Holstering their blasters, Krysty and Doc started to help the others haul the cans of fuel into the desert, placing them fifty feet away and about ten feet apart. Hopefully, the cans were far enough apart that shooting one wouldn't start a chain reaction and ace the companions along with the millipedes. But there was no way to test it, so they simply had to depend on a best guess.

 

 "Still clear," Dean asked hesitantly. "Just some dust blowing to the west." Or was it dust? Hmm, the boy wasn't really sure. Could that have been smoke? He trained the longeyes in that direction again, but whatever it had been was gone now, dissipated by the sluggish currents rising off the warming plain of hard salt. Then he caught it again, high in the sky.

 

 "Buzzards," Dean announced. "About a mile to the east."

 

 In the process of checking his backpack for additional loose rounds, Ryan spun at that. "Must be feeding on the dead bugs," he said, holstering the blaster and sliding the Steyr SSG-70 longblaster off his shoulder. "That's a break for us."

 

 "How?" Krysty asked, loosening her shirt. Already she was perspiring badly. Maybe it was the presence of the salt, but this was much worse than any desert she had traveled before. Breathing was becoming difficult.

 

 "We give them something else to eat instead of us," Ryan said, working the bolt on the weapon and adjusting the focus on the scope. Taking careful aim, the man squeezed off a shot, and a second later there was an explosion of feathers in the distance and a buzzard plummeted from the sky.

 

 "One bird won't stop them," Krysty said, mopping the sweat off her brow. "But the blood might attract other scavengers, scorpions, lizards, maybe even a few screamwings."

 

 "Sure hope not," Jak muttered, rubbing an old scar. Damn muties moved faster than arrows and would attack anything with a ferocity unequaled in the animal kingdom.

 

 "And there they are," Ryan said pointing as two more buzzards began to circle the fresh kill. Raising the longblaster, he fired twice more in rapid succession and both of the birds fell dead.

 

 "That'll keep them off our back for a while," Krysty said in grim satisfaction. "But not for very long."

 

 "No," Ryan admitted honestly, "not for long."

 

 Tense minutes passed as the companions stood guard, watching the ground under their boots for any suspicious activity, while Mildred and J.B. worked diligently on the engine. Their muttered curses from the front of the wag gave no clear indication of how well the job was progressing.

 

 Slowly rising high overhead, the blazing sun filled the desert with tangible waves of heat until a thickening haze of reflected illumination formed over the crystalline landscape. Loosening their clothing, and tying handkerchiefs around their necks to save the sweat, the companions kept the conversation to a minimum, and tried to remember to breathe through their nose and save irreplaceable moisture. However, the brutal combination of the rising temperatures and the salted dust seemed to be leeching the fluids from their flesh. But the companions knew survival tactics for this kind of territory. Sucking pebbles helped folks keep their mouths shut and conserved moisture. Plus, Mildred had long ago taught them to take some grease from the wheel bearings and smear it over lips. That stopped chapping and made a person feel less thirsty. The tricks helped a lot, but if the wag couldn't be repaired, then the loss of the water barrel was going to prove a serious problem. Quite possibly, a matter of life and death. Aside from what little remained in the canteens, the companions were out of water and standing in the middle of a salt desert.

 

 They heard the yowl of a big cat, possibly a cougar or mountain lion, and then a screech unlike anything they had heard before.

 

 "The other predators have arrived," Krysty commented calmly. "Too bad the cat didn't pass this way. We could have sliced its skin into rawhide to fix the wag."

 

 Adjusting his eye patch, Ryan growled, "The problem with rawhide is that it can get too tight, shrinking so much the bearings burn out and junk the engine permanently."

 

 Draping a cut piece of blanket over his head as protection from the direct sunlight, Dean nodded at his father's words as if filing the information away.

 

 "Okay, I think we got it," J.B. announced, closing the hood. "At least for now."

 

 "Here's hoping," Mildred added.

 

 Careful of touching the metal handle on the door with her bare skin, the woman climbed into the cab, set the choke and tried the ignition. Incredibly, the diesel started at once without the slightest hesitation.

 

 "All right, turn it off!" Ryan shouted, turning his back to the sun. "Let's grab those fuel cans and get moving while we still can!"

 

 "What you do?" Jak asked curiously, placing socks on his hands before lifting two of the steel fuel cans.

 

 Shrugging out of his leather jacket, J.B. tossed it into the front of the cab and went to help reclaim the containers. Damn, it was hot! "Did the only thing we could," he said, carefully placing his fingerless leather gloves around the handles of a couple of cans. "I split a fan belt in half lengthwise and used it for both pulleys."

 

 "That going to work?" Dean asked. "Doesn't sound very strong."

 

 "It isn't," Ryan said, grabbing four cans and striding to the back of the wag. "So we have to go bastard slow and be a hell of a lot more careful. But it got us running again."

 

 Placing the cans roughly on the floor, Ryan went for more as Mildred pulled them away from the edge and started lashing them to the ribs with some spare rope.

 

 "Can we do that again with another belt if one of these breaks?" Dean asked, panting from the effort of carrying two cans. They weighed a ton, but the boy was determined to always do his full share of the work.

 

 "Nothing left to split," Ryan stated, slowing his pace so the boy could keep abreast. "If these snap, we start walking."

 

 Once the wag was loaded again, the companions piled into the rear, with Ryan behind the wheel and J.B. riding shotgun in the passenger seat. Ryan gently tried the ignition and the diesel easily started. Slipping the transmission into a low gear, he drove away slowly, babying the overheated engine.

 

 AS THE STRUGGLING wag headed for the horizon, swaddled figures rose from the ground like masked ghosts. They watched the vehicle for a brief while, then slipped back down into the earth as nothing truly human could, and were gone from sight.

 

 KEEPING A CAREFUL watch on the dashboard gauges, Ryan drove the wag onward through the stifling heat. With the temperature rising every hour, even shielded by the roof of the vehicle, the companions had to apply more of the grease to their lips. But the heat was becoming oppressive, and the conversations lagged, everybody simply concentrating on breathing and trying not to exert themselves too much. There were a few scattered clouds in the blazing sky, small and darkly colored, but any shade they cast was nowhere near the companions and their tantalizing presence only seemed to make their sweating more unbearable.

 

 Over the long miles, the hard packed salt became mixed with golden sand, more and more windswept dunes rising as they departed the dead zone and the land became a simple desert. Finding a stand of cactus, Ryan slowed the wag to a mere crawl and Krysty got out of the back to use Doc's sword to safely hack off chunks of the plant, spearing the pieces and bringing them back to the wag. Eagerly, the companions used their knives to cut off the thick barbed thorns and cut the cactus open to munch on the moist pulp inside.

 

 "Kind of bitter," Dean said unhappily, his face smeared with the sticky juice.

 

 "Indeed, yet ambrosia compared to some of the things we have eaten to stay alive, lad," Doc rumbled, chewing each mouthful slowly before forcing a swallow. "Actually, it is rather similar to pickled turnip, albeit a tad more spongy."

 

 "That's from being so close to the salt lands," Mildred said, wiping her mouth, but then added, "Turnip?"

 

 Lowering his pale green slice, Doc smiled, flashing his oddly perfect teeth. "Most assuredly, dear lady. My mother considered it a necessary tonic for good health."

 

 "Ate a lot of it as a kid?"

 

 "Not willing, no."

 

 It was noon when the dropping fuel gauge forced the companions to stop in the delicious shade of a large dune. Ryan took advantage of the break to get out of the broiling vehicle to refuel the wag even though it wasn't his turn to do the job. J.B. did the same, taking on the disagreeable task of pouring a few pints of saved urine into the boiling radiator. As much as the friends would have liked to stop there and sleep through the remainder of the day, the threat of the bugs was too pressing and they had no choice but to keep going.

 

 Driving back into the harsh sunlight, Ryan saw the break didn't really help reduce the temp of the engine and could only assume there had to be something wrong with the thermostat. When he got the chance that night, he would open the cooling system and remove the bloody valve completely. The bastard thing was designed to keep the heat in on cold wintry days and channel it off during a hot summer. But since there was only heat in the desert, they had no need for the other function and it could be safely removed. But not abandoned. While they kept the wag, they would save any spare parts. Only a fool threw away a blaster just because nobody was attacking at the moment.

 

 "Ville!" J.B. said, squinting to the north.

 

 Shifting gears, Ryan headed in that direction and soon there rose from the sands a ville of tan bricks. The high walls weren't straight, but extended to points like a star, forming deep passages between each section. Ryan approved. Those were murder alleys, where the ville sec men could concentrate their blasterfire to cut down invaders. The lower bricks were shiny with pieces of broken glass studding the surface, and along the palisade were firing slots and some rusty metal frames dangling with nests of rope that he instinctively knew was a lift of some sort for bringing folks in and out of the ville without opening the gate. This was a real hard-site, safe from any army of coldhearts. Unless somebody had a functioning tank, or a working plane, which was about as unlikely as drinkable rain falling from the tortured sky in this desolate part of the Deathlands.

 

 As they got closer, Ryan couldn't see a door or a gate in the walls, and drove around the ville in a wide arc until locating first one, then another door, separated by a starpoint wall. The large doors were both wooden and strapped with metal. The one-eyed man was willing to bet a live round of ammo that only one of those actually opened into the ville. The other would be a sham, a thick door placed in front of a solid wall to make attackers waste time and men by dividing their forces to hit a useless target. Smart. The baron here was no fool.

 

 "Dark night," J.B. whispered, shoving his hat back on and pulling the arming bolt of the Uzi.

 

 "I see it," Ryan growled, grinding the damaged clutch as he brought the wag to a halt in the open sand.

 

 Directly in front of the wag was a low adobe brick wall only about a foot high that seemed to circle the entire ville at about four hundred feet of distance. Old weathered crosses jutted from the ground, and at one point the skeleton of a man was staked spread-eagle near the little wall, iron spikes driven through the empty sockets of both eyes. The message was clear—cross this line and die.

 

 "In a world of illiterates, this is an easily understandable denouncement," Doc rumbled, using a strip of canvas to tie his silvery hair off his neck. "Most elucidating."

 

 "A simple skull and crossbones would have sufficed," Mildred told him, using the barrel of her Czech-made ZKR target pistol to push aside the tattered canvas awning to peek out from the rear of the vehicle.

 

 "Over there," Dean said, jerking a thumb to the left.

 

 His pale skin painfully flushed from the sunlight, Jak took a tiny sip from his canteen, sloshing the water around in his mouth before swallowing, still hoarding the precious fluid even with a ville only minutes away. Mebbe it was empty, or full of muties. Life had taught him that until it was in your pocket, you didn't have anything for sure.

 

 "Must have a lot of coldhearts in the area for them to go to this much bother," Krysty suggested, her hair coiling tightly to her head. She was getting a very bad feeling about this ville, not a sense of direct danger as if a sniper had them in the crosshairs, but more a sensation of betrayal. Then it was gone, the ghostly impression vanished like a dream in the night.

 

 "Or one big enemy," J.B. guessed. "Might be both."

 

 Turning off the engine, Ryan pushed aside the blankets and stepped out of the vehicle, enjoying the sensation of the desert wind blowing over his sweat-damp clothes. When nothing happened after a few minutes, he pulled a small plastic mirror from his shirt pocket and reflected the bright sunlight along the top of the wall. That should get somebody's attention soon enough.

 

 Almost immediately, there was an answering flash, and the huge metal framework loudly creaked as it rotated out over the wall and slowly began to lower something to the sandy ground.

 

 "It's a man," Krysty said, her eyes picking out the details of the lone sec man. "Blaster, no grens in sight."

 

 "Mighty suspicious folks," Dean muttered, drying a hand on his shirt before pulling his Browning. "Wouldn't even open the door for seven people."

 

 "Seven people in a wag," his father corrected.

 

 "Could be a hundred more of us just over the horizon."

 

 As the man touched ground, a dozen more people appeared along the angled walls of the ville, brandishing a wide assortment of longblasters, crossbows and something that could have been either a piece of stovepipe, or a predark antitank weapon. It was hard to tell at this range, which was probably the idea.

 

 As J.B. dug out his Navy scope, Krysty squinted hard.

 

 "Looks real," she said softly.

 

 "It is," J.B. added, lowering the telescope and collapsing it back down. "That's a 70 mm recoilless rifle, sort of a baby bazooka. Packs a hell of a punch. Might not be loaded, but even a homemade rocket could send us into a world of hurt."

 

 "I'm already in sight," Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth.

 

 "No problem," the physician replied, holstering her handblaster.

 

 She took Ryan's Steyr SSG-70 off the front seat and pulled it into the rear of the wag. Back in her day, the black woman had been an Olympic silver medalist for target shooting, and she was the second-best long distance shooter among the companions. Working the bolt, Mildred checked the clip in the breech to make sure it was fully loaded, then eased the barrel through a slit in the awning and started adjusting the focus on the scope to find the sec man on the wall brandishing the 70 mm recoilless. At the first sign of danger, she would put a 7.62 mm round of hardball ammunition directly into his front temporal lobe, instantly turning the sec man into a mindless vegetable. The second round would go into the firing mechanism of the U.S. Army recoilless, rendering it equally harmless before anybody could get off a shot. There was a scorpion design painted on the weapon that made a fine target.

 

 Surreptitiously readying the rest of their weapons, the companions stayed still while the lone man walked to the low wall and stopped on the other side. He was lean to the point of gaunt, his light-colored clothing tied off at the ankles and wrists, probably to help keep out the windblown sand. A double holster gun belt was strapped around his waist, but only one carried a blaster. The original pistol grip was gone, replaced with a dark wood of some kind, polished bright and cut with the pattern of a trippant scorpion.

 

 Squinting his good eye at the ville, Ryan again approved. Why risk losing two blasters when one would do the job?

 

 "Where did you find our wag?" the sec man demanded, a hand resting on his gun belt only inches from the shiny blue steel of the revolver. "Thanks for bringing it back. Now get out and start walking."

 

 "You mean our wag, feeb," Ryan corrected hotly, feeling a rush of fury at the clumsy trick. He pulled out the SIG-Sauer and let the fool look down the barrel. "Now shut the fuck up and bring out the sec boss, we got business to jaw."

 

 The skinny sec man bared a grin, displaying missing teeth. "That's me," he stated, stabbing himself in the chest with a stiff finger. "I'm in charge here."

 

 Swinging open the passenger side door, J.B. raised the Uzi into sight. "That's a load of crap," he said calmly. "You're the newest sec man the ville has, sent out in case we ace first and talk later."

 

 "Get your boss," Ryan growled dangerously, "and stop wasting our time. You aren't in charge of wiping the baron's ass."

 

 Startled by the insult, the sec man contorted his face into a mask of rage and started for his blaster only to freeze at the sound of several hammers locking back on blasters. A few long seconds passed in silence, then the snarling man eased his hand away from the piece and turned to walk back toward the ville.

 

 "I'll remember you, One-eye," he muttered hatefully.

 

 His black hair ruffling in the dry wind, Ryan made no comment, but kept the 9 mm blaster trained on the man until he was well out of range.

 

 Going to the apex of the ville, the skinny sec man shouted something to the people along the wall. Shortly thereafter in the second murder alley, there came the squeaking of hinges and the big door was ponderously raised. A group of armed men on horses rode through the doorway spreading out so that they wouldn't present a group target in case of a firefight, most of them stopping about fifty feet from the low wall. Only one rider kept going past the boundary until he reined in the animal only yards away from the wag.

 

 The engine was ticking steadily as it cooled, and the dry wind swirled the desert dust around their boots like miniature tornadoes. A dusty lizard raced by from out of nowhere and headed into the unknown.

 

 "Who's in charge here?" the sec man demanded. He was wide with muscle, not fat, his features oddly flat as if there were a lot of Oriental or American Indian blood in his heritage, or just a touch of mutie. His long black hair was tied off in a ponytail with a ornately decorated length of rawhide, his boots were some kind of lizard skin and a brace of pistols rode protectively behind the buckle of his gun belt, the handles turned out for a fast draw. The blue head of a scorpion tattoo peeked from under his shirt, and he had too many scars to count.

 

 Scorpions again, Ryan noted. Had to be the crest of the local baron. Yeah, this was the sec boss without a doubt. The son of an East Coast baron himself, he could tell the difference between a hired gun and a leader.

 

 "That's me. The name's Ryan Cawdor."

 

 "Alexander Hawk, sec chief here at Rockpoint ville," the big man replied, openly appraising the people in the wag. There was a lot of hardware on display, pointing his way. "Those blasters work?"

 

 "Only one way to know for sure," Ryan stated calmly, crossing both arms across his chest. "But it'll cost you red."

 

 Leaning forward in the saddle, Hawk barked a laugh. "Fair enough." These outlanders didn't rattle worth a damn. Good, mebbe he could hire them on as mercies. Always needed more blasters during the dry season.

 

 Shifting his stance, Hawk addressed Ryan directly, as if the rest of the companions were no longer of any importance. "So what do ya want here?"

 

 "Food and water," Ryan said, indicating the wag. "Got mil fuel to trade. The good stuff."

 

 "Won't buy ya a thing here. We don't have any wags," Hawk said, stroking the neck of the stallion. "Anything else?"

 

 "Ammo," J.B. said, lifting a small box of .22 cartridges and shaking it to make the rounds jingle. "You've got blasters, don't you?"

 

 The metallic sound snapped Hawk's head around fast, and he squinted as if reevaluating the situation. "Full box of fifty?" he asked suspiciously.

 

 "Count them if you want."

 

 "I will," Hawk warned. "Better not be duds loaded with dirt."

 

 Krysty drew her S&W and fired a single round into the sky. The noise echoed along the plain, and in seconds a dozen more armed people were at the ville wall pointing longblasters their way. Hidden behind the canvas sheets, Mildred didn't take the scope off the man with the 70 mm pointing at the GMC wag.

 

 Hawk stared at the redhead for a moment, then cracked his face into a hard smile. "Fair enough. Food, rooms and water for all of you for a day in exchange for the box."

 

 "One day for a whole box?" Dean snorted. "That's feeb talk!"

 

 "A week is more like it," Ryan countered, shifting his boots on the hot ground.

 

 "One day," Hawk declared, shaking his head. "This is the only water east of the glass lakes. Next spring is a week's ride away, if you can find the spot. Take it, or leave. Your call."

 

 Reaching into a pocket, Ryan pulled out another box of .22 cartridges and tossed it to the sec man. "Two boxes, three days."

 

 Caught by surprise, Hawk gave that emotionless smile again. "Deal," he said, tucking the ammo into his shirt. Then turning the Appaloosa stallion, he started walking the beast back toward the ville.

 

 Climbing back into the cab, it took Ryan two tries to finally get the engine running, the whole vehicle shaking from the effort of the struggling diesel. Sounded like a seal might have broken, but at least the fan belt was still holding.

 

 With the gauges rapidly climbing back into the red zone again, Ryan drove the wag over the boundary marker heading toward the main murder alley of Rockpoint ville and the large open door.

 

  

 

 Chapter Ten

 

  

 

 The mounted sec men led the way through the murder alley and into the gate. Keeping to a crawl so the horses could stay in front, Ryan drove the rattling truck through the opening, the heavy gate rambling shut behind to leave them trapped inside a short tunnel that penetrated the wall. The sides were smooth and plain, without decorations or even blaster ports for defense. On the other hand, the wag was barely able to traverse the passageway, the canvas awning less than a foot from the ceiling with the tall radio antenna loudly scraping along overhead to the obvious annoyance of the sec men. Any vehicle slightly larger than the GMC would never be able to gain entrance, much less make it completely through.

 

 "An ambush by any other name," Krysty muttered, glancing around them on every side.

 

 "Indeed, dear lady," Doc agreed. "I do believe the operative phrase, quote sitting ducks end quote, would be in order here."

 

 Born and raised in a ville protected by a drawbridge, Ryan agreed with that assessment. To any invaders on foot, the tunnel would be a death trap with nowhere to run or hide from the blasters of the ville sec men.

 

 The tunnel was dark with the front gate closed, but there was no need to switch on the headlights as dim sunlight showed at the far end. As the companions drove into a sunny courtyard, the ville spread before them in disorganized rows as if each house had been built wherever the owner felt like it.

 

 "This is a maze," Mildred stated under her breath, and drew a pencil and notebook to start tracing their way along the twisting streets.

 

 Stretched between the adobe brick buildings were sheets of cloth that rippled with the desert breeze, but the material effectively reduced the devastating effects of the noontime sun to a tolerable level.

