by James Axler
Mildred was no history buff, no strategic or tactical mind—those were Ryan’s and J.B.’s departments, and they were welcome to them. But just in these past few years she had seen enough of battles lost and won, of retreats, pursuits and sudden reversals, to know Al was basically right.
And that’s yet another sad testimonial to what my life’s become, she thought, though these days the realization was familiar enough to kindle little heat within her.
“We got a peace treaty to negotiate. So I reckon I need you to keep up the pressure. Just a bit, mind. Sting the Protectors’ wide asses every now and then, to keep their minds right.”
“And what might you have in mind in that regard, Baron?” J.B. asked.
Baron Al frowned. He looked around at the army, busy with the mop-up of action. From somewhere in the middle distance came the sound of a shot. Some of the young men of Al’s ever-changing staff, who took on themselves the roles of sec men—as far as Mildred could see the Uplander commander had no official bodyguard—looked alert and started to close in from the discreet distance at which they’d hovered around their baron. Al ignored them.
“I think, what with one thing and another,” Al said slyly, “I’ll just leave that to you folks’ discretion. Think of it as part of what I’m payin’ you for.”
Turnbull looked pained. “Speaking of which, Baron, is it really responsible, to make such outlays to...outland hirelings, given the costs the barons of the Alliance have absorbed already for this war?”
“Now, Cody,” Al said, “wasn’t it you, not hardly a moment ago, arguing we needed more troops runnin’ around burning powder today? Whatever I paid these folks, even tossing in a nice reward for playing such a key role in this here little victory and all, it’s less than the bill for powder burned in a couple minutes’ decent artillery barrage, or even an average cavalry skirmish.”
A troop of cavalry in green shirts and armbands came trotting up the road from the south. Their horses’ coats were dark with moisture. The troopers’ faces were flushed and running with the sweat of heat and exertion—and something more.
“Shadowed them back to their lines, Baron,” Lieutenant Owens reported.
He had a smudge of burned powder on one cheek and a bandage around his left forearm with some red soaking through. The battle hadn’t been entirely one-sided. Then again Mildred knew too well by now, they seldom were.
“Just like you said, Jed had got ’em whipped back into pretty decent order by the time they were halfway there. Even left a few squads of foot sloggers to lay up in the weeds and snipe, keep us cautious. They’re already digging in tighter behind their old emplacements.”
“So Jed did survive. Told you, Cody. That little cuss is as triple-hard to kill as a cockroach.”
Al nodded to the cavalryman. “Good job, son. Start spreading the word. We’re shifting our own main bivouac down to the stream where we set our ambush. That’ll add to the pressure on the Protectors, too.”
He glared around at his young staffers, who were still holding handblasters and carbines at the alert.
“Some of the rest of you kids, too,” he said, “seeing as you got nothin’ better to do at the moment than protect me from imaginary Protector chillers!”
“One last thing, General,” Owens said. Mildred noted that Turnbull frowned. Clearly it displeased him that a junior officer had not instantly obeyed his commander’s order, for whatever reason.
But Al was unfazed. “Hit me with it.”
“The Protectors pretty well rushed out of their lines this morning. That’s going to work to their advantage. A lot of their supply wags and even some of their smoothbore arty never made it past the perimeter. And even if between shooting it and losing wags they used up most of their ready powder supply, I reckon they got enough yet to make it triple-hot on us if we try to force things. Plus it won’t take all that long for Jed to get more barged back up the river from Hugoville.”
“Right. Confirms what we reckoned, too. All right then, spread the word like I told you. Git!”
Lieutenant Owens and some of his fellow young officers turned to go, though large numbers of foot soldiers were drifting back to cluster around the wag where Al sat. Noticing that, the baron looked at them quizzically.
“Three cheers for the general!” a voice yelled from somewhere, “savior of the Uplands! Hip, hip, hooray!”
Hundreds of voices joined in the cheering. Hats were tossed in the air.
