Chapter Two

 

Jak knew death as an intimate experience. It measured in heartbeats, from the last one to the next one that didn't come. A man trained in killing knew which heartbeat to act on. He waited patiently.

 

Breathing easily, he ran a hand down the front of his camo vest. His fingertips avoided the sharp bits of metal sewn into the cloth to prevent man or beast from wanting to get too close to him. More metal bits studded his pants, providing an offense, as well as a defense.

 

He stood slightly below five and a half feet tall, wiry and whipcord lean. His skin held the pallor of a corpse, mirrored by the shock of white hair on top of his head. Bone white and savagely scarred, as still as death, his face looked like a mask. Only the burning heat of his ruby red eyes showed life as he watched the men before him.

 

Philox and the two men who rode with him dismounted from their horses a few yards back of the clearing where Doc and Ryan conducted their business. They unsheathed their long blasters and crept forward, never knowing that death dogged their heels.

 

Lush forest growth, overgrown for decades, provided cover for Jak. He remained behind the men as they went forward. Their attention stayed on the events spinning out in the clearing. The albino teen left his .357 Magnum Colt Python in its holster, filling his hands with the leaf-bladed throwing knives he made himself and kept secreted on his body and in his clothing.

 

Seated atop an outcrop thrusting from the uneven ground less than ten feet from the three men he followed, Jak saw Liberty make his move against Ryan. The Winchester came up blasting as the gang leader levered round after round into the breech and fired away. Doc scattered to the left, just as they'd planned, making his way toward the huge Le Mat blaster.

 

"Keep the old man alive, you stupe bastards!" Liberty yelled above the sudden din.

 

Philox and his two partners raised their long blasters to their shoulders, taking aim.

 

Both hands flashing, Jak threw the leaf-bladed knives, then leaped from his vantage point. The three men howled in pain, hands reaching over shoulders to try to grasp the knives that sank deep into their backs. One of the men turned as Jak landed, alerted by the noise even over the crash of gunfire.

 

The man yelled out a warning as he brought up his weapon.

 

Jak whipped back a hand and released another throwing knife as he spun and ducked into cover behind a thick bole of an oak.

 

The knife sank deep into his victim's throat, the man gagging instantly on his own blood. He dropped to his knees, firing his blaster into the ground.

 

Hand dropping to the butt of the .357 Magnum revolver, Jak ripped the big weapon free of leather. Following his momentum around the tree bole, the albino brought up the blaster in a two-handed grip, rolling the hammer back with his thumb for a quick snap shot. He punched a round through Philox's forehead. The man's head jerked backward as the bullet emptied his brain pan across the brush behind him. He went wide-eyed, face first into the dirt.

 

"Fucking ghost!" The third man panicked, trying in vain to find cover.

 

Jak relentlessly pursued, bringing up the .357 pistol again. The front sight fell over the back of his target's skull, then a full-metal-jacketed hollowpoint caved it in. The albino recovered Philox's long blaster, scooping it from the ground in a quick, practiced movement. He recognized the weapon as he brought it to his shouldera Marlin bolt-action .30-.30 with a 5-round clip.

 

Squinting through the telescopic sights, he tracked across the clearing where Doc and Ryan scrambled for their lives. The gang poured a constant barrage of fire, fighting against their struggling mounts.

 

Jak slipped his finger inside the rifle's trigger guard and took up the slack, knowing the lives of his friends existed only one heartbeat to the next, with no guarantees.

 

 

 

RYAN MOVED in a smooth uncoiling of muscles, not bothering with a feint. Liberty struck like a snake, with no warning and without hesitation.

 

Diving to the right of the clearing, Ryan knew he pulled most of the gang's guns in his direction. He broke his fall with his left arm as he kept hold on the Steyr with his right hand. He rolled, keeping the long blaster tight against his body.

 

"Get him!" Liberty yelled. "Get the bastard now!"

