by James Axler
Kiyomasa called the other Tigers of Heaven forward and introduced them so swiftly Kane had only the vaguest idea of which name belonged to who— Jozure, Ibichi, Kuroda, Odo. As Kiyomasa spoke each name, the man lifted his faceplate long enough to nod, then snapped it back into the down position again.
The imprints of the passage of many feet were easily visible in the sandy soil, but it required a few minutes to distinguish the tracks of the savages from the Mags. The group of ten started off, leaving the corpses of the savages to lie unattended on the sand. Shizuka, Grant and Kane replaced their helmets. The other Tigers moved with a surprising degree of stealth, despite the amount of metal they wore and carried.
It appeared Pollard's Magistrates no longer cared about covering up their trail. The gauntlet of snakes had either spooked them so much they forgot to sweep their tracks, or they hoped any pursuers would fall prey to the bites of the diamondbacks.
Grant, who at first seemed inclined to walk beside Shizuka, dropped back to speak quietly to Brigid. "How much of Kiyomasa's story should we believe?"
"Without any evidence to contrary," she answered, "we might as well accept all of it as gospel. Besides, the bare bones match up with an account in the Wyeth Codex."
Grant nodded, seeming to be both relieved and comforted.
The Codex was a journal of sorts by Mildred Wi-nona Wyeth, one of the enduring legends of the Deathlands. Born in the twentieth century, Wyeth had slept through the nukecaust and skydark in cryonic suspension. She was revived after nearly a hundred years by another semimythical figure of the Death-lands, Ryan Cawdor. Wyeth joined Cawdor's band of survivalists who journeyed the length and breadth of postholocaust America. At some point in her journeys, she found a working computer and recorded many of their experiences and adventures.
"She even went to Japan?" Kane asked skeptically.
"And a lot of other places. She was one well-traveled lady."
As they walked, Brigid saw how Domi seemed content to lag behind, which both annoyed and disturbed her. She gestured for the girl to come forward, but she only shook her head. Brigid fervently hoped after her humiliation at the hands of Shizuka, Domi wasn't scheming some form of payback.
A two-mile hike brought them to the crest of a low range, more of a sprawling foothill to the Sierra Ne-vadas. They stood at the brow of the hill and stared at the collection of ruins below them.
The buildings of the town were gutted shells, its streets choked with rabble and debris. It was a settlement long dead, at least since the nukecaust. Mesquite bushes grew in open courtyards bounded by the remnants of once tall walls and cluttered with the wreckage of long collapsed roofs. Scrubby grass grew in the pockets of windblown dust and weathered detritus.
"Looks like you'll get in a little archaeology practice after all, Baptiste," Kane said quietly to Brigid.
They looked down at the still-visible pattern of streets and lanes, laid out in a grid. A nearby river sparkled clearly in the moonlight, running slow and quiet. Not far downstream it was joined by another flow of water.
"They're down there," Shizuka announced, her voice muffled by her full-face visor. "They could have gone around the place, but the fact they did not shows they intend to spend the night."
Kane and Grant silently agreed with her assessment. Pollard wouldn't want to trudge across the wasteland at night, regardless of the cooler temperatures. The town offered more shelter than sand dunes, and they could rest with a degree of comfort.
Kiyomasa grunted as if satisfied. "We shall find them easily."
Quietly, Kane said, "Once we do, remember how revenge is not our mission priority."
"Point out a murderer you wish spared," Kiyomasa retorted with a touch of impatience in his tone. "If at all possible, he will be. However, sparing child-killing cowards is not part of the otoko no michi."
"The what?"
"The manly and honorable samurai tradition." Over his shoulder, Kiyomasa spoke to the Tigers in his own tongue. They began to fan out, slinging their carbines over their shoulders and drawing their swords.
"Unclean weapons like guns have their uses," the captain continued, "but only the katana—the sword—can quench the samurai's thirst for vengeance."
Kane contemplated the meaning of Kiyomasa's remark for a couple of seconds, then swiftly stepped to the lip of the ridge. With a geniality he didn't feel, he said, "I'll take point. It's part of my tradition."
