by James Axler
Arching both eyebrows, J.B. lowered the self-heat he was eating from and turned slowly, but the man and boy were yards away and moving fast.
"Old coot," the Armorer growled, smiling.
Reaching the trees, Doc stood guard while Dean knelt on the ground, and, folding up the front of his shirt,
started gathering apples. A plump one rolled away, and he made a successful catch.
"None from there, dear boy," Doc said, the LeMat held ready. "Too many bruised apples can give a horse cramps."
"Okay," he replied, then stood and emptied the fallen fruit from his shirt. Tucking the garment into his pants, Dean grabbed hold of some low branches and scampered up the trunk as if it were a ladder.
"Ah, youth," Doc said with a sigh, and removed a wedge of cheese from the pocket of his frock coat. It was hard and crunchy on the edges, but still edible. There was movement in the bushes. Doc dropped the cheese and aimed the LeMat, thumbing back the trigger. Then he spotted the squirrel nibbling an apple and withheld firing. The miniball from his weapon would leave nothing of the squirrel to cook for dinner. It was the one drawback of big-bore blasters. Game had to be at least as large as a fox, or it was a waste of ammo. Retrieving the cheese from the ground, Doc wiped it clean, cut away a suspicious area and continued to eat.
"You know, horses are like wags, aren't they?" Dean spoke from the foliage. "Got to constantly watch this and feed them that."
"True words, lad. But I would love to meet the wag that could make more wags," Doc said, taking another bite. "I daresay humanity lost something important when we stopped riding."
Returning to the others, Dean passed out the apples, keeping a couple of the best for his mount.
"Here, girl," he said, offering the fruit. The pinto lifted its head and sniffed the offering, then took the whole apple in its mouth and started crunching.
"Careful fingers," Jak warned, feeding the fruit to his mount. The horse was a young dappled stallion, lean muscles rippling under its coat. "Can't see good. Take finger accidentally."
"I know," Dean replied, stroking his horses neck. "I watched Dad before doing mine."
"Smart move," Mildred acknowledged, coming over and inspecting the mare. "Damn, I thought she was limping. That's a bad cut on the fetlock. You better clean that with witch hazel before it gets infected."
"Me?"
Mildred went to her mount and came back with some bandages and a plastic bottle. "A rider tends his own horse," she explained, giving him the bottle and cloth rags. "They trust you more that way."
Speaking soft words, the boy tended the animal. It shook at the sting of the witch hazel, stomping its hooves, but he got the cut thoroughly cleaned and wrapped tightly.
"Gaia, they found us," Krysty said, standing and dropping the partially peeled apple from her grasp.
Seconds later, howls sounded from the east.
"Mount up," Ryan commanded, rushing to his stallion.
He checked the belly cinch, then climbed into the saddle. Shaking the reins free from the bush, he started off at a brisk canter. The rest did the same, then kicked their horses into a full gallop.
"Thank God spurs haven't been rediscovered," Mildred said, holding the pommel and bending low over her animal. "Come on, girl, faster!"
At top speed, the companions crossed a field, jumping over a low hedge and starting a flight of robins.
"Fuck!" Jak cursed, glancing over a shoulder. "Give away position!"
Angling away from the soaring birds, Ryan led the companions over some irregular terrain to where a broken expanse of a paved road peeked out from the grass.
After a hundred yards, Doc reached into his saddlebag and found his last container of black powder. Slowing to the rear of the pack, the old man leaned low in the saddle and shook it out, the wind spreading the powder into a fine spray. Stuffing the empty powder horn into a pocket of his frock coat, Doc slumped in the saddle, concentrating on staying mounted.
The sloping land flew beneath the pounding hooves of the horses, the baying of the hounds rising and falling as the dogs found the companions' trail, lost it and found it once again.
Ryan heard the low moan of winds whistling in a ravine. Moving to the south, the warrior saw that the land was cracked wide alongside the weedy field. Slowing his mount, he trotted close to the edge. The division was shallow, only a sheer drop of one hundred feet, but there was a bridge only a few hundred yards behind them. The structure was a box trestle, dripping with ivy and hanging moss. Older than predark, it looked solid and that was a gamble he was willing to take.
