by James Axler
Supposedly named after a mythical beast, the war wag was huge, as large as any predark tank, boasting overlapping armor plating and eight huge tires. There was no cannon, but it was armed with a brace of heavy machine guns, and what could only be a crude flamethrower. Blasterports dotted the sides, and two fluted exhaust pipes rose from the rear of the machine. Each was protected by a hood and surrounded by a small iron cage to prevent anything from being thrown into them and into the vulnerable engine.
Sitting motionless on the green grass, the Wendigo radiated a feeling of lethal power, and no fence or guards were necessary to keep the civies from getting too close. In a land almost completely devoid of metal, the armed might of the Wendigo was disturbing, almost obscene.
“Now where is…Yeah. There he is,” Ryan said in quiet satisfaction. “I knew he’d be close.”
“The master likes to keep his dogs close at hand,” Mildred noted dryly.
Only a few paces away from the hulking war wag was a wooden dais topped with a pair of thrones. The chairs were ornately carved with an endless motif of eagles and stars, the backs draped with beautiful white wolf fur. Sitting in the thrones and holding court over some bound prisoners were the absolute rulers of the ville, Baron Griffin and his lady.
Stroking the feathers of a falcon resting on the arm of his throne, Baron Nolan Griffin was heavily muscled and covered with tattoos, more closely resembling a sailor than a ruling baron. His clothing was spotlessly clean, and he wore several pieces of metal to show his wealth, a thick silver necklace, a high school signet ring and a large predark wristwatch in remarkably good condition. A crude half-circle of hammered iron served the baron as a makeshift crown and two holstered blasters rode low in a fancy gunbelt.
Clearly much older than her husband, Lady Barbara Griffin was as plump as a gaudy house madam, yet her breasts were so small that they disappeared behind an embroidered leather bodice. Her auburn hair was long, and hung loose around a stern face that held no trace of mercy. The woman wore a flowing gown trimmed in white fur, with a silk scarf wrapped about her pudgy throat. A sawed-off shotgun rode in a large holster that had to have been specifically designed for the ungainly blaster. Metal rings were on every finger, and silver loops hung from both of her ears.
Standing alongside an iron brazier full of glowing hot charcoal was a large man with a blond crewcut, his bearing, scars and holstered blaster proclaiming that he was either the only son of the baron or the sec chief.
Kneeling on the cold ground in front of the baron and his wife was a pair of men, their hands and legs lashed together. Their clothes were in tatters, and bloody welts crisscrossed their backs.
“But, my lord, I reported this man for stealing the salt from the barracks of the sec men!” one of the prisoners called in a hoarse voice. He had a full head of hair and wore the loose clothing of a civie. “Why am I also being punished?”
His head bowed, the other man said nothing, his fate already sealed. He could only hope for the clemency of a swift execution on the gallows.
“Why? You dare to ask that? Because you are also a thief!” Lady Griffin growled in barely contained rage. “You were seen licking the block when you thought nobody was watching!”
“B-but I had to make sure it really was salt…” the man said lamely.
“Don’t you have a nose?” Sec chief Donovan snarled in open hatred. “My lord, let me ace this fool here and now!”
Surreptitiously, Ryan and Mildred exchanged glances. Salt was in short supply, eh? That only made sense on an island in the middle of a freshwater lake. They had seen what a lack of salt did to a person out in the broiling desert of the Deathlands. First came a terrible thirst, then mounting weakness, closely followed by mental confusion, and finally death. It was an ugly way to get chilled.
Placing the falcon on a nearby wooden perch, Baron Griffin thought about the request. “Granted,” he said without any trace of emotion. “Slit his throat and boil him down to recover the salt.”
Grinning, the sec chief leaped off the dais, pulling out a blade. The prisoner had only a moment to gasp in shock before the blade flashed through the air and he fell gurgling to the ground, his hot blood steaming as it pumped onto the cold grass.
Wiping the blade clean on the clothes of the dying man, Donovan sheathed the weapon, then hawked and spit on the fool.
“As for you…” the baron said, turning to address the thief. “Twenty-five lashes for the theft, and ten more for trying to escape.”
