Crucible of Time

by James Axler

  They couldn't try any sort of an escape with Doc, not in his present sickly health, and they surely couldn't run for safety without him. The bones had to lie where they fell.

  Krysty was speaking, her words sounding like they came from an infinite way off.

  "I'll do what you want, Sister Sprite. And all the gods, yours and mine, can decide who has the right."

  "To the death," the huge woman shouted.

  Krysty nodded. "If that's what you wish."

  Ryan knew that this was terminally serious, and that he should try to stop the fight.

  But Krysty's hand was still on his arm, the touch of her flesh on his warm and reassuring.

  Reading his thoughts, she half smiled into his face. "No, lover," she breathed. "Not this time."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It wasn't like it had been with Jak and the Burrows boys.

  Ryan would have wagered a panful of jack against a dead skunk that the teenager would easily take out the two bulky, muscle-bound good old boys. And he'd have accepted odds of fifty to one for Jak.

  This was something else.

  The big woman emanated a genuine aura of power and midnight evil.

  The name of Sprite conjured up a picture of someone light, blond, blue eyed and delicate, small boned and skinny with flounced hair and a rose pink complexion.

  Sister Sprite, Hopeville's finest, was the exact antithesis of that.

  Ryan was as good a judge as existed in Deathlands of someone's fighting potential. It wasn't necessarily the biggest and strongest that won the day. Jak's lethal performance against the gigantic Burrows boys had shown that only too clearly. But Sister Sprite was something else.

  Her whole body breathed violence, and her small piggy eyes flared with the desire to torture and murder. Her strong, stubby fingers, with chipped and jagged nails, clenched and unclenched as she waited for Wolfe to give the signal of approval for the testing with Krysty to begin.

  "Come on," she grated impatiently.

  Ryan tried one last time, touching the redheaded woman on the arm, but she shook her head and pulled away. "No, lover," she said firmly.

  "Combat between Sister Sprite and the outlander woman, known as Krysty Wroth. No blasters or blades to be used. Anything else allowed. That includes kicking and gouging, hair pulling and thumb twisting. May the blessed apostles all watch and lend their support for a clean fight. With the right to lie, as always, with the winner. Ready?"

  Krysty nodded solemnly. "Ready."

  Sister Sprite spit in the dirt, rubbing her booted feet back and forth to ensure a good grip. "Yeah, I'm fuckin' ready."

  "Then get to it. No quarter to be asked or given. To the death."

  Sister Sprite didn't come rushing in, charging in a clumsy manner at the slighter build of Krysty Wroth. She edged in toward her adversary, her arms held loosely at her waist, ready to grip or to counter. The shouting was all for the big woman, though Ryan led a countercheer from J.B., Mildred, Dean and Jak.

  Sister Sprite spit again. "Come on, you ginger bitch! Come to Momma."

  Krysty saved her breath, circling counterclockwise, keeping out of reach of Sister Sprite. She was so much outweighed that she knew to try to fight at close quarters could, literally, prove fatal.

  The champion of Hopeville made several feints at Krysty in the first few minutes of the mortal combat, once nearly managing to grab her slender wrist and draw her into her embrace.

  Ryan's heart leaped to his throat, his breath whistling between his parted lips at the narrow escape.

  "Keep off her, lover," he shouted.

  "Mind your own business," Jim Owsley yelled, fingering the butt of his Hawes Montana Marshal blaster.

  Krysty tried an attack of her own, feinting to lunge, straight armed, stiff fingered, at Sprite's face, altering the angle at the last nanosecond to try to kick at the woman's knees. But Sprite laughed mockingly at her attempt, moving easily out of range, like a huge cat, perfectly balanced.

  "So far, so bad," the Armorer muttered.

  It was difficult to see how Krysty was going to beat her larger, stronger opponent.

  In the front row a skinny young guy, with a heavy mustache, wearing the tall white hat of a chef, called out in support of Krysty, but was instantly hushed by all his neighbors.

  Sprite pretended to stumble, landing on hands and knees in the piled leaf mold close to the footpath through the ville, waiting a moment and shaking her head as if stunned. Ryan was about to shout a warning, but it wasn't necessary. Krysty wasn't a person to let herself get faked out just like that.

