"Yeah."

 

"Stay on top."

 

Ryan drew the panga, making sure he had a secure grip on the slippery hilt. He took in a deep breath and released it, took in another, deeper, and dived.

 

The broken light from above had a dappled effect, but he immediately saw the helpless woman. Dorothy was now unconscious, hanging limply, a tiny stream of bubbles inching from the corner of her open mouth. Her blue eyes were wide open, staring past him with an imbecilic expression of vague surprise. Her arms were spread but her legs were tangled in a pile of netting, keeping her trapped.

 

Holding the panga in his right hand, Ryan grabbed at the young woman's left leg, just above the knee. He felt his way down, hanging on to her for purchase, and used the honed blade to slice through the outer layers of the nets that were immovably knotted around her feet and ankles.

 

There was a serious risk that he might cut her badly as he hacked away, working with a desperate, choking speed. There was someone at his side, and he glanced sideways, seeing Michael with one of the twin daggers that he carried. Ryan pointed down, indicating to the teenager to work lower, so that they wouldn't get in each other's way.

 

A great fold of the clinging nets fell away, but there was still more to cut through. Part of Ryan's brain was a ticking clock. It had to be over a minute and a half. He remembered someone on War Wag Two who'd once gone through the thick ice on an ill-planned fishing expedition. It had taken six minutes to break through and free him. Amazingly he'd still been alive. They'd thawed him out and the medics had done everything they could. He breathed and his heart beat, but after twelve hours he hadn't recovered consciousness and obviously never would. Before they moved on, the next morning, Trader had personally put a bullet through the back of his neck in an act of mercy.

 

Someone else had joined them, his face and body vanishing behind a wealth of silver bubbles. Ryan carried on with the panga, cutting and cutting, trying to pull away the fronds of the net.

 

Now he could see that it was Jehu, the young man diving beneath them all, tearing away at the main tangle of nets, towing them a little distance off to remove the risk of all of them becoming entrapped.

 

Ryan could feel the air becoming exhausted, pressure behind his eye, pain in his lungs and chest. But he knew that time had very nearly run out for the young blonde.

 

He was cutting blind, slicing, hacking and tearing, aware that he'd almost lost it.

 

Ryan almost left it too late.

 

Almost.

 

There was a sudden steel tightness across his forehead and temples, and a lethal churning blackness. Just for a moment Ryan hallucinated that he was in the middle of a mat-trans jump. Then the last shards of reason cut in and he flailed his way to the surface of the lake.

 

For several seconds Ryan could do nothing except float helplessly in the good air, kicking feebly, battling to recover. He could hear someone shouting to him, but the wind and his own exhaustion combined to deafen him to the words.

 

There was a great cry beside him and he saw Jehu, long hair streaked across his pale face, gripping his own knife, sucking in harsh breaths.

 

"She's dead," he shouted.

 

Ryan readied himself to dive once more, knowing that it was too late. But Vader had drilled into everyone who rode the war wags that the only possible excuse for giving up was to be actually, certifiably stone-dead.

 

But before he could draw in enough breath for a final effort, Ryan saw Michael's head break the surface, between himself and the overturned boat. And he was holding on to the limp body of Dorothy.

 

WITH THE SKILLFUL HELP of Jehu, they all managed to heave the heavy boat the right way up, frantically bailing out the swilling water.

 

The deeply unconscious Dorothy was laid between the thwarts in the wet bottom of the dory and Mildred stooped over her, ready to try to bring her back from the brink of the dark chasm.

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

"Moses will be seriously pissed." Jehu sat back in the stern, steering a course southeastward toward Quindley. Fortunately the wind was now behind them, speeding the boat across the slate-gray water.

 

"Because of Dorothy?" Dean asked, as he sat facing the man.

 

"No!" Jehu shook his head violently, the damp blond hair clinging to the side of his face. "No, because he won't be getting the fish he ordered."

 

"Surely her health matters more than whether he gets his trout for his supper." Krysty was on the next thwart, beside Ryan, both of them rowing steadily.

 

"Why?"

 

"Because she's a part of his community. Your community as well, Jehu."

 

Doc and Nanci were one seat nearer the bow. The old man looked tired from the rigors of the ill-fated fishing expedition. "No man is an island, Jehu, entire of itself. We're all linked together, is what that means."

 

Mildred was kneeling behind him, cradling Dorothy's head in her lap. "Ask not for whom the bells tolls, eh, Doc? Because it might start tolling for you."

 

"Least it won't toll for Dorothy. You did well there, Mildred." Ryan glanced over his right shoulder, nearly catching a crab with his oar and sending them all into confusion. "She still recovering?"

 

"So far so good."

 

As soon as they'd ladled some of the water out of the dory, Mildred had begun mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the motionless girl, pausing now and again to take a short break and check the slow, fluttering pulse. "Last time I did this sort of thing we had to have on a mask and rubber gloves," she said, explaining that it had been because of the AIDS epidemic of the last years of the twentieth century.

 

It was a long, slow process, and they were more than halfway back to Quindley before the first encouraging sign of returning life. They had been rowing fairly close to the shore, and Dean spotted a narrow column of gray smoke, whipped into shreds by the strong wind, rising from among the trees.

 

"Stickies, Dad?"

 

"Don't know."

 

At that moment Dorothy had gone into convulsions, kicking and waving her arms, while Mildred laid on top of her, helped by Michael to hold her still. Then she'd vomited copiously, bringing up half the lake, along with strings of bile and the partly digested remains of her breakfast.

 

Her eyes had opened and she'd stared, bewildered, up at the sky. And began to weep.

 

"You're fine, girl," Mildred said.

 

"I'm alive?"

 

" Sure. Very much so. Good for another eighty years or so... Ah, sorry. Forgot your rules."

 

"I thought I'd been taken."

 

"Pike threw the boat over. You went in deep and got trapped in the nets."

 

"How do I Jive?"

 

"Michael saved you, Dorothy. Along with Ryan and Jehu. Cut you free."

 

" Where's Calvin."

 

"Pike got him. Sorry."

 

Michael had knelt in the water at the young woman's side, holding her hand in his. "And Mildred gave you the kiss of life and brought you back from the other side."

 

"Other side?"

 

Doc had interrupted at that point. "That dark bourne from which no traveler returns. Apart from the fact that Dr. Wyeth's professional expertise ensured that you were the exception to the ancient rule. You came back, my dear."

 

"We haven't got the fish that Moses wanted," she replied, studiously avoiding thanking Mildred, or any of them, for saving her life. Then she'd turned her face away and refused to speak until they were home again.

 

AS THEY NEARED THE CAUSE that supported Quindley, they heard the sounds of a trumpet, announcing their return. Many of the young men and women came running in from the nearby fields, exclaiming in shock and horror at the news of Calvin's brutish death. Jehu leaped from the boat the moment they landed, calling out that he had to go and report to Moses immediately. He waved a hand to acknowledge Ryan's warning that he should mention the fact that they might have seen further evidence of stickles.

 

Dorothy was helped out on rubbery legs, supported on one side by Michael, who went with the young woman into the heart of the ville, leaving the other six to wander back to their own quarters.

 

An hour later Jehu appeared in their doorway. His face was pale, and he could do nothing to stop his hands from tangling with each other in front of him, a sure sign of his profoundly nervous state. "Moses wants to see you, Ryan. Straight away."

 

"And the rest of us?" Krysty asked.

 

"No. Just Ryan."

 

"You look like your granny just caught your balls in her mangle, son," Doc said, grinning. "Moses come snarling out of his basket in the bulrushes and give you some seriously hard time, did he?"

 

"He is not pleased with what's happening in the ville since you outlanders came."

 

"His idea to let us stay," Ryan replied.

 

"I know, I know." Jehu's voice broke, and he lifted his hands to his face, looking like he was about to burst into tears. "But now... Well, he wants to talk with you, Ryan."

 

"You tell him about the smoke from the fire?"

 

"Yes. Moses said he believed that it was only a camp of some beaver hunters, that we shouldn't worry at all about the stickies, that he knew that they'd all gone away and that Calvin had paid the first part of

 

the blood price and all would be well after the rest was settled."

 

"What's that mean?" Mildred asked.

 

"What?"

 

"Settled. You said that the rest of the 'blood price* would soon be settled."

 

"Tonight. There will be a ceremony. Two will be sent on. The outlander and Heinrich."

 

"Chilled?" Krysty asked.

 

"You call it that." Jehu shrugged. "Go to Moses now, Ryan. Now."

 

THE LUXURIOUS ROOM felt cold, and Ryan was aware that his clothes still held more than a touch of damp. He walked toward the mirror and stared into it, trying to detect some sign of life or movement.

 

There was a deep, melodious chuckle. "Such curiosity, Ryan Cawdor."

 

"Always been my way."

 

A silence. Ryan rubbed at the side of his nose, hesitated a moment, then turned and started to stroll out of the stone-walled building.

 

"And so impatient." Again the wise chuckle, making Ryan feel seven years old.

 

"I don't wait for any man," he replied.

 

"I believe you, my son. Did you never wait for a word from your father?"

 

"When I was little."

 

"Respect, Ryan Cawdor. That is what I have taught my young people here in Quindley. Respect and order. You would be surprised how eager they are to be

 

told what to do and when to do it. No confusion over having to make choices."

 

"Right or wrong?" Ryan questioned.

 

He caught the faint sound of someone clapping, slowly and quietly. "I like you. If s sad that you have brought such gloom and death riding at your saddle horn."

 

"You know that's shit."

 

"Do I?"

 

"Course. Isaac's brother was dead before we got anywhere near your ville. Children died because of bad planning and bad luck. Same with Calvin. Just to feed your face, Moses."

 

"You speak your mind."

 

"Damn right!"

 

"This is because you have more summers."

 

"Mebbe."

 

"This is why we do not allow so many summers here in the paradise of Quindley. They lead only to questioning and trouble."

 

"Paradise! I seen better paradises on flea-bitten beds in stinking frontier gaudies, Moses. This might be paradise for you. You got everything you need. The kids work from when they get born and then, when they might start to get difficult, you simply get them chilled."

 

Again there was the quiet, deep-chested laugh. "You are the living proof of the great wisdom of the way that this ville operates, Ryan."

 

"Wise for you."

 

"Of course. I give them the sense of belonging and of having their h'ves organized. Without me this ville would be a hole in the ground."

 

Ryan nodded, becoming bored with the conversation. "That all you wanted to tell me, Moses? How the sun shines out of your ass and when you shit it comes out flat like a ribbon and smells of violets? That all?"

 

"Someone once said that you shouldn't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain, Ryan Cawdor. You are the first person I've met who has acted on that."

 

"I'm going."

 

"Very well. But if you chose to come in with me, we would together wield such power that all of Death-lands could fall to us. One day."

 

"Old friend of mine used to say that you shouldn't ever plan for tomorrow. Might not come."

 

"It will not come for Heinrich and for the out-lander."

 

"Heard about them. When?"

 

"Tonight," Moses replied.

 

"Might turn in early," Ryan said, yawning. "Been quite a big day already,"

 

"It gets bigger."

 

"Sure."

 

"The passing of someone who has resisted being twenty-five is a spectacle worth seeing, Ryan."

 

"I've seen more chillings than you've eaten fish dinners, Moses."

 

There came a sigh that seemed to Ryan to be tainted with a strange longing. "I believe you."

 

"How old are you, Moses?"

 

Moses laughed, which made Ryan feel, for a moment, as though he'd asked the unseen presence something incredibly stupid. "You must cease wondering about my age. You know the truth that you will never know."

 

"See you later," Ryan said.

 

WHEN HE REJOINED the others he found that Michael was back, sitting on the corner bed, arms folded, staring sullenly at Krysty.

 

"What's wrong?" Ryan asked. "Dorothy hasn't bought the farm, has she?"

 

Michael shook his head in silence.

 

"He saw the people they're going to chill tonight," Krysty said quietly.

 

"When?"

 

"Day he went into the woods with his special blonde," Dean stated venomously.

 

"Just shut your flap, kid," Michael spit.

 

Ryan stepped between them. "You know you should've told us about this."

 

"No, I don't know that, Ryan. As it happens, I don't fucking know that at all."

 

"Just what's got into you?" Ryan looked at the others. "Anyone know about this?"

 

"Cherchez la femme," Doc muttered. "Ancient predark saying. Means that when there's any trouble... all that you have to do is seek out the woman." He glanced at Mildred. "My apologies, my dear. Not very politically correct, I know. But, c'est la vie. That's another-"

 

"I know what it means, Doc," she replied. "And this time I guess you're probably right about Michael's problem."

