by James Axler
"And Pyra Quadde?" Lori asked. "What are done about her?"
Nobody answered the blond girl. Finally Ryan spoke.
"Chances are we'll never see her again. She'd lost her ship and half her crew. Depends on her power base back at the ville." He looked at Captain Deacon.
"Can't say. If I can persuade the remnants of her men that her authority is done, then she will find it hard to win back her place."
"Figure trouble with her seamen?" J.B. asked.
The sailor shook his head. "No. Pyra Quadde ruled with her fists and with fear. As long as she's not around, then the fear's gone as well. Course, it could return the moment she appears, hull up, over the horizon."
"Dawn's not far off," Doc said.
For several long seconds, nobody spoke. Ryan was struggling to make a decision. Over the past few months he'd almost begun to think of himself and his companions as being on a kind of a mission: they traveled through the Deathlands encountering wickedness, cleansed the land like a driving wind and then moved on.
They'd flirted with death and disaster with Pyra Quadde, and now they seemed to have broken her power. But if they went back to Claggartville with Deacon and the Phoenix, they might find a civil war in the township.
The harsh days at sea had taken their toll, even on Ryan Cawdor's great strength, and he felt tired.
"We'll go in with a whaleboat," he said, finally breaking the silence.
Captain Deacon nodded. "And go on thine own way, Outlander Cawdor?"
Ryan shook his head. "No."
"No?" Jak and Lori said in perfect unison.
"No," Ryan repeated. "We've got tracking skills and we outblast them. We row in now and try to pick up their trail. Can't be difficult. They'll be pressed to head for the ville. We should easily overtake them and chill them."
"Murder them!" the sea captain exclaimed.
"Try to shoot them from behind or from cover. Yeah," Ryan replied. "You'd want me to go and stand in front of them and challenge them to draw fastest? Like the old westie vids? Come on." He shook his head in disgust.
"But ye... Oh, I suppose that it's only justice for her. But ye can catch her?"
"Yeah. They've got no more than an hour or so's start. Two to their boat. We can close fast with seven of us at the oars."
"Six," Donfil said quietly.
"How's that?"
The Apache smiled gently at Krysty. "Ryan knows that... if we survived... I wanted to say farewell to you all. And remain."
"And do what?" Jak asked.
Captain Deacon answered for the shaman. "The whole ville was abuzz with talk of Outlander Ten-from-Ten. I hear from Pyra Quadde's crew that the Indian acquitted himself well and bravely against the monsters of the deep."
"I shall sail back with the Phoenix. When the Salvationis sold at public auction — unless the woman betters you, Ryan — then I may ship on her as first harpooneer. Or with Captain Deacon here." He smiled again, eyes glinting behind the polished lenses of his glasses. "It will all depend on who offers me the best lay of the profits."
"It will be me, I'll promise thee, my lofty friend," Deacon said, patting him on the shoulder. "And thou wilt look right handsome in one of my red sweaters, I'll warrant."
* * *
The last goodbyes and handclasps were, of necessity, very brief. Every minute that passed put Pyra Quadde and her taciturn first mate another hundred paces away from them.
Lori smiled at Donfil and turned her face to accept a kiss on the cheek.
Jak shook his hand. "Try and grow a little, Eyes of Wolf," the Apache said with a smile.
"Try and shrink bit," the boy retorted.
J.B. shook hands firmly. "Always watch your back," he advised. Donfil nodded.
Doc Tanner was next. Half bowing, he placed one hand over his heart. "I swear that I shall greatly miss your friendship and your wisdom. I truly will." He sniffed, wiping at his nose with his kerchief. "I fear that some specks of this damned mist have got into my eyes," he muttered, on the brink of weeping. Donfil stooped and clutched the old man to his chest, arms enfolding him.
"I have enjoyed being with you, Dr. Tanner," he said, "And I shall miss you. Miss you very much, I think."
"Gaia go with you, Donfil," Krysty said, kissing him on both cheeks.
"And Ysun ride always at your shoulder, Fire Hair Woman," he replied.
She held out the small black polished stone. "I shall keep this Apache tear with me forever, Donfil, and it will hold your memory for me."
