Crucible of Time

by James Axler

  "Looks like a ten."

  Caitlin fired again. Again a ten.

  The third and fourth shots were also dead-center bull's-eye, bringing a round of hearty applause from the watching Children of the Rock.

  "Forty from forty," Wolfe announced. "The saints be praised, Brother Caitlin. Your turn now, Sister. You may shoot at will."

  Mildred stood sideways on, her whole body relaxed. Ryan knew that the woman's skill with her revolver was unparalleled. It was the sort of skill that had died out after the long winters. He had no doubt that she could outshoot anyone he'd ever seen in all Deathlands.

  Caitlin was better than adequate with his rifle, but so he should be at only twenty-five paces.

  Mildred aimed and fired quickly, all four shots seeming to run into one another, giving an odd quadruple echo that quickly faded into silence.

  The elder with the scope took some time. "Looks like all four through the same hole," he called, bringing a buzz of excitement from the spectators.

  "Good shooting, Mildred," Dean shouted, clapping his hands and jumping up and down excitedly.

  "Fish in a barrel," she snorted.

  Both of them scored maximums at fifty yards.

  Attention shifted to the hundred-yard target, a tiny square of white pinned to a ponderosa.

  Caitlin hawked and gobbed, the greenish lump of spittle striking a stunted larch to his right, dangling there, catching the sunlight.

  "Me first, I reckon," he muttered. Ryan had always been a keen student of body language, and he noticed that something of the spring had gone from the shootist's step. He moved a little more slowly, as if his confidence had been eroded by Mildred's performance so far.

  He was firing more slowly at each distance, taking around fifteen seconds at the hundred-yard marker, giving the skinny man time to check each shot.

  "Ten."

  Applause.

  "Ten again, Brother Caitlin."

  More applause from the Children of the Rock. Mildred watched impassively.

  There was a long delay. "Nine."

  "What?"

  "Sorry, Brother. Clipped the line between eight and nine, but I call it a clear nine."

  The last shot hit the bull's-eye again, giving him 119 out of a possible 120. It was pretty fair shooting, though Ryan reckoned that he could have probably matched it himself.

  Mildred stepped up, quickly and easily scoring bull's-eyes with her four shots.

  "On to the last set of markers," Wolfe announced, pointing into the distance, at two hundred paces, where the target seemed almost invisible.

  "Sweating," Jak whispered to Ryan. The teenager was right. A thin sheen of perspiration lined Caitlin's forehead, trickling down the side of his nose onto the stubbled chin.

  "When you're ready, Brother," Wolfe said, holding up his good hand for quiet.

  "I'm ready."

  "Nine."

  A hum of excitement ran through the crowd.

  "Take your time," Wolfe urged, biting his lip anxiously. "Just take all the time you need."

  "Puts more pressure on the son of a bitch," J.B. said quietly.

  They heard the crack of the rifle, and the faint hum of the .44 round as it sliced through the pine-scented sunlight between the tall trees.

  Another long pause.

  "Eight."

  Caitlin muttered a colorful curse under his breath. He walked around his mark in a small circle, kicking his heels into the damp ground.

  "Two more shots left," Wolfe said encouragingly. "Make them count, Brother."

  The barrel of the rifle was visibly trembling as the man took aim for the penultimate time. With an effort he lowered it, wiping sweat from his forehead. He sighted again, squeezing the trigger, the Winchester 94 kicking against his shoulder.

  "Four."

  "You sure about that, Brother?" Wolfe shouted, his voice rising above the gasp of dismay.

  "Fear so. Aye, fear so. Just a four. One round remaining. Brother Caitlin's score stands at…"

  There was a moment's hesitation for the mathematics. "From one hundred and fifty, his score is 144."

  "One hundred and forty," the Armorer called without a moment's pause.

  "No." Wolfe stared at the man with the telescope. "Check your numbering, Brother."

  "It's 140," Krysty agreed. "Missed one point up to this last round of shots. And he scored a nine and an eight and the last four. That's nine. Plus one makes ten. One hundred and forty even."

  Nobody argued.

  "Woman won't hit fuck-all at this range with her toy!" yelled a man from the back of the crowd. "Nothing to worry about, Carlo."