"No way we can jump this," Krysty said, fighting to retain control of her mount. The horse was trying to walk in a circle to get away from the chasm. She pulled on the reins to keep the animal under control. "Whoa, girl. Good girl. Easy does it."
"Why should we jump?" Dean asked, confused. "There's a bridge."
"My point exactly." She smiled. "Once we're on the other side, nobody can follow us. Especially the dogs."
"Follow me!" Ryan shouted. Kicking his mount into a gallop again, he backtracked to the bridge and rode across to the other side.
"We were headed north," J.B. said, stopping near his friend. "Going to try for an ambush?"
"Better," Ryan replied, sliding off the horse and heading toward one of the pack animals. Digging in the bags, Ryan found a hurricane lantern filled with oil reeking of fish.
"Good dry timbers," J.B. announced, running his hand along the supporting beams.
"Trap?" Jak asked, holding the reins in one hand, his Colt Python drawn to give cover. Far below, a riverbed was visible, but there was no sign of any water. Just bare gray stones and smooth black pebbles lying across the red clay bottom of the riverbed.
Removing the flue, Ryan tipped over the lantern, spilling out the rancid oil. "No time for traps or bombs. Those dogs are too damn close."
"And the sec men right behind them," Mildred added tersely.
Removing the wick from the lamp, Ryan lit it with his butane lighter. The rag caught at once, and he dropped it on the planks. Smoky flames spread across the planks and over the sides, following the path of the flowing oil.
The howling was closer.
"Let's go," Ryan grunted, climbing back into the saddle. "Just in case one of the dogs makes it across before the bridge collapses."
Kicking their mounts into a gallop again, the companions rode away from the burning bridge, knowing they were safe from pursuit for the moment—but also knowing that there was no way back into North Carolina. The plan to head into Tennessee was abandoned as they rode deeper into the wild country of Georgia.
STANDING IN THE throne room of the castle, Nathan Cawdor bowed his head in contemplation. He didn't believe in torture. It served no purpose except personal revenge. Information was always more easily bought, or stolen, than extracted.
But as he looked down upon Sullivan lying wrapped in his cocoon of netting and chains, Nathan felt a fury build within. His mother had referred to it as the blood-fire, a sort of madness for violence that ruled the Cawdor bloodline.
"I have no wish to kill you," Nathan said. "Or rather, I had no wish. To the best of my knowledge, you had harmed nobody within the walls of this ville. Plus, you saved many lives in the hospital sewing wounds and removing crushed limbs so gangrene wouldn't rot my men."
The room was packed with sec men and civilians. Justice wasn't served in the dark. Only tyrants ruled from the shadows because daylight made them wither and die.
Hands clasped behind his back, Nathan walked around the supine prisoner. "No, my plan was to find you and send you back to BullRun ville alive and unharmed."
The mutie sneered at the man, not believing a word of the pretty speech. Barons would always say golden promises before the crowd, then feast on flesh in private. Soon they would be alone, and Sullivan would discover his real sentence.
In a flash of anger, Nathan kicked the bound man. "You idiot! I had no wish to kill you. But after seeing what yo
u did to the patients, nukestorm, you set wounded men on fire merely to hide your escape with their death screams!"
"Hang him!" a woman shouted from the crowd. "Peel off his skin and feed it to the dogs!"
Patiently, Nathan allowed the interruption as the woman was the wife of a now dead sec man. "Yes, Sullivan, I would be justified in torturing you to the point of death, then leaving you alone in the dungeon for a year to heal and grow strong, then start the torture again, and continue on until I was too old to wield the pliers or hot irons. So my sons would take over, and their sons and theirs, and it would still not be enough! There can never be enough revenge for what you did!"
Nathan turned away from the man and walked to his throne. Sitting down heavily, he sighed. "There is no choice but the ultimate punishment."
Sullivan tried not smile. This was why he had done the act, to infuriate them beyond reason. Nathan always killed common thieves with firing squads, and hanged rapists and other such scum. Only once did he burn a man alive, a traitor who turned against the ville and allowed coldhearts past the walls. But Sullivan couldn't be burned alive. His skin was resistant to flames, and once his ropes were weakened he would break loose, kill the startled baron with a single blow and escape over the wall in the confusion. The fool was playing right into his hands.