Ryan was last. The whaleboat rocked gently below him, provisioned and watered by Captain Deacon's men. The whaling irons were still in their place, laid on the starboard side, close to the harpooneer's position in the bow.
"I do not think we shall ever meet again, Ryan Cawdor," Donfil said, taking off his reflecting shades, nodding solemnly. "This is a good day to part, I think. Good luck and may all your gods go with you."
"We might see you again in Claggartville if we don't hunt down the bitch queen before then."
"No. No, Ryan. I do not see that happening. I see you leaving and going into a darkness. But I do not see us meeting again."
"Fair enough, Donfil. Then, goodbye."
After a brief, firm handshake Ryan straddled the rail of the Salvation.
Captain Deacon lifted his hand to the peak of his cap in a salute, which Ryan returned, then swung easily down the rope, taking his place in the narrow bow of the whaleboat. J.B. was at the tiller, the other four manning the long oars.
"Sure ye know your course?" Deacon called. "Dawn'll be on the way in an hour. Keep it to your starboard hand and ye cannot go wrong."
Raggedly, they began to row, the rudder hard over to carry them away from the two ships, still tethered together. The red-sweatered crew of the Phoenixlined the side and gave them three hearty cheers to speed them on their way.
The fog was patchy, lying low on the dull gray surface of the Lantic. Ryan, in the bow, stated behind them, seeing the bulk of the Phoenixvanish, but the top spars of both vessels were still visible. There was clearly a light breeze springing up, and a bright moon peeked through the mist.
When they were a good two hundred yards off, Ryan took one last glance backward, over his friends' heads, and saw the very top of the Salvation'smainmast, with the ensign fluttering in the pallid silver glow. As it folded on itself, he saw the crimson shape against the darkness. Once more he was struck by how much like a bloody skull was Pyra Quadde's chosen flag.
"In and out and in and out. Try and keep it together, Doc," the Armorer moaned. "You'll have us crabbing around in circles."
The next time that Ryan looked astern, both ships had totally disappeared in the shifting murk. He turned and looked only ahead, watching for the first sign of the distant shore.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It wasn't as easy as Ryan had thought. The tide was turning, ebbing away from the invisible coast, bringing with it a powerful offshore current. It tugged at the whaleboat with its inexperienced crew, making forward progress difficult. The mist was dissipating, but hanging in pockets here and there. Ryan could sometimes see clearly ahead for close to a quarter of a mile. Then, without warning, the fog descended once more and he could hardly make out the hunched figure of J.B., gripping the carved tiller.
"Are we still moving forward?" Krysty called, panting as she rowed on the port side of the narrow dory.
"Yeah. Bend your backs, my hearties, and pull and pull," Ryan said, parodying the cries of the mates of the Salvation.
"Shut fuck up and come row yourself," Jak gasped.
"Least it'll be even harder for Pyra Quadde and Cyrus Ogg," Ryan replied. "Just two of them to row and no hand to steer. I reckon we could be closing in real fast on them."
"Dawn's coming," J.B. called, keeping his voice pitched low. "Times of poor seeing they could come up on us unseen. Like we did on the Phoenix. Better if Krysty takes lookout, Jak steers and watches from back. They got the best eyes of anyone here."
Doc was too exhausted to reproach her for the bad language.
"Don't shout out like that!" Krysty admonished the angry girl. "If that woman's near ahead of us you'll warn her we're closing in. Sound carries a long way over water. Uncle Tyas McCann taught me that, back at the ville of Harmony. So everyone try to keep real quiet."
* * *
Dawn came, but the last, lingering tendrils of fog didn't clear. Visibility still varied between ten and one hundred feet. The sea remained completely calm. Once Krysty asked everyone to stop rowing, which they were happy to do, while she listened intently.
"Yeah. I can hear waves on rocks. Or shingle, mebbe. Difficult to tell. I guess it's within a quarter mile or so."
"Anything else?" Ryan asked. "Nothing like rowing or voices?"
Krysty shook her head. "Sorry, lover. Nothing at all."
"There's something dragging at oar," Jak said from the seat in the stern. "Saw it on Doc's oar. Like thick rope."