 

Long blasters and pistols broke the stillness under the leafy canopy behind Ryan as he came to his feet behind a three-foot-high shelf of rock the brush covered from casual view. He misjudged his roll and smacked his right cheek against it. Blood wept warmly down the side of his face. He pulled himself into position behind the rock and raised the Steyr. The weapon's butt pressed into the side of his face against whatever injury he had taken. The abraded flesh stung at the touch, but parts of his face where the old scars were didn't have any feeling at all.

 

Thrusting the Steyr's barrel through the underbrush, he noted that Doc was safely out of harm's way. The gang members milled around in the clearing, not yet in complete control of their mounts.

 

"Philox!" Liberty roared, twisting his head to the right as he reached under the wag's seat and came away with an ammo belt.

 

Ryan put the Steyr's crosshairs over Liberty's face, leading the man slightly as the gang leader moved across the wag. He squeezed the trigger, spotting the horse and rider that reared in the way only a chron tick before the big sniper weapon crashed into his shoulder.

 

The 7.62 mm round cored through the horse's neck, cutting through the jugular and unleashing a torrent of blood. It whinnied in pain and fear, fighting harder than ever against the commands of its rider.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan snarled, chambering another round. He looked for Liberty again, but there was too much confusion in the clearing.

 

Some of the gang members took advantage of the situation to start raiding the supplies spread out on the blanket. They remained in position, though. Ryan peered through the scope. A slight squeeze of the trigger, and one of the riders sprawled to the ground, kicking through the last reflexive movements his nervous system allowed.

 

Bullets smacked into the shelf of rock before Ryan, driving him back. He found another target, so close he didn't even need the Steyr's scope. He trusted his instincts and experience with the weapon. His finger stroked the trigger, putting a bullet into the center of the man's chest and bursting his heart.

 

Three bullets gone and two men down. It wasn't enough, and fighting a protracted engagement wasn't something the companions could afford to do.

 

Ryan raised his voice as he swapped shots with another gang member, neither of them hitting anything. "Krysty, do it now!"

 

 

 

TITIAN-HAIRED Krysty Wroth moved from hiding and made for the tree along the uneven rock face where she had taken up a position. She raised her .38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson Model 640 and ripped off two shots at a man closing in on Doc. Both shots went wide of their mark, but they came close enough to send the man diving for cover.

 

"Down, Krysty!" Mildred Wyeth yelled behind her.

 

Krysty dived at once, splaying flat on hands and knees. Still, she kept moving forward. Bullets pocked the rock face above her, showering rock splinters that stung her back and legs.

 

She heard the distinctive detonation of Mildred's .38-caliber ZKR 551 target pistol banging behind her. Men yelled and cursed in pain. A shootist in the last-ever Olympic games, Mildred was hell on wheels with a pistol.

 

Krysty threw herself the last few feet to her goal the old gnarled oak tree that held the rope to spring the trap Ryan had set up for the encounter. She ripped Ryan's panga from her hand-stitched cowboy boot and rose with the knife in her hand.

 

The rope snaked around the oak tree, safely hidden from most casual inspections.

 

A man erupted from the ground in front of Krysty, rising up out of the brush. The maniacal face was limned in blood, and there was no way to tell if it was his or someone else's.

 

"Goddamn bitch!" the man snarled. He raised a double-bitted ax that had been cut down to a hand weapon and looped around his wrist by a leather thong. "Going to cut you a little now, cut you deeper later." He swung the blade.

 

A little under six feet tall and graced by nature and hard living with a strength that surprised most people, Krysty met the man's attack head-on. She lifted the panga and turned the sweep of the ax head enough to miss her. Then she brought around the panga, the razor edge neatly slicing off two of the man's fingers. The wounds spurted blood as the digits dropped to the ground.

 

The man shouted in pain.

 

Krysty rammed the .38 into his face and pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet kicked the man's head back, and the second turned it sideways.

 

As the dying man dropped to the ground, Krysty turned and swung the panga at the rope coiled around the tree. The keen-edged steel sliced through the rope as if it were wet paper.

