Iron Rage

by James Axler

  The New Vick sailor choked out a scream and fell to the deck, gagging on his own blood. He managed to take Ryan down with him, but was unable to keep any kind of hold on him. Ryan fell on his back across the man he’d double kicked, who was starting to push himself up, moaning from what was most likely a deck-smashed face. The man went down again with a fresh crack of face bone on wood.

  Putting his left hand, still clutching the panga, on the prone man’s neck to keep him down and help himself up, Ryan scrambled up to one knee. He raised the big blade, then slammed it into the cannon loader’s neck. Blood gushed from the crewman’s mouth and spurted from the wound. His neck broke with an audible crack.

  The other patrol boat’s engine was chugging rhythmically now. “Yarville, what’s going on?” a voice bellowed. “Sandoz, Whateley—somebody answer me!”

  Ryan saw the craft’s prow swinging toward his boat. The lantern’s beam swept a yellow path across the placid waters of the great river.

  There was enough side-scatter light for Ryan to get both hands to brace his handblaster in a classic kneeling Weaver position. He got a hurried picture of the lantern’s glow, then fired two shots. The light went out with a clatter and tinkle and a confused curse from the man who was holding it. It was rapidly drowned out by confused and panicky shouting as a spreading blue-and-yellow glare showed that oil spilled from the shattered reservoir had taken light.

  Ryan caught a glimpse of somebody emptying a bucket of something other than water into the fire-pool. It made sense that a war craft would carry sand to use to fight a fire, especially when its main weapon or weapons were flame-belching monstrosities.

  That didn’t bother him. He had a new plan in mind. In a fight his mind was always working at high speed, even while his well-trained and experienced body did most of the work of minute-to-minute keeping him alive. He was up on his feet at once, holstering his 9 mm blaster, and darting a few steps toward the bow.

  He yanked the wet mop out of the wide, stubby cannon barrel and chucked it over the rail. He grabbed up a bag of black powder from the little stack to the starboard of the cannon. It was surprisingly small—they had to have access to good powder mills in New Vick. A baron who had the means and mind to create a powerful war machine by the standards of the day would make sure he or she had the best supply of powerful and reliable black powder possible.

  He cut the bag with his panga and dumped it willy-nilly into the bore. Even though it was several inches across, it looked almost small by comparison to the thickness of the tube surrounding it. Not more than three-quarters of the dark grains went down the black hole, but neatness didn’t count, nor did full power.

  It wasn’t his nuking boat. If he could use it to make his own getaway, fine. If not, he didn’t intend to leave it in a condition to be used by anybody else.

  He stuffed the empty hemp bag into the cannon to serve as wadding. Then he sheathed the panga, ran to the other side of the cannon and picked up a ball, which he could tell by the heft was about four pounds. He stuffed it into the barrel, where it fit just easily enough to make a bit of rattling sound on the way down, until the powder bag wadded enough to halt it.

  Again, perfection was not an issue here. It so seldom was when the shit and lead began to fly. But while Ryan didn’t load and fire black powder cannon on a regular basis, he’d seen the drill often enough to know the salient points. And though optimum power didn’t play into what he was fixing to do, the ramrod lay in carved-wood brackets on the same side of the weapon he was on, and Ryan grabbed it.

  As he straightened, a blaster banged from the other patrol boat, a black powder longblaster from the sound. The ball didn’t come close enough to hear, nor did it strike anything that made enough of a noise to be perceptible.

  He ignored it. If they shot more small arms at him, they’d likely miss, too. If not—well, then he’d either deal with it, or he wouldn’t be worrying about it anymore.

  As he jammed the ball the rest of the way down the smoothbore, and tamped it once hard against the powder charge for good measure, he heard the steam engine of the boat he was on begin to chug. The boat slowly began to gather way up the river.

  Ace on the line, he thought. They just keep making my job here easier.

  Yellow flame flared from inside the cabin, right next to the spoked steering wheel. That shot zipped by the right side of his head.

