by James Axler
“Ask them,” the sergeant muttered, jerking a thumb toward a large patch of sand lined with hundreds of low mounds of dark earth.
Shocked at the proximity of a graveyard to the ville, Mildred started to ask why the graves were across the river, but then realized the common sense of the matter. It wasn’t sanitary to bury decomposing corpses inside the wall near the fresh water supply, and if interred too far away, the local animals would only dig up the bodies for food. In the Deathlands, sometimes even the dead needed protection.
As the sergeant and Dunbar stopped before the massive gate, Mildred braked the van to a halt right alongside, the rest of the companions clustering behind. Just in case of trouble, the first thing the locals would encounter would be J.B. and the Atchisson. The ammo drum was only half-full, but the autoblaster could discharge all fifteen of the remaining shotgun cartridges in only a few seconds. Anybody left standing after that thundering maelstrom of hot lead would be easy pickings.
Softly, there came the sound of a gasoline engine from inside the ville, and slowly the imposing barrier rumbled aside to reveal tracks set deep into the bedrock. A dozen sec men were waiting for them, armed with blasters and crossbows.
“At ease, ya gleebs!” the sergeant gruffly commanded. “These outlanders have aced Big Joe and brought back Lord Dunbar alive and well!”
“Son of a bitch, it is Dunbar!” a sec woman gasped, lowering her scattergun. “Three cheers for the outlanders!”
As Dunbar strode into the ville, the guards quickly holstered their weapons and began to wildly cheer. Driving along after the teenager and sergeant, Mildred tried to keep a safe distance from them without falling too far behind. Once before the companions had been hailed as the conquering heroes at a ville, and the next day they were imprisoned in a torture chamber run by an insane eunuch who specialized in skinning people alive.
“We spot any fat bastards holding pliers, and I’m taking him out purely as a precaution,” J.B. said.
“Most wise,” Doc agreed, trying not to scratch under his shirt. The bandages around his chest had been washed daily, but lacking Mildred’s usual collection of ointments and tinctures, the wound was slow to heal and itched like crazy.
Behind the companions, the gasoline engine started again, and the heavy portal cycled back into place. Burly sec men used sledgehammers to drive home massive steel bolts and firmly lock the gate closed.
“If we want out of here fast, that’s going to be a problem,” Krysty murmured over the sputtering engine of the motorcycle.
“More for them than us,” Ryan replied, forcing himself not to glance at the sheet of patched canvas covering the Gatling gun nestled in the sidecar.
It was an ordinary enough ville, the huts, shacks, homes and buildings constructed of anything available, a wild mix of adobe bricks, wooden planks, cinder blocks and occasionally even some aluminum siding. There were very few glass windows, but a lot of wooden shutters, and every roof was covered by sheet metal or plastic sheeting to keep out the acid rain. The entire ville seemed old and worn, but everything was clean, which was a pleasant change from most of the villes the companions visited.
The alarm bell had stopped clanging, and the air was redolent with the aromas of wood smoke, baking bread, uncured leather, boiling laundry, tobacco and horse dung—the smells of civilization. The street itself was smooth bedrock, the dense granite only slightly scuffed from generations of shuffling feet.
Through the gaps between the larger structures, Ryan kept getting glimpses of a squat stone building in the distance. He recognized the structure as a former National Guard Armory and naturally assumed that was the home of the local baron. After skydark, a lot of villes had formed around the fortified buildings as they were designed to keep out rioting mobs and came fully stocked with food, medicine, wags, fuel and most important of all, military blasters. The supplies would be used up by now, but the buildings remained.
Within minutes, word spread through the ville, and soon a jubilant crowd lined the street. Some of the people were only half-dressed, as if rudely woken from sleep. Wearing a bloody apron, a large man was brandishing a hatchet and the dismembered leg of a pig. Resembling a ghost, a small woman was covered with flour, a small child hiding behind her skirts. A wrinklie was smoking a corncob pipe, and a sec man stood with a razor in his hand, half of his face covered with foamy soap. In the sea of happy faces were young and old, healthy and sick, sec men and ville people, but everybody whooped at the sight of Dunbar as if he had risen from the grave, the only person in history to ever hop off the last train west.