 

 An adobe brick machine gun nest stood directly in front of the tunnel, with two more off to the sides to give cross fire. Stout pylons of gray rock jutted from the blue cobblestone street, and the companions recognized them as tank traps, designed to bust the treads on an APC, rendering it immobile.

 

 As the horses turned into a side street, the wag followed and the milling people stopped whatever they were doing to stare in wonder at the vehicle. The effect was unnerving until Ryan remembered that Hawk said the place had no wags. Just simple curiosity, then. Or was it something more? In spite of the apparent wealth of Rockpoint, there seemed to be a lot of fear in the faces he saw.

 

 The crowds parted before the armed sec men to keep from being trampled by the unshod hooves of their mounts. But they avoided even looking at Hawk. The sec chief rode like a baron through the streets, the iron-clad hooves of his stallion ringing loudly against the cobblestones, announcing his approach.

 

 The people were sensibly dressed in loose clothing of varied stages of cleanliness, the usual mixture of salvaged clothing from predark days and tanned hides. Shoes were ragged and repaired into faded patchwork that resembled the deliberate camou patterns of military fatigues, with children going about bare foot. Nothing that could be a weapon was in sight, and no machines, even nonfunctioning devices.

 

 In the shade of the rippling cloth roof, a legless leather smith was tanning the hide of a mountain lion, while a young assistant stitched a saddle. A dwarfish woman was sharpening knives of a whetstone, and drunken laughter sounded from the second floor windows of what was obviously a gaudy house. Situated on a corner, an old potter was palming red clay into the shape of a bowl. Behind him were wooden racks filled with drying plates and pitchers. On the top shelf, the better plates carried the detailed design of a scorpion.

 

 "Ugly design," Dean said, frowning. "Who the frag wants to eat off a bug?"

 

 Doc started to speak, and Mildred rested a hand on his arm, shaking her head. He grimaced, then shrugged. The scholar had tried to explain many times that scorpions weren't insects, but an arachnid, an entirely different species like spiders. But nobody seemed to care. If it had more than four legs it was a bug.Ipso facto . Case closed.

 

 "Could be the baron's crest," his father answered, shifting gears.

 

 "See those slits in the ville roof?" Krysty said, pointing above the potter. "This deep in the desert, there would be no easy supply of charcoal for a kiln. So everything has to be sundried."

 

 "Lemons and lemonade," Doc commented wryly. "They turned a problem into an asset."

 

 "Nuking hot enough be kiln," Jak said, shaking to the motion of the wag over the uneven cobblestones. "Even with roof."

 

 "Black dust, I don't like this," J.B. muttered, adjusting his glasses. "Not one damn bit."

 

 "What?" Krysty asked. "Something wrong? The ville looks peaceful enough."

 

 "That's the bastard problem," he said, gesturing broadly. "No gallows."

 

 "Yeah, I noticed that, too," Ryan muttered, glancing down cross streets and into alleys. In almost every ville, there was an execution area near the front gate to warn outlanders to behave or else. But not here. No gallows, chopping blocks, cages, or pits. However, there were always people to chill—thieves, traitors, murderers, whatever. So where did they ace people?

 

 Mildred brushed back her beaded hair. "If the job isn't being done in public, then it's being done somewhere hidden. We better make sure none of us get detained by the sec men."

 

 "Just here to buy water," Ryan reminded bluntly, but keeping his voice low so the sec men couldn't hear. "Not interested in local troubles. If the people ain't happy with the present baron, that's their business, not ours."

 

 "'Aren't' happy," Krysty corrected him.

 

 Just then, there came the sound of a whip cracking, closely followed by dull grunts of pain.

 

 "Spoke too soon," Krysty said, a hand instinctively resting on her gun belt.

 

 The noise grew as the sec men and companions entered a small courtyard, where the cloth roof was gone and the sun blazed down in all its fury.

 

 Set apart from every other tan adobe building in the ville, this structure was made of red brick and looked as strong as a bunker. It was two stories tall, yet oddly without windows, and a set of wide granite steps led to a bronze door green with age. Armed guards stood on either side of the door, routinely checking through the clothing of the people waiting in line to enter, and then again as they came out clutching small clay pots that loudly sloshed.

 

 "I see that water is tightly rationed here," Ryan said casually out the window. "That the ville well?"

 

 "Our temple," Hawk replied with a dark scowl. "You won't be seeing inside there."

 

 The whip sounded again as the horses and wag went around the temple bringing into view a skinny man wearing rags, his hands tied to iron rings set into the brick wall, legs covered with rivulets of blood. A shirt hung in filthy strips from his back, and a large sec man was whipping him with a length of smooth leather.

 

 "Nineteen!" the sec man cried and let the whip fly. The leather cracked as it touched the prisoner's skin, making another section of clothing drop fluttering to the ground.

 

 The prisoner hardily flinched as a red welt rose on his bony shoulders, an old scar splitting open and fresh blood trickling down his trembling torso. While the sec man reclaimed the whip, the prisoner wheezed for breath through his nose, a wad of dark leather held in his mouth.

 

 "Padding to keep from breaking his teeth," Doc scowled, twisting his hand on the silver lion's head of the swordstick. "Barbaric!"

 

 A sec man jerked his head toward the wag at that, and Krysty jabbed the scholar with a hard elbow to the ribs. Scowling darkly, Doc clamped his mouth shut with a clear effort of willpower.

 

 "So what was his crime?" Ryan asked, as the group passed by the sight, the whip rising and falling in the background.

 

 "Water thief," Hawk said gruffly, shaking the reins to keep his horse abreast of the wag. The animal didn't like to be near the noisy wag with its exhaust fumes and kept shying away. "Remember that sight, or else it could be you. Always need more sacrifices for the Scorpion God."

 

 "No blood, no water," a sec man said in a solemn manner, bobbing his head slightly in a small bow. The rest of the sec men repeated the phrase along with every person in the crowd.

 

 Turning his head that way, Ryan meet the gaze of the sec man who had spoken and was surprised to see the guard who had first met them outside the ville. The two exchanged hostile glares for a moment, then the guard rode onward.

 

 "We're going to have trouble with him," Ryan stated under his breath.

 

 "Heads up," Dean said softly, glancing to the side.

 

 Following the direction, Ryan saw a redbrick building rising above the tan adobe structures. Some sort of a keep, a fort within the walled ville. The windows had thick wood shutters and iron bars, blaster slots were everywhere, and a blue flag bearing the golden outline of a scorpion fluttered from a bare metal pole on the roof.

 

 Standing at a corner of the roof with the afternoon sun at his back, was a man, hands clasped behind him, a double rig carrying a blaster under each arm, a thin trail of smoke rising from the slim cigar in his unseen mouth. Yet Ryan had no doubt that was the baron. As if sensing the attention, the baron turned to look down at the vehicle passing the keep, then he turned to walk inside the fortress, a phalanx of bodyguards staying close with weapons in hand.

 

 "That where we're going?" Ryan asked, keeping his voice neutral. "To see the baron?"

 

 "No need," Hawk replied, gesturing with a finger. "You'll be staying a few blocks over that way, at the motel."

 

 "Motel?" Mildred repeated in surprise. That was a word she hadn't heard in a long while.

 

 Hawk slowed his horse to speak to the woman in the rear of the vehicle. His frank disapproval broke her reverie and sent a shiver down her spine that the woman tried to hide. Then Mildred noticed him looking at her satchel, which bore a red cross. Oh, he had something against healers. That explained it. It wasn't the color of her skin, or her sex, but that she was a healer, a scientist. Odd, but some people still harbored that hatred.

 

 "Motel is what we call the inn where outlanders stay there until it's time to go," Hawk said in disdain. "That is, until they cause trouble and go to the temple."

 

 "No blood, no water," Ryan said without inflection, watching the dashboard gauges start to climb once more.

 

 For a moment, Hawk glared at the man, unsure of how to react to that, then he kicked the flanks of his mount and rode on ahead of the others.

 

 "A genuine, old fashioned, water monopoly," Doc murmured. "Fascinating. Control the people by controlling the water."

 

 Mildred added, "Rather similar to how the Aztecs maintained population control by pretending to need human hearts to make the sun rise."

 

 "Quite so, dear lady."

 

 Holding on to a rib of the awning, Dean glanced back toward the red brick building. The crowd was carrying away a body, blood dripping off the form to show he was still alive, although just barely.

 

 "Or do you think they got some kind big mutie in there?" the boy asked nervously. "Could be it drinks blood and pisses water, or something like that."

 

 "Some cave bats drink blood and piss ammonia," J.B. said, removing his fedora to wipe the sweatband with a handkerchief. Then he tucked it back on. "And we can cook that into a kind of explos, so who knows?"

 

 "Changing blood into explosives," Doc boomed, shaking his head sadly. "Never have I heard a better paradigm for existing in this wretched land."

 

 Following the mounted guards past a slaughter house and a reeking row of public shitters, Ryan steered the vehicle away from the protected section of the ville and into a wide open area exposed to the raw sun. It was like entering an oven. There was nobody on the streets, not even a dog or lizard, the adobe buildings spaced far apart so that it was possible to see the high wall surrounding the ville a hundred feet away.

 

 Their goal appeared to be a predark motel situated between a roofless adobe ruin, and a garbage dump buzzing with flies. The original neon sign on the cinder block wall was only a stain, the name long gone and replaced with a poorly drawn cartoon of a bed and a spoon on a faded wooden placard. That was necessary these dark days for the many folks who couldn't read.

 

 "Pretty clever," J.B. muttered. "Having outlanders living without a roof, must cut their stay short."

 

 "Make buy more water, too," Jak added, rubbing a hand across his dry mouth. The canteen hung heavy at his side, but he was holding off until they were some place out of the direct sun.

 

 "Okay, this is the place," Hawk announced, reining his stallion to a halt and walking it around. "You can put the wag in the barn over there. We have no other outlanders staying here, so you won't be bothering any horses."

 

 "Fair enough. Any laws we should know about?" Ryan asked, turning on the heater to keep the heating engine operating. As a wave of hot air rushed from the vents, the temperature gauge needle flickered and began to move away from the red line in a pulsating motion.

 

 "Yeah, there are. You can leave Rockpoint anytime you want during the day, but not at night," Hawk said, leaning forward in the saddle, both hands crossed over the pommel. "Disobey a sec man, ten lashes. Steal water, thirty lashes. Hurt a horse, a hundred lashes. Go anywhere near the temple, death. Say anything treasonous against the baron, you get into the temple. Permanently. You leave at dawn in three days."

 

 With that done, the big man shook the bridle to start the stallion trotting away. The rest of the sec men rode around the sputtering wag with hands on blasters once in a patent display of firepower, then followed their chief back into the coolness of the covered ville.

 

 "Mother Gaia, I wonder why they let us come inside," Krysty said. "They sure as hell don't seem to want any visitors."

 

 "Only way to get any news about what's happening outside the walls," Ryan explained, turning the wheel to head for the adobe barn. "New plagues, new muties, and such. If they stay too isolated, something big could come their way and they wouldn't be ready to fight, or run."

 

 "Simple self preservation," Mildred said in agreement. "Nothing more. Walls this thick were built to keep something out."

 

 "Or in," Doc added cryptically.

 

 Rolling the wag into the barn, Ryan made a wide arc and managed to turn it around to park facing the exit. It would be ready to charge and smash through the door in case they had to leave in a hurry. Ryan turned off the engine, and he and J.B. both stayed in the vehicle, listening carefully as it sputtered and backfired to finally go still.

 

 "Intake is clogged with salt dust," J.B. said with a frown. "Tricky to fix that."

 

 Setting the handbrake, Ryan added, "And we got to remove that thermostat."

 

 "Damn straight we do. My legs are feeling like they've been dipped in acid rain."

 

 "At least we got the spare juice to flush the manifold," Ryan told him, reaching under the dashboard and pulling a handful of fuses. "But that's for tomorrow, after we rest and eat."

 

 "Good," Jak said eagerly, lowering the canteen and smacking his lips. "Starving."

 

 Tucking the fuses into a pocket, Ryan climbed down from the cab and walked to the rear of the wag to claim his backpack. A slanted shadow cut across the interior of the barn from the setting sun, but if there was a difference in temperature it wasn't readily noticeable. Why anybody would build a ville here in the first place was a puzzle. Then again, maybe it was started by folks fleeing across the salty desert and they found water.

 

 "Dean takes first watch," Ryan directed, checking his wrist chron. "Doc next, then Jak, J.B. and me. We switch every two hours."

 

 "No prob," the boy said, lifting a nukelamp and checking to make sure the device still worked. Even in the daylight, the brilliant beam was clearly visible. Turning it off, he placed the lamp on the ground in the far corner where the beam could shine in the open doorway. Hidden in the shadows behind the light, he would be a hard target to shoot.

 

 Gathering their backpacks, Mildred and Krysty said nothing about being left out of the rotation schedule. They knew that a woman standing guard alone at night would only be an open invitation for serious trouble. They'd do a turn during the day, or by a campfire once the group was far from the ville.

 

 Lifting the hood, J.B. pulled an ignition wire and coiled it into a bundle before tucking it into his munitions bag. Too many folks seemed to know how to jump a fuse these days, so he decided to take some extra insurance. Unless a hijacker had exactly the correct replacement for the same make and model wag, the vehicle wasn't going to move an inch. The rope, shovels and other small items they could safely leave behind. There was only the single entrance, and Dean was a good shot.

 

 "Don't lose that, John," Mildred joked, slinging her own backpack onto a shoulder. "We really don't want to stay here for any longer than necessary."

 

 "Got that right," the Armorer replied, as he slipped the S&W M-4000 off his back and offered it to Dean.

 

 "How about some company?"

 

 "Thanks," Dean replied, accepting the shotgun and resting it on a shoulder. "You hear this, you better come running."

 

 "Or sound the horn," Ryan instructed, checking over the arrangement inside the barn with approval. The site was tight. "See you in two hours."

 

 "No problem," the boy said, racking the weapon.

 

 As the rest of the companions walked from the barn, Dean followed them to the doorway. Watching them head for the ramshackle motel, he noticed a young girl across the street just standing there, her slim arms holding a clay water jug. She was about his own age, just starting to fill her raggedy dress with the shape of a woman. She was so beautiful it was like something from a predark vid, and on impulse he gave a brief wave. Shyly, the girl smiled and that was when he noticed her topaz eyes, bluer than the sky after a storm. Dean started forward, but then stopped, knowing that he couldn't leave the wag unattended. Frantically, he tried to think of something to call out to her, but nothing came to mind. After waiting a minute, the girl shrugged in resignation and padded around a corner with her water jug. Dean followed her progress until she was gone from sight.

 

 "Mebbe this place isn't so bad," he said softly, and settled down into a comfortable position against the wall to watch the street in the hope that she might return.

 

 CROSSING THE CRACKED asphalt of what once had been the parking lot for the motel, Ryan found the way into the building blocked by a mangy dog laying in front of the door, its pale tongue lolling from the heat. Nudging gently with a combat boot, Ryan got the dog to move and walked into the building.

 

 As the one-eyed man pushed aside the door, the rusty hinges creaked, and the cracked glass wobbled loosely in the frame. Waiting a moment for his vision to adjust to the darkness, he then stepped out of the afternoon sun into the lobby of the predark motel. It was somewhat cooler, although the air reeked of sour sweat and rancid cooking grease.

 

 Across the lobby, a stack of sandbags formed a sort of front desk, flat stones on top serving as a counter. Sitting behind that was a fat man wearing a moth eaten cowboy hat and no shirt, picking his teeth with a thumbnail. Hanging on the nearby wall was a baseball bat spiked with nails in the manner of a medieval flail. Obviously a peacemaker to deter any troublesome guests.

 

 In the middle of the lobby was a fancy stone fountain, the rocks bone dry and the drain clogged with dust. A Dutch door marked Office was set alongside a row of the empty phone booths, and broken frames on the walls held only tatters of colored posters that once would have boasted about local attractions.

 

 Two sets of concrete stairs led to the second floor, where dirty laundry was hanging over the iron lace railing. From somewhere deeper in the motel came the sound of soft snoring, along with the wet smack of flesh on flesh. But it was impossible to tell if it was folks having sex or a fistfight. In the corner, a dog looked up from gnawing on a bone, only long enough to growl at the companions.

 

 Prying a bit of food from between his stained teeth, the fat man behind the sandbags inspected the morsel and popped it back into his mouth to chew and swallow. His splotchy face was marred with acne scarring, and his fingernails were shockingly long, with unidentifiable filth embedded underneath.

 

 "We're not eating anything served here," Krysty stated flatly. "Even if it comes in a sealed can."

 

 "I want to boil the air," Mildred added.

 

 Scowling darkly, Ryan started for the desk. If this was where guests of the baron stayed, he wondered what the jail looked like. "You in charge?" he said gruffly.

 

 "Yep, and you're the outies I heard about," the man drawled. "I'm Sparrow, and welcome to my place."

 

 "Sparrow," Mildred repeated in disbelief.

 

 "That's me!" He laughed, then paused to belch and scratch under an arm. "Shoot, and seven of ya at once! Never had the place so full. An' I see ya got your own sluts. Mind if I ride one when yer done? Might try the redhead myself. House rules, ya know. He-he. Sparrow rides free, ya know."

 

 In cold fury, Ryan started for his blaster, but Krysty stepped in close to shove the snub-nosed S&W Model 640 under his chin and forced his head back until he looking at the ceiling.

 

 "Want to try that again?" she demanded, grinding the muzzle into his flesh. "And get it right this time, feeb!"

 

 "W-welcome t-to Rockpoint, madam," Sparrow stuttered, his greasy face damp with sweat. "Hey, I didn't mean nothing, just talking."

 

 "Then shut your stinking mouth," Krysty ordered, removing the blaster and tucking it away. "Say anything like that again and the dogs will be chewing your bones."

 

 "Yes, ma'am, sorry," he blubbered in apology, trying to force a grin.

 

 "How did you know we were coming?" Ryan demanded, his hand still on the grip of the SIG-Sauer. The urge to kill was taking a long time to leave. He knew that his nerves were on edge from the lack of sleep, and it was becoming difficult to think clearly.

 

 "Sec men sent a runner, told me to get some rooms ready. I chased out the lizards and put in a clean night soil bucket," Sparrow said in a rush of words. "Ya gotta empty that yourself, ya know. I run this place. Ain't got no slaves. Ain't allowed. Not enough water to spare."

 

 "Hurrah for the baron," J.B. stated. On the wall was a honeycomb of letter slots, each with a hook for a key, but none was in sight. "Where are the keys?"

 

 "Done need any," Sparrow said. "None of the locks on the first floor work. We had to bust 'em down to get in and never saw the way of fixing them."

 

 "And what room were you told to prepare for us?" Ryan demanded.

 

 "The big one on the first floor, way in the back, near the garbage dump," Sparrow said, rubbing a hand across his soft belly. "Now if ya want something better on the second floor, we got that. Door got a lock, and the window overlooks the barn so ya can watch your stuff. Curtains, nice and cool during the day. Best we got!"

 

 There was a pause, then he added, "Of course, that costs more."

 

 J.B. grunted at the news and Ryan narrowed hiseyes.So that was it, eh?

 

 "How much for the clean room?" he asked.

 

 Smiling with greed, Sparrow said, "Half your water ration. We got a deal?"

 

 "No," Ryan said, turning away and heading for the door. "We'll stay in the barn."

 

 "But you can't do that!" Sparrow cried out. "The baron said ya gotta stay here!"

 

 "And we shall be sure to tell him about your hospitality," Doc added. "Perhaps he would be interested in how you obtain extra water from travelers. I wonder if that falls into the category of stealing water?"

 

 "Hey, now," Sparrow whispered, going pale. "No need for that. Man's got a right to earn a little water now and then. I was just, like, ya know… Help me Jed!"

 

 There was a creak as the office door started to swing open, pushed by the barrel of a longblaster. Moving fast, Ryan fired twice into the wood, slamming it closed. There came a muffled cry of pain and a thump from other side.

 

 "Don't move!" Mildred commanded, her .38 revolver pointed at Sparrow. The desk clerk froze motionless, his hand only inches from the club. Krysty and Doc went back to watch the front door and the balconyfor the arrival of reinforcements.

 

 With a low growl, the mutt started to rise and Jak pointed his Colt Python at the animal. "Call off," he said, cocking back the hammer on the blaster.

 

 "Sit, boy," Sparrow said, shaking with rage.

 

 Obediently, the dog stopped making noise, then turned around a few times before settling down with his boneonce more.