  “Fireblast!” he said, ducking. The best and closest available cover was the squat cannon itself. Unless the crew of this boat were more stupe and less trained than seemed likely, they would not have primed the initiator with powder, nor stuck a cap on the nipple before loading the cannon. But it still did not give him the best feeling to crouch in front of the bore of a loaded cannon.

  Another shot blazed from inside the cabin. Time was blood, and he was bleeding it out triple fast. He fired two quick shots toward where the flashes had come from. Both came from the same spot, so far as he could tell. He might have lowered his aim and punched the slugs through the thin wood of the wheelhouse, but he had no idea how the shooter’s body was positioned, nor what ironmongery lay between the two of them. So if he couldn’t chill the bastard, at least he’d make him keep his head down.

  And in no way did Ryan intend to make himself an easy target. He moved from in front of the bow cannon in a forward roll, jettisoning the SIG’s spent magazine as he did. He was likely going to lose that mag, and they were hard to replace, but it was small potatoes compared to catching the last train west.

  Another shot rang out. This one went high. Ryan got back up to one knee, pulled a fresh magazine out of a belt pouch, jammed it up the waiting well and clicked the lever that let the locked-back steel slide slam home with a satisfying sound.

  He lunged forward, catching himself on the jamb of the open portside hatch with his left hand, swinging around and leading with his blasterhand thrust into the cabin. He started firing as soon as he saw his target.

  The muzzle-flashes illuminated a wide-eyed look of surprise in a blond-bearded face.

  Terminal surprise. The man fell down away from Ryan, with the boneless rag doll flail of the well and truly chilled. His handblaster clattered to the deck right below the wheel.

  Holstering his SIG, Ryan retrieved the blaster, a battered, remade Colt Navy revolver. That meant either two or three shots left, depending on whether the person who loaded it followed the common practice of leaving the hammer down on an empty cylinder for safety. He’d count on two and nuke it.

  He stuffed the Colt down the front of his pants. That was definitely contrary to habit, and gave him a crawly feeling, even though the hammer was down. Since this was a single-action handblaster with a used chamber beneath it, it could only go off and blast his dick off if he snagged the hammer spur on his own clothes, and probably even then only if he had his finger on the trigger like a triple-stupe bastard. All the same it didn’t feel good, even though he’d also slanted the long barrel away from his groin. Mostly to make it fit.

  He grabbed the wheel and hauled on it. The vessel, moving slowly forward up the Sippi, began to turn to port. As it did, it crossed the bow of the other vessel, now about fifty feet away. That brought more exclamations. They might have been intending to fire on the boat he was on once their bow cannon came to bear, sister vessel or not. But even though it wasn’t exactly moving fast, nobody was prepared for it to move at all.

  Ryan guessed they were now frantically trying to reverse their turn, which was not a quick process, given the low relative speeds and the mass of their boat—and the water rolling against its hull. He stuck it out, only crouching when more longblasters boomed from the other craft. He kept the wheel cranked as his boat turned with gut-clenching deliberation.

  He needed to do this to complete his plan to divert the enemy from pursuing Krysty and the rest. Granted, he had already accomplished that, to a degree. But he wanted to give them the maximum time to get back to Wolf Creek. He doubted the New Vick blasterboats could even find it
in the dark.

  That meant he needed to stay and steer. The bow cannon had limited traverse, and as strong and adrenaline-hyped as he was, Ryan had no intention of trying to wrestle the fat bastard around on his own, so he had to aim the cannon by aiming the boat.

  By the time he had the bow pointed at the other vessel he was almost due north of them, or so he reckoned. They were meanwhile still turning to their own starboard to line up their cannon again.

  Letting the wheel go, he moved quickly back to the cannon. As expected, the primer flask and cap box were stored in a little open-topped wooden box, fastened to the deck just aft of the point at which the heavy-hawser arrestors would stop the big weapon from being blasted back through the front of the cabin by its recoil. He grabbed up both. Thumbing the cap off the flash, he slopped powder into the waiting primer pan. He covered it with the hinged, curved frizzen. Then he pulled back the hammer of the initiator and, standing as far to the side as he could just in case, stuck a cap on the steel nipple.

