my eyes. Al's face was pale, a dappling of shadows cast over it by the shaft of sun that had pierced the broken dome high above our heads.

I had begun to lean forward, my physician's instincts kicking in with automatic concern, when it hit me.

Sunlight?

Sweat?

Oh boy...

And then I was shaking his shoulders and patting at his cheek, desperate for his attention.

"Al? Wake up, will you? Come on. Wake up. I'm alive. God damn it, I'm alive!"

"Whaa-a...?" His response was bleary bewilderment. "Awww - don't shout at me, Sam. I got one hell of a hangover here..."

He'd opened his eyes, only to slam them shut again with a heartfelt groan. I didn't care. I just shook him again, so caught up in my discovery that nothing else seemed to matter.

Nothing at all.

"Look at me, will you? It's over. I'm sweating. I'm breathing. I've got a heartbeat. I've got - I've got pins and needles in my foot, and cramp in my side and I ache all over and I'm alive, Al. I'm alive!"

"Yeah, yeah," he dismissed abstractedly, waving a weary hand to fend off my enthusiasm. "Sure you are, kid. Now let me go back to sleep, huh? I was dreaming of - of - ah, damn it. I can't remember..."

I caught at his wrist, lifting his hand to lay it firmly over my heart. He had to feel it. It felt like it was drumming a military tattoo inside my chest. His first reaction was to start to pull away; then his whole body tensed and I felt his palm slam back against my chest. Hard.

I was grinning fit to bust, watching his expression as he figured it out. His eyes opened - opened wide - and then his jaw dropped and his head turned so that he was staring at me in total astonishment, gasping for breath like a stranded fish, his fingers pressed over my pounding heart, his other hand groping for my arm.

"You're - warm," he managed after a moment or two. I nodded. "You're - you're... Oh-mi-i-god... Sam..."

He grabbed. Reached and grabbed, wrapping me in a bearhug so tight that I could scarcely breathe. Not that I cared. I hugged back, just as tight.

Feeling nothing but solid muscle and human contact; the genuine warmth of living flesh...

He was hot and sweated, drenched in effort, reeking of the jungle and too many days of himself, a far cry from the cologne-scented, smoke-fragranced freshness that memory insisted on. But even that was wonderful to me. Because he was there, whole and solid and alive-

- trying damned hard not to cry and failing miserably...

I didn't even bother trying. There were tears of joy streaming down my face, laughter bubbling out of me so hard it hurt. I was alive.

And so was he...

It took me a while to notice that the initial enthusiasm of his hug had ebbed away; when I paid a little more attention it was to find him resting his forehead on my shoulder and trembling - not from laughter, but from effort.

"Hey," I registered with concern. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah," he growled without conviction. "Just a little dizzy, I think."

His dissemblance didn't fool me for a minute. I tipped his weight back against the marble and turned into anxious physician, feeling his forehead with the back of one hand whilst checking his pulse with the other.

"Aw, come on, Sam," he protested as I did so. "There's no need for that."

"No?" I questioned sarcastically. "Al - someone tried to beat you to a pulp yesterday. And what the hell did you think you were doing last night, huh? I was way over the edge. I could have killed you."

"Ya didn't," he grinned, and after a moment I grinned back.

"No. I didn't." I managed to turn the grin into a sterner frown. "But I probably took more than I should..." I tailed off, staring at him. There was something peculiar about the situation that I couldn't quite place. Apart from the fact that I was alive when I had no right to be, that was...

"So what did happen?" he asked, stretching out one leg and relaxing against the stone with a weary grimace. There was nothing really wrong with him; nothing that a few days' rest wouldn't fix, anyway. Metabolic shock, along with the inevitable symptoms of iron-deficiency anaemia.

The medical effects of excessive blood loss are well documented.

But how do you measure the result when a man gives away his soul...?

"I don't know," I answered, beginning to frown over his question. "I never touched the elixir... Bruises!"

"What?"

I'd finally figured out what was bothering me.

"Bruises," I repeated, with more certainty. "You were black and blue yesterday. What happened to your bruises?"

He lifted his fingers to stroke what had been the damage to his cheek, then pulled away to stare at the hand instead. That was undamaged too; no remnants of abuse at his wrist, and no sign of the myriad cuts he had got from groping through broken glass...

