Time Castaways

by James Axler

  TIME CASTAWAYS

  by James Axler,

  HARLEQUIN ENTERPRISES LTD.

  Prologue

  Prologue

  The creature exploded out of the laurel bushes and charged across the dirt road, its four arms raised for a fast chill, the black talons dripping green venom.

  “Ambush!” sec chief Charles Donovan cried, flicking off the safety on his massive crossbow. “Gene and Rosemary, stay with the cart! Everybody else, form a firing line!”

  As the team of horses whinnied in fear, the sec man in the buckboard wagon holding the reins tried to control the animals while his partner lifted a balanced pair of throwing axes into view. Meanwhile the rest of the platoon brandished their crossbows and formed a defensive line between the charging monster and the imperial treasure cart. Assuming a marksman stance, Donovan aimed his heavy crossbow and fired. A split second later the other sec men did the same with their smaller version, unleashing a maelstrom of wooden shafts.

  Bristling with arrows, the creature recoiled from the staggering impacts, but the heavy wooden slats covering the giant man were not penetrated. Bellowing loudly, the armored coldheart shook his two arms in rage, the fake arms suspended underneath them dupli cating the motion precisely. Then a second armored man came out of the bushes, closely followed by two more.

  “Keep firing!” Donovan bellowed, reaching over a shoulder to pull a stone quarrel from the quiver on his back.

  At the sight of the additional coldhearts, the Anchor ville sec men needed no prompting to work the levers on their complex crossbows, the wooden machinery automatically drawing back the bow string and feeding another half-size arrow into the firing notch from the box magazine mounted on top. They fired in unison, and one of the attackers dropped to a knee, blood pouring from a small gap between his leg and belly.

  Stepping protectively in front of their wounded brother, the other coldhearts coughed inside their misshapen headmasks, and something flashed across the dirt road too fast to see clearly.

  Dropping their weapons, two of the sec men staggered backward. Gurgling horribly, they raked fingernails along their throats, desperately clawing at the tiny feathered darts buried in their skin. Already their flesh was turning a bilious green, and flecks of foam began to appear on their deathly pale lips.

  Pausing for only a moment, Donovan mercifully shot an arrow through the head of the nearest sec man, while the rest of the platoon did the same for the second man. There was no antidote for kraken poison.

  Reloading quickly, the sec men fired again, wounding another of what they called Hillies. Retreating slightly, the coldhearts coughed again, but ready this time, the sec men managed to dodge the incoming darts successfully. However, that was when Donovan suddenly noticed a dozen figures moving among the trees edging the road. Shitfire, he thought, the rad-suckers had to have brought along the whole tribe for this attack! The grim man had no idea how the bastards knew about the cargo in the treasure wag, but there was no way he was going to let his baron’s prize fall into the dirty hands of these stinking inbreed throwbacks.

  Tossing aside his loaded crossbow, Donovan clawed open the sealed holster at his side and hauled a predark blaster into view. Lovingly polished every day, the revolver shone rainbow bright with the reflected lights of the aurora borealis filling the sky.

  “Akhmed, Hannigan, watch the trees,” Donovan shouted, sliding a single brass round into the blaster and closing the cylinder with a jerk of his wrist. “Everybody else, flanking positions.”

  Launching another volley, the sec men hastily reloaded and quickly formed a wing formation behind their chief. Coughing out more darts, the Hillies bellowed angrily, then charged, concentrating on a young sec man struggling to clear an arrow jammed in the loading mechanism of his crossbow.

  Hastily taking aim, Donovan fired, and a Hilly stopped running, blood pouring from the mouth of his carved wooden mask. But even as the dying coldheart sank to his knees, the rest of the Hillies converged on the teenager just as the jam came free. The sec man raised his weapon and fired, but the half-arrow only dully thudded into the thick chest armor of the lead coldheart. Then the others struck, the bear talons on their four arms raking the youth, slicing him open and ripping out bloody gobbets of flesh.

  Horribly shrieking, the sec man went backward, his uniform slashed apart and soaked with blood. Feebly, the youth clutched the ruin of his face, an eyeball dangling between his bloody fingers on the end of some white ganglia, then his belly opened wide and ropy intestines slithered out, steaming from the cold air as they fell onto the cold ground.

