No Man's Land

by James Axler

  Chapter Five

  As silent as a panther, Jak crept through the night.

  Since he approached with the wind in his front—to keep the horses from detecting him and showing nervousness—the equine smell was almost overpowering. He didn’t need it to track the sentry, whom he’d spotted standing bolt-upright in the open, a shadow-form in starlight.

  Then Jak heard a snap, smelled sulfur, saw an orange firefly ember arcing tightly upward. Unbelievably, the sentry was lighting a smoke. Tobacco, by the acrid smell.

  Apparently the Protectors had no fear that their enemies would try to raid this particular herd. It wasn’t an entirely stupe notion, Jak thought. They had cavalry pickets riding circuits of the camp pretty close in, as well as random-sweep patrols like the one that bagged Jak and his friends earlier that evening.

  They were about to learn that they had just made a whole new set of enemies. As far as Jak was concerned, his bunch was a bigger threat than the whole army of sheepmen coming any day of the week.

  The breeze had freshened, bending the spring-green grass. It also covered the sound of Jak’s passage over it...had he made any.

  Puffing on his stinking smoke, the guard swung around toward Jak just as the youth gathered himself to spring. The glow of his cigarette underlit an expression of utter shock.

  The man wasn’t shocked enough not to try to swing up his bayonet-tipped musket, which he had leaned against his side as he’d rolled and lit his cigarette.

  Rattlesnake-fast, Jak grabbed the rising barrel with his left hand. His right slashed his big bowie knife across the man’s throat.

  Then he pivoted briskly to the side to avoid the gusher of blood, black in the starlight, from the man’s severed throat.

  The sentry tried to scream, but all that came out was gagging and gargling as blood filled his throat and fouled his windpipe. Clutching his neck futilely with both hands, he fell into the grass to thrash away the miserable, brief remainder of his life.

  “Frank?” a voice called tentatively from behind Jak’s new position. “Frank, what’s goin’ on?”

  Jak whirled. His left hand was already grabbing for the grip of his Colt Python handblaster.

  A man was emerging from a brushy little draw, pulling the strings that held the fly of his baggy canvas trousers. He had a bayoneted musket tucked under one arm. His eyes widened as he saw Jak standing above the still-flailing, still-spurting form of his partner, Frank.

  He began a mad effort to get a grip on his longblaster so he could shoot the pale intruder. At the same time he opened his mouth to cry a warning.

  Jak already knew he could blast the man before the man could blast him. But what he could not do was prevent the alarm from being given. Whether the man shouted out loud or Jak shot him—and Jak’s .357 Magnum revolver was probably as loud as that smoke-pole the guy was juggling, with a sharper report that carried farther in the night air—the whole damned army would be alerted. Including the mounted pickets that still lay between Ryan’s companions and the open prairie.

  Standing off a good distance, Ryan, who was never one to waste ammo on something like mercy for strangers, had finished both off with head shots from the sniper longblaster he carried before he got his new, handier Steyr.

  Thanks to Krysty’s killing Baron Jed’s son and heir, the camp was already pretty much on full-alert. Alerting the vengeful baron and his hundreds of uniformed sec men to exactly where they were wouldn’t end well.

  Even as he turned and grabbed for his own blaster, Jak cocked back his right arm to throw the bowie. He knew his chances of doing enough damage fast enough to the sentry to keep him from raising the alarm were about the same as the chances of riding a motorcycle naked through an acid-rain cloudburst. But even the skinniest-ass chance was better than the stone certainty they were all triple-fucked.

  Suddenly the lower half of the sentry’s face erupted in a black cloud. He staggered. The musket fell to the turf as he clutched at his face. His head jerking to the side, he dropped straight down in that boneless way that told Jak he was an instant chill.

  From the darkness stepped Ricky Morales, jacking the bolt of his funny, short longblaster with the sausage-fat barrel. Jak grinned and nodded his thanks.

  When the kid first joined up, more or less by accident, Jak didn’t see the point of him. He sure did now. Also, it was kind of nice having somebody pretty much his own age...younger, even. Ryan, Krysty and the others were family, but they were still a great deal older.