Kiyomasa stared at him with an indefinable expression on his face then lowered his visor with a short, slapping motion. "Aft so deska, Kane-san."
Kane wasn't sure what he said, but he assumed— and hoped—Kiyomasa wasn't warning him to keep out of his way.
Chapter 10
Kane picked his way slowly down the steep decline, his companions and the Tigers of Heaven following at a discreet distance. When he reached the outskirts of the ruins, he waited and watched and listened for a minute. There was something both fascinating and repellent about the houses, roofless and silent in the night Many of the fallen walls showed black glassy surfaces, as if they had been exposed to intense heat and the stones vitrified. Peeping through tangled vines here and there, he saw the rust-red streaks of what had once been vehicles, which gave him some idea of the many years the city had lain unattended. By the standards of the Outlands, scavengers should have put the wags to other uses long ago.
He tried to find some hint for the cause of the city's collapse, but there was no sign of a single catastrophe, no bomb craters, no evidence of shelling. Despite the fact some of the ruins showed signs of fire-blackening, others did not Some buildings still stood among others that were no more than ragged foundations. Wide dark bands of dried mud discolored many of the walls, from the ground to half their heights. Evidently, the two rivers tended to flood intermittently.
Kane gestured and his party joined him, the Tigers again impressing him with how quickly and relatively silently they moved in their armor. He stalked down a broad avenue. Farthest from the edge of the river, the city was better preserved than elsewhere. Here most of the buildings still stood. They were low, long structures set upon terraces and facing curving streets. The streets were narrow, and they had to keep to the center for the bushes and creepers had narrowed it still further.
Many of the plants bore flowers, and Brigid wondered aloud if they had once been part of gardens that overgrew and overflowed to make a continuous thicket The area had all the appearances of a residential section of the city, what she knew were once called suburbs.
Brigid said, "I mink this place was what the pre-darkers called a commuter community, a specially built or expanded township for people who worked in large metropolitan areas but didn't want to live or raise their children there."
A few minutes later, Brigid pointed out a big square of plastic rearing from the ground, almost covered by bramble bushes. It depicted a cartoony Sun wearing a big smile, a sombrero and dark glasses. The bright read copy read Welcome to Vista del Sol—Our Future's So Bright We Need Shades!
Kane didn't know whether to laugh or scoff.
On impulse, as they passed one of the rambling houses, Kane strode up a walk to peer inside. Grant, Domi and Brigid followed him, the Tigers waiting out on the street. The doorway was wide and tall. The wooden frame disintegrated into fine powder when he brushed against it with a shoulder. Inside all was a shambles. Dead leaves filled the hallways, and the rooms showed evidence of being long-unused nests for vermin.
The interior smelled musty, which was not surprising, but it also held another odor, faint but detectable. Domi sniffed and said quietly, "Smoke."
It was the first word she had spoken in more than an hour. Kane and Brigid experimentally sniffed the air and detected the faint odor of wood smoke. Grant did not bother, inasmuch as his nose had been broken three times in the past and always poorly reset. A running joke during his Mag days was that Grant could eat a hearty dinner with a dead skunk lying right next
to his plate.
They followed the scent of smoke out of the residential section and down a side lane. The street ahead of them looked as if it had been a mix of storefronts and apartment buildings. Many of the structures lacked roofs, and there wasn't a single pane of glass visible in any of the windows.
Kane once again took the point, leading them quickly along the narrow, overgrown alleys and through deep shadow between roofless walls. They passed doorways leading into nothing but darkness.
Up ahead he caught the murmur of voices, the muffled clink of steel. The odor of smoke thickened. The alley took a sharp turn and butted up against the base of a high wall, about eight feet tall. It extended from the side of a multistoried apartment complex, forming a wide square enclosure on its rear side. The designers of the building had gone in for a Spanish Mission style architecture, meant to evoke the days of hidalgos and caballeros. Fake adobe covered over bricks, and a square, bell-tower-like cupola rose from the top of the structure. Most of the adobe stucco had peeled away from the walls decades before, revealing the mortared brick beneath.
