Homeward Bound

by James Axler

  "I'd decided that I'd try for the baron with this," he informed them, flourishing the blaster, "if he'd had you all chilled. Then the sky opened yonder." The young man laughed. "Heard me some chem storms over the Shens. Never nothing like that. Thought the nukes were back again. Then I glimpsed the baron, face like a madman, double-stupe, galloping toward the ville. Streaked with blood and dirt. Thought I'd come see what had been going down with you."

  "They all died," Ryan said.

  "What?" Nathan shook his head. "That can't be, Uncle."

  "You keep calling me 'Uncle' and I'll start calling you 'Nephew.' Understand, Nate?"

  "Sure, Ryan, but…all of 'em? That's nine tenths of the sec men from the ville."

  "Guess that's 'bout right."

  "And Harvey's driven clear-crazed. That means that anything could be happening back at Front Royal right now."

  Ryan nodded his agreement. "That's right. Which is why we're heading there. Back to the ville." Under his breath, so that only Krysty heard him he added, "Homeward bound."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  SEC TROOPER BAKER was in charge of the main gateway into the ville, with young Sec Trooper Lesser as his companion. They were two of the dozen or so guards left behind when Baron Cawdor had ridden out to hunt an hour past noon. They'd watched him go, each man rigidly at attention, carbines at port arms.

  The ville was quiet. Word had quickly gotten around the small settlements that surrounded the main house— word that the long-lost Lord Ryan had returned and been captured; word that during the day, he and his companions would become the victims of the hunting pack of crossbred hounds.

  It was something over an hour later—neither man was sufficiently high in the rankings of the sec men to merit his own chron—and they were talking quietly about the merits of a two-edged knife against a single blade.

  Then the explosion came with a shock wave that fluttered dried leaves on the cobbles leading to the drawbridge, rippling the surface of the filthy moat.

  The noise was like a hundred distant peals of thunder collected into one great booming crash.

  Baker jumped, nearly dropping his M-16. "May Blessed Ryan save us!" he exclaimed, the words out before he could stop them. But his companion was too startled himself to notice the treasonable utterance bursting from Trooper Baker.

  A cloud of smoke gushed straight up. It was dark and oily, and Lesser's sharp sight picked out black shapes that rose within it and then fell again into the trees. The light breeze tugged at the toppling crown of the smoke, tearing it into ragged streaks of gray. Within a couple of minutes the wind brought the faint smell of gasoline to the two men, overlaid with another scent, oddly familiar, yet elusive. It reminded Lesser of something in the kitchens, but he couldn't say what.

  Neither man knew quite what he should do. The explosion certainly had come from the direction of the Oxbow Loop, where the hunting always took place, and it had been a truly awesome explosion. But what it portended… ? That was the question.

  Neither man even knew who was supposed to be in charge of the ville. The baron was gone, and he'd taken virtually everyone with him, including the senior sec officer. Lesser wondered, nervously, if one of them ought to go and tell Lady Rachel about the explosion. But that meant going all the way to her suite of rooms and risking her anger if she was sleeping. Or "busy." And both men knew what "busy" might mean to the Baron's wife.

  So they did nothing.

  About half an hour later Baker heard a horse coming toward them at a fast canter from the general direction of the Oxbow Loop Road. And they could hear shouting— a man roaring in a hoarse voice.

  With barely a dozen men in the whole ville, there was no question of turning out the guard. All they could do was move cautiously back inside the main gateway, readying their M-16s for whatever might be approaching them.

  "It's the baron," Lesser said.

  "Lost his hat."

  "Cloak's torn."

  "Gone stark crazy," Baker suggested, "shouting like that."

  The horse was lathered, rolling from side to side with utter exhaustion, stumbling as it reached the far end of the drawbridge, nearly tipping Harvey Cawdor in to join his son. He hung along the neck, eyes wide and shot with blood, mouth open. It was difficult to make out any words in the harsh raging.

  "Nevermore… all… all fucked. My brother comes and—"

  Once inside the courtyard, Baron Harvey Cawdor slithered from the saddle and fell to the cold stones, lying on his face, weeping. The two sec men were joined by two more from the guardhouse.

  "Bastard smell of gasoline," one said.

