by James Axler
“That’s Simms. He’s part two of the, uh, entertainment,” Esquivel whispered.
“That all it is?” J.B. snapped back.
“I think you know the answer to that, dude,” Esquivel answered. “Like all good entertainments, this can teach you something. And hey, mebbe that’s the real point. After all, why else would a piece of fun be compulsory?”
J.B. looked along the line of the crowd, the front rows of spectators held by a line of sec guards, who stood facing them. There was a general murmur of anticipation. Along the way, J.B. could see Olly. Unlike the others around him, the youth looked pale and drawn, as though he would puke at any moment. He seemed detached from the crowd, somehow on his own.
J.B. kind of knew how he felt.
On the far side of the blacktop, the crowd parted in a wave, moving from the back. As the movement rippled nearer the front, J.B. could see that it was Xander, flanked by Grant. The baron cut an impressive figure, but the sinister aspect that the gaunt, lame man at his side gave to the procession was a portent. Behind them, hands bound behind his back and attached to a chain by a collar around his neck, was a young man of about Olly’s age. He was shorter, with olive skin and slicked back black hair. His torso was exposed and was covered with weals, open wounds and bruises. He’d taken a hell of a battering and he looked only half-conscious as he stumbled after the baron and Grant, the chain held from behind by one of a pair of sec men, the other of whom was using the barrel of his AK-47 to spur the man on.
He had to be Chino.
The babble of the crowd faded to silence as the baron strode purposefully across the ribbon until he was dead center.
“Simms, I want you to see this,” he declaimed in a strident voice, beckoning to the trader and his guard. Simms seemed unwilling to move, but the sec man with him gave him a less than friendly prod with his blaster. Reluctantly, he moved around to face the baron. Behind Xander, Chino had stumbled onto the blacktop, his appearance causing a ripple of discussion from the crowd. The noise died down again as Xander held up both hands, arms aloft.
“People,” he began in a loud, clear, piercing voice. “You know why you are here. This young man has been stupe—triple stupe. We stand together and we prosper, we try to go alone and we fall. That was the principle on which my father founded Duma and it’s the principle on which it has prospered. I ask you, do you want to go back on that?”
There was a roar from each side, as the crowd gave voice. Xander waited until it had died down to continue.
“Chino tried to skim jack off the top of his takings before giving me what is Duma’s due. Duma’s people, not mine. Yours. You are Duma and Duma is you. He skims what should come to the ville and we all suffer. One does it, all do it and we fall apart. So he has to be punished. I don’t do this for myself, I do it for you. As I would do it to any one of you if you try. As it should be done to me if I do.”
J.B. felt like turning away in disgust. Although there was an element to the words that contained some truth, this was swamped beneath the baron’s hypocrisy. At the end of the day, the young man had tried to cheat Xander out of his share—his share for doing nothing—and was being punished for trying to keep hold of his own hard-earned jack. This was the baron’s noble cause.
He caught Esquivel’s eye: his face was impassive, but his eyes read J.B., and the Armorer could read him. They each knew the score.
Chino, still dazed from his injuries, was beginning to realize what was happening. Try as he might, he couldn’t hold back the tears that started to fall as he burbled through split and swollen lips, pleading for his life. Neither could he hold back the stream of urine that trickled in fear down his leg, staining and dampening his combat pants.
“This is what happens to those who try to cheat Duma, who try to go against the whole,” Xander yelled, taking a blaster from inside the rich robe he was wearing. Even at this distance, J.B. could see that it was a Luger—a big, heavy handblaster that carried a 9 mm shell and could do some serious damage at such a short distance. He hoped that Xander would make it quick for the young man, who had now sunk to his knees. Quick, as much for the ashen-faced Olly as for Chino himself.
Xander had no such intention. This was for display, to make a point to the assembled crowd. It was never going to be quick.