 

 Swinging around the Uzi, J.B. kicked open the office door and Ryan charged through, his blaster leading the way. Sitting on the dirty floor was another fat man, holding his bloody mouth. Next to him was a homemade blaster composed of a small-diameter bathroom pipe wrapped in layers of iron wire and bound to a wooden dowel. A cartridge was inserted intothe crude barrel of the zipgun, two more rolling loosely on the linoleum.

 

 "Kick it away," Ryan ordered and the man complied, the homemade gun skittering under a metal desk. "Now, move, fat boy!"

 

 Slowly, the corpulent fellow rose to shuffle into the lobby and joined Sparrow at the sandbags. This close together, it was clear the two men were brothers, maybeeven twins. Or else the gene pool of the ville wasdangerously small.

 

 "Damn, you folks are good," Sparrow muttered. "Haven't seen anybody move that fast, not even Hawk."

 

 "Except for that bitch Kate," Jed added, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his split lip. "Damn, I think a tooth is broken."

 

 "Tough," Ryan growled. "Who's Kate, the baron's wife?"

 

 "Some slut who works for the Trader," Jed mumbled.

 

 "Who? Oh, you mean Trader Kate," Ryan corrected. There were a lot of traders in the Deathlands, and they all used the word as a title, the way the barons did. Only the legendary Trader was known by the single word.

 

 "No, just Kate," Sparrow corrected. "She's the sec chief for Trader."

 

 "How do you know about the Trader?" Ryan asked, trying to control his words. The blaster felt big in his hands, as uncontrollable as a thrashing snake.

 

 "I bought a predark med from him that saved my arm after a mutie bit me," Jed said, blood dribbling down his chin. "Didn't charge me anything what he could have."

 

 "How long ago was this?" Krysty asked urgently.

 

 Sparrow started to lower his hands, but at a gesture from Mildred he quickly raised them again. "I dunno," he said, scowling as if forcing a dim memory. "Maybe five months. Long time ago."

 

 "Months," J.B. said slowly. "You gotta mean years. Five years, right?"

 

 The fat man shrugged. "Whatever you say, you got the blaster," he replied. "But I ain't no feeb. It was less than half a year ago. He and the baron had a big fight about something, and the Trader ain't been back since. Used to stop by fairly regularly. Bought a lot of water."

 

 "What's he to y'all?" Jed asked suspiciously. "Kin?"

 

 "Describe him," Ryan demanded, feeling his heart pound in his chest. It was impossible.

 

 The brothers exchanged glances. "The Trader? Hell, I dunno," Sparrow said. "Never saw the guy. He was always inside a big-ass tank, stays behind a blister of the military glass."

 

 "How many wags?" J.B. demanded. "Describe them!"

 

 Sparrow scrunched his face. "Well, there were three, one big wag and two others, each plated with metal and covered with blasters. Big stuff, cannons, mortars and rockets. Baron Gaza was scared to death of the guy. Hell, who wouldn't be with all his weapons."

 

 "More," Ryan said through clenched teeth.

 

 Fumbling for a reply, Jed scratched his head. "Well, I heard Kate call the big wag War Wag One. That help any?"

 

 The universe seemed to go still at those simple words, as if it were breaking apart and rejoining in a new pattern, reorganizing itself on a most basic of levels.

 

 "He's alive," Ryan stated. "Trader is alive and back in business!"

 

  

 

 Chapter Eleven

 

  

 

 Mists of steam filling the air of the small marble room, Baron Edgar Gaza was sprawled naked inthe shallowend of his large swimming pool, the clear mountain water flowing steadily around his hard muscular form from a feeder pipe. On the tiles near his head was a pile of dry towels and several loaded blasters. Laying at the bottom of the pool was a stiletto.

 

 "I think they're spies sent by the Trader," Hawk said quietly, leaning against a marble pillar. Hisshirt was unbuttonedto the waist, the entire tattoo of the scorpion visible on his broad chest. "Best to chill them. Gather ten, no make that twenty of our best men. We'll make this a night creep and garrotethe bunch in their sleep."

 

 Soaping his arms, Gaza gazed at his sec chief with saturnine calm. "The women, too?"

 

 "Women we got," the sec man snorted angrily.

 

 At thefar end of the pool, the women of the baron's harem were slowly washing themselves, the sudsy water carried away into another predark pipeline. Where the dirty water went the baron had no idea, but it was no place local so it wasn't a challenge to his control over the ville. Once, the wife of a blacksmith had given birth to a tiny baby, and when the boy was ten Gaza equipped the child with several bottles of air and flushed him down the pipeline with orders to return and his family would live comfortably for the rest of their lives. A lie, but the boy eagerly accepted the challenge and dived into the feeder pipe. He was never heard from again.

 

 The women stayed in this wing of the keep, their tongues removed to stop any of them from talking just in case one of them escaped somehow. Whenever one of them got too old, Gaza would brutally kill her in front of the others saying she had tried to escape, and then he would beat the rest as punishment for allowing her to try. Escape attempts were few and far between.

 

 It was something his father had taught him, keep the slaves suspicious of one another and they become the guards. His father had been a very wise man, the founder of Rockpoint ville. Wise and hard. Edgar had been the youngest son of the baron, and one day had been pitted against his older brothers in the Arena. Armed with knives and spiked clubs, the boys were commanded to fight, the winner to be the heir to the ville. Edgar had offered to team with a sibling and share the ville, and when the fool accepted and turned his back, Edgar beat him to death and stole his knife. Now armed with two weapons, he savagely fought the others and won. But the eldest brother had gotten in a few good strikes before dying, and Edgar's badly broken leg had never healed correctly. He still limped to this day, the old break aching badly when the acid rains came in the fall.

 

 "Well?" Hawk demanded impatiently. "What should we do, Baron?"

 

 Washing lazily, Gaza looked at the desert giant. His loyalty was unquestionable, which was why the baron allowed the mutie to challenge his orders. Only a fool listened to bootlickers. Hawk had been found in the desert crawling with scorpions, stung a hundred times. Incredibly, the man lived and was proved immune to the deadly poison of the tiny killers. A useful skill that became their safeguard on the Scorpion God.

 

 The sec men sometimes referred to him as the Big Scorpion, which amused Gaza greatly. The more the troops feared Hawk, the more authority the baron had over them. It was all a matter of control. Which was why he created the water shortage. If he opened the pipes, the entire valley would be flooded. But a simple twist of the valve and the water slowed to the merest trickle. Now visitors paid for the precious liquid with ammo and horses, food, and sometimes their very lives. His troops had the pick of the sluts, and his people believed that he was their savior and only chance of life.

 

 "We shall ace them, of course," Baron Gaza said, slipping under the water for a moment, then rising to push back his wet hair. The women waded closer to their "husband," wrapping him in dry towels as he walked from the pool.

 

 "How is the matter in question," Gaza said, taking a clean robe from a marble bench and belting a robe about his waist. "They have rapidfires and a predark ammo. And the black hair man, Ryan, has the look of a real fighter. I think it might be best to let them stay for a day or two, sell them water and then track them when they leave. Ace them far from the ville and bring the blasters and wag back for our private arsenal."

 

 Padding naked past the sec man, a blonde looked at the giant with no more interest than if he were a chair, her full breasts swinging to the gentle motion of her young body. Hawk understood why their tongues had been removed, but considered it a waste. However, they could still be bent over a bench. Didn't need a tongue for that.

 

 "Chill them now, tonight," Hawk countered, rubbing the scars along his neck with a palm.

 

 Taking the stopper from a crystal bottle, Gaza poured a goblet full of sparkling clean water, spilling some onto the floor in the process.

 

 "All right," the baron said after taking a sip. "Send troops to the motel and ace the outlanders in their beds. Then blame Sparrow and drag him through the courtyard to the temple. He has been stealing from me long enough."

 

 "Nobody is above the law," Hawk agreed, rubbing his tattoo as he watched the women splash about in the soapy pool. Already the currents were flushing the suds away, leaving the water clear.

 

 Noticing the direction of his gaze, Baron Gaza fixed the man with a hard look. "Remember that, old friend," he growled. "What scorpions can't ace, the Scorpion God can."

 

 IN THE LOBBY of the motel, the companions stood transfixed, their minds trying to absorb the implications of the incredible news.

 

 "The Trader and Abe are alive," Ryan repeated softly.

 

 "Mebbe," Krysty countered, then nodded at the two fat men. "We should continue this in private."

 

 "Please," Sparrow begged, misunderstanding her statement and dropping to his knees. "Don't chill us!"

 

 "Upstairs stupe," Ryan ordered, gesturing with the SIG-Sauer. "Jak, get the dogs."

 

 The teenager nodded and started urging the hounds into the office with a soft whistle. The beasts followed him into the room and he closed the door with a sharp bang.

 

 "My dogs," Sparrow cried. "Not my dogs!"

 

 "Shut up and move," J.B. ordered, poking the man with the Uzi.

 

 As they marched the fat men up the stairs, Jed tried to make a break and Ryan clubbed him to the floor with the barrel of his blaster. Trembling in fear, Sparrow did nothing, unable to speak. Going to the end of the corridor, Ryan shoved open a door to find a corner room containing only the barest essentials, a mattress on the floor, empty water pitcher and a night soil bucket.

 

 Putting the men back to back on the dirty mattress, Ryan and J.B. kept them covered while Mildred cut some rope from the blinds and Doc expertly tied their feet at the ankles, and then each man's hand to the other's arm in a crisscross pattern. The brothers grumbled and complained, but didn't resist.

 

 Coming out of the dark bathroom, Krysty ripped a paper thin towel into strips and stuffed a wad of cloth into their mouths before gagging them tightly.

 

 "Good job," Mildred said in approval. "They're not getting out of that."

 

 Leaving the room, J.B. used his tools on the door and tricked the lock into engaging with a solid click. "That'll hold them for a while," he said, tucking the picks into his munitions bag.

 

 Returning downstairs, the companions found Jak at the front counter, stropping a knife on a whetstone.

 

 "Oh, no, did you kill the dogs?" Mildred asked.

 

 "Nah," Jak drawled, sheathing the blade. "Locked in office."

 

 "Good enough," Ryan said, holstering his piece, then rubbing his face. Fireblast, he was tired. But the sleep that had been so tantalizingly close was now faraway. "So, what do you think?" he asked aloud.

 

 "Beats me," J.B. said bluntly, leaning against the sandbags and crossing his arms. "But it sort of makes sense. Where else could they get the ammo if not from a trader? There's certainly no ruins around here to scavenge."

 

 "Might be just somebody using the name," Mildred suggested. "As advertising. You can trust me, I'm Trader, sort of thing."

 

 "Never thought that," Jak growled. "Twisted."

 

 The physician smiled. "No, my friend, you're just an honest man."

 

 "Get lot enemies that," Jak added. "But make lot deals, too."

 

 "However, there's a chance that it might actually be Trader," Ryan said slowly.

 

 "Then again, it might just be some mercie who could have the Trader a prisoner," J.B. said, removing his glasses to clean them on a sleeve. "Forcing tech secrets about the wags and blasters to build an empire. Or his son, or a clone, or…"

 

 His voice trailed off, the possibilities were damn near endless. And after what they had seen traveling the Deathlands, the man knew that almost anything was possible these days.

 

 In reply, Ryan shook his head. There were too many questions and no bastard answers at all.

 

 Darkness was starting to cover the ville, so Krysty lit a candle. Out the front windows, Ryan could see the bright light coming from the barn next door.

 

 "Now what?" Mildred asked. "Somebody is going to eventually miss those fools, so the sooner we leave, the better."

 

 "We can't leave at night," Ryan said, starting to pace. "Not without acing some folks, and then we'll have a war party chasing our asses across the desert."

 

 "Tomorrow should be good. Got to remove that sticking thermostat anyway," J.B. said, slipping on his glasses again. "A few hours of work could triple our speed across Texas. Six hundred miles is a long way to the next—" he paused and glanced up the stairs to the closed door "—to the next, ahem, waterhole."

 

 Stopping near the fountain, Ryan grunted at the discretion. They knew better than to even say the word redoubt among others. Some people knew of the legends, but the fewer that number stayed, the better.

 

 "Engines have their use, madam," Doc rumbled. "But I have yet to see a car that can reproduce itself."

 

 Horses, eh? There was a thought. "How much ammo do we have?" Krysty asked, rummaging in her pocket. "I have a box."

 

 "Total of three more boxes of the .22 cartridges," J.B. replied. "More than enough to buy horses. The locals have plenty, so the price shouldn't be too high."

 

 "Unless the baron owns all of the horses."

 

 "Not going reach Grandee on horses," Jak said. "Need wag. Bad land down there."

 

 "Besides, we don't know how to find the Trader," Krysty stated bluntly. "His supply bases are secret, even if it is the same person."

 

 "We used to know them," J.B. added. "But he was always changing the locations in case of a traitor."

 

 Ryan frowned deeply. A traitor, that was something he hadn't considered until now.

 

 "But how find?" Jak demanded, brushing back his long snowy hair.

 

 Pulling a map from his munitions bag, J.B. smoothed it across the counter and the companions gathered around, the combined candlelight almost making the document readable.

 

 "Now we came from the east," Ryan said, "which leaves north, south and west. South of here is the Grandee, north is New Mex and the west is unknown."

 

 "Three choices, none of them guaranteed," Mildred said, using her butane lighter to start a lumpy candle on the front counter. The tiny flame constantly jerked as the fatty wax spit and popped.

 

 "And a million combinations mixed in between those three. This is hopeless!"

 

 "Damn straight. We need more info," Ryan agreed, smoothing out Texas with his hand. "Bastard lot of territory to recce blind."

 

 "Sec men know truth," Jak grunted, glancing upstairs. "Those tubs lard might be spinning shit-webs." The teenager knew that he could easily force the two men to spill their guts with a hot blade, but that was something he would hold off doing until there was no other choice.

 

 "Hey, we passed a gaudy house down the road," J.B. said, tilting his head. "There's always sec men there. It's only a couple of blocks away, and we do have free rein inside the ville."

 

 Glancing out the door, Ryan started to speak, and Doc cut off the man. "I shall stay with Dean," the old man offered. "The establishment in question is too far away for any response from us to be of effective use if there was an altercation."

 

 "Thanks. Save the MRE packs," Ryan ordered. "We'll bring you something for dinner."

 

 "Anything but dog," Doc muttered, glancing at the silent office door.

 

 Checking the street outside for any suspicious movement before leaving the motel, Ryan motioned the others forward and they split apart in the deepening darkness. As silent as a ghost, Doc melted into the shadows along the side of the building and was gone from sight. Krysty nodded in approval. The old fellow was getting good at that.

 

 In the night air was a faint reek from the garbage dump behind the motel, but that faded as they crossed the street. From the roofed section of the ville, the lights from the windows were reflected off the rippling cloth, giving the streets a golden hue like something from an old vid. Now there came the aroma of frying peppers mixing with the clean smell of the desert salt. Somewhere a horse whinnied, and there came the crash of pots and pans, followed by raised voices marking a fight. The desert ville was full of life, and the sound of a whip was noticeably absent at the moment.

 

 "It was this way," Mildred said, checking the map in her notebook.

 

 The companions passed very few people on the streets, a young boy dragging a burlap bag full of sticks, an old woman bundled under a raggedy shawl limping along a side street. Muted voices came from behind the closed shutters, and something flew by overhead, its passage masked by the patched material roofing the ville. Steadily, the temperature dropped as night descended in full, slices of light beaming through the shutters and around closed doors, becoming brighter in the purple dusk. His boots slapping against the cobblestone street, a sec man walked down the center of the street with a longblaster slung over his shoulder, a hand tight on the faded leather strap. He looked hard at the companions, then slowly nodded, granting them passage and kept slowly walking.

 

 Easing his stance, Ryan let go of his grip on the SIG-Sauer and Jak tucked the throwing knife in his hand back up the sleeve of his camou jacket.

 

 "Lot of security here," J.B. muttered, taking his hand off his slung Uzi. "Everybody seems scared."

 

 "If the baron is at war with the Trader," Ryan growled, "they bastard well should be."

 

 "Roger that."

 

 Skirting around the temple, the group heard the gaudy house long before they saw the place. Gales of laughter came from the second floor, shadowy figures ran past the louvered shutters, and there was actual glass in the lower windows, showing a roaring fireplace and tables of men eating and drinking. The few women moving through the crowd were scantily dressed.

 

 A group of horses was tied to a stone hitching post, with a lone sec man leaning against it smoking a home rolled cig. He watched the outlanders cross the street, but said nothing as they passed by, heading for the brothel.

 

 "Must be the designated driver." Mildred laughed, and waited for a response from the others, then realized the joke was a hundred years out of date. Ah, well.

 

 Stepping through the doorway, Ryan pushed aside a blanket hanging across the opening to help keep out the evening chill. Inside the building, the air was warm and heavy with the smells of food and wood smoke. From the bolt holes in the concrete floor marking where heavy machinery had once been anchored, it was obvious that the place had originally been some sort of factory, now gutted into a single huge room with bare steel beams supporting the second story. Clusters of candles hung from chains attached to the metal rafters, clay bowls underneath positioned to catch drippings so as not to lose a drop of wax. A roaring fireplace was near the wooden counter that served as a bar, with a bubbling iron pot sitting directly amid the crackling flames, the roasted carcass of something slowly turning on a spit.

 

 The tables were mostly cut down wooden spools that at one time housed industrial cable, the chairs a mixture of anything that could be sat upon, including a flat rock and some plain wooden boxes.

 

 Incredibly, over in the far corner a stickie was stuffed and mounted on a wooden box, its eyes replaced with shiny glass marbles, its hands raised as if about to attack. The mutie was wearing pants, but its chest was bare, the mottled skin covered with the puckered scars of large bore bullet holes, along with a stitched slash on its neck that almost went completely across.

 

 "Must been some fight," Jak muttered.

 

 "Ah, that it was young fellow!" a drunk sec man called out, waving a wooden mug. "Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all the details. Lost ten men chilling the bastards, and nearly got caught by the Core!"

 

 "Shut up, fool," another man hissed, grabbing the arm of his friend and squeezing so hard his knuckles went white.

 

 The drunk went silent and bent over his mug to concentrate on his shine.

 

 The Core, eh? Ryan filed that name away to check into if he got the chance. Maybe that was what the Trader was calling his people these days.

 

 Now voices dropped as the companions made their way through the room heading for an empty table. Taking a seat, Krysty noticed an old brass plaque on the wall, the lettering barely discernable, buried as it was under the accumulation of grease and dirt.

 

 "Rockpoint Nine Relay Station," Krysty read aloud. "Relay for what, I wonder?"

 

 "No signs of any power lines," Mildred said, reviewing the ville in her mind. "Might have been a satellite base, or microwave transmission relay for telephones."

 

 Placing his longblaster on the table in plain sight, Ryan left the table and went to the counter. The man behind the bar was tall and muscular, missing several fingers on his left hand, and his left eye was a marbled white, a long scar going from his forehead, across the dead orb and down to his dimpled chin.

 

 "Lost it in a knife fight, eh?" Ryan said, gesturing at the man's white scar. "Me, too."

 

 "But we're still here and the other fellas ain't." The bartender chuckled. "Nice to meet another brother of the blade. I'm Bart. So what do you want, outlander? No eyes for sale today."

 

 Snorting a laugh, Ryan found himself immediately liking the man. "Just food," he said, then on impulse reached into a pocket and flipped the man a single .22 cartridge.

 

 The bartender made the catch with both hands and stared at the round of ammo as if it were alive.

 

 "Damn. Prime condition. Stew is on the fire, help yourself," Bart said, pocketing the round. "Got some roast lizzie, but not much left. If you ain't got a plate, use a hubber, but then you scrub it clean afterward. Or there's some flat bread. All you want."

 

 A hubber, a hub cap for a plate. Glancing at the fireplace, Ryan now saw a battered plastic milk crate stacked with the ornate metal disks bearing car company logos. The companions had military mess kits, but again showing off their wealth in such a poor ville would only start a fight.

 

 "We'll use the flat bread," Ryan decided.

 

 A man stumbled at the end of the bar and thumped it with a fist. "Beer!" he called out, slurring the word.

 

 "Smart choice on the flat bread," Bart said, pulling a chipped ceramic mug from under the counter and dipping it into an open barrel behind the counter. "Most people don't clean the hubbers so well, and some of them are kinda ripe."

 

 "Is the bread fresh?" J.B. asked, joining them at the counter.

