Blood Harvest

by James Axler

  Honore put the hammer down, and the med wag roared forward. Raul stepped away from Doc, and the old man collapsed. Ryan and Honore flinched as Xadreque emptied a blaster through the windshield. She hefted her spear and hurled it. The windshield of the wag proved no obstacle. Honore proved even less as the spear punched through his chest, his seat and a screaming ville man behind him. Ryan grabbed for the wheel and the windshield shattered completely as the wag hit Xadreque at forty miles per hour. The shredded tires lost their grip on the cobbles, and Ryan braced himself as the wag flipped. Ryan’s world spun and became one of flying glass, screaming metal and brutal impact. The wag rolled three times, but it felt like a hundred. It came to rest on its roof like an overturned turtle.

  A huge hand snaked through the empty windshield and bodily ripped Ryan out of the wag and hurled him to the cobbles. Ryan rolled and came up on one knee. Raul stood in front of him, limned in firelight like a colossus. “Good evening, Senhor Cawdor.”

  Ryan looked about him.

  Doc was on his hands and knees throwing up. Things looked better elsewhere. There was a full-on battle raging on the seawall. Another was shaping up within the ville proper as Balduino and his men surged inside and engaged. Sec men were emerging from the church in good order with bayonets fixed. The ship Ryan had seen exchanging cannonades was back in the harbor. It was smoking, but still heading for the pier. “Looks like you lost, Raul.”

  Raul smiled. “You know? Your friend Dr. Tanner said that no matter what happened, you were going to kill me.”

  “Doc’s right.” Ryan considered a lunge for Doc’s LeMat, but he knew he’d never make it. Sylvano lay closer. Ryan very slowly picked up the fallen blade Raulslayer where it lay beside Sylvano and rose to his feet. “I’m going to cut off your head.”

  Raul’s hunting scream shook the sky as he attacked.

  Ryan felt the damaged vein in his left elbow reopen as he flung the great blade underhanded like a harpoon. The six-foot sword was a clumsy missile, but it was heavy and it flew point-first, and Raul’s insane blue eyes went wide at the unexpected danger. Raulslayer rang like a bell, and Raul’s flensing blade bent as he batted the flying sword aside. Ryan closed the distance between them with his panga already in hand. The shaving-sharp blade whispered in. Purple ichor flew as Raul’s arm opened from wrist to elbow. Raul roared and Ryan ducked. The return swing of the flensing blade literally clipped an inch off the top of Ryan’s unruly black locks as Raul sought to open his opponent’s skull from temple to temple.

  Ryan was no swordsman, but he and Raul fought with chopping blades, and machete fighting was a science unto itself. It was a science that Ryan had assiduously mastered. He stayed within the giant’s reach, dancing in the jaws of the serpent so that he could land his blows. Ryan cut and cut again. He relieved Raul of his left little finger. The panga passed across Raul’s ribs, but the giant’s bones and muscle were so thick it was impossible to make a killing cut. Raul was just as fast as Ryan but at a cubed power level. Like Doc, all Ryan had in his corner was experience. Raul had been trained as a swordsman in his youth, but now he wielded a flensing blade and he had spent the intervening decade terrorizing slaves in the night. Cuts weren’t enough. Raul wasn’t afraid of bleeding to death. Ryan’s death consumed him, and his strength and stamina were far beyond human.

  Raul accepted a cut across his collarbones that was meant for his throat and swung with all his might. Ryan had no room to dodge. All he could do was put his panga in the way. Sparks shrieked off the blade as the flensing knife shaved metal. It didn’t stop the blow, but it was enough to turn it. Ryan took the flat in the chest rather than the edge.

  Nevertheless it was like being slapped in the chest with a cast-iron pan by a man who was eight feet tall. Ryan’s heart made a fist as he was flung backward. Instinct took over and he rolled as he hit the cobbles. Raul bore down with his blade held overhead in both hands for the killing blow.

  Ryan threw his panga.

  It revolved once and punched into Raul three inches below the rope belting his toga and sank to the hilt into his bladder. Raul screamed in real agony. Ryan tottered two steps and grabbed Doc’s swordstick and drew the rapier. Raul put up his giant hands to protect himself, and Ryan lunged low. Raul screamed as Doc’s blade entered his bowels beside the panga. Ryan staggered back as Raul fell to his knees, clutching at his belly with his viscera full of steel.

  Ryan picked up Raulslayer.

  The cutting edge had been brutally turned by Raul’s parry, but the great sword had two of them. Blood spurted out of Ryan’s left arm as he wearily bore the sword aloft in both hands. Ryan swung. Raul fell forward to hands and knees as the blade his nephew had forged to slay him bit into the bull-like muscles of his neck. Ryan swung the blade like a man chopping wood. With the third blow Raul’s Frankensteinian skull left his shoulders and rolled across the cobblestones. His body collapsed, fountaining blood and fluids.