  She backed away, half turning to grin reassuringly across at Ryan.

  And Sprite struck.

  The breath died in Ryan's chest, and his good eye blinked shut in a reflex of utter dismay.

  Nobody that big, especially a woman, had the right to be that fast.

  As she straightened, Sprite had thrown two handfuls of the powdery leaf mold, mixed with sharp pine needles, directly into Krysty's face following it up with the frightening speed of a charging buffalo.

  Krysty staggering backward, stumbling clumsily, hands trying to clear her blinded eyes, opening and closing them to try to see through the sudden flood of tears.

  Too late and way too slow.

  Sprite was on top of her, screaming with a fervid delight, clasping her muscular arms around Krysty's chest, crushing her to her own body as both women fell to the earth. There was a dull thud as Krysty's skull hit the dirt, followed almost simultaneously by a sickening crack as Sprite drove her forehead into her face. Blood gushed from Krysty's nose and cut mouth, and she lay still and helpless.

  "Chilled, bitch!"

  Sprite straddled the inert body, her knees gripping Krysty's chest, holding her motionless, while the woman's big butcher's hands grappled for a hold on her throat.

  There was a collective sigh of delight from the watching Children of the Rock. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan noticed that Jim Owsley's right hand was caressing the tight front of his jeans and his mouth sagged open with a morbid, obscene delight at the killing spectacle.

  "Krysty!" Ryan yelled, his voice cracking. He took a step forward, stopping as he felt the sharpness of the barrel of a pistol jammed into his spine, not even seeing who held it. He was aware that several of the ville's sec men had leveled their revolvers and rifles at the outlanders, preventing the possibility of interference from any of them.

  "Watch and enjoy," Wolfe whispered to Ryan. "Payment of debts."

  Sprite grinned at her shrieking supporters, showing her broken, stained teeth. She leaned forward, putting all her weight into the strangulation, her fingers digging into the soft flesh of Krysty's neck.

  Krysty thrashed her head from side to side, her emerald eyes staring wide, white rimmed, threaded with blood. Her mouth was open, rasping breath struggling for release, her tongue protruding and purpled.

  Brother Wolfe was rocking back and forth, his hand on the butt of his blaster, grinning broadly, his eyes locked to Ryan's face.

  "Yes, Brother Cawdor," he crowed. "A dish best eaten cold, wouldn't you say?"

  Ryan didn't say anything. If there hadn't been so many blasters trained on him and his friends, he would have made a grab for Wolfe's pistol and risked holding him for ransom—the life of the leader of the Children of the Rock in exchange for the life of Krysty. But it would have been a hopelessly suicidal gesture. All that seemed left to him was the ultimate possibility of wreaking a bloody revenge.

  Sprite was toying with her victim, releasing her grip and allowing Krysty to draw in a couple of tortured breaths, then closing off the air passage again.

  "She's dying, bro," J.B. said very quietly.

  Mildred turned to face Wolfe, her fists clenched tight with anger. "She's butchering her," she said accusingly.

  "So she is, Sister Wyeth, so she is."

  Krysty was fluttering in and out of consciousness, her hands beating feebly at Sprite's broad shoulders, making no impressi
on on the woman.

  "Use the power, lover," Ryan shouted. "Use Gaia! You fucking well have to."

  It was a grim decision.

  Krysty had been taught a number of arcane skills by her mother, Sonja, a woman wise in the old mystic traditions. It wasn't just the power of seeing. It was the ability, in times of extreme need, to transform herself with almost supernatural forces, giving her an inhuman strength.

  But it always drained her energy so deeply that it often took her to the brink of the grave.

  "Use it!" Jak and Dean yelled in unison.

  "Do it!" Ryan shouted as loudly as he could, trying to make sure that his words carried to Krysty over the screams of the spectators.

  There was no sign that she'd heard them. It looked like she'd passed out and was well along the dark road from which no traveler ever returned.

  Sprite sat back once more, taking a moment to release her victim, clasping her meaty hands above her head in a gesture of triumph.

  "Now, lover! Call on the Earth Mother! Krysty! Fireblast, lover, do it now!" Ryan's voice was breaking, ragged, high and desperate.