Xander beckoned to Grant, who kicked Chino in the back, sending him sprawling to the dusty asphalt. The gaunt healer then grabbed the young man by the chain attached to his collar and hauled him to his feet, holding him at arm’s length, the chain wrapped around his fist, pulled taut.
Xander held the muzzle of the blaster a few feet away from the young man’s face. It had to have filled his fuzzy, tear-filled vision and Chino yelled incoherently.
He’d paid for that the moment he tried to skim the baron.
Xander lowered the muzzle, so that it was at an angle of less than forty-five degrees. Then he fired twice, shifting his aim to the left a few degrees between squeezing the trigger. The two shots sounded almost as one, loud and echoing over the hush of the assembled crowd, matched only by the tortured and agonized screams of their target.
It seemed to the assembled crowd as though Chino’s legs bent back in an unnatural way. The close proximity of the blasterfire and the diffused force of the slugs as they hit the solid bone of his kneecaps pushed his legs back at an angle that looked impossible. A spray of blood, bone and flesh scattered on the asphalt and splashed on both Xander and Grant. Deprived of the hinge mechanism that kept his legs rigid, Chino collapsed onto the asphalt, screaming in a long, endless wail, punctuated by sobs of indrawn breath. His upper body thrashed, his neck still pulled up taut by Grant’s grip. His legs, below the knees, were still—useless sticks pointing at strange angles.
Xander stepped up to the wailing man and two more shots echoed in the still air. One in each shoulder, pinning the man back to the asphalt, rendering his arms useless appendages that flopped on the asphalt surface of the blacktop. Chino stopped wailing, his screams deadened by the shock of the second assault. He lay back on the road, gasping for breath, eyes wide but unseeing. His head was at a painful angle, still constricted by the collar. His life dripped onto the asphalt and even though there was no way that J.B. could see from where he was standing, he was sure that the young man’s eyes had begun to cloud over from shock and blood loss.
The crowd was silent, almost as though it was scared to break the baron’s concentration and the spell he was weaving on the asphalt ribbon. It would have been like interrupting a teacher during a vital lesson. The Armorer looked for Olly in the crowd. The youth was still standing at the front, eyes wide with horror and pity, swaying slightly as he watched his friend slowly buy the farm.
Xander looked up at the crowd gathered on each side of the blacktop, and spoke in a loud, clear voice. “This man went against us all. This is how anyone who dares to cheat the people shall end their life. First the suffering, the punishment. But I am not a cruel and unreasonable man. There shall be a swift relief from such pain.”
With which, the baron stepped up to Chino’s quivering body and put the blaster against his forehead, squeezing the trigger. The explosion sounded around the ville, the young man’s head drilled with a neat hole at the front, the back exploding. Xander stepped back.
“Take him away,” he ordered the sec men who had been standing by, waiting for his word. Grant dropped the chain and stepped away to allow the sec men to drag the body off the ribbon and into the crowd on the far side of the road, who parted with alacrity and then quickly reformed so that the Armorer couldn’t see what happened to the corpse. He looked along the line of the crowd, and could see that Olly was unable to tear his eyes away from the bloodstains on the asphalt.
“Where you going?” Esquivel murmured as J.B. began to edge sideways.
“Something that’s gotta be done,” J.B. replied cryptically.
As the two men made their way to the shocked youth, Esquivel following on J.B.’s heels, Xander turned his a
ttention to the trader Simms, who had been watching the execution, openmouthed, from the side. It was obvious from the man’s hanging jaw and staring eyes that he expected the same thing to happen to him.
“Bring him around,” Xander commanded the sec man guarding the trader. Nudging him with the butt of his AK-47, the sec man prodded the thin, pale trader into life. Simms seemed to jolt from a trance and looked wildly around him as he moved to face the baron. The bracelets on his wrists jangled as he used one hand to push the long, stringy hair from his eyes; eyes that stared bloodshot and scared at the surrounding crowd, focusing finally once more on the blood and brain that stained the ribbon. He was visibly trembling.
In the crowd, J.B. had reached Olly, Esquivel on his heels.
