Pony Soldiers

by James Axler

  The sec man lifted his dusty riding boot to slam it into the helpless man's body.

  "Leave him, Lance," shouted one of the troopers with a blaster.

  "You heard him!"

  "And you heard the General. Go out to the ghost town and pick up anyone there. Special to pick up the tall bastard with only one eye."

  "We got him. Didn't say nothing about him break­ing a finger or two."

  Ryan regained his breath slowly. He lifted his head and looked at the sec man called Lance, making sure he'd recognize him if the chance ever came to chill him. He was heavy-built, with swarthy skin and a thin mustache.

  "You want to damage the goods, then go ahead, but wait till the rest of us have gotten clear. You seen the General when he gets mad. Remember Carl Onas? Cut the General's stallion when he was grooming him. And drunk an' all. General filled his mouth with bits of ra­zor steel. Tied some cloth around his face and had it tightened. Bits o' bloody metal pushed clean through his cheeks and tongue. Couldn't never speak after that."

  "I know," Lance said sullenly.

  "That was for a little mark on his horse. Nuke-death! Think what the General'd do if you spoiled this double-chilled bastard."

  "Yeah, sure. Sure. Let's get him tied proper and leave him."

  The steel cuffs had sliding locks that gripped tight and grew even tighter if you pulled against them. One had been placed around each wrist, holding his arms out at an angle. But they had left his feet free. Ryan badly wanted a drink, and his temples pounded like trip-hammers.

  Otherwise, he didn't feel in bad shape.

  There were no windows in the cell, and the sec men had dimmed the lights before leaving him. He could see across the room by the light of the embers that glowed brightly in the brazier.

  Ryan had felt his life imperiled many times in his thirty-odd years of living. There was no point in giv­ing up until your heart had stopped beating and your vision had dimmed for the last time. But he found it difficult to have much hope. If this General Yellowhair was the swift and evil bastard that he seemed, then he was hardly likely to set Ryan free.

  But there was a hope. Though the invitation to peace talks had veiled a trap, the sec men couldn't know that. They'd sprung their own ambush too soon. It was just possible that Ryan had been captured to be used as an emissary to the Mescalero for the General's own peace proposals.

  What screamed against that hopeful view was the conversation by the troopers. Yellowhair had planned the raid purely to get hold of Ryan Cawdor.

  "Why?" Ryan said aloud. "Why does he want me so bad?"

  He only had to wait a little less than an hour to learn the appalling answer.

  THE WALLS OF THE DUNGEON were thick, and Ryan could hear nothing of the life going on all around him. Once he caught the clear golden notes of a bugle, sounding what he guessed was probably a call to eat the noon meal.

  The guard changed shortly after. A sliding panel in the door moved across, and Ryan could see the gleam of light in the passage beyond. Someone said some­thing, and there was a guffaw of rasping laughter. Then the panel closed again.

  The only other sound was the gentle shifting of the slow-burning ashes, tumbling in on one another. Ryan found that his eye kept returning to the small ruby glow of the fire. In the hands of an expert torturer, such as the monstrous Cort Strasser from Mocsin ville, a very little fire could