Haven's Blight

by James Axler

  “Generally I think historians are talking about considerable more ‘building up’ than you got here, Baron, if you’ll forgive my saying so,” Ryan said. “But I think the principle applies, though, yeah. Attacking a ville’s always a tough proposition, even one a lot smaller than this.”

  “Rationally, why should they attack us at all, Tobias?” Elizabeth asked. “We can impose greater costs on them than they’re likely to recoup even if they succeed in plundering Haven!”

  “But sometimes these guys aren’t rational,” said J.B., biting off a chunk of bread and chewing it, earning a look of dismay from Mildred as crumbs tumbled down his shirtfront. “A guy like Black Mask gets a bee in his bonnet, he won’t reckon profit and loss. Plus Haven’s a plum prize.”

  “Plus he’s a pure stoneheart,” Ryan said. “It’s not like he’s going to shed any tears for any blood he doesn’t leak himself. More of his dregs you chill, the bigger his piece of the pie.”

  The baron nodded. “This is why I’d be so much happier if you—all our honored guests—would consent to sign on and help us past the point your companion, Krysty, recovers.”

  Landry scowled. “You were complaining about limited resources, Baron? Why would it be advisable to add new mouths to feed on an extended basis?”

  “Nonsense,” Bouvier said, taking a hearty slug of wine. “These people are skilled fighters. They add far more than they could possibly consume. They’re worth any number of farmers and laborers pulled from their tasks. No matter how enthusiastic they are, such people remain amateurs.”

  Ryan didn’t bother polling his companions with a look. “All I can say is what I said all along, Baron. We’ll stay and do what we can to help you until Krysty’s fit to fight again. Then we’ll talk long-range.”

  “And as I have said,” Blackwood said with a slightly regretful smile, “that’s fair enough.”

  “Speaking of Krysty,” his sister said, “have you any good news for us, Dr. Wyeth?”

  Mildred sighed and looked down at her plate, which was empty except for a little sheen of yellow crayfish grease. Ryan already knew her answer. He’d intercepted her the moment she’d stepped into the house.

  “Only that she’s not getting worse. Amélie says she remains hopeful. She knows a lot. Also, she has a remarkable facility, given that it was put together so many years after skydark.”

  “Her father was a remarkable man,” Blackwood said. “A man of great determination as well as ability—traits his daughter carries on. He was persistent and resourceful enough to find the materials to build the laboratory. And my father supported him without reserve. I’ve tried to do as well by Lucien Mercier’s daughter.”

  Elizabeth put her napkin on the table in front of her. “Brother, if you and our guests will excuse me, I believe I shall retire.”

  St. Vincent materialized behind her to help pull out her chair and assist her to her feet. At a gesture from the majordomo, a female servant appeared at Elizabeth’s side. Elizabeth gratefully put an arm over her shoulder for support.

  “Elizabeth—” Tobias said.

  She waved a hand. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just weak. I’ll be fine when I lie down.”

  She made her way out with the help of her servant. The baron turned a look of pain and helplessness around the table.

  Ryan knew how he felt.

  RYAN’S EYE SNAPPED open to the amber gleam of an oil lamp turned low.

  Krysty’s dead, son, a voice said in his head. Face it. She’s lost. You’re lost. She was the better half of your soul. Now she’s gone forever.

  He sat up so violently he almost made the cot fold up on him. He felt hotter than the air would account for. Wildly he looked at Krysty. She still lay on her back, covered by a sheet, her cheeks the color of ivory in the dim light.

  Somewhat more cautiously he climbed off the cot. He licked a finger and held it under her nostrils. He felt the slight cool pressure of her breath. She was breathing shallowly, as she had since he had awakened here in Haven. But at least she still breathed.

  But this is how it ends, the voice said. She’ll never get better again. You’ve lost her. You’re lost, little boy. You’re doomed to wander forever alone.

  He shook his head. He wasn’t a fearless man. Any man who said he felt no fear was just a flat-out liar. A man who really didn’t feel fear had something wrong inside.