 

"Not a problem. Look, all right. I went for a walk, and we saw these two prisoners. That's all. You always told us, Ryan, that we shouldn't mess with the affairs of a ville. Well, I just did like you told me."

 

The teenager was on the ragged edge. With a shock like cold water in the eyes, Ryan realized something. Michael had been taken into Nil-Vanity as an oblate, an infant who was reared all his life within the strict confines of the withdrawn meditative order. Dorothy was one of the few women that Michael had ever fallen in love with.

 

"All right," he said. "Let it drop now. But remember where your loyalty lies, Michael."

 

"Oh, I know that all right, Ryan." He stood up defiantly. "And it doesn't lie with you." He stalked straight out of the door into the heart of the ville.

 

Chapter Thirty

 

There was a long discussion between the six friends over the noon meal. Ryan and J.B. were both leaning toward the idea of getting out of the ville before evening came, and the pair of promised sacrifices. Jehu had arrived with the silent serving girls, who carried in trays of food and had explained to them about the doomed outlander rapist that Michael had seen, and about the hapless Heinrich who was to die as an example for the rest of the ville.

 

The food was less good, as though everyone in Quindley had been shaken by the death of the young man. But Ryan's suspicion was that the depression was linked to the vastly more serious fact that Moses hadn't been allowed to enjoy his anticipated luncheon of fresh-caught fish.

 

There was cold potatoes, lumpy and dull, scorched on the outside and partly raw on the inside; a mess of peas, gray and heavily salted. At least the bread was good, and the butter tasty. Dean looked at the horn beaker of water that Krysty had poured out for him.

 

"That come from the lake?"

 

"Course. They don't seem to have any wells here. No need, I guess."

 

"Don't somehow fancy it." The boy peered unhappily into the tumbler. "Got the blood of what's-his-name. You know, that Calvin the pike crushed. Don't want to drink it."

 

Doc brushed some crumbs off his vest. "I confess a certain sympathy with the lad, though I share the opinion of the great W. C. Fields on drinking water. He wouldn't touch it because he said that fish fucked in it."

 

"Doc!" Mildred exclaimed. "I'm shocked at your language. And you a Harvard man."

 

"Only a lighthearted jest, madam." The old man appeared to be flustered. "It was not my intention to offend you. Or to offend any lady here present. My apologies."

 

She grinned. "Only kidding, Doc. Actually this water tastes good enough to me. I wouldn't have dreamed of drinking it back when I was alive before. Most of the lakes, rivers and seas were filthy with all kinds of industrial and chemical contaminants. Fall in some lakes in the United States of America and swallow a couple of mouthfuls and you probably wouldn't make it to the next dawn. They were that bad."

 

Krysty picked up a bright-skinned pippin and crunched it between her strong white teeth. "We should get back to the subject of leaving or staying." She turned to Ryan. "Look, lover, if you and J.B. think we ought to make tracks, then I guess the rest of us'll go along with that."

 

The two men looked at each other in silence. Ryan spoke first. "My guess is that we'll probably be leaving young Michael behind here."

 

"Serve him right." Dean was peeling a ripe pear with his turquoise-hilted knife.

 

"You and Michael have really fallen out, haven't you?" Ryan looked at his son.

 

"Yeah. Gone all big-eyed and wet-mouthed over that straw-head slut."

 

Krysty pushed back her chair, the legs scraping noisily on the wooden floor. "Better watch that mouth, Dean," she said, her voice hard and tight with anger. "Dorothy might be many things, but she's not a slut. You get in the easy habit of bad-talking all women, and you lose all respect for women. You'll be calling Mildred and me sluts next."

 

"Sorry. But she's trapped Michael into changing. Mebbe she's a witch, Dad."

 

"No. Michael may have fallen for Dorothy. In love with her. Wouldn't surprise me. Happens, Dean. One day it'll even happen to you."

 

"No way at all!"

 

They all laughed. Doc leaned back and pushed away his wooden plate. "When the arrow strikes at the heart, Dean, it will pierce through the strongest defence. And even the bravest and boldest will fall a helpless captive."

 

"Not me, Doc!" Dean pulled a face of such appalled repugnance that they all laughed again.

 

Ryan got up and looked casually out of the doorway, making sure that none of the young people of Quindley were close enough to overhear them.

 

"You think Michael might remain here, Dean? Think about it. That's a serious question."

 

"What if he does, Ryan?" J.B. asked.

 

"Then he stays. Time came for Jak Lauren to pull out of the endless moving-on. One day it'll come to all of us." He didn't dare to meet Krysty's eyes. "If Michael decides that his own personal future lies here with Dorothy, then that'll be what happens. It's his decision."

 

Dean nodded. "I think they sort of want to be together, Dad."

 

"How about us, Ryan?" Mildred had also stood up. "Must go and take a leak in a minute. Are we going to stay another night or move on while there's light?"

 

Ryan looked out of the thatched hut, at the range of close-packed wooden buildings. The narrow lanes of the ville were almost deserted, with most of the people out in the fields or the forest around.

 

"Stickies are out there, somewhere. I'm sure of it. We can malce the redoubt in about a half day or so. Wouldn't want to find us stuck in the evening gloom in these woods."

 

"So we wait until dawn, lover?"

 

"Yeah, Krysty. Move tomorrow at first light. But keep that to ourselves."

 

"We telling Michael?" Dean asked.

 

Ryan considered for a few seconds, finally deciding. "No."

 

THE TEENAGER still hadn't appeared by the end of the afternoon.

 

Jehu had come by after the dirty plates had been collected to tell them that the ceremony-that was the word he used-would be beginning an hour after the sun had set over the western edge of the lake.

 

Then he had gone, saying something they didn't understand about how he had to check that all of the osiers had been properly collected and treated.

 

"Did he say the 'hoosiers' had been collected and treated?" wondered Doc.

 

"No, the osiers," Mildred snapped. "Osiers, Doc. Branches of willow trees."

 

"I am familiar with the term, madam. Just that the young man with the absurd ponytail doesn't open his mouth properly when he speaks. Anyway, why would they be wanting the branches of willow trees?"

 

Nobody could come up with an answer to that question. So the afternoon wore wearily on.

 

RYAN AND KRYSTY WALKED out across the causeway onto dry land. Strolling together along the beach, they ignored the curious glances of the young men and women working in the allotments and orchards of the ville.

 

The sun had dipped partway below the horizon, leaving a golden carpet that stretched toward them across the calm water. The storm had eased away, bringing only a brief shower at around three o'clock, barely enough to lay the dust.

 

"Where are they going to do this chilling?" Krysty asked, her dazzling hair even more bright in the evening fire.

 

"Don't know. Have to be close, or Moses won't be able to get to see it. And I can't imagine anything happening in this sick place without his knowing all about it."

 

"Look."

 

A hundred yards ahead of them, emerging from the sable shadows at the edge of the pine forest, were Michael and Dorothy, hand in hand.

 

"Young lovers," Ryan said flatly.

 

When they saw Ryan and Krysty, the couple hesitated, exchanging a few hurried words. Then they approached.

 

"Fine sunset," Krysty said.

 

"Yeah. It is." Michael looked unhappy. "Is...is your neck feeling okay, Ryan?"

 

"My neck?"

 

"Yeah. You still got that bit of bandage on it from the mutie creature in the ghost town."

 

Ryan's wound had healed so well that he'd almost completely forgotten it. Once in the night he had woken with a brief stab of flaring pain, but it had quickly passed. He lifted a hand to touch the place.

 

"Feels fine, thanks. How are you?"

 

All four of them were suddenly aware that the question hadn't been a simple, polite one, that Ryan was asking the teenager how he really was.

 

"Better. Think that the last jump, and the ghost town, sort of moved my brain around loose inside my head. You know how it can be, Ryan."

 

"Sure do."

 

"But you are feeling better now, aren't you, Michael?" Dorothy asked, not letting go of his hand.

 

"Sure. Lots."

 

"That's good." Krysty looked beyond them, along the dark strand, vanishing toward the north. "Can any of you smell smoke at all?"

 

Ryan paused, concentrating. "Could be. Probably the cooking fires from the ville."

 

Krysty shook her head. "No. Not wood burning. I'm sure there's gas, as well."

 

"We didn't see anything in the trees, did we, Dorothy?" Michael said.

 

"Depends on what you mean by anything." She wasn't able to control a suggestive giggle.

 

Michael blushed and pulled his hand away from hers. "You know what I mean," he snarled, angry at his own obvious embarrassment. "No fires or anything."

 

"All right, sweetness. Sorry if I upset you. You know I'd do anything not to do that."

 

She laid a hand on his arm, then stretched up and kissed him softly on the mouth, her blond hair blowing across both their faces.

 

"You going to the ceremony, Michael?"

 

"Sure. Everyone'll be there, Ryan. You aren't leaving the ville before that, are you?"

 

"No. Why do you ask?"

 

He shuffled his feet in the loose pebbles. "Something I want to talk about before you go."

 

"Before 'you' go? That sounds different from saying before 'we' go, Michael."

 

"Yeah."

 

Krysty watched the teenager carefully. He was looking toward the setting sun, and she saw that his dark eyes were completely veiled, showing no more emotion than a piece of fresh-quarried slate. His mouth was a thin, etched line, and he wouldn't actually look either Ryan or herself full in the face.

 

At that moment she was certain that Ryan had been right in his guess. Michael and Dorothy wouldn't be separated. Unless something very unexpected happened in the next twenty-four hours, the six of them would be making the next jump without the curly headed teenager.

 

THEY WALKED a little farther along the coast of the enormous lake, but the sun was sinking fast and they only had their handblasters with them.

 

"Best get back," Krysty said.

 

"Sure."

 

"Lover? What do you think that Michael was talking about? What does he want to say to us?"

 

"Goodbye."

 

Chapter Thirty-One

 

The tiny sliver of a new moon showed in the night sky, hardly enough to cast the weakest shadow.

 

Far over the lake, to the west, hung a dense bank of cloud, and a few thin tatters of gray-white floated across the silent forest that surrounded the ville.

 

Within the pools of blackness beneath the larches, firs, pines and aspens, the creatures of the night moved and hunted. Some crawled on their scaled bellies and some flew silently among the stark branches. Many did their work on four legs.

 

Some did it on two legs.

 

SUPPER HAD BEEN a hasty and cursory affair: a stew of apples that was so thick you could have cut it into slices, providing you had a sharp enough knife; some sourdough rolls with cherry jelly, and a large bowl of cold boiled potatoes and carrots.

 

None of them felt all that hungry, though Ryan insisted that everyone eat as much as they could handle. "Might be the last food for some time," he said. "Depending on when we make the jump and where it takes us."

 

Outside, they had been able to hear the noise of the preparations for the two sacrifices, though Jehu had politely insisted that they shouldn't leave their quarters until they were sent for.

 

After the brief meeting on the shore of the lake, there had been no further sign of Michael. The tall blond leader of Quindley had told Ryan that the teenager was with Dorothy. "Which means that he is also with us."

 

"Not an outlander, Jehu?"

 

"No, Ryan. Michael is neither one thing nor the other. But within a day or so he may have completed his choosing and will speak with Moses."

 

That was all they knew.

 

"Now," JEHU ANNOUNCED.

 

The ville was in semidarkness, with only an occasional torch burning smokily in wall brackets. They followed the blond figure through the narrow, twisting lanes, until they reached the larger open area directly in front of the conical thatch of Moses's own dwelling.

 

It seemed that everyone was there, standing in solid blocks: the little children, shepherded by a few of the teenage girls, then the older children, all silent, as though they were overawed by the occasion, and around three sides stood the rest of the young people.

 

Though there were ripples of movement, Ryan wasn't aware of anyone actually speaking. He looked around, his eye turning to the roof of the temple of Moses. At first, because of the shifting orange glow from the torches, he wasn't entirely sure of what he seemed to be seeing. Then he concentrated, his sight accommodating to the gloom.

 

There was an opening in the dense thatch of reeds, square, with light glinting off glass. Behind it there was the pale blur of a figure, though it was quite impossible to make out any details. But Ryan realized that Moses was present, watching the proceedings through his own window.

 

"Over here," Jehu said, pointing to a space in the front row, to the left of the square. "Then you can both see and be seen. Watch and be watched."

 

"Where's Michael?" Dean asked.

 

"There." Jehu pointed with one hand toward the mass of people on the opposite side.

 

Ryan looked as well, thinking he saw the tentative wave of a hand among the crowd, but it wasn't easy to be certain. He half waved back, then thought better of it.