“Never before have we been so royally welcomed,” Doc muttered, feeling like a triumphant caesar returning from his victory in Ethiopia.
“Smiles not make ’em friends,” Jak replied, nudging his horse with his knees to keep it moving. The animal didn’t seem to like the noise and attention, and the teen was beginning to agree. He could feel something wrong in the ville; not a trap exactly—it was more like the calm acceptance of an unpleasant fact. Unwanted, but inevitable. Slipping a hand inside his deerskin jacket, the teen loosened his blaster in his shoulder holster.
Moving along the main street, Dunbar, the companions, cargo van, bikes and horses made a nice little parade, with a constant cry of “spring corn” heralding their advance. However, Ryan began to notice a few somber faces among the passing crowd. It was mostly the older people. They didn’t seem angry, but sad, and many of them turned away to avoid looking at Dunbar as the teen strode past.
Situated on a corner was a large tavern, the second-floor balcony lined with gaudy sluts, one hand held demurely over their cleavage, the other steadily waving. But once the parade was past, the women sagged as if aging years in a moment and scuffled back inside to close the doors and bring down the shutters.
“Nice ville, eh, Alberta?” Ryan asked.
“Sure thing, Adam,” Krysty replied calmly, letting him know that she had also picked up on the bad vibes. But it wasn’t necessary. Her hair was slowly moving into tight curls as preparation for battle.
Reaching the center of the ville, Dunbar paused as the crowd parted to reveal a boy just into his teens. He was wearing a uniform very similar to the sec men, but of much better quality and scrupulously clean. The boy wore a blaster on his hip and was surrounded by a cadre of armed sec men, their faces as immobile as the bedrock under the ville. At the sight of them, Ryan and Krysty eased to a stop and turned off their engines. A few seconds later, the van arrived and Mildred did the same.
“Brother!” Dunbar cried, and started to rush forward, when the sec men closed protectively around the boy. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”
“Please keep your distance, sir,” Fenton advised, holding up a restraining hand. “Things have changed since you were taken prisoner.”
“Don’t be a feeb!” Dunbar snarled. “I am the older brother, I will be baron someday! Edgar, don’t you recognize me anymore?”
“Sir?” the sergeant asked, his voice strained.
“Let him pass,” the boy ordered, and the guards reluctantly parted.
Starting to walk forward, Dunbar stopped and looked upon his younger brother anew. He had never heard such command in his voice before, and Eddie was much taller than the teen recalled, more muscular. There were cuts on his face as if Eddie…Edgar was shaving these days, and that wild mane of long hair that not even their mother could get the stubborn boy to trim was now only a military buzz.
“It is good to see you again, brother,” Edgar stated, placing both hands behind his back. “But after living with the bonemen for three years, my guards are naturally a little uneasy about having you rush toward me followed by a group of armed outlanders.”
A low murmur swept through the crowd at that, and the companions forced themselves to not reach for a blaster. Six against fifty were bad odds, even with their new weapons. Besides, something important was happening, but they didn’t know what it was yet or who to support. But there was a definite
feel of blood in the air, the calm before the storm.
“Outlanders? Edgar, these are the people who rescued me and aced Big Joe!” Dunbar snapped, getting a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Brother, where…where is the baron?”
“Our mother died two winters ago from the black cough,” Edgar said in a gentle tone, then the iron returned to his demeanor. “Two winters! You were gone, and the ville needed somebody to be in charge, so I assumed command.”
Still straddling the motorcycle, Ryan didn’t move or make a sound at the pronouncement. But Krysty men tally fought to keep her hair under control. This was why some of the ville people had looked so tense! Two brothers, one throne, it was a classic formula for disaster.
Unfortunately, standing in the open like this, there was very little that Krysty and the others could do at the moment. She and Doc each had a rapid-fire, but tucked into the gun boot of her bike and his horse, the weapons might as well be on the moon for all the good they offered. If the blood hit the fan, everything would depend upon J.B. and the Atchisson.