Nathan drew a blaster and weighed the weapon in his palm, deliberating justice the way a butcher did meat. Was this enough, or too much?
Standing along side the throne, Lady Tabitha took his free hand in both of hers. "You have no choice, dear."
"I know," Nathan said, bolstering the weapon. "This coldheart mutie deserves the very worst punishment we have. Once, I burned a man alive at the stake for treason, and you all still remember that smell. It haunts me at night and clings to my clothes. No amount of washing or soap will ever remove the memory. And that day I made a solemn vow to never repeat that again for any reason."
The crowd held its breath, anxiously waiting.
"Captain of the guards!" Nathan called out formally.
Clem stepped forward and saluted. "Yes, my lord?"
"Bury him alive."
Icy panic filled the mutie as he realized this was a death sentence with no escape. "No!" Sullivan screamed, and he stood, ripping the nets apart with bare fingers. He shook back and forth, trying to escape from the chains, but they weren't cold iron forged in some Deathlands smithy, but predark steel. The metal didn't even strain at his awesome strength. Gasping for air, terror a fist in his belly, the mutie started to weep as his bones broke in the blind madness of trying to escape.
There was a gunshot, and Sullivan fell to the floor, blood pooling around him, spreading outward in pumping waves. He tried again to rise, a chain snapping loose in his death throes. There was another shot, and Sullivan collapsed, his body exhaling its last breath and going still.
Ceremoniously, Nathan slid the clip from the execution blaster and laid them down separately on a silver tray. "And so it ends today," he said sternly. "Anybody buried alive would soon go insane and live out their last few hours in a delirium of escape and freedom fantasies. The very worst thing I could do was threaten him with the act. Sullivan punished himself, and I ended the matter."
"What about Baron Markham of Bull Run ville?" Clem drawled, watching the corpse for any signs of returning life. "Y'all know she sent the mutie here."
Leaning back in his throne, Nathan nodded agreement. "Because she believed we were attacking her, and she was too weak fighting off some samurai baron from Washington Hole to withstand an attack by us."
"I would be happy to make a stand against her, my lord," a bearded lieutenant said, kneeling. "My life for yours!"
"Thank you, Jarod, but that won't be necessary," Nathan acknowledged graciously. The baron turned to address another man. "Clem, would you go to them as an ambassador and talk the truth? We aren't enemies. Tell them of Overton and enlist their aid. His plan was to divide the baronies so we couldn't work together. If that was his greatest fear, then that's exactly what we should do. And quickly."
The chief of the sec men scratched his neck. "She may not believe me, but I'll sure as shit try."
"Thank you."
"What about those Casanova assholes?"
"I'll deal with them later," Nathan said in a low, dangerous voice.
Clem smiled. "Gotcha. You're a pretty good baron."
Startled at first, Nathan smiled back at the man. "And I'm pleased to also call you a friend."
"Beg pardon, my lord," a sec man asked politely. "What about the…ah, Sullivan?"
Stepping in front of her husband, Tabitha scowled at the dead mutie. "As he lived, so shall he die," she said in controlled anger. "Burn the body."
IT TOOK A FULL CORD of wood to finally consume the mutie, his flesh oddly resistant to the conflagration. But at least he was reduced to ashes, the residue thrown into the river to be washed away.
Chapter Thirteen
Five large men walked their horses to the edge of the ravine and stared at the ruined bridge.
"Escaped," the biggest man hissed. "They have escaped again. This is intolerable!" An M-60 machine gun was resting on his shoulder as if the massive weapon were a simple longblaster, the linked belt of ammo dangling to his knees. A hairy pouch slung over his other shoulder bulged with a spare belt. The handles of knives jutted from each boot, and a revolver rode in a holster at the small of his back. Covered by his loose shirt, it was almost undetectable.
"Mebbe we should give up," said one of the others, kicking some charred wood over the edge. It tumbled out of sight. He tugged at his good-luck necklace, which was made of human ears. "I mean, we've been after these people since Thunder Pass!"