  "And he's drenched in blood," Lesser observed.

  "Where's the others, my lord?" Trooper Baker asked. "They coming, my lord?"

  Harvey turned, and they all took an involuntary step backward. The face they saw was scarcely human. The eyes were frozen, the pupils like the pricks of a needle. The color had gone completely, and there were deep furrows etched around mouth, nose and eyes. Hundreds of tiny specks of crusted blood dotted his cheeks, matting the scorched hair. His whole body trembled.

  "Coming? Who? Brother Ryan? Nevermore. Never ever more more."

  "Where's the rest of the men and the dogs, my lord?" Baker asked, showing amazing courage to press the madman. Or incredible foolishness.

  Lesser went back on the drawbridge, shading his eyes with his hand. The wind had freshened, veering to the east, with the promise of colder weather and some rain within the next day or so. The roads all around the ville were deserted. "Nobody coming," he called. "Not a sight of 'em."

  "The rest?" Baker repeated.

  Harvey Cawdor rose to his feet, drawing the remnants of his tattered dignity around him. "The rest, my good fellow, is gone. Are gone. Chilled. Blown to a better place or world or whatever. Each dog and each horse and each man are here, in my face." He rubbed at the congealed blood. "Each spot a life. And all chilled by my brother. I think he will be here shortly. So keep good watch." He clapped Baker on the shoulder and then kissed him on the cheek, turning on his heel and waddling crookedly away into the main body of the great ville.

  Baker gathered together the remaining sec men, talking in whispers of what had happened. Their lord was utterly insane. His wife a jolt junkie and his son disappeared in a bloody mist. All of their fellows were slain in some gigantic explosion, and the ville was surrounded by hundreds of villagers, all waiting for the moment to rise against Front Royal and take their vengeance for the years of bloody oppression. And that vengeance would also spill against the sec men who'd helped the Cawdors keep their hold on that part of the Shens.

  "And Lord Ryan will come…" Lesser said. "And he will hold us for…" The sentence trailed away into the late afternoon sunshine.

  It took only four or five minutes for the dozen sec men to reach their decision. Within fifteen minutes they had gone and changed into civilian clothes, out of the ville's hated uniforms, making their way by ones and twos into the surrounding woods.

  Most were recognized and murdered before they'd gone five miles.

  RACHEK CAWDOR MET her husband in one of the maze of corridors that wound through the upper floors of the rambling house. She had woken from her drug-frozen sleep, calling for her servants, finding the ville was inexplicably deserted. The air carried the taint of roasted meat and gasoline. In the silence she began to wonder whether the jolt had finally scrambled her brains and transported her to some different world, familiar, yet oddly altered in detail.

  Then she met Harvey, and the feeling of alienation intensified. His eyes stared at her, bloodshot and blank. There were spots of mud all over him, and his hair and eyebrows were grizzled to stubble. His clothes were torn and stained, hanging from his limping body like an ill-fitting and ornate shroud.

  "Where's everyone? What's happened? Tell me, damn you!"

  "Dead, my dearest dove," he said in the hushed tones you might associate with some great church.

  "Dead? Ryan and the others? All
the prisoners dead?"

  He smiled with a surpassing gentleness, frightening Rachel more than any rage might. "No, my pearl of the Orient. I think they all live. It is us who are chilled. Chilled forever more, nevermore."

  She shook her head, feeling a band of icy steel tightening around her temples. "If Ryan and the others live, then who is dead? And where are… ?"

  Harvey nodded to her, still smiling. "He is clever, my little brother. Led us on and in and then… Boom!" He clapped his chubby hands together. "Boom. They all died at once. It was wonderful. Fire and noise, and they were gone. More witchery, like Jabez."

  "All dead!" she screamed, voice like a saw cutting across sheet glass. "Then we are lost? Everyone's gone off and left us to die! It's your fucking brother. Why didn't you give him to me to kill? You fool…"

  Her hand went to the dagger at her belt, wanting nothing more than to slit the flabby throat of her husband and then run and run.

  From the basement, they could both hear the hideous cacophony of the wild boars, upset by the scent of death that filled the Shens.

  "At least the old man and the yellowhead still live," she screeched. "I can butcher them. Then we must go."

