Deathlands 068: Shaking Earth

by James Axler

“Rarely. But yes. As you can see.”

  Light spilled onto the terrace as the door was flung open. Ryan’s companions spilled out, blasters in hand, staring around with wild eyes.

  “What in the name of everything nuke-blasted is going on?” J.B. demanded, brandishing his Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun. “Are we being shelled?”

  Ryan had to moisten his lips before he could speak. “Lava bombs,” he said. “From the smokies.”

  “Dear God,” Mildred said. She stared off toward the south. “It looks like somebody pried the lid off Hell.”

  She turned to Ryan. “If they’d been going off like that when we were leaving, when we came across the mountains, we’d never have made it!”

  J.B. put his arm around her shoulders. She pressed her face into the hollow of his.

  Krysty was at Ryan’s side. She alone held no weapon. Her eyes were calm, but her hair stirred around her shoulders as if agitated.

  “You knew it wasn’t an attack,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “I could feel it.” Her cheeks were flushed again.

  Don Tenorio was eyeing them intently. “You are most finely attuned to the forces of the Earth, are you not, Señorita Wroth? If you will forgive my asking.”

  Arm around Ryan’s waist, she turned to face him. “I am…you might say, bound to Gaia. To the forces of the Earth. I draw strength from them.”

  He smiled. “My people already are saying you are touched by the Lady of the Valley.”

  “I’m only tuned to the forces of the Earth, Don Tenorio. Nothing more.”

  He shrugged. “As may be. You are clearly a woman of remarkable power. Even I, who have small feel for such matters, can sense that. Now, if you will excuse me, friends, we can all hope the worst fury of the eruption is spent so we can rest.”

  He started to the door. When he reached it he stopped and turned back. “One thing, señorita. This land is not altogether like your Deathlands to the north, where I understand people have largely turned their backs upon religion. Many of the old beliefs remain strong within the valley—stronger in some places than in others. In future you might be wise to be as discreet as possible about the strength of your connection to the earth spirit, however you call it. There are those who might fear such power, those who might envy it—and those who might try to use it. Now, I bid you all good-night.”

  He was gone.

  “Now what in thunder do you suppose he meant by that,” the Armorer asked, “that somebody might try to ‘use’ Krysty’s power?”

  Doc ran his hand through hair already tousled by sleep. “I hope, somehow, we never find that out, John Barrymore.”

  NAKED, HER CINNAMON-SATIN skin shining in the torch light, Felicidad Mendoza knelt in front of Don Hector on the cool stone of the temple. Naked, he sat upon a polished stone throne. She was rendering him obeisance with her very skillful lips and tongue.

  He moaned and writhed and sweated. Then he seized handfuls of her spun-copper hair, thrust his hips violently. He uttered great guttural cries as he spent himself.

  She took it all in and never batted a jade-green eye.

  When it was done, she rose, eyes kept carefully downcast. “I hope that my lord will accept my sacrifice,” she said. Her breasts were large and rode high. The nipples were small chocolate caps upon them. Beneath her flat dome of belly and between her panther-muscled thighs, her pubic bush gleamed like filaments of burnished metal in the flicker of the torches. She crossed her wrists behind her and stood nude in front of her lord.

  The throne had been carved from a single piece of onyx and polished to mirror gloss. It was uncomfortable as hell. Don Hector had purchased from the scavvies down-filled cushions to ease his baronial backside, and upon these he now lolled, sated.

  “Given what a botch you made of the attempt to take Tenorio, I should accept a full flowery sacrifice of you,” he said musingly. “Perhaps grilled alive in a steel brazier on a bed of glowing coals?”

  “I shall accept what gifts my emperor chooses in his wisdom and mercy to bestow on me.” Actually the term she used meant literally, first speaker. In the valley of Mexico that had long been synonymous with emperor, and that was how he heard it.

  “Tush, tush, my child,” he said, wagging a finger, all indulgence now. “You mustn’t use that term…yet.”

  “If I have given further offense—”

  “All right, all right. No need to lay it on so thick. Look at me now, and explain to me why you screwed up so badly.”