"Of course," I realised, comprehension dawning with a sense of wonder. "I never touched the elixir - but you did."

Al went from staring at his hand to staring at me.

"Jeez-Louise," he breathed after a moment or two. "Sam, are you suggesting...?"

"I don't know," I interrupted, looking up at the carved image above us and suddenly afraid to question the miracle too closely. Something had saved me.

But had it been the magic of some mythical potion, now lost beyond recall?

The blessing of this ancient Goddess?

The result of his determined generosity?

Or a combination of the three...?

Third time pays for all, they say. I looked back at my friend's face, pale beneath its accumulation of stubble, and I smiled.

I couldn't be sure of the reason for my unexpected redemption.

But I sure as hell knew where to place the blame.

"Does it matter?" I decided, getting to my feet so as to stretch my cramped muscles and ease the kinks out of my bones. "The elixir is gone, Al. Without it, everything else is just speculation."

"I guess so," he agreed, watching me with a quiet smile.

"What?" I demanded, catching the look in his eyes. He was laughing at me, I swear he was. "What are you thinking?"

The quiet smile became a warmer one. "Just - you never used to believe in miracles, pal. There is always a scientific explanation for everything. That's what you used to say."

"Did I?" I couldn't exactly remember, but it sounded like the kind of thing an arrogant genius might trot out at opportune moments. "Well," I admitted with a grin, "I never used to believe in vampires, either. And look where that got me."

I left Al resting at the Goddess's feet and went out into the ruin to take a cautious look around. The outer courtyard seemed deserted; the only evidence of the night's events was the remnant of blood that stained the stones where the Frenchman had fallen. There was no sign of his corpse, nor of his executioner. No sign of anyone at all.

I paused to savour the sensation of drawing the heat-heavy air into my lungs, and then slapped manfully at the mosquito that had decided to see what I tasted like. I missed, and found myself chuckling over the fact.

God, but I feel good.

Good to be alive, to be re-experiencing the myriad sensations that impinge on human senses: the whisper of sweat down my back and the stickiness it imparted to my skin, the scents of the jungle, and the taste of the day.

But a part of me missed the perceptions I had lost; the awareness of life as an ever-present energy, the harmonic symphonies of existence, and the ability to discern the heat of a man's soul.

The courtyard was quiet, touched only by the calls of distant birds and the sibilant hiss of insects on every side. I reached out to let my fingers drift over weathered stone and smiled wryly to myself. I was back to the limits of my normal senses, to sight and sound and touch and taste and simple scent. For all I knew I could be surrounded by a lurking army and never even know it.

Despite my inevitable sense of personal euphoria, we were still in the middle of a complicated Leap and working to an inevitably tight timescale. Several hours had passed since my confrontation with Lascale; the sun was well up, and the day advancing toward noon. I had no way of knowing if the massacre in the village was still going to happen, but I suspected that it would, and probably soon.

Why else would both of us still be there?

So - we had to get back down the mountain, dissuade the mercenaries from wreaking havoc, probably persuade them to leave, and find some way to prevent the French authorities from investigating Lascale's death too closely.

After which - with a bit of luck - Al and I could Leap.

I'm afraid my mind was more on that end of events than the details of the situation. How would that work? Would we need to be in contact to ensure we Leaped together?

Would I even Leap at all...?

I'd died. Ziggy had lost my signal; I suspected that the only reason I was here was because when Al had Leaped he and I had been so closely attuned there had been - quite literally - no space between our souls.

But now I was myself again; myself, Sam Beckett, sustained - not by another's fire - but by my own mortality. I was nearly seventeen years away from the start of my life, over sixty from where I wanted to be - and of all the possibilities that occurred to me, the very worst one was the prospect of having to make my way back to the end of the century the hard way.

Although it was only half a step ahead of the idea that - if and when we did Leap - Al and I might then be separated by time, rather than staying together. After all, the link that had brought us both back to nineteen thirty seven had now been well and truly broken.

Hadn't it?

I was so absorbed in my concerns that I nearly walked straight into Yun Shi as he entered the courtyard. Both of us jerked back in surprise and alarm, and then he was genuflecting in a deep and respectful bow, going down onto his knees as he did so.