Thick, flowering vines sprouted from the brickwork. Using hand signals, Kane informed his party of his intentions. Kiyomasa nodded brusquely, and he and Grant made a stirrup out of their hands. They heaved Kane high enough so he could see what lay on the other side of the wall.
In a spacious but litter-strewed courtyard, a few Magistrates were pacing restlessly, but most of them sat around a small fire, eating their rations from the self-heat packages. They stared at the flames and smothered yawns. Several of the Mags lounged on the flagstones with their helmets off, Pollard included. Kane recognized several—Franklin, Hotch-kiss, Brady. A few others he knew by sight but not by name.
An empty swimming pool, half-filled with scraggly tumbleweeds and debris, served as the prisoners'
holding cell. They huddled together against a curving wall. All of them looked exhausted, their faces haggard and begrimed. They were fed scantily by a Mag and given enough water to keep life in them, but not much more. Their fetters were not loosened, but they were allowed to sprawl around as they might
Pollard stood some distance from the fire, a cup of coffee sub in his ungloved right hand. He gazed vacantly at the pool, not really seeing it, as if he were lost in thought. Kane saw the faint scar bisecting his right eyebrow, the memento of the day Grant rescued Lakesh from the Cobaltville cell blocks.
He wished Grant hadn't left the bastard alive, or at the very least had crippled him. Kane and Grant had known Pollard for years, and they had never liked him. He was a simple, brutal, uncompromising man, always toeing the mark and obeying his superiors' orders without question. He made the perfect blunt instrument, and in Pollard's mind, that quality made him the ideal Magistrate. More than once he had evinced jealousy of Kane's and Grant's reputations.
Kane saw equipment packs piled in a corner, on the opposite side of the compound from the prisoners. Other than the Sin Eaters, the only blasters in sight were the standard-issue Copperheads. He figured grens were stowed somewhere, since they were part of the normal hard-contact complement of ordnance.
Kane made a swift head count and noticed four of the twenty Magistrates were nowhere in sight. He assumed they were on sentry duty somewhere outside the walled compound, patrolling the perimeter. A wide, dark doorway gaped in the side of the building, but he doubted any of the Mags were inside. It was very defensible ground Pollard had chosen. The only opening in the wall was a narrow arched entranceway.
He gestured to Kiyomasa and Grant. They eased him down to the ground, and he strode back into the alley, indicating the others should follow him.
"We've got four Mags unaccounted for," he reported in a grim whisper. "They're on guard somewhere, so we've got to be on triple red. If we're spotted and they raise an alarm, Pollard and his men could hold us off for a long time."
"What do you suggest?" Kiyomasa inquired.
"We'll split up. I'll get inside the building and come up on them from the inside. The rest of you circle the zone, find the guards and take them out. Secure the way into and out of the compound."
Kiyomasa nodded. "Hai. A sound strategy."
"One more thing," Kane added. "I've spotted the man we need alive. His name is Pollard." He supplied Kiyomasa with his physical description. "Disable him if you have to, but don't kill him."
Turning to the four Tigers, Kiyomasa repeated Kane's words. They all responded with head nods.
Kane opened the war bag and removed three grens, a CS gas canister and a pair of Alsatex concussion flash-bangs.
"I'll go with you," Brigid volunteered, reaching for a concussion gren.
Domi gave Grant and Shizuka a narrow-eyed glance and extended her hand to Kane. "Me, too."
Kane handed her a flash-bang. "Be careful with it."
Domi regarded him with an up-from-under glare. "I'm not a child."
Grant stepped beside Shizuka and, facing Kane, he lifted his right index finger to his nose and snapped it away in the wry "one percent" salute. It was a gesture he and Kane had developed during their Mag days and reserved for undertakings with small ratios of success.
Kane returned it gravely. "Let's get it done."
Grant, Shizuka, Odo and Jozure crept around the north side of the sprawling apartment complex while Kiyomasa, Ibichi and Kuroda circled southward. They kept to wedges of shadow, angling toward the dark overgrown areas. Shizuka took the point, astonishingly fast and agile in her armor. She darted quickly into and out of the spots of best cover with barely a sound. While Grant and the two Tigers stayed close to the shadow of the wall, Shizuka crept away at an oblique angle.