  Actually, until just about exactly now, Jak hadn’t really seen the point of having the Puerto Rican kid back his play, either. He’d basically humored Ricky, on condition the newbie hang back and not spook the game.

  Jak made a peet-peet-peet sound, like a killdeer flying in the night. An owl hoot answered. The rest of the group was hustling up to secure their four-footed transport pool, which hadn’t even been spooked by the commotion, since Ricky’s funny blaster made so little noise, and the smell of blood was also carried away from the herd by the stiff breeze.

  “How so quiet, blaster?” Jak nodded to the carbine as his friend drew near.

  “Bolt action’s tight, so no gas gets out of the breech. Also no sound of the weapon cycling like with a semiauto. And the bullet goes slower than sound, so no little sonic boom. That’s why my uncle was always so obsessed with making a DeLisle like this one in his shop.”

  Jak looked away so as not to embarrass his new friend by noticing the glimmer of moisture in his eyes. His uncle, his parents and the rest of the seaside ville of Nuestra Señora—where he’d grown up—had been chilled by another army of coldhearts, on the same day Jak and his companions had arrived in the little harbor on a stolen yacht, closely pursued by the pissed-off pirates who were its rightful owners. Or anyway its most recent ones. The loss still smarted like a fresh wound—as did the fact his adored older sister Yamile had not only been kidnapped by the coldhearts, but also sold to slavers, who took her to the mainland where Ricky had no hope of finding her trail. He still liked to imagine he’d get wind of her someday.

  “Don’t just stand there beating your gums,” Ryan said gruffly, loping past them. “We need to move with a rad-blasted purpose.”

  * * *

  “WHOA,” RYAN SAID, tugging the dark mane of the chestnut gelding he rode. The animal bounced its head, eager to follow the rest of its fellows thundering on ahead along the sandy soil of the dry creek. But the Protectors trained their cavalry mounts well; it obeyed.

  Looking around, Ryan saw his companions weren’t all enjoying the same easy success he had. But they got it sorted out fine, once J.B. ran down Mildred’s recalcitrant mare on his stubby little paint pony and got her turned back where she was supposed to be.

  Ryan had seen the party mounted, not all of them comfortably, especially since they had neither saddles nor bridles, but had to ride bareback and do their best to steer by tugging on the horses’ manes and sheer force of personality.

  Their task wasn’t made easier by Ryan’s insistence that they not only stampede the enemy’s mounts, as a reflex precaution, but also actually drive the herd before them, west, and almost at right angles to the direction to the main body of the Uplander Army, which from conversation they had overheard lay camped a dozen miles north.

  “Why stop?” Jak called. He was up ahead with Ryan and J.B. chasing the stolen herd, about sixty head, before them.

  “Reckon we still got a lead, J.B.?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah,” J.B. replied. “Even as riled up as they were, it would take them time to organize pursuit. Not that they had much trouble finding our tracks once they did, of course. We probably have half an hour. I’d give it fifteen, if I was a cautious man.”

  Ryan grinned. “Okay. Ricky, you still got that rope you liberated from that redoubt in Rico?”

  “Yeah,” the kid called back. He was having almost as much trouble as Mildred in controlling his mount. While he had told his new companions he was used to dealing with d
onkeys, traveling with his father on his annual trading trips around south and central Puerto Rico, Ricky Morales had little experience with horses. And none riding them.

  “J.B., grab the rope and start divvying it up for leads. I want everybody to lead a remount when we shake the dust of this gully off the horses’ hooves. Jak and I’ll cut them for you before we chase the rest of this bunch off north along the arroyo here.”

  J.B. nodded. “Ground’s hard here,” he said, “with lots of thick grass. Pursuers’ll likely follow the easy trail of the rest of the herd up the soft sandy bottom.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Ryan said. “If you can rig some kind of makeshift bridles so we’re not clutching mane and hollering to get the beasts to do what we want, do it.”

  “You looking at riding a long ways, lover?” Krysty asked.

  Ryan shook his head. “Reckon the best way to approach a new baron is to bring the man presents. Especially seeing how we got off on the wrong foot with that last one, and all.”