 

"Wait," Jehu said. "You see that some of us carry our blasters with us. You must not interfere with what must happen. You understand?"

 

Ryan nodded. "Sure. It's your party."

 

"And you can cry if you want to," Mildred whispered mysteriously.

 

"No talking, please." Jehu lifted his right hand over his head in a signal to someone standing on the opposite side of the square.

 

Immediately there was the sonorous, slow beating of a slack-skinned drum, so deep and resonant that it seemed to echo through the marrow of the bones.

 

The shuffling stopped, and there was a total silence from the young people, a quiet so intense that everyone heard the far-off, mournful cry of a hunting wolf.

 

Krysty slipped her hand through the crook of Ryan*s arm, and he could feel that she was trembling with the growing tension of the ritual.

 

Jehu was still by them, his face turned upward, staring with wide eyes at the inconspicuous window in the roof of Moses's stone-built home.

 

Ryan looked up and saw a tiny flicker of light, no brighter than a firefly. And then they all heard the familiar voice, echoing around the ville.

 

" Welcome to the time of pleasure, a time for which there is a season. A time to be birthed and a time to take the long road that winds not."

 

"Sounds to me uncommonly like a nickel-and-dime TV evangelist preacher who has unfortunately swallowed a compendium of quotes."

 

Jehu turned and hissed angrily at Doc. "You live on borrowed time, oldie! Hold your words!"

 

Moses was still talking. "Each of you dwells well here in our home of Quindley. Outside is plague and the dark angel of death, escorted by the pale riders. To live outside the ville is only a worse, longer way. Do you want that way, brothers and sisters of the ville?"

 

There was a great roar of "No!" from all around.

 

"Five and twenty is the number and five times five shall be the sacred counting."

 

Mildred was beside Ryan, her voice so quiet that it didn't reach the ears of Jehu. "Four and twenty shall be too little and six and twenty too much and seven and twenty shall be right out," she breathed.

 

"As the day has its measure and the year its turning, so shall each of us have a span allotted. Not a doubtful, troubled time, rife with worry. But a time that we know. We know truly of our coming in and our going out and the grace that lieth with us at exit and entrance."

 

The crowd was sighing, tike the wind through a grove of tall beeches. Ryan felt a deeply uneasy prickling at the base of his spine at the strange, almost hypnotic power of the man who watched over them.

 

"What is the reward of those who tread the righteous path, brothers and sisters?"

 

"Light and life" was the chorused reply.

 

"And what shall be the lot of those who transgress against the word of Moses?"

 

"Darkness and death!"

 

Ryan's right hand had slipped down onto the cool butt of his 9 mm SIG-Sauer, without his even being aware of the movement.

 

"How shall they enter that darkness, brothers and sisters? How?"

 

This time the shout was deafening. "Through the flame, Moses, through the flame."

 

"Oh, Gaia!" Ryan whispered. "Look."

 

Suddenly everything had become very clear-the need for the willow branches, the call for the flames, the path to the endless darkness for those who had gone against the word and laws of Moses.

 

The drumbeat became even slower, ceremonial and ponderous, like the steps of a giant.

 

Or the beating of a huge, diseased heart.

 

The two victims appeared, surrounded by an honor guard of the tallest young women in the ville, all carrying rifles at the high port.

 

The outlander rapist was first, naked, hands tied behind his back. His head was sunk on his chest, and he shuffled his feet as be walked, not seeming to be aware of where he was or what was happening to him.

 

Heinrich, the renegade youth who had chosen to try to defy Moses and his laws, followed close behind. He walked with his head up, looking scornfully from side to side, once spitting at someone who whispered something from the crowd.

 

The eagle eye of Moses missed nothing. "Let us have silence and dignity, brothers and sisters of the ville," he called from his thatched aerie.

 

Dean pulled at his father's sleeve. "What are those things for, Dad?" He pointed at a pair of large cages, roughly the size and shape of a man, made from tightly bound, narrow strips of willow, being carried by a number of men from the ville, toward two stout wooden stakes that were driven into the ground beneath the watching Moses.

 

Ryan didn't answer for a moment, though he knew the answer. "You'll see," he whispered.

 

The older man, whose tongue had been torn from his mouth, kept making choked, gobbling sounds. He stumbled as he was tied first to the stake, then the wicker cage was strapped into place around him. One of the younger women poured some clear liquid all over him and the woven container that held him. The pungent smell drifted across the square.

 

"Lamp oil," J.B. said.

 

"They going to burn him, Dad?"

 

"Yeah. Both of them, Dean."

 

"Bastards!" The word was spoken loud enough for Jehu to hear him. The blond man turned and glowered at the boy.

 

"You could've joined us, boy. You know that. And you turned your back."

 

I Wouldn't join you if you offered me all the jack in Deathlands!"

 

Ryan patted his son on the back.

 

Now it was the turn of Heinrich to be imprisoned.

 

Though he had seemed fairly passive, the sight of the stake and the wicker cage brought on a violent and futile rage. He pulled himself away from the young women guarding him and kicked out at them, buying himself a few moments* breathing space. He stared wildly around him, looking toward the hidden figure of Moses.

 

"Don't do this to me, friend!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with mortal terror. "Spare me this ordeal. Let me go free and I'll never come back to Quindley again. I swear it. Show me mercy, I beg you."

 

"Silence him, sisters!" ordered the sonorous voice of the hidden Moses.

 

"It can't be wrong just to be old!"

 

The word died away as the nearest woman brought the butt of her rifle around in a crushing blow to Heinrich's groin. He doubled over, flat on his face in the trampled dirt, his cries turning to a feeble, helpless mewing. His whole body convulsed as he vomited.

 

"I regret that I have no wish to bear witness to this most barbarous performance. I shall return to our quarters with anyone who wishes to accompany me."

 

"You were warned, oldie!" whispered Jehu, starting to bring the barrel of his own blaster around toward Doc. But he stopped when he found himself staring down the gaping muzzle of Ryan's SIG-Sauer, with J.B.'s Uzi nudging him in the ribs.

 

Doc smiled. "A little violence is a wonderful thing, is it not?" He raised his voice toward the roof of Moses's temple. "Carry on with your bloody ritual, but you carry on without me!" He turned on his heel and began to walk back toward their quarters, pushing an angry young man out of the way with the iron ferrule of his sword stick.

 

"Think I'll keep you company, Doc," Mildred called, striding after him.

 

It crossed Ryan's mind as a vaguely interesting fact that the two members of their group who couldn't face the brutal chilling to come had both arrived in the living enamel house of Deathlands from earlier, perhaps more civilized, predark times. He also wondered what Michael was feeling, across the far side of the square, in the gloom.

 

"Dad?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Mind if I go after Doc and Mildred?"

 

"Course not."

 

"You staying with Krysty and J.B., Dad?"

 

"Guess so."

 

The boy nodded. "See you hi a while."

 

Ryan half turned to watch the slim, lithe figure of his son picking his way through the darkness after Doc and Mildred.

 

"Best for him not to watch this, lover," Krysty said, taking his arm.

 

"I guess so." Jehu stood watching them, frozen in an impotent rage at their betrayal of one of the most important of the ville's rituals. "You keep looking at me like that, Jehu, and you'll miss the main event behind you."

 

"You speaking to me, oldie? You speaking to me?"

 

"Must be," Ryan replied, "You're the only one here."

 

Just for a spaced heartbeat he thought the pony-tailed youth was going to go for him, and his finger took up the first pressure on the P-226. But then Jehu managed to regain self-control and ostentatiously spun to watch the ceremony.

 

Both men were bound inside the cages of thin, strong osier branches.

 

The scent of the oil was strong in the still night air, filling the nostrils with its rank odor. The drum had stopped its beating, and the watchers were motionless. Ryan listened carefully, and it seemed as though the entire world beyond the fortified walls of the ville was holding its breath.

 

The calm, gentle voice of Moses drifted down over them all like a layer of warm, silken honey, making the double murder a perfectly reasonable thing to happen.

 

"For betraying us and all our brothers and sisters, the sentence shall be..."

 

"Death!" The word wasn't shouted. It was breathed with a religious awe from dozens of throats, making Ryan's hair stand on end.

 

"Lover?"

 

"Wait," he whispered.

 

"Something's wrong," Krysty said.

 

"Where? The chilling you mean? Course it's-"

 

"No. Something else." Her head turned wildly from side to side, her brilliantly fiery hair seeming dulled in the smoky dimness of the square.

 

"What?" He looked around, but there wasn't a sight or sound of a threat.

 

Not a sight.

 

Not a sound.

 

"No sound," he muttered. The forest by the lake was totally quiet, quite bereft of the usual nocturnal range of bird and animal noises.

 

"Light the fires," Moses shouted, breaking Ryan's intense concentration for a moment.

 

"No!" The scream from the tortured Heinrich split the blackness.

 

Two of the smallest children stepped forward, each holding the hand of an older girl, each holding a blazing torch in their other hand.

 

"Yes, my dears," Moses called from on high.

 

The wicker baskets caught fire at once, blazing with a truly ferocious intensity, a golden light that shaded into orange and crimson in the shimmering air above the two cages.

 

"Gaia help their passing and make it fast," Krysty said.

 

"Breathe hi the fire and they're dead in seconds," J.B. observed, the flames reflected off the lens of his glasses, veiling his eyes.

 

Many of the watchers had fallen to their knees, hands pressed together, faces radiant in the glow of the twin fires.

 

One of the dying men had begun to scream. Ryan thought it was Heinrich, but he couldn't be sure. Whoever it was kept twisting in his bonds, as the fire consumed.

 

There was the smell of roasting meat, and, barely audible above the piercing cries, the noise of sporadic gunfire, with a bright blaze beginning near the main gates into Quindley. Yelps and shrieks of hatred and anger emerged from the darkness beyond the causeway.

 

"Got company," J.B. said. "Sounds like the stick-ies have come calling."

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

All the pieces of the jigsaw locked instantly together in Ryan's mind. As he ran toward the causeway, SIG-Sauer ready, J.B. on his right hand and Krysty on his left, his combat memory was ticking off the clues he'd ignored-the figure seen among the trees during the ill-starred fishing expedition; the smoke that they'd glimpsed, dismissed by Moses as being just beaver hunters; the smell of the fire when he and Krysty had bumped into Michael and Dorothy.

 

But above all, and Ryan cursed himself for having let it pass him by, was the unnatural silence out there among the tall pines, a silence prompted by the lurking, slinking presence of the mutie enemy.

 

He was aware of the panic and chaos behind. The young people of Quindley screamed and shouted, two or three of them discharging their blasters uselessly into the night sky. Ryan thought he also heard the voice of Moses, struggling to try to make itself heard over the bedlam, and failing.

 

Still soaring above it all, like a soul in the bottom circle of the inferno, was the endless screaming of Heinrich.

 

As they drew closer to the main gates of the ville, the noise of voices grew louder and the fire grew brighter.

 

"Thrown pitch on it and set it alight," J.B. panted. "No bastard guards at all."

 

"One on top, coming over," Krysty yelled, stopping and drawing a bead on the ragged figure that clung to the large spikes that decorated the wooden doors.

 

Ryan and the Armorer ran on, hearing the faint snap of her 5-shot Smith & Wesson double-action blaster, seeing the stickie throw his arms wide and topple forward, hanging by his knees to the gate.

 

The surging mass of Moses's people were on their heels, surrounding and passing Krysty before she could begin to run again.

 

"Lookout towers, both sides," Ryan shouted, pointing with the SIG-Sauer. "You take left!"

 

The beechwood ladder was well made, and he ran up it with the agility of a great cat, hardly having to steady himself, reaching the narrow walkway that ran around the inside of the high defensive walls of the ville.

 

He peered cautiously over the side, toward the causeway below, seeing the stickies' fire reflected in the dark, sullen waters of Shamplin Lake.

 

On the opposite side of the gates, J.B. also looked down, his Uzi at the ready.

 

There were black, sticky gobbets of tar stuck to the timbers, burning with a smoking yellow flame. Dancing outside were no more than half a dozen stickies, three of them struggling to raise a crude siege ladder against the wall just beneath Ryan. There was ample light, and he aimed the powerful 9 mm handblaster and fired three times, killing the trio of muties, two of the corpses flailing lifelessly into the cold water on either side of the causeway.

 

"Something wrong!" J.B. shouted, his clear voice breaking through the hubbub around them.

 

Ryan was already being jostled by some of the young men and women, Jehu right at his shoulder, all of them shooting wildly down at the surviving stickies.

 

J.B.'s words jarred Ryan, and he half turned, staring toward the forest, wondering where the rest of the gang was. Stickies had brains with all of the reasoning power of dead sheep, but even they would hesitate to attack a powerful, fortified ville in such small numbers.