  Without hesitation, the sec men aced their friend, then savagely hammered the hated mountain men with flight after flight of half-arrows, focusing on the narrow opening of the mouth in their grotesque masks. Waving their double set of arms as a distraction did nothing this time, and two of the Hillies slowed, red fluids trickling out of their wooden collars.

  Unexpectedly, a boomerang flashed over the sec men to brutally hit the mask of an undamaged Hilly. The deadly ’rang did no damage to the stout oak armor, but the attack distracted the coldhearts for a moment, just enough time for Donovan to finish unearthing a second bullet.

  Hastily firing, the sec chief carefully took out the knee of a Hilly, gore and splinters spraying into the trees. In a strangled cry, the coldheart feebly grabbed the wounded leg with his gigantic wooden gloves, trying to staunch the flow of life. However, designed to be frightening, the gloves were useless for the simple task and the blood continued to flow unchecked.

  At the sight, the lead Hilly paused for a long mo ment, arrows hitting his armor in a steady patter. But he yanked something from around his waist and threw it down hard. Instantly there was an explosion of dark smoke, the roiling cloud rapidly swelling to fill the road for yards.

  Quickly backing away from the mysterious fumes, the Anchor sec men shot half-arrows blindly into the smoke, but there were no answering thunks of a hit. Only the sound of heavy footsteps heading away, down the roadway toward the nearby shore.

  With a start, Donovan realized that the mountain men had to be trying to reach a boat, which could only mean reinforcements, more weapons or, worse, escape. Nuke that drek! the sec chief mentally snarled. Nobody aced one of his sec men and lived to tell the fragging tale.

  Donovan pulled in a deep breath and charged into the fumes, braced for a wave of searing pain. But nothing occurred, and when he finally had to breathe, there was only a sweet smell of flowers and kelp. Shitfire, it was only smoke, not poison.

  “Stay with the wag,” the chief sec man bellowed, redoubling his speed into the murky cloud. “These gleebs are mine!”

  “But, sir…” a sec woman began, taking a step forward.

  “This could be a diversion,” Donovan shouted, pulling out an obsidian ax. “Stay with the wag.”

  Just then something flew through the smoke, leaving spiraling contrails behind. So they had more darts, eh? Donovan grimaced, and tightened his grip on the ax and blaster.

  Shouting a rally cry, the sec chief dodged to the side, and, as expected, more darts flashed by, missing him by only a few inches. Pausing to listen for their footsteps, Donovan heard only the rustle of the leaves in the trees, then there came the soft sound of waves cresting on the beach. Zigzagging through the smoke, the sec chief ran as fast as he could and as the fumes began to thin, there were the Hillies, both brandishing axes and coming his way. Another damn trap.

  Diving forward, the man rolled under the swing of the double blades and came up standing behind the coldhearts. Shoving his blaster against the neck of the closest one, he fired, and the wooden helmet was blown off the man’s head, his face exploding outward in a horrible geyser of teeth and eyes.

  As the last Hilly spu
n around, Donovan saw that it was their leader, the elaborate designs on the armor proclaiming his exalted rank. The two men locked gazes for a full heartbeat, each testing for any sign of fear, then they swung their war axes in unison. The heavy obsidian blades met in a strident crash and each ax shattered, razor-sharp shards of green volcanic glass flying everywhere.

  Cursing vehemently, Donovan backed away, wiping at his stinging eyes, while the Hilly chuckled and pulled out a granite knife, the feathered edge gleaming bright as steel.

  Swinging up his blaster, Donovan expertly met the thrust and stone clanged off metal, the sound loud in the thinning smoke.

  “Shoulda stayed with your ville boys,” the coldheart said, a narrow slit displaying rows of rotten teeth.

  Caught by surprise, Donovan almost flinched from the wave of fetid breath. It was worse than a burning dung pit. But the sec chief forced himself to stay close, and slam the wooden shaft of the broken ax against the side of the Hilly’s head. The wooden helmet thumped and shifted slightly, covering the coldheart’s eyes.

  Snarling curses, the Hilly pulled back, one gloved hand fumbling with his helmet while the other waved the granite blade around wildly.