  “You speak of Baron Al Siebert?” Doc asked. “But why, Ryan? Why not simply ride west until we lose them?”

  Ryan glanced toward Mildred, who had gotten her mare stopped and was tentatively patting the beast’s neck in a placatory way. The horse had her facedown in a green clump of bush and was chomping away at it, paying its rider no mind.

  “Speaking of presents, given the kind of farewell gift Mildred and Krysty left for that sawed-off little bastard Jed,” he said, “I kind of reckon he’ll be liberal about spending his sec men’s time, effort and horses running us down wherever we go. Not even those stupes are going to take forever catching up with their stolen herd. Plus we’re a long shot from out of the woods right here. There’s always a chance of running smack-dab into some random Protector patrol anyplace inside mebbe a hundred miles of here. And I’ll remind everybody we’re running more than a bit light on the supplies.”

  “Thinking big, Ryan?” J.B. asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The Armorer rode his horse up alongside Ricky’s. The beasts were used to being in each other’s company, though Ryan knew full well horses had their own likes and dislikes.

  “I’ll get right on those leads,” J.B. said.

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “And get them done in ten!”

  * * *

  “HALT, IN THE NAME of the Uplands Alliance!”

  As if rising straight up out of the Earth, a party of eight or ten mounted men appeared before the companions. Ryan reckoned that was just about the way of it, too. He gathered they’d come out of a draw hidden at the foot of the long, slow decline the fugitives had ridden down. There was a stand of brush growing there, a shroud of leaves black in the starlight, that might have masked it.

  The new set of riders held remade carbines and short double-barreled scatterguns leveled on Ryan and his friends. Still holding the rope by which he led his chestnut gelding, Ryan raised his hands. His companions did likewise.

  “State your names and your business,” the man who’d first challenged them said. Like most of his men he wore a wide-brimmed hat with the front pinned up by a badge of some sort, presumably the insignia of the Uplands Alliance. He had on what looked like a uniform shirt, with a double row of buttons at the front, that was probably part of the Uplands Alliance uniform, although he wore baggy pale canvas pants. He toted a pair of revolvers in flap-cover holsters, and a saber hung in its scabbard from his saddle. His gloved hands were empty.

  “I’m Ryan Cawdor,” Ryan called out. “These are my friends. Our current business is running away from the Protectors. Though we’re looking to sign on to do some contract sec work for your baron.”

  “Baron Al?” the young lieutenant asked.

  “He’s not our baron,” snapped a rider with a lever-action carbine aimed at J.B. “He’s commander of the army, yeah. But he’s just baron over Siebertville, not the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Starbuck,” the lieutenant said, waving a hand. “Whatever.”

  “We still thought he might appreciate these horses we brought him as a present,” Ryan said. “Sort of sweeten the deal.”

  “Don’t trust ’em, Lieutenant Owens,” said another rider, a middle-height man in his forties. Ryan didn’t need to see the chevrons on the sleeve of his shirt to know he’d answer to “sergeant.” “Could be a trap. Remember about Greeks bearing gifts and that.”

  “Those are just old stories, Koslowski,” Owens said. “Doesn’t mean they’re all true. Anyway this dude isn’t speaking Greek, and these horses aren’t wood. Fact is, they do look pretty handsome, though this isn’t the sort of lighting conditions I’d care to pay for horseflesh in.”

  The fact was they were some pretty prime rides Ryan and friends had trolled along. As a baron’s son, Ryan had grown up knowing not just how to ride, but how to judge horseflesh with the eye of someone who might have to buy riding stock for himself, his family and their sec men. Rolling for years with the Trader had taught him a different appreciation for the beasts—Trader being a man who preferred wags with engines to those drawn by livestock, and better yet armed to the eyeballs, but overall he preferred turning a handsome profit where one could be secured. Which sometimes meant leaving the gas-burners behind for locations only grass-burners could reach.

  Jak had helped. His brief stint as a rancher in the Southwest had given him both an eye for horses and better skills at cutting them out of the herd and driving them where he needed to go than Ryan had. Between them they’d secured seven nice-looking animals. Although the fact was none of them were broken-down plugs; from their cursory acquaintance he didn’t judge too many Protector heads were in danger of exploding from an overload of brains, but to give the bastards their due credit, they did know how to lay their hands on some mighty fine horses, and care for them properly.