Baron Al grinned and nodded. When the applause subsided he rose clumsily on the wag box.
“Thanks, boys,” he said. “Just doing what had to be done. Like all of you. And I must say we all did us a heap of good work today!”
They cheered that, too. Mildred noticed Ryan looking thoughtful.
As the fresh wave of acclaim subsided, Al clambered down from the driver’s board. Mildred wasn’t surprised to see him wave off the young staffers who had, presumably according to some kind of rotation, remained to attend him when about half their number rushed off to spread his latest orders.
“Baron,” Ryan called.
Al looked up at the one-eyed man, sitting calmly on his bay horse.
“Just a word to the wise,” Ryan said. “From one experienced hand to another. Once the war is won, some of the people closest to you start having second thoughts about you. Mebbe worth thinking all your enemies aren’t necessarily back in the Protector camp.”
Al shrugged like a tired mountain. Suddenly he looked tired. And old. Mildred wondered if postbattle letdown was settling in, now that the first fiery rush of combat—and victory—had passed.
“If the folks of the Alliance decide I’ve finished the job I got picked to do,” he said, “reckon I’ll abide with that. Meantime I’ll go on doing what I can to secure our future, and our children’s future, best I can. Always reckoned that’s been my real job, all along. But thank you kindly, young man. I know those are wise words.”
He turned away to put his head together with Colonel Turnbull. For all Mildred’s growing dislike of the prissy officer, she did see his whole demeanor change to one of pure professional interest. At the core he was clearly a man who took his duty as seriously as his general did.
And that’s supposed to be a good thing, she thought. Why does that make me think he’s all the more dangerous?
* * *
FROM THE CONCEALMENT of a clump of trees by a fire-blackened field-stone chimney that was all that remained of the farmhouse, Snake Eye watched the small group ride away from the Uplander commander, south along the road a few hundred yards to the east.
With a smile he lowered his brass spyglass from his good eye and telescoped it back down to fit in its pouch.
“Enjoy your victory while you can, my friends,” he said aloud. There was no need to keep his voice down; he knew no Uplander troops were within two hundred yards, and the wind carried from the river and the battlefield toward him.
He knew enough about battles, and their aftermath, to be thankful he had little sense of smell.
“You’ve earned it,” he said, turning back to his horse. “But now our game begins in earnest.”
Chapter Eighteen
A prairie chicken call whickered up the freshening breeze.
Sitting in a slight depression in the gently undulating grasslands between the army camps, Krysty looked up from the low yellow fire. Her hand fell to the butt of the Colt Lightning replica she had scabbied from a Protector cavalry sergeant who had no further use for it, or indeed anything.
The group, their horses and the grass alike were still damp from a rain that had fallen earlier, around the time the sun set. The smell suggested they might be getting wetter again sometime soon.
Krysty eased her hand away from her handblaster.
“Somebody coming,” Ryan said. He seemed mostly to be explaining it to Ricky, who was hunkered down on the far side of the campfire next to Jak. The youngster was still getting brought up to speed on the group’s protocols.
Jak, who squatted next to his new friend, rose. He was almost quivering with eagerness for the chase, like a dog who scented a fox. J.B. was on watch, currently, as the group prepared to heat a supper of horse jerky and beans.
Ryan nodded in the direction from which the call had come. “Show him in,” he said.
Jak vanished.
For his part Ricky jumped to his feet, clutching his beloved handmade blaster like some kind of talisman. “Where?” he whispered. “Why is everybody still sitting down?”
“Relax, son,” said Doc, who sat braced on his arms with his long legs splayed out before him and the much-abused soles of his knee boots toward the wan flames. “That was no danger alert J.B. gave. Had he considered our still-mysterious nocturnal visitor a threat, he would have emulated a yellow-crowned night heron.”
Ricky just looked blank.
“He’s not gonna give it now,” Mildred explained, “because J.B. and Jak would just think we were in trouble. Don’t sweat it. You’ll get it all figured out. All it takes is time.”