Prepared for much worse, the prisoner could not believe his good luck. Was that all? He was going to live!
“Then take his eyes so that he won’t be able to ever steal again,” Lady Griffin added, a hint of a smile playing on her full lips.
The surrounding crowd roared their approval and the terrified prisoner began wildly twisting and turning, trying to get free.
Snapping his fingers, sec chief Donovan pointed at the bound man and a gang of sec men descended upon him with raised clubs and proceeded to pound every trace of defiance out of the condemned thief. Battered and bruised, the prisoner fell gasping to the ground, openly weeping. Then the hooded figure of the ville executioner walked out of the crowd, a curved blade held in a gloved hand.
Some of the civies watched in fascination, others turned away in disgust, but soon the odious task was done, and the unconscious prisoner was dragged off to the learning tree to wait until he woke to receive the rest of his sentence.
“Well, you were right,” Mildred said, shifting the boomerang in her belt to a more comfortable position. “The baron does like to hold court in sight of his war wag.”
“That’s just common sense,” Ryan replied, involuntarily touching the patch on his face in sympathy. “You always have to make the people remember you’re the greatest victory, or their own mortality. Sec men chill with blasters, but a baron rules through fear.”
Judging this was as good a time as any, Ryan raised an arm high and began walking toward the dais. “Metal!” he shouted. “I’ve got metal for the baron!”
As the startled crowd got hastily out of the way, the baron and his wife glowered at the stranger walking boldly forward. The black-haired man was not familiar to them, and carried himself with the calm assurance of a seasoned warrior.
Carefully studying the man, sec chief Donovan rested a hand on his blaster. He had no idea who the fellow was, but his guts said this was a nuke-storm of trouble coming.
“And who are you?” Baron Griffin demanded.
“Finnigan, sir,” Ryan replied, using the name of an old friend who no longer walked the Deathlands. “And this be my wife, Holly.”
Trying to appear humble, Mildred gave an awkward curtsy.
“Odd accent. Where are you from?” Donovan asked in a hard tone, his fingers tripping the handle of the big bore blaster.
“Saddle Brook,” Ryan replied. “A little fishing ville on the outer islands, near the Broke Place.” He had no idea what that meant, and neither did Liana, but she claimed that was all anybody called it, the Broke Place.
Incredibly, Lady Griffin perked up at that. “Saddle Brook? Why, I was born there!”
Keeping his face neutral, Ryan internally cursed the bad luck, then saw the baron fight to hide a smile. Clever bitch, it was just a trick to try to expose a liar. Whatever else they might be, these people were not fools.
“Sorry, my lady, but I don’t seem to recall ever seeing you there,” Ryan said in mock apology. “Could have sworn that I knew everybody from the Saddle.” He shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”
Nodding in satisfaction as if the stranger had just passed some kind of a test, Baron Griffin dismissed the matter with a gesture. “You two can talk about old times later,” he said, leaning forward. “Now, what was this about metal, eh? Found a tin can, did you? Or perhaps a nail?”
“We can always use more of those,” Donovan sniffed in marked disinterest.
“Show the baron, woman!” Ryan barked, jerking a thumb at the
baron. “That be why we here!”
Meekly, Mildred stepped forward, offering a small wad of folded cloth.
Scowling uncertainly, the baron hesitantly took the bundle and unwrapped the oil cloth to gasp out loud. Lying in the palm of his hand was a blaster. Not the rusted remains of one, but an intact blaster, the steel as smooth as polished bone.
Lifting the blaster, the baron felt a visceral thrill surge through his gut at the weight of the steel in his hand. His own weapons were nowhere near as heavy. This blaster was a monster! Easily twice the caliber of the one he inherited from his father, and he from his father before, possession of the weapon going all the way back to skydark.
“Careful, my lord, it be loaded,” Ryan warned.
The baron raised an eyebrow at that, and warily cracked the cylinder to extract a live brass, the metal shiny bright, the lead cut into the deadly cross pattern of a dum-dum. It was incredible. Live brass! He checked and found two more in the weapon, plus two empties. Five brass, three of them live!