Grant watched her with frank admiration. He couldn't deny his attraction for the woman. She exuded self-confidence, a slightly self-deprecating sense of humor and, despite her warrior trappings, a gentleness of spirit. She was certainly more mature than Domi, both in years and behavior.
And there was something about her that penetrated his guarded reserve. He didn't know exactly what it was, but she touched his inner core in a way only one other woman had done in his life—Olivia, the only woman who'd truly claimed his heart.
A shadow suddenly shifted behind Shizuka, a shape blacker than the darkness. A Mag glided soundlessly out of the gloom, combat knife in one fist and Sin Eater in the other. He wasn't wearing his helmet and in a split second Grant understood the man's strategy.
Removing his helmet in a potential killzone was more than unforgivably stupid; it was a major breach of hard-contact protocols. Without his helmet, the Mag couldn't relay a report about an intruder. His only option was to try to take out Shizuka with the knife rather than a blaster, which would possibly alert other intruders skulking around the perimeter.
Grant started to yell a warning when Shizuka spun faster than anyone he'd ever seen, Kane included. She whirled on the ball of one foot and came up with a two-handed stroke. With a faint wet sound, the blade sliced off the Mag's right arm just below the elbow. Coming up from under his armpit without ceasing her movement, she circled back, ready to deliver a second slash if necessary.
It wasn't. The Magistrate who had just lost his arm gazed with wonder at his limb lying on the ground, the hand still holding his Sin Eater. As blood continued to pour from the stump of his arm, he fell to his knees, then on his face. He died within seconds from the double traumas of blood loss and shock.
Grant, Jozure and Odo joined Shizuka around the body. Staring at the blood-damp katana in wonder, Grant husked out, "What the flash-blasted hell is that sword made out of?"
"Steel, of course," Shizuka replied, reaching beneath her breastplate and taking out a scrap of silk. She carefully wiped the blood from the blade.
"Steel can't cut through Mag armor like that," Grant objected incredulously. "Or it shouldn't be able to."
"It's a new process…or rather an old one, rediscovered about twenty years ago by Lord Takaun."
Grant eyed first the katana th
en her with suspicion. "Kiyomasa said the old sciences had been lost."
"A century ago, most of them had been. But not all of them remained so." Her dark eyes peered at him, glittering through the slits in her visor. "Did Kane-san reveal everything about your Magistrates and your barons?"
Grant forced a chuckle. "Point taken."
Shizuka turned to Odo and Jozure, addressing them curtly. They took hold of the Magistrate and his severed arm, dragging bom out of sight into a tangle of shrubbery. The four people then resumed their circuit around the walled courtyard.
This time Grant assumed the point position. If they encountered another sentry, the sight of a man in the black armor wouldn't instantly drive him to the at-tack. Their progress was achingly slow, since they had to pick their way over a scattering of broken masonry, most of it butting up against the wall.
He heard a voice call out in a hoarse whisper, "Claremont, is that you?"
Grant turned slowly, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. A hedgerow rustled a dozen yards to his right, and a Magistrate stepped out, this one wearing his helmet. Grant didn't recognize his jawline or voice so he mumbled a monosyllabic acknowledgment.
The Mag accepted the mumble as an affirmative and strode toward him, saying, "I'm so sick of this shit. Nobody's following us, so why can't we keep moving? Do you have your canteen with you—?"
The man was so intent on venting two days' worth of accumulated frustration it wasn't until he stood nearly toe-to-toe with Grant that he realized he wasn't addressing Claremont. His litany of complaints abruptly ceased, and he opened his mouth and raised his Sin Eater simultaneously.
Grant's left fist hammered upward, catching the Magistrate under the jaw, twisting his head back brutally on his neck. The impact of the uppercut dropped the man to earth without a sound. Grant was not as fast as Kane, but he was a good deal stronger, and when he struck, he usually struck only once.
