* * * * * * * * * *
MEMENTO VIVERE

- Septimus -
Et De Profundo Lacu



"The sun is closing near," Passepartout said, as he moved around the cabin of the dirigible doing mysterious things to the myriad of levers and valves that were there. "It is some little hours before is light, and we are having to move now."

Brideshaw nodded gloomily. It was all bad luck, really. If he hadn't seen that blasted piece of news, he wouldn't be now flying in this terrible machine, practically held hostage by a French valet, and going to die under the fire of Prussian guns.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "There's no way this... ship is going to pass unnoticed."

"You told me where my Master is going. We go that way and look for trouble."

"I'd really rather not..."

"I'm meaning, look for the trouble my Master is making, with Miss Rebecca," Passepartout explained. "They doing that a lot. So when we see the trouble we go there and get them."

"What if that doesn't happen?"

"It is happening," Passepartout said curtly, and pulled a lever with far more strength than seemed quite necessary. "And we're going. Now you tell Passepartout where we're going."

* * * * *

"Phileas," Rebecca said. He was sitting on one of the free slabs, slumped over like a broken puppet. Her Phileas, who always sat with his back straight as a plank. She went towards him to find only his finger raised in a wordless warning: "don't come closer". She sighed and went back to her post by the window. The old man watched them from a rickety wooden chair by the table and waited, showing no signs that their stay annoyed him.

Rebecca fretted. She didn't like their situation, cooped up there without a clear escape plan. Soon dawn would come and the streets would fill with people. By now their description, such as it was, should be in the hands of the Prussian police, and if the men who had ambushed them earlier were part of the Prussian Secret Service, they'd have concocted a sufficiently good story to make sure that everybody would be on the lookout for them.

Assuming that Passepartout was already on his way to England, their best bet would be to escape the town and make for the forests, towards the border. It wouldn't be easy, but they could make it.

Or, Rebecca corrected herself, =she= could make it. She wasn't at all sure that Phileas would even want to try.

There was a sigh, and Phileas got up. Still facing away from her, Rebecca saw how his body unbent, slowly, very slowly, and recovered his usual perfect poise; how much of that was scaffolding, she couldn't say.

Phileas turned. There was nothing on his face. No sorrow, no despair, no desperation. No relief, either. He walked past her and put a wad of bank notes in the old man's hand.

"Keep half of what is there," he whispered. "Give him a decent burial with the rest."

"Why, thank you, sir, you are very generous. It'll be as you say, sir. And may I say how sorry I am that it wasn't your brother after all. The river keeps many of the bodies, you see."

Phileas nodded once. Then he set his jaw and went to Rebecca, who was again watching the silent street.

"Let's go," he said.

"Easier said than done," she replied. "Any ideas?"

"No." He said it curtly, without any particular inflection. Rebecca's skin felt suddenly colder.

Phileas had stopped trying. This last blow had emptied him of any lingering remains of hope. He wasn't going to take any active part in their getting out of Prussia.

By every rule in the book, he was now a liability and would hinder her escape, and she should leave him behind.

Let the book rot in Hell, then.

"I suggest we try to get out of the city before the streets fill with people. There must be some way of escaping without being seen. Let's look for carts or wagons in which we can hide. We are both too noticeable, dressed like this," her hand went over her leather suit. "And I have few weapons left. We cannot break any blockade by force."

Phileas nodded absently.

"Lead the way," he said. Rebecca swallowed her frustration and her impending terror. Her first priority was to get them both out of Prussia alive.

Then she would worry about keeping Phileas alive.

* * * * *

"We've set the roadblocks, Colonel," Kreutzmer said, showing his boss a map with red marks all around town. They were inside one of their official coaches, black and functional and vaguely menacing.

Von Kessler studied the map carefully for some moments and then smiled.

"Very good, Kreutzmer. I also want men sent out of town into the woods. Tell them to be on the lookout for a dirigible, and let them be armed with hunting rifles, the most powerful we have."