  Ryan dropped to his knees and leaned on the great blade. It was the only thing holding him up.

  Doc crawled over and shoved his kerchief against Ryan’s elbow. He gasped as he spoke. “I am sorry…I tried…I tried as hard as I could…”

  “I get the feeling you did real good today, Doc.”

  Doc was done. The Blood of the Lotus had left him. His strength was gone, and madness and exhaustion danced around his damaged mind, but a flicker of sanity surged at Ryan’s rare praise. “You should have been there. The battle for the Sister Isle…” A smile cracked across Doc’s fatigued face. “We were something to see.”

  “You can tell me about it late—”

  Ryan stopped as Doc dropped face-first and twitching to the stones of the square. The one-eyed man eased Doc’s LeMat out and leaned on the great sword like a crutch as half a dozen sec men ran forward. Blood stained their bayonets. Ryan cocked back the antique blaster’s hammer. The sec men stared back and forth between Ryan, Raul, Doc and Sylvano. Their leader eyed Ryan uncertainly. “I am Vasco.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I am Sylvano’s second in command.”

  Ryan nodded at Sylvano’s corpse. “Looks like you’re first now.”

  Vasco started. “I…do not claim the barony.”

  Ryan regarded the blasters and bayonets that weren’t quite pointed at him. “Neither do I.”

  “Then you want—”

  “I want to get Doc off the ground and someplace safe.”

  Doc feebly shoved himself into a sitting position. “I am all right.”

  He wasn’t, but at least he was lucid. Ryan and Vasco turned as a small army came marching up from the seawall. Jak led a band of spear- and sling-armed Sister Islanders. J.B. was limping alongside Zorime, and a small contingent of ville sailors and sec men from the boat. Zorime stood for long moments looking at the butchered, crucified thing that had been her father. Then she cried out and ran to her brother. Ryan looked at his friends. “Where’s Krysty?”

  “Back on Sister Isle,” J.B. said. “She did her Gaia thing during the battle, but she’s okay. She and Mildred are tending the wounded.”

  “Saw your sea battle.”

  “It was a diversion.” J.B. shrugged. “Looks like it worked.”

  Ryan nodded. “Jak?”

  Jak shrugged. “Snuck up. Blew shore battery powder stores. Took seawall.”

  Zorime looked up from her brother.

  “You should know your brother died going forward,” Doc said. “Sword in hand. I was with him.”

  Balduino and his force of landowners reached the square, followed by the limping mob of ex-slaves. They looked to have lost half their number. “My lady?”

  “I am baron now. What is the situation?” Zorime asked.

  “We killed at least fifty nightwalkers. The rest have fled the ville for the hills. I did not think pursuit wise. My men are too few and the…freed men?” He sighed and looked at the hobbled left foot of an ex-slave. “Cannot give chase. I thought it best to secure the ville first and then mount
a proper hunt in the morning.”

  Ryan scanned the rooftops. The surviving nightwalkers had pulled a fade. “Jak?”

  “Killed least as many,” Jak said. “More.”

  “We slew fifty more on the other island,” Doc said.

  “Then they are crushed and leaderless.” Zorime rose from her brother’s side. “And by the population rolls I would think there can be fewer than fifty functioning adults left. The survivors will head back to the caves. Some will undoubtedly go feral in the hills. All must be hunted down. Vasco, secure the ville. Balduino, take a heavily armed patrol and visit each farmstead. Tell them we have retaken the ville and to be armed and ready for the hunt at dawn.”

  Balduino gave Ryan a hard look. “Baron, you should know that this one destroyed both the clinic and the powder mill.”

  Zorime flinched as the mess she had inherited kept getting messier. “I suppose that was to be expected.”

  Balduino shook his head. “And what is to be done about this?”

  The freed men and the men of the Sister Isle had begun mingling. Many fathers, uncles and sons were tearfully reuniting, and the younger generation was quickly swelling with anger as they saw how their elders had been hobbled and enslaved.

  “First tend to the wounded, theirs and ours,” Zorime ordered. “Then break out the festival caldrons and open the storehouses. Feeding them will be a first step.”

  “Baron.” Doc rose shakily to his feet, and Ago rushed over to support him. “Though it grieves me, there is something I must tell you.”

  “What more can you add to this night, Dr. Tanner?”

  “Simply this. You told me the story of your people, and the refugee fleet who were the Sister Islander’s ancestors. They know the story now, as well. I warn you, if it is your intention to drug these people at feast and then cull them like you did their forebears, they are forewarned. You should also take into consideration that you have scores of wounded back on Sister Isle, and sufferance of the islanders is at its limit. If you betray these men here, my friends Krysty and Mildred will not be able to stop the answering slaughter across the strait.”