"Hey," I protested, reaching a hand to lift him up. "There's no need for that."

"A wise man honours the dead," he muttered, keeping his head bowed and his eyes averted.

"Well, yeah," I agreed with embarrassment. "But I'm not exactly dead."

Not any more.

His head tilted, his eyes fixing on me with suspicion and his body poised to resume its respectful demeanour should I turn out to be a liar.

"You were last night," he accused softly. I wondered how to answer that.

"I was - possessed," I said grasping for inspiration. "By - by-"

Al would have thought of something; he was good at that sort of thing. At standing in the Imaging Chamber and feeding me inspired suggestions I could parrot until they got too ludicrous for words.

"Ahhmm - I - I really can't explain it. But last night-"

"Last night," the old man quavered, "I knew the ghosts had claimed you." He put out a cautious hand, visibly relaxing when his fingers found my arm to be solid and warm beneath them. "Did they send you back? Was that what the pattern meant?"

My fortune, laid out before me in lines of blood-red wood. A sacrifice. A gift. And the restoration of balance.

You lack faith in yourself, he had said. You lack faith in higher powers. But you have angels watching over you...

"What of your friend?" he asked warily. The question sparked a wry grin he had no hope of comprehending.

"He's okay." I nodded down at the covered basket his genuflection had placed on the ground at my feet. The soft scent of something wonderful was drifting up from beneath the covers. "You bringing us breakfast?"

He followed the line of my gaze and sighed. "Offerings for the Goddess. For the spirits of the dead..." His words tailed off and then he was sharing a wizened grin with me. "Will you be appeased, oh ghost?" he cackled. "With my paltry offerings?"

I hadn't realised I was hungry, but I was. A decent, human hunger, the sort that yearned for coffee and doughnuts and fresh-baked bread...

Or for rice and spiced chicken and shredded pork and pickled vegetables - not my usual breakfast, but right there and then it seemed the best in the whole world. I savoured every grain of it, every morsel, every spice and seasoning. Yun Shi served out generous helpings to both of us before placing the rest as offerings at the statue's feet. I don't think Al had much of an appetite; he ate sparingly and without enthusiasm. When my bowl was empty he quietly passed me what remained in his, and - after I'd thrown him a suitably reproachful look - I eagerly devoured what he'd left.

"What happened this morning, Yun Shi?" I asked, licking my fingers so as to catch every last drop of sauce. "Are Lascale's men still in the village?"

He nodded, coming to sit cross-legged beside the two of us. "They were half the night searching for this young man," he said, patting at Al's arm with a bony hand. "Didn't find him, hah? Looked in all the wrong places."

Al's smile at that was polite rather than amused.

"They turned the place upside down, huh?"

Yun Shi nodded. "I told them the ghosts had spirited you away. I thought they had," he added in piqued complaint, and I laughed.

Al didn't.

"Do they know their boss is dead?" he asked. The old man shook his head.

"Not yet. But they grow impatient that he has not returned. They wonder if he has found some treasure he has no wish to share with them." He sighed. Wearily. "I fear for my people. That is why I came this morning - to make offering and pray that the spirits of this place might be appeased and protect us. Ho-" He hesitated over his grandson's name. "He tells me I am an old fool and that the only power the Colonial understands comes out of a gun. I fear for him, too. He fills Lao Fe with whispers of retribution. Too many listen to him."

He sighed a second time, more heavily than the first.

"And no-one listens to me any more..."

"I don't believe that," I announced with confidence. "Yun Shi - maybe Carl and I can persuade the mercenaries to leave before anyone else gets hurt."

"Oh, sure," Al growled, half under his breath. "Is that before or after they stop laughing?"

I threw him a reproachful frown and he frowned back in confusion for a moment or two.

"Oh - you were being serious," he noted, his confusion becoming anxious alarm. "Are you sure about this? You've got a plan, haven't you?" The alarm became suspicion. "You have got a plan, right?"

I grinned. I had an idea - which would probably have become a plan by the time we'd reached the village. I'd escaped damnation and been redeemed despite the sacrifice I had made; I felt as if I could conquer the world. There was just one more thing to do, this one last wrong to right. How hard could it possibly be?