 

Under a hail of lead, the last mutie was down and done for, his body literally shredded to a bloody pulp by the overwhelming firepower.

 

Immediately Jehu led his people in an ululating chant of victory. He waved his Remington hunting rifle above his head, his expression contorted with a savage delight. "With Moses as our captain, how can we be defeated?" he yelled, his breath hot and feral, directly into Ryan's face.

 

The noise was gradually subsiding, and Ryan caught J.B.'s eye across the gap between them. The Armorer hadn't fired a single shot from the machine pistol and gestured with it, back toward the heart of the ville. He was looking worried, rather than triumphant, heightening Ryan's concern. Below them, Krysty was looking back over her shoulder.

 

The crowd was thronged so thickly on the narrow platform that Ryan could hear the supporting timbers creaking. Several of the teenage girls shot at the corpses, making them twitch and jerk. Jehu watched them, laughing delightedly.

 

Ryan grabbed him by the shoulder. "Get everyone off here," he shouted, "or the whole place could go down."

 

At first the blank blue eyes didn't register any understanding. Then the danger of their position reached Jehu and he gradually restored a kind of order, telling everyone to get back down again, except for half a dozen men that he nominated as guards. Ryan pushed through and climbed quickly back to street level, where J.B. joined him and Krysty.

 

The screaming had stopped from the two tortured victims of the sacrificial ceremony, but they could all hear Moses's voice, praising everyone for their bravery and speed of response.

 

"If he'd had a lookout posted, then none of that would have been necessary," J.B. stated calmly.

 

Suddenly Michael was with them, Dorothy hanging on his arm. "Moses knew what would happen," said the teenage youth. "He can see the future."

 

"Yeah, "the woman agreed. "It's over and we won! Praise to Moses, we won!"

 

From the far side of the ville, where it protruded farthest into the huge lake, over toward the living quarters, they all heard the boom of a powerful handblaster, echoing into the night.

 

"Doc's Le Mat," J.B. said, setting off at a dead run toward the sound.

 

It was followed by a piercing scream. Scream upon scream. Two shots were fired from another blaster that Ryan recognized as being Mildred's Czech ZKR 551 target revolver, and a single round that he guessed came from his son's Browning Hi-Power.

 

Jehu had reacted surprisingly quickly, loping alongside Ryan. "What's happening?" he panted.

 

"Attack at front was a trick," Ryan replied.

 

The cries for help were shrill, high and thin, the voices of children.

 

"They've come in from the water and broken in. Taken our little ones."

 

Ryan sprinted through the darkness at top speed, his arms pumping, Krysty close behind him. "Taken our friends as well," he said.

 

They passed the open square, where the remains of the two wicker cages were now heaps of glowing ashes, containing what might have been a collection of blackened branches. Had it not been for the smoke-darkened skulls that lay, empty-socketed, among the ruby embers.

 

Quindley was small enough for them to be able to run from the entrance to their own rooms at the rear in less than fifty pounding heartbeats.

 

Ryan didn't waste time looking up at the roof of Moses's own shrine, but the voice seeped down as he powered by. "All will be well, brothers and sisters. Listen to me, for I say an will be well."

 

"Fuck you," Ryan breathed.

 

But Jehu had skidded to a halt, nearly falling over in the dirt. "We must listen and obey!" he yelled. "Listen and obey the word of Moses."

 

"Place is fired!" J.B. called. "Near where our rooms are. The back."

 

Ryan could smell the tang of blazing pitch, smothering the ghastly stench of the burned corpses, and see the orange glint of light between the buildings just ahead of them.

 

"Wait," Jehu called again.

 

Now they could see what had happened, read the story of the successful trick that the stickles had managed to play on the ville-a trick that would never have worked on forty-nine settlements out of fifty, with sensible lookouts and sentries constantly alert against just such a sneak attack.

 

They had come in from the lake, in boats or rafts, and crept in over the back wall while their suicidal companions had given their lives to distract the inhabitants with their feint at the front entrance.

 

Now the whole of that segment of Quindley was well ablaze, fountains of sparks erupting fifty feet high from the dry wooden walls, floors and roofs.

 

The outlanders' sleeping and eating quarters were already an inferno of scorching heat, the flames roaring as they consumed everything, chunks of burning timber falling into the waiting water below with a hissing of steam.

 

"See anything?" Krysty asked, shading her eyes against the ferocious glare, trying to look past the raging fire across the lake.

 

"Impossible. Guess they came by water and they're leaving the same way."

 

"No corpses." J.B. looked behind, where the mood of the ville had completely changed. The bravado and delight had vanished, to be replaced by grief and mourning at the loss of all the children who'd been stolen away.

 

"Could be there. Or mebbe dumped in the lake." Ryan knelt and tried to look inside the nearest burning building, but it was impossible. He straightened again. "Jehu. Get your people to work on putting out those fires, or you're going to lose the whole damned place."

 

"Moses hasn't given us the order to do anything."

 

"Wait for an order and you lose your home. Come on, you double stupe!" Krysty looked as though she were about to haul off and slap the young man across the face.

 

"Yes, yes, I guess..." He turned and waved his hands rather helplessly. "Water. Get water and put out the fire."

 

J.B. clapped his hands loudly to attract attention. "Put water on the nearest buildings first. Can't save those already burning. But you can soak the others and rescue them from the flame spread. Get to it!"

 

RYAN-S FIRST IMPULSE had been to take one of the rowboats from Quindley and set off immediately in pursuit of the fleeing muties and their prisoners. It was possible that Doc, Dean and Mildred had already been butchered. But it was typical behavior for stickies to spend some time on disposing of their captives, disposal that generally involved a great deal of pain, and as much fire as possible.

 

Stickies truly loved the brightness of fire.

 

But Ryan realized that it would be pointless. He had no idea of the numbers of the raiding gang, or how many vessels they had with them.

 

What he needed to do was set out with as many armed men and women as possible from Quindley, preferably before first light. He could remember where they'd sported the smoke among the trees, farther north along the shore of the lake. It was a fair bet that it had been the stickies* camp and that they would have returned there with their prisoners.

 

Under Jehu's orders, the bucket chain had been quickly organized and was working well, water spraying onto the wood of the buildings that adjoined the heart of the fire, soaking the thatch and preserving it from the flying sparks. The timber walls, heated almost to the point where they would have spontaneously combusted, were literally steaming.

 

Michael appeared again from the crowd, this time without the blond woman on his arm. "They got Dean and Doc and Mildred," he said.

 

"Yeah. We heard a burst of shooting. But we don't see any bodies. They got every one of the little children from the place next along as well." Ryan looked at the teenager. "We're going to go after them before dawning. Want to come along?"

 

"Sure. Course I do." He hesitated. "You asked Moses for permission?"

 

"Permission?" Ryan shook his head. "We don't need his permission, Michael."

 

"You do if you want to take boats from the ville. Or use any of the brothers and sisters."

 

"Think he'd be able to stop us?"

 

Michael grinned, the first time since their arrival in the ville that he'd shown even a glimmer of his old self. "Guess not, Ryan."

 

THE WINDOW IN THE ROOF of Moses's dwelling was closed, and audience with the invisible ruler of Quindley was in the luxurious surroundings of his receiving room on the first floor. Jehu, pressed by Ryan, had led him there, accompanied by J.B. and Krysty.

 

The two-way mirror still concealed Moses from their sight, but his voice was calm and gentle, as though the disaster of the stickies' attack were the merest of flea bites.

 

"You wish to consult me, Ryan Cawdor."

 

"Muties took all of your littlest ones, and three of our friends."

 

"This is true. Sad, but true."

 

"Hour before first light I want to take as many boats as you can spare. Armed people. Land up the coast and hit the stickies in their camp. With any luck we can rescue a lot of your children as well as our companions."

 

"No," said the deep, gentle voice.

 

"No?"

 

"No."

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

 

Moses was utterly immovable.

 

"I hear all you say, outlander," he said calmly, "but you are deeply wrong."

 

"Wrong to save lives? Wrong to save the lives of children and friends?"

 

"To your way of thinking, I see why you cherish such beliefs, Ryan Cawdor. But what has happened was destined to happen. Our young ones will have a rebirthing and will rejoin us here in the ville of Quindley."

 

"That's total shit!" Krysty could no longer contain her anger, and she brushed away Jehu's restraining hand, striding forward to push her face within inches of the mirror. They all heard a rustle of sudden movement, as if Moses had been taken aback by her enraged approach.

 

"You are strangers here." There was an unmistakable note of tension in his voice. "Best that you leave us."

 

Ryan considered putting a dozen spaced rounds through the dark glass, in the hope of taking Moses out. But to do that-to assassinate their god-would bring a mob of armed men and women running for revenge.

 

J.B. rescued the moment of tension. "Sure, Moses," he said. "The fire's out now. I'd be grateful for a bed for a few hours. Then we'll quit your ville."

 

Moses had recovered his cool. "I had not looked for such wisdom from an oldie. Your thinking is correct, outlander Dix. You may be fed before departing.

 

Jehu?"

 

"Master?"

 

"Arrange it."

 

"Yes, master."

 

Ryan stretched and yawned. "Guess I could do with some shut-eye as well."

 

"May your rest be gentle and filled only with dreams of light and hope."

 

"Thanks, Moses."

 

THEY PASSED THE REMAINS of the two murdered men, now just cooling ashes and tangled bones.

 

The ville was settling down after the horror of the sneak attack. The fires had been controlled. The only buildings destroyed were the living accommodation for visitors and the dormitory of the youngest children.

 

Fortunately none of Ryan's party had left any weapons or possessions in the rooms when they'd gone out to watch the sacrificial ceremony.

 

Jehu organized straw-filled mattresses for them in a storeroom that the ville used for late-summer fruit. It was lined with high shelves of planed elm, was pleasantly dry and smelled sweet and clean.

 

"Sleep well. There will be food in the morning. And we can give you something to ease your journeying. Some bread and apples, and flasks of water."

 

"Thanks," Ryan said. "Appreciate it."

 

Jehu paused in the doorway. He had brought them a pair of torches, sticking them into brackets in the wall. Their flickering light showed the struggle in his face. "Moses's rule runs only within the ville and its lands. If you wished to try to rescue your friends yourselves..."

 

"Appreciate that," Ryan replied. "You wouldn't know where Michael is?"

 

"No. He was walking with Dorothy out along the causeway after the fire was finished."

 

"Risky-" Krysty looked across the small room at Ryan"-isn't it, lover?"

 

"Not very, I guess." Ryan shook his head. "Stick-ies got what they wanted. Did it well. Good combat skills for them. Doubt there's any of them still around."

 

"HI wish you a good sleep and a clean wakening." Jehu raised his hand in a sort of cautious wave, then left the building, pushing the door shut behind him.

 

Ryan waited a few seconds, listening to the sound of the young man's feet moving away from them, "Right," he said. "Let's get to some talking and then some doing."

 

RYAN WAS LOCKED into a bizarre dream. A young woman, naked and oiled, was leaning over him, scratching an intricate tattoo on his forehead with a

 

bone needle, then rubbing a mixture of dark blue dye and spittle into the shallow cuts.

 

The point made a thin, tearing sound as it rubbed at the flesh above his good eye. Sometimes, in his dreams, Ryan found that he had both eyes. But not this time.

 

The strange rustling sound of the sharp point against his skin seemed louder.

 

Ryan blinked awake.

 

The small hut was almost totally dark, just tiny chinks of light between the feather-edge boarding. The albino teenager, Jak Lauren, had the best night sight of anyone Ryan had ever known. But his own vision was vastly better than average and he could make out a figure, black against the blackness, moving slowly toward him, feet making a rustling sound against the dusty wood of the floor.

 

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer from by his head and leveled it at the intruder.

 

"One more step and you get to be dead," he said quietly.

 

"It's me, Ryan."

 

"Michael. What do you want?"

 

"To come with you."

 

Ryan was one of the most cautious men in all Deathlands. "When we leave the ville after first food?"

 

"No." There was something like a laugh in the young man's voice. "I've been with you long enough to know better than that, Ryan. I may be a stupe, but I'm not triple stupe."

 

"So?"

 

He knew that J.B. was awake and would be holding the Uzi ready to fire. And that Krysty, alongside him, was also alert, holding her own blaster.

 

"So, you're going to steal a boat and go after Dean and the others."

 

"Who says this?"

 

Michael squatted. "Don't waste time. I got the boat for you."

 

Ryan was taken by surprise. "Where?"