 

 Sliding the mug down the counter to the waiting, customer, Bart looked hostilely at the man's glasses.

 

 "He's with me," Ryan said, twitching a thumb.

 

 The sec man at the end caught the beer, slopping some of the pale fluid onto himself and the floor, then stumbled away sipping nosily at the mug.

 

 "Fresh? Well, it wasn't made today," Bart admitted, wiping his mutilated hands dry on a wet towel tucked into his gun belt. There was no blaster, the holster containing a wooden cudgel instead. "But then, it wasn't made last moon either. Fresh enough to eat, if you got strong teeth."

 

 "Anything to drink, Bart?" Ryan asked. This was a technique he had learned long ago. Chat with the bartender, get on his good side and slowly the man would spill the local gossip.

 

 "Beer and shine," the man growled. "Only water here is reserved for sec men. Ain't none for sale."

 

 "That so, brother?" Ryan asked, scratching at his leather eye patch.

 

 Keepinga straight expression, Bart placeda scarred arm on the counter and leaned forward. "Well," he added softly, "if you pay double the price for shine, there might be water in the mug. Stranger things have happened."

 

 "Sounds good. A round of shine for thetable," Ryan reached into a pocket and placed a couple of .22 rounds on the counter.

 

 "Nuke me, but you're packing brass," Bart said, covering the rounds witha hand and sliding them out of sight. "What are you, the Trader's bastard?"

 

 "Could be," J.B. said, resting an arm on the counter and briefly opening his fingers to expose a pile of cartridges. "And if we were looking to avoid that person, which would be the best direction for us not to travel?"

 

 Bart arched an eyebrow at the man and clamped his mouth tight. "I'll have a girl bring the drinks," he said woodenly, all traces of friendliness gone.

 

 "Well, that went poorly," J.B. muttered as they walked away from the counter.

 

 "Gaza has these folks scared to the bone," Ryan agreed, glancing backward. The bartender avoided his look. "Mebbe we should visit the baron and see what we can learn from him directly."

 

 "You mean, pretend we're mercies and try to hire on for the job of chilling the Trader?"

 

 "We've done it before."

 

 "Not always with success," J.B. stated flatly.

 

 As they crossed the room, a group of sec men watched the companions closely and started to whisper among themselves. Ryan spotted them and marked the group as possible trouble.

 

 Returning to their table, the men toldthe others what had happened. Just as they finished, some feminine laughter sounded from upstairs and the floor began thumping in a familiar pattern.

 

 "Got idea," Jak said, inclining his heads toward the stairs. "Go talk girls. Never knew gaudy slut won't talk for extra jak and no sweating."

 

 "They'd know everything," Mildred agreed. "Probably more than the baron does about what was happening in his ville."

 

 "Food first," Ryan decided, pulling a box closer to the table. "Going to be a long night, no matter how this goes."

 

 A girl who looked more like a gaudy slut than a waitress brought over a tray of mugs filled with water and left without saying a word.

 

 "Wait a minute before drinking," Mildred said, taking a container and sniffing carefully. Lifting the mug to the flickering candlelight, she inspected the coloration of the contents, then dipped in a finger and placed a drop on the back of her hand, then touched the tip of her tongue to the drop.

 

 "Clean," she announced at last.

 

 "And clear," Ryan added, checking his rad counter. More than once, they had bought water only to find it hotter than the bottom of a glass lake. After quenching their thirst, the companions got their food two at a time and settled down to eat. During the meal a few sec men wandered upstairs drunk, and a few came stumbling down the stairs fixing their pants and tucking in their shirts. A bald man stopped near the table and leered at Krysty, but she placed her revolver on the table and he moved off quickly muttering under his breath.

 

 "If Jak gets nothing upstairs," Ryan stated, laying aside his wooden spoon, "we'll get back and start work on the wag so it's ready to leave at dawn."

 

 "Leave for where?" Krysty said, chewing a mouthful of her stew. There was meat in the mix and some veggies, but also a lot of gritty corn. The kernels had to have been ground between pieces of sandstone. Or house bricks.

 

 "Grandee," Ryan answered, taking the last chunk of flat bread and stuffing it into his mouth to chew it soft.

 

 "We can use that place near the river as a base to start searching the Deathlands," he continued after swallowing, "until we find somebody who knows something."

 

 "Gotta go there anyway," J.B. agreed, dipping his bread into the water to try to soften the stuff. The bread swelled a little and he chewed it carefully, finding more grit in the flat bread. Damn sand was everywhere. Had to be mighty uncomfortable for the girls working overhead.

 

 "That seems to be our best plan so far," Mildred said, cleaning her spoon on a spare chunk of bread before tucking the spoon back into her jacket pocket. "I'll get something for Dean and Doc." Standing, she checked her blaster, then headed for the fireplace. A couple of the drunks watched her pass, but none of them got in her way.

 

 As Mildred returned with cigarlike rolls of flat bread containing stew, a mature woman come over with a tray of wooden mugs.

 

 "We didn't order a second round," Ryan said suspiciously.

 

 As she placed the drinks on the table, he noticed the woman had eyes as blue as topaz, startling in their intensity of color.

 

 "Here you are, sir. Sorry it took so long," she said loudly, then added in a whisper, "Bart is my husband."

 

 "Something wrong?" Krysty asked in concern.

 

 "Hell, yes," she replied quickly, taking the empty mugs and putting them on her tray. It was just a circle of plastic, but seemed to serve well enough. "In this ville asking certain questions get you sent to the temple to feed the Scorpion God. What you were talking about is top round in that mag. Ain't nobody here going to talk about that person you mentioned. Unless they're a feeb."

 

 Well, that certainly covered those two at the motel. "Thanks for the tip," Ryan said. "Anything else?"

 

 "Oops, sorry," the woman said for no apparent reason. Then pulling out a rag, she pretended to mop a spill on the dry table. When she took it away there now was a damp circle on the wood with a tail sticking out like the comet. Or a compass heading.

 

 Krysty glanced up at that and emerald green eyes met those of ultrablue. "Understood," the redhead said, pressing a handful of spare rounds into the pocket of the woman's apron. "We'll stay low."

 

 "Don't go upstairs, they're waiting for you. That wag caused a stir here like kicking a hornet's nest. Everybody wants it to try to escape," the woman said, turning to leave. "Sorry again. Anything else you need, just ask."

 

 As the woman returned to the bar, Krysty wiped her hands across the mark obliterating if from the table. "South by southwest," she said taking a sip of her water, then reacted when she realized the mug was filled with shine. Mother Gaia, it was strong! They could use this to run the wag if necessary.

 

 "Okay, got what we wanted," Ryan said, standing and hitching his belt. "Let's go."

 

 The companions left the gaudy house and hurried up the street, pausing at the sight of the lighted barn, Dean standing in the doorway with a drawn blaster in his hand. Ryan slid the Steyr off his shoulder and worked the bolt. "Hey, Able," he called out, using their established code, asking if there was an ambush.

 

 "No problems here, Charlie," the boy answered, giving the prearranged countersign.

 

 The friends entered the barn and found the wag parked exactly where they left it, the nukelamp blazing away. High in the sky, lightning briefly flickered across the black storm clouds drifting among the thick patina of twinkling stars.

 

 "Here you go," Mildred said, passing over the wrapped stew.

 

 Without a word, Dean tore into it like a wolf and didn't speak for a few moments.

 

 "Damn, that's good," he said at last, coming up to breathe. "Hot pipe, I was starving. What took you long enough? It's been over two hours, and I was starting to worry."

 

 "Doc should have told you we were getting food," Ryan demanded sharply, glancing around. "Where is he, anyway? Taking a nap in the wag?"

 

 Lowering his soggy sandwich, the boy blinked in surprise. "But he's with you," Dean said slowly. "I haven't seen Doc since you left."

 

  

 

 Chapter Twelve

 

  

 

 Stepping outside the barn, the companions listened to the ville around them, straining for the faintest cry from the missing man. But the silence was thick, no shouts or sounds of a struggle disturbing the night.

 

 "The peace of a grave," Ryan spit, unholstering his blaster. "Somebody is playing us for fools. Mildred, J.B., stay here. Krysty, with me. We'll check the motel, see if Sparrow and Jed are still tied up. Jak, sweep the area for any traces."

 

 As the man and the woman dashed out of the structure into the dark street, Jak grabbed a nukelamp from the back of the wag. Returning to the street, he started at the front door and began sweeping the blaze of light along the cobblestones.

 

 "Pity we can't use the wag to search the ville," Mildred said, glancing longingly at the vehicle. "But that perforated muffler makes so much noise it would announce our presence to deaf people."

 

 "Any chance you refilled the wag?" J.B. asked, zipping up his leather jacket midway. Away from the canopy, the desert breeze blew strong, seeming to go straight down his collar.

 

 "Sure, not much else to do," the boy answered while licking his fingers, then wiping his greasy mouth on a sleeve. "Mebbe Doc is just off at the shitters."

 

 "For two hours?" Mildred shot back incredulously. "Damn well hope not."

 

 "Could have fallen in," J.B. said with a frown. "Old wooden planks get weak and it happens sometimes."

 

 The physician frowned. "Hell of a way to die. Drowning in a pit of shit. Stay here with Dean, and I'll go check."

 

 "Nobody is going anywhere alone," J.B. stated forcibly. "We wait for the others to come back, then we check."

 

 "He could die by then!"

 

 "And it could be a trap. We go with what we know. I'd sure as hell hate to lose Doc, but I'm damn sure that I would rather keep you, Millie."

 

 Just then, Jak appeared at the open doorway of the barn holding Doc's sword. The ebony sheath was missing, and the blade was darkly stained with blood.

 

 "Night creep," the teenager stated. "Got him."

 

 "Can you track them?" Mildred asked, pulling her piece. Suddenly the silence of the ville seemed to be the stillness of a waiting trap, with enemies watching from every shadow.

 

 Jak shook his head. "Not on bare stone."

 

 "Now we recce the outhouses," J.B. said, working the bolt on the Uzi. "Millie, stay with Dean. Let's go."

 

 Jak and the Armorer charged into the night, their faces grim masks.

 

 Pulling a metallic envelope from a pocket, Dean ripped it open and used the U.S. Army moist towelette to clean his hands of the grease from dinner, then checked over his Browning Hi-Power. His gut was starting to tell the boy death was on the move and coming their way.

 

 "We didn't find him," J.B. reported ten minutes later, stepping into view. "And we did a once around the block in case it was just a mugging. Just some ville hardcases out to steal his blaster."

 

 "He gone." Jak brandished the sword, the ebony stick now poking through his gun belt. "But we found sheath."

 

 "Where?"

 

 "Near shitters. Must have ambushed there."

 

 "Well, don't sheath the blade!" Mildred advised. "We might need that blood."

 

 "My very idea," Ryan said from the street, holding a dog on a leash.

 

 Standing close by, Krysty had her blaster hard against the back of Sparrow. The man was shivering in the cold.

 

 "Saw what was happening from the window," Ryan said with a scowl. "No sign of Doc from up there, so we brought some help."

 

 "Your turn," Krysty said, nudging Sparrow forward with the muzzle of her blaster.

 

 Ryan passed the man the rope leash. "Find our friend, and you keep breathing," he growled. "Run off, and we'll torch that pesthole with your brother still inside. Get me?" It was a lie, but Sparrow didn't know that.

 

 "Sure, sure, no prob. Houston is a good tracker. We found lots of folks for the baron," the fat man sputtered, tightening his grip on the rope and scratching the animal behind an ear. "Just show him the blade."

 

 Jak held out the steel and the dog approached it warily, then started to sniff, his tail wagging in excitement.

 

 "Got the scent, boy? Good. Now go find the runaway. Find the runaway, boy!" Sparrow released the rope and the dog sprung forward, his nose checking the ground here and there, spreading across the street, then starting back again.

 

 Mildred curled a lip at the wording. Runaway, eh? Sounded like the ville did keep slaves. Maybe they simply hadn't encountered them yet.

 

 "What if this doesn't work?" Dean asked grimly, muted thunder rumbling on the horizon.

 

 His father glanced at the keep rising above the ville just as lightning flashed, silhouetting the structure for a split second. "Then we grab the baron and trade his ass for Doc."

 

 "If he's been aced?"

 

 "Then Rockpoint gets a new baron," Ryan stated.

 

 Over by the outhouses, the dog suddenly went stiff and lurched down a side street at a lope.

 

 "He's got the scent!" Sparrow gushed, starting after the hound.

 

 Moving fast, the companions raced along the cobblestones, following the dog through the maze of streets.

 

 "Stay close. This could be an ambush."

 

 "Good," Ryan snarled, working the bolt action on the Steyr.

 

 Houston paused at an intersection, checking the ground several times before finally choosing an alleyway. People watched through closed shutters as the companions ran by, the adobe buildings going dark as candles were hastily extinguished. Obviously this was sec-man work and none of their concern.

 

 Reaching a courtyard, the dog froze and growled at the darkness to the left, weird piles of things creaking in the wind, the jumble reaching higher than the wall surrounding the ville.

 

 "What's over there?" Ryan demanded.

 

 Sparrow shrugged. "Junkyard. Baron collects predark machines."

 

 "I thought this place didn't have any wags?" J.B. said.

 

 "None of them work," Sparrow replied. "Houston just don't like it there 'cause the baron guards the stuff with a couple of big cats he caught in the salt lands."

 

 Gaza protected wags that didn't work with a couple of cougars? Sure. Ryan was starting to understand why the baron was on bad terms with Trader. It was starting to sound like Gaza was stockpiling weapons and wags for a major assault somewhere. A war was brewing in these sand dunes, which meant there had to be another ville nearby. Unless Trader was the target.

 

 "Really hates those folks to the north of here, eh?" Ryan tried on a hunch.

 

 "Ain't nothing to the north that I know about," Sparrow said, sounding puzzled. "Hey, there he goes again!"

 

 In a burst of speed, Houston scampered down a broad street, then disappeared into a cross street. Turning the corner, Ryan spied the dog running past a group of sec men coming down the street with crackling torches and crossbows in their hands.

 

 "It's the outlanders!" a sec man cried, starting to level the crossbow. "Chill them!"

 

 Releasing his grip on the Steyr, Ryan pulled the SIG-Sauer and fired, the silenced blaster coughing twice, the whispering 9 mm slugs tearing through the soft tissue of the men's throats and the guards fell, drowning in their own blood.

 

 One of them got off an arrow that whizzed past Jak, and he jerked an arm forward. The blade hit the sec man in the chest dead center in the heart. Still holding the crossbow, the man went completely still, then slowly toppled.

 

 Another raised his longblaster and Dean flipped his Bowie knife into the man's stomach, making him drop the blaster. Then Ryan stroked the trigger on the SIG-Sauer and the guard flipped backward minus a face.

 

 "Take the bows," Krysty directed, tugging a quiver of bolts from the trembling arm of a corpse. "Once we start shooting, all hell is going to break loose."

 

 "Has already," Ryan muttered, slitting the throat of a guard who was somehow still alive.

 

 "A silenced blaster," Sparrow whispered. "You folks work for the Trader!"

 

 "Close enough," J.B. stated, watching the windows along the street while Mildred took the other crossbow and a second quiver. The stock seemed to be whittled from a house beam, the cross hammered from a steel leaf-spring out of a car. She had seen similar homemade weapons before. They were crude, cumbersome and extremely powerful.

 

 "Is he coming?" the man asked eagerly. "Going to do Gaza and Hawk? Be glad to help there."

 

 "Go find your dog," Ryan ordered.

 

 Moving around the sprawled bodies, Sparrow took off after the animal, with the companions close behind. Raised voices were heard in the distance, but they moved away from the group heading for the keep. Oddly, the area was starting to look familiar when Ryan saw the dog start for a redbrick building without doors or windows.

 

 "Dark night, this is the rear of the temple!" J.B. said.

 

 "Call him back now!" Ryan ordered brusquely.

 

 Sparrow whistled and the dog stopped, looking back at his master, then turned and trotted back.

 

 "So that's where he is," Sparrow said hoarsely. "They got him in the temple. Might as well leave. Most likely he's aced already. Or worse."

 

 "What do you mean 'worse'?" J.B. demanded.

 

 "Blood for water," Sparrow said, quoting the ville mantra. "But I also hear the Scorpion God likes it spiced with screams."

 

 Doc was in a torture chamber? Shitfire. Ryan swung around his blaster until it pointed at Sparrow. In spite of the evening chill, the fat man started to sweat.

 

 "You kept your part of the deal," Ryan said gruffly. "So we keep ours. Now leave before I change my mind."

 

 Sparrow nodded energetically and took off at a run down the street, Houston tagging along behind his corpulent master.

 

 "If he talks, we're dead," J.B. said, tracking their departure with the Uzi machine gun.

 

 Ryan turned from the man and the dog. "He wouldn't do anything until he's set his brother free, and then they'll have to discuss whether they should side with Trader or Gaza."

 

 "Say, fifteen minutes."

 

 "Mebbe ten."

 

 Staying in the shadows as much as possible, the companions moved around to the front of the building and studied the two guards at the door. Both were large men holding bolt action longblasters, with a muzzle loading pistol tucked into their belts. They were smoking cigs and appeared bored.

 

 "No other doors," Krysty said, her hair a wild tempest of motion as her hands tightened on the crossbow. "We have to go in this way."

 

 "No problem," Ryan said, removing the half-spent clip from the SIG-Sauer and gently inserting a fresh one.

 

 Suddenly a bell began to ring from the keep and the guards jumped at the sound, casting away their smokes to slide their blasters off their shoulders and work the bolts.

 

 "Shitfire, that must be the ville alarm," J.B. cursed, ducking lower into the shadows.

 

 "A single shot from them, and we'll have the whole ville coming down our throats," Dean added, glancing around. Lights were appearing from behind closed windows. "Whatever we're going to do better be soon."

 

 "We move on my mark," Ryan growled, steadying the SIG-Sauer in both hands. "Ready…go."

 

 Stepping into plain view, Mildred clicked on the nukelamp, bathing the two guards in its blinding light. Covering their faces, the men cursed as Krysty and Jak used the crossbows. The bolts took the men in the throats, neutralizing any chance of them crying out in pain. Gagging on their own blood, the guards staggered drunkenly about as the companions rushed across the open courtyard and finished the job with knifes. It was brutal and messy, but there was no other choice.

 

 Jak and Dean pushed the bodies against the wall, while Ryan tried the door. It was locked tight. The one-eyed man got out of the way as J.B. rummaged in his munitions bag for some tools and got to work. The rest of the companions nervously stood around the man, watching the windows and side streets for any movements. The alarm bell continued to sound from the keep.

 

 "Barred from the inside," the Armorer said in frustration. "No way to open this without using a gren."

 

 For a long moment, Ryan stared hostilely at the door as if it were a living enemy. "Give me the sword," he demanded.

 

 Jak passed over the ebony stick. Unsheathing the blood smeared blade, Ryan wiggled the point between the door and the frame. It took some muscle, but he finally got the slim steel to slide all the way through, then he pulled it upward in a hard jerk.

 

 There was a crash inside and the door swung open a crack.

 

 "Bring them," Ryan directed, slipping into the building with the SIG-Sauer leading the way.

 

 The companions dragged in the bodies of the chilled sec men, leaving behind a wide crimson trail. But there was nothing they could do about that. Inside the temple oil lanterns burned in wall niches, illuminating a large empty room decorated with a wall tapestry of a blue scorpion. There was nothing else but a gate made of slim iron bars sealing off an arched doorway.

 

 Reaching high, Mildred pulled down the tapestry and stepped outside to mop up the excess blood on the stoop, while J.B. went to work on the gate. As the physician came back in and tossed aside the gory cloth, there was a solid click and J.B. pushed open the gate.

 

 "Hey, what was that?" a man called out from a dark corridor. "Who are you folks?"

 

 Stepping through the archway, Ryan fired the silenced weapon directly into the unseen face. The blaster coughed, its muzzle-flash lighting the corridor for a heartbeat, and the man jerked backward as an explosion of blood and brains slapped against the brick wall. As the dead guard crumpled to the floor, the rest of the companions rushed past the gate, and J.B. locked it in their wake. That should buy them a few minutes, but not much more.

 

 "From here on, it's chillin' time," Ryan said low and fast. "Ace anybody you see. All we're interested in is finding Doc."

 

 Jak passed the crossbow to Dean. "Ready," the albino teen said, drawing a knife with each hand.