  He scored a seven with his last round, making 147 out of 160.

  Mildred hadn't missed a single shot yet, putting them all into the center of her target with a monotonous regularity. Now she stood there on the mark, calm and unflurried, the light wind tugging at her beaded hair, the long-barreled Czech revolver seeming an extension of her body. "Ten."

  That gave her 130 out of 130, meaning she needed only seventeen from the last thirty to win.

  There was a tense silence, broken by Wolfe dropping his own hand-blaster onto the dirt with a sudden, loud clatter that made everyone jump. The interruption coincided perfectly with Mildred's fourteenth shot.

  "Bastard!" Jak spit.

  "Sorry," Wolfe muttered. "Slipped."

  "How many?" Mildred asked, the most serene person there.

  "Take that again," Ryan said.

  But the woman only smiled back at him. "No worries, friend."

  "Nine," said the marker.

  Eight to tie from the last two shots, and nine to win it.

  Everyone's attention was focused on the minuscule square of white card. Ignoring the excitement, a tiny copper-winged scarab moth had landed on a branch just above the mark, its poisonous tendrils tasting the air.

  Mildred aimed and fired.

  "Miss," brayed the man with the scope too eagerly. "Yeah, a miss."

  "I want…" Ryan began, stopping at the collective sigh of wonder as the venomous little insect fluttered lifelessly to lie pulped on the ground below.

  Mildred fired her last shot without even seeming to sight, instantly starting to reload her blaster, not paying any attention to the marker's call.

  "How many?" Wolfe yelled. "Did she miss the target again? Did she?"

  "Ten," Mildred said very quietly.

  "Ten," the skinny man echoed. "She scored a ten with her last shot. Woman wins."

  Caitlin spun on his heel and stalked off, ignoring Mildred's outstretched hand.

  Wolfe raised his voice above the hubbub. "Outlander wins the first part of the testing. No quarrels with that. Finest shooting I ever saw. Now we move on to the second part. Not over yet." He turned to Ryan. "I say that it's not over yet."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jak was next for the testing.

  He and Ryan had discussed what weapon the albino teenager should choose. The youth's first instinct was to go for his beloved throwing knives. Ryan had seen him in action with them often enough to know that nobody in Deathlands could touch his uncanny skill.

  "But they don't know you got them, Jak. Still got any of the knives?"

  "What?"

  "They got all our weapons off us. But you said you still got two or three blades concealed, didn't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "So? Best to keep them hidden, don't you reckon? We don't have many surprises going for us on our side."

  "Could ask for one blade they took."

  "Yeah." Ryan considered that possibility. "But how about if you choose hand-to-hand?"

  Jak's red eyes glinted at the idea. "Like it, Ryan. Show them fucking testing."

  "Then that's decided."

  THE CHOICE THREW Wolfe and the senior members of the religious community.

  "Not proper testing," Jim Owsley complained in his customary whining voice.

  "Don't see why not," Josiah Steele argued. "It's a genuine skill."
/>   Wolfe nodded his reluctant agreement. "Guess that's so, Brother."

  Caitlin had rejoined the group. "Probably some sort of trick. Like that bitch with her freaky-deaky blaster! A cheat."

  One of the older men laughed out loud. "Not sure that bein' a better shot is cheatin', Brother Caitlin. Not by any of the Lord Jesus's definitions. I vote we let the kid try his hand at close combat."

  There was a general agreement.

  But a fresh problem sprang up as soon as they tried to select who their champion would be in the testing against Jak.

  Ryan and the others watched as a bitter argument developed among the Children of the Rock. It came down quickly to a straight choice between a pair of siblings—Bull Burrows and his almost identical brother, Lee.

  Both were big men, weighing in, Ryan guessed, close to three hundred pounds, with hands like platters of raw ham. Both had lost all of their teeth, with bleeding gums, probably owing to the rad sickness. Both were in their middle twenties, close to six and a half feet tall, with long, greasy hair that was flaking away from their narrow skulls in places. "I can lick my little brother, Lee, blindfolded," Bull Burrows protested.

