by James Axler
According to rumor, the enemy had cannons.
J.B.’s artillery consisted of a single swivel gun with two harpoons.
The Armorer shook his head. The situation wasn’t good. In the Deathlands guerrilla war would’ve been the obvious answer, picking up much-needed weapons and experience in a series of running fights and ambushes. Jak was a past master at that kind of war. But they were on a small island. There just wasn’t room to run. The windswept rolling hills of Sister Isle didn’t provide much cover, and there were no subterranean cave complexes to hide in. J.B.’s biggest problem was that the Sister Islanders had been raised pacified. Luis and Leto had spent the past twenty-four hours running from hamlet to hamlet and telling their tale of what happened to those who were taken to the main island. The Sister Islanders were outraged and angry, and they knew they would be defending their families, but there was very little time to teach them how. The only two advantages J.B. could claim was that he would have the invading force outnumbered, and by all accounts most of them would be using single-shot blasters. There was no way around it. It was going to be a stand-up fight.
It was a fight J.B. was pretty sure he couldn’t win.
J.B. wished Ryan were here, but by the same token the only real hope was that Ryan could make something happen on the main isle.
Jak squatted on his heels, staring at the small assortment of weapons. “Spears?”
J.B. nodded. “Yep.” It was going to come down to that, and they didn’t even have anything from which to make a decent spearhead. They would have to make do with sharpened sticks with the points hardened in fire. Driven with a will, you could certainly kill a man with one, but Jak had told him most of the ville men carried swords. Worse still, Doc had reported the sec men at the cannon emplacement had bayonets. J.B. was already having nightmares of a few, select sec men shock troops rolling up the entire revolution with a single volley and a bayonet charge.
They would also have the support of the cannons, and while by all reports the number of predark blasters the enemy had were few, it would only take a few to turn the entire battle.
Zorime sat in the shadow of the nearest hut and echoed J.B.’s worst fears. “You are going to make my father very angry, Senhor Dix. You are going to get these people slaughtered, and yourselves nailed to wagon wheels and given to the mercies of the nightwalkers.”
J.B. ignored her. He stared at the dismounted swivel gun and the small keg of powder that had come with it off the boat. “We load that with nails, preposition to break a hole in their lines, mebbe sweep a gun position. I’ll make a bomb with the remaining powder. I’ll figure out how to deploy it later.”
Jak nodded, searching his own swamp-fighting experience for some kind of edge. The situation was pretty cut and dried. It was bad, and he couldn’t see any angles to play.
Doc leaned over the strategy session. “I fear we must be mauled in any exchange of musketry.”
J.B. refrained from rolling his eyes. When Doc had a firm grasp on anything at all, it was all too often the obvious. “Yep.”
“Slings?” Doc suggested.
J.B.’s first instincts always ran toward blasters and explosions, but he was aware of slings. “Takes time to get good with one, doesn’t it?”
Doc pursed his lips in thought. “Must our brave island confederates be good? If the enemy confronts us in formation to give us volley fire, and we release hundreds of stones at their center, then surely with even the vaguest of aim it will have a deleterious effect, and would it not also give us a much-needed element of surprise?”
J.B. looked at Jak, who shrugged. J.B. frowned up at Doc. “You know how to make one?”
“Use one?” Jak asked even more pointedly.
“Oh, as a lad my playmates and I whiled away many a happy hour with our homemade slings and slingshots. Church bells were our most cherished target. I received many a thrashing by our good parson for—”
“Doc?” J.B. asked.
“Yes, J.B.”
“How come you never mentioned this before?”
Doc searched about in his damaged mind for an answer. “It…never occurred to me.”
J.B. just let that one go. “What do you need?”
“Oh, lengths of leather, plaited hair or wool.” Doc scratched his chin. “Even simple cloth will do except that it will tear after a prolonged session of slinging.”
“Whatever happens won’t be prolonged. What else?”
“Well, we have neither the time nor the wherewithal to cast proper, elliptically shaped bullets of lead or clay, so we must rely upon stones. Best if they are smooth and approximately the size of hen’s egg. I suspect the beaches will provide them.”
