by James Axler
“In the meantime…” Barat snapped his fingers and pointed at Doc. The larger of the two sec men prepared two more drafts of wine, blood and drug. Doc recoiled in the ropes that bound him as the baron took one glass and the sec man brought the second one toward the bed.
“No!” Doc shouted. He desperately clamped his teeth together as the sec man’s hand clamped onto his jaw.
“Dr. Tanner,” the baron said. “Surely you know I cannot have you lying abed plotting, much less in any condition to assist in your own escape.”
Doc thrashed helplessly.
The baron gave Doc his skull-face grin. “Dr. Tanner? The Blood of the Lotus can be introduced through other bodily orifices if you are uncooperative, and the only difference it will make is that you will not enjoy the taste of the wine.”
Doc sagged in defeat. His sanity, strength and courage were at their limits. The glass was pushed against his mouth. Doc didn’t resist, but the sec man still cruelly vised his mouth open and held it open as he steadily upended the glass. Doc gagged and choked as the sourness of wine, the coppery slickness of blood and the sickening sweetness of nightmare slid down his throat.
Barat raised his glass in mocking toast. “Pleasant dreams, Dr. Tanner.”
RYAN RAN HIS EYE over the baron’s manse. He examined the stone walls and spear-tipped iron fence along the top. The first-story windows were bricked over except for firing slits. The second- and third-floor windows were barred. Barbed wire and razor-sharp spikes ringed the roof. Ryan stared long and hard at the brass dome of the observatory that rose among the multiple chimneys. Movement returned his gaze earthward. Sec men with auto-blasters patrolled the grounds. The mansion had fairly extensive grounds, but the sec men all stayed behind the fence. Ryan was pretty sure he and Mildred could take them, but he had no idea how many people might be inside nor did he know where Doc was. Best to go in quiet. He frowned at the manse once more. It was the only house in the hills that was lit, and Ryan didn’t like it.
He liked the almost total lack of pursuit even less.
The ville men had taken their sweet time organizing the posse. Rather than assaulting the sec station, the first thing they had done was secure the wharf. By the time they’d gotten around to the sec station and the constable, Ryan and Mildred were long gone. Ryan had paused for a while on the first hill outside out of the ville proper and watched the enemy’s movements. They had posted a cordon of heavily armed men down on the beach and used carts to make a roadblock across the street that ran out of the ville into the hills. No attempt had been made to organize a sweep into the hills. Ryan didn’t like it.
“Could be worse,” Mildred opined. “Could be raining.”
Lightning cracked out of the ink-black sky to the east and thunder rumbled off shore. Fat, cold drops began to spatter down through the trees.
Ryan stared at the manse with the patience of a stone.
Mildred shivered as the rain started to soak her through. “So, what do you think?”
Ryan shook his head at Baron Barat’s manse. The windows were either bricked over or barred. He looked out into the rain. “I think we’re safer in there.”
“And warmer,” Mildred agreed.
Ryan glanced up. “Let’s climb.”
Mildred shook her head. “Here we go…”
The forest was thick, but the stumps surrounding the manse proved that any tree closer than forty meters had been chopped down to provide a killing zone. Everything Ryan saw said the people on this island were used to sieges. Ryan scrambled up a spreading hardwood pausing every few feet to haul Mildred up behind him. He stopped in a crotch of branches that let him look in the second-story windows and froze. Doc was lying tied to a bed in one of the rooms. Ryan heaved Mildred up beside him. He flicked his eye from room to room, but the rest were either shuttered or had blinds or curtains drawn behind the bars.
Mildred gasped as she looked through the window. “Doc!”
Ryan nodded.
Mildred made an unhappy noise. “Tell me this doesn’t stink like a trap.”
It completely stank like a trap. Ryan gave Mildred a measuring look. “You can take anyone who comes into that room?”
By Mildred’s own admission with a properly set up handblaster she could hit an ant in the ass at fifty yards and human reliably at a hundred. “I’m your woman.”