  He picked up the lanyard. It was designed to allow him to step even farther to one side, which he did. Glancing up to make sure the other vessel was in front of his cannon, he turned his face away, stuck his left finger in his left ear, and hauled away on the lanyard.

  The New Vick cannon-founders were belt-and-suspenders men. Cap-and-ball small arms didn’t use a separate primer charge; the cap itself sent a spike of hot flame stabbing down into the propellant powder to set things moving. A lot of cannon did, too. But the smiths who made this piece wanted to make sure it went off when its crew wanted it to. So it used the cap to light a primer charge, to enhance the chances of getting the full charge in the barrel to go off.

  It worked. The effect was as satisfying as Ryan could have hoped for: a world-shaking boom, a gush of flame the size of a derelict economy car, and the squatty little toad of a cannon jumping backward until its ropes caught it and brought it slamming to a halt in its track.

  The shot struck the enemy wheelhouse between the midpoint and its starboard side. Planks splintered and chunks cartwheeled away into the night. Somebody screamed, maybe several somebodies. And even better, white steam suddenly enveloped the rear of the open-sided cabin and billowed up both sides of the roof, evoking a much shriller scream in a new voice. Briefly.

  The round shot had either broken a fitting on the boiler, or cracked open the main tank itself. That was a better result than Ryan had even dared to hope for.

  His triumph was short-lived. Inertia carried the prow of the oncoming boat around the last few degrees to point right at Ryan.

  The fireball seemed to swallow up the world. He never even heard the sound of the actual cannon going off. Dazzled, he was aware of something long and dark and heavy—a chunk of something blasted off the rail—spinning toward his face.

  It struck him full on, breaking his nose. Worse than the pain was the way the impact forced his head back almost hard enough to snap his neck. Not quite, though he felt the abused bones and cartilage creak.

  It dropped him flat on his face on the deck. Stunned, his stomach surging with nausea, and completely unable to control his own body or even one of his limbs, Ryan was as helpless as a newborn babe—and barely aware enough to stay cognizant of the fact.

  He lay there for what seemed like an eternity. He had no sense of time passing. It just felt long. Somehow.

  The ache that filled his face and then his whole skull from front to rear told him he was starting to come back to himself from consciousness’s Limbo.

  And then rough hands were clamping on his still-jellylike arms, hauling him to his feet. Manacles closed on his wrists. He saw faces peering at him by lantern light at close range, some mottled and fisted with lethal rage, others somehow almost admiring.

  And then the world got away from him, and the blackness took him.

  Chapter Ten

  With a sense as if her stomach was plummeting down a vast chasm and leaving the rest of her behind, Krysty watched Ryan fly through the air.

  Helpless, and hating the fact, she held her breath as he struck the dark hull. A moment later had hauled himself up and over the rail.

  She watched just long enough to see him explode into action, fast and lethal and thoroughly controlled. Then she turned her attention back to the power boat and the motley caravan of rafts and dinghy it towed. She had her own duties to perform. Failure to do so meant Ryan was sacrificing his—well, whatever this stunt would cost him—in vain.

  “Cease-fire!” she yelled back to the trailing craft, which were now being drawn into a looping path away from the bigger vessel behind the launch. Abner was crowding his luck, pouring more power to the motor than was likely safe. But he knew his job the way Ryan knew his. He’d made that much clear. She trusted him because she had to.

  “You might hit Ryan!”

  Voices called back questions. One of them was Ricky’s.

  “Shut it down!” she snapped. “No more noise!”

  She turned to Abner. “Once we’re headed back south, cut back the power to keep down the noise. We won’t outrun them.”

  “On it,” he said.

  Krysty looked back toward the enemy boats. The second one, off to the right, cast its wan spotlight beam onto the rafts of the little flotilla as they curved toward the eastern bank. She could see only the vaguest hints of light brush the gear and human bodies riding on them. She was concerned that the New Vick crew might open fire anyway, but for whatever reason they did not. They probably didn’t want to risk a rocket from higher up the chain of command for wasting powder and shot on phantoms.