  "That'll be the day, pilgrim," mocked the younger of the pair. "Not, not, not!"

  "Make them tussle to pick a winner to lick the whitey kid," someone shouted.

  "Let the outlander pick which one he wants to whale the tar out of him!" was another suggestion, which seemed to be greeted with general approval.

  "Sounds fair," Joshua Wolfe said, turning toward the silent, watching youth. "How do you feel about making the choice yourself, sonny boy?"

  "Both," Jak said flatly, the single word lying there like a shovelful of graveyard dirt.

  "Both?" Wolfe repeated, shaking his head as though he'd misheard. "You say that you'll take both the Burrows boys on? One after the other?"

  "Both at once," Jak said.

  RYAN COULD HAVE written the script for the coming hand-to-hand conflict, and he'd have been pretty close to the final, predictable outcome. J.B. could have done the same.

  Just as Mildred was, possibly, the finest shot in the whole of Deathlands, so Jak was very probably the finest exponent of hand-to-hand lethal fighting that Ryan had ever known.

  His lean 120-pound body was almost unbelievably agile, his fighting reflexes acutely honed, like a fine, ivory-hilted cutthroat razor.

  "Won't last more than a short minute," Ryan whispered across to Krysty.

  Jim Owsley overheard him and gave out a raucous, bellowing laugh of derision. "Right there, outlander. Inside a minute and the kid'll be dead meat."

  Ryan didn't bother to reply. He knew what he knew, and it wouldn't be long before Jak proved him right.

  To an outsider the fight looked absurdly unbalanced and unfair.

  Two huge men were stripped to the waist, in belted jeans and knee-high boots. Their hairless bodies showed signs of running to fat, with a number of deep purple, weeping sores dappling them, but their jowled faces were wreathed in eager, anticipatory leering grins, and they were flexing their massive hands as they both dropped into a half crouch.

  Jak, facing them, looked like a starving waif. He had taken off his canvas camouflage jacket and chose to fight in his ragged, short-sleeved, gray fur jacket.

  Even Joshua Wolfe looked uncomfortable, glancing at Ryan. "You sure about this?"

  "Sure."

  "Well, may the Lord Jesus, Blessed Savior of the merciful stranglehold and the knee-drop pick the winners of this combat. Go to it, boys."

  Bull and Lee weren't particularly triple stupes. It was just that they hadn't traveled all that much around Deathlands and had little experience of serious fighting outside their secluded enclave. It was easy enough to beat the crap out of some of the younger men living in the ville, and the fragile youth with the mane of tumbling white hair had to be just there for the taking.

  And the first few seconds of the "fight" confirmed what nearly everyone expected.

  The moment the word was given by Brother Wolfe, Jak turned away and ran from the two hulking men, his feet barely seeming to brush the earth as he glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued.

  He was, the brothers splitting up and readying themselves to close in slowly on him from both sides.

  "Yo, catch him!"

  "Stop runnin' and turn and fight, kid!"

  "Shoot him if he tries to break out of the ville," Wolfe ordered.

  Jak opened up a gap of about forty yards, stopping before he reached the edge of the settlement. He paused for a moment, facing the heavily built pair of brothers, his arms dangling loosely at his sides.

  Lee and Bull paused in their pursuit, grinning at each other, fingers clasping and unclasping. Ryan could smell the rancid odor of their sweat from where he watched.

  "Nigh on a half minute already, outlander," Jim Owsley said with a sneer. Ryan said nothing.

  Jak gave the brothers a mocking half bow, then exploded into movement, powering across the clearing toward them, his legs a blur of white speed.

  Suddenly he changed direction, reversing his attack, going into a series of snapping back handsprings.

  "Look out!" Joshua Wolfe called, but his warning was drowned out by the roar of the spectators.

  Jak was so much faster than the Burrows boys that neither of them managed to lay a hand on him. He whipped between them at extraordinary speed, and everyone heard a double cracking sound, like two dry branches being crushed at once.

  Very few people had good enough eyesight to make out precisely what had happened. All most of them heard was the snapping noise, followed immediately by a double scream, high and thin like a boar being gelded.

  Lee and Bull Burrows were down in the dirt, both clutching at their knees.

  They rolled over and over, their faces contorted with a twin rictus of rending agony, a feeble, mewing cry erupting from their bloodied lips, eyes squeezed shut. ;

  "Did he…?" Mildred said wonderingly. "Damned if I could make out how he did that."

  "Kicked out both sides as he went past them," J.B. grunted, clapping his hands approvingly. "Hit them smack on and smashed their knee joints apart."

  "Jesus!" Owsley breathed. "That ain't…" He let the sentence trail away into the sudden stillness.

  Jak had done a final double somersault, landing agilely on both feet, perfectly balanced, hands still at his sides. His chest was barely moving.

  "Finished?" he called, not even a little out of breath.

  "You finished them both, kid," came a voice from the crowd.

  Wolfe swallowed hard, clearing his throat. "Help them up and take them away," he ordered.

  "Two to us," the Armorer said, taking off his fedora to wipe his forehead. "Sure you want to keep this going, Brother Wolfe? Can you afford to lose good men?"

  "Who goes next?" Ryan asked. "How about me or J.B. taking our turn?"

  For once the leader of Hopeville seemed to be quite lost for words.

  "How about me takin' on the redhead slut? Yeah, me, Sister Sprite."

  It was the giantess, her voice as deep as a thundering torrent through an abyss.

  She pushed to the front of the crowd, standing with her hands on her broad hips, staring aggressively at Krysty, her face contorted with a violent hatred. She wore a cropped, short-sleeved white blouse of bleached leather over torn and faded ancient denim cutoffs, leaving a gap that revealed her belly button, sticking out like a chameleon's eye.

  Her hair was hacked short, teased into sharp spikes. The wide leather belt carried a knife nearly as long and broad as Ryan's panga.

  At a guess he put her at just over six-three and way above the 250-pound mark. And there didn't look to be an ounce of fat on her body.

  "Well now, Sister Sprite," Wolfe began doubtfully, "I don't know if—"

  "Fuck you and the wag you ride on, Brother Wolfe! I don't see anyone here, woman or weakling, who's going to stand agin me on this."

  Ryan glanced at Krysty o
ut of the corner of his good eye, looking for some reaction. But she was totally still and impassive, arms folded across her chest, eyes half-closed against the bright sunlight.

  "Sister Sprite challenges the outlander woman, Sister Krysty Wroth, to a testing, as under the laws and gospels proscribed by the Children of the Rock."

  "What weapon?" Krysty asked quietly.

  Behind Ryan, somewhere deep within the mighty pine forest, a flock of crows rose squawking into the sunlit air, circling around, their black shadows etched on the cerulean blue of the sky. He half turned, wondering what might have startled the birds, watching them as they weaved around one another before, at a soundless signal, they flew off southward.

  He was distracted by the crows from what was happening right at his side.

  "What weapon you like? Blaster or blade? Best would be to get my fingers round that scrawny neck and choke the fucking life from it. Watch your tongue swell, purple, and your green cat's eyes pop out their sockets like the knobs on a mission-hall harmonium."

  "Not hand-to-hand, lover," Ryan whispered to Krysty. "She looks to be—"

  She turned and laid a hand on his arm, as gentle as the brushing of a butterfly's wing. "What has to be, has to be, lover," she said so quietly that nobody else heard her. "You see this?"

  "Yes. I see this, lover. Like I've known this moment for all of my life. Seen this woman. These trees. These people. Yeah, I know them all."

  Ryan felt the chill of layered ice, gripping around his heart, seeming to paralyze him. There was a grim note of doom in Krysty's voice that he'd never heard before in all the time that they'd ridden together.

  "No," he said, so hushed that he couldn't even hear himself speaking.

  "You ready for this, Sister?" The aggressive, grating voice was like a ragged fingernail in the eye socket.

  "Guess so."

  Maybe if they all acted together they could grab some weapons from the watching sec men, taking advantage of their fascination with what was going down in front of them, open fire into the heart of the crowd and hope to be able to make a run for it amid the panic and bloody confusion.

  In the stillness he suddenly heard the sound of violent, muffled coughing, as Doc, in the cabin, had another of his bad turns.