The village was tense when we arrived; there were raised voices coming from the open square, and what looked like a crowd gathered around it. Yun Shi left us crouched in the shadow of the shrine while he went to reconnoitre the situation. Had Al been his usual holographic self, I'd have asked him to tag along. As it was, I decided to go take a look myself.

"This really isn't gonna work," Al decided, looking me up and down as he did so. The headman had lent me one of his many layers of shirts for the long walk down from the ruin, and I was adding the camouflage of a jacket and a coolie hat that I'd found. "You're too tall to pass for one of the villagers, Sam."

"I may be," I shot back, peering round the corner of the ancient building. "But Frazel isn't. We need to know what's happening. Why they're still here. Would you hang around in Lao Fe if you had a choice?"

"No," he answered wryly. "But then, I don't get a kick outta rape and pillage."

"I should hope not," I muttered, still watching the twist of steps for an opportunity to slip into the crowd. "You going to be okay?"

I heard him sigh, a quiet sound of exasperation. "Sam," he growled, "you're the one taking all the risks here. Just remember you're not invulnerable any more, willya? If they start shooting-"

"I'll duck," I promised, turning to throw him a grin. "Just make sure you do. Capite?"

His eyes went briefly skyward. "There is a small part of me," he observed in pained tones, "that wonders if maybe you'd have been better staying dead..."

"Aaal..."

"A very small part," he added hurriedly, returning my grin and demonstrating the point with a pinch of finger and thumb. "An eensy, teensy, weensy part. Which isn't, of course, an important part. Because all the important parts of me are - ah-" He used a gesture of his hand to convey the rest of the sentence, and I had difficulty smothering the laugh that tried to bubble out of me.

"Oh, god," I chuckled, shaking my head in mock despair. My hand went out in an easy gesture, impacting on his arm; a conveyance of warmth, of friendship, of contact. "Thanks, Al."

He frowned. "Wha'for?" he queried suspiciously.

I was still chuckling; an upwelling of inner happiness I had no wish to suppress. "Just for being you."

He tried to dismiss the sentiment with a half-shrug of embarrassment, a you didn't really mean that kind of reaction. "Don't go getting mushy on me, kid," he warned. But I knew I'd hit my mark; his eyes had lit up with a little glow of pleasure, dispelling some of the weariness that had been haunting them. "Are you going out there, or what?"

I took a careful breath, hunched my shoulders down and hurried away. I climbed the twist of shallow steps much as I had done the day before, except this time there was no impact of fire to snatch at my equilibrium.

Just the murmur of angry voices ahead of me and a heart-pounding sense of tension in the air.

We're too late, I realised.

This whole situation is about to go critical.

And there were women and children among the crowd of villagers, watching the drama unfold before them with wide and anxious eyes.

There was a surly faced mercenary standing at the top of the steps, his eyes fixed on the confrontation in the centre of the square. The crowd had left a studied space around him, partially enforced by the presence of the angled bayonet he was swinging in his left hand. He'd clearly been in the process of affixing it to his rifle, since his other hand was curled around the weapon's muzzle. I ducked my head as he glanced briefly in my direction and sidled a little further along the side of the nearest building so as not to catch his eye. No-one paid me much attention, and I was quickly able to find a spot from where I could see what was going on.

It looked like the whole village was there.

One of the mercenaries was standing on the steps up to the elder's hooch, more or less where Lascale had stood the previous day. Two more were behind him on the veranda, but the rest were scattered around the square, their rifles angled with menace. I shivered. It looked suspiciously as if they been deliberately rounding up the villagers and herding them together.

Like sheep being sent to slaughter.

The man on the steps must have made some sort of announcement or ultimatum; an ill-received one, by the looks of things. There was a small group of Vietnamese standing out in the centre of the square, and the man was shouting at them angrily, demanding compliance in a number of languages. Yun Shi had taken a place among the group, his hands moving animatedly as he tried to calm the situation down. Even as I took in the scene, the enraged mercenary clattered down the steps and lashed out savagely with his swagger stick. Yun Shi and another villager were hit; protests rose from the gathering, and I saw Yun Ho peel out from the discussion to drag Lascale's gun from his coat and fire it, practically point blank, at the raging European.

Oh my god...