  Even on short notice J.B. had parceled out rope leads and even rigged some nooselike bridles that’d fit over a horse’s snout and provide steerage pressure without pinching off their ability to breathe. He’d had a good deal of help from young Ricky, which should have surprised Ryan less than it did. The kid was scarcely less handy than the Armorer himself; and while, of course, his actual knowledge wasn’t a patch on the ass of what J.B. knew, he had a good grounding and learned like lightning. No wonder J.B. had taken such a strong and early shine to the kid.

  As it turned out, they’d only needed makeshift bridles for Mildred and Ricky himself. The rest of the crew felt comfortable as they were, steering the animals with knee pressure and tugs on their manes. Ryan was grateful the Protector pony soldiers didn’t roach off their mounts’ manes triple-short the way some outfits did.

  Despite his qualified approval the fresh-faced young officer frowned. “I think we do need a little bit more by way of bona fides before we completely trust you people,” he said. “Baron Jed’s a cagey bastard. He might be willing to give up a few ponies—”

  “Trojan horses,” said Sergeant Koslowski, who was clearly not a man who let go of much of anything readily.

  “Take us back under guard if you care to,” Ryan said. “Be the smart thing to do, in your boots—”

  Before he could say he’d likely do as much himself, something moaned past his ear like the world’s biggest bumblebee with a rocket up its butt. A horse shied and bucked away from a solid thump in the ground right ahead of it.

  A couple heartbeats later the crack of a black-powder weapon going off rolled down from the south.

  “Shit!” Lieutenant Owens exclaimed.

  “Troop, spread out!” the sergeant barked. “Dismount. Form firing line.”

  He didn’t yell, but he sure talked emphatically, like a man who knew his business, Ryan thought—briefly, since his own business right now was trying to calculate how to get out of line of their pursuers’ fire without their new acquaintances chilling them on general principles.

  As the patrol began to fan out in obedience of J.B.’s voice, calm yet as authoritative as the sergeant’s knuckle
s-on-oak rap had been, spoke up.

  “Might not wanna do that, boys,” he said. “You’ll empty a fair number of saddles, sure. Then the rest’ll ride you into orange mush.”

  The pony soldiers were moving to obey their sergeant. The lieutenant gave the Armorer a hard look.

  “Why do you say that, outlander?”

  More blastershots banged out from the night behind, a couple hundred yards off yet, to Ryan’s seasoned ear. The Protectors had to be panic-firing in hopes of preventing their quarry from getting away.

  “Because likely as not, Baron Jed has every ass that can keep a saddle riding right on our tails,” J.B. said, as cool as if he were discussing whether to have cold beans or reheated for dinner. “Seeing as we sort of left his son and heir to bleed out when we left.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes flew wide, but he recovered quickly. “Ace,” he said. “Protectors shooting at you bona fides enough for me. Troop, get ready to ride fast back to camp!”

  “What about the prisoners?” Koslowski asked.

  “Detail men to keep an eye on them. Now move!”

  Chapter Six

  Big Erl Kendry sat back against the cushions piled on his chair in his tent, luxuriating in the feel of the hot cloth in his face. He was waiting for his servants to give him his morning shave.

  He always enjoyed these peaceful times. Never more so than today. Baron Jed was raging like a jolt-walker about his son Buddy’s unfortunate demise. He was going to be a mighty handful.

  Not that the baron was a patient man at the best of times. Still, Big Erl could understand the frustrations of the born leader of men if anybody could. He experienced the ingratitude of his own tenants on a daily basis.

  Except when he was out here in the field protecting them, of course. Then at least he got respite from their ceaseless bitching.

  He began to shift his considerable bulk in the chair. He wondered just where his shiftless servant had wandered off to. As precious as this break was, he was mindful that if he dragged his ass into the HQ tent too late, Baron Jed would give it a thorough chewing. His teeth were sharp this day, and he hungered for blood.