  She did as he bade. “I anticipated, thanks to the intelligence reports gathered by my father, that Don Tenorio would at some point go on an inspection tour on that armed cabin cruiser of his, as he does every few days. When our contact in his palace passed word that he had set forth, we executed the trap we had already prepared. By that point, thanks again to our own intelligence assets within the city, we knew that the strangers from the north would be accompanying him. We judged that they would sweeten the prize we would bring back to Your Resplendence.”

  She shrugged. “They proved more formidable prey than we reckoned. I of course accept full responsibility for the miscalculation and our failure.”

  He nodded his jutting chin on his fist, as if scratching it. “What in the gods’ names were you doing there, Feli? After myself, you are perhaps the most recognizable dweller in all my domain.”

  “The object in disguising our raiding party as Chichimecs, if I may presume to remind Your Celestial Refulgence, was in the event we were discovered before springing the trap. Once we had captured Don Tenorio, and his gringo guests, and conveyed them here to await your soon-to-be-divine pleasure, there would be bloody little point to trying to pretend we were a pack of muties and savages out of the northern wastes, now would there?”

  “Perhaps. But had you not permitted yourself to be seen during what turned to be the abortive attempt, our rivals might still possibly believe the attack was carried out by the savages. Or at least they couldn’t prove otherwise.”

  “As I said, I misjudged. My life, it need not be said, lies upon your palm.”

  “Enough, enough. We’ve settled that. You are far too valuable, not to mention beautiful, for me to discard…lightly. You are a brilliant schemer, Felicidad. Your skills at intrigue are nonpareil. But you are rash. Sometimes rash enough to spoil your own cunning efforts.”

  The nude woman shrugged again, causing her breasts to ride impressively up and down her rib cage. “It matters little. Tenorio is a maguey worm. A strong man would be plotting his revenge. Tenorio pleads with us to reopen negotiations, he all but apologizes for successfully defending himself.”

  Hector frowned thoughtfully. “You do him discredit, my lovely little feather. He realizes well enough that only I have the means, the manpower and the generalship to defeat the Chichimec hordes. He still thinks to use me, manipulate me to do his dirty work for him, while he and his pack of merchants are free to grub like rats in the ruins of the city, and gain treasures they had no share in creating!”

  He was almost shouting now. She flowed to his side like honey down a plank, caressed his cheek. She fell to her knees; her fingers trailed down his well-muscled chest and his belly, the ribbed muscles of which were only beginning to be softened by a hint of paunch. Then they trailed farther down.

  “We shall give him the talk he wants, all the talk he can stomach, won’t we, great chief?”

  He trailed his strong brown fingers though glinting strands of her hair that had worked free of the knot she had gathered it into atop her head, and smiled. “That we shall. And remember, the foreigners are not to be harmed. Especially the woman.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because I say so,” he said, allowing a touch of whipcrack into his voice. Then he stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingertips. “I sense great power in them. Especially in the woman.”

  “So you will replace me with another woman with red hair—provided her hair is naturally that unpleasant shade, of cou
rse?”

  He laughed. “No. I may take my pleasure of her yet—that remains for me to decide.”

  She stiffened and looked down. “Of course.”

  “No, no. Look at me.” He put a curled finger beneath her chin and raised her face. “You know what use I can put her to, and the others. You know what it means to me. To you, too, if you continue to serve me well—without question nor further mishap.”

  “I shall give of my all each day to thee, O Lord.”

  “That’s my girl. And now to more personal pleasurable matters…”

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Though sadly faded, the stripes on the big tent were many-colored, retaining a hint of their earlier gaudiness. “I cannot help but believe,” Doc said as the companions marched with Colonel Solano, Five Ax and the rest of the small party accompanying Don Tenorio up to the meeting place, “that the fanciful shadings of yon pavilion lend an unwonted note of frivolity to these proceedings.”

  “It’s what the tent-rental place they salvaged it from had in the appropriate size, Doc,” Mildred said. “Scavvies can’t be choosers.”

  J.B. winked. “Mebbe it’s a little commentary on this whole fandango by that sly old coyote Tenorio.”

  Doc frowned loftily. “He seems to regard these talks as of the gravest moment, John Barrymore. Still, there may be aught in what you say.”