 

Sheared of its moorings, the rope slithered through the tree branches. As she watched it, Krysty sent a small prayer to Gaia, the Earth Mother, to watch over her companions and keep all safe from harm.

 

She took up cover behind the oak tree as she listened to the crash and thunder of heavy objects smashing through the trees overhead. She barely made out the thick tree trunk that swept down at the gang still trying to steal their trade goods.

 

Then it was among them, over a ton of falling wood that Ryan had selected from farther up the hill. Steel cable had been easy enough to come by in the redoubt, and Ryan, Dean and Jak had returned for it after the one-eyed man had picked the ambush spot and made his plans.

 

Short loops of the steel cable jutted from the underside of the huge tree trunk. The loops folded out big enough to catch a man's arm, hand or foot, and it was thin enough with the force coming up with it to slice right through skin, flesh and bone as it passed.

 

It was also in a man's instinct to lift a hand to defend himself against something he thought was falling on him. Ryan had counted on that.

 

Krysty watched the tree trunk arc through the trees, staying less than two feet above the ground just as Ryan and Doc had planned on. Three or maybe four men lost their lives when the tree trunk smashed into them. At least that many lost hands and arms in the vicious coils of steel cable.

 

A head spun free of one man's body, scissored off by the cable before he could escape. The sound of dying men multiplied below.

 

Krysty extended her arm and fired her remaining two shots at a man rushing the last position she'd seen Ryan in. The man went down. Ducking behind the tree, she broke open her weapon and shook the brass loose. Her fingers moved smoothly as she refilled the cylinder. After those rounds were fired, she had only four more in her shirt pocket.

 

She shifted around the tree, finding a new position that offered a less constricted view of the clearing below. They were down to all or nothing.

 

 

 

RYAN SHOVED HIMSELF to his feet as the tree trunk suspended from steel cables swung back in its trajectory. The huge block of wood slammed into two other men who'd been missed the first time. They flew almost thirty feet with the impact, and didn't move again after that.

 

Doc came up with the Le Mat blaster and fired a round of scattergun pellets that knocked a handful of men reeling. Then he went to cover.

 

On the second time through, the trailing coils of steel cable caught more hands and arms. It also smashed into the converted horse-drawn wag. A horse whinnied in pain and terror as it struggled to get up.

 

Standing beside a tree, Ryan picked his targets coolly and fired with rapid accuracy, choosing the biggest part of the men's bodies to hit. The gang members went down in succession.

 

When he'd fired the Steyr empty, Ryan left it by the tree. If he survived, he could get the long blaster later. He drew the SIG-Sauer P-226 and rushed forward, gaining ground and assuming a new position that caught the gang unaware.

 

Rising to one knee, he fired three times and cut a man down in midstride. His combat senses caught some movement to his left. He pulled around as a line of bullets chopped into the ground where he had been.

 

Liberty stood beside a tree and levered another shell, then fired again. "You're a dead man, One-Eye!"

 

Ryan shoved the SIG-Sauer forward, facing the .3O-.3O's barrel as it swung toward him. There was no time to move, and he knew Liberty had him dead in his sights. He squeezed the trigger, expecting to feel a bullet hit him in the next heartbeat.

 

Instead, Liberty's head snapped back, his skull opening up and loosing brain matter over the trees behind him. The corpse dropped in an uncoordinated tangle of limbs.

 

Turning back to the clearing, Ryan saw one of the gang members spin away from Doc. A load of buckshot had taken the man's face from him, along with his life.

 

Nothing moved out in the clearing.

 

Ryan lifted his voice. "Jak!"

 

"Done," the albino called back, letting them know the three men who had disappeared from sight no longer mattered.

 

"J.B.?" Ryan wiped perspiration from his forehead before it had a chance to drip down into the open socket behind the eye patch and burn.

 

"I think we got them all," the Armorer replied.

 

Ryan took a fresh magazine for the SIG-Sauer and changed it with the partially depleted one. "Cover me."