  A flash snapped her gaze toward the first boat, the one Ryan was now aboard. A second followed almost at once. And then a third.

  The sound of the first gunshot reached the launch, now nearing the shore and turning full north. Krysty relaxed. She was nowhere near the blaster expert Ryan and J.B. were. Nor even Mildred. But she did recognize the difference between the noise a smokeless blaster made and what a black powder one did.

  And that meant it was almost surely Ryan doing the blasting.

  The blasterfire continued at uneven intervals. Krysty sat tense, knuckles bloodless from her hands gripping the gunwales. She was unlikely to learn the outcome for sure until much later. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away, even as Abner, who had as instructed backed off the throttle, proceeded north almost within touching distance of the weeds growing by the shore, at about the same pace they had traveled south.

  The spotlight lantern, which no longer reached even as far as the dinghy following the launch and rafts last in line, winked out entirely. She saw fire flare aboard the second patrol boat, the one off to the right. Something was burning there, although the flames quickly diminished. Then more flashes from the first boat.

  Then nothing.

  Krysty waited, barely daring to breathe. It can’t be over! she thought.

  She refused to think further down that line. She always held that moral courage was more valuable by far than physical courage. To her surprise, Ryan seemed to agree—as, more surprisingly still, did J.B. Bravery was commonplace in Deathlands—and cowardice too, granted. In their own little group everybody was brave. But their real strength, so Krysty always thought, was the moral courage that kept them together, fighting for one another. And always fighting on, regardless of the odds.

  But she didn’t want to think what might have happened, that nothing more seemed to be.

  And then two gigantic flashes went off, with barely the space of a heartbeat between. The glaze of the second overlapped the first’s afterimage: they were that close to one another, or seemed to be at this distance.

  The bass-drum booms of cannon going off, once, twice, reached her ears. And then a silence returned that seemed to stretch into eternity.

  “He’s gone!” Myron suddenly screamed. He cackled with a sort of insane, triumphant exultation. “Now you know what it’s like to see your loved one die before your eyes! Now you know what my pain is like!”


  She shifted her focus back inside the launch. She saw Abner’s lips drawn back from his teeth, heard his dismayed and expectant hiss of indrawn breath. He clearly expected the redhead to unleash her full, righteous fury on the acting captain.

  So, it seemed, did Myron Conoyer. No sooner had the words left his mouth than his eyes went wide, as if he had heard someone else say them, and his mouth dropped open in horrified anticipation.

  But Krysty did not feel anger. Far less did she feel empty or numb. Instead a strange sense of peace filled her, a serene certainty that warmed her like fine brandy.

  “He’s not gone,” she said calmly. “He said he would come back to me, and Ryan’s a man who keeps his word.”

  She glanced back south. The only thing she could see above the blackness of the river was the glow of a now fully awakened New Vickville fleet.

  “You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll learn what so many people in the past have learned. Never count Ryan Cawdor dead until you’ve seen his chill.”

  * * *

  THE BLACK CLOTH bag that had covered Ryan’s head since shortly after he had been seized aboard the patrol boat was whipped away. The shine of lanterns in the stateroom was almost blinding. He blinked his eye, trying to get it focused after having nothing but blackness to look at for hours of sitting in a chair. He was somewhere that smelled of wood, water, turpentine oil lamps burning and lavender.

  He had come back into full possession of his faculties and strength quickly after he was hit in the face by what he could only surmise was a hunk knocked off the blasterboat’s rail by the cannonball. But not quickly enough. He was already manacled and surrounded by angry men with black powder blasters aimed at his belly and face. He was somewhat amused to see one or two sailors with cutlasses.

  Somebody spit in his face. He grinned. Voices snarled at one another that they should chill him then and there: shoot him, spit him, smash his head in with a mallet. Or just load his pants with cannonballs and chuck him over the side.