  "Go? Where? Here's home. I'm home now, my sweet child. Ally, ally oxen free. Home and safe. I shall soon… The yellowhead girl? I had forgot her. Before I… I shall go and…"

  The knife was out, flashing through the air. With a deceptive speed, Harvey batted it away from his neck. Bunching his ringed fist, he smashed it into his wife's face with a casual ferocity that sent her spilling to the stone flags, blood seeping from her mouth, a livid bruise springing to her cheek.

  "The yellowhead," he said, turning away from his unconscious wife as though he'd already forgotten her.

  DOC TANNER SLEPT CONTENTEDLY on the bunk, lying flat on his back, hands folded on his chest like a crusader resting in a cathedral vault. The explosion had hardly ruffled him. Lori had called out to ask him what it had been, and he had mumbled some reassurance before sliding again into a dreamless sleep.

  Lori was also lying on her bunk, wishing that she was in bed with Doc, wanting him to cuddle her and do the nice, gentle things that made her feel all squirmy inside.

  "Wop bop a loobop, a wop bam boom," she hummed to herself, repeating the nonsense verse over and over, like a mantra, lulling herself with it. The girl wondered how long it would be before they were released. It was getting really boring in the little stone room with the barred window. She stood up and looked out, seeing that the afternoon was wearing on. "Wop bop…"

  She turned at the sound of the cell door grating open.

  "Hi, there, yellowhead. Having a nice day?" Baron Harvey Cawdor asked.

  "LOOKS DESERTED," J.B. said, squinting through the screen of trees at the ocher walls of the ville. There was nobody in sight, not a single guard on the ramparts or on the drawbridge.

  "Trap?" Jak suggested.

  Ryan turned to Krysty, raising an eyebrow in a silent question. She shook her head. "I can hear those bastard pigs he breeds. Nothing else. Feels empty to me, lover."

  "Me, too," he agreed. "Nathan? You ever know it with no sec men showing?"

  "No. Never. Baron doesn't sleep well o'nights. Fears death. If he came back here, he'd have the bridge up and blasters everywhere. I think…" He stopped, hesitating.

  "What, Nate?" Ryan asked.

  "If'n I didn't know better, I'd figure they've all done a runner on him. Heard of the massacre and fucked off. That's my guess."

  "One way to find out," Ryan said. "I can't figure it for a trap. No reason. Let's go see."

  DOC TANNER CLUNG to the bars, terrified that he might faint. His brain creaked with the effort of trying to do something. He knew the man was hopelessly mad, but he had to find the words that might save Lori.

  Harvey stood against the door, his grotesque bulk blocking it. One of his pretty little pistols was in his right hand, pointing at Lori's stomach. The man was whistling tunelessly to himself, gesturing for her to hurry. His cloak hung open and he had unzipped his hunting breeches, revealing his tiny, budlike penis. Lori had taken off her top, showing her breasts, and she was now, slowly, stepping out of the skirt.

  "She is my daughter, Baron Harvey. A child. Can you not spare her?"

  "You croak on like some raven, old man. Mebbe I should close your beak," Harvey sneered, pointing his pistol at Doc's anxious face.

  Lori was naked at last, hands by her sides, making no effort to cover herself from the baron's stare. His cock was struggling toward a partial erection, and there was a thread of spittle hanging from a corner of his mouth.

  "I'll not…" Doc began, nearly weeping in his helpless frustration.

  "Don't, Doc," she called out. "Don't hurting me. I'm used fit. Don't watch it, Doc."

  Lori was crying.

  "Like tears and fears, child." The baron laughed. "Lie down and spread 'em."

  "Beware of the teeth," Doc shouted, voice cracking with emotion.

  "Keep her mouth shut. Mebbe fill it later, know what I'm meaning, huh?"

  "Not the teeth in her mouth, my lord!"

  "How's that?"

  "Shames me to admit it to a great noble like yourself, and you ready to do her honor, but the girl's a mutie, my lord. Don't show much. Normal, apart from the teeth in…in her…you know, my lord. Can do fearsome harm to a double-stud in the coupling."

