chest. He missed
timing
chest. He missed nearly every leaf he cut at or stabbed, leaving him depressed as well as in pain. Each movement hurt, grating that broken rib, but Charlie was out of practice and previous experience with Bericus told him that breaking Sibyl and little Lucania out of that villa was likely to get violent.
Finally, Charlie decided he was as ready as he was likely to get—and that his body was threatening mutiny. He adjusted the leather-strap stirrups for his now-straightened leg, then clambered awkwardly onto the fallen tree trunk. He untied the reins and clutched them in one hand, then turned cautiously and urged Silver a little closer. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to drag himself up without the aid of leg brace and stirrups. He slithered into the saddle and immediately felt about a thousand percent better.
Charlie peered around, trying to get his bearings from the mountain and the sun. He'd need to work his way back downstream. Judging from the angle of the sun, he'd been unconscious not only the whole night, but most of the morning. The sun was rising rapidly toward its zenith. Midday, or close to it. How much time was left? He bitterly regretted not getting as many details from Sibyl as possible, but Xanthus' timing had prevented it.
All he knew for sure was, Vesuvius was supposed to blow sometime between now and about eleven o'clock or midnight tonight. Either he had enough time to break Sibyl and his daughter out of Bericus' villa and get them both to safety or he did not. Charlie chose the likeliest direction that would take him toward the villa and set out.
Sibyl woke in darkness. Her body was sluggish, her mind lethargic. Her mouth tasted like live bait. From the far corners of her cell, blackness crept toward her, touched her with slimy tendrils of panic. Half-suffocated, Sibyl struggled to push herself up off the hard bed. When the bar rattled loudly on the far side of the door, she gasped, an airless shriek in the darkness.
The door creaked open. Weak sunlight streamed across the floor and came to rest on her skin.
Morning? Or evening? She couldn't hear anything resembling the preliminary stages of eruption. . . .
She blinked away the blurry aftereffects of the drug and focused on Quintus' surly face. He was flanked by two women.
"Get up."
So much for a cheery "good morning."
She could