Sitting behind the wheel of the van, Mildred did some thing with her hands out of sight below the window, and J.B. gently thumbed off the safety of the deadly autoblaster.
“Two winters…?” Dunbar whispered, looking toward the royal castle. “Is she buried outside the wall?”
“Safely burned, like every baron before her. The ashes thrown to the solstice winds.”
“Thank heavens for that,” Dunbar said in relief.
“No, thank me!” Edgar snarled, advancing close to look up at his brother. His voice was thin, but held the iron ring of authority. “It was done on my command. I am the baron here, not you. Make no mistake about that!”
“But I am the elder brother,” Dunbar declared, a hand going to his hip where a blaster should have been holstered. His fingers touched only cloth, and frustration fueled his rage. “I am the elder brother!”
“Is that a challenge for the throne?” Edgar asked softly.
Was it? Suddenly, Dunbar realized what a challenge would mean: it might split the ville apart, create yet another civil war like the one that had claimed his father and left his mother to rule the ville alone. He had always been assigned the role of heir to the throne, but did the teenager even want the authority? That simple question had never been asked before. His mind swirled with conflicting emotions, and Dunbar struggled to find a moment of clarity somewhere between truth and duty.
“There is no challenge. I obey my liege lord in all things,” Dunbar said in the ritual oath of allegiance, kneeling before his brother and bowing his head. “Through fire and blood, I stand on the wall and serve the Rock. All hail Baron Edgar Cranston!”
A palpable silence filled the ville, and even the desert breeze seemed to stand still. Nothing moved, and nobody spoke. Their muscles tightening, the companions braced for combat.
Then the uniformed boy stepped forward to rest a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Rise, Lord Dunbar, chief sec man of Delta ville!” the baron commanded.
Just for a split second, the companions thought a bomb had exploded when the mixed crowd of sec men and ville people roared their approval. The noise was deafening, and several minutes passed before anybody could even hope of being heard.
“Thank you, my lord!” Dunbar replied, standing to give an awkward salute. It was his first.
“Sorry about the demotion back to sergeant,” Baron Cranston said, making a conciliatory gesture. “But my brother is of royal blood.”
“Not a problem, Baron,” Fenton said with a rueful smile. “I kind of guessed that would happen when I saw the young lord alive at the front gate.”
“You were the chief? But you said nothing when I called you sergeant,” Dunbar said accusingly.
“Yeah, hadn’t heard that in years.” The man chuckled, hitching up his gun belt. “Damn near made me drop the brass about everything. But it only seemed proper that the bad news about the baron should come from kin.” He shrugged. “So I lied.”
“Balls on the wall are brass in a blaster,” Dunbar said, quoting his father. “Baron, do I have your permission to make this man a lieutenant and my second in command?” He grinned. “I will need his help. After being gone for so many years, I don’t even know where the sec men hide their secret stash of predark shine anymore.”
That caused a ripple of smiles from the guards, and their postures became more relaxed. In the van, Mildred rested her hands on the steering wheel again, and J.B. subtly moved his thumb.
“It’s under the last bunk on the second floor of the barracks,” Baron Cranston said blandly. “Good stuff. I’ve had some when nobody was around.”
The armed sec men gawked at the frank admission, then broke into nervous laughter.
“Yes, we know, sir. I’ve been watering it for years until you were older,” Fenton added. “Didn’t want to stunt your growth. Some of that stuff would knock the nuts off a tank.”
“As I very well recall,” the baron muttered, touching a scar on his forehead, a souvenir from his first bottle of the ancient shine called brandy. “Very well, Sec Chief Dunbar, your request is granted.”
“Thank you, Baron!”
“Damn, an officer at last,” Fenton said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thank you, my liege.”
“Up a stripe, down a stripe,” a sec woman said from amid the ranks.
“Oh, shut up, Lucille,” Fenton ordered, but not very harshly. The woman grinned in reply, but went still. She would congratulate the man properly later on in their bed.