  Ryan had felt fear many times, in many forms. He had always mastered the fear. He had always one way or another found what it took to do what had to be done. That was what made him the man he was.

  But he’d never felt fear quite like this before. It curdled his guts and turned his joints to jelly. It was a burning pain like cancer in his brain. It seemed to offer no hope, no escape.

  “Nuke it,” he snarled, keeping his voice low as if there was any danger he’d wake the sleeping woman. As if that wouldn’t feel like the best thing that ever happened to him. “I’m not going to give in. I’m not!”

  Ryan, he thought he heard a voice say.

  “Krysty?” There had been no sound. The woman lay as she had for days now. She obviously hadn’t moved. Or spoken.

  Ryan, listen to me, the beloved voice said in his skull.

  He shook his head. “I’m imagining this.”

  He felt her soft laughter fall on him like gentle rain. You still haven’t learned better, lover? Believe what you want. You always do anyway.

  “You got that right,” Ryan said, folding his arms and feeling like a stupe for holding a conversation with a woman in a coma.

  First, you’ll never be left alone. Unless you choose to be. I’ll always be with you, live or dead, until you tell me you don’t want me hanging around anymore.

  “That’ll be never.”

  That’s a long time, lover.

  “You said it first.”

  Again, he felt more than heard the unvoiced laughter.

  Exasperating as always. That’s my Ryan. The other thing is—you need to be ready to let go.

  He crossed his arms. “That’s not going to happen.”

  You say that now, but there’ll be a time someday when you just have to walk away.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, here, without coming out and telling me? Are you saying you’re not coming out of this?”

  Ryan, I don’t know. I wish I did. All I can tell you is, I’m fighting, and Gaia fights with me. As to whether this will only end with me dying not even she can say. What I’m saying is, when the time comes—whenever it comes—promise you’ll walk on and get on with your life.

  “You trying to scare me worse?”

  No. Never that. I just want to know you won’t chain yourself forever to my lifeless husk.

  He inhaled a deep breath, let it slide out in a long exhalation between his teeth. “I’ll walk that road when it opens before me,” he said. “Till then, I’m sticking.”

  That’s my Ryan. That’s the Ryan I know. I love you.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  And then it was as if he was the only one left awake in the room, as if the person he’d been speaking to had gone back to sleep.

  “I’m crazy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

  But the fear was gone. He still felt weak, as if from fever, but he no longer felt as if the fear were tearing him apart from the inside.

  He climbed back onto the cot and fell instantly asleep.

  HE CAME AWAKE with a strong hand clamped over his mouth and his own hand gripping its wrist. His eye snapped open, but he saw nothing immediately.

  He recognized the smell of Jak Lauren. The youth was bathing daily—all it took, it turned out, was for Elizabeth Blackwood to ask him please to do so. But Ryan had been with him long enough to know how he smelled clean or dirty.

  The soap had a faint scent of lilac.

  “Ryan, me,” Jak said.

  He nodded, and the pressure came off his mouth.

  He let go of the slim but steel-muscled wrist. “Got a
risky way of waking a body,” he said.

  “Why stood aside, out of sight. No time now. People outside. Sneaking up on house!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In a heartbeat Ryan was up off the cot and moving toward the window.

  “Keep low,” Jak warned in a hiss.

  Ryan waved a hand at him. “Yeah.”

  He flattened himself against the wall. There was a risk if he looked that somebody below would see him. As dim as it was, the lantern’s light was enough to make it hard for him to see movement in the darkness—and enough to silhouette him for a watcher outside. But he knew that turning the light off was worse. People noticed changes, like lights going out. Especially in a house they were night creeping.

  But his luck was in. He saw seven or eight figures, men or youths from the way they moved, stealing across the darkened lawn from the black wall of the trees to the front porch. Dark hoods hid each head. They carried a variety of cudgels—stout sticks, planks of wood, lengths of lead pipe. Ryan saw knives and single-shot blasters tucked into belts.

  They weren’t coming to deliver fresh eggs.

  None looked up. That wasn’t any huge windfall. People usually didn’t. As long as Ryan didn’t do anything to catch their eye, like move fast or turn a lamp up or down, only bad luck would betray him.