 

 The brick corridor was lined with more tapestries that were barely discernible in the yellowish light of the hissing lanterns. A set of double doors closed off the end, and Ryan placed his ear to the wood. There were some muffled voices, a laugh and then the telltale crack of a whip followed by a cry of pain.

 

 "That's Doc," Krysty stated, bringing up the crossbow.

 

 Slamming open the door, Ryan withheld firing as Mildred clicked on the nukelamp, filling the next room with harsh white light. As the three sec men lowered their whips, the companions opened fire in unison with every weapon. The men reeled at the incoming lead and arrows, died on the spot torn to pieces.

 

 Walking into the vast room, Ryan felt a shiver go through his bones. This was something new. It was a church from hell. The pews had been removed, leaving the center open for people to gather. A wooden railing stood before an altar at the back of the church, and a giant scorpion stood on a velvet covered altar, a steady stream of water trickling from its open mouth into a stone basin on the floor. Surrounding the basin was a low stone wall filled with dozens of live black scorpions.

 

 Set on either side of the altar were slanted tables, the left covered with a canvas sheet, the right supporting Doc. The old man had been stripped to the waist, his hands and feet shackled with chains and pulled tight, holding him motionless. His back was covered with welts and countless old scars, a few of them bleeding slightly from the cut of the whip, but his chest still rose and fell.

 

 Keeping their every weapon on the motionless scorpion towering over them, the companions crossed the room, and J.B. got to work on the shackles.

 

 "You okay?" Mildred asked, setting down the nukelamp and turning Doc's head to look into his eyes. The pupils dilated to the light. No drugs used this time, but her fingers found a hard lump on the back of his head that told the story. Hit from behind.

 

 "I live,"Doc whispered hoarsely. "Th-that is enough."

 

 "Any more sec men around?" Ryan demanded, taking the nukelamp and playing the white beam around the church. There were no other doors in sight, but that didn't mean a whole lot. Could be dozens of secret entrances.

 

 Doc weakly shook his head while Mildred started to clean the cuts on his back with some of the precious med supplies from her satchel. The scholar winced at the application of shine, but said nothing. He had endured much worse,

 

 "There were three," he croaked, "and three when we arrived. One is very big with a—"

 

 "Got them," Ryan interrupted, taking the man by the shoulder and giving a hard squeeze. "We aced six."

 

 "S-splendid."

 

 "There," J.B. said with satisfaction and the mechanism disengaged, the chains dropping noisily away.

 

 Krysty slid a shoulder under Doc's arm to help him stand, while Mildred helped the man slip on his shirt andcoat.

 

 "Think you can walk out of here?" J.B. asked, offering the ebony stick.

 

 Fumbling to button his shirt, Doc stopped and took the stick. Extracting the blade, he inspected it in the white light, then held it out to wipe the steel clean on a sec man sprawled on the floor. The corpse had an arrow through its chest, and a slash along its neck that went from ear to Adam's apple, but not quite deep enough to open the big artery under the skin.

 

 "If need be to leave here," Doe stated resolutely, closing the weapon with a solid click, "I can sprout wings and fly."

 

 "What happened?" Dean asked.

 

 Tucking the stick into his belt, Doc finished dressing. "I went to visit the outhouse, and they were waiting, not inside, but on top. I never even considered the possibility, but shall in the future. They knocked the LeMat away, but I got that man with my sword. Then I was struck from behind and awoke in this charming abattoir."

 

 "Come again?" Jak asked, scowling in confusion.

 

 "Slaughterhouse," Doc translated.

 

 Doing a fast recce of the temple, Ryan walked closer to the giant on the altar. In the yellowish light of the oil lanterns the thing seemed to move slightly as if alive and watching. But starkly illuminated by the nukelamp, it was plain to see the thing was merely a statue covered with oil to distort the light. It was just a trick.

 

 "So this is the Scorpion God," Ryan said in a monotone. "A whole ville terrified of a statue from some predark museum or an amusement park."

 

 "And this explains the blood for water we've been hearing about," Krysty said, studying the basin and enclosure. The scorpions reacted to her presence by running about and arching their deadly barbed tails, ready to attack. "Gaza must feed scraps of flesh to the scorpions so that the people can reach the basin and fill their water jugs."

 

 "Literally, blood for water," Mildred muttered, tossing away a bloody cloth.

 

 "Look at them go," Dean said in disgust. "Little bastards are expecting food."

 

 "Getting oil, instead," Jak snarled. Going to a nearby niche, he removed the lantern and blew out the flame. Returning to the cage, he used the gun butt of his blaster to smash open the reservoir of the lantern and poured the flammable oil over the darting scorpions, then lit the wick of the lantern and dropped it. The fire whoofed alive, and the creatures started high pitched squealing as they burned, scampering madly about and stinging one another in their utter lack of comprehension of exactly what was destroying them.

 

 Checking the bodies, Dean took their blasters, ammo pouches and a folding knife. Not bad, but he had better. Then the boy paused. "I know this man," Dean said slowly. "He was the sec man who met us outside the ville gate."

 

 "Said he would get back at us," Mildred said, wiping her hands clean, then tossing the damp rag away. "Guess he meant it."

 

 "Indeed, he did, madam," Doc told her, starting to sound like his old self again. Using his ebony stick as a cane, he hobbled over, then stopped and forced himself to stand erect without assistance. Only the tightening of his mouth betrayed what the effort cost him in pain.

 

 "By the way, how is the other prisoner? I heard him moan when I was being chained," Doc added. "I would suppose the noise reminded him of his own imprisonment."

 

 Going to the other side of the altar, Ryan yanked away the sheet to expose the bloody remains of what had once been a man. His eyes were gone, as were his ears and nose. The sagging mouth held no teeth, and those were the least of the injuries. Both arms had been removed at the elbow, the stumps covered with horrible scars. His legs were missing at the knees, and there was only a tattered nubbin of flesh hanging between the naked man's scarred thighs.

 

 "I wonder who he was," Mildred whispered, "and what he did to deserve this."

 

 "Fuck her…" The tortured spoke, lifting his horrible head. "Didn't fuck her, you bastard. We're in love! Don't care she was going to be your wife, ya got enough, Gaza! Bastard! Stinking, filthy bastard…"

 

 Then a racking shudder shook the man. "Oh, God, please, no more. I'll tell ya anything you want to know. Where the Trader stores his fuel and weapons! Anything! But no more cutting. Please, stop cutting me up! No more!"

 

 Thrashing feebly at his iron bonds, the prisoner began to mumble incoherently. Turning, Ryan gave Mildred a hard look and the physician sadly shook her head. With regret, Ryan placed the muzzle of his blaster to the mutilated remains of man and fired once. The head slapped to the side from the impact of the slug, and the moaning ceased as the man slipped into the sweet release of death.

 

 "One of the Trader's men," J.B. scowled. "Did the local baron's bride and started a war. Damn fool."

 

 "Love makes folks do crazy things," Mildred added softly. "I wonder what happened to the woman?"

 

 "Hopefully long dead," Krysty said with a sigh. "And probably done a lot worse than this."

 

 "Let's get moving before the same happens to us," Ryan said, heading for the front door of the temple.

 

  

 

 Chapter Thirteen

 

  

 

 The banded door to the keep slammed aside and Baron Gaza strode out of the structure, dragging a sec man by the throat. With a roar of anger, Gaza threw the man down the front steps onto the cobblestone street, where he landed sprawling before the waiting company of sec men filling the courtyard.

 

 "My lord, it's true!" the man cried, rubbing his sore neck. "The people who saw the chilling claim that Ryan has a blaster that makes no noise!"

 

 "Liar!" Baron Gaza shouted. "Find me those traitors and stuff them into the Black Queens!"

 

 The sec men reacted badly to that order, and several openly stroked the grips of the blasters.

 

 "But some of them were children," a sec man from the crowd said in a loud clear voice. Then almost grudgingly he added, "My lord."

 

 Gaza turned on the man, but before he could speak, Hawk strode through the crowd leading his stallion by the reins.

 

 "The children and women are spared, of course," Hawk said, striding through the crowd. "In fact, forget these liars until tomorrow. Tonight we concentrate on finding those murdering outlanders."

 

 Murmurs of approval rose from the guards, and Gaza forced his rage under control. These weren't his wives, broken and beaten until they lived to serve, but armed fighters who he controlled only through fear. The ville was already twitchy enough about cutting off relations with Trader. If the stupe cattle knew his real plans, they'd probably revolt even faster than if they discovered the truth about the water.

 

 "The outlanders are the top priority," Baron Gaza agreed loudly. "They aced sec men, a crime for which there is only one punishment. To become food for the god and earn this ville more water!"

 

 Shouts of agreement came from the men, a mixture of revenge and greed crossing their dirty faces. Yes, he thought, they would like that idea.

 

 "Except for this Ryan, who goes to the table!" Baron Gaza added as an afterthought. "Perhaps the knives can make him tell the secret of this silent blaster, eh?"

 

 Now the sec man laughed at the foolish notion, his momentary outburst forgotten.

 

 "Wall Sergeant Franz, Gate Sergeant Henny, double the guards on the wall," Hawk commanded. "Nobody leaves this ville tonight without the baron's personal authorization."

 

 "And send off outriders," Gaza directed. "I want twenty men on patrol in the desert around the ville. If this Ryan gets outside Rockpoint, they're to bring him back alive. Chill the rest."

 

 "But what about the night muties?" a man began, glancing toward the high walls.

 

 "My lord, we can't double the wall patrols and send outriders while searching the ville," Hawk said quickly, walking his horse closer to the furious man on the stoop. "We don't have enough troops."

 

 "Do as you think best," Gaza conceded, then sensing a loss of power quickly added, "But the man who captures Ryan alive can have his redhead as a reward. Permanently!"

 

 The baron could see that the guards liked that idea. Pitiful fools. Norms were like horses—you needed a carrot and a stick to make them obey. Beat them once so they knew the taste of pain, then reward them often but always at the end of the stick so they would remember.

 

 "However, I lay claim to the black woman," Hawk said, climbing onto his horse and gesturing at the men on top of the keep. "Even if she surrenders, I want her dead! Now to the walls! Let's find these coldhearts and show their guts to the stars!"

 

 The alarm bell on the roof of the brick building started clanging once more and the sec men rallied to the sound, rushing to their posts on foot and horseback, waving their blasters and crossbows.

 

 With only his personal bodyguards staying close, Gaza stood on the stoop of the imposing keep and looked across the roofed ville. The one location he ignored was the temple. Only feebs would dare to venture to that place. His secrets were safe there. Now where could the outlanders be hiding? Where?

 

 From the barred windows of the keep, the wives of the baron watched the tableau below. Their fingers wove silent words to one another as they discussed what was happening, and how best to make it serve their needs.

 

 PAUSING AT THE temple door, the companions checked their blasters before entering the corridor that lead to the front exit.

 

 "Okay, got any idea yet how we're going to get out of the ville?" J.B. asked, racking the scattergun to exit a shell and then thumbing it back into the feeder slot. It was a habit he had developed recently to spread the lubrication inside the weapon and make sure it was feeding smoothly when there was going to be fighting in the desert. He knew how badly sand and blasters mixed.

 

 "We blow up the temple as a distraction," Ryan said, "then escape in the confusion."

 

 "That should do it." The Armorer grinned and pulled out an implo gren. "I can rig all three to go simultaneously. That'll level this whole place."

 

 "Save one to remove the gate," Krysty advised. "Blood is the only way they're going to let us leave."

 

 "Gotcha."

 

 "Wait a moment," Doc cried, feeling the empty holster at his hip. "Has anybody seen my LeMat?"

 

 Dean gestured at the dead men on the floor. "They didn't have it," he answered, then pulled a big bore revolver from his belt. "Want one of their wheelguns? No reloads, but it's better than nothing."

 

 "I suppose that would be wise," Doc stated, then frowned. "No, wait a moment. I remember somebody placing it inside a black statue, saying they would get it later."

 

 "Statue?" Jak asked, glancing at the fiberglass scorpion dominating the altar.

 

 "Hiding it from Hawk to keep for themselves, is what he meant," Ryan said, washing the light of the nukelamp along the side walls. "There's going to be chilling, so we need every weapon. Let's find it quick."

 

 In the clear beam of the headlight, the companions started back for the giant scorpion, then noticed a series of shallow alcoves lining both walls. Normally in a predark church those were filled with statues of Christian saints, but held the squat somber figures of iron maidens. Resembling a metal statue of a fat woman, the iron shells were actually hollow and hinged to open like a clam shell, the interior covered with sharp spikes. When a prisoner was forced inside and the hatch closed, the spikes would only penetrate their flesh a little bit, making even the slightest move in any direction yield untold agony. The victims often went insane after only a few days and threw themselves at the spikes to end their lives but slowly bleeding to death. Both Mildred and Doc knew that even the legendary Torquemada had considered them cruel machines and only used the iron maiden on his worst enemies.

 

 "Which one was it?" Dean asked, studying the line of dark figures.

 

 "That I do not recall," Doc rumbled. "My attention was elsewhere."

 

 Feeling the pressure of the enemy outside the temple, Ryan started for the closest device. "Dean, start on the left, Doc take the right."

 

 Going to the first iron maiden, Ryan saw a pair of wrinkled eyes staring back from the viewing slit in the metal face. Dried and lifeless, the corpse inside was long dead. The next few held only skeletons. Across the temple, the others were having a similar lack of success.

 

 Then peering inside an iron maiden, Ryan saw it was empty. What's more, the spikes weren't in evidence. Grabbing the handle, he twisted the locking bolt free and there was no sound, the metal well oiled. Suddenly alert, Ryan braced himself and was in front of the torture device when it started to swing aside. He stopped it purely as a precaution. A heartbeat later something slammed into the metal, knocking him backward. Even as Ryan drew his blaster, the door continued to swing open wide and a smashed wooden arrow fell to the floor with a clatter. Weighed on an angle, the oiled hatch swung closed once more with a muffled boom.

 

 A boobie! The torture device was rigged with a trap to keep people out? What sense did that make? Unless it was a lot more than it seemed.

 

 "Pass me the light," Ryan ordered.

 

 J.B. handed over the second nukelamp, and Ryan opened the hatch just enough to slip the light inside on the floor. Then closing the door, he carefully put his good eye to a viewing slot and saw the back swing open wide for a moment onto a brick lined passageway and then close once more.

 

 "Found a hidey-hole," Ryan announced to the others. "I'm going to do a fast recce."

 

 "At your back," J.B. said, leveling the shotgun.

 

 Pulling open the door again, Ryan stayed well clear but no arrow was launched this time. Had to be a one-shot boobie. Retrieving the lamp from the floor, the man hunched over to fit inside the infernal machine and braced himself as the door swung closed. There was a subdued click, and the back opened wide as it had before and he stepped through into a room filled with boxes and barrels and crates. It was an armory, with racks of longblasters lining the walls, and multiple shelves stuffed full of plastic jars of loose ammo, the rims sealed with wax to keep out the air.

 

 On a table directly before the secret entrance was the LeMat pistol. Laying alongside was an empty crossbow, the trigger rigged with a copper wire feeding through iron guides thick with grease and leading to the iron maiden.

 

 Then the device clicked impotently, trying to release an arrow that wasn't there, and the back of the maiden swung aside, admitting an Uzi machine gun held by J.B.

 

 "You okay?" the Armorer asked, peering around. "Son of a bitch, it's the baron's private armory!"

 

 "Looks like," Ryan agreed. He picked up the LeMat and tried to tuck it into a pocket, but the Civil War blaster was much too heavy, so he stuffed it into his belt instead.

 

 "I'll rig this open and get the rest in here," J.B. said, slinging the Uzi and grabbing some rope from a peg on the wall. Then he realized it was sticky with some sort of glue and covered with black dust. It was a fuse! And just about the worst one he had ever seen. The local armorer had no idea what the hell he was doing. Just a rank amateur.

 

 Ryan found extra arrows and placed them next to the crossbow while J.B. tied back the interior door, then opened the outer half of the shell and beckoned the rest of the companions over. Soon, they were spreading throughout the armory, looting the place of everything useful. The very best longblasters were grabbed by Krysty, Mildred and Jak along with bandoliers of shiny brass ammo, while Ryan and J.B. smashed open the sealed jars and passed out handfuls of different ammo to each person. Dean kept his crossbow, in case there was more silent chilling to be done, but he grabbed a plastic predark quiver full of bolts with razor sharp tips.

 

 After checking his LeMat for any damage or tricks, Doc tossed aside the dead guard's crude blaster and returned the Civil War piece to its holster, then began his own recce for ammo. However, while there was a lot of black powder for the homemade scatterguns and muzzle loaders of Rockpoint ville, there were no primers anywhere to be found. Apparently they used rimfire cartridges to set off their shotguns loads. A clever move, but useless for Doc since he needed percussion nipples for the LeMat. After filling his ammo pouch with a good pound of black powder, cloth wads and lead balls as a reserve, Doc then chose a massive Webley .44 revolver from the assortment of blasters on display. He had used this type of wheelgun before and found it to be a satisfactory substitute for the LeMat. The bullets were loaded with black powder, and the lead shiny smooth, showing it was also homemade. Predark rounds were always steel-coated, or copper-lined to prevent fouling the barrel.

 

 Draping a gun belt over his chest, Doc flinched as the leather pressed against his raw back and he was forced to buckle the holster around his waist.

 

 Oddly, with a gun on each hip he found the configuration quite comfortable.

 

 "This must be a bolt-hole," Dean said slowly, testing the draw on the bow. "A place to stage a rally against invaders."

 

 "Bad spot get trapped," Jak growled. "One door."

 

 "Bull," Ryan stated, cracking his knuckles. "No baron would ever box himself in where he could be starved to death. There's another exit somewhere."

 

 "Probably hidden like the door," Mildred said, laying aside a British made Hollands & Hollands .475 Nitro Express rifle.

 

 The huge rifle had to have been the toy of some Texas millionaire and was in excellent condition, with a whole jar of the thick blunt-nosed cartridges. But the Nitro Express simply had too much power for the physician. Without most of the tools she had trained with in the predark days, the woman had only her bare hands to perform meatball surgery. Fighting to control the recoil of the .475 would strengthen her hands and lessen her delicate sense of touch. Killing enemies with the Nitro Express would render her able to save friends. The incredible irony of the matter almost made Mildred laugh and weep at the same time.

 

 "Want to swap?" Krysty asked, proffering a .30-30 Remington longblaster. The barrel had been modified to receive a slotted bayonet at the front, the edge of the blade was feathered from a recent sharpening.

 

 "Sure?" Mildred asked, accepting the lightweight hunting rifle.

 

 Krysty easily worked the thick bolt on the heavy Hollands & Hollands and slid in a fat half-inch-thick round, closing the massive breech with a solid, satisfying clack. "Absolutely," she said grimly. She hated to chill anything, but when blood was necessary, Krysty did the job ruthlessly as any coldheart. It was a simple matter of survival.

 

 "Dark night, we have enough stuff here to level this place," J.B. said, packing a coil of homemade fuse into his munitions bag, along with an assortment of items, including three predark grens. They were only concussion models, designed to knock out people with a deafening boom, not the deadly antipers that threw off bits of shrapnel. But anything would chill folks in the right hands.

 

 "The baron has really been holding out on his troops if they're armed with homemades and he has blasters like this in storage," Ryan said, lifting the lid of a steamer wag to find it full of cedar wood chips and belted links of fat brass. "Check this— 25mm belted ammo. I think the baron has a cannon somewhere."

 

 "Mebbe keep?" Jak suggested, sliding rounds into the side port of the Winchester.

 

 "Yeah, on the roof, most likely," Ryan agreed. "That's where I'd put it to get the best field of fire. Cover the whole ville from up there." Dropping the linked ammo, the man moved to a wall rack and started to rummage for 7.62 mm rounds for the Steyr, but so far nothing and he was dangerously low. He might have to grab that other Winchester.

 

 Then Ryan saw the shockingly white stock of a U.S. Marine Corps M-14 and hurried closer. He knew the M-14 was a ceremonial rifle used in parades and military reviews for the predark prez. However, it used the exact same caliber as the Steyr SSG-70 sniper rifle. Pulling down the rifle, Ryan opened the 20-round clip and found it full of greasy hardball brass. Back in business!

 

 Going over to the trunk full of belted ammo, J.B. pulled a knife and started to open the wide 25 mm shells to carefully extract the tiny C-4 charge inside the warhead. Some of the plastique was only a dried lump, but most of it was still soft to the touch, and still as volatile as the day it was made a hundred years ago. Soon he had a small mound of the material and started using his palms to press it into crude blocks. Pulling a shower curtain salvaged from the redoubt out of his backpack, Dean passed it over and the Armorer cut it into squares to wrap the C-4 nice and tight.