“This is truly quite a find,” Lady Griffin said, seemingly unable to catch her breath. “You did well, outlander, to bring it directly to us. Failure to do so is a slow death on the learning tree. Or worse, the slave pits.”
In dark harmony, there came the distant crack of a bullwhip, followed by the anguished scream of a slave.
“That is as it should be, my lady,” Mildred answered quickly, spreading her arms. “Only barons and their sec men should touch metal.” She smiled, and hoped it didn’t look like a grimace. The fragging boomerang was digging into her hip again, and bothering a sore rib she had acquired when the companions abruptly departed from the warship in the bay.
If the baroness noticed anything wrong, she made no comment. But she looked steadily at the physician in a most unnerving manner.
Sensing that something might be wrong, Mildred decided to not speak again unless spoken to directly.
“Well, Finnigan, this is the prize of a lifetime,” Baron Griffin stated in heartfelt honesty, removing the cartridges to spin the cylinder, then load it again. “So tell me, what do you want as a reward? A year of easy living in the gaudy house? Two horses? Ten crossbows? A hundred slaves?”
Pretending to scratch under his eyepatch, Ryan struggled to not show his disgust at the callous hierarchy of life. “Just a boat, my lord, one large enough for fishing, and six nets,” Ryan said, putting a touch of eagerness into the words. “Plus, all the food it can carry. My boat sank in a storm last week and now…” He shrugged.
“The ville is starving without the boat.” The baron nodded in understanding, passing the blaster to his sec chief. “Yes, I see, of course.”
Accepting the weapon, Donovan tucked it away for later cleaning and a thorough examination. Nobody was going to fire the new weapon until it had been completely disassembled and checked for traps. The fat slut Wainwright was triple clever, and not above sending one of her sec men to pose as an outlander with a trick blaster as a gift to ace her cousin. The baron of Northpoint never attacked straight-on, but always hit from the side, like a damn lake snake. The joke among his troops was, if you hear nothing in the fog, it had to be Wainwright on the move.
“A boat and two nets, you said?” Baron Griffin asked, deliberately getting the numbers wrong.
Instantly, Ryan felt his long years of training under the tutelage of the Trader flare into action as the negotiations began in earnest. “Beg pardon, my lord, it was six nets and a ton of food,” he said incorrectly.
“Oh, yes. Six nets and ten barrels of dried fish.”
“Twenty barrels and five more of grain.”
“Ridiculous! Ten and five.”
“Six, ten and ten.”
“Done!” The baron grinned in pleasure. “We have a deal, outlander.” He paused and then added, “You could have asked for more.”
Knowing that was true, Ryan shrugged. “I only asked for what was needed, my lord. Not going to ask for a horse if I can’t ride.”
“Wise words,” the baron acknowledged, then spit into his palm and offered his hand. “My sec men will escort you to the dockyard, and you can choose a boat from my fleet. Anything under twenty feet is yours. Slaves will deliver the food and nets before nightfall.”
“Thank you, my lord!” Ryan said, accepting the hand and shaking to seal the deal.
“Please also allow me to give you a small gift,” Lady Griffin purred, sliding a worn plastic bracelet off her wrist.
“Thank you, my lady,” Mildred replied with a forced grin, trying to appease the woman. In her time, the garish trinket was the kind of thing you could buy from a vending machine for a quarter.
However, as the physician reached out to accept the bracelet, Lady Griffin roughly grabbed her hand and pulled Mildred closer, staring intently at her face, and then nodding in grim satisfaction.
“Yes, I thought so!” Lady Griffin shouted in triumph. “Look there, metal! The outlander bitch has steel in her mouth!”
Jerking free from the grip, Mildred stared at the woman as if she were insane, then the truth of the matter hit her like an express train. Her fillings! She had completely forgotten about the fillings in her back molars.
“Steel in her teeth?” the baron asked with a frown, then his face hardened. “Mainlanders! Only mainlanders do that twisted perversion!”
Snapping his head around at the wild accusation, sec chief Donovan started to frown, then saw the grim expression on the face of the outlander. So it was true, these were mainlanders! “Close the gate!” the man bellowed, drawing his blaster. “Protect the baron!”