Jak shrugged. Military strategy wasn’t usually Mildred’s purview but she spoke up as she saw an angle. “This could work. The ville can’t afford to slaughter these people. They need them as labor and as a blood source. They don’t want a war. They’ll want to end this quick. Like you said before, they’re expecting all it will take is a volley and bayonet charge. Our guys scatter. They round up the women and children and our guys surrender unconditionally. They crucify a few people, us included, as examples, and they’re back to business as usual.”
“Our dear Mildred is right,” Doc agreed. “Despite the Lady Zorime’s imprecations to the contrary, if we can surprise them, bloody their noses, give them a real fight, then they will have to rethink their entire strategy. It will buy us time, and Ryan.”
J.B. looked at Jak. The albino teen was grinning. J.B. nodded. “Doc? Get the women making slings. Get the children into rock-gathering gangs. Krysty, get me a head count. I’ll need every man over the age of fourteen. Jak, get the men to cutting straight boughs and making spears. No time to teach them to fight in formation so make them short. Each as tall as the man wielding it.”
Doc translated to Ago and Nando.
Jak rose without a word and drew his heaviest knife. He nodded at Ago to follow him. Mildred looked at J.B. ruefully. “J.B., give me any kind of blaster and I’ll do my best.”
“Rather you set up a surgery. Get the island midwives together. Lot of people are gonna get hurt whichever way this goes. Stay at the church. Stay in the light. You know you’re a valuable commodity. If it comes to it, you surrender.”
“J.B.—”
“Millie, you have to promise,” J.B. insisted.
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ryan strained against his bonds, but he was strapped to a gurney by predark medical restraints designed to hold violent patients. He hadn’t the strength to tear free from the heavy-duty webbing, and his fingers couldn’t reach the multiple buckles. Ryan sagged back in his restraints. The interior looked like the med lab of a lot of redoubts he’d seen except that the electrical lighting had failed long ago and lamps and candles lit the room instead. Dr. Goncalves sat at his desk, and his witchy-looking nurse leaned against the edge of the desk looking Ryan up and down as though he was some new breed she didn’t recognize.
Baron Barat stood over Ryan, gazing down upon him with cold-blooded interest. Four sec men lurked behind him. “I gather my brother took your accomplice,” Barat said. “Cafu, was it?”
Ryan glared silently up at the ceiling.
“How many others among the slave population have you suborned?” A sneer curled Baron Barat’s lips. “Besides women and blind men?”
Ryan inwardly had to admit not nearly enough.
Barat read Ryan’s mind. “Word of your capture and the death of the slave Cafu have been sent to all the farms. Your revolution is over. All that remains is to crush Sister Isle. I will have you know that you are going to get a large number of the people you sought to save killed.”
“Their choice.” Ryan rolled his eye onto the baron. “And better dead than in here.”
“Speaking of in here, I am going to have Dr. Goncalves bleed the rebellion out of you. Then he will take his amputation kni
fe and hobble you. Thence you will be taken across the strait to Sister Isle where you, any of your surviving male companions and a suitable number of rebellious Sister Islanders shall be broken upon the wheel to make an example that will be remembered for generations. Finally, you will all be brought back and crucified on the beach outside the cave where you first encountered my brother. Bonfires will be lit, and Raul and the brethren will commit acts upon you that no one will want to remember.”
Ryan stared upward stoically, but he couldn’t help think of Xadreque’s promise and her long teeth.
Barat whirled. “I leave him in your charge, Doctor. The fleet leaves tomorrow with the outgoing tide. Have the clinic prepared. We may well take casualties subduing Sister Isle. Mr. Cawdor saw fit to put something of a dent in our powder supply.” Barat gave Ryan a scathing look. “However, my son and his cadre have been putting great effort in their bayonet drills. I will have you know that Sylvano has taken an even dimmer view of you abducting Zorime than I have. I believe he is prepared to be quite ruthless.”
Ryan deigned to look at Barat. “My friends won’t hurt her. They won’t let anyone else hurt her, either.”
“You know? I rather believe you, Mr. Cawdor. I shall likewise spare the women in your party.”
Ryan knew that short of being killed outright, there was very little chance that Krysty and Mildred would be spared. Barat stalked out of the clinic and left two of his sec men behind. Moments later Ryan heard a wag drive off.
