Time Slips & Tax Thieves by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“Tell me you’ve got a plan, Nance. Please tell me you’ve got a plan,” Alfred pleaded as soon as they were out of earshot of the outlaws.

“Please tell me it doesn’t involve robbing a freaking hospital,” Justin added.

“Yes. Well, kind of. For the plan, I mean. And, no, I have no intention of robbing a hospital.”

Justin breathed a sigh of relief at the same moment Alfred did. “What’s the plan, babe?”

“It’s not a full-fledged plan, exactly. More like a…a strategy.”

The taxman glanced askew at her. “How detailed is this strategy, exactly?”

“Not very.”

He groaned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

“So…your strategy is ‘run away’?” Justin frowned.

“Pretty much. The Freemen are clearly nuts. But this Lord Rickman? We know nothing about him. With our luck, he’s as batty as they are. Maybe worse.”

“We could use the crowd as cover,” Freddo agreed. “Head into the hospital, wait for whatever distraction they’re planning, and then disappear into the forest in the opposite direction.”

“Preferably,” Nancy agreed, “following a road this time.”

“God yes,” Justin nodded. “From what I can tell, Yngil-wode goes on forever. We could end up starving to death before we found the next town.”

“We don’t know what’s out there, though, darling,” Alfred worried. “What if the next town we come to is hostile? What if Rickman’s men find us, and don’t buy our traveling-bards routine?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy admitted. “But we can’t stay, Alfred. We can’t help them rob a hospital.”

“No,” he agreed. “We can’t.”

“And if we go back empty-handed…”

“Robert’s men already want to string us up for target practice,” Freddo reminded him.

“Oh Nance,” he said, and his tones were raw. The enormity of their shared misery for a moment overwhelmed him. It had been one thing among friends, as he’d thought the outlaws not long ago. But now to find themselves alone in this strange and hostile world? To know that Nance, his Nance, would be stuck here, without any of her computers or her gadgets or the awful tv shows she loved so much? Without real medicine or good doctors, in a world where a scratch could lead to death? He cursed the miserable luck that sent them to a time like this, that had opted to strand them in a strange past instead of a technologically advanced future. They could have been sent into a world where medicine had evolved, where life was easier and better. Instead of this place and this time. “Oh my Nance.”

She squeezed his hand again and leaned in a little closer. “We’ll be alright, babe.” She smiled at him. “As long as we’ve got each other, we’ll be alright.”

Justin, meanwhile, wrapped an arm around Freddo, and the two men exchanged a warm gaze. “It sure as hell isn’t how I planned the rest of my life,” the former declared after a moment. “But it doesn’t look like we’ve got any other choice.”

“I know,” Alfred said.

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