“You okay, kid?” J.B. whispered.
“What do you think?” Olly countered in a husky, barely audible tone. “I’ve just seen—”
“You’ve just seen what happens when you cross Xander, that’s all. He was your friend, I know, but he knew the risks he was taking. It was a gamble and he lost. End of story. Don’t end up like him. Mourn losing him, yeah, but learn. Stay frosty for this and then let it out in private. You’ve got a good future—don’t fuck it up because he was stupe. You need time to think about this, right?”
The Armorer delivered this speech rapidly, in an urgent whisper. He didn’t want anyone around to catch any more than was necessary and he didn’t want Olly to endanger his position in the ville by coming to the attention of Xander when he was like this.
“Dude’s right, kid,” Esquivel agreed. “Later, howl your heart, boy, but don’t let anyone see.”
Olly looked at them both and nodded slowly before turning back to the ribbon, eyes seeing nothing, shutting it out until later.
J.B. felt a nudge at his elbow. Turning, he found Ella-Mae standing there. “Kid okay?” she asked. When he nodded, she added, “He’s a good kid. You ain’t so bad yourself. I’ll be seeing you later.”
She melted into the crowd, leaving J.B. to wonder just exactly what she meant. Meanwhile, Xander had begun to speak and the Armorer turned his attention to the baron.
“You people may be wondering why this man is here. Traders, too. This is just by way of a lesson to you all. See, this man sold me some hardware that turned out to be faulty. It could have taken out some of my own people, blown up my armory. I paid him a good price in good faith. Those of you who trade with me regularly know that I’m fair with you.”
Casting a quick glance around, J.B. could see that this wasn’t quite the way the outside traders and convoy members saw it. But they elected to stay silent in the circumstances.
“And that I let you act as you wish in my ville. But I will not, and cannot, accept anything that endangers my people. I will not chill him, as that is not my right.”
The relief on Simms’s face was palpable, but short-lived as Xander holstered the Luger and held out his hand. Grant shuffled forward and handed him a spiked ball on a short chain. It was like an old-fashioned mace, the kind J.B. had seen in old predark books, but it wasn’t that old. Xander had obviously seen similar illustrations and had this made. The chain was like a shorter set of links from the same mold as the chain around Chino’s neck, with a leather-bound wooden handle at one end. On the far end, a roughly spherical metal ball had been studded with nails, the heads facing out.
Xander began to swing the ball, the momentum growing faster and making the chain fly taut. Simms eyed it, shook his head and tried to take a step back. The barrel of the AK-47 behind him halted his progress. Xander stepped forward and the arc of the ball was broken by the contact it made with Simms’s face, ripping into his cheek and temple. The ball itself was small, so it wouldn’t render him unconscious with its weight; rather, it would allow the nail heads to do the damage, tearing his flesh and excoriating to the bone. A spray of blood spumed from the trader’s cheek as the blow knocked him sideways and down onto one knee. Only fear of what was to follow prevented him from falling to the asphalt, leaving him totally defenseless.
J.B. thought it odd that the trader’s convoy team didn’t try to save him. The sight of the sec men moving among the crowd, immediately recognizable in their uniforms and matching blasters, reminded him that the sec would crush any response immediately. Xander had said the trader wouldn’t be chilled. Why should they risk their own chilling when they knew he would live?
On the ribbon, the baron waited until Simms had recovered from the blow, shaking his head to clear his senses. As he tried to rise, the mace arced through the air once more, catching him on the upswing, throwing him in the opposite direction and splitting the other side of his face.
Simms was now concussed, but still managed to drag himself to his feet, swaying. The concussion got to him and he vomited on the asphalt, the spasms in his stomach forcing him to double over once more. As he did so, coughing, Xander swung the mace again, and the nails ripped the man’s shirt, raising great bloody weals on his back. He fell sideways and once again the baron swung the mace, this time slashing the nails into his side. Simms was coughing, his long hair covered in blood and vomit, too choked to scream.