Pandemonium erupted. Shots were fired, screams and angry shouts rent the air. The crowd surged away in panic, pushing past the startled sheepdogs and spilling out of the exits to the square like water released from a dam. I was dragged with them, fighting and struggling to make sense of sudden senselessness.

A young woman tripped and fell almost in front of me; I snatched her up and half-carried her to the safety of a nearby hooch.

"Stay down," I ordered, backing the command with an appropriate gesture. A bullet ricocheted past me, showering me with splinters of wood, and I ducked in reflexive alarm.

Jeezus!

It had been bad enough taking a bullet when I'd been dead. If one hit me now, I wasn't going to be getting up again afterward.

Where the hell is my hologram when I need him, damn it?!

On this particular occasion? Several hundred yards away - in the flesh, and keeping his head down if he'd got any sense...

I hit the ground and crawled, trying to figure out what was happening. The initial panic had scattered the villagers completely; the men on the veranda were now firing at anything that moved, turning the open ground into a shooting gallery. But someone was firing back. I risked a glance above an abandoned handcart, and was in time to see one man take a bullet in his stomach. He staggered back, tumbling into the doorway of the hooch and screaming as he did so.

I have to stop this!

I had no idea how. I ducked a second time as more deadly projectiles whistled past my hiding place. Through the wheels of the cart I could see more of the mercenaries retreating back from elsewhere in the village to take up a defensive stance beneath the boards of the hooch. They were being pelted by stones, and at least one of them had lost his rifle. It wasn't an organised skirmish; it was a riot and a rout, a revolution fired and enflamed by the imposition of brutality.

The first time round I guess they didn't fight back.

But the first time round Lascale had been in command, and he'd kept his head and control of the situation. This time the men he'd left behind had let matters boil until they'd got out of hand.

And Yun Ho had had the courage of the gun to support his cause.

Which rather made it my fault.

Didn't it?

I jerked back to the suspect safety of my chosen shelter as yet another exchange of gunfire filled the square.

I hope those kids got safely away...

I risked another look. There'd been eight or nine mercenaries in Lascale's employ. Three lay dead in the square by now, and another one was sprawled in the doorway to the headman's house. Two were crouched beneath it, desperately reloading their weapons, and a seventh was pulling something from his belt, tossing it out into the air so that it tumbled in a lazy arc before landing with a thud close by my hiding place.

What the-?!

I felt time slam to a halt.

It was a hand grenade, hissing and fizzing with menace. And staring at it from barely five feet away were several pairs of startled eyes; those of the young woman I had rescued were among them.

Damn!

I dived sideways, scooping the deadly device up from the ground and throwing it with desperate strength. It went off in mid-air, filling the whole square with concussive thunder and rolling me over and over with disorientating force. My body impacted hard against some kind of barrier and I lay there, dazed and shaken, gasping for breath.

Is it over?

Dear god, let it be over...

A shadow fell across me, and I looked up, to find myself staring down the business end of a rifle.

Along with the furious eyes of the villager at the other end of it.

Ohhh, boy...!

I'd thought that was it for a moment or two, but the menace of the weapon was snatched from the man's hands by a crowd of women who'd emerged from the nearest building. They'd obviously seen what I'd done, because while half of them berated the poor man soundly, the rest came and picked me up and dusted me down with solicitous attention. The young lady I'd been able to help was among them; she smiled shyly at me before turning on her fellow villager with fierce reproach. I felt rather sorry for him; after all, how was he meant to know I was on his side?

"Mr Frazel!" Yun Shi pushed through the chattering women with a look of relief on his face. "Are you in one piece?"

"I think so," I decided, smiling my thanks at my rescuers. "Is the war over?"

Stupid question. The war that would engulf this country had barely begun as yet. But then, there was no way he would know that.

"For now," he agreed, glancing around the carnage of the square with resigned eyes. I followed the look. The remaining mercenaries were either dead or unconscious; there were maybe six dead villagers being lifted and carried away by their fellows, and Yun Ho was directing the matter with excited authority. "This is what you wanted to prevent," the old man noted regretfully.

"Yeah," I sighed.

But it could have been a lot, lot worse.

"This is our business," he decided. "Leave us to deal with it now. Find your friend and - we will talk later."

Find...? Oh, lord!

In all the excitement I'd practically forgotten about Al.

He'll be livid, I grinned to myself. He got to miss all the fun.