"Yes, sir."

"And you and I," von Kessler said, pointing with a gloved finger at one of the roadblocks, "will be here."

"Sir?"

"This is the road they'll try. I want to be there when we capture them."

"But... How can you be sure, sir?"

"Ah, my friend, it seems you have not been paying attention to all the nuances of my plan." Kreutzmer went pale. Von Kessler laughed and patted him on the arm in a cordial manner. "Don't worry. I wasn't expecting that you would; your talents lie elsewhere. You see, this is the exit route closest to the town morgue."

"Oh. The body."

"Precisely."

"But, Colonel, if I may... Wouldn't it be easier simply to have posted our people around the morgue?"

"That is the way small minds think. If they had but smoked that we were there they would never have come closer. And I want Fogg to get in there, to believe he's safe... And see the body. And despair. It's far easier to catch a tiger when the tiger has lost its fangs, Kreutzmer. You should study our dossier on Phileas Fogg, someday. He's not an opponent anyone should take lightly."

* * * * *

"I see lots of little lights running, Mister Passepartout," Brideshaw said.

"Torches," Passepartout said, grimly. "They are already knowing that my Master and Miss Rebecca are being there." He sent the =Aurora= up through a providential cloud, to keep them out of sight of possible watchers.

"This is not good," the valet said. "We are closing to the site of the morgue, but not very close. If we are going down, we are watched and there can be shots. And we cannot help them if they shoot us."

"Amen," Brideshaw said, fervently. Passepartout looked at him as if he had noticed his presence just now.

"You come here. Take the wheel."

"Me? But..."

"It's being very easy," Passepartout said, dragging Brideshaw to the steering ball and making him put his hands over the blue surface of the globe. "You just direct with this, up is like this, down is like this, and you do this for the right and this for the left. See? Easy. Now you keep her steady like this, and when I tell you bring her down fastly."

"What...? B-but I never..."

"You do this or I do like my Master and put the gun in your head, hear me? My Master is not a patient man and I'm feeling very much like him in this moment." Leaving the terrified Brideshaw clutching the sphere between trembling hands, Passepartout ran to the weapons cabinet and opened a wide wooden chest that was inside. He took out the contents with a grunt of effort. Brideshaw turned, saw what Passepartout was carrying, and his eyes opened wide.

* * * * *

"Damn," Rebecca flattened herself against the wall and breathed deeply, forcing herself to think. A roadblock. Of course.

She peered again from around the corner. There were two policemen posted by the roadblock, and three more figures, all of them wearing cloaks similar to the ones their earlier attackers had. There was something familiar about the shortest one, a certain jauntiness of movement that reminded Rebecca of the man she had fought earlier. Other subtle signs told her that this man was the leader. Which made his presence at that particular roadblock unpleasantly significant.

She took a quick inventory: she still had her small revolver and a box of fifty bullets, which was useless, since she would never have time to reload anyway. She also had another flash device, useful if they had a way of running away fast enough. But they didn't. Oh, and six throwing knifes. Phileas had nothing: he'd lost his swordstick during their flight across the roofs.

Poor equipment against five men with guns and already waiting for them. A surprise attack might get them past the blockade, but after that they could only run, and that was of no use against guns; the road beyond offered no cover.

Of course, they were Prussians. So disciplined they wouldn't even dare to drop dead without saluting first. That gave her a faint edge, if she could get close enough to grab their leader and use him as a hostage. Besides, her arm still hurt, and she had never been against a little payback.

She looked at Phileas, but there was no comfort there. He hadn't even looked at the blockade. He stood against the wall, silent and withdrawn.

"Phileas," she whispered. He looked at her, and Rebecca had to steel herself not to respond to the naked despair in his eyes. "Phileas, pay attention. We've got to get past the blockade, are you with me?"

"What do you want me to do?" Well, that was something. At least he hadn't turned into a sleepwalker. She explained her idea.