  "Teeth…inside her…in her…teeth in…teeth for… You mean she could bite my cock off with… ? You can't…"

  "Try her, my lord," Doc babbled. "Times they only close a little. But they have razor-sharp points to 'em and… she can't help it, my lord. It's being a mutie."

  Harvey drew back, reaching down to zip himself up again, the gun wavering. "Muties should be shot and killed," he muttered.

  "She is a good girl, my lord."

  "So many dead today," the baron said, letting himself out of the cell, leaving the key dangling in the lock. Without a backward look he left the guardhouse.

  Doc let go of the bars, finding great weals across his palms.

  Lori started getting dressed again, unconcerned by what had nearly happened. "Doc?" she asked.

  Somehow there wasn't enough air in the cell for him to answer. So he cleared his throat and tried again. "What is it, child?"

  "That about teeth in my… you know?"

  "Yes, Lori?"

  "Ain't true, is it?"

  Doc laughed, feeling suddenly a great deal better than he had for some time. When he'd finished laughing, he pointed out the key to the blond girl.

  RYAN LED THE WAY,now only a few paces from the end of the drawbridge. There was still no sign of any threat to them. The ville seemed utterly deserted. Jak was behind him, carrying the M-16. Then came Krysty, followed by

  Nathan with his blaster in his hand and J.B. with his drawn knife.

  The sky was darkening, and the air over the Shens seemed heavy and threatening. The wind rose and fell, driving a whirling column of dust ahead of Ryan's boots, which collapsed in on itself as it reached the water of the moat.

  "See any guards?" Ryan asked. Nobody answered him.

  Suddenly, with no warning, there was a figure in the main gateway to the huge house, under the spiked portcullis, a staggering person in burned clothes that shone and glittered. Ryan's first thought was that he was seeing some monstrously fat, drunk old gaudy whore. Then he saw the two matched Colts pointed at him.

  And he realized.

  "Harvey!" he shouted.

  "Farewell, brother!" Baron Harvey Cawdor bellowed, opening up with both blasters.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A SMALL-CALIBER PISTOL —like Harvey Cawdor's pair of .22 Colts—wasn't the most accurate of weapons over any kind of distance. And it took a lot of skill and control to hit a target under any kind of pressure.

  It didn't help much if you were stark mad, either.

  Ryan dived to the cobbles, hearing the pettish snap of the blasters, bullets kicking off the stones ar
ound him. As far as he could tell, none of them went within three yards of him.

  The others also took cover from the shooting. Before Nate Freeman or Jak could return the fire, Harvey had dropped one of his guns and darted back into the inner courtyard. He was pursued by Ryan, knife gleaming in his hand.

  It was a bizarre chase from the present into the past.

  Just inside the main gate, by the guardhouse, Ryan bumped into Doc Tanner and Lori, but there was no time for conversation. Harvey knew the ville like a rat knows its burrow, and Ryan knew he had to keep close if he wasn't to risk losing him. There was just time to throw a message over his shoulder, for the others to retrieve their own clothes and weapons as swiftly as they could. And to watch out for any ambush.

  "Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber." That was the rhyme that one of the old servants of the ville used to sing to little Ryan to try to lull him into sleep. In his mind's eye he always saw it literally, imagining himself following the twisting passages and blind corners of the mansion, taking himself inside his own head into every room and staircase of Front Royal. It had been an exercise that had saved his life when he'd had to run for it the night Harvey had come to kill him. Now, all those long years later, the memories were still there, and he followed after his brother like a loping timber wolf after an elk.

  His brother had a good head start, slipping through one of the entrance doors to the main body of the house and across the courtyard. Harvey had time to slam the door shut and slide across the bolt. But Ryan knew other ways. It struck him immediately that the ville was deserted. Not only the sec men had fled. Every single person who had served the Cawdors had left. The fires in the kitchens were dying, food prepared but uncooked. Bowls with eggs broken in them stood on scrubbed tables. Piles of washing dripped in the sinks. A cooling iron rested on its stand.

  It helped Ryan. When he heard a distant slamming of a door, or feet pattering along a corridor a floor above him, he knew it could only be Harvey. It crossed his mind as he ran silently through his childhood home to wonder where Lady Rachel had gone, guessing she had either run with the pack or lay sleeping off her latest lines of jolt. Probably she had fled the doomed ville.