From the darkness emerged not the ghost-white form of Jak Lauren, but the small yet sturdy figure of J. B. Dix. He cradled his M-4000 scattergun in his arms.
Right behind him came an old man with a white beard and hair sticking out any which way from his face, wearing a sorely battered slouch hat. He had a paunch pushing out the front of a wool shirt that had been red but had faded to pink. A pair of little donkeys, all but dwarfed beneath equipment and bagged swag, ambled behind him.
As if taken by surprise at the ancient scabbie’s arrival, Ryan rose to his feet.
“Name’s Ryan Cawdor,” he said. “Welcome to our campfire.”
“My handle’s Old Pete, as in, old enough to know better. Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining, son. I know how the land lies. You sent this here pale young feller to escort me in whether I wanted to or not.”
Ryan grinned. “Fair enough. You’re still welcome—if your intent is peaceable.”
“If I weren’t I’d be triple-stupe to announce the fact to a campfire full of blasters,” the old man said. “But it is, it is. Happens I’ve got a pot of cold beans and plenty of possum jerky to share, if you folks ain’t et yet. And pleased at the chance for some company other than Bess and Hoovie, here.”
“Possum jerky,” Mildred said in tones dripping with sarcasm. “Be still my heart.”
Krysty frowned at her friend in honest puzzlement.
“You talk as if you don’t like possum jerky, Mildred.”
“I know. What’s wrong with me, huh?”
* * *
OLD PETE DROPPED the ceramic jug from his white-whiskered lips, which he wiped with the back of a liver-spotted hand.
“Ah, now,” he said, amid and around a hearty belch. “That’s the good stuff. Not for the young, though.”
Seated next to the grizzled scabbie by the fire, Ryan nodded. He’d taken a swig of the man’s Towse Lightning and promptly decided he was too young for the stuff.
Especially since he was intent on getting older.
Old Pete automatically passed the heavy stoneware vessel to the person who’d just squatted at his left. It was Ricky, who’d been fussing over the donkeys, where they stood hobbled and grazing near the party’s horses. He had spent weeks every year traveling the southern part of his home of Monster Island with his father’s trade caravan, through generally mountainous terrain where the best available transport happened to be donkeys. He clearly missed the little equines. And probably his home, as well.
Accepting the heavy jug, Ricky frowned down at it as if uncertain what to do with it. After a moment he looked up. His gaze hunted around the fire, settling on Krysty. Without changing expression the woman gave her head a slight shake.
Ricky nodded back and passed the jug to Doc, who accepted gratefully and guzzled generously, head back, Adam’s apple bobbing.
Mentally, Ryan shrugged. It wasn’t his concern if the kid drank the toxic stuff, as long as it didn’t cause him to make mistakes when the shitstorm hit. Which was no different from how he regarded the rest of his friends. Fireblast, he was no stranger to gut-burning swill like that when he was the boy’s age, but Krysty had her own way of doing things, and Ryan was way past questioning her judgment. If she thought the new kid should refrain, then fine. Anyway, it wasn’t as if the boy didn’t look relieved to let the cup pass from him.
Old Pete stared into the weak yellow flicker of the campfire as if seeing visions there.
“Just come back to these parts,” he said, more as if talking to himself than company. “Got a rich trove of scabbie just lyin’ out under the sun and stars, after that big battle a few days past. O’ course, man’s got to step pretty lively to avoid the patrols from both sides. They look on that brand of honest scabbie as looting. Take it for a shooting offense.”
“You mean you’ve been robbing the corpses?” Ricky asked, with revulsion and outrage throbbing in his adolescent voice.
“Only makes sense, boy,” said J.B., who happened to be sitting next to his apprentice. “We’ve done it a time or two since you been with us, remember.”
“Yes, but we killed them!”
They all looked at him. Even Old Pete looked up from whatever he was seeing in the flames.
“Okay, slow down, Ricky,” Mildred said. “You lost even me on that last turn, and I’m the squeamish one here.”