Not that it had been fun, by any stretch of the imagination. But it was over. The village had defended itself, and the massacre hadn't happened. We had changed history.

Which also had to mean that we were about to Leap.

I was feeling a warm glow of quiet satisfaction as I made my way across the square and down the shallow steps toward the shrine. Maybe things hadn't gone quite as I'd hoped, but we had made a difference. Best of all - I was alive. Utterly, wonderfully, completely alive; even my bumps and bruises were sensations I could savour.

And I'm not alone any more...

There was a bitter-sweet satisfaction in that, too. In having company on my odyssey. To contemplate the next Leap with the prospect of there being someone there with me; someone I could reach out and touch, who could help me with more than words, who would understand the problems I faced.

Particularly if my next Leap is into a woman.

Wait a minute ... What if he ends up as one too?

The idea brought a wicked grin to my lips. Al in high heels? The image it brought to mind was priceless.

Absolutely priceless.

I was still laughing at it when I saw the corpse.

The dead man was lying at the bottom of the white marble steps; he was the surly European who'd been trying to fit the bayonet to his rifle. The bayonet was now firmly lodged in his abdomen, angled up between his ribs. From the look of it he'd died almost instantly.

As soon as the blade had pierced his heart.

I glanced back up the rise toward the square and wondered what had happened. The panicked crowd would have swept him down here, probably parting him from his rifle in the process. Then what? Had he fallen on the blade by accident, or had a desperate villager snatched up the fallen weapon and struck at him?

"Sam...?"

I looked round in startlement - then grinned with decided relief as I caught sight of my friend. Al was sitting on the topmost step, his back propped up against the carved stone of one of the shrine's supporting pillars and his head tipped back in apparent weariness. I no longer had the sharpened senses that might have enlightened me; I got to my feet and started to climb toward him with casual intent, vaguely wondering if now might be the time to Leap, expecting him to look up and greet me with his usual grin.

I was halfway there before I realised he was bleeding. And not just a little sputter of crimson either, not a minor wound; there was a steady welling of bright red blood slowly cascading down the white stone steps.

No.

Please, god - no...!

I practically flew across the remaining distance, dropping to my knees beside him, heedless of the spill of scarlet that painted the floor. His hands were pressed over his right leg, barely covering what lay beneath them: the deep and savage curve of the wound that had sliced him almost from hip to knee. Blood oozed between his fingers, gathering into pendulous drops before it fell to the tiles, its impact covering the intricacies of lotus blossoms with the taint of his life.

With the rich and glorious wine of his soul...

I stripped off the linen jacket I'd found, wadding up the fabric to bundle it under his hands, to press into the wound. Pointless, useless, action. It barely contained the flow, let alone halted it. The damage started high over his hip bone, too far up to apply a tourniquet, even if I'd had the means to do so. All I could do was add to the pressure that might stem the flood, but the damage was severe and the air was thick with the metal taste of hot arterial blood. If the wound didn't kill him, the shock almost certainly would; shock and fluid loss, from a system that was already under strain.

We were miles from any kind of sensible aid, and years away from stored whole blood and pressure packs and everything else I could think of that might help him. Even then the hope they might spin would be slender; he'd already lost too much blood, and he'd had so little to lose in the first place.

If only I hadn't taken so much...

My guilt was as pointless as my aid; he was dying, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all.

He lifted his head with an effort, acknowledging my presence, finding me a pain-filled smile. "Sorry, kid," he gasped. "Guess I forgot I'm not a hologram any more..."

What could I say? Everything and nothing in one brief moment of time? I owed him my life - my soul - and we'd thought the nightmare to be over but for this one last thing - this minor detail - that remained. To cross the t's, to dot the i's of the Leap. To save the lives of innocents who might - he'd said - one day become the enemy that still haunted his dreams.

We'd gone through so much together...

My face must have betrayed me; his smile tightened. "It's bad, right, Sam?"

I couldn't lie to him. He had so little time left, and there was so much I wanted him to know...

"It's bad," I echoed. The angered frustration spilled out before I could stop it. "I thought I told you to be careful, you crazy nozzle..."