But as fast as the sec chief was, Ryan matched his speed, whipping out the SIG-Sauer in a blur of motion, and the two men fired simultaneously at each other in point-blank range.
Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
The fog was heavy along the shore, and with their crossbows leading the way, the Northpoint sec men warily pushed aside the curtain of thorny bushes to enter the dark cave.
The last to enter was the Hilly, the mountain man brandishing a weapon in each hand, his every sense alert for the presence of the one-eyed giant who led the pack of outlanders. He had seen the nuking bastard in action, and had no wish to ever face the big man in battle. A knife in the back would do just fine.
As the sec men moved deeper into the cave, their torches revealed nobody hidden inside the rocky passageway, only the remains of an abandoned campsite, a few broken arrows, some food scraps and a wad of strange paper that smelled like food but was as shiny as metal.
“What the frag is it?” a sec man asked in obvious confusion.
“Dunno,” sec chief LeFontaine muttered, fondling a piece. The material was as soft as leather, and made a sound like dry autumn leaves being crumpled when he closed his fist. Yet when the man opened his hand, the stuff sprang back into the original shape. Bizarre.
“We better bring that back to the baron,” a beefy sec woman stated. “Just in case it’s…ya know…”
“Yeah, guess so,” LeFontaine agreed. It gave him a thrill to think there might be a wad of metal in his pocket.
“Well, whatever that drek is, there’s no big honking pile of blasters waiting for us, that’s for damn sure,” a sec woman declared irritably, playing the light of her torch around the cave. “I always did think that inbred throwback was shitting in our ears.”
“No, I swear the outlanders were here!” the Hilly cried.
Frowning, a sec man chuffed him to the ground. “Shut the frag up,” he growled menacingly. “Or ya get more!”
“No need for that yet,” LeFontaine growled, then paused to retrieve something shiny from the cold ashes of the campfire.
At first, he couldn’t quite identify what it was, never having seen anything like it before. Then his mind coalesced around the object and he gasped in astonishment. It was a spoon! A bent spoon made of solid metal, left behind with the trash as if it was of no importance whatsoever, completely worthless.
“
Release the Hilly,” LeFontaine ordered, marveling over the incredible utensil. “He was telling it straight, boys. The outlanders were here, and packing more steel than even the lord high bastard Griffin his own damn self!”
The hand that had hit the Hilly now reached out to offer him assistance to get back on his feet. Ignoring it, the mountain man stood and dusted off his ragged furs. There were a million things he wanted to say, but now was not the time or the place.
“So what are we waiting for?” the Hilly demanded. “Let’s go track down the mutie lovers, and get those blasters!”
The sec men cheered, and LeFontaine led the way outside to the waiting horses.
Climbing onto his mount, LeFontaine shook the reins and started forward at a slow walk. “All right, I want a full recce of the beach!” he said gruffly. “They probably swept the dirt to disguise which direction they went in, but nobody can do it forever. Spread out! Find their damn tracks, and it’s a week of beef, bed and beer for the man who does!”
The sec men burst into eager smiles at the generous offer, but then their expressions melted into frowns as a mountain of mottled hide rose from the nearby lake, the colossal figure of the kraken blotting out the foggy sun.
Snarling virulent curses, the sec men swung up their crossbows to cut loose with a flurry of arrows. They hit the mutie hard, the wooden shafts going into the fletching. Ignoring the attack, the monstrous thing howled as dozens of ropy tentacles snaked out of the waves to grab a horse by the legs. Screaming in terror, the animal was hauled into the lake and disappeared beneath the choppy surface.
“Retreat!” LeFontaine bellowed, kicking his horse in the flanks and charging for the nearby forest. The sec chief had a full five rounds of live brass in his wheel gun, but against a kraken he might as well be throwing pinecones.
Galloping off the beach, the Northpoint sec men raced for their lives. If they could just get deep enough into the trees, the sheer size of the mutie would prevent it from following. They knew it was a desperate gamble, but there was no other choice. Only a feeb fought a hopeless battle.