“I—I—” Ricky waved his hands in the air. Ryan reckoned he was just outraged, and now floundering around looking for a way to justify it.
The kid was smart. Trouble was, much of that was book smart, and that made him think everything had a reason. He just needed to learn that stuff like most feelings didn’t need a reason—nor have anything to do with what you knew or what you thought. They just were, mostly, like wind and weather. The difference was that you could sometimes control feelings.
“It’s been a few days since the battle. Aren’t the bodies, well—”
“Ripe?” Mildred suggested callously. When she called herself out as squeamish, she didn’t mean about blood, guts or decay. Her predark training as a doctor had bashed all that kind of squeam clean out of her system.
“That’s why we tend to get them while they’re fresh, generally speaking,” J.B. said, taking off his specs and polishing them. “Plus the fact that the early vulture gets the liver.”
“But—but—”
“Give it up, kid,” Mildred said. “That’s a fight you’ll never win.”
“Amen,” said Doc sorrowfully. “O tempora, o mores!”
“Got to admit,” Pete said, “I don’t much cotton to messin’ with stiffs that’re swole up and leakin’, myself. But a man’s got to keep himself from windin’ up in that very state. And I need to do what I can to tide myself over.”
He stopped, his old blue eyes flickering left and right.
Ryan knew trapped-animal furtiveness when he saw it.
“Here,” said Doc, who had just taken another long and somewhat noisy pull from the jug. “Whet your whistle. Calm your nerves.”
Ryan suppressed a grin. Old Pete was probably thinking Doc’s own triple-grizzled appearance and age-husky voice made him relatively harmless. A common mistake, often made by, say, those who sat down across a gaudy-house table to play cards with Doc. Though those, at least, commonly survived the experience of underestimating the apparent old man.
Old Pete nodded and showed jumbled brown teeth in a grin. He accepted the jug and took a pull.
Ryan quickly did an eye-check to his companions. So well-attuned were they that each nodded ever-so-slightly. They quickly caught Ryan’s drift, which amounted to: we’ve done all the drinking being sociable demands. Let’s leave the rest of the liquid lubricant for our guest, see what it helps slide out of his mouth.
The only one who frowned slightly back was
Ricky. J.B., noting that, put his head close to the boy’s and spoke briefly. Then Ricky almost dislocated his neck bobbing his agreement.
Fortunately Old Pete was already in for a protracted swallow of Towse Lightning, and didn’t notice.
The others sat and let him drink in companionable silence, which he did until he muttered, “Mebbe now we’ll get peace that lasts a spell. And I can finally make the score I’ve been a-hopin’ for for so long!”
Ryan twitched a finger. He didn’t want anybody to press the old man on the issue. Yet. He reckoned the scabbie had something he wanted to share with others, no matter how good an idea his conscious mind knew it wasn’t. He’d speak it in his own sweet time, once he’d sufficiently anesthetized his better judgment with repeated applications of rotgut.
Or he wouldn’t. And Ryan and company would be no poorer than they had been before Old Pete wandered in out of the night, probably sensing their campfire despite their efforts to keep it discreet, and hungering for human companionship. But Ryan had never known a man, woman, or mutie to catch a fish by yanking the hook out of the water before the creature took it in its mouth.
“Found the mother lode, I did,” Old Pete said.
Chapter Nineteen
“Or anyways,” the ancient scabbie went on, “what might be the mother lode. An old-days fortification, buried underground. Don’t reckon anybody’s been in there since whoever was in it last from the time before the Big Nuke. Wandered inside with my lantern. Solid walls all of concrete. Found some offices and cubbies that still had stuff in the drawers and mugs on the desk. From the black crap caked at the bottom they’d probably been left still holdin’ coffee, dried out years and years ago.”
By reflex Ryan glanced at the weakest link, who naturally enough was Ricky. The boy’s eyes were wide, as if he couldn’t believe the old man was telling random strangers—to say nothing of random, heavily armed strangers—anything like this.