 

"Tied up by the burned-out portion of the ville. Smaller than the one we had the other day. Four oars."

 

Krysty spoke. "How about Dorothy, Michael?"

 

A long pause. "She doesn't know."

 

"If she finds out?"

 

"I don't know, Krysty. She's...real special. Like her a lot. Think she likes me. But she believes in everything that Moses says. Like they all do."

 

"You don't?" J.B. asked.

 

"No. Not now. When we got here, my head was fucked by what happened in the jumps and it seemed that Moses was the fountain of truth and wisdom. Sort of thing they tried to teach at Nil-Vanity. Then I saw the chillings and the way Moses treated the attack by the stickles. They got all those little children and he just doesn't..." His voice broke with his anguish. "He just doesn't seem to care at all!"

 

The room was silent.

 

Finally it was Ryan who spoke. "We go an hour before first light. Head north and land on this side of where we think the stickies have their camp. Mebbe be too late for... for some of the ones they took. Mutie bastards like the dark for their fires and their sporting. But they might hold them and have a real good time this coming night. Best we can hope for. Go in and hit them hard as we can."

 

"How you reckon to bring the children back here to the ville? They must have fifteen or twenty of them."

 

"Sure. Plan is to spring them safe. Point the kids this way and hope to chill enough of the stickies to slow them down in going after them."

 

"How about..." Michael hesitated.

 

"Go on." Ryan and the others waited for him to speak. Outside, far off, they all heard a coyote howling at the thin slice of silver moon.

 

"How about the ville? How about Quindley and everyone? Stickies could come here again."

 

"Trader used to say that you look after yourself and your friends. Anyone else you can help is just a bonus. But you never, never risk yourselves trying to help folk who won't get off their asses to help themselves."

 

THEY ALL DOZED FITFULLY for the remainder of the long night. Ryan had always been able to set himself a waking time and then rely on some mysterious element in his body and brain to pull him from sleep at the right moment.

 

He rolled over and picked up the Steyr. All of them had slept fully clothed, and it was only a handful of seconds before they were ready to move.

 

Ryan gathered the three close around him. "One thing," he whispered. "Anyone tries to stop us-anyone, Michael-then we have to take them out. Can't risk being stopped. Dean, Doc and Mildred are out there waiting and relying on us.1'

 

There was just the faint eastern glow of the false dawn, enough to make out the pale blur of Michael's face.

 

"You understand what Ryan's saying, don't you, Michael?" Krysty asked.

 

"Yeah. If Dorothy happened to come out and try to stop us leaving, then she gets chilled. Sure, Ryan. I understand."

 

THERE WAS NOBODY out there.

 

Despite the horror of the sneak attack from the stickies, Moses had ruled that there were to be no extra security precautions, no more than the usual couple of lookouts at the front, overlooking the causeway.

 

The rowboat was where Michael had tied it, the water of the lake lapping gently under its keel. The mirrored expanse of Shamplin stretched away from them, quiet and calm.

 

"Want to be on the way before the full dawn," Ryan said. "Be visible a long way off. Hoped there might have been a mist to cover us."

 

Krysty and J.B. took the bow pair of oars, settling them carefully into the oarlocks.

 

"Take that side, Michael," Ryan ordered. "Don't need anyone to steer. We can do it with the oars." The teenager stood still, hesitating. "What's wrong? Having second thoughts about coming with us?"

 

"No."

 

"Then we have to go."

 

"We coming back?"

 

"Here? Doubt it. You want to?"

 

"Maybe, Ryan."

 

"Then mebbe we can come back here. Have to see which way the knife lands."

 

"I hate having to make decisions. Doc said once that until you have to act, you still have a choice of an infinite number of possibilities. Once you actually do something, then you don't have any."

 

"Sounds like Doc," Krysty said.

 

Michael grinned, his teeth white in the dawn's gloom. "Yeah. It does."

 

He stepped down into the boat, balancing with an effortless grace. Ryan got in last, handing the rifle to the teenager, untying the painter from a wooden stake at the edge of the ville. One push of his oar and they began to drift silently out into the vast stillness of the lake.

 

"Try not to make any splashing until we're well away," J.B. whispered.

 

"How long will it take us?" Krysty asked.

 

"About an hour, I guess." Ryan gave the word for them to begin rowing, setting a steady rate. "Keep in close to the shore and the land when we get close enough to where we think their camp might be."

 

"Then what?" Michael asked.

 

"Then? Then we do what we can. Can't do any more than that. Nobody can."

 

Chapter Thirty-Four

 

Doc felt less than well. He had a bruise the size of a pigeon's egg just below and behind his right ear. His coat was torn. His beloved Le Mat was stuck in the belt of the tall mutie who appeared to be the leader of the stickie gang. There was a strip of skin peeled away from his right wrist by the vicious suckers of the first of the murderous attackers who'd suddenly loomed silently in at them, out of the blackness of the night.

 

His hands were tied behind him with thin cord, so painfully tight that he could feel his fingers swelling, blood seeping from beneath the nails.

 

Mildred lay on her side next to him, similarly bound, with young Dean a little farther along the line of prisoners. Three young girls from the ville were tied between him and Mildred. The remaining survivors of the raid were scattered around the clearing, all equally helpless.

 

It was well past midnight, and Doc guessed that the coolness in the air and the faintest pallor toward the east was a token of the coming dawn.

 

The fire at the center of the muties' camp still burned brightly, and there were piles of kindling all around the place. Most of their captors had slept at some point, simply pulling ragged blankets or piles of stinking furs over their bodies, leaving their prisoners to fend for themselves.

 

So far, they had only killed one of the children, a little boy of about six. The rest of the young ones from Quindley had begun to scream at the appalling horror of the scene, until the stickles had raged among them, beating them into silence with short-hafted clubs and whips.

 

Mildred opened one eye and looked around. "Actually managed to sleep a few minutes" she whispered. "Can't believe I did that. Soon be light."

 

"I believe so." Doc profoundly wished that he could have thought of something brave or witty to say, but he felt sick, old and terrified.

 

"Ryan'll be here soon," she said, seeing Dean's eyes on her, managing a wink to show him that she wasn't beaten yet. But with the stickles starting to rise and wander about, she didn't dare say more to reassure the boy.

 

Doc had been trying to count the number of muties in the camp. Not that he had any serious hope of escape, but it gave nun something to occupy his mind. The trouble was that they kept moving around, and they all seemed to look the same. Lean, with stringy hair and dreadful complexions.

 

"Count the legs and divide by two," he'd breathed to himself. He made it around thirty or so. Two-thirds were male, though the women were difficult to tell apart. Most carried crude knives or axes, but several had blasters. It seemed as though they must have recently carried out a successful raid on a large ville or wag train. They had a stash of cans of lamp oil and tubs of pitch, which they'd used against Quindley.

 

Doc had learned a fair bit about the variety of human genetic mutations that had flowered across Deathlands since the long winters, and he knew that stickies were about as bad as they got. The only possible reason for taking prisoners was to torture and kill them with as much cruelty as possible. No ransom or trade would be taking place. Just some long, slow dying.

 

"How is your bruised head, my dear Mildred?"

 

"Like someone's been using it to line a parrot's cage. How about you?"

 

"Chipper and perky and ready to be up and doing. Soon as Ryan and the others get here."

 

"You sure they'll come, Doc?"

 

"Sure as I ever was about anything, madam. If they don't all arrive shortly, I shall, to put it mildly, be most frightfully disappointed."

 

IF IT HADNT BEEN for the fact that they were on a desperate expedition to try to rescue their friends from the horror of the stickies, the boat trip across Sham-plin Lake would have been surprisingly pleasant.

 

It was a calm, serene morning, the sun breaking through over the tops of the heavily wooded mountains to their right. There was absolutely no wind to ruffle the limitless expanse of black, mirrored water. Behind them, their vanishing wake stretched southward, creditably straight, arrowing toward the just visible bulk of the ville.

 

By the time there was enough light for them to have been seen, they were far enough away to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Ryan had deliberately steered them close to the eastern shore, in the shallows.

 

He set a good pace, trying to send the small boat darting northward at the best possible speed. There was no weak link among the four of them, and the oars rose and fell in graceful, unflagging unison.

 

Far over their heads, a lark soared and filled the morning sky with its piercing song. A hundred yards behind them a single fish leaped exultantly high from the water, its scales a dazzling rainbow of iridescence. It fell back into the lake with an audible plopping sound, leaving only a diminishing circle of ripples to mark where it had been.

 

Moments later it repeated its brave salute to the dawning. There was a humming of wings and a blur of movement as a falcon swooped on it, plucking it from the air in its cruel talons and bearing it off toward the shore.

 

"Should've kept its head down," J.B. grunted just behind Ryan.

 

MICHAEL HAD BEEN glancing back over his shoulder, disrupting the rhythm of the rowing. Ryan kept telling him to concentrate on his oar and not to worry about trying to spot any sign of the stickies' camp.

 

But it was the teenager who first saw the thin column of pale gray, almost white smoke, rising high above the dark mantle of conifers that shrouded the rolling hills to the east of the lake.

 

"Easy," Ryan cautioned, shipping his own oar, letting the boat coast silently forward under its own momentum. The only sound was the water dripping from the blades.

 

The camp was roughly where he'd remembered it from the previous day, looking to be about a hah* mile inland from the shore. He stared intently behind them, to the south, checking that there was no pursuit coming from Quindley that might hinder their rescue operation.

 

But the water was scraped clean of any life.

 

"Head in," he ordered.

 

"THINK THEVLL FEED us, Mildred?"

 

"I somehow don't think so, Dean."

 

For a moment the prisoners were on then- own, with the nearest of the muties fifty yards away. The little children from die ville all seemed to have subsided into a collective catatonic stupor. They wouldn't look up or move or respond to Mildred's and Doc's futile attempts to rouse them from their dismal apathy.

 

"Think Dad'll be here?"

 

Doc answered. "Does a dog piss in the sea? No, I fear that I have used the wrong phrase."

 

"You mean does a mutie shit in the woods, Doc."

 

"Indeed, I think it was something along those lines. But there is no scintilla of doubt that the inestimable Master Cawdor will be here with us in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

 

"They aiming to chill us all, Mildred?"

 

"Got to be their plan, son."

 

"You, as well?"

 

Mildred grinned, feeling the movement mil where the corner of her mouth had been split by savage punch. "Me, as well. Stickles aren't racially sexually prejudiced when it comes to chilling, Dean."

 

THE KEEL OF THE BOAT kissed the soft shingle and came to a gentle stop.

 

"Tie it up?" Michael asked, leaping out, knee-dc in the cold water.

 

"Don't think this lake's tidal." Ryan glanced at J.R for reassurance.

 

"Doubt it. Just pull it up." There was a bank of scrubby bushes nearby. "Put a bit of that over it, in case anyone passes by."

 

"We might need to get away fast." Krysty was sniffing the air like a hunting dog. "Bad taste to things, lover."

 

"Definitely the stickies?"

 

"For sure. Been some chilling already."

 

"Dean and the others?" Michael paused from putting armfuls of undergrowth over the boat.

 

"Can't tell. Have to wait for that."

 

Ryan stood back and looked at the concealed vessel. "That'll do it," he said. "Now, everyone knows where this is. Take a careful look around. Lite Krysty says, we might be off and running good when we get back here. Won't be time to hunt around wondering where we hid it."

 

"What's the plan of attack, Ryan?" Michael was checking his Texas Longhorn Border Special, work-

 

ing the fluid action of the 6-round, centerfire .38 revolver, while the Armorer looked on approvingly.

 

"Tell you when we get there. Trader used to say that it was hard to leave it too late to make a plan. But there was a lot of good men six feet under because they tried to make their combat plans too early."

 

Ryan had the Steyr slung over a shoulder, the SIG-Sauer loose in its holster. The others all had their weapons ready as they began the cautious walk through the forbidding forest toward the stickies' camp.

 

Two MORE of the Quindley children had been killed, butchered with a casual, brutish dispatch that brought tears to Doc Tanner's rheumy old eyes. He managed enough self-control to restrain himself from protesting at the small massacre, knowing that to draw attention to himself was to insist on putting his signature on his own death warrant.

 

One was a little boy who had started to snivel when a passing mutie woman had kicked him in the ribs. The second death that morning was a girl. Terrified beyond all control, she had fouled herself, committing the unpardonable sin of drawing the stickies' attention to herself.

 

The golden sun was now well up, its fresh bright light fingering between the branches of the tall, fragrant pines all around them.

 

Mildred wondered how long Ryan would be.