"When I get their leader, grab the guns from the rest; we lay down some covering fire and run as fast as we can." It was a desperate plan, and their chances of surviving it were, at best, slim. Maybe that was why Phileas nodded, and he shifted his posture ever so slightly. Rebecca's trained eyes saw that he was poised for the attack.

"Give the signal," he said simply. Rebecca hesitated, but then decided against saying anything. Whatever happens, happens now, she thought. There will be time for words if you live through this. She peered against around the corner, checking her distance and visualizing her movements towards her objective. The flash device was in her hand.

"Cover your eyes when I tell you," she told Phileas, and then she drew a deep breath and cast from her mind all that wasn't the task ahead. There was a faint sadness deep down within her, an impending sense of loss. She cast that aside, too, and stepped forward.

* * * * *

The cloud was drifting from under them. Passepartout was about to tell Brideshaw to move the ship with it to keep them under cover, when a brilliant flash of light coming from the town stabbed the night.

"Master! I am coming, Master!" Passepartout signaled Brideshaw to bring the dirigible down and ran to the hatch that led to the exterior walkway.

* * * * *

The flash from the explosive device had blinded the guards, and Rebecca didn't waste a single second. She ran towards the short man and grabbed his neck from behind, using her hip as lever to prevent him from getting a foothold strong enough to escape her grip.

"Drop your weapons or your commander dies!" she shouted immediately in German. Two of the men froze, but the other two started to reach for their guns. And suddenly Phileas was there. He punched one of them and kicked the other brutally in the stomach, catching the gun before it fell and pointing it, in one fluid movement, at the rest of the guards. Rebecca dragged the little man a few steps backwards to get around them and past the blockade, while Phileas kept them covered with the gun.

A sudden change in balance told Rebecca that her prisoner wasn't happy with his situation and was getting ready to do something about it. She braced herself, but was completely unprepared for the strength and violence of the man's retaliation. An elbow caught her under the ribs as she barely dodged a heel to her knee. The blow took the breath out of her and she staggered backwards with a gasp, struggling not to fall.

"Alive! Get them alive!" the little man shouted as he unsheathed his saber and swung it wildly towards Rebecca, who was already moving out of the way. Phileas shot twice, and two men fell, but the third one kicked the pistol out of his hand while at the same time tried to stab him with a dagger. Phileas dodged, barely: his waistcoat got caught in the blade, making him spin and almost lose his balance. Phileas let out a growl, and suddenly he leapt and caught the man with a punch that threw him backwards several paces.

Rebecca, recovering from her attack and avoiding another sweep from the saber blade, kicked the leader's legs from under him; looking around wildly, she saw they had a clear path past the blockade and jumped towards it before her opponent could recover. But Phileas didn't follow her: he was pummeling the guard, his fists falling like hail, his face contorted with rage, in a silent and terrible display of fury.

"Phileas! Run!" she said, even as she made it towards the road, throwing one of her knives almost blindly behind her in the vain hope of hitting someone.

She knew he wasn't even listening. In a second he'd be caught, and she'd stop, and turn backwards to him, and they'd be captured, and that would be it.

And at that moment two things happened: Phileas dropped the unconscious form of the guard, and ran towards her; and a huge explosion behind them covered the world in smoke. They both stopped, shocked, until Rebecca looked upwards and saw the =Aurora=, now with all her lights ablaze, and out in the walkway there was Passepartout, lowering his fearsome rocket launcher and waving his arms, and a second later the scale fell a few paces in front of them.

"Passepartout!?" Rebecca laughed, relief and incredulity fighting for control of her voice, as she saw the valet grinning and making wild gestures, mimicking someone climbing a scale.

"Hurry, hurry, Miss Rebecca! Master!" she heard him shout, but she had already grabbed one of the rungs and started climbing. Her relief knew no boundaries as she felt the weight of Phileas pulling down the scale, joining her, and they were both swept away by the =Aurora=, as shots rang in the air behind them, hitting only the night breeze.



* * * * * * * * * *
End of Chapter Seven