Dr. Goncalves ran a hand over his bald head, wiped his lips and regarded his subject with unhealthy interest. “You are quite a remarkable specimen for having come out of the Deathlands, Mr. Cawdor,” he remarked. “The last few Deathlanders that came through the mat-trans were in terrible condition. According to the annals of my predecessors, even the refugee fleet that came long ago showed signs of great privation. You nonetheless seem quite robust. By report, so are your companions.”
Ryan reserved comment. He had grown up healthy in Front Royal, and since then the Deathlands had hardened him. He had taken more wounds than any man should, and later in life, if there were any later, it would cost him. However, at the moment he was one of the hardiest and most dangerous specimens the Deathlands could produce short of radical mutation.
“Let us see.” Goncalves took Ryan’s bound wrist in one cold, soft, sweaty hand. Ryan’s forearm was striated with veins, scars and muscle. “A well-pronounced median cubital vein. Always a good sign.” He poured brandy onto a clean bit of cloth and disinfected the extraction site on the inner elbow.
Ryan didn’t bother to struggle as Goncalves prepped a syringe. His blue eye fixed on the ville healer in coldhearted hatred. “I will chill you.”
Goncalves laughed. “You are a refreshing change, Mr. Ryan. The Russians and Deathlanders begged, and the Sister Islanders?” Goncalves scoffed. “They just weep.”
Ryan watched unflinchingly as the needle slid in and Goncalves drew back on the plunger. Ryan’s blood filled the tube. “You wouldn’t happen to be aware of your blood type, would you?”
Ryan spit in Goncalves’s face.
The two sec men swore in Portuguese and raised the butts of their blasters. Goncalves waved them off and withdrew the needle. He put no pressure on the wound and blood drooled down Ryan’s arm. Goncalves smiled as he wiped his face and took a fistful of cordial glasses out of a medical cabinet. He expressed ten cc’s of Ryan’s blood into each glass and mixed it with a shot of brandy. The red blood congealed in the alcohol and sec men each happily took a glass. Goncalves swirled the glass and held it up to the lamplight. The mixture looked like bloody clouds in a sunset sky. He held the glass out in mocking toast. Ryan watched coldly as the ville men tossed back his blood. Goncalves set his glass down. “Nurse Pauleta, let us begin with a thousand cc’s.” A sick gleam entered his dark eyes. “Let us see if that cools the fire in his blood.”
Ryan had seen Mildred draw blood before. Five hundred and fifty cc’s was the usual medical maximum.
Nurse Pauleta was every inch the antithesis of the healer. Goncalves was short, round, and his bald head and chalk skin made him look like an egg. Nurse Pauleta was tall and willowy in a black nurse’s uniform. Her face was emaciated and her black hair was pulled back in a severe bun. She trailed her finger up Ryan’s slowly bleeding arm and licked his blood from her finger. “Yes, Dr. Goncalves.” She prepared a gleaming bronze needle that looked entirely too large for the operation. Ryan grimaced as she slid the needle into his vein and tied it in place with a bandage. The nurse dropped the trailing tube into a Mason jar on the medical tray next to the gurney.
Ryan’s blood began spurting into the jar in a stream. He controlled his mounting rage. Thrashing around would only earn him ruptured veins, and Goncalves was already going to put a big dent in his blood volume. He was a mess after all the beatings and rock saltings, and soon he was going to be a quart low. The only advantage Ryan could see was that just like the overseers and sec men at the powder mill, Goncalves and Nurse Pauleta seemed to enjoy their jobs just a little too much. Ryan knew he had to keep it together, make the thousand cc donation and hope for an opportunity to present itself.
Ryan’s heart sank as two sec men walked in. One had his hand on Moni’s shoulder and the other sec man gripped Thais. Each had a blaster against the women’s backs. Goncalves clapped his hands delightedly. “Oh now, look, Mr. Cawdor, a reunion. Dear Thais I know all too well, as does Nurse Pauleta. She enjoyed her so very much before she was given to those rough mill workers, didn’t you?”