  Accidentally the blade scored a blood slash across Donovan’s chest, and he cried out in pain. Then he changed targets and with his ax handle started battering at the arm holding the blade. Spitting in rage, the Hilly clawed for a lumpy globe hanging from around his waist, but Donovan smacked the hand aside and went on hammering the wooden glove. Splinters came free and the coldheart tried to shift the blade to his other glove, but Donovan managed to smack it away and the blade went spinning into the forest and disappeared among the bushes. The Hilly dropped his gloves and grabbed the sec chief by the throat.

  Fighting to draw a breath, Donovan slammed his fists into the belly of the coldheart, but only managed to skin his knuckles against the battered armor. Thrusting upward, he then attempted to jam his fingers into an eye, but the slits were too narrow.

  Chuckling, the Hilly tightened his hold, his thumbs crushing deep into the neck of the struggling man. “Time to die, ville boy,” the coldheart whispered.

  Refusing to surrender, Donovan kept punching away even as his lungs began to ache then burn with their need for air. His heart was pounding in his chest and there was a growing ringing in his ears. Suddenly the world began to blur then spin out of control, black spots swimming in his sight, when the Hilly jerked and bizarrely released his grip.

  Gasping for air, Donovan backed away and saw that an arrow was embedded in the Hilly’s helmet, blood trickling along the shaft.

  Massaging his sore throat, Donovan looked up just as the treasure wag rolled into view out of the smoke, every sec man steadily firing flight after flight of half-arrows at the Hilly, the sec woman, Rosemary, triggering Donovan’s big crossbow.

  Snarling in rage, the Hilly reached for a smoke bomb on his belt, and Rosemary fired, the heavy shaft pinning his bare hand to the wooden armor. The coldheart shrieked at the pain, then half-arrows slammed into his other hand, slicing off fingers.

  Gibbering from the agony, the coldheart attempted to flee, clearly planning to simply throw himself off the cliff to escape his tormentors. But as he turned, a bald sec man threw a bolo. The stones tied to lengths of stout rawhide neatly spun across the intervening space and wrapped themselves tightly around the Hilly’s armored legs, trapping him in place.

  Stopping the treasure wag, the sec men poured onto the road and swarmed the helpless coldheart, concentrating their half-arrows for the narrow eye slits in the wooden mask. The terrified mountain man raised his wounded arm as protection, and a flurry of half-arrows nailed it permanently in place.

  “Pax! Pax!” the Hilly cried. “I surrender!”

  “Tough,” Donovan croaked in a barely recognizable voice. He held out an empty hand, and somebody slapped an ax into his palm.

  Tightening a fist around the fish-hide grip, the sec chief swung the weapon with all of his might and buried the polished granite blade deep into the back of the weeping coldheart. Then shouting curses, Donovan began hacking at the Hilly as if chopping down a tree. Chips flew off under the brutal impacts of the granite blade, then leather padding came into view and finally human skin….

  When he was finished, Donovan wiped the cracked blade clean on his pants and returned the borrowed weapon to the bald sec man.

  “Thanks,” Donovan whispered.

  “Always got your back,” Hannigan said proudly, slinging the weapon over a shoulder. “Now we go after those others in the forest?”

  In a rush of anger Donovan tried to speak, but could only cough for a few minutes. Akhmed passed over a gourd, and the sec chief pulled out the cork to pour the contents down his aching throat. The shine burned like fire, then the tenderness eased and he took his first deep breath for what seemed like an eternity.

  “No,” the sec chief said, speaking almost normally. “There could be more tricks, more traps. We’re heading for home, and not stopping for anything until we have a wall around our asses again. Savvy?”

  “No need to rush, Chief,” Gene said, both hands on the reins controlling the horses. “Whatever those things were in the forest, they skedaddled the minute that Hilly started eating dirt.”

  “Hillies,” Rosemary snorted in contempt, resting a throwing ax on a shoulder. In spite of wearing the largest size of body armor available, her ample breasts were simply much too big, and deliciously muffined over the top. Every man privately enjoyed the delightful sight, but the sec woman’s dire expertise with a throwing ax kept them all respectful and courteous even when far away from the ville on patrol. “Think they knew what we’re carrying?” The woman glanced into the cart. Set among their piles of supplies, barrels of water and such was a wooden strongbox bolted to the floorboards. Without explosives, it would take a day to chop into the box, and the only way to steal it was to take the whole cart. This was the best the ville had, but what it contained was more valuable than black powder.