  “Gotta admit I’m not too comfortable having you here,” Ryan said sidelong to Krysty, walking up the slope next to him. He carried his Steyr SSG-70 slung, muzzle down. As had the crest of the hill on the lake’s northern shore where the striped tent had been erected, the path to the tent had been cleared of scrub and rocks for the convenience and comfort of the dignitaries. Just offshore, Don Tenorio’s cabin cruiser Paloma Blanca rested at anchor.

  “I’m fine.” She was. What had been an angry pus-weeping hole in her shoulder was now a red blotch that had seemed to shrink almost visibly when Krysty had stripped down to show Ryan the night before—not that he had spent long watching before getting involved in other activities. The colossal outpourings of seismic energy, it seemed, supercharged more than just her immune system. His knees were still wobbling.

  “Don Hector was paying a little more attention to you than seems good for us on our last little jaunt,” he told her.

  “He’s not exactly the first baron we’ve run across to admire me.” She smiled to take any perceived edge off the words.

  “It’s what those other barons did as a result of admiring you that worries me.”

  She laughed. “I’m afraid I’m with Mildred. Maybe it’s just my vanity, but I think any hypothetical crush the cacique might harbor for me is about the last of his character flaws we ought to be worried about.”

  “That’s a point,” Ryan conceded grudgingly.

  Five Ax was walking along beside them, wearing desert-camou shirt, khaki shorts, rubber-tire sandals and an MP-5 SDK, Heckler & Koch’s full-size brother to the stubby little 5K model, complete with a built-in noise suppressor fattening the barrel. The Mexican army or national police or whoever’s arsenals the scavvies had turned up sure hadn’t stinted themselves in firepower, by the evidence both of Tenorio’s group and Hector’s party trudging up the other side of the hill. The wiry little Jaguar Knight commando was listening in on their conversation, not eavesdropping, since nobody was making any attempt to be private. Now he laughed and spoke rapidly to Doc.

  “He suggests you entertain no worries on that score, friend Ryan,” the old man translated. “Don Hector, so the barracks rumor has it, has little use for women as women. If you will forgive me the implied indecency, my dear Krysty.”

  “No, Doc, I’m shocked and appalled.”

  The old man’s long face slumped. She laughed and fisted him in the ribs. “Gaia, I’m joking you! There’s very little you can say to me that I didn’t hear before I was weaned. Or see.”

  Five Ax spoke again. Doc was blushing and too obviously flustered yet to speak. Mildred, whose Spanish had improved greatly with fairly intensive use over the last few days, caught up the slack. “He says the exception is the Red Haired Serpent,” she said.

  “Red Haired—”

  “Felicidad Mendoza,” Krysty said.

  “Dead on target,” Mildred said. “I hear she’s a real piece of work.”

  “DON’T LIKE THIS,” J.B. murmured from the side of his mouth.

  Ryan cocked the brow of his one good eye at his friend.

  “Hector’s sec boss Mendoza made zero fuss about us packing,” the Armorer amplified

  The outlanders were at the back of the tent, standing in a clump or sitting in folding chairs the scavvies had provided. The real dignitaries, the barons, their sec chiefs, and a single bodyguard each—Five Ax for Tenorio, a gorgeously plumed and laser-braceleted Eagle Knight for Hector—were up at the front talking over a heavy oak table. Hector wore a robe fringed in gold, Tenorio a simple white shirt with open collar, khaki trousers and hiking boots. The two sec bosses looked almost identically glum.

  “Tenorio and Solano didn’t kick up a fuss about Hector’s people coming heeled, either,” Ryan said. “Not Mendoza’s .45 nor that laser-blaster thing.”

  “Don’t that strike you as a bad sign all of its lonesome?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Same rules apply as always—keep both eyes open.”

  “Wonder where Little Miss Copperhead is,” Mildred said.

  “Up to no good,” the Armorer guessed.

  “Don’t reckon Hector wants to remind Don Tenorio of her existence right this moment,” Ryan said. “Plus we hear Hector hasn’t got much use for women at the council table, remember?”

  “I’m disappointed. I’ve been sort of looking forward to seeing her in action.”

  “No, you’re not,” Ryan, Krysty and J.B. said simultaneously.