  “I admit the idea did occur to me, Dr. Tanner.” Zorime looked out across the burning ville. “However, we will need every man.”

  “Every slave goes free,” Ryan said. “Or the battle begins again right here.”

  “You misunderstand me, Senhor Cawdor. Both islands have sustained terrible casualties, and nearly all of it among the able-bodied male populations. We are all going to have to start making babies very quickly, and if the curse of the nightwalkers, indeed the porphyric curse of my people is to end—” Zorime gave Ago and his oxlike physique a frank look of appraisal “—then a great deal more interbreeding will be required between our two islands.”

  Balduino and Vasco made appalled noises.

  Zorime cut them off with an imperious glare. “I believe I gave you both orders.” Ryan noted that Zorime wasn’t having many problems assuming the mantle of the barony. “Take Dr. Tanner back to the manse and make him comfortable.”

  “I will not rest until my friend Ryan is attended to,” Doc protested.

  Zorime nodded. “I will see to it personally.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Lover!” Krysty jumped up from a wounded islander she was tending and ran to the church door and the man filling it. As she hurled herself into Ryan’s arms, he winced. Krysty ran her hands over him and her beautiful face clouded with concern. She had seen Ryan in bad shape before, but he currently looked like a poorly dressed side of beef wearing boots. “What happened?”

  Ryan touched his face, his arm and his side. “Shot, hooked, stabbed, bled, was in a wag wreck, some giant bitch tried to pull my balls off.” Ryan shrugged. “I got salted. A lot. How’s it here?”

  Krysty sighed and looked at the blood on her hands and clothes. “Mildred did her best, but we lost a lot of the wounded. The ville people are bleeders, and the islanders charged massed blasterfire. They’ve got a couple of midwives and herbalists here, good enough for a fever or a broken leg, but they don’t have anything for or any experience with bullet holes. It’s been bad. Where’re the rest of us?”

  “J.B. did a deal with the new baron, Zorime. He’s helping the blacksmith service the ville weapons and help get powder back in production again. In return they’re going to fill our mags. Doc’s resting up in the baron’s manse drinking something called Madeira and reading books. Jak persuaded the Sister Isle detachment to stay and help with the hunt, but they’ve also been going from farm to farm to make sure the baron keeps her word and the slaves are really free. The farmholders aren’t happy about it, but it’s hard to argue with three hundred men at your door.”

  “So what’re we going to do?” Krysty asked.

  “The baron has given us permission to stay as long as we want on either island, and Ago doesn’t want us to go ever. I figure mebbe we take them up on their hospitality. Lie up for a week before moving on. According to Zorime, the mat-trans should be on a fresh cycle now, and at the start no one gets left behind traveling from this end.”

  “Baron Zorime,” Krysty mused. “She’s very beautiful.”

  Ryan didn’t mention that she had offered herself to him to open up the population drive while she tended his wounds, or that he had politely refused. He did relate what happened next. “She summoned Ago to her manse to ‘negotiate’ terms, and word is they haven’t been out of her bedroom in twenty-four hours.”

  Krysty laughed. “She didn’t waste much time.”

  “She doesn’t have much time.” Ryan looked around the makeshift hospital ward. “None of them do. Both islands are pretty much defenseless now, and both need to get their crops in. It’s going to take a lot of negotiating both in and out of beds to make up the shortfall of manpower around here.”

  “Well, you know, lover?” Krysty ran her eyes up and down Ryan’s battered frame speculatively. “I’m feeling a shortfall of manpower myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ryan’s scrotum still ached from the mauling Xadreque had given it, but he figured there was a good chance Krysty could figure out something to make him feel better. Krysty was a skilled healer with talented hands, and pretty much a talented everything else. Ryan grinned lopsidedly at the best thing in his life. “I know a guy who might loan me a hut tonight.”

  “Mildred and I have been sharing Father Joao’s cottage.” Krysty grinned back. “It has a real bed.”

  “I know a guy who’s gonna loan Mildred his hut tonight.”

  “Go have a nap. I’ll be along.”

  Ryan limped off to Father Joao’s cottage and flopped on a bed with blankets that smelled like Krysty’s hair. He closed his eyes, and it wasn’t long before he reopened them to find Krysty sitting on the bed naked beside him with a bucket of hot water and a cloth. She moved over his wounds with her hands, her lips, her breasts and hot water. Ryan wasn’t surprised to find himself rising to the occasion.

  Krysty Wroth was a resourceful girl.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5036-3

  BLOOD HARVEST

  Copyright © 2010 by Worldwide Library.

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