  “Right. Why didn’t you raise the alarm, Jak?”

  The teen gave him a look of half-uncomprehending disgust. By his very nature Jak was himself a supreme night hunter. His answer to attack by stealth was counterattack by stealth.

  May have a point, Ryan thought. A counterambush—falling by surprise on attackers who believed themselves secure in the advantage of surprise—appealed to Ryan’s own dirty-fighting instincts.

  “Go rouse the baron and our friends,” he said, “quiet-like. Then do what you gotta do.” Trying to tell Jak how to ambush the ambushers was like telling him how to breathe.

  “You?” Jak asked.

  “I’m going to drop in and give these boys a nice warm Southern welcome. Move.”

  But the teen hesitated, a pale ghost in the dimness. “Krysty.”

  Ryan pressed his lips together, looking at his lover lying faultless and entirely vulnerable beneath the thin cotton sheet.

  “I don’t want to fight in here,” he said. “Best way to keep her safe’s stop them well shy. Right.”

  He looked around. Jak had already vanished. Ryan nodded.

  The window stood open as far as it would go for air. It was covered by a metal-mesh screen. Ryan drew his panga, which he kept honed close-shave sharp. With decisive yet quiet motions he slashed three cuts in the screen and folded it down.

  He poked his head out. Though he seethed with rage and desire to throw himself on the foe, he forced himself to move deliberately. A quick check showed him the portico covering the front entrance to the mansion was too far away to jump to. But there were other windows spaced along the third floor. Windows with sills.

  That was enough, because it had to be. He grabbed the sill and stuck one leg out. Turning to face into the bedroom, he brought the other leg out, so his bare feet gripped the sill as he crouched. He cast a last longing look at Krysty, then he turned and sprang at the next sill.

  He made it effortlessly. He looked around, more out than down. No one had noticed him.

  Quickly as he dared Ryan shuffled sideways to the end of the sill nearer the portico. Two more windows. Then he’d be directly over the peaked roof of the porch. He could lower himself to the next sill, and from there quietly to the top of the portico.

  He gathered himself, then jumped sideways.

  Maybe he misjudged distances in the darkness and with the adrenaline yelling in his veins and hammering at his heart. Maybe the sill was off true, cambered just a smidge outward. Or maybe there was some kind of loose rubble on it, flaked-off paint perhaps, that slid.

  The balls of Ryan’s feet hit the weathered wood and slipped right off. He fell toward the ground two dozen feet below.

  JAK SLIPPED down the stairs to the second floor. He’d checked the baron’s room. It was empty. Blackwell had either gotten the word already and acted, or he was just elsewhere. Either way, Jak reckoned he’d done the first part of the job Ryan gave him. He was always going to warn his companions in preference to searching a big creepy old house for an absent baron.

  He tapped the door of the room he shared with Doc. It was an arrangement that worked surprisingly well. They didn’t have a lick in common. For his own reasons each preferred to keep quiet during downtime. So when they bunked together neither troubled the other with idle chitchat.

  “Doc,” he said quietly in a voice he knew would carry less far than a whisper. “Jak.”

  “Yes, yes—”

  “Stay ready. Coldhearts come. Don’t let reach Krysty!”

  “You may depend on me, young man, for—”

  The albino teen had moved on, as silent as a ghost in a hallway lit only by starlight trickling through open windows at either end. Doc might not make small talk, but let him get going on one of his speeches and he ran on like a babbling brook.

  Next came the door to J.B. and Mildred’s room. Jak turned the knob and cracked the door. The pair came instantly awake at the slight sound.

  “Trouble,” Jak said. “Coldhearts night creep. Ryan says keep quiet and bushwhack.”

  “And not let them get to Krysty!” J.B. added as Mildred swung off the bed. “Got it.”

  Jak nodded and shut the door. He descended the next stairs to the ground floor.

  Voices came from the front stoop. Grinning like a wolf in the darkness, Jak found the deepest-shadowed corner of the dining hall and slipped into it to await his prey.

  This was the night. And this was his house.