  The meeting seemed to be going well. The two barons were pitching their voices too low for Ryan to make out what they were saying, even if they’d been speaking a lingo he understood, which of course they weren’t. But their tones seemed amicable.

  Krysty’s eyes suddenly widened. “Ryan—” She clutched his hand in a drowner’s grip.

  “Krysty, what—”

  “Something…bad,” she whispered. “About to happen.”

  Tenorio and Hector rose as one, stepped around the table, embraced each other.

  The roof fell in.

  RYAN FLOUNDERED as the faded but colorful cloth swaddled him. It was surprisingly heavy. He shouted, “Krysty!” The cloth muffled his voice.

  He fell over.

  The cloth seemed to have got itself twined around his legs and the butt of his sniper rifle. He struggled to draw his panga, but the folds of cloth were fouling his arm; the blade was too long to get free of its sheath. Heavy fabric pressed close in on his face, filling his nostrils with dust and the omnipresent ash, making it difficult to breathe even as his lungs burned from the exertion of struggling to get loose.

  He heard a tumult of cries, shots. “Krysty!” he cried again. It was like a bad dream, one of those terrible dreams, where danger threatens and nothing you do works, where your impotence is total.

  The cloth split across right in front of his face, allowing sunlight and blessedly cool, fresh air to flood inside. He grabbed the first thing he saw, a pale arm. Then he saw that at one end was a strong but very feminine hand grasping a folding knife, and at the other end was Krysty.

  “Give me your hand,” she shouted to him, reaching down with her free hand. They clasped each other’s wrists and she hauled him to his feet—even without using her Gaia linkage to enhance her strength, which drained her so brutally she saved it for the direst emergencies, she was strikingly strong for a woman.

  By the time he was upright his SIG-Sauer was in his hand. He looked around. A dozen or more of what he took for Hector’s sec men—not Eagle Knights, but more generic goons in khaki uniforms—were milling over the collapsed tent. As he took stock, he saw Colonel Sol
ano, looking dazed, trying to struggle free of the swathes of cloth.

  A dazzle of ruby brilliance. The city sec boss’s head exploded in a cloud of pink steam.

  An Eagle Knight, possibly the one who had accompanied Hector, was standing several feet from the toppling, blood-geysering corpse, a macahuitl in one hand, the other upraised to aim his armlet-mounted blaster. Ryan snapped his SIG-Sauer out in front of him into a two-handed combat grip. The Eagle Knight saw the motion, started to swing his arm around to bring his laser to bear.

  Ryan didn’t know whether the fancy partial armor the Eagle Knights wore was some kind of bullet-resistant synthetic, although he guessed it was. To be safe he lined the long barrel of the silenced P-226 up so that the Eagle Knight’s head seemed to be right on the front sight like a pumpkin on a post. He squeezed the trigger once, again. The weapon made its explosive cough. Because he was loaded for defense, not stealth, and because he was running low on subsonic rounds, he was firing full-power Parabellum ammo. Had the bullets flown past any objects they would have made cracking sounds almost as loud as an unsuppressed muzzle report. Neither copper-jacketed bullet happened to pass near anything on its flight into the Eagle Knight’s face. His head jerked back and he crumpled.

  Another Eagle Knight in full drag was running at Ryan with obsidian-blade sword upraised. Apparently he didn’t rate one of the prized wrist-lasers. He was high-stepping to navigate across the fabric, which seethed like a stormy sea with the angry, frantic efforts of those still trapped under it to get free. Ryan turned to face his charge, drawing his panga with his left hand; the big and powerfully muscled swordsman was already too close to be taken down by any handblaster before he split Ryan’s skull to his teeth, much less by the jacketed 9 mm ball rounds from his SIG, which carried more penetration than punch. At his side Krysty also spun, but even if she could fire in time, the 158-grain lead slugs from her .38 weren’t going to be enough, either.

  Above the commotion Ryan heard a ripping sound. Right in the sec man’s path a shine of steel in the sunlight appeared through a fresh rip in the faded but colorful cloth. The Eagle Knight ran on heedless, eyes rolling with whites showing on all sides, as if he could smell his victim’s blood already.