“I’ll want an untouched bottle of that brandy for our dinner tonight to celebrate the return of my brother,” the baron stated. “But for now, Chief, tell me about these people.” The boy turned to face the companions. “Was there a revolt among the bonemen, or are these sec men from another ville?” The group had the look of coldhearts, or mercies, at the very least, and from the number of blasters on display, they were very good at the work.
Briefly, Dunbar described the events of the previous day. The crowd was delighted at first over the chilling of Big Joe, but their faces grew dark when the new sec chief told about the circumstances of Ryan and the others.
“That’s mutie shit,” a sec man growled. “Petrov and his gang would never deal with slavers.”
“Didn’t say they did,” Ryan corrected. “They jacked our blasters at the waterfall, then left us for Big Joe to sell.”
“You see ’em jack the iron?” someone demanded hotly.
Clearly annoyed, Krysty frowned. “We were unconscious.”
“Then how do you know they did?” a sec woman asked defiantly.
“Big Joe said they did,” Ryan replied calmly. Raised to be a baron, the man knew that a crowd had a mind of its own, and once it started moving, there was no way to stop it short of bloodshed, with the companions smack in the middle. If six versus fifty were bad odds for a fight, then six against a thousand was nuking suicide.
“Only a feeb believes a coldheart,” a woman muttered, and a sec man spat on the ground.
“More likely Petrov stole those blasters from Big Joe, and these folks just want them for themselves!” a gaudy slut added, both hands on her hips. “I’m seeing lots of iron, but who says there’s any brass in it, eh? That’s what these bastards are after. Brass!”
“Don’t give them any, Baron!” a man shouted from the rear of the murmuring crowd.
Knowing the cargo van was jammed full of spare rounds, Dunbar rallied. “I was there and saw Petrov and the others hit Big Joe. They never tried to set me free.”
“Mebbe they didn’t know who you were,” a fisherman offered, scratching under his hat. “It has been years, sir.”
“They knew,” Sec Chief Dunbar stated. “I told them.”
“They coldhearts, that fact,” Jak stated gruffly.
“Well, they never jacked anybody in this ville!” a sec woman declared. “Shitfire, they helped defend Delta when those muties attacked last spring!”
�
�When the healer was sick, Rose delivered our first baby,” a woman added, sounding oddly proud of the fact.
“And that big Thal fellow helped me patch my roof when the acid rains came early,” a wrinklie added, angrily waving a cane. “Won’t take nothing in payment but some dinner!”
“Petrov knifed that outlander who raped the basket-weaver!”
“Their credit is good at my bar!” McGinty shouted, the big barkeep staring with open hatred at the companions.
“Fucking outlander scum!” someone yelled, advancing a step. An angry mob of a dozen more people was close behind. One of them pulled a knife, another raised a hatchet, then a blaster.
Instantly, the companions swung up their weapons and aimed, fingers tight on the triggers, waiting for the first wave to charge. Inside the van, J.B. leveled the Atchisson, and Mildred worked the arming bolt on the Ingram MAC-10.
Quickly, the sec men closed ranks around the baron.
“Fenton!” Baron Cranston yelled, his thin voice cutting through the general chorus of angry growls and cursing.
Drawing his sawed-off blaster, Fenton fired both barrels into the sky. As the double booms echoed across the ville square, the crowd stopped moving, the heated rush neutralized as fast as it had started.
“Sec Chief Dunbar, the next person who threatens these outlanders goes to the wall post!” the baron yelled furiously. “Fifty lashes, man, woman or child!”
“But Baron…” a wrinklie started, lowering his home made zipgun.
“My sec chief gave his word to these people they would have safe passage!” the boy snarled, radiating an adult fury. “And his word is law! My law!”
Lowering their weapons, the crowd shifted uneasily under the stare of the young baron. The companions didn’t speak or move; the sec men did nothing. Then Dunbar reached out a hand, and Fenton slapped the reloaded sawed-off into his waiting palm.
“Go home. We’ll sort this all out tomorrow,” Dunbar commanded gently, opening the breech to check the condition of the 12-gauge cartridges. With a jerk of the wrist, he snapped the blaster shut. “Or do you really want to spend the rest of the night cleaning your own guts off the street?”