 

"I SMELL BURNED MEAT," Michael said, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

 

"Probably not ordinary meat," Ryan replied quickly, instantly regretting his lack of thought.

 

* 'You mean they're setting fire to the kids? Or to..." Michael stopped walking and leaned a hand against the rough trunk of a towering ponderosa. "World be a cleaner place without those sicko bastards."

 

"Can't argue with that." Ryan looked around. "Must be getting close. Half mile or so. Better move to double-red. Stickies might be out hunting."

 

JEHU STOOD AND GLANCED at the painting of the animal's skull. He shuffled his feet and stared at his own reflection in the mirror, waiting to hear what Moses might say about the news of the outlanders escaping and stealing one of the villa's valuable boats.

 

"You believe that Sister Dorothy knew nothing of this, Jehu? You are sure?"

 

"Sure as I can be. She was really upset. She had formed close links with the outlander called Michael, and we believed that he was intending to stay here with us, though she knew nothing of your orders to have Ryan and the others executed while they ate their food this morning."

 

The calm voice sounded slightly bored with the whole business. "It matters not. If any of them return, then have them chilled immediately. Immediately."

 

"Yes, Moses. Immediately."

 

Chapter Thirty-Five

 

"Doesn't look to me like the stickies have been in these parts for very long."

 

J.B. thought about what Ryan had said, and nodded. "Must be right. No damage to the forest. No hacked trails. Usually leave a circle of devastation for a mile or more around one of their camps. Reckon they were moving through. That's why we found that body on the hillside before we got down into the viDe.' *

 

They were sitting in a close circle behind a screen of wild cherries. An exquisite pentstemon was flowering just to the right of them. Krysty had picked one from a cluster of delicate pink blossoms, their heavy scent almost hiding the foul stench from the camp on the far side of the ridge.

 

"How we going to play this one, Ryan?" J. B. Dix was hunched over his Uzi, his glasses glinting in the bright sunlight. "A recce first?"

 

"Yeah. Don't know if they got huts or tents or anything. Where they got the prisoners. Tied up or not. How many of them. What kind of blasters."

 

"Shit lot that we don't know." Michael had been becoming visibly more tense ever since they landed the boat and began the trek through the woods.

 

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Sure there is. But we know one thing the stickies don't." "What?" "We know that we're here."

 

RYAN CARRIED our the creepy-crawl himself, aware from endless experience that there was no substitute for personal appraisal of the scene for a potential firefight.

 

He counted around thirty stickies rather more than he'd anticipated, mostly men, and a few of them with blasters. He spotted one tall mutie sporting Doc's Le Mat in his belt and had no doubt that Mildred's Czech pistol and Dean's Browning were also somewhere in the crude camp.

 

He could see the prisoners easily enough.

 

With so many of the muties to watch the captives, there had been no effort made to chain or wire them together. As far as Ryan could make out, from behind the screen of some feathery tamarisks, Dean, Mildred and Doc were all alive and didn't show any obvious signs of serious injuries.

 

With the excellent Starlite scope on the rifle, it would have been easy for Ryan to have picked off at least half a dozen of the muties from where he was hiding. But that would still leave far too many to chill their prisoners before scuttling off into the woods around.

 

It needed some thinking.

 

THE SKINNY LEADER of the muties was interested in Doc and Mildred. "What old fucks like you do in that young place?

 

Huh?"

 

"I asked myself the same question, friend," Mildred replied. "A thousand times."

 

"So, what fucking answer?"

 

"Answer is that I don't know."

 

"Then you fucking stupe."

 

"Yeah."

 

The bulbous eyes with their oddly forked pupils turned toward Doc. "You oldest fuck I never saw. We heard that vflle chills every fucker when they gets old."

 

Doc nodded. "You heard correctly."

 

"So why you alive?"

 

"Possibly my inherent charm. Perhaps my insistence on the most scrupulous standards of personal hygiene. That is the very best that I can offer by way of explanation."

 

The mutie looked at Doc for a long time, making the old man feel the sudden awful certainty of his now imminent death. Then the stickie smiled at him, oblivious of a thick thread of greenish spittle that was trailing down over its receding chin. "You funny fuck."

 

"Thank you."

 

"We give you fucking funny hot death, old fuck."

 

"MASSACRE THEM ALL? " Michael sat with his head resting on his knees, hands folded in front of him as though he'd been interrupted in midprayer.

 

"This a problem, Michael?"

 

The young man didn't answer Ryan. His eyes were closed, and his face had gone pale.

 

Krysty knelt by him. "Gaia, Michael! Don't come over all pious now."

 

"You're going to try and shoot down...how many? Twenty or thirty of God's creatures without a word of warning or a chance of survival."

 

J.B. spit in the dirt. His normally sallow cheeks were flushed with anger. "Tell you what. You go on down, Michael, and ask them to surrender."

 

"They wouldn't." He looked up at the Armorer.

 

"So, it's double stupe to suggest it, then?"

 

"Yeah. I know what. Can't we tell them they got no chance and let them go if they don't harm any of the children or Dean and the rest?"

 

"Dark night! Stickies aren't down-home folks, you shit-for-brains kid!"

 

Krysty stood up between the Armorer and the sitting teenager, holding out a hand. "Keep it down, both of you. Or we'll have muties all over us."

 

J.B. sighed. "Sure, sure. You're right, Krysty." He lowered his voice. "Michael, will you listen to me?"

 

"Sure. Look, I'm sorry about-"

 

J.B. put his hand on the young man's shoulder. "I know you weren't born in Deathlands. You see things like a..." He changed direction. "Stickies are't human beings, Michael. It would be like worrying about treading on a poisonous scorpion. If we don't go in against the sickhead bastards on full-auto, then there'll be deaths on our side. Might well be anyway. Nobody can ever predict where the cards are going to fall. But you have to plan it best you can."

 

It was an unusually long speech for the normally taciturn man, but Ryan couldn't find a word to disagree with.

 

Michael stood up, offered his hand and shook with J.B. "I see that now. I'm ready."

 

"Fine," Ryan said. "Then let's go."

 

A PAIR OF PLUMP-BREASTED pigeons fluttered noisily out of the forest, southwest of the muties' camp, circling three or four times, and then flying off toward the lake.

 

Dean sat up and stared at the birds, glancing sideways to see if any of the muties had noticed the brief disturbance. He glanced across at Doc and Mildred, but both of them were lying down, locked into their own thoughts.

 

The boy half smiled and lay down again, trying to exercise his tightly bound hands to keep them supple. Ready in case he needed to move fast.

 

THE MUTIE CAMP WAS SET in a large clearing, about a mile inland from the lake.

 

Ideally Ryan would have liked the chance to wait, then move in at the optimum time, perhaps a couple of hours after midnight, when most of the Stickies would have collapsed into a drugged or drunken sleep.

 

But nighttime was when the perverted nuke mutations launched into their torturefests. To wait would almost certainly mean being too late.

 

Numbers were massively on the side of the stickles, but they seemed to be poorly armed. And there was no sign at all that they were worried about the possibility of anyone raiding them.

 

Which tipped the balance strongly in favor of the four attackers.

 

It was important to try to chill every one of the stickies. If a few escaped, then the retreat to the boat would be made that much more dangerous. The best way of ensuring that was for each of them to take a •quadrant of the compass, and come in from four different directions to hit them hard and fast.

 

"Get the firstest with the mostest" had been Trader's basic ruling. When Ryan had once mentioned that to Doc, the old-timer had pointed out that it wasn't exactly original and had its origins with a commander in the ancient Civil War.

 

Before they separated, Ryan gave a last whispered warning to Michael and Krysty. There was no need to mention something so obvious to J.B.

 

"Danger is shooting each other. Aim low and keep a triple-red watch for the rest of us coming in."

 

There had been a momentary temptation to go opposite the Armorer, knowing that was safest. But he rejected the idea, choosing to go around to the north himself, leaving Michael to cover the south. Krysty took the lake side while J.B. circled to the east.

 

He and J.B. had chrons. The other two would have to rely on a measured count to make sure they were in position and ready to go in at the right moment.

 

Since there was no tearing hurry to initiate the attack, Ryan allowed a full half hour for everyone to get into position. At that point he would fire a single round in the air from the Steyr rifle.

 

"No questions?"

 

There were none. They'd agreed that they would set free the children if that proved possible, but only after they'd ensured the safety of Dean, Mildred and Doc.

 

As RYAN PICKED His WAY along the narrow trails between the tall trees, he heard a pair of pigeons rise noisily into the air, somewhere toward the lake, disturbed by Krysty's passing by. He hoped that none of the muties would have noticed it and made the connection.

 

When he was halfway around he wrinkled his nose at a bitter, acidic smell. He stopped in midst ride and waited, listening intently. The path ahead was straight for fifty yards or so, and he could see a pile of fresh droppings, still steaming slightly in the cool morning air. Ryan had never been a great tracker, but he guessed that some large carnivore was nearby, possibly either a bear or a puma.

 

But the woods were brimming with a deep stillness, and he began to move on north, looping around the stickies' camp, not heading toward the scent of the smoke until he'd made sure there was no outer ring of sentries.

 

He checked his timing, the tiny digital numbers flicking over to show he'd been moving for just over sixteen minutes. Nearly a quarter of an hour remained before he'd fire the signal bullet and all hell would break loose in the serene New England forest.

 

Now he could smell the foul odors that he always associated with stickle camps-rotting food, burned meat, unwashed bodies and the peculiar decayed, fish like stench that seemed to surround the creatures.

 

Most frontier villes would have any number of stray animals hanging around them, lean, slant-eyed mongrels and vicious feral cats. But there was something different about stickies. Even among then- own mutie kind they were regarded as outcasts, and it was rare to find any sort of living creature within range of their malodorous camps.

 

Ryan picked his careful way closer.

 

"IF THIS RESCUE WERE to be done," Doc muttered, "then it were well that it were done quickly."

 

"Couldn't agree more," Mildred whispered. "Don't like the way they're collecting kindling and brushwood. Looks to me like they're planning a big blaze."

 

"With us as their center-ring, numero uno star attraction." Doc sniffed. "We shall this night, by God's grace, light such a candle, my good Dr. Wyeth, as shall never be extinguished in this fair land." He sniffed again. "My nose itches alarmingly. But I fear that it would be an ill thing to ask one of our captors to scratch it for me."

 

Mildred managed a weak smile. "Do that and the sons of bitches would just cut your nose off, Doc. And, probably, your chattering head with it."

 

One of the stickies walked by them, carrying an armful of loose branches. It heard them talking and glared in their direction, silencing them immediately.

 

RYAN WAS CLOSE ENOUGH to hear sounds from the camp, an occasional shout and once a cry of sudden pain.

 

Just ahead of him there was a tangle of fallen timber, piled almost shoulder-high. He began to pick his way around it when he heard the sound of feet, coming fast toward him.

 

The one-eyed man dropped to a crouch, easing the rifle onto the ground, holding the SIG-Sauer ready, hoping desperately that he wouldn't have to open fire and get their attack off to a messy and premature start.

 

He could catch the guttural, bubbling voices of stickies and risked a glance through the tangled branches, seeing that there were two of the muties. One carried a single-shot musket of immense age, while the other had only a short-handled ax tucked into its narrow string belt.

 

He caught the words "fire" and "wood" repeated several times as they drew closer. Now they'd stopped, only just the other side of the big deadfall.

 

Ryan waited.

 

Chapter Thirty-Six

 

Krysty had gone right to the shore of the sunlit lake before starting to work her way eastward again toward the stickles* camp. She had immediately found the boats that they'd used on the raid on Quindley the previous night, though "boats" wasn't the best word for a motley collection of rafts and crude canoes tugged up onto the pebbles.

 

From there the trail was easy to follow.

 

Bushes had been broken down and trees hacked with machetes. Barely concealed in the undergrowth, a quarter mile from Shamplin, Krysty saw a protud-ing pair of bare feet. Flies buzzed around the bloodied corpse, and her heart nearly stopped with the jolting fear that it might be Dean.

 

But it wasn't. It was a younger child, barely five years old, with its throat cut so savagely that the whiteness of the spine showed through the clotted blackness.

 

"Gaia!" Krysty drew her blaster and moved on a little faster, to be in position when Ryan fired the warning shot from his rifle. She had calculated that just over half of the time had gone.

 

RYAN DIDNT HAVE a choice. The pair of stickies had started to strip away some of the dry wood from the deadfall, one of them walking straight to the side where he was crouched.

 

The SIG-Sauer P-226 was a fifteen-round, 9 mm automatic blaster. The four-and-a-half-inch barrel carried a built-in baffle silencer that had been developed during the middle and late 1990s. Like all silencers, prolonged firing greatly diminished its efficiency.