"Stop your complaining," a bald man snapped, his head covered with colorful tattoos. He carried a machete in a shoulder holster, and dried human scalps dangled from his belt as ornaments. "In the morning, we'll find a way across once we have some daylight."
"How's the food?" a thin man asked. Clothes seemed to hang off his skeletal frame, yet he ate more than any two of them. A sawed-off shotgun rode at his hip, extra rounds lining his tan-colored belt. The ornate buckle was carved from white bone.
"We're down to only a few pounds of meat," a hairy man said. Carrying a bolt-action longblaster, he was bare chested in spite of the evening chill, bandoliers of ammo crisscrossing his herculean torso. "But we have those fresh supplies we caught escaping from the ville."
On the back of a pack horse, the bound captive squirmed and kicked from within a rolled blanket. A bamboo tube fed enough air for the gaudy slut to breathe, and the blanket hid her from the casual sight of strangers.
"Gut and cook her," said Scarface, displaying pointed teeth. Starting at his forehead, a long jagged slash traversed his features, going into his shirt and out of sight. "We'll think better with a full stomach."
TWO DAYS LATER, the companions were camped on the top of a hill overlooking the ruins of a predark metropolis. Silvery with reflected moonlight, dark monoliths rose from the jumble of fallen structures and windblown debris. A great amphitheater, or sports arena, stood by itself at the far end. No lights shone from the hundreds of windows, and no smoke rose through the many holes in the roofs. There was no smell of machinery, and no sounds marred the stillness of the evening.
"It's dead," Krysty stated knowingly, as she added more sticks to the campfire. As a precaution, the companions had dug a hole for the fire so the flames wouldn't be discernible to anybody below, but their precautions seemed unwarranted.
"There's nothing on the map," J.B. said, sounding annoyed, squinting to read by the flickering light. "My best guess would have been that this area was nothing but peach orchards."
Ryan rubbed his unshaved chin. "Strange," he admitted. "Very strange."
A few yards away, the horses whinnied in the darkness from hunger. Yesterday, the companions had passed a field full of rye. But after inspecting the grain, Mildred refused to let them feed any to the horses. It was cont
aminated with an ersatz mold she said could be fatal.
Unfortunately, they were entering desert, and grass was getting scarce. With no other choice, the companions went through their supplies, feeding the horses everything they could—the rest of the apples, bread, granola bars, crackers, dried vegetables and peanut butter. Combined with the tiny sugar packets from the MRE coffee packs and what green grass they could find, the mixture had sustained the animals until now.
"We've got to find them something to eat, or the horses will start to weaken," Ryan said, chewing on another piece of smoked fish. "Then they'll rebel, and we'll have to chill them."
"Shoot the horses?" Dean asked askance, looking up from his work. The Browning Hi-Power was lying on a clean piece of cloth completely disassembled. The boy was cleaning each piece thoroughly before rebuilding the blaster.
"No," his father replied coldly. "We'll ride them till they die. Get every mile out of them we can. I'd prefer to find food and keep them for the rest of our journey."
"Me, too!"
"Maybe we should check out the ruins," Mildred ventured, sipping her tin cup of cold turkey bouillon. "Dried cereals on the supermarket shelves, cans of corn, envelopes of oatmeal, could be lots of food down there."
"The big one looks like a Hyatt," she continued.
"Good hotel. I always stayed at them for medical conferences."
Ryan sucked a hollow tooth. "Don't recall ever looting a hotel before. But come to think of it, they would have lots of usable items. Tons of canned goods for the kitchen, good knives, too. Soap and shampoo, TP, radio and blasters in the sec office."
"Should be lots of clothing. I could use a new belt."
"Socks," Jak said.
"There could be nothing. Rats usually get everything not in a can, and rust gets that," Ryan countered, putting aside the gnawed fish. Whatever Flat Rock did to preserve the stuff almost made the things inedible. His teeth ached from chewing on the smoked trout. "I think we stand a better chance finding food on the road. We'll leave the roads and start cutting cross-country."