 

 "We don't need to waste an implo gren now to get through the front gate," J.B. said confidently. "One of these blocks will blow that out of the wall like kicking a knothole."

 

 "Prep one as a scuttle," Ryan said, slipping spare 9 mm rounds into the loops of his gun belt. "We'll get rid of that plastic scorpion and Gaza's private stash in one move."

 

 "Make a hell of a distraction, too, if we time it right."

 

 "Sounds good. Help me with that barrel of black powder, will you?"

 

 While the two men got to work, Mildred continued sorting through some tools on a workbench, hoping to find a replacement for her lost scalpel, when she spied an ancient binder tucked into a shelf and blew off the dust to read the faded cover.

 

 "Rockpoint Water Storage Relay Station Nine," the physician read aloud in amazement, flipping through the yellowed pages of the operations manual. "So that's why the ville is here. This used to be a pumping station for a major city. Water shortage my ass."

 

 "Which means that isn't an artesian well attached to the fiberglass scorpion," Krysty said, practicing to reload the Hollands & Hollands. "There must be a feeder pipe somewhere."

 

 "Not matter," Jak declared, checking the play of a Winchester lever action rifle.

 

 There had been a lot of .38 long cartridges for the short barreled longblaster, and it was in prime condition without a sign of rust or corrosion. A lot of folks would fire weapons and then store them away without cleaning, only to return a month later to find the dampness in the air had combined with the residue of the powder to form a kind of acid that ruined a blaster. Mildred had told him the name of the chem, but it slipped his mind at the moment. Carbolic, or something. But there was none of that on the Winchester, which shone with oil.

 

 "No, we can use that to our advantage," Ryan countered. "Let's find that feeder pipe."

 

 Following a blurry map in the manual, Mildred led the group through the armory into a back room, the doorway damaged in spots where the door had been forcibly removed. Inside was a huge steel pipe rising from the ground and doubling back down again. There were some meters and a wheel valve on the pipe, along with a small diameter bleed rod that went into the brick wall and out of sight.

 

 "Straight up the ass and out of the mouth of the Scorpion God," Ryan said. "Gaza controls the water from here, turning it on for the faithful, and off for the people he doesn't like."

 

 "Surprised he hasn't declared himself a god yet," Dean said, showing a surprising understanding of the situation.

 

 "Probably will someday," his father stated. "Bastard of a way to rule a ville. A brave man will charge blasters, but thirsty people will do anything to get a drink of water."

 

 Checking a toolbox on the sandy floor, J.B. used a cloth to wipe the condensed moisture off a pressure meter. "Dark night! This valve is holding back over fourteen tons of pressure. There's enough water here to flood that whole ville. Wash it clean off the map."

 

 "Over here!" Krysty cried out, waving.

 

 In the corner of the pump room was a predark iron ladder bolted to the brick wall leading to a hatch set into the concrete ceiling.

 

 "Let's check outside," Dean said eagerly, reaching for the ladder.

 

 Pulling the boy back, Ryan said, "Remember, these folks like traps."

 

 Using his panga to probe the way, Ryan found razor blades attached to the center of the first couple of rungs. Anybody grabbing in a hurry would have sliced off fingers under their own weight. Checking carefully every foot of the way, he reached the ceiling and forced open the hatch. A warm wind blew into the armory, carrying the sound of the alarm bell still stridently ringing and clanging, and raised voices shouting in the distance. Crawling onto the roof, Ryan stayed low until he was sure there were no guards present, then worked his way to the edge and slowly stood to see the whole ville.

 

 Rockpoint was in turmoil, torches moving along the top of the wall and cries rising from everywhere below the rippling canopy across the ville. The light of the wag could be seen from the top of the temple in the distance, distorted shadows on the adobe wall showing the barn was occupied. But whether it was Sparrow looting the wag, or ville sec men setting a trap was unknown.

 

 "Everybody but the gaudy sluts out looking for us," J.B. said, pulling out his Navy scope and peering through. "And I'll be damned if they might also be hunting for us."

 

 "Something sure put a round up the baron's ass," Ryan agreed, leveling his longblaster. "And Gaza doesn't even know about the temple yet."

 

 "Might be because we have blasters," Dean suggested, joining the adults.

 

 "Or type of blasters," Jak said, gesturing at the Uzi machine gun. "Some villes never seen rapidfire. Only legend."

 

 "That must be it," Krysty said softly, crouching low in the roof shadows. "Our blasters. They think we're spies for Trader."

 

 Cradling the Steyr in both hands, Ryan scowled at the notion. "Fireblast! That makes sense. Okay, get back in fast before we're seen."

 

 Quickly and silently, the companions scrambled down the ancient ladder back into the pump room, but as Krysty started to leave she felt compelled to look toward the keep rising above the ville, as if something were forcing her attention there. Then the urge was gone, carried away by the chill desert wind.

 

 The last to leave the rooftop, Ryan left the locking bolt open to speed their escape. A plan was already forming in his mind, something he had never done before. But it seemed like their only chance to leave this pesthole without fighting Gaza and Hawk.

 

 "Okay, new plan. Jak, help J.B. to rig the feeder pipe to blow when somebody enters this room. Krysty, Dean, buy us some time by using the shackles from Doc's table to chain the locking bar on the front door in place. Make it triple-hard for them to get inside. Mildred, give them cover."

 

 "And I, sir?" Doc demanded. The man hadn't joined them in the brief sojourn onto the rooftop, and was using his ebony stick as a cane when he thought nobody was watching. Ryan didn't blame the man. A whipping took a lot out of a person, left him feeling bruised deep inside as if he had rad sickness. It was a testament to the old man that he was up and moving.

 

 "Sit and rest, Doc. We're going to be moving fast soon, and you will only get us chilled moving slow," Ryan directed, then saw a determined look of indignation grow on the scholar's face.

 

 "Better yet, go make firebrands," Ryan said. "All you can, fast as you can. We leave here in five minutes."

 

 "At once, my dear Ryan! I shall serve where Icarus failed."

 

 "Shut up, ya old coot," Mildred chided, "and get cracking."

 

 "What about you, Dad?" Dean asked, pausing in the open doorway of the pump room, one foot in the armory. "Going back up on the roof to do some sniping at the guards on the front gate?"

 

 "Not yet," the one-eyed man answered, going to the master valve assembly on the feeder pipe and cracking the knuckles on both hands. "I'm going to set the Scorpion God free."

 

  

 

 Chapter Fourteen

 

  

 

 Going to a wall niche, Ryan removed an oil lantern, blew out the wick and very carefully poured a few drops of the mineral oil onto the base of the valve. Setting the lantern aside, he took the wheel in both hands, braced himself and started applying pressure. The wheel turned only a smallest distance then seemed to become stuck. The man knew that he had to do this gently, too much force too soon and the spindle could snap.

 

 Dean started forward to help, but J.B. held the boy back. There was no room for another set of hands on the wheel; it was a one-person job.

 

 Ryan's hands turned white, sweat appearing on his brow as he continued to exert himself more and more. One of his feet slipped and he almost lost his grip, but dug in even harder.

 

 There was a terrible crack, and for an instant Ryan knew for certain that he had broken the spindle, then with a squeal of metal the wheel came free and began to spin easily. The meters swung high at the rush of water throbbing through the slim bleeder pipe, the length going into the wall shaking from the water coursing through it. Softly from the room beyond came a splashing sound as a torrent of water flooded the stone basin to overflow in only moments and then started to spread across the temple floor.

 

 "It'll take awhile," Mildred said in the pump room, gingerly touching the bleeder pipe. It was already coated with condensation from the sheer volume of water going through. "But soon the temple will flood, and the excess will start seeping out the front door. The ville people will go insane."

 

 "Good," Ryan panted. "The more confusion the better. Mebbe it'll start a revolt."

 

 "Lots of folks would die in that."

 

 "Lots of folks dying now," Ryan answered, massaging his wrists. "You better get moving before the water gets too deep in there to work."

 

 Everybody but Ryan left the room, while J.B. knelt alongside the main pipe and pulled a block of C-4 from his munitions bag. Gently, he molded it under the arc of the pipe were it would be difficult for anybody to find. Then he disassembled one of the concussion grens and inserted the detonator and ring assembly into the soft claylike material of the plastique. J.B. had a few timing pencils in his bag, but those had a maximum limit of five minutes, which was much too short for the companions to get away from the temple.

 

 "Along with the boobie, rig a secondary charge," Ryan directed. "I know how we can set this off from a distance."

 

 "Got a radio detonator in your pocket?" the Armorer asked, packing the C-4 firmly around the core of the grenade.

 

 "Better," Ryan said, and went back into the armory to return with a coil of the dirty rope.

 

 "The water will be reaching here soon," J.B. scoffed, attaching a length of copper wire to the pull ring of the gren. "We can't trust that shit to burn when it's wet."

 

 "Not a problem," Ryan said, looking at the ceiling.

 

 REACHING THE FRONT DOOR of the temple, Krysty and Dean paused to listen as sec men shouted outside. Then somebody knocked hard on the door and demanded admittance.

 

 The woman and boy drew their weapons as the person tried the lock several times, but after a while the guard went away. However, both of the companions knew the guards would return soon with tools and a lot more men.

 

 Unraveling the tangle of shackles and chains from the torture tables, the pair wrapped three of the lengths around the wooden bar, locking the shackles onto each other to hold the knot tightly.

 

 "Nobody is getting through that without ex-plos," Krysty stated in satisfaction when it was done.

 

 "Looks like we finished just in time, too," Dean said, looking down at the arrival of the first trickle of the water.

 

 Expanding along the floor, the water puddled in front of the massive door, then began to seep outside. Almost immediately there were more shouts and somebody threw themselves against the door, rattling the chains. Then another joined the effort, their curses audible through the slim cracks along the jamb.

 

 "What the hell is that noise?" a man cried out. "Sounds like chains."

 

 "Why would the baron chain the temple shut?"

 

 "He wouldn't, ya feeb. Get Hawk, we need a battering ram!"

 

 Moving fast, the woman and boy retreated into the tunnel, and Krysty locked the iron grille while Dean keep guard with his crossbow. Then they both raced back to the temple, closed the set of double doors and looped the last chain through the handles.

 

 Now Krysty held the first and last link of the chain on top of each other and placed a dagger from the armory through the loops. Lowering the crossbow, Dean drew his Browning Hi-Power and hammered the dagger into the wooden door in lieu of a stake. It wasn't much, but the knife would at least keep the chains from simply slipping off the handles when folks started banging to get inside.

 

 They knew that none of these things would hold off a truly determined force, but all of this would buy them time and make the baron waste a lot of troops trying to get inside and capture them. Hopefully, that would be enough.

 

 Returning to the armory through the iron maiden, Krysty closed the hinged hatch while Dean dragged over an empty wooden barrel. Together, they started to toss in any loose items available, tools, blasters, ammo, grinding stones, until the barrel was heaped high.

 

 "Got to be a good half ton of junk there," Krysty said, dusting off her hands. "That'll slow them down some."

 

 Busy at a worktable, Doc merely grunted in reply. The old man was busy making firebrands, using bits of stiff wire to attach short pieces of the rope fuse to crossbow arrows. Mildred was stuffing the completed products into a patched duffle bag and Jak was nearby stringing a crossbow, a stack of four more nearby.

 

 "How did it go?" Mildred asked, cinching the duffel closed.

 

 "The door is solid," Krysty replied bluntly, "but the sec men are already trying to get inside."

 

 "So soon? Damn."

 

 "Need any help?" Dean asked the people at the workbench.

 

 "Thank you, but this is the final batch," Doc replied, handing Mildred the last arrow. "Especially since Ryan took the rest of the fuse."

 

 Dean looked around to see the huge coils of ropy fuses were missing from the wall pegs. "He took all of it?" The boy frowned. "What for?"

 

 "See yourself," Jak said, loading his arms with crossbows. "But watch step!"

 

 Heading for the pump room, the friends paused as they spied J.B. on his knees playing a candle along a piece of the copper wire stretched knee high across the open doorway. The flickering flame was slowly turning the red metal a dark brown almost invisible in the dim recesses of the temple.

 

 "Hold it," he directed, then turned off the nukelamp and the trip wire was gone, invisible in the darkness.

 

 "Okay," J.B. said, turning the lamp back on. "But watch your step."

 

 "First person through that door is going to discover a world of pain," Dean commented, once on the other side of the trap.

 

 Shifting her duffel bag of firebrands, Mildred snorted. "Yeah, for about half a second."

 

 Glancing at the feeder pipe, Jak saw the wheel was wired to blow, as was the gren at the door. Whatever else happened, the water shortage in the ville was going to end this night, that was for damn sure.

 

 "Where is Ryan?" Doc asked, stepping over the trip wire with exaggerated caution.

 

 Tucking the candle into a pocket, J.B. jerked a thumb at the open hatch in the roof at the top of the ladder. "Making sure we can leave," he said. But interrupting those words was a fast series of soft chugs from the hatch. Drawing weapons, the companions scrambled up the ladder and onto the top of the temple. The last in line, Krysty caught the stock of the H&H Nitro on the hatch for a moment, and had to wiggle about to get through. The damn blaster was over five feet in length, much too long for such cramped quarters.

 

 Standing in the shadows, Ryan was sweeping the edge of the building with the SIG-Sauer. He froze as a hand slithered into view near the corner, but did nothing until the head of the sec man rose into view. Instantly he fired, and the man fell backward with a bloody crater in place of a nose. Going to the edge, Ryan fired twice more and another man cried out briefly.

 

 "Fireblast! Too bastard many people know about the roof hatch," Ryan growled. "And somebody with a brain is going to figure out why there's a pile of bodies in the street, at which point we're shit out of luck."

 

 "Let's get to it," Jak said, passing out the crossbows.

 

 Overburdened with weapons, the companions dropped their backpacks to take the weapons and got busy nocking the firebrands.

 

 "Think we can reach the motel from here?" Mildred asked, licking a finger to test the direction of the desert wind. Simple logic dictated what the plan was. She only hoped they could pull it off. They had been in tight scrapes before, but this was the first time they were doing a night creep on an entire ville. One wrong move would expose them, and then it was all over.

 

 "The bows have the range," Ryan said, looking across the ville. "It's just a matter of can we hit the target."

 

 Stepping on the crossbar of his crossbow to grab the string in both hands, J.B. pulled it upward until the cord caught on the tongue. Lifting the weapon, he slipped in a firebrand.

 

 "Ranging shot," J.B. directed, touching the rope with his butane lighter. As the fuse sputtered into life, he raised the crossbow and pressed the trigger.

 

 The flaming arrows arced over the ville to drop beyond the motel a dozen blocks away.

 

 "Try ten o'clock, instead of eleven," he said, reloading and lowering the angle. "All together. Ready, shoot!"

 

 The companions launched in unison, the flurry of arrows soaring high to plummet down into the open courtyard around the motel. Bursting from the building, Jed and Sparrow came running out with blasters drawn, both of their dogs baying wildly.

 

 "Again," Ryan ordered brusquely, as tiny dots of light began moving along the top of the adobe wall. The sentries had spotted the firebrands. "Shift more into the wind!"

 

 The crossbows were armed once more, and the next flight went over the motel, one arrow spiraling away randomly to disappear into the distance.

 

 "The fuse came free and threw off the balance," Doc rumbled angrily.

 

 Suddenly a chorus of voices rose from the opposite side of the temple, closely followed by a tremendous crash of splintering wood. Then it came again and again.

 

 "Sounds as if the sec men are busting through," Dean said.

 

 "Check the wires," J.B. commanded, running his fingers along the shaft of an arrow. "This volley has got to be on target!"

 

 Locking his crossbow and reloading, Jak saw a man carrying a longblaster appear on a roof a few buildings away. Only a sec man would have a weapon like that, so he fired from the hip. The unlit arrow flew straight and hit the man in the stomach partially going through. Dropping the blaster, the man clutched the shaft sticking out of his belly and shrieked in pain.

 

 Squinting in that direction, Ryan chanced two shots with the SIG-Sauer, but the wounded man was masked by the darkness and kept on screaming. Having no choice, he slid the Steyr off his shoulder, placed the crosshairs on the sec man's chest and put a 7.62 mm round through his heart, ending the cries.

 

 But the crack of the sniper rifle rolled over the ville, and most of the voices on the streets stopped shouting.

 

 "If they come to this side and find the bodies, we're screwed. There's no canopy over here to hide the arrows," Ryan growled. "Load and fire at will, but hit that triple-damn wag right now!"

 

 Fast and furious, the companions loaded and fired as quickly as possible, flaming arrows raining all over the area, setting fire to the roof of the motel and smashing to pieces on the streets. When the wind slowed for moment, they sent off the last flurry of arrows. Climbing high toward the stars, the firebrands curved sharply earthward and slammed all over the wag, penetrating the cab, the hood, and several going through the tattered canvas awning over the rear.

 

 Only seconds later, a fire woofed out the back of the wag from the punctured fuel cans, tongues of flame licking from every hole in the canvas. Some sec man hidden behind the wag started running, but it was already too late.

 

 The deafening explosion illuminated the entire ville in a blinding flash of light and rattled shutters for blocks in every direction. Caught near the blast, the sec men were slapped off the ground and sent tumbling through the air like burning rag dolls to hit the side of other buildings with lethal results.

 

 Then from the boiling inferno of the barn came a series of sharp bangs and a new fireball boiled upward, spraying out debris as the cans of condensed fuel rocketed into the air and detonated above the ville.

 

 By now every window was open and a dozen bells were ringing. Illuminated by the reddish glare of the rising fireball, the companions ducked low on the roof of the temple to try to stay in the shadows.

 

 Blaster in hand, Ryan gave a short whistle and jerked a finger at the front of the temple. Dropping to his belly, Jak crawled to the edge of the roof, listened and then chanced a peek. Turning to face the others, he nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

 

 "Okay, they're off to check the explosion," Ryan said aloud, rising to his knees. "That bought us time but not a hell of a nuking lot."

 

 He paused as another detonation shook the ville, as the main forty-gallon fuel tanks of the U.S. Army GMC 6X6 added their destructive fury to the growing conflagration.

 

 Still wary, Krysty was maintaining a close watch on the keep. When a guard appeared on the parapet with what seemed to be binoculars, she swung around the heavy longblaster, set the crosshairs on his chest and fired. The recoil kicked her hard in the shoulder, making the woman think she had missed completely, but the slug from the Nitro Express crossed the distance in a split second and the man flew backward minus a head, a splash of blood hitting the flagpole. Hopefully, Gaza would think it was shrapnel from the blast.

 

 But as she worked the bolt, a woman dressed in white appeared briefly at a window in the keep, and Krysty got a fluttery feeling inside her head. Hastily, she raised the monster rifle, but the woman was already gone. Her heart pounding, Krysty suddenly knew she had aced the wrong target. The strange female was the source of danger, but whether she was a doomie or a telepath, Krysty had no idea.

 

 "The baron might have a doomie," Krysty said aloud. "Hawk could be waiting for us at the horse corral."

 

 Or the front gate. Breathing heavily in the darkness, Ryan said nothing at the news for a few moments. "Okay, too bad for him," he stated.

 

 "J.B., check out the corral. Everybody else, clear the streets of any sec men!"

 

 Standing in plain view, the companions went to the side of the temple and cut loose at a group of guards inspecting the bodies sprawled in the street. Side by side, they chilled every man, the continuing explosions from the wag drowning out the crack of their rifles.

 

 "Corral looks clear!" J.B. announced, collapsing his Navy scope.

 

 Holstering his piece, Ryan gathered up a thick coil of fuse from the roof and tied the end to the top rung of the iron ladder. Tugging hard, he decided it would hold and tossed the rest of the coil over the edge of the temple. With the others keeping watch, the one-eyed man slid down the rope in one fast motion, landing with his knees slightly bent to absorb the impact.

 

 Instantly, he turned with the SIG-Sauer drawn and checked the street, but there were only the dead and the dying on the cobblestones.

 

 Ryan whistled twice, and the rest of the companions descended one at a time, the process seeming to take forever, even though it was only a few minutes according to his wrist chron.

 

 Once Doc was on the ground, Ryan lit the fuse with his butane lighter and watched it slowly start to burn upward.

 

 "Let's get those horses," he growled, and started running through the maze of the ville with the others close behind.