Xander stepped back calmly, handing the mace to Grant.
“You tried to take from me, and now I will take something that is precious to you,” Xander intoned, taking a knife from Grant. J.B. could see that the blade had been carefully polished and honed. It looked like Toledo steel, and was attached to an ornately carved handle unlike anything the Armorer had ever seen.
Without another word, Xander took hold of Simms by his hair, wrapping the long strands around his hand and using this to pull the trader so that he was forced to move into an upright position. With the hair pulled tight, Xander slashed with the blade at the man’s hairline, splitting the skin so that blood poured down Simms’s forehead and into his eyes. The intense pain cut through his concussion and he screamed in a high-pitched, frantic tone, waving his arms uselessly as the skin of his scalp parted from his skull. As Xander cut further in, so the pressure of the baron’s pull and the weight of the trader’s unsupported body caused the skin to tear as much as it was cut. Blood flowed over him. The ragged scalp tore into a point, the skin and flesh coming away in the baron’s hand.
Xander threw the bloodied scalp onto the asphalt, the hair falling beside its owner like a chilled animal. The baron gestured to his sec men and two of them moved from the edge of the crowd and took hold of the semiconscious Simms. One of the sec men snapped his fingers and J.B. was surprised to see a driver get out of the silent wag. He looked like a convoy driver and was obviously nervous as he stared around. The sec man gestured impatiently and the driver reached into his wag, producing a length of rope.
Xander watched as impassively as his audience while the sec men lashed the trader to the front of the wag. When this was done, Xander turned to the driver.
“Now go, and don’t stop until you’re a long way away from here.”
The terrified driver needed no second telling and he scuttled into the wag, fired the engine and screeched off, the almost comatose trader battered by the sudden acceleration as the wag roared out of Duma in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
Xander waited until it was out of sight, the engine noise barely audible, before turning to the crowd. “The rest of Simms’s party I want out by nightfall. We know who you are, so don’t fuck us about. The rest of you can now go about your business.”
Like it was that easy. J.B. returned to the armory with his shadow in tow, to find that Olly was in the blaster room, cleaning a rack of Uzis.
“Y’all right, Olly?” J.B. asked quietly. The youth ignored him at first, concentrating on his cleaning. Finally, as the Armorer was standing in the doorway waiting for a reply, Olly looked up and nodded sharply. His eyes met J.B.’s and the Armorer could see that he just wanted to be alone.
“I’ll check the grens, see if there are any other batches. Mebbe reinventory them,” he muttered.
Budd didn’t make an appearance
until the late afternoon, then he did little except berate his son for associating with the likes of Chino. The old man was in a permanent bad mood and was now taking it out on his son as well as everyone else. It made working hard, and when the time came for them to eat in the evening, J.B. found that he had achieved little during the day. The atmosphere in the kitchen was no better: Budd was bad tempered; Olly was still brooding; and Liza moaned at them both while the confused sec men on duty looked on. Only J.B. and Esquivel had any idea of the whole situation and neither was inclined to explain.
“I need to get out,” J.B. said to his shadow after they left the kitchen. “Just away from here for a while.”
It didn’t take much to persuade him, and they soon hit the main part of the ville. Esquivel led J.B. to the bar they visited the night before.
“Not another strip act,” the Armorer complained. “Besides which, I want to drink, not fight.”
“Two points.” Esquivel grinned, counting them off on his fingers for emphasis. “One, Icepick won’t have another act for a few days, as it’ll take him that long to pay for the damages from last night. Two, there won’t be a very big crowd without the show, so it’ll be quiet. Three, I figure someone you’ll want to see might drop by to say hello.”
“That’s three points.”
“So I lied a little.”
They entered the bar, which was deserted by the standards of the previous evening, but still had several customers sitting around drinking, accompanied by gaudies. Icepick had cleaned up the majority of the mess, but the bar still had the air of a place in need of repair. The giant barman greeted them with a nod and placed two glasses of liquor in front of them.