He tipped his head back again, shutting his eyes, the sweat beading his face, pain and effort written into every line of it. "The bastard was gonna kill a kid," he muttered, perhaps as surprised at his reactions as I was. "A six-year-old kid, Sam..."

My glance toward the sprawled corpse was involuntary. While I had been a helpless witness to slaughter, he had been fighting to prevent it.

And the echo of his words came back to me; tight words, bitter memories given fresh life by circumstance. I look into their eyes and I see the hate they offered me, he'd said. Nothing but cold hate...

He'd thought he'd forgiven them, a long time ago. It hadn't been easy, finding that to be a self-deceptive lie.

You didn't have to do anything, my heart raged with helplessness. You could have stayed out of the fight. This wasn't your war. You could have let that child die...

He'd even argued for it earlier. But when the moment came, when he had the choice, he had acted as I would have acted. For the sake of that child's life, he had risked his own. Given his own.

Both my hands were pressed tightly over his; despite the heat of the wound - or perhaps because of it - his skin was growing cold and clammy under my palms, and he was beginning to shake. "It's okay," I murmured, offering absolution for his recklessness. "I understand. Al, I-"

"Save it," he growled, as brusquely as he could in the circumstances. "There are worse things to die for. Worse ways, too. Funny, though."

"Funny?" I wasn't laughing. He did. A short, effort-filled chuckle that spasmed his wounded frame.

"Yeah. Me, dying in 'Nam, after all." His eyes flicked open, disturbingly bright, distantly focused. "Maybe Beth was right all along..." A convulsion shook through him; I abandoned the damage and gathered him up instead, cradling him into my warmth - into the warmth he had given back to me.

This isn't fair. Dear god, this just isn't fair...

He should never have come back, never have chanced his life for mine, never have left the future for the darkness of the past.

But, because he had, I owed him everything; owed him my soul.

"Sam?" he questioned softly, shivering in my arms. "Do me a favour, willya, pal?"

"Sure," I answered. "Anything..."

"Don't - beat yourself - up over this, okay?" The words were an effort; he clung to the last of his strength with the same fierce determination that had once brought him through years of hell. "Not - your - fault, capite?"

Wasn't it? Wasn't it my fault that I was Leaping in the first place? My failure to measure McFarlane for what he was that had brought him back to join me, my need that he had chosen to meet with sacrifice...

But it was his choice. Always his choice; and what right had I to demean the glory of his gifts with the bitterness of regret?

It was just going to be so hard to let him go.

"I'll - try not to," I promised, lying with every word, knowing that I would, and even that he would forgive me for it.

"Yeah," he breathed, "right..."

Another spasm shuddered through him and my hold tightened reactively. His face was ashen, and his breathing laboured. He was running out of time. We were running out of time.

And I didn't know what to say...

Don't leave me, I wanted to scream. Primal emotion, pointless anger. A purely selfish reaction. He'd been the only constant in my life since this crazy business began; I couldn't remember how it might have been before, who else might fit into the scattered jigsaw of my forgotten life. I hadn't even remembered him that first time, that first Leap. But he'd been there, and he'd been with me ever since, a friendly voice, a helpful guide, an irritating commentator... My lifeline. My reassurance that I had not gone mad, that there was a future, a world where I belonged, where I was missed...

His eyes were on mine; wide, filled with quiet apology. I'm sorry, Sam, they said, just as they had done that day when McFarlane had ripped at his soul. My heart turned over. There was no need for that. Not after everything we had shared...

His mouth opened; a prelude to a final word, pre-empted by a shiver of pain. He gulped in a disconcerted breath instead-

- and it was at that moment that the Leap seized him, a flare of brightness, a sheath of blue lightning that engulfed him and took him away. I was looking at another face; the confused and begrimed face of a stranger.

Nooo...

My inner protest was savage; was this how it was meant to be? To take him away from me, to leave me in the company of strangers without even a corpse to bury, a certainty to mourn?

What kind of god would deny me the comfort of his last breath?

Rationality dug deep claws in my soul almost immediately. An understanding that had no explanation, just comprehension. He'd gone home.

Home.

To the place where he and I had once forged the friendship that had brought us both to this. Somewhere where he would be received with honour; where he might be laid to his final rest with understanding. By those who loved him.

By everyone but me.

How will they write the words? I wondered, all in that split second of loss. Can they write them? This was a gallant soul, taken before his time...