 

  

 

 Chapter Fifteen

 

  

 

 As they raced through Rockpoint, a crackling noise steadily grew as flames began to spread across the ville following the canopy covering the streets. Soon the flames started to spread to the adobe houses, the compressed mud and straw bricks burning as easily as wood.

 

 People were rushing into the street, clutching their belongings and staring about helplessly. A child got in the way of a running sec man, and he clubbed the little girl aside. With a cry of rage, her father smashed a water jug over the guard's head shattering his skull. As the body dropped, the rest of the family began kicking and beating the fallen man while cursing wildly.

 

 "Looks like we've got that revolution," J.B. remarked as they ran past the scene. His last view was of the father yanking the blaster from the limp hands of the bleeding corpse and fumbling to work the hammer and trigger.

 

 But as the companions took a corner, a group of sec men were shouting orders to a crowd of people stomping out the burning embers on the ground.

 

 "It's them!" a sergeant cried out, swiveling his longblaster and pulling the trigger. But the weapon misfired and only a feeble flame came from the muzzle.

 

 As the sergeant feverishly worked the arming bolt, Ryan put a round into his chest, while J.B. fired the Uzi, the hail of 9 mm rounds tearing the other sec men apart.

 

 "Head for the temple!" Dean shouted at the terrified people running about. "Water's everywhere!" But if anybody believed the boy, there was no indication.

 

 Watchful of the side streets, the companions ran through the ville, shooting down any sec men who came their way. At a hitching post, a corporal stared in shock at their approach and raised his hands in surrender. Without remorse, Ryan blew him away and kept going, knowing full well the man would have started to shoot once their backs were turned.

 

 The smoke was getting thick, blowing along the streets like mist in a tunnel, trapped by the canopy and adobe buildings. That was an unexpected bonus to hold down sniper fire, especially from that 25 mm cannon in the keep if it was working. Rising above the ville, orange flames were barely visible through the cloth and the dense clouds, then there came the sound of splintering wood as the roof of a burning tavern collapsed, sending sparks soaring skyward in a fiery whirlwind.

 

 Needing to check his bearings, Ryan stopped at a gaudy house. The front door slammed aside, and there stood a bald man armed with an ax, along with a handful of raggedly dressed ville people carrying makeshift clubs. Behind them was a group of women in various stages of undress.

 

 "By the Scorpion God, it's the outlanders!" the bald man yelled in triumph. "Chill 'em and the baron will make us sec men!" Like a pack of hounds flush with the scent of their prey, the rest yelled battle cries and charged.

 

 Pausing for a full second to make sure Bart and his wife weren't among the gang, Ryan and J.B. then opened fire while Krysty braced for the recoil and stroked the trigger on the H&H Nitro. The longblaster thundered flame along the street, the big .475 slug blowing a gory hole through the leader only then to slam into the second and send him sprawling.

 

 The noise of the longblaster startled the rest of the vigilantes, and they broke and run, tossing away weapons. Tracking the group for a moment, the companions then turned and hurried away, seeing no reason to ace the unarmed people.

 

 "Fools," Jak muttered, thumbing rounds into the side port of the hot Winchester. When it was loaded, he yanked the crossbow off his shoulder and tossed it away. Damn thing weighed a ton and could serve no useful purpose now. The night creep was over, this was a straight firefight.

 

 Screaming as he came, a sec man ran around a wooden cart loaded with loose bricks, shooting a homemade scattergun. Ryan dived out of the way just in time, and Mildred lunged forward to gut the man with the bayonet at the end of her blaster. The shotgun fell from a spasming hand as he tried to clutch the writhing nest of entrails pouring from his belly. Although still screaming, the guard was already dead, but Mildred couldn't stop herself from wasting a live round and firing the Remington into the man, ending his agony. There was only so far the physician would allow herself to abandon civilization, leaving a wounded man to die slowly was something she would avoid whenever possible.

 

 By now the alarm bell stopped ringing, and people were running all over the ville, seeking cover, but also looting the buildings and the dead. Several fistfights had broken out, and once Dean saw a sec man shoot a corporal in the back. When the turncoat faced their way, the boy feathered him with the last bolt from the crossbow, then tossed the weapon away. Hot pipe, the ville was going insane, old scores between people being settled in the crimson heat of raw battle.

 

 Doc discharged the Webley at an armed man on a rooftop. Although it was a predark weapon, the revolver was carrying bullets reloaded with black powder, and it boomed as if it had exploded, gushing forth a billowing cloud of acrid smoke. Yet even through the din, Doc saw the guard go over the side and fall to the cobblestones to land with a meaty crunch.

 

 "Praise the lord and pass the ammunition," Mildred growled, then flinched as a slug hummed by so close she felt its warmth on her cheek. She turned quickly, but didn't see the source of the incoming rounds. Doubling her speed, the woman tried to ignore the itchy feeling between her shoulder blades of a crosshair marking her as a viable target.

 

 Checking around a corner, Ryan whistled sharply at the others and held up a restraining hand. Listening to the growing noise of the fire and rioting fill the ville, the man watched the stables across the courtyard for any sign of activity. But he could only detect the natural motions of the horses, nothing fugitive suggesting hiding troops.

 

 Taking point, Ryan sprinted across the open street to jump over a split rail fence and hit the wall of the stable. Then he swung inside with his blaster, searching for enemies. But there were no guards at the corral, the adobe brick stalls containing only horses, mounds of hay and tack. The animals were shuffling in the straw on the floor, their eyes wide with terror. The animals were reserved for the baron and officers, so blasterfire would be well known to them, but the thick smell of smoke stirred primitive fear response that no amount of training could completely overcome.

 

 There was a movement near the fence, and Ryan almost fired until he saw it was J.B. covering his blind side. Good man.

 

 The Armorer stood guard while Ryan gave the signal and the rest of the companions charged into the stable, grabbing blankets, saddles and bridles to throw onto the animals.

 

 After her horse was saddled, Krysty looked around for anything useful to steal and spotted some sagging bags hanging from a wooden peg sticking out of the bricks. It took only a touch to realize they were water bags. Grabbing two, Krysty looped the first over the pommel of her saddle, then did the same for Ryan's horse. Finished with her own mount, Mildred saw the action and did the same, along with Doc and Jak. Dean searched for any feed bags for the horses, but couldn't find any.

 

 During this, Ryan and J.B. had remained by the fence, ruthlessly chilling every sec man who appeared on the street, the bodies scattered along the surface like drunks after an orgy.

 

 "Let's move out," Krysty called, guiding her frightened horse to the fence, with two more in tow by the reins.

 

 Swinging open the gate in the fence, Ryan and J.B. climbed onto their animals, briefly checking the saddle and reins. Just then a sec man ran by, clutching the stump of an arm, blood spurting at every step.

 

 "That's no blast wound," J.B. said, tightening the reins as a precaution when his horse reared in terror as a cougar lopped past the corral with a human hand sticking out of its fanged mouth.

 

 "The lunatic!" Mildred cursed, fighting to control her mount. "Sparrow said the baron guarded the junkyard with some big cats. Cougars!"

 

 "Must have released them to try and get us," Dean said, stroking the neck of his mare to try to calm her. The animal responded to his touch, but became jittery at the moment he stopped the soothing caress.

 

 "More likely they escaped, terrified of the fire," Ryan stated grimly, forcing his combat boots into the narrow stirrups. "But its still triple-bad for us."

 

 "Look out!" Jak shouted, levering the Winchester with only one hand, the other tight on the reins.

 

 Snarling and spitting, another cougar appeared from around a corner, chasing an armed sec man. The fellow fired blindly over a shoulder, and the big cat leaped through the black powder cloud to land upon the man, driving him to the ground under its weight. Then the man screamed as the cougar buried its fangs into the small of his back and savagely shook him, audibly snapping the spine, then cast him aside. In a blur of movement, the animal was gone, leaving a trail of bloody paw prints to mark its passage.

 

 "We stay together!" J.B. commanded, inserting a fresh clip into the Uzi. "They're less likely to attack us in a group! Let's move it!"

 

 The companions galloped through the billowing clouds of smoke, heading directly for the front gate. There was no more time to waste on subterfuge or tricks. The faster they got out of Rockpoint and into the desert, the better were their chances of staying alive.

 

 Unexpectedly, the two cougars joined in the courtyard, snarling their blood chilling cry as they padded through the smoky ville, attacking sec men and civilians indiscriminately. But anybody who discharged a blaster was brutally attacked by both animals and literally torn limb from limb.

 

 Even as he fought to not get sick from the slaughter, Dean filed away the type of attack in his mind. The cats were a pair, male and female, working as a team. He had never seen animals do that. Most muties attacked in a mob but without any order, these killers weren't even eating the people they aced. Just chilling and moving on to find another. The very idea made the boy wish he had taken a longblaster instead of a crossbow from the temple armory, and he clenched his hand around the checkered grip of his Browning Hi-Power, privately wishing it was something more than a 9 mm pistol.

 

 "They seem to be heading for the gate," Krysty said, struggling to keep her horse from bolting. The combination of fire and the cats was driving the animal into a frenzy.

 

 "Stay behind the cats," Ryan ordered. "They'll clear the way for us."

 

 "What if they turn?" Doc demanded, the Webley held in his right hand as he cocked back the hammer with a thumb.

 

 "Left shoulder!" Ryan stated, holding the reins in his left hand, the right keeping the Steyr braced in his hip for immediate use. "Not the heart or head! And don't fucking miss!"

 

 As if understanding the words, a cougar glanced backward to snarl at the mounted people, and the companions leveled their arsenal of weapons at the beast. For a moment, it seemed like the male cougar was going to charge, then the female sprang sideways and seized an old woman by the throat ripping away most of her neck. Gushing a horrible fountain of blood, the wrinklie fell to her knees, as the cougar mauled her with its front paws. Her high pitched scream never stopped as the blood sprayed everywhere. Then she went limp and the cat raised its gore streaked face to snarl at the sky.

 

 At the sight, Krysty started to aim the Hollands & Hollands, but stayed her hand. The old woman was already dead, and they needed the help of the cats to reach the gates. Once there, she would blow their heads off with the Nitro Express.

 

 Horses, dogs, civilians and sec men fled from the approach of the cougars, the chaos in the smoky ville increasing as the alarm bell began to ring again from the keep. Or was it sending a message to the sec men? There was no way of knowing.

 

 With the bravado of ignorance, a sec man jumped out of an alleyway firing two big bore wheelguns at the big cats in a storm of lead. But they dropped to the ground at the first round and then leaped, the male seizing his gun hand by the wrist and the female raking her claws across the man's head, flipping over the scalp to fall across his face. Bare white bone gleamed from the smeared blood of the open head. As the guard tried to shove his scalp back in to place, both cats sank their teeth into his chest and ripped out vital organs.

 

 That was when several shots rang out from behind the companions. Turning in their saddles, they fired a volley at the group of sec men coming up the street. The ten or so guards were moving from doorway to alley, trying to always stay behind cover as they closed in toward Ryan and the others, the companions now trapped between them and the big cats.

 

 "Flank attack!" J.B. yelled, spraying the Uzi in a figure-eight pattern, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds ricocheting off the houses and streets in a hellstorm of lead until the clip went empty. "Which way, the men or the cats?"

 

 "Fuck them both! Head down the side street!"

 

 Ryan shouted, kicking his horse in the rump and urging it on to greater speed.

 

 Galloping loudly on the cobblestones, the companions thundered past the snarling cats and down the side street. But the cougars followed, looping after the riders.

 

 The stupe sons of bitches had to think the friends were running away in fear, Ryan realized in frustration, and instinct was forcing them to chase after them. That was when he saw the street was a dead end, terminating at the ville wall. Trapped again! Now there was no other choice. They had to ace the cats before the animals got underneath the horses and ripped out their bellies.

 

 "Ace 'em!" Ryan ordered, reining in his mount and turning to shoot.

 

 The barrage of rounds from the companions hit the cats everywhere, blood covering their muscular bodies. But the lead seemed to have no effect, and the cats leaped to turn in the air and charge at the mounted people, snarling with blood lust.

 

 Trying to find the left shoulder, Ryan swung his rifle and both cats dodged. Fireblast, they were fast! Choosing a different target, the one-eyed man pumped a 7.62 mm round directly into the left eye of the male cougar. The animal jerked at the impact and shook its head to snap a bite to the left. But now their horses refused to advance and were backing away from the gate.

 

 J.B. put a spray of 9 mm Parabellum rounds into the female and she turned toward them with eyes of green fury, her mouth scissoring the flapping piece of face.

 

 Struggling with the heavy H&H rifle, Krysty fired just as her horse bucked, the heavy slug smashing into a burning adobe house and blowing a gaping hole in the mud bricks. Then Mildred fired four fast shots directly in front of the cougars, the lead glancing off the cobblestones, the noise and sparks making the pair retreat slightly.

 

 Yanking on the bolt, Ryan yanked out the clip and stuffed in his last loaded spare. The big cats were too heavily muscled for anything but the .475 round to penetrate from a distance. The short Parabellum nines and the blackpowder rounds just couldn't get in deep enough to reach any organs. The shoulder was the only really vulnerable spot. The muscle was thin there and a well placed shot could reach the bone, blowing out a halo of bone splinters like shrapnel directly in the heart. But it was a bastard tricky shot, especially on an animal that could move faster than most wags could drive. Their speed was incredible!

 

 Using both handcannons, Doc fired and missed.

 

 Switching to the shotgun, J.B. hit the female and wounded her in the side, but nothing fatal. Krysty fired again, but it was only a graze. Dean banged away steadily with his Browning, making the male turn, and Ryan paused before firing again, hitting the cougar smack in the left shoulder.

 

 The beast froze from the pain, galvanized for a half a heartbeat, and then it slumped to the ground. Puzzled, the female made a noise at its mate, then turned its attention to Ryan and worked its rear legs, hunching up for a charge when the sec men appeared at the mouth of the side street. The cat whipped around, startled by the intrusion of more people.

 

 "We're wasting time and ammo!" Ryan shouted, as a shot hummed by his head. "Use a gren!"

 

 Already with a sphere in hand, J.B. pulled the pin on the implo gren and threw.

 

 Landing between the sec men and the cougar, the device activated on impact, generating its killing gravity field, compacting men, animal, street and buildings in a microsecond pulse of total destruction. As the dust cleared, only a mangled pile of twitching flesh remained at the bottom of a mirror smooth crater, none of the ooze could easily be identified as either man or cat.

 

 "Good thing that worked," J.B. said with a sigh, easing his grip on another gren. "Only one of these babies left to use on the gate."

 

 "Nuke that," Ryan said, studying the width of the steaming crater. "Use it on the wall right here."

 

 "Here?" the Armorer repeated, looking at the imposing barrier. "If the grav field doesn't go all the way through, we're trapped for good."

 

 "Better chance here than of us reaching the front gate alive," Ryan countered, the alarm bells starting to ring once more. "Those are for us, and I'm betting that they know where we're headed."

 

 Nodding in agreement, J.B. galloped to the end of the street, set the timer and heaved the gren. His aim was good, and it landed on top of the twenty-foot wall with a clatter.

 

 He was already riding back to join the others when a sec man appeared on the parapet of the wall holding the gren and raising it high to throw back down.

 

  

 

 Chapter Sixteen

 

  

 

 Watching from the window of the keep, it seemed to Baron Gaza that the sky was on fire, with pieces of burning cloth dropping into the streets everywhere, embers swirling thick as sand fleas over the adobe buildings. Several roofs were already smoldering, others blazing away, orange tongues licking at the stars.

 

 For some reason, his wives were terrified of the outlanders and wouldn't allow him any closer than he was to an open window. As if somebody could accurately shoot a longblaster this high!

 

 "They didn't breach my private armory, did they?" Gaza demanded, shifting uncomfortably on the stool.

 

 He had caught a piece of shrapnel from the exploding wags, and a healer was cleaning the wound before sewing it shut. The old man was slow, but the best in the ville. Which was why Gaza had hobbled the man, cutting the tendons in his legs so he couldn't escape. Rockpoint ville had no slaves, but there were many different levels of freedom here.

 

 His eldest wife, Allison, started to nod yes, then shrugged. Unlike the other wives, the blonde had a gift, a talent, a feeling for things that couldn't be described. Sometimes it was so haunting it was like trying to hold a moonbeam in your hand. Other times it was a slap in the face that something bad was near. This day had been such an occurrence, and while she didn't exactly know what it meant, Allison knew enough to keep her beloved husband under cover. And still he had been nearly chilled when the outlander wag exploded. Such a fireball!

 

 The room was lush with furnishing, a wooden table covered with linen and silver bowls of cactus fruit. Bottles of aged shine, and sparkling clean water stood about for anybody to sample, and there was a huge roast of camel filling a center plate. Pictures adorned the walls and there were rows of books. Each of them lovingly preserved by the wives, and untouched by Gaza. Some bore the great name of Texas on the cover, but most spoke of things indecipherable.

 

 "Black dust, it's like skydark out there!" the baron grunted, as the probe dug into his flesh.

 

 The old man apologized, and the mute wives rushed forward to stroke their husband and show the healer how to do his job.

 

 "Away with the lot of you!" Gaza shouted, shoving them away. "I can't fragging stand it when you all hover around like I was made of glass. Get out and check on my horse. Take ten guards armed with rapidfires. I'll be there shortly after Hawk reports on the temple."

 

 The slim redhead called Kathleen waved her hands in concern.

 

 "Damn door is jammed and they had to smash through. I already sent sec men to climb onto the roof, so if the outlanders are inside, they're trapped with no way to escape."

 

 Allison glanced at the burning ville and signaled that there was still much danger, and she didn't want to leave him alone.

 

 "I'm fine, woman," Baron Gaza said, gritting his teeth from the pain. "Hawk is coming, and Darvis has been with me for a decade."

 

 There were powders, even jolt to ease the pain, but those clouded the mind and Gaza needed to stay sharp. This Ryan was a tricky bastard, worthy of being a baron himself. Walked right in the gaudy house used by his officers to buy a meal. That took some major balls, or a hot steaming ton of stupidity.

 

 Reluctantly, the women departed to do his will, taking the guards from the room, their steps echoing along the stone corridors until out of range.

 

 Outside, there came the snarl of a cougar and the scream of dying men.

 

 "Ouch! Careful, fool," Gaza muttered, turning on the healer. "Just because we're alone for a minute doesn't mean you can start rushing the job. That hurt!"

 

 Then the baron stopped talking as he felt sharp steel pressing hard to his throat, the body of the healer warm against his back.

 

 "Did you think I would forget, or forgive?" the wrinklie wheezed, forcing the knife harder into the flesh until a thin line of blood formed along the blade. "You took my daughter screaming to your bed, then sold her to the Devils as a gaudy slut when she didn't bear you a child."

 

 "Please, no," Gaza begged, reaching for his blaster only to find the holster empty. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the weapon laying on the table near the roast. When had the wrinklie taken the blaster?

 

 "Let me live," the baron pleaded. "I'll give you anything you want. Horses, women, blasters! Anything you desire!"

 

 Sliding the blade along the soft skin cutting new avenues of crimson, Darvis leaned in close and breathed on the baron's ear, sending chills down his spine.

 

 "Anything?" the healer asked mockingly.

 

 "Name it!" Gaza whispered pitifully. "Take my own wives!"

 

 "Now that is a deal, my lord. What I desire," the healer growled, spittle striking the cheek of the trembling baron, "is to piss on your fucking grave!"

 

 The knife started to cut in then for real, and Gaza screamed in terror when a blaster roared and something slapped against the baron with a wet sound, blood, hair and bits of flesh spraying onto the floor.

 

 Staggering to his feet, Gaza saw Hawk walking in from the doorway, his blaster firing again and again into the limp body of the whitehair.

 

 "Damn traitor, good thing I arrived when I did," Hawk said, kicking the dead man to make sure the job was finished. "Are you okay, my lord?"

 

 "Th-thank you for saving my life," Gaza stammered, running his hands over his face, the fingers coming away streaked with pinkish brains and a sticky clear fluid. "Nuking hell, this is such a waste! It really is."

 

 "He wasn't that good a healer, my lord," Hawk said, cracking open the cylinder and dumping the spent shells into a pocket for reloading.

 

 Unexpectedly, there came the clockwork noise of a hammer being locked into the firing position from the dining table.

 

 "Not him, you. You are the waste," Gaza said softly and fired.