  Making a face, Hannigan grunted. “Shitfire, if they knew what was in that box, the bastards would have sent a dozen coldhearts after us.”

  “Can the chatter, and go collect your arrows,” Donovan ordered, passing the gourd back to Akhmed. “The damn things don’t grow on trees, ya know.”

  Chuckling at the very old joke, the sec men dutifully retrieved the spent arrows, carefully pocketing the fletching and stone heads found with broken shafts. Sadly, quite a few of the half-arrows were gone, lost in the forest.

  Reclaiming his crossbow, Donovan slung it over a shoulder, then hunted for the blaster. He found it in the bushes, undamaged, just smeared with blood and dirt.

  “Here, I got the lead back for you, Chief,” MacDouglas said, proffering a small disfigured blob of gray metal.

  “Thanks, Mack,” Donavan said, tucking the slug in a shirt pocket along with the spent brass.

  “Excuse me, sir?” a bald sec man asked respectfully.

  “What is it, Carson?”

  “What should we do about the others?” the man asked, looking forlornly up the roadway. The herbal smoke was almost completely gone now, and the bodies of the fallen sec men could be clearly seen.

  “We’re short on time,” the sec chief began, but then relented. “But we’ll wait. Take a shovel and bury your kin. Save their crossbows for the baron, but you can have everything else for their kin.”

  “You want a hand?” Akhmed asked, tucking some loose fletching into a pocket.

  Shaking his head, Carson got a shovel from the cart, then trundled off to drag a tattered corpse into the bushes and perform the odious task in private.

  Shrugging his crossbow into a more comfortable position, Hannigan scowled at the aced Hilly lying mutilated in the churned dirt. “That was a hell of a scary mask,” he said, speaking as if the words had a bad taste. “Ya think the bastard based it upon a real mutie? Something from one of the outer islands? Those got hit a lot worse than us in the endwar.”
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  “Makes sense,” Akhmed replied, clearly unconvinced. “Unless the ocean currents have changed again. Remember when that mutie that looked like a man but was covered with suckers washed ashore from the mainland?”

  “Oh, don’t be a feeb,” Gene snapped impatiently. “There ain’t no mainland anymore. The whole damn world got nuked during the Big Heat. There’s only this chain of islands, nothing more. Baron Griffin says so.”

  The unflappable sec man shrugged in dismissal. “If you say so, cousin.” Thunder rumbled above and Donavan climbed into the back of the cart to drape a tarpaulin over the strongbox. It didn’t really need the additional protection, even if it was acid rain coming, but he felt it wise to be cautious with this cargo. A slave had found the treasure on the shore, of all places, and immediately turned it over to Baron Griffin for the promised reward of freedom. It was granted, the baron always kept his word. However, once the former slave was outside the ville where none of the civies could see, the sec men on the walls had shot him down in cold blood. Slaves were not allowed on the beach under any circumstances, and the punishment was death. The ancient laws ruled supreme on Royal Island, even when their transgression yielded the greatest treasure in the world.

  Metal. A big jagged chunk of rusty, corroded, glorious metal. Almost a full ten pounds. None of the sec men had any idea what the irregular lump had once been, but soon the ville blacksmith would convert it into a new hinge for the front gate, edging for a dozen knives and deadly tips for a hundred war arrows, vital protection needed by the ville against the hairy-ass barbs in the west, and that tricky bitch Wainwright to the far east. Anchor ville sat smack between the two, cursed with a baron more interested in dance and song than chilling. They were thankful for his wife. Lady Griffin was more of a warrior than any ten sec men in the ville.

  Including me, Donovan grudgingly admitted in private. Plus, the busty woman was also a lusty sex partner. The woman fought like a sec man and fucked like a gaudy slut. Now, that was a real woman! A proper ruler for any ville. It was just bad luck that the Book of Blood had decreed she had to marry that smiling feeb from Northpoint ville. But then, the Book had to be obeyed. End of discussion. Only the throwbacks, barbs and Hillies screwed whomever they wished, which was why so many of them were born…different.