 

Ryan took a chance and jabbed the pistol into the skinny midriff of the surprised mutie, pulling the trigger twice. The explosions were doubly muffled, sounding no louder than a polite cough.

 

The stickie's mouth sagged open and it staggered a few clumsy steps backward, dropping the wood it had collected, tripping and landing on its back. The ax slipped from its belt. Its suckered hands opened and closed, reaching toward the two tiny black holes hi its stomach.

 

Ryan didn't stop to watch something he'd already seen dozens of times in his life.

 

The body crashing to the ground had made enough noise to attract the attention of the other mutie, on the far side of the deadfall. "What happen, Jez?"

 

It was carrying the musket, and it immediately began to fumble with the grotesquely long blaster, struggling to get it cocked and aimed at the one-eyed norm who'd suddenly sprung from the forest's ferny floor.

 

Ryan didn't hesitate. He bolstered the SIG-Sauer and stepped in close to the stickie.

 

He kicked it in the groin, the steel toe of the combat boot crushing the shrunken genitals up against the wedge of pubic bone. The mutie gave a squeak of agony, so feeble and high-pitched that it would hardly have disturbed a hunting bat. The old Kentucky long gun dropped silently to the dirt as the stickie started to double over. The breath seemed to have become trapped deep in its lungs by the shock of the attack. Blood was already trickling down its chin and chest from its open mouth where it had bitten the end off its tongue with its needle-filed teeth.

 

Ryan watched carefully, standing away until the thing was down on its knees, face pressed into the soft earth, rocking slowly back and forth. Then he stepped in, having checked all around him that the forest was deserted, pressed the barrel of the SIG-Sauer to the back of the stickie's neck and pulled the trigger for a third time.

 

This time the sound of the shot was a little louder, but he guessed that the light wind through the tall trees would probably have ridden over the noise.

 

The body of the mutie jerked once from the impact of the high-velocity bullet, then slid forward like a confident swimmer entering a deep pool, lying still. A river of blood began to leak from the massive exit wound at the base of the flattened nose.

 

Ryan looked around again, then picked up the rifle and slung it once more across his back. He checked his chron and saw that the chilling of the two stickies had taken him less than one hundred seconds from beginning to the ending.

 

It was now time for him to move in closer to the camp, ready to fire the signal round.

 

AT THE LAST MOMENT, Ryan had changed his mind and used the warning bullet to chill one of the stickies, putting the 7.62 mm round between the eyes of a white-haired mutie woman who was about to cut the throat of one of the Quindley children, two along from where Dean was tied.

 

It blew away most of the back of her angular skull, so that her brains exploded in a pink-gray mist, all over the row of young prisoners.

 

There was instant chaos and confusion-sound like ripping silk as J.B. walked calmly into the center of the camp, spraying lead from the Uzi, sending the stickies toppling like broken dolls; Kxysty, hair like flame, came in from the direction of the lake, picking her shots with great care, very aware that her blaster held only five rounds; Michael, last of the four to appear, some seconds behind the other three, confronted several of the stickies who had already chosen the south side of their camp as the best line of escape from the murderous shooting that had erupted from the forest around them, shooting into them with the Texas Longhorn, his lips moving in what could have been either a prayer or a string of pattered curses.

 

The next two and a quarter minutes were a merciless massacre of blood and screams.

 

THEY'D AGREED IN ADVANCE that Krysty would be the one to head straight for the prisoners, using her knife to free Dean, Mildred and Doc. Michael would try to help her, while J.B. and Ryan, holding the serious firepower, would beat off any attacks on them from the stickies.

 

Like most plans, it didn't turn out quite like Ryan had expected.

 

The main difference was that their ambush of the j camp was more shocking and successful than he could have hoped. In the first thirty seconds they managed to chill or mortally wound well over half of the stickies, while the rest of the muties screamed and ran around like headless chickens.

 

In the chaos and confusion, Ryan couldn't be certain, but his guess was that not a single shot was fired against them by the "defenders" of the camp. One woman threw a knife at him, and the hilt struck him a glancing blow in the small of the back. But he turned and shot her with the ninth of the ten rounds from the Steyr, the bullet sending her stumbling, her legs seeming like they wanted to move in five different directions. Until the wires went down and she slumped forward onto her face, with the loud crack of her nose splintering.

 

J.B. ran the Uzi in a careful, steady line, right to left, cutting down five stickies in that single burst. The bullets ripped them apart at waist-level, sending them rolling and weeping in a welter of their pale mutie blood.

 

Krysty would always remember the fourth of her five rounds. She had reached the line of prisoners, managing a reassuring grin for Dean. As she knelt, reaching for her knife, Doc barked out a warning of a stickie coming at her from behind, on hands and knees, trailing blood from a bullet that had smashed his left thigh apart.

 

She turned and snapped off the .38 at the crawling mutie. But one of the little girls from the ville, freaked into blind panic, jumped up at that moment and took the bullet through the throat. The heavy round nearly tore her head off her frail shoulders.

 

Krysty didn't flinch or hesitate, using the fifth and last bullet from her Smith & Wesson to chill the stickie, smack between the narrow, mad eyes.

 

She was never certain if anyone had seen the shot that killed the child and she never, ever mentioned it to a living soul.

 

Michael was ready to shoot, as some of the fleeing stickies raced toward him. But most turned at the moment he opened fire, scattering in all directions, to be gunned down by either Ryan or J.B. Michael was never sure that he actually shot anyone that ferocious, crazed morning among the pine-scented trees.

 

Mildred tried to keep track of the mutie that had taken away her beloved ZKR pistol, but she lost sight of his ragged pink shirt in the panic.

 

Doc sat up, his hands still bound behind him, ready to kick out if any of the stickies decided they they were going to try to take at least one of the norm prisoners with them into their arid shadowlands.

 

Dean whooped with an almost hysterical delight- "Hot pipe, guys! "-every time one of their captors hit the dirt and lay still.

 

Ryan dropped the empty rifle hi the trampled earth and stood stock-still, his feet spread, holding the SIG-Sauer cocked. He moved it like the tongue of a rattler, tasting the dangers in the air, looking for a fresh target.

 

But there wasn't one.

 

It was over.

 

The smoke from the stickies' fire drifted up serenely between the branches of the overhanging trees. The children stopped their terrified keening, one by one.

 

Nobody was shooting.

 

At a quick glance there were at least half a dozen of the muties still alive, though all of them were sorely wounded. J.B. had unslung the Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun from his shoulders, the empty Uzi dangling from a strap on his belt. But the lethal flechettes weren't going to be needed.

 

Krysty was on her knees, cutting away with her slim knife at the cords that tied Mildred's hands behind her. Dean was already up, rubbing furiously at his chafed wrists to try to restore the circulation to his fingers. His eyes darted through the carnage as he sought the mutie that had stolen his Browning Hi-Power. Doc sat still, his head turning slowly from side to side, as though he hadn't yet managed to take it all in.

 

"That's it," Ryan said.

 

By the time everyone was untied, only three of the entire pack of stickies were still on this side of the dark river. Ryan went round with his flensing knife and opened up their carotid arteries.

 

And then there were none.

 

The children were sent packing, pointed in the southerly direction, assured that they were no longer in any danger. Most of them still seemed to be sunk hi a trough of clinical shock, and they left without a word of thanks and without a backward glance.

 

Doc, Mildred and Dean recovered their blasters from the dead stickies, and the seven friends, safely reunited, set off through the forest to where they'd hidden the boat.

 

Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

"Simple choice, friends." Ryan sat in the stem of the crowded little boat, his hand on the tiller. "Jump straight away or stop off at Quindley and let Michael speak with Dorothy. Let's hear what anyone has to say."

 

They had made their way back to the concealed vessel without any trouble, pushing off and rowing a quarter mile out onto the still water of the lake, resting there, beyond the reach of any potential threat.

 

Michael put up a hand. "Can I go first, Ryan?"

 

"Course."

 

"The way I see it, we have to pass close by the ville anyway. We rescued their children, so Moses and the rest are going to be real glad to see us and hear the news."

 

Ryan nodded. "Probably right."

 

"Probably?"

 

"Not dealing with what you and I might think was a double-norm mind, Michael. Like watching a rabid fox and trying to decide who he's going to try and bite first. But I grant you that Quindley should be a touch grateful."

 

"So, we can go in?"

 

Ryan looked at the others. "Anyone have a problem with stopping off for a few minutes in Quindley?"

 

Dean raised a hand. "Why can't we row around the ville and then let Michael go in on his own? If he wants to see Dorothy another time that much."

 

"I don't mind," the teenager said.

 

"No." J.B. shook his head. He took off the fedora and wiped sweat from his temples. "We all go or none of us goes. Only safe way."

 

"Right." Ryan looked over his shoulder, toward the south and the ville. "We'll pull in on the lakeward side. Most of them'll be in the fields by now. Fair chance we can do this without shaking the trees."

 

IT WAS A PLEASANT and easy row back along the lake toward Quindley. Ryan steered them in a straight line, moving away from the shore.

 

"Nobody seen us yet," he said.

 

At a word, everyone shipped their oars, sliding them into the bottom of the boat. While it coasted gently forward, the ripple of water under the prow slowly diminished.

 

Dean was in the bow, ready to leap out and save it from jarring against the piling. He tied up the boat quickly.

 

The moments as they approached the ville from the water were the real danger. If there had been an ambush planned, that would have been the time and the place. Even with their superior firepower, they could have been blasted out of the lake by a dozen or so concealed rifles.

 

"Right. Triple red. Keep a skirmish line. Michael, where do you think Dorothy'll be now?"

 

"She said last night that it was her turn to be on duty in the temple, waiting on Moses. Guess I'll find her there."

 

"No. We'll find her there," Ryan said.

 

THE STREETS WERE DESERTED, so quiet that Ryan began to feel like they were walking into a trap. But the chances to coldcock them had already been there. Why wait?

 

He was out at point, with Krysty right behind him. The others were strung out, J.B. bringing up his usual rearguard position. The main gates were open, and they could see out along the causeway the neat allotments and tilled meadows. There was a scattering of the young people working there, but none of them noticed the intruders in their ville.

 

"Moses's place." Ryan held up a hand to stop them, looking all around. But there was still not a sniff of betrayal.

 

"Can I go first?" Michael asked. "I'd like to see her.. .sort of on my own. See if she still says she'll come... What she promised last night."

 

"What did she promise?" Mildred asked, but the young man turned away and ignored her question.

 

Ryan spit in the dirt. "We all go hi together. J.B., you and Mildred wait out here and keep watch. Wouldn't want to find us trapped inside there."

 

"Sure."

 

"Let's go in."

 

It was cool as he pushed at the carved wooden door, feeling its ponderous weight as it swung silently open. The inner room was as luxurious and silent as ever, with torches blazing in iron sconces on the walls, their light dancing over the priceless old paintings that hung everywhere.

 

"I had not thought you would return."

 

The voice from behind the mirror was gentle and mildly amused, as though a bright little child had done something rather clever to entertain it.

 

"We set your babies free, Moses," Ryan said, looking at his own reflection in the mirror. "They're on their way back through the forest. Mebbe you should get Jehu to send a party out to bring them in."

 

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

 

A maroon velvet curtain moved at the side of the large, dark mirror, and a hidden door opened and closed. Out came Jehu and Dorothy.

 

The blond youth had his hair loose. His deep blue eyes stared at Ryan. He was completely naked and his body was marked with crimson weals across his hairless chest, and down over his stomach and thighs.

 

Dorothy was partly dressed, but she, too, had whip marks across her bare breasts, and what looked like the jagged bites from sharp teeth disfigured her thighs. She held her head down and wouldn't look up at any of them. Not even Michael, who called to her.

 

"Dorothy! What the fuck's been happening?"

 

"Looks like Moses has been taking some sporting with his apostles," Ryan said, almost choking on his own bitter rage. "That why you keep them young and tender, Moses?1'

 

"He's the lord, outlander," Dorothy said, trying to fasten a blouse across her nakedness, still not looking up.

 

"Some lord." Krysty glanced at Ryan. "We going to just leave this, lover?"

 

Moses laughed. "Such foolishness. All you oldies with your prim and prudish morality! Jehu!"

 

"Master?"

 

"Fetch the others and we will have a ceremony tonight that will long be spoken of, as we dispose of these interfering old, old outlanders. Go now."

 

"Yes, Master."

 

"Stay where you are, son," Doc said, the Le Mat pointing at the young man's chest.

 

"Do as I say, Jehu."

 

"Of course, Master."