 

 Hawk felt a searing white-hot pain in his chest and staggered from the blow, his weapon falling from numb hands. The baron fired once more, driving Hawk backward, and the man went out the window with a startled cry.

 

 "Did you really think I would let anybody know I had begged a wrinklie for my life?" Gaza growled at the empty window, massaging his throat. "The healer may have been insane, but you were a fool, old friend."

 

 "Such a waste," Gaza repeated, holstering his piece and shuffling from the room, holding his aching side. He still needed that wound stitched shut. This time he'd have the wives do the job. At least they could be trusted.

 

 MOVING FAST, Ryan fired the Steyr without aiming, and the wall guard dropped the implo gren from his hand, the shattered wrist pumping blood from both sides.

 

 A split second later there was a blinding flash, and the entire wall seemed to shake as wide cracks spread out like lightning bolts, making bricks tumble off.

 

 Dust clouds rolled from the vibrating barrier, the horses rearing and whinnying in fright. Seizing the reins, the companions fought to stay on their mounts and the rumbles dissipated through the side street, rattling window shutters and shattering clay pots. As the aftereffects of the implosion slowly faded, Ryan could now see there was a gaping hole in the thick barrier reaching all the way through, only some glassy rubble covering the few yards of ground to the black desert outside.

 

 "Walk them through," Ryan said, sliding off the horse and leading it through the dangerous wreckage. If the animals broke a leg at this point, the escape was finished before it began.

 

 Everywhere on the streets, people were screaming, blasters firing, horses screaming.

 

 "They're coming through!" a sec man screamed on the wall, his shaking hands dropping cartridges as he tried to load a scattergun.

 

 Coming through? The feebs thought it was an invasion, not an escape, which gave J.B. an idea. While the others started traversing the littered passage, the Armorer rode to the mouth of the side street and tossed the last box of .22 cartridges into a burning pile of cloth where the canopy had collapsed. As he raced back to join the others, the bullets started cooking off, lead banging in every direction.

 

 "Coldhearts are in the ville!" J.B. bellowed at the top of his lungs through cupped hands. "Cannies and muties at the front gate! Protect the keep!"

 

 Incredibly, the cry was repeated by others and carried along. Soon the sec men on top of the gatehouse started shooting into the billowing smoke in mindless panic.

 

 Meanwhile, the rest of the companions had reached the desert past the wall, only to discover outriders pounding toward the breach. Climbing on their horses, Ryan and the others peppered the enemy riders with blasterfire as the sec men on the wall started shooting crossbow arrows, the deadly hum of the barbed bolts chilling as they thudded deep into the sand.

 

 Caught in the cross fire, the companions had no choice but to leave and kicked their mounts into action, sprinting for the safety of the night.

 

 "We can't abandon, John!" Mildred yelled, moving to the motion of her mount.

 

 "Not going to! Just drawing away their fire!" Ryan answered, clicking on the nukelamp.

 

 THE MEN on the wall shouted in surprise at the blinding beam, and Ryan leaned far over in the saddle and dropped the lamp on the sand as the companions kept galloping away. Thinking the outlanders had stupidly made a stand, the guards concentrated their weapons on the nukelamp until it was hit and darkness returned to the desert.

 

 Already at the breach, J.B. started walking his horse through as fast as possible, when it tripped and caught a leg on a jagged pile of debris. Diving out of the way, J.B. just missed being crushed by the animal as it went tumbling. Scrambling to his feet, the Armorer saw the animal was crippled, its right leg bent at an impossible angle, badly broken in several places. Without hesitation, J.B. put a short burst from the Uzi into the horse, grabbed the saddlebags, then took off running. But the bags weighed more than he could carry, and the man reluctantly dropped the spare water and nukelamp.

 

 Reaching the low stone wall of the boundary marker, the companions slowed their horses to take stock of the situation. The desert ahead seemed clear, but the outriders were still somewhere in the darkness, and the wall guards were getting better with those blasters now that they figured out it wasn't an invasion. If Gaza got his hands on J.B., he'd be aced on the spot. They'd have to make a stand.

 

 "Doc, Jak, watch our backs!" Ryan ordered.

 

 "The rest of us, let's start clearing off that wall and give J.B. some cover!"

 

 "All for one, and one for all!" Doc said in a loud clear voice, drawing both of his huge pistols and cocking back the hammers.

 

 Holding the reins in one hand, Dean gave a sharp nod at that advice as he pulled out the Browning. Never leave a friend behind, or a coldheart alive, as his father always said.

 

 Dodging some loose bricks still falling from the smashed wall, J.B. hit the sand running and started to follow the hoof prints, holding tightly on to his munitions bag to keep it from flapping about and slowing him. Then a rumble sounded to the left, and he felt the ground shake as horses came thundering out of the darkness. Whistling loudly, J.B. headed toward them, thinking it was his friends. Then blasters started sparking in the darkness, a round tugging on his leather jacket. Mounted guards! Zigzagging in the night, J.B. opened up with the Uzi, the hardball ammo mowing down the first row of animals, the second row plowing into the dead. The shouts of pain were music to his ears, then the submachine gun jammed on a bad round and J.B. began laying tracks while jerking on the bolt to free the brass from the ejector port.

 

 "Outlander!" a guard cried from above, and crossbow bolts flew through the night thicker than a swarm of bees.

 

 As the jam came free, J.B. raced for the desert, firing bursts over his shoulder until the Uzi was empty. Pulling a concussion gren from the munitions bag, he pulled the pin and released the spoon to flip the explosive charge high into the air. It detonated with a tremendous bang, the shock wave slamming sec men off the parapet to fall to their deaths.

 

 At the sound of the gren, Ryan turned and squinted. There was a hellish light pouring through the breach in the ville wall from the burning buildings, and in the glow he could make out a running figure wearing a fedora and glasses.

 

 "John got out alive!" Mildred cried in joy.

 

 "We go back!" Jak stated firmly.

 

 "We stay here!" Ryan commanded, reining his horse to a stop and sliding the Steyr off a shoulder.

 

 "Dean, get going son!"

 

 The young Cawdor wheeled his mount and started for the ville racing across the sand, staying just out of the light washing through the breech.

 

 Working the bolt, Ryan chambered a round and raised the sniper rifle to his eye for only a moment before firing. Silhouetted by the fire, a black shape on top of the wall cried out, the crossbow in his hands firing its quarrel into the guard beside him.

 

 Leveling the .30-30 longblaster, Mildred began to slowly squeeze off rounds and sec men fell off the wall, then Krysty, Jak and Doc trained their weapons on the outriders as they appeared coming over a low dune. The mounted sec men had tried to outflank the companions, and paid dearly for arriving too soon.

 

 Crouched low in the saddle, Dean urged the horse on to greater speed as he pounded across the flat open ground, his body moving in perfect rhythm to the massive animal. The distance between him and J.B. was decreasing by the second, and reaching behind, Dean released the lacings and the saddlebags slipped to the ground, making room for his passenger. This was why his father had sent Dean. He was the only person small enough to share a horse with J.B. and not fall behind from the weight of two riders.

 

 The ground around J.B. was puffing dust as the ville sec men started to find his range. The Armorer was running in a zigzag to avoid offering a steady target, but he was starting to tire, and the range was too great for his shotgun, the last gren, or anything else he had. His lungs were burning from the frantic effort, and his precious glasses kept threatening to bounce off his face as he pounded the sand.

 

 Reloading the Nitro Express, Krysty choked off a scream as an arrow went through her hair, cutting off several of the living filaments, and Jak cursed as he dropped the Winchester, blood flowing down a limp arm.

 

 A buzz went by Dean, and he felt something wet trickling down his cheek. Blood? Hot pipe, that had been close! A half inch more and he would have been impaled on the shaft of the quarrel. Blasted locals were too damn good with those crossbows.

 

 Reining the sweaty horse to an abrupt halt, Dean offered J.B. a hand, and the man scrambled on, kicking the beast hard in the rump with the heels of his combat boots.

 

 "Light this candle!" the Armorer wheezed, holding on to the saddle for dear life.

 

 Dean didn't bother to reply, just headed the horse into the darkness, kicking up the sand.

 

 Creaking loudly, the front gate of Rockpoint raised and out stormed a dozen fresh riders, brandishing longblasters.

 

 Now moving fast enough, J.B. hauled a C-4 block out of his bag, stabbed it with a timing pencil, broke off the detonator and tossed it behind.

 

 "What was that?" Dean demanded, banking to the left, and left again to confuse the enemy marksmen.

 

 "Protective cover!" J.B. said, reloading the Uzi.

 

 The charge hit the ground and rolled a few yards before violently exploding, throwing out a hellstorm of sand. Unable to see anymore, the guards on the wall had to stop shooting out of the fear of chilling their fellow sec men.

 

 Not hindered by that consideration, Ryan and the others filled the swirling sandstorm with lead, the screams of dying men and horses a testament to the accuracy of their shots.

 

 Taking advantage of the distraction, Jak slipped off his horse, retrieved his blaster and crawled awkwardly back into the saddle. Ripping open his shirt, he stuffed the wounded arm into it as a crude sling, then crammed the reins into his mouth and started to fire the Winchester with one hand, throwing the longblaster forward by the lever, then pulling the trigger.

 

 One of the horses coming their way was nicked in the shoulder and veered sharply away from the pain to collide into another. Mounts and riders mixed and went crashing to the ground in a wild jumble of limbs and blasters. The two sec men directly behind tried to jump the tangle of bodies but only landed directly on the fallen men, crushing them, hooves slamming into chest with pile-driver force, ribs shattering.

 

 Half blind from the swirling sand, the rest of the pack rode onward, unlimbering their weapons when the night was suddenly illuminated by a strident detonation within the ville. Seconds later a towering geyser of clear water rose like a fountain above Rockpoint.

 

 "Somebody finally found the trip wire," Ryan muttered, his horse pounding over the hilly desert.

 

 The men on the walls stopped firing at the incredible sight, then held out their palms as a light sprinkle rained upon them from the rumbling geyser. Slowing their horses, the outriders did the same, staring in wonder at the fantastic, impossible sight. Water, clean, clear water, was gushing upward from the temple in the heart of the ville in unlimited amounts.

 

 "Nuking hell, it was a trick!" a sec man shouted furiously. "Gaza told us there was barely enough water to keep us alive, while he was sitting on a hidden ocean!"

 

 "Son of a bitch lied to his own sec men!" another man ranted, switching from looking at the ville to the escaping outlanders.

 

 "Blood for water, my ass!" a guard snarled, rubbing old scars on his chest.

 

 Reining in his mount, a sergeant brought the horse to a ragged halt in the sand. "Forget the outies," he commanded the rest of the troops. "Let's go get that son of a bitch Gaza and string him up by the balls!"

 

 Waving their blasters, the sec men shouted obscenities and reversed direction to charge back into the ville, hellbent for bloody revenge.

 

  

 

 Epilogue

 

  

 

 Drenched to the skin by the falling water, Baron Gaza slogged through the ankle deep puddles in the streets of the ville, heading for the junkyard. Again and again, he was approached by furious people screaming for revenge, and he ruthlessly cut them down with a rapidfire.

 

 How could things have gone so bad so nuking quickly? He was an outcast in his own ville! There was only one conceivable way that the outlanders could have possibly found the pump room. Hawk had to have been right; they were spies for Trader.

 

 Fortunately, the dried mud walls were softening under the presence of the water and soon the buildings would start to sag and crumble. Chaos was spreading through Rockpoint, and that alone was what gave Gaza the chance to escape with his wives. The silent women had expressed no wish to leave the man, and privately he was glad for their company. The more blasters covering his ass the better. Their sodden clothing clung to every curve, exposing a wealth of flesh, but the blasters in their hands were expertly balanced and swept the ville in a steady pattern. Gaza approved.

 

 Reaching the junkyard, Gaza cut down two sec men waiting in hiding near the fence, then took the handcannons from their twitching fingers, along with an oil lantern. Damn fools.

 

 Lighting the wick, Gaza held the lantern high as he maneuvered through the jumbled collection of junk and rusty cars, leading the five women at his back into a metallic cave formed by predark cars tilting against one another. The baron paused at one point, listening to the growing sounds of battle, punctuated by the groan of a collapsing building, before directing the women around a deadfall trap—an engine block attached to chains that would have swung along the middle of the tunnel with deadly force, a cast-iron pendulum that would have crushed any intruder into a bag of broken bones with one shot.

 

 After a few yards more, the baron guided them past a pitfall, the bottom of the deep hole studded with pool cues, the long sticks sharpened and charred with fire to make them strong. The rotting remains of a curious sec man rested halfway down the pit, his desiccated corpse still suspended in the air from the wooden shafts jammed into his torso and broken limbs.

 

 Once past that, Gaza kept his wives close as he paused to dig in the loose sand to uncover a wooden box. Lifting the lid, he cut a few wires inside, disabling a predark land mine, then started forward into the flickering darkness.

 

 From overhead came the steady patter of the falling water from the towering geyser, and soon the hissing lantern revealed a ramshackle school bus sitting in the center of the dim tunnel, its rusty sides covered with corrugated steel, the windows barred, jagged knife blades jutting from the rim of each tire.

 

 His wives bobbed their heads at the sight, and Delia eagerly started for the vehicle, but he roughly pulled her aside.

 

 "Leave it alone," Gaza directed impatiently. "That one's a boobie. No engine or fuel, and if anybody tries the ignition the whole thing blows."

 

 The women smiled proudly in appreciation of the death trap and followed their glowering husband as he eased around the crumbling wreck to reach a large canvas covered object just behind the bus.

 

 Hanging the lantern on a pole sticking out of the hard packed sand, Gaza ripped off the canvas to reveal the squat, angular box of a military wag.

 

 Eight huge tires supported the APC, the armor a mottle of tans and creams, perfect camou for the desert. The hull was covered with closed blaster ports and hatches, with a big bore .50-cal sitting on top, a glistening link of oiled brass dangling from the breech.

 

 "That's our ride out of here," he said triumphantly.

 

 Gaza looked upon the vehicle with pride. He had found the war wag in a cave stuffed full of supplies, obviously some trader's secret cache. It had taken months of work to get it working again, and then after taking everything he could fit inside the vehicle, Gaza rigged the rest of the supplies to blow so that nobody could use the weaponry against him. He was miles away when the cave detonated, and upon reaching Rockpoint had proclaimed himself baron. The former baron had objected and got blown to hell for his troubles. What did bravery amount to against steel and blasters? Damn fool should have known better.

 

 Going to the rear of the APC, Gaza checked a wax seal on the double doors to make sure nobody had entered the transport. When he was satisfied it hadn't been disturbed, he smashed the seal and shoved aside the doors with the squeal of stubborn metal.

 

 "Inside!" he snapped, clambering into the darkness. "I'm leaving whether you bitches come with me or not!"

 

 Hurriedly, the women scrambled into the APC and figured out how to latch the double doors shut just as there came a roar of power from under the floor and the vehicle lurched forward. Suddenly the interior was filled with white electric lights and they grabbed seats along the metal walls. The blinking lights of electronic equipment winked from racks above them, but the women ignored the display and fumbled to open some blaster ports, shoving through the barrels of their rapidfires.

 

 Throwing the wag into gear, Gaza fed the big diesel engine's fuel and worked the steering levers to angle around the school bus, the sides of the LAV-25 APC squealing as its armored chassis scraped along the rusted pile of wrecks forming the slanted walls. Once past the bus, he stayed in the middle of the tunnel, easily jouncing over the pit and hardly flinching when the engine block slammed into the side of the military war wag, the strident impact making the steel hull loudly ring and rattle the bins of linked ammo.

 

 A curtain of water blocked the end of the tunnel, and Gaza hit the gas as the APC roared from its hidden garage and onto the flooded streets. Water sprayed high behind the LAV-25 from the spinning tires, as Gaza directed the war wag directly into the crowds of people, plowing through the bodies as if they were no more than weeds. Needing both hands to drive, the baron could only laugh as the terrified people tried to splash out of the way and were crushed beneath the thick military tires. Galloping around the side of the temple, a group of sec men on horses charged at the wag, and Gaza surged through the center of the group, fishtailing the APC to smack them aside with crushing force. The sec men still alive fought to control their animals, and that was when the women cut loose with their rapidfires through the blaster ports, the barrage of small caliber rounds finishing the job.

 

 Dripping blood and entrails, the APC rolled through the downpour as the awnings ripped free, cascading down their accumulation of water. For a moment, Gaza was blind, and that was when from out of nowhere a Molotov crashed on top of the APC in an explosion of fire. But the deluge from the geyser quickly quenched the flames, and his wives retaliated with bursts of blasterfire.

 

 Heading for the front gate, Gaza careened off the corner of a building, running down several people, their screams continuing to come from below the war wag but only for a few brief moments. Another Molotov hit the vehicle's front prow, and as the flames licked into the wag through the air vents, Gaza frantically drove into an alleyway to dodge any further firebombs. But unexpectedly, there was no end to the alley, a wide breach going all the way through the thick outer wall.

 

 Suspicious as hell, the baron scowled at the sight. Could this be some sort of a trick? No, there had been no time for the sec men to arrange for such an elaborate trap. This had to be how the outlanders got out of the ville. Excellent.

 

 Revving the big diesel engine, the baron charged down the alleyway and roared through the crumbling gap, the APC riding rough over the irregular chunks of masonry, dead horses and sec men. More blasterfire came from the top of the wall, and then Gaza was outside the ville on flat ground. Throwing the war wag into high gear, the baron raced across the desert sand into the night, and soon even the sporadic sniper fire died away into the distance.

 

 Easing off the bolt on her rapidfire, Delia rose from her chair and awkwardly walked to the front of the APC to touch her husband on the shoulder.

 

 "Yes, I have a plan. There are some ruins to the north," Gaza replied to the unspoken question, then paused for a moment as the badly stitched wound on his throat began to bleed slightly. He mopped away the blood and continued. "We'll hide there for a while and then move on to New Mex. I know of some villes there could use a strong baron."

 

 Holding on to a ceiling stanchion, Delia frowned and made a gesture with a fist.

 

 "Yes, they have contact with the Trader," Gaza answered angrily. "But that homemade war wag of his can't possibly stand against us! Soon I'll be the Trader, and then I'll carve out an empire the likes of which nobody has ever seen before!"

 

 The woman nodded in acceptance and carefully walked back to join the other wives. She had total faith in her husband.

 

 Checking her blaster, Delia stood guard at the rear blaster port, while Kathleen went to the front to ride shotgun, and the remaining women began checking over the hastily gathered supplies, each obviously content to do whatever was needed for the man they loved.

 

 SLUGGISHLY, HAWK awoke into a world of searing pain. For a single chaotic moment, the sec chief thought he was still falling, then abruptly realized he was merely laying in a soft bed, his chest and left arm swaddled in bloody bandages.

 

 "He's alive!" a sec man shouted across the room, and others rushed closer to crowd around the wounded man.

 

 Hawk grunted at their presence and tried to stand, but strong hands forced him back down onto the mattress.

 

 "Easy, sir, don't tear open that stitching," a sergeant said. "We found the dead wrinklie who shot you, and his body has been thrown to the pigs."

 

 The events replayed themselves in Hawk's mind, and he decided to accept the lie. "Where's Gaza?" he croaked weakly.

 

 The faces in the room took on dark expressions.

 

 "The nuking bastard ran away when the temple exploded!" a sec man cursed, tightening a hand on his gun belt. "There was some sort of well underground. We have a flood in the ville!"

 

 Another sec man added, "Most of the buildings are melting."

 

 Hawk understood. Yes, of course, sun dried adobe mud bricks. He should have thought of that event.

 

 "So how bad am I?" he asked with false calm. Death wounds often hurt less than minor scrapes.

 

 The sec man serving as a healer snorted at that. "Merely flesh wounds, sir. The lead went clean through without hitting anything vital."

 

 So the slug had missed anything vital and he would live. Good. Gaza was going to die for that mistake.

 

 "Get me a horse." Hawk groaned as he swung his boots to the floor and painfully sat upright. The barracks spun for a minute, then settled into place once more.

 

 "The ville is dead," he continued. "Raid the armory and take every weapon. We ride tonight!"

 

 "But your wounds…" a sec man said, frowning.

 

 Baring his teeth, Hawk stood by a sheer effort of will. "Fuck them! I want both Gaza and those outlanders chilled by dawn!" he shot back angrily.

 

 Miles away in the desert, Ryan and the rest of the companions steadily rode on into the night. Ahead of them lay endless miles. At the end of their journey, hopefully, they'd encounter the mysterious person who just might be the Trader.