  FRANTICALLY, RYAN grabbed at the sill. His right fingertips slammed the edge and bounced off. His left hooked the very end of the small wooden ledge. Elbow and shoulder wrenched as they took the full force of his falling weight. At the impact his half-healed ribs shot pain like a knife into his lungs.

  At once his grip began to slip. He writhed frenziedly, then got his right hand up. Relief flooded him. He was back in the game. The ribs wouldn’t distract him. That was only pain.

  He looked down. The hooded men were hunched over, straining forward. From the angle of their heads they were all staring fixedly at the front door of the big house, as if their eyes were attached to it by fishhooks on strings.

  Ryan slid his hands to the right, pulling himself to the far sill’s end. He swung his legs left then right, three times.

  The third time he launched himself with all the strength in his shoulders and arms. He flew sideways through the air. His right hand reached and it caught the final sill, followed an instant later by his left.

  Shit, Ryan thought, as he dangled and firmed his grip, this is the easy way to do it.

  He glanced down. The peaked porch roof waited right below him. He thought about a drop straight down and decided against it. It wasn’t far, but the downward-angled sides of the roof meant too much danger of slipping or twisting an ankle. Plus he doubted he could land silently.

  He looked closer. The second-story sill wasn’t far below his bare toes. He calculated, swung inward a bit, dropped.

  His landing was sure. It was also quiet. As fluid as a mountain lion down a boulder outcrop, Ryan flowed down to hang from the ledge and drop with only the faintest of thumps to the portico roof.

  He got a good foothold on either side of the peak. Then drawing his panga in his right hand and his SIG-Sauer P-226 handblaster in his left, he walked bent-over to the end of the roof.

  Some of the coldhearts were on the porch now, muttering softly. Four others stood on the grass just short of the steps up.

  Ryan leaped toward his prey.

  “GET YOUR PANTS ON, John,” Mildred said. “Having your naughty bits dangling in the breeze will only distract you.”

  “Right,” the Armorer said. He had started to join her where s
he stood with her back to the door, and the door opened to a hairline, clad only in boots, shotgun, eyeglasses and fedora. He turned back to the bed, scooped up his pants and sat to pull them on.

  Mildred had taken her own advice, after a fashion. She had pulled on a thigh-length T-shirt to give at least the psychological sense of protection to her own tender parts. She hadn’t bothered pulling on underpants. There were advantages to internal plumbing.

  She had her .38 ZKR 551 target pistol held barrel-up in her right hand.

  “Somebody’s coming,” she said. She heard J.B. trying to stand. “No, I got it. Back me.”

  Footsteps, she thought. Coming up the stairs.

  EVEN BEFORE HIS toes touched the grass of the front lawn Ryan’s panga chunked into the hooded back of the head of a lean man in a checked flannel shirt hanging untucked over badly holed blue jeans. The impact shivered up his arm. His feet struck. He flexed his legs deeply, allowing his own weight and momentum to yank the blade free.

  The intruder melted and his knees struck ground. Then he turned into a lumpy puddle.

  Ryan was already rising, swinging his left hand. He had aimed his leap to land behind and roughly between the man whose skull he had split and the shorter man on his left, who had a big gut and a bum left leg. The second was turning, holding a wooden ball bat but not swinging it, as though he wasn’t fully aware of the fate that had befallen his companion.

  Ryan rapped the magazine end plate at the bottom of the SIG’s grip hard against the man’s right temple. As a rule he didn’t care for hitting people with blasters. Most made crappy clubs, and if you banged them around too much, clubs could be all they ended up being good for. Right now he couldn’t be choosy.

  The second man pitched forward, dropping the bat to clutch at his face but not saying anything, stunned.

  Ryan’s plan was to tie up as many of the sneak attackers as he could here, outside the house. Whether they were chilled, incapacitated, run off, or just occupied beating and stomping him to a helpless pulp on the ground, they wouldn’t be threatening Krysty. He couldn’t say, now or ever, that he didn’t care about being chilled. Survivor was core to who and what he was. But this time he could say surviving wasn’t his number-one priority.