I think I was close to hysteria. I know I hauled Schuster to his feet with unnecessary roughness. "You're okay," I heard myself saying. "Just got knocked a little squiffy, I guess."

He was staring at me, bewilderment written right through him. He was a good-looking man, was Carl Schuster; as tall as I am, a tumble of sun-bleached hair framing his tanned face. Young, too - twenty five, Gushie had said - too young to be completely sure of himself yet, but old enough to delude himself into thinking he might be. "I guess so," he muttered, glancing around himself - at himself with total confusion. With reason I suppose; his clothing was soaked with blood and sweat. "Ah - did we win?"

"Yeah," I growled, dipping my hand down to recover the sodden cloth with which I had tried so uselessly to dam the floodgates of a man's death. "We won. For what it's worth."

He shivered - perhaps at my tone, perhaps at something less obvious than that. I stalked away, down the steps, away from him, away from the spilled remnants of life, away from everything. The stink of death was in my nostrils; it soaked my skin, and drowned me in its fumes.

Welcome to hell, Sam. Welcome to 'Nam...

I was walking in a world that had not yet heard the sharp staccato of chopper blades, had not yet accepted the sacrifices of young lives in a cause they would never understand. In just over thirty years I would be standing on the edge of just such a place, my hands sweating, my heart pounding too loudly in my ears. Trying - oh god, why did I ever begin this - to change my brother's fate, to rewrite the annals of history.

Waiting to condemn a vital woman to her death, and deliver my friend to three more years of hell...

My hands clenched convulsively on the cloth they contained; my head went back, and I howled. A howl of frustration, of pain, of abject devastation.

"I don't want to do this any more," I choked, not fighting the tears that welled out with hot, angry bitterness. "Do you hear me? I won't do this any more. I won't. I won't..."

I felt as if I had nothing left to give. No strength, no will to continue. Nothing. Just a cold emptiness, deep inside.

And yet, and yet...

The sun was sinking into the mountains, a ladle filled with liquid gold that painted everything around me in hues of brilliance and fire. Gold and bronze, orange and crimson, purple and indigo; colours so vivid they could never be captured, not even by an artist's brush. The softest of winds whispered along the valley to ruffle at my hair like a comforting touch. It embraced my skin with quiet presence, a caress so gentle I barely felt it. But it warmed me all the same.

I'd died alone, in the dark, beset by horror; I remembered doing so. I had become a shadow drowned in ice, savaged by a hunger for life I had thought never to know again.

And now the touch of the dying sun could feel as sweet as a lover's kiss.

Deep in my heart, deeper still - somewhere in the depths of my soul - there lingered the echo of a richness I would never forget; the glorious ecstasy of a man's life, given without restraint, offered without regret. A part of me forever, a truth that had redeemed my life, and brought me back from shadowed places.

I was cold. Cold and tired and bitter; angry and confused, drowning in guilt and grief, wanting to go home. Perhaps as he had gone home; aching to rest. Finally to rest...

Oh god, just give me a chance to rest...

My heart was breaking, there in the evening light. I had ridden the rollercoaster of time for so long, faced its up and its downs, clung to its precipices and laboured up its inclines; a pell-mell ride into event and change and correction. I Leaped to save lives didn't I? I'd lost my own and had had it given back to me, a redemption, a sacrifice, a trust...

So why did it have to end this way? Why must I go on without him...?

There were no answers in the sunset; just colours. The colours of glory, the wider work that lies beyond the simple needs of men. How he would love such colours...

And how could I choose to diminish his death with my capitulation? He had wanted me to live. I would live. I might even accept the allotted tasks that fate decreed I must pursue.

But no-one could make me like it any more.

I stood there until the sun went down, the tears following its descent, silent, heartfelt tears. For whom did I weep? For my friend, or for myself? I didn't know. I just knew that I could weep, and perhaps there was gratitude for that amidst the pain. In the end the coldness of the air sent me back to the village to seek shelter, numbed, feeling abandoned by god and man alike.

No-one had come.

No shimmering hologram had stepped out of the evening air, no unheard voices had disturbed my grief.

Nor did I Leap.

And that, perhaps, was the most hurtful thing of all...

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Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground. Part Two. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1996 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson