ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  They had allowed the fire to die down, and it had sunk to a small pile of gray ashes that occasionally flared crimson as the strengthening breeze reached it. Doc had already fallen asleep, lying on his back, gnarled hands folded across his chest like a crusader at his eternal rest on a tomb.

  Jak and Dean were also dozing, curled up beside the embers of the fire.

  Mildred and J.B. sat close together, hands entwined, whispering to each other. Every now and again one of them would laugh quietly.

  Krysty looked across at them, then back at Ryan. They both lay close together, sharing a companionable silence.

  Time passed, evening creeping imperceptibly into the darkness of full night.

  They heard the keening of the wolf once more, but it didn't seem to be getting any closer.

  "Rain in the air," J.B. announced, beating his battered fedora into shape.

  "Shame no fish left." Jak sat up, honing one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives on a round stone. "Shoot us another, Mildred, huh?"

  "Yeah, Mildred. I'm about starved!" Dean added.

  She laughed. "Maybe. I still feel kind of stuffed from yesterday."

  Ryan stood and stretched, easing the kinks out of his muscles. "Might be best to move on some. Tracks showed plenty of deer around here."

  Doc smiled at the thought. "Haunch of venison. With some apple and cabbage and some creamed potatoes. Goblet of a decent zinfandel to wash it down. Followed up with a gut-sticking portion of homemade treacle pudding. And a brimming balloon glass of Napoleon brandy."

  None of them, not even Krysty with her "seeing" ability, could have guessed how far off the mark was the old man's sybaritic vision.

  THE TRAIL WAS NARROW, winding steeply across the face of a wooded ridge, the ground dropping away to the west toward the river. The water level had fallen during the night, but the river was still a snarling, menacing sight, impossible to cross safely.

  There was the threat of rain, though the bank of low clouds had passed over and lifted. Mildred hunched her shoulders and shivered. "Still cold," she complained.

  "Spoiled by having such a good fire for two nights running," J.B. said with a grin, wiping away the fine mist of condensation from his glasses.

  "Warm up once we get moving properly." Ryan led the way, swinging along at a good four miles per hour, which was a fair pace over difficult terrain.

  They hadn't seen any sign of human life for some time, then Ryan spotted a short wooden sign, almost hidden among a clump of flowering thimbleberries: Beaver Lake Trail, 1.6 Miles. An arrow pointed back and downward. Crest Pine Trail, 8.6 Miles. An arrow pointed straight ahead. The lettering was deeply incised, covered with a thin coating of phosphorescent moss.

  "Lots of national parks around here and stuff like that," Mildred commented.

  They crossed the remains of a wider, edged path, its surface rippled by some postnuke earth movements. Its tarmac surface was furrowed and cracked, and bright weeds sprouted through in hundreds of places.

  "Look at that." Dean pointed into the lower branches of a fire-scarred ridgepole, a little way ahead of them and to the left.

  "More of the Children of the Rock," Krysty said as they gathered round the macabre totem.

  It was the wind-dried corpse of baby pig, with trotters and head removed, its flanks shrunken and leathery. Two unmatched dolls' heads, plastic and eyeless, had been nailed to the shoulders, staring into each other's face. Threads of blond hair, looking human, were pasted to one of the artificially pink skulls.

  Chicken feet had been sewn onto where the forelegs of the pig would have been, the claws painted a faded crimson. And what looked like the legs of a very large rat were fixed to the rear stumps of the hideous thing.

  A delicately embroidered waistcoat in rainbow silks had been fitted around the wasted midriff, fastened in place with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons.

  "I vow that someone has taken a great deal of time and trouble, bubble, bubble, double trouble, in the caldron… My apologies, my good and trusted companions, but I fear that my brain took a brief vacation there."

  A small white card, about nine inches square, shrink-wrapped in clear plastic, was nailed to the trunk of the tree below the symbol:

  The righteous are right and the rest are wrong. We choose life. For you, unless you come to us in abject humility, we choose death and damnation.

  It was neatly lettered, signed in scarlet with the stark initials: "CoR."

  "Friendly sons of bitches," Ryan muttered. "Religious crazies can be serious trouble."

  "Think we should just go back, lover?"

  He shook his head hesitantly. "Mebbe not yet."

  EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON they reached another cross trail. This one was wider than any of the others and showed distinct ruts from wheeled vehicles and the deep patterns of many horses. Jak squatted on his haunches and peered at them. "Not fresh. Not very. Days not hours."

  J.B. leaned over the teenager's shoulders, nodding his agreement. "Yeah. Rain tells us that. But the track's heavy used. Look at the boot marks, as well."

  "No gas buggies at all," Ryan offered. "Only flatbed carts. Iron-rimmed wheels. Some ponies unshod. Wonder if they could be the Apaches?"

  "Possible." The Armorer looked around them, his head slightly on one side, as though he were listening for some divine message. "Might as well follow them."

  "Why not?" Ryan straightened and eased the blaster in its holster. "Just so long as we don't run into the camp of these Children of the Rock."

  "THINK SOMEONE'S COMING." Krysty had stopped at a point where the trail wound into a series of hogback ridges, with the trees pressing in thickly on both sides.

  "Sure?" Ryan already had the SIG-Sauer drawn and cocked in his right hand.

  She nodded, her sentient red hair bunched more tightly at her nape. "Sure, lover."

  "Norms or muties?"

  Krysty considered the question for a moment, her green eyes squeezed shut. "Norms."

  "Many?"

  A shake of the head. "Don't think so. Few. But you know that I can never be…"

  "Sure," he said, finishing the sentence for her. "Yeah, I know."

  Jak cleared his throat. "Can hear something."

  "What?"

  Ryan knew the albino's hearing was sometimes uncannily acute.

  "Bridle. Hooves."

  "Right. J.B., you, Mildred, Dean and Doc cover that side of the path. We'll take this side. Keep under cover. Don't make a move unless I do. Best nobody knows we're in the area." As the others began to move, he called out in a penetrating whisper, "But if we need to stop them, then we do it with extreme prejudice." The old killing phrase from the long-gone, distant days before skydark came easily to him.

  He crouched in the stygian blackness between two slender sycamores that had somehow seeded themselves among the ranging conifers, his blaster ready, his nerves strung taut.

  From where he hid, Ryan could see some distance along the trail toward the north. The sound of a horse coming in his direction was louder, and he heard the soft snuffling of the animal's breath, the noise of the harness and tuneless singing.

  It was an old song that Ryan recalled one of the navs on War Wag One used to sing, claiming it was an ancient folk ballad from a hundred years before skydark and that it had at least a hundred verses. And he'd known all of them.

  The quavering voice, coming toward them along the trail, could be either an old man or an old woman.

  It didn't sound like anything to fear.

  Finally the singer appeared, sitting slumped on a sway-backed mule, barefoot, dressed in a collection of ill-fitting rags. It was an elderly man, with shoulder-length, greasy gray hair, tangled and knotted. He held the bridle loosely in his clawed right hand, seeming content to allow the animal to pick its own way at its own speed.

  The current verse of the interminable song detailed a biologically impossible encounter between the heroine, Little Betty, and a well-endowed rattlesnake, in a cave filled with long-lost Spa
nish conquistadors' gold.

  Ryan eased his finger off the trigger of the SIG-Sauer. The old man was alone, apparently indifferent to the rest of the world, obviously unaware of any threat to his safety.

  It might be worth stopping him and interrogating him about the local region, and particularly about the mysterious Children of the Rock.

  Now the mule was almost level with where Ryan was hiding, and the rider still hadn't even looked up, still droning on in a quavering voice.

  Ryan made the snap decision to allow him to pass by unchallenged.

  When the song stopped, the old man tugged on the reins, bringing the animal to a four-square halt. His head turned slowly toward the fringe of trees, seeming to drill directly at where Ryan was standing stock-still, barely breathing.

  He risked a glance around the flank of the tree, seeing to his amazement that the man was stone-blind, his staring eyes both veiled with milky white cataracts.

  "Who's there?"

  The voice was stronger, and Ryan noticed for the first time that the old man had a blaster tucked into a broad leather belt, a battered Ruger that looked like it had been used for everything from hammering fence posts to stirring mutton stew.

  "I can hear you out yonder. If it be one of you brats, then I'll see skin tanned off your asses."

  From the other side of the track, Ryan glimpsed J.B.'s face, framed in the low branches of a pine. The Armorer was holding his Uzi at the ready, eyes turned questioningly in Ryan's direction, as if he were waiting for a sign to open fire.

  For a dozen slow beats of the heart, nothing happened.

  The pale, blind eyes continued to stare toward where Ryan lurked between the pair of sycamores. The mule snickered and lowered its head to graze a clump of long, rank grasses.

  "I can hear you. Smell you. By the living God that made me and plucked out my glims, I can taste you! If Brother Joshua hears of this…then on your own gob-smitten heads be it. Don't say you wasn't warned!"

  There was a note of genuine rage in the trembling voice. Ryan realized that the blind man wouldn't be a person to cross.

  "Well enough." His bare heels kicked into the hollow flanks of the patient mule. "Walk on, you spawn of Shaitan. Miles to go before we sleep."

  The animal began to amble down the trail, the venomous old man swaying from side to side on its back. Just before they vanished from Ryan's sight, the song started up again, this time with the verse about Little Betty and her meeting with the over-endowed band of traveling monks.

  Ryan watched until the voice had faded away in the distance before stepping out from cover.

  "Old man was riding the mule stone-blind," Krysty said wonderingly.

  "Mean-looking bastard." Jak spit in the dirt and made the finger gesture to fend off evil.

  "I wouldn't want him mad at me," Dean added.

  Ryan holstered the SIG-Sauer. "Seems to me that there could be a ville close by. Mebbe the Children of the Rock. We'll keep moving, on condition orange. Eyes and ears open. Let's go."

  Chapter Twelve

  After a half hour, Ryan relaxed the conditions. Blasters were holstered, and everyone walked with a lighter step. Krysty had closed her eyes and concentrated her seeing powers, reporting that she couldn't feel anyone nearby.

  "Think we should have stopped the old man on the mule and asked him about the Children of the Rock?" J.B. called from the rear of their rough skirmish line.

  Ryan answered him over his shoulder. "Guess not. Could have set him off making a noise. No idea if there was anyone near. And he didn't look the kind of person who'd take to answering questions." He paused, thinking about it for a few more strides. "And there was something triple creepy about him."

  Doc nodded his agreement. "I would second that thought, my dear Ryan. I have seldom encountered a less savory individual in all of Deathlands."

  Jak laughed. "Love way put things, Doc. Got way with words, ain't you?"

  The old man grinned, showing his strong, perfect teeth. "Praise from you, my winged Mercury, is praise indeed. Thought, word and deed. Yes, indeed. Valiant deeds. Prince valiant deeds. Do-dah deeds!"

  Mildred tapped him on the arm, making him jump. "Snap out of it, Doc," she said curtly. "You got your mind to wandering off again."

  "Ten thousand apologies, my dear sable madam. If only I had my trusty headgear I could remove it to you in token of my deep regrets. But I don't, so I won't."

  Ryan slapped his right hand against his thigh. "Enough, people, enough. Let's keep concentrating on where we are and where we're going."

  "We going to get something to eat, lover?" Krysty looked down at the muddied state of her chisel-toed boots. "Gaia, but this rain's played havoc with these. Look at them."

  Doc had a sudden coughing fit, doubling over, hawking to try to clear his throat and spitting out a chunk of thick green phlegm. "I'm so sorry," he spluttered. "I fear that this damp has gotten onto my chest."

  "Could do with somewhere warm for the night," Ryan said. "Place like this should have some old shelters or huts or something like that."

  "Most national parks did," the Armorer stated. "Visitor centers and motels and chalets. All kinds of accommodation. Just keep going along this trail here and we're bound to come across something."

  THE SIGN WAS crudely painted, white lettering daubed with scant respect for spelling, across a broken hunk of dark blue plastic, about four feet square: Mom's Fyness Jerkiee. Best In Weste. Just The Myle A Long This Trayle.

  " 'Mom's finest jerky,' " Jak read slowly. "That what says?"

  Ryan nodded. "Close enough. A mile along the trail. Hope the cooking's better than the writing."

  "We going to risk it?" J.B. pushed back his hat, glancing up at the lowering sky. "Got to be getting closer to the HQ of these mysterious Children of the Rock."

  Ryan sniffed. "Step careful. Recce on the way in. We should have enough firepower to take on most hostiles."

  "A mile on." Mildred looked over at Doc, who was blowing his nose vigorously into his blue swallow's-eye kerchief. "You all right?"

  He turned bleary eyes toward her. "I would be the first to admit that my health has deteriorated a little within the last few minutes, Dr. Wyeth. A closeness of the chest and tightness in the throat." He coughed again. "And a pernicious trembling in the joints."

  "You well enough to carry on a ways, Doc?" Ryan asked. "To this Mom's place?"

  "I believe so. Let us put the issue to the testing place, shall we?"

  Ryan grinned. As long as the old man could still talk like that, then he couldn't be feeling too bad. "Fine. Let's move onto extended skirmish line, friends. Condition red."

  A CLOUD OF DRIZZLE swept through the dripping pines, as cold as charity. Ryan, leading the way, almost missed the second notice, tipped on one side like a drunkard's dream, half-hidden among some long-thorned brambles: Mom Jerkee. Ahed On Ryte. Soon.

  The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, leaving the trail dotted with silvery puddles among the wag-rutted mud.

  The sky was like unpolished pewter, dismal and oppressive, casting deep shadows beneath the trees that pressed up against the edges of the track. The movement caught Ryan's eye. His hand dropped in a conditioned combat reflex onto the chill butt of the SIG-Sauer as he half turned, crouching slightly, perfectly balanced.

  Behind him, everyone reacted fast—everyone except Doc, who was busily involved in blowing his nose again. Blasters were drawn, and everyone stopped, looking around them.

  In among the blackness, Ryan caught another flicker of deeper darkness, the glint of golden eyes. Now his blaster was drawn and cocked. Doc muffled a liquid cough, fumbling the massive Le Mat from its deep-cut holster.

  "What is it, dear boy?" he whispered. Ryan gestured for silence, concentrating on whatever it was that had snatched his attention. The creature was larger than a beaver and smaller than a hunting dog, short legged with a long scaly tail glistening wetly behind it. It moved slowly, parallel to the blacktop.
r />   His very first thought had been a cougar, but it didn't seem to be making any attempt to conceal itself from him. There was something in the way it moved that put him in mind of a rat, but he'd never seen a rat that size, not even in the mutie rad-cancered hot spots in the bleakest wilderness of Deathlands.

  "Other side," J.B. whispered, pointing with the stubby muzzle of the Uzi.

  Whatever the creature was, there were two more of them on the left side of the trail.

  Ryan stood still and waited.

  "By the…" Doc's voice faded into silence, the words vanishing.

  Ryan felt his finger tighten on the trigger of the blaster, the barrel of the SIG-Sauer swinging to cover the nearest of the creatures as it came lumbering out from the dark fringe of the forest.

  It was a rat.

  At least, before the rad sickness burned its way into the genetic codes of its ancestors, it had to once have been an ordinary domestic rat, the sort of rodent that would have skulked in barns and outbuildings and moist cellars.

  But several generations over the long winters and the subsequent century had changed it into the monstrous apparition that fumbled its way onto the blacktop, less than thirty yards from Ryan.

  It moved slowly, its overgrown claws ticking on the gravel. Its pelt was a bizarre cross between scales and fur, oddly charred. The tail was covered in leprous patches of flaking, infected skin. Its head turned slowly from side to side, trembling with some kind of frightful ague.

  The skull was blackened and elongated, earless, ending in a running sore where the nose would have been on a normal animal. The hooded eyes were pale yellow, crusted with a hard white froth. The lower jaw was underslung, gaping open with a triple row of stained, serrated teeth showing between the swollen, obscenely delicate pink lips.

  Ryan guessed that its body was around four feet in length, with an extra five or six feet of twitching tail.

  "Look left," J.B. breathed, his voice suddenly hoarse and high.