"I can feel it, my young colleague," the old-timer replied, "pulling at the stroke. Could be weed of some sort, I imagine."
"It's stopping my moving the rower," Lori protested.
They could all feel it now.
Ryan lifted the blade from the sea, peering into the dismal, murky light. Fronds of shining brown cord were draped over the oar. They were about the thickness of a man's thumb, and one end vanished beneath the flat waves. As he looked, there was a distinct tug, and he gripped the oar more tightly.
"Fireblast! It's trying to..."
"Pulling it away from me," Lori said. "Can't hanging on!"
There was a small splash, and the girl's oar was plucked from her hand, sliding out of sight as neatly as a magician's illusion.
"Lift them, quick," Ryan ordered.
The weed had a strength and purpose of its own, coiling its tendrils around the rowers' blades and trying to draw them away. Ryan reached for his panga, dragging his oar in nearer to the boat and slashing at the loops of the weed. They parted easily enough, giving out a stinking ichor, the color and texture of molasses.
The others used their knives to cut free, the severed ends of the weed falling limply into the ocean. Ryan glanced over the side of the boat and saw that they were trapped in a veritable pasture of the sentient plant. If plant it was.
"Gotta get out of here!" he yelled, the possibility of Pyra Quadde's hearing them forgotten in the urgency of the moment.
"It's on rudder," Jak called, drawing one of his throwing knives and hacking furiously at the slowly writhing cords.
As Ryan lowered his oar cautiously into the sea again, one of the pieces of weed looped lazily up, resting across his forearm, stinging him like a thousand tiny, fiery needles. With a shout of pain he wrenched himself free, examining his skin and seeing there were rows of neat little punctures, each one proudly showing its own speck of bright blood.
"Keep away from it." If any of them went into the water, they were dead. The weed was thick and voracious enough to destroy any of them before they could be pulled back into the whaleboat. "Row for our lives!"
For nearly a quarter of an hour it was a touch-and-go battle, one of the hardest that Ryan had ever been involved in. His panga was the best weapon they had for hacking away at the brown fronds, and he shipped his oar, leaving it to the others to carry on with the rowing.
Lori started to cry, slumping in the bottom of the boat, oblivious to the struggle of the others. Jak left the tiller and double-banked an oar with Doc. Steering was no longer important. All they had to do was break clear of the patch of killing weed.
Eventually, having lost another oar, they were in clear water. Doc was doubled up, fighting for breath, finally managing to pant, "At my age to fall victim to an aquatic herbaceous border!"
"I can smell land," Krysty said a few minutes later. "Earth and growing things."
Above the layer of mist they could all hear the lonely cry of swooping gulls, cut off from their food in the invisible ocean.
Doc called out that his oar blade had struck something. "Must be a rock. Must be closer in than we thought." He stopped rowing and leaned over the side of the boat, recoiling with a gasp and shifting to the center of the thwart. His lined face was as pale as a laundered sheet.
"Doc?" Ryan said. "What's wrong? Are we running aground?"
The old man managed a nervous laugh. "Run aground, my dear fellow? I think not. A blessing, that would be. No, I believe... yes, I am certain of it, that we would do well to bend our backs and hasten for the shore yonder."
"Doc," Ryan repeated, fighting for patience. "Just tell us what you saw."
"You recall, shortly after our arrival in this part of old New England, that we had something of a difficulty with a mutated killer whale and great white shark?"
"Yeah. Fireblast! You mean there's..."
The boat shifted uneasily as something grated along its keel. Doc waved his hand in the air as he struggled for expression. "The great-grandfather of all mutie sharks. Upon my soul, but it's so. Fifty feet if it's... I looked straight down into the grinning jaws and that devil's eye, empty and without soul. Oh, let us away, friends."
Nobody needed any further encouragement, bending to the remaining oars, propelling the little boat forward in a series of great rushes, the whirlpools from the blades vanishing swiftly behind them.
Krysty, in the bow, kept careful watch for any sharp-fanged rocks that might suddenly tear the bottom from the whaleboat and dump them all in the treacherous chill water.