 

"Give me plenty of room to shoot around."

 

Ryan stood and moved from behind concealment. He kept the 9 mm blaster in front of him and moved slowly. The muzzle tracked across the scattered dead men, looking for signs of life among the mangled bodies.

 

Ryan only found two men alive. One of them still had the breath to beg for his life. Ryan didn't waste a bullet on either of them, instead taking a knife from a nearby corpse and slitting their throats. He intended to take his group into Hazard, and he didn't mean to leave a chance of any vengeance coming up from behind them.

 

The converted wag rattled from a faint movement. At first Ryan thought it was the only surviving horse feebly kicking out its life. The wag had turned over, coming to a rest across the horse's legs. But when he looked into the horse's eyes and saw only death reflected there, he knew something else caused the motion.

 

"I got somebody still alive in the wag," Ryan called back to J.B.

 

"I can put a few rounds into it," the Armorer offered.

 

Ryan directed his voice at the wag. "Is that what it's going to take?"

 

"Don't kill me," a voice said. "Mebbe I can help you."

 

"Looking around at things," Ryan replied, "I don't get the feeling we're in a spot to need a lot of help."

 

"Are you planning on going into Hazard?"

 

Ryan crouched and looked under the overturned wag. The dwarf, Albert, stared back at him, eyes wide and frightened. "And if we are?" Ryan asked.

 

"The folks in the ville are going to wonder what happened to Liberty and his bunch. They might not like it if you just come strolling into the ville. But if I go with you, I can tell them Liberty said it was okay."

 

"The way I hear it," Ryan said, "the people of Hazard have been letting Liberty do their chilling for a while now. Could be there's not many in the ville who'd care to stand up against us."

 

The dwarf licked his lips, laying his final ace on the line where they could both get a good look at it. "You want to take that chance when you could take me with you and be sure?"

 

Ryan grinned in spite of the situation. The little man had a lot of nerve. "How do I know you and Liberty weren't related or something? Mebbe you'll try to stick a knife in my guts as soon as you get the chance."

 

"Me and Liberty related?" The dwarf had to strain to make a rude noise, but he succeeded after a dry-lipped moment. "And I got all the looks. He kept me around to torment, mister. A few miles to the north, there was another ville just setting up. I was part of that ville. Some of us had a disagreement with a local baron, so we pulled up stakes and tried to make it on our own. Except we hadn't counted on Hazard being so territorial. Twenty miles away, we were, and the ville elders decided we were still too close. They were afraid we were going to overhunt the game in this area."

 

Ryan knew that was a serious worry for a ville like Hazard, which was still living off the land.

 

"They warned us to move away last year, but by then winter was coming on," the dwarf continued. "We asked them to give us till the spring. Instead, they sent Liberty and his bunch of coldhearts to burn down our tents and the two permanent buildings we'd started before we talked to them. When they rode out of the ville, not many people were left alive. I don't think the ones that escaped survived. Winter hit the next week, and the land around here can be bastard inhospitable during those times. Thirty-seven people, and all of them wiped out. No, sir, I don't have any love for the folk of that ville."

 

Ryan stood, not presenting his back to the dwarf in case Albert tried for a last-minute escape. He spotted Krysty coming down from the hill.

 

"I believe him, lover," she said.

 

Ryan nodded. "Might be an idea to have a guide in the ville." He took the panga from her. "Least until we get situated and figure out where we're going from here."

 

"Personally, my dear Ryan," Doc said as he walked over and dusted off the tails of his frock coat, "I think we could all enjoy a few hours respite after our trip to North Carolina."

 

"Yeah." The one-eyed man turned to the upended wag. "Come on out of there."

 

After a brief hesitation, Albert clambered out from under the wag. He made certain to keep his hands in view, his stubby arms not allowing him to shove his fingertips much up past his head. "You won't regret this."

 

"I don't have much in the way of regrets," Ryan said. "And I aim to keep it that way." He scanned the corpses. "Okay, let's see what we can salvage."