“You cover me on the way in. When I’m in, you cover Doc. You cover us both on the way out.”
Mildred took out her ZKR target revolver and checked the loads. “Okay, but how are you getting in?”
Ryan ran his gaze back up the manse and gazed fixedly at the observatory. “Top down.”
“Okay.” Ryan was the scariest son of a bitch Mildred had ever met, and if anyone could do it, he could. “How are you extracting?”
“Doc can’t make it out the top unless I throw him.”
Mildred had heard worse ideas. “So…?”
“I may have to carry him. So with luck, out the front. You cover. I’m thinking of taking the baron’s wag if possible. Get us mobile and get us some distance. If I crash the gate, you’ve got to be ready to move.” Ryan took a length of rope out of his pack. He tied it around the branch they sat on and let the rest fall to the weeds and mud below. He gave her a final look before he slid down the rope. “Be ready.”
Mildred laid herself out along the bough and took her ZKR in both hands. “Born ready.”
Chapter Ten
Baron Xavier Barat entered his cellar alone. In the light of his candle, barrels of wine and wheels of cheese aged in the cool, musty, cavelike vault. He crossed the cellar and went to heavy door. Three hooded, whale-oil lamps sat on a shelf, and he lit all three of them and snuffed out his taper. He examined the door and found that the iron bolt was still locked. The two heavy crossbeams were still in their brackets and unmolested. He shot the iron shutter of the peephole and prudently stepped back. No violence occurred, and he shone the light through. The iron grille was still in place, so he peered down the flight of steps that led deeper into the earth. The door at the bottom was closed and the bolts and trip wires were in place. The baron unlocked the door and hung a lantern on a hook outside of it. He took up the other two and descended the short, slimed stair to the catacombs.
It had been years since he had come down these steps, but he insisted his servants keep the lamps ready and the doors maintained. This night he was glad that he had. The door at the bottom was of very heavy oaken timbers, bound with black iron and studded with short spikes on the outside. The baron set down the lamps and took a deep breath. He flexed his bandaged hand and then loosened his sword in its sheath. He cocked both of the double blasters shoved through his belt. Rock salt wouldn’t drive off what he feared this night. The pair was loaded with .75-caliber lead slugs that had a heavy nail down the middle, been filled with mercury and then sealed once more with lead. Barat eased the trip wires off tension and opened the peephole. The grille was still in place. He shone the light into the chamber. It was very low, of medieval origin and lined with the moldering bones of Barats from time out of mind. Xavier looked across the mausoleum chamber and stifled his sigh of relief. Iron bars blocked the dark passageway down into the cave system that riddled the islands’ roots. The bars were as heavy as a castle’s portcullis except that these were set in stone and were never meant to be raised.
Two of the bars were slightly bent where something had tested its strength against them and failed.
Barat unlocked the door and despite his fear strode across the chamber with purpose. The second security feature in the room was a short, triple-thick length of brick wall set perpendicularly just beyond the bars like a privacy screen. Behind the wall sat a simple chair. Barat stepped behind the barrier. He adjusted one lamp to its brightest and set it atop the wall. The other he set at his feet. The baron drew his two blasters, took a seat and waited. He could feel cold sweat trickle down his collar. His interview with Dr. Tanner had intrigued him so he took the copy of T
he Time Machine from a pocket in his cloak and opened to a page. He spent several minutes trying to read, but he couldn’t concentrate on any passage. Barat was being outwaited and he knew it. He replaced the book and filled his hands with his blasters once more. They offered him no more patience but the cold steel did give him more resolve.
The baron finally spoke quietly. “Raul? Are you there?”
A voice far deeper than even Sylvano’s answered. The voice was almost below human register. “You know I am, brother.”
Barat shuddered as he always did. He knew it was a trick of the cavern’s acoustics and his own mind, but it sounded like his brother was just on the other side of the bricks, rather than behind the bars and back where the lamplight didn’t reach. Then again perhaps he was crouched but inches away. The baron had never dared to try to chart the catacombs and the caves they led to. There had always been talk of secret passageways from the ancient days. He wasn’t about to step around the wall to find out, and if there were a hidden way into the chamber, Raul had never seen fit to come around the wall and face his brother, either. “I thought perhaps you might be…out and about.”