"Left, Jak, left," she called, hearing the sucking noise of the sea, tangling around the gray boulders that marked the mixing of land and ocean.
The fog was finally showing a willingness to clear away. Visibility improved, and the sun broke through above their heads in a vapid glow. Ryan twice spotted the great dorsal fins of the mutie carnivores as they skimmed toward the shore. The bodies of the chilled seamen from the Salvationhad obviously attracted several of the whale-sharks, and the noise of the oars in the water had brought them in close to hand.
"I can see it!" Krysty called. "Bit to the right. There's a channel between rocks. Looks like it leads to a beach."
Now they could all see land, the rowers squinting over their shoulders. There were cliffs above a strip of glistening shingle, and on either side of the boat they could make out numerous tiny islands, mostly peaks of rock sticking above the calm sea.
"Recognize it?" Ryan asked J.B.
"No. Once we get ashore I'll use the sextant to get a bearing. Deacon knows this coast and figured we were close to the redoubt. Fortress was what he called it. Got to be same place."
"Take it slow and easy," Krysty warned. "Lots of stuff just below the surface."
The narrowing channel twined between the fragments of the old reef. Ryan remembered now the state of the redoubt, with its sunken corridors and tidal damage from the old nukings — and wondered how easy they'd find it to get back inside and reach the gateway.
The final few yards to the shingle were between jaws of rocks less than a dozen feet across. Beyond them was a last stretch of water where tiny waves tumbled ceaselessly, one upon another, whispering to the smooth pebbles. Under the keel, Ryan could see through clearer water, to the bottom, perhaps twenty feet below. Even as he glanced over the side of the boat he saw the sinuous form of one of the lethal whale-sharks, white-bellied, move past them, teeth bared in its eternal smile.
"Put the oars in," he ordered. "Too narrow. Sea'll carry us in from here."
They floated in, silently, all of them staring up at the lowering cliffs, their shining flanks streaked with bright splashes of emerald moss. The last remnants of the mist still clung to the rock walls, like ghostly webs.
"Let me come in the bow," Ryan said, changing places with Krysty. He held his automatic rifle in his right hand. As he moved, his boots slipped on the long whaling sp
ears that were tucked in near the bow, their hafts ready for the hand of the harpooneer. For a moment his mind flicked back to Donfil, and he thought how he'd miss the tall Apache.
As he'd missed so many good companions over the years.
"Hurry up, boat," Lori said crossly, shuffling on her seat.
Gradually, riding three feet forward and then two back, the boat came in closer. The rocks loomed on both sides of them, seamed with narrow caves and shadowed inlets. But their attention was on the beach, where the keel eventually grounded.
Ryan stood, ready to leap onto the shingle to haul them up higher when the familiar rasping voice froze him in place.
"Not a blink of an eye, cully, or it's fins over for everyone."
Chapter Thirty-Three
"Blasters at your feet. Slow, slow and very slow."
Ryan lowered the Heckler & Koch, putting it on the thwart of the boat, seeing from the corner of his eye that the others were doing the same. Only Jak, in the stern, wasn't moving. The boy's mouth was set in a tight, etched line, and his fingers moved toward the butt of his Magnum.
"Snow-hair's about to meet his Maker," Pyra Quadde cackled. "Does he bleed white as a mutie or red as the roses?"
"Let it alone, Jak," Ryan snapped. "She'll chill you! Put the blaster down."
Reluctantly the boy did as he was told.
Moving like a scout through a trembler mine field, Ryan turned to face the woman, knowing that life and death were now a breath apart for all of them in the whaleboat.
She stood in the bow of the dory. He guessed that she must have heard their approach and chosen the tiny cove to hide. The boat was pulled in so that it could only be seen when one was past it. She wore the long dress, with seaboots beneath it, and the Spanish pistol was held steady in her hand. She was smiling.
Just behind her and a little to the side was Cyrus Ogg, holding his own blaster aimed at the six friends. They were only about twenty feet apart.
"Well, now, here's a thing, isn't it, Mr. Ogg?" Pyra Quadde sneered.
"Indeed, ma'am, here's a thing, indeed. As thou sayest, Captain Quadde, here's a thing indeed," he agreed.