Nurse Pauleta looked long and knowingly at Thais, who shuddered in revulsion. Barat’s sec men took this news with keen interest.
“Such a rare flower cannot escape notice. And this other?” Goncalves lifted Moni’s chin. “This must be Moni, poor Cafu’s lady love.” He let go of her face and shook his head in dismissal. “They all look the same to me after the bloom of youth has faded.”
Looking up from the gurney, Ryan could see something Goncalves couldn’t. He could see beneath the broad hats the sec men had pulled low. The two men’s skin was tanned like leather from years of pulling wags beneath the sun, and both men were carrying a refurbished Uzi Ryan recognized from the powder mill. They were not holding Moni and Thais to control them. They held the women’s shoulders because beneath the stolen smoked glasses the two men were blind. Barat himself had said that word of Ryan’s capture and what his fate was to be had been sent to all the farmsteads. Moni was mounting a rescue with the only assets she had.
Things were about to get interesting.
Goncalves dismissed Moni’s existence. “Nurse, strip Thais and put her on the table next to Mr. Cawdor.”
Nurse Pauleta yanked Thais away from the sec man holding her. He almost reached out for her blindly but stopped himself. The nurse cranked Thais’s arm back in a cruel hammer-lock and yanked her head back with a handful of hair. The woman knew something about controlling slaves. Thais whimpered as Pauleta bent her over the steel table and began cutting away her tunic with a pair of medical shears. The baron’s two sec men watched with avid interest.
Thais moaned plaintively as she was stripped. “Moni…?”
Moni looked at Ryan and desperately flicked her eyes at the two powder slaves clutching blasters beside her. She spoke quietly but firmly. “Ryan.”
The two blind men lifted their chins expectantly. If any of the ville men had been looking at them they would have seen their tanned faces. Everyone was too busy watching Nurse Pauleta’s ministrations. “Yes,” Ryan said. The two blind men’s shaded gazes snapped around at the sound of his voice and located him. “I am here.”
Moni produced a stolen kitchen knife from beneath her tunic.
Goncalves laughed. “Mr. Cawdor cannot help you, he—” Goncalves jaw dropped as he noticed the blade in Moni’s hand. He shouted at the baron’s sec men. “Miguel! Waldir!”
Miguel and Waldir looked around in confusion.
Moni dropped to hands and k
nees shouting at her own sec men. “Ferno! Gil!”
Moni scuttled across the floor as Ferno and Gil cut loose. Miguel and Waldir shouted and went for their weapons. Glass cabinets shattered and medical supplies exploded under the blind salvo of autofire. To their credit their weapons never swung Ryan’s way. Moni slashed through the strap holding Ryan’s right arm. Nurse Pauleta hurled Thais to the floor and rounded on Moni with her hands curled into claws. She screamed as Moni slashed her palm open to the bone. Nurse Pauleta clutched her hand to her chest, howling imprecations in Portuguese. Thais hit her from behind and took her to the ground. Moni cut through Ryan’s leg restraint. The one-eyed man took the knife and cut his other arm free. A lucky bullet sheared away the side of Waldir’s skull and the sec man dropped.
Ferno’s and Gil’s weapons clacked open on empty mags. They dropped the blasters and drew swords. They stumbled forward swinging at any sound. Miguel raised his blaster and Ferno went flying backward as the musket ball hammered him. Ryan ripped the needle out of his arm and leaped from the gurney. Miguel drew his sword. Gil took two wild swings at him, and Miguel ran the blind man through with ease.
Goncalves screamed and shot Ryan twice. The one-eyed man stumbled backward with each blow and turned a baleful eye on the doctor. Ryan was growing very weary of being rock-salted. The healer dropped his blaster and ran screaming from room.
Miguel came for Ryan warily. A knife was no match for a sword, and Ryan flung it. Miguel dodged. The Deathlands warrior picked up the gurney and charged him. The sec man thrust, and his point punched through the frame inches from Ryan’s head. The one-eyed man used his superior size and his remaining strength to drive his adversary across the room. Miguel fell backward and both Ryan and the gurney fell on top of him. Ryan reached out for Ferno’s fallen Uzi, raised the empty auto-blaster and drove the butt into Miguel’s face until he stopped moving.