“I smell blood upon you, brother.”
Barat’s eyes flicked his bandaged hand. “Do you?”
“Yes, just as I smell the fear sweating through your skin, and the mercury you so lovingly loaded into your pistols.”
Barat grimaced but kept his voice neutral. He knew his brother lived to intimidate him during these interviews. “You heard the alarm bells?”
“I did.”
“There are strangers upon the isle.”
Barat was surprised as Raul paused before answering. “I know.”
“You have seen them?”
“I have. The Cyclops is dangerous and wants killing. The other was an old man who smelled of madness.”
“It was the old man who bloodied me. He carries a sword within his cane.”
“You never practiced your swordsmanship as assiduously as you should have.”
Barat cringed at the remark, and his hand almost went to very old scars upon his body. The baron kept his tone light. “He is a fascinating man. He speaks fluent Latin and claims the acquaintance of H. G. Wells. You might enjoy meeting him.”
“Well, that is fascinating. Though I believe I might enjoy making him speak in tongues and acquainting him with God as I break his bones for their marrow more.”
“He put similar marks upon Sylvano. Would you like me to arrange a match?” Barat remembered the old man’s startling alacrity and skill. He almost hoped Raul might sneer and accept.
Barat’s brother didn’t rise to the bait. “Ah, my dear nephew. Does he send his love?”
“Nearly every day he bids me give him a hundred men with blasters and pikes that he might come down into these passages and drive you and yours forth into the light.”
“Such a sweet boy.” Raul’s voice went reptilian.
Barat felt the old bitterness within him. “He misses his mother.” He was surprised to find a cold reservoir of compassion within him, even for his brother. “I believe we all do.”
Raul’s roar shook the very walls of the catacombs. “She was mine!”
Answering roars boomed upward from the bowels of Raul’s kingdom. The baron waited until the echoes faded. “Yes, Raul. She was your betrothed, but the marriage was arranged when all of us were children. Just as you were firstborn, and the barony was to be yours.” Barat kept malice and vengeance out of his voice and spoke the simple truth. “Then you reached the age of maturity, my brother, and you became what you became.”
The words lay between them as solid as any brick wall or iron bar.
Raul’s voice went back to being cold as his catacombs. “And how is my dear niece Zorime? I hear she is quite beautiful. As beautiful as her mother?”
Barat clenched his teeth but didn’t rise to the bait as his brother had.
“You have many nieces and nephews down here, brother.” Raul’s demonic voice dripped with malice. “Some day you really must come down for a visit.”
“The day I come down into those caves, Raul, will be at dawn, with every man of the ville, with blasters, pikes, the smoke of the Lotus and blasting powder.”
Raul’s voice dropped dangerously. “It would take you more than a day, your losses would be horrific, and with the night would come my counterattack upon the ville.”
“I would annihilate you, Raul. The only card you have is that I am indeed unwilling to accept the losses such an endeavor would require, just as you keep your predations to a minimum and mostly among the slaves so as not to provoke it.”
Silence hung heavy between them once more.
It was Raul who spoke first. “More strangers have come from the escarpment? At the usual interval?”
“Yes, the next two were an albino youth and a black woman.”
“An albino?” Raul laughed. It was a horrible thing to hear echoing through the chamber of stone and bones. “Coming to this island? Now there is irony. And a black, you say?”
“They were well-armed and equipped, but with the coming of the one-eyed man and the doctor we were prepared for them. You might find it of interest to know that the one-eyed man and Dr. Tanner were not taken on the escarpment. They appeared on the wharf claiming to have been shipwrecked in the storm.”
Raul spent a few moments digesting this. “You believe they slew Roque and his crew?”
“And took his boat. The only truth in the matter is that I believe the two of them could not manage the boat and they were indeed shipwrecked upon the rocks in the channel. From things Dr. Tanner said I believe they washed up on Sister Isle and made contact with the slaves. Though where they found a boat to make the passage here is beyond me.”
