Patriots

The woman threw herself at Yerby, screaming and clawing. He grabbed her wrists and tossed her to another of the men, saying, "Take her outside, Elmont, and mind she don't blood you!"

"Mama!" cried a three-year-old child who appeared at the stairhead. He put his hands over his eyes, though he was still peering through the gaps between his fingers.

Child and mother wailed together. "I'll get him!" Mark said, glad of the excuse to drop the gun that made him feel so uncomfortable. "He's all right!"

He swept the boy into his arms and stood aside so that three Woodsru

Mark walked outside, carrying the child. Elmont held Saunderson's wife while a woman bound her.

"No," said Mark. "Not her." He gave the child to Mrs. Saunderson. Mother and son wrapped their arms around one another. They continued to cry, but not quite so noisily.

The first light spikes were burning low; drops of blazing wax dribbled down the support rods. Woodsru

Mark found he was standing beside Amy. He hadn't consciously worked through the crowd to find her; or maybe he had. She recorded the scene in twenty-second takes, focusing on a face or an incident that gave meaning to what was chaos if you tried to view the whole thing at once. Her expression was set, withdrawn.

The villagers had been dragged from their beds and tied. Most were half naked. The night wasn't dangerously cold, but they were at a terrible psychological disadvantage compared to their captors.

Torchlit Woodsru

"Hey!" Yerby cried from the Saundersons' doorway. Most people turned to look at him, but the pair with the garments continued to sidle toward an airship.

"Cooch Jezreal?" Yerby said. "You'll stop now or you'll wish you had! What's that you're carrying?"

The men halted. The father peeked from behind a mound of lace and velvet. "Aw, Yerby," he said. "You know my wife-"

"I know how to deal with a damned thief when I find one, Jezreal!" Yerby said. "We're the instruments of justice, not a gang of brigands."

The Jezreals obviously had a notion of how Yerby would deal with a thief. They hunched back to the house they'd come from, moving rather faster than before.

Yerby walked into the park. Zenith paraphernalia was heaped in one corner. The cowed villagers stood beside it, more threatened than guarded by the crowd of militiamen.

Yerby held a sealed and embossed document in his left hand. He waved it under the magistrate's nose and said, "Ardis Saunderson, you're charged with being the agent of a foreign power, the Protector of Zenith. This very paper convicts you! How do you plead?"

Saunderson stood as straight as he could with his arms tied behind his back. "I am a magistrate appointed by the Protector of Zenith," he said in a clear voice. "You have my commission there, yes. The only thing I'll plead with you, Yerby Ba

Light from the illuminating spikes pulsed across Saunderson's face. He blinked. "It's the smoke!" he cried. "It's only the smoke!" There were tears on his cheeks.

The child was whimpering in his mother's arms. Mrs. Saunderson watched Yerby in silent terror, looking like a rabbit in the headlights.

Yerby wrenched a half-burned spike out of the ground, ignoring the occasional flaming droplet. He tossed it onto the pile of everything the villagers had brought with the name or a view of Zenith on it. Thick smoke rose as fire twisted down through frames and fabrics. Even metal burned at the touch of the spike's thermite core, throwing flickers of ghostly color over the conflagration.

Yerby hurled the magistrate's commission onto the fire. "Citizens of Greenwood!" he roared. "Do you find this man guilty of treason?"

"Guilty!" shouted the flame-shot night. Deep in the chorus were other shouts: "Hang 'em!" and "Burn them all alive!"

Mark shivered. His eyes stared straight ahead. His hand gripped Amy's. "They attacked us," he whispered. "They might have killed us all."

"That was them," Amy said. She'd stopped recording, but now she raised the camera again. "This is us."

"Ardis Saunderson!" Yerby said. He took an unlit spike from Dagmar Wately. "You stand convicted before the court of your fellow-citizens. I sentence you to have your house burned and all your possessions with it!"

Yerby turned and jerked down the igniter tape. As the illuminating spike sputtered to life, he spun it twice above his head and flung it onto Saunderson's roof. The device rolled halfway down the moderate slope before heat softened the dense plastic roof plates. Tendrils of the molten surface gummed the spike to a halt. Sparks and the paraffin's yellow softness began to raise the plastic into low, smoky flames. They were the color of drying blood.

The other villagers had moved as far from Saunderson as the Woodsru

Saunderson's wife knelt, crooning to the child with her head bowed so that she didn't have to look at the house. The magistrate moved closer to them. He stood with his feet planted firmly, watching the red flames creep across his roof like gangrene on an injured limb.

Yerby looked from Saunderson to his wife and son. "Ah, Christ almighty and His holy saints!" he said. He gestured to Mark and Amy. "You two-come cast me loose, fool that I am!"

Yerby shouldered his way through the crowd. By staying close, Mark and Amy were able to follow. Mark didn't have the slightest idea of what the frontiersman intended.

Woodsru

"… ought to burn a few more of them out!" somebody said louder than he needed to speak to a neighbor. "And you know-"

"Holophernes Maynard?" Yerby shouted over the sound of the crowd. "I know that if you do light off another house against my orders, I'll use your fat ass to smother the flames!"

He swung himself onto the deck of the Ba

The airship was tied to a pair of trees the settlers had planted in the park. They weren't species native to Greenwood; Mark thought he'd seen similar ones, much larger, around the Civil Affairs Building in New Paris.

It took him a moment in the flickering light to decide which end of the clove hitch to feed back through the loop to release the tension. By the time Mark found it, Yerby was already bleeding hydrogen from the storage tanks into the ballonets where it could expand. The dirigible lurched upward, snatching the line from Mark's hands.

"Yerby?" a Woodsru

The dirigible lifted only forty feet in the air. The props were spi