Austin released Skye's wrist, reached up and grabbed two fistfuls of branches. Tucking his toes into the seams in the stone blocks lining the moat, he pulled himself up like a rock climber assaulting a
headwall. Then he turtle-crawled on his belly to the edge, stretched his arms down. As he yanked Skye onto dry land, the bush blazed with light.
They rolled into the shadows, but it was too late. There was a chorus of shouts and footfalls pounded the earth as Marcel's men moved in from both sides in a pincers movement. Fearful of shooting each other, they were holding their fire. The only avenue of escape was into the woods ringing the chateau.
Austin headed for a break in the forest, whose silhouette was visible against the blue-black night sky. A pale slash of white stood out against the blackness. It was a gravel path into the woods. Their wet clothes and general weariness prevented them from breaking any Olympic records, but desperation gave wings to their feet.
Marcel's men were yelling with excitement with their prey in sight. The path led to a junction where three other lanes came together in a four-lane intersection.
"Which way?" Skye said..
The choices were limited. Voices were coming from the paths on either side.
"Straight," he said.
Austin sprinted across the intersection with Skye on his heels. As they ran, he scanned the woods, looking for an opening, but the trees grew close together and impenetrable brush and thorn bushes blocked the way. Then the trees ended suddenly and the path plunged between hedges at least ten feet tall. They came to another intersection, this one with two lanes. Austin started down one, then came back and took a few steps down another. Both were flanked by tall hedges, almost as impenetrable
as the chateau's walls.
"Uh-oh," he said.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est "Uh-oh'?"
"I think we're in a garden maze."
Skye looked around. "Oh, merde" she said. "Now what do we do?"
"We don't have a lab rat to lead us through this thing, so I'd suggest that we keep moving until we find our way out."
Since it didn't seem to make any difference, they took the left-hand path along a long curved stretch of hedge that swirled back on itself before branching out into two more lanes. The maze was going to be a challenge, Austin thought. It was laid out in a freehand design with circles and flourishes rather than with the right angles of a crossword puzzle grid. They would round a sharp corner only to find they were heading back in roughly the same direction.
Marcel's men were in the maze now. A couple of times, Austin and Skye stopped and held their breath until the voices faded on the other side of a hedge. They were within a few feet of each other, separated only by shrubbery.
Austin knew that Marcel would bring in more reinforcements and it would only be a matter of time before they were caught. There was simply no happy ending to their story unless they found their way out of the green labyrinth. If he were Marcel, he'd be guarding every escape route from the maze. Damn!
Austin had stubbed his toe on a hard object. He went down on one knee and let loose with a string of quiet curses. But his anger turned to a muted joy when he discovered he had tripped over a wooden ladder that had probably been left by a gardener.
He lifted the ladder off the ground, leaned it against the hedge and climbed to the flat top. He crawled belly down, and as the sharp branches stabbed through his thin jester's costume he had the sensation of lying on a spongy bed of nails. But the hedge held his weight. Lights were moving at several points in the maze. A search party was coming along the path toward Skye. He called down in a soft voice and told Skye to climb up the ladder onto the hedge. Then he pulled the ladder up and they lay on top of it. Not a moment too soon.
They could hear boots crunching in the gravel and heavy breathing and whispers.
Austin waited until the searchers had gone down another lane, then he moved the ladder so that the other end rested on the closest hedge, bridging the space between. He crawled across the ladder and held it steady for Skye to follow. They repeated the process with the next hedge.
As long as they stayed in astraight line, they could work their way out of the maze. They worked as a team, placing their improvised bridge, crawling across it, watching for searchers and then doing it again. The branches tore at their palms and knees, but they ignored the discomfort.
Austin could see the black line of trees in the darkness with only a few more hedgerows to bridge when they heard the thrump of helicopter rotors coming from the direction of the chateau. The helicopter was a few hundred feet in the air, moving toward the maze. Then a twin pair of searchlights came on and scanned the ground below.
Austin did a quick ladder shift to the next hedge, but in his haste he misjudged the distance. When he crawled across the ladder, it slipped from the furthermost hedge and he tumbled onto the gravel path. He sprang to his feet, climbed back onto the hedge next to Skye and placed the ladder with more care this time. Then he was across, quickly followed by Skye.
The mistake had cost them precious time. The helicopter was making its first pass over the maze, the brilliant searchlights turning night into day. Austin bridged the last path and turned back to help Skye. Her foot slipped off one of the rungs about midway and he reached across to pull her toward him. The helicopter was moving closer. With Skye beside him, Austin slid the ladder down the outside of
the last hedgerow. She climbed to the ground with the speed of a spider monkey. Her agility might have been due in part to avoid having Austin step on her hands. As soon as he hit the ground, Austin pulled the ladder down and shoved it close to the base of the hedge. Then he and Skye stretched out beside it. The helicopter roared overhead.
They could feel the downdraft as the chopper executed a tight turn and came back over the maze and moved back and forth over the hedgerows. After a minute, the chopper darted off and began a sweep of the woods.
In its quick swing, the chopper's lights had illuminated an opening in the tree line. Austin helped Skye to her feet and they ran along the gravel path that surrounded the hedge, then they sprinted along a grassy path into the woods, unsure of where they were going but grateful to be out of the maze.
Several minutes later, they broke out into the open. They were at the edge of a meadow or field, but Austin was more interested in the ghostly outline of a building near the edge of the woods. "What is it?" Skye whispered. "Any port in a storm," he whispered.