“They fashioned a raft.”
“How do you know?”
“I found it.”
The baron paused. “The one-eyed man was injured and Tanner old. They could not have felled enough trees to make a raft in the space of a day. The slaves must have helped them.” Anger kindled in Barat’s cold heart. “It has been some time since the last punishing. Perhaps the slaves are due.”
“Oh, they are due, brother.”
Barat didn’t like the tone in his brother’s inhuman voice. “Oh?”
“Yes, I told you, I have seen the raft, and it was not rudely fashioned of logs.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let us say that good Father Joao will not be pleased at the modifications to his church.”
“Damn them!” Barat’s fist clenched so hard purple blood oozed through his bandages.
Raul shifted the subject. “Tell me, brother, what is the disposition of your charges?”
Barat saw no reason to withhold anything. It was that which had brought him down into this graveyard. “I have the doctor. The other three are at large.”
“Then they will be coming here,” Raul surmised.
“So I believe. I have the impression they are intensely loyal to one another.”
“Brother…” Raul’s voice registered mild surprise. “Are you giving me free rein to hunt them?”
Barat left off fencing with his brother. He knew that literally or figuratively he was bound to lose. What he could do was to be so openly honest that it took his brother off guard. “I suggest more. I suggest an alliance.”
The baron was pleased with the silence that greeted that. His brother offered no vile personal inference, intimidation or taunt. The baron believed he had another card to play. Despite the horror Raul had become and the terrible crimes that lay between them, Xavier Barat believed his brother was still loyal to the family and to the island in his own twisted way. “I know we have not spoken in some time, and the last time we did, it ended in…acrimony.”
“You told me when next you laid eyes upon me you would slay me.”
“I meant it.”
“I know you did, brother, and yet I have laid eyes upon you many times since that night, and only wished
to embrace you as my sweet sibling.”
Barat shuddered once more.
“I remember reading that men of power have troubled dreams, but you sleep so soundly, brother. You look like an angel.”
The baron shoved the terror of the idea aside. If Raul had access to the manse he would have taken his vengeance long ago, nor would he have asked of Zorime. He would have taken her. Xavier believed he had another card to play. He sometimes thought of his brother languishing in his dark world. Huddled in these filthy dank passages during the day, coming out only at night, and then rarely, to raid the slaves’ quarters for blood, flesh and women. The roars and screams one sometimes heard coming out the known cave mouths or out on the fringes of the ville or in the hills when Raul and his brethren hunted left Xavier with the impression that Raul hadn’t played chess with anyone but himself in a very long time.
Raul Barat was a monster, but he was a classically educated monster.
Sometimes during these infrequent parleys, Xavier had the feeling that Raul was similarly starved for conversation. “We cannot have these outlanders trying to infect the slaves with dissent as the Russians attempted to do.”
“As I recall, you ruthlessly crushed them.”
“Yes, but they were cartographers and self-taught scientists, descendants of a predark research station in the Arctic and the local aboriginal people. They were suicidally idealistic about making contact and rebuilding the world. We were their third jump and they had encountered nothing hostile in the previous two. The only thing they had fought in a hundred years were polar bears. They were sec men, if they could even be called that. Hunters, not warriors. The few who escaped led us a merry chase, but they made the mistake of running into the caves. I believe you may have captured several of them.”
Raul neither confirmed nor denied, but Xavier could almost hear the wheels of his brother’s monstrous mind turning.
“These newcomers are different,” the baron continued. “They are warriors, born of the Deathlands across the sea. Also, the Russians had no way to communicate with the slaves beyond hand signals. They engendered sympathy but could not illuminate the sister island population to their true disposition in our islands. This Dr. Tanner can make himself understood, and he seems quite sympathetic toward their plight, and we do not know yet how many more may be coming through. Even counting your people, Raul, the slaves upon this island outnumber us. Add the population of Sister Isle and—”