 

Jehu turned, the golden down on his muscular buttocks gleaming in the light. Doc hesitated, unwilling to murder the naked young man by blowing him apart from behind. Jehu grabbed a torch and whirled it, so that flames streamed out, the fire hissing in the stillness.

 

"Mine," Ryan said.

 

The single bullet took Jehu below the breastbone, angling sideways and ripping out most of his lungs before tearing chunks of muscle from the pumping walls of his heart. His mouth opened in a gasp of

 

shock and surprise, and his arms flew wide. The burning torch landed at the foot of a dusty tapestry, which immediately caught fire.

 

Jehu staggered a few clumsy steps, his eyes blank and blind, fingers clawing at the air. He slipped to his knees with blood frothing from his pale lips, dappling the wooden floor.

 

Dorothy looked up at the shot, blinking in horror. Michael ran the few steps to her side and put an arm around her. For a moment she resisted, trying to pull away, then she collapsed and started to weep.

 

"Good way to finish it," Krysty stated, not bothering to conceal her satisfaction.

 

"Put out the fire, children," Moses called, sounding amazingly unconcerned at the desperate threat to his home. The flames had reached the ceiling and were devouring slender beams, already lapping at some of the oil paintings.

 

"I have encountered varieties of evil and sickness in my long life," Doc said loud enough for the hidden godling to hear him. "But not, I think, anything to compare with the way you have corrupted and destroyed the innocents."

 

He leveled the gold-plated Le Mat and pulled the trigger. The single ,65-caliber scattergun round shattered the ornate Gothic splendor of the mirror into ten thousand silvered shards of dark glass. As it collapsed into itself, it revealed the room beyond.

 

And it revealed Moses, lying on an antique sofa, its brocade material filthy and stained. He wore what looked like a bed sheet, which had once been virginal white and was now a disgusting mixture of different shades of dirt.

 

Moses was roughly four feet tall, and had to have weighed close to three hundred pounds. He had the soft, plump body of a child, but the seamed face and veiled eyes of an old man. His teeth as he smiled at the watchers were crooked and yellow, and his fingernails were grotesquely long, so jagged and distorted that they almost curled back on themselves.

 

"See my godhead," he giggled in that wonderful voice.

 

"See his boasted pomp and show," Doc shouted. "Your pleasure's faded, Moses. Reckoning time's here."

 

The fire was so hot that they all had to retreat toward the main entrance.

 

Moses sat up, the cloth falling away, revealing the folds and creases of his gross nakedness. "I have taken my sport where I found it," he said, smiling at them through the shimmering curtain of flames. "Founded this place and sucked it dry for so many, many years. Now I will pay for my sport. But it was so good, out-landcrs, so good!"

 

Moses disappeared behind the wall of fire, and they heard nothing more from him.

 

His temple had become an inferno.

 

"Nothing to keep us here," Ryan said, shouting to be heard above the noise of the fire. "Whole ville's likely to go."

 

Michael shepherded Dorothy out, his arm still tight around her. Dean followed, glancing back wonderingly at the cascade of multicolored fire that poured down the walls. Krysty and Doc followed, with Ryan last to leave the doomed building.

 

J.B. stood close by the door with Mildred, the Uzi in his hands. "You set the fire?" he asked Ryan. "Heard a couple of shots."

 

"Took out Jehu. He dropped the flaming torch and up it went. Doc blasted the mirror."

 

"Did you kill Moses?" Mildred asked.

 

"Tell you about it later." Ryan looked behind them. For a few moments there was no sign that the building was irredeemably ablaze. Then there was a whoosh of noise and heat, and part of the thatched roof exploded into smoky fire. Sparks and burning reeds were scattered over the roofs of the rest of the ville, most of which immediately caught fire.

 

Dorothy was sobbing noisily, her arms clasped around Michael. The rest of the young people of Quindley still hadn't noticed the fire, but it could only be a matter of seconds before they did and came running.

 

It was time to move on.

 

THE RAGING BLAZE, coupled with the death of their guru and leader, seemed to have totally destroyed the will of the young ones of the ville. Though they came dashing toward the column of smoke and flame, hesitating when they saw the heavily armed outlanders, not one of them made any attempt to stop Ryan and the others from leaving.

 

They parted like the Red Sea to let them pass along the causeway and out through the cultivated fields and orchards into the welcoming shadows of the forest around.

 

Dorothy paused at the fringe of the pines, dragging at Michael. "I can't leave like this," she said. "They need me at my home."

 

Mildred patted her on the shoulder. "Not really anything much left that looks like a home, girl."

 

The fire was unstoppable, leaping from wall to roof and back down to the next wall. One or two of the men and women were scooping up buckets of water from the lake, and throwing them at the ferocious wall of flame. But it was totally futile.

 

THEY REACHED the hidden redoubt without any further incident, Ryan leading them immediately through its deserted corridors and down into the mat-trans unit.

 

Dorothy shrank back as she saw the cold gleam of the tight purple annaglass walls of the chamber.

 

"Be fine," Michael encouraged. "Trust me."

 

Chapter Thirty-Eight

 

It took the combined efforts of all of them to reassure the frightened young woman. Krysty stood behind her, stroking her long blond hair, trying to gentle her as though she were a terrified mare.

 

"Be all right. We've done it dozens and dozens of times," she said.

 

"But I can't leave my family and my brothers and all my sisters."

 

"You'll have me." Michael was also crying, great gobbets of tears miming through the dirt on his cheeks. "And I need you, Dorothy."

 

There was no real hurry, but Ryan was beginning to lose patience with the tender scene. "Best get on with the jump," he said. "You and the girl can sort this out later, Michael. Right now I'd like to get away from here."

 

One by one they filed into the chamber, picking their places to sit down in a circle, backs against the walls. Michael led Dorothy, who seemed now to have recovered a little of her composure. Ryan waited, ready to close the armaglass door and trigger the mat-trans mechanism.

 

He was aware that all of them carried the scent of wood smoke clinging to their clothes.

 

"Everyone ready?" He looked around the circle.

 

Doc had been fumbling with the reloading of the Le Mat, assisted by J.B. Now he smiled up at Ryan, showing his wonderful set of gleaming teeth. "Ready as we'll ever be, my dear fellow. Shipshape and Bristol fashion."

 

J.B. simply nodded, allowing Mildred to take his hand. She also grinned at Ryan. "Ally ally oxen free," she said.

 

"Let's go, Dad." Dean sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, picking at a splinter in his thumb with the sharp point of his turquoise-hilted knife.

 

Krysty patted the space next to her. "Let's hope we have a better jump than the last time we tried."

 

"It'll be fine," Ryan said.

 

He looked last at Michael and Dorothy. "You two ready for this? It doesn't hurt, but it sort of scrambles your head and you kind of fall asleep for a few seconds. And you wake up somewhere else."

 

"And I'll be here for you." Michael looked unbelievably tense and worried, gripping the young woman by the wrist. "And you for me."

 

Dorothy said nothing. But she was trembling like an aspen in a hurricane, her teeth chattering, her eyes rolling in their sockets with fear.

 

Ryan closed the door and sat down by Krysty, laying the Steyr at his side, making himself comfortable. The wound in his neck gave a twinge of pain, and he touched it with the tip of a forefinger. The disks in the floor and ceiling were starting to glow, and the familiar mist was appearing.

 

He could hear a voice, a long way off, but he'd already closed his eye ready for the jump. It was a woman's, but Ryan didn't think that he recognized it.

 

The darkness was swimming around him.

 

"No... No... Can't..."

 

The voices merged.

 

Ryan reluctantly opened his eye again. Part of him saw what was happening, but a pan of him was already slipping away on the jump.

 

Dorothy stood by the door, screaming, though she didn't seem to be making a sound.

 

Michael was on hands and knees, howling like a dog in pain, reaching out to her.

 

"No," Ryan said, struggling to move, but there was a massive weight settled across his limbs and he was paralyzed.

 

The door opened, and a vague figure stumbled through it-a woman, with hair like Kansas wheat.

 

"No."

 

Someone said it.

 

The shape disintegrated as it left the chamber, becoming transparent and without form.

 

The door closed again, and the blackness enclosed the gateway chamber and everyone inside it.

 

Chapter Thirty-Nine

 

The man astride the small black-and-white pony was lean and hard, with curling side whiskers.

 

He was reciting a monologue to himself, about the world being a stage and how everyone had to play a part. But that the fates had dealt him the hand of a lover, and that his girl had betrayed him, cheated him.

 

"But I'd rather carry on listenin' to those lies..."

 

The trail was narrow between the tall pines, and he'd heard talk at his previous night's lodgings of there being some big mutie critter in the woods. Half the trappers and hunters said it was a humpback grizzly sow. Others talked about a slewfoot cougar that already chilled a dozen settlers in that part of New England.

 

"They can bring down the curtain."

 

He reined in the pony and blew his nose on a torn cotton kerchief. Singing the old songs, best as he could recall them, of King Elvis always made Lonnie's eyes water. That was why he only ever gave voice when he was out on the trail, which was most of the time, sell-nig his handmade blasters and rebuilds all across Deathlands.

 

His last trip had brought him the whole way from old Seattle in the west, into New Hampshire, alongside the great mirrored expanse of Shamplin Lake.

 

On previous trips, he'd been able to do some trading with the young folks at Quindley. They mostly used rifles and muskets. Lonnie generally didn't sell long guns. Too clumsy and too obvious. But the saddlebags that Lucifer carried were filled with the actions and locks for all blasters. Quindley-the ville that stuck out into the cold water like a diseased thumb, with that freak baron. Morgyn? Mordred?

 

"Moses," Lonnie said.

 

But the word of the gaudy where he'd stayed had told of some major disaster in the ville along the shore, a big fire that had filled the air for a hundred miles around with the heavy scent of wood smoke.

 

It had happened, so the scar-faced slut had told him, as they lay together on the unmade bed, about a week ago. The survivors had stumbled away as though they were in a daze, abandoning the place to nature.

 

"Lot starved," the woman had said. "Wandered around like they'd had their brains picked clean by crows. Didn't know what to do with themselves."

 

Lonnie figured that he was probably wasting his time by calling at the ruins, but you never knew. He'd once sold three-quarters of his stock to a white-haired granny near Duquesne, Missouri. She ran a traveling gaudy and needed some extra protection. Thrown in five freebies with her girls as part of the price.

 

He was nearing the end of his sweeping run from west to east. It had been an easy ride, with no serious

 

problems, apart from an earth slip in the Dakotas that had delayed him for a couple of rainy days.

 

There was a sister who lived to the north east, on the Lantic, with gray shores and thousands of hideous spike-shelled crabs for company. New Haven. Lonnie generally called in on her when he was in the area.

 

Now HE was CLOSE to where Quindley had been.

 

He heeled Lucifer along, wary that the snaggle-toothed brute might swing its head around to try to take a chunk out of his thigh. It wouldn't have been the first time.

 

Lonnie broke into his half-remembered version of King Elvis's "Return to Sender," puzzling over the line about her dress unsewn, as he always did.

 

Now he could smell the smoke, charred wood, still hanging below the branches of the damp pines. Ahead of him, as the trail opened out with a view north along the lake, he saw that the stories had been right.

 

Quindley was gone.

 

A few blackened piles stuck up from the water, like the remnants of trees when a forest fire's passed by. The fields around still looked more or less the same, though. As Lonnie drew closer, he could see that rank weeds were already beginning to spring in among the neat rows of crops.

 

He reined in Lucifer, right at the edge of the lake, sighing to himself.

 

"Waste of time," he said. "Mission aborted."

 

He had a slight cold and reached inside his pocket for a kerchief, his fingers encountering a folded piece of paper. Lonnie knew what it was and took it out. He carefully opened the written message from those two cold-eyes up near Seattle. It was to be given to a one-eyed man traveling with a redhead, and a black woman and an old guy and some others that Lonnie couldn't quite remember.

 

The older of the pair had been a real triple-jack bastard. Eyes like obsidian chips washed in melt-water. He carried a battered Armalite like he knew how to use it. Other one was smaller. He'd done the writing, Lonnie recalled. They threatened him with what would happen if he didn't do his best to deliver the message.

 

"Well, I fucking tried. And enough is fucking enough."

 

He dropped the crumpled bit of paper into the lake and kicked Lucifer on again, northeast.

 

As it hit the water, the note unfolded like a moth leaving its cocoon, and for a few moments the words were legible before it became sodden and sank from view.

 

Success. Will stay round Seattle for three months. Come quick. Abe.

 

The sound of the pony's hooves faded into the distance.

 

Though the smell of wood smoke still lingered.