  He saw the bloodless lips moving, but it was impossible to hear what Krysty was saying. Her eyes had closed, and she seemed to be concentrating all of her mental energy on taking herself to another place.

  "Gaia!" she was saying, focusing inward, hands opening and closing.

  Ryan realized that he was holding his breath, watching what was going to be, one way or the other, the terminal scene in the brief drama.

  Sprite seemed to sense that something was going on, that there was a bizarre change happening in the helpless body clasped below her.

  She reached down and resumed her grip on Krysty's throat, fitting her fingers onto the dark bruises that marred the soft skin of her victim's throat, smiling in triumph as she began to apply what everyone recognized was going to be the final pressure.

  But Krysty seemed to have grown.

  Her eyes snapped open, and the rictus of hopeless agony on her face changed into a gentle smile. It was something that Sister Sprite saw immediately, and the watchers gradually recognized as being an ominous development.

  "Sprite is plucking defeat right out from the jaws of victory," Mildred said.

  Krysty reached up, almost lazily, and laid her hands on the muscular forearms of the huge woman. She flexed her entire body, with a visible surge of the Earth Mother's power. Sprite screamed, once.

  The piercing sound rose above the double snap of the bones of both her arms, radius and ulna, both breaking like fragile frosted twigs.

  For a moment Ryan saw the whiteness of jagged ivory, as the broken bones tore through muscle and skin, bright blood spilling into the sunlight.

  Sister Sprite screamed again, trying to throw herself clear of Krysty. But the smaller woman, the gentle smile scarily unchanging, clung to her, twisting and crushing.

  The whole settlement of Hopeville was utterly silent.

  "Crippled me…done for…" she moaned, hanging like a helpless rag doll in Krysty's inexorable grip. Everyone could hear the harsh grating sound of the raw ends of bone rubbing against each other.

  "To the death?" the redheaded woman questioned, pushing Sprite away from her with an unforgettable gesture of contempt. "That what you said, Brother Wolfe?"

  "I said…that…I didn't…not…" Wolfe stammered.

  Sprite was hunched over, her ruined arms clasped under her, her face in the dirt, sobbing. Krysty paused to wipe sweat and leaf mold from her own face, standing over the disabled woman, holding her steady with her knees.

  For a moment Ryan had a vision of Krysty astride a broken stallion.

  The wind was rising, whipping up a mini tornado of circling dust, obscuring the tableau.

  "Do it, lover," Ryan called.

  "Oh, I will…" Krysty answered in a voice that was barely human.

  The dust cloud blew away and everyone saw that the redheaded woman had stooped over the hapless Sister Sprite, gripping her skull between her hands.

  She started to twist it.

  "Jesus!" Mildred breathed. "Nobody could…"

  Krysty Wroth, in thrall to the Gaia power, could.

  And did.

  Ryan watched, unable to avert his eye from the macabre sight. Sprite's bull-like head was revolving on her thick neck, the bulging, blood-streaked eyes staring sightless into the sky, toward the pitiless face of her tormentor.

  It didn't seem possible for the skull to turn any farther without the spine cracking.

  When the crack came, it seemed surprisingly quiet, almost insignificant.

  The body jerked and relaxed, vacated, the spirit gone. There was a dark stain appearing at the crotch of Sprite's pants, as her bowels and bladder emptied.

  Krysty stood a frozen moment, then opened her hands and staggered away from the twitching corpse. She took three tottering steps and fell like a hewed log to the earth.

  Ryan ran to her, kneeling at her side, seeing that the use of the Gaia power had, as always, exacted a dreadful toll. Krysty lay completely still, unconscious, her breath rapid and shallow, her heart pounding at twice its normal speed.

  "You said to the death, Wolfe," he said. "If she dies, as well, I swear on the grave of all my friends that I'll take your bastard life."

  But the leader of the Children of the Rock wasn't listening. He'd turned on his heel and walked away, his head drooping, toward his own hut.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Krysty was still deeply unconscious.

  Mildred sat by her, chafing her wrists, dabbing a water-soaked rag on her white forehead. There had been no sign of life since Ryan had carried her into their cabin, placing her on the bed with an infinite gentleness.

  And that was nearly four hours ago.

  "Any change?" he asked.

  Mildred shook her head. "Not really. Though her respiration's better than it was, and the pulse is slowed some. But she's still way out of it."

  Jak stood in the doorway, staring out over the settlement. Sister Sprite's body had been dragged away by half a dozen of the sec men, her heels digging twin furrows in the soft earth.

  "Nobody moving," he said, terse as ever.

  Doc was propped up on one elbow on his bed, sipping at a mug of hot water and honey, held for him by Mildred, who had left Krysty for a moment. He had managed to stop coughing for several minutes, but he still looked desperately frail. Krysty lay on the adjacent bed, her eyes tight shut.

  Mildred had been seriously worried for the first few minutes, but now was much happier. She decided that it had been using the power of the Earth Mother that had stricken her friend, and that time and rest would probably see her recovered in a few days.

  "If we have a few days," had been Ryan's response. "After all that's gone down, I'd like us to be away from here as soon as possible."

  After the death of Sister Sprite, the ville had been quiet. A dog had started yapping, then they had heard the sound of a blow, and the animal had become silent.

  "What do you reckon happens next, bro?" J.B. asked, standing next to Ryan, by Krysty's bed.

  "No idea. You?"

  The Armorer pushed back the brim of his battered fedora and shook his head. "Bones might fall either side of the line. By their rules we all passed the testing."

  "Except you, me, Dean and Doc."

  "Baron's coming," Jak said, moving away from the doorway. "Alone."

  A shadow fell across the floor, and Brother Joshua Wolfe walked into the hut,

  "Good afternoon, outlanders," he said quietly. "How is Sister Wroth?"

  "She'll be real fine," Mildred replied. "How are the Burrows boys?"

  "Shaken. Got the wise woman to give them some sleeping herbs. Set the breaks. Should help. We have to do some talking about the rest of the testing."

  "Haven't had enough?" Jak snapped. "Want everyone in ville chilled?"

  Wolfe looked at him. Ryan noticed that the man was stroking the stump of his amputated arm. "Race isn't over u
ntil the fat lady crosses the line, kid."

  "Don't call kid."

  "Sure."

  Ryan sat on the side of the bed, hearing the springs creak under his weight. "What happens next? What do you want me, Dean and J.B. to do for our testing?"

  Wolfe shrugged. "The boy's not of age. He's excused. I've seen enough of both of you, personally, to know that there's no need for you to face any trial. You are two of the most dangerous men in all of Deathlands. There's no need for you to be tested."

  Ryan was puzzled, not believing that it was going to be that easy. Give Krysty three days or so, and they could head back to the redoubt and make a fresh jump. By then Doc should also be well.

  "So, it's over."

  "No." The single syllable hung in the dusty air of the cabin.

  "No?"

  Wolfe shook his head. "I'm deeply regretting this, old friend, but it isn't quite over yet."

  The smile was as sunny and broad as the Grand Canyon in August. The eyes and the voice were like a cascade of Sierra meltwater in April.

  Doc suddenly sat up, his pale eyes blinking open, and he stared directly at Joshua Wolfe. "Just send my mail to the Tijuana jail," he said firmly, then pushed the mug of water aside and lay down again.

  "Not good." Mildred laid a cool hand on the old man's fevered forehead, wincing at the fiery heat. "No, not good at all. Wish the temperature would go down. Set him on the road to recovery. Still, with rest…"

  Ryan was still staring at the leader of the ville. "What do you mean?"

  Wolfe shook his head gently. "Not who wins the first lap, friend. It's who's first past the tape at the end of the race. You all did real well in the testing."

  "But?"

  "But you haven't all taken the trials. Still one of you left." He pointed at the recumbent figure of Doc Tanner.

  "What?" Ryan's temper was always on a short fuse. Always had been, always would be. The suggestion that the critically ill old-timer should somehow have to prove himself to the sick-brain bastards of Hopeville was so obscene that an instant red mist descended. "You don't—"

  Wolfe had the pearlized grip of the blaster firmly in his hand, the gaping barrel drilling into Ryan's abdomen. "One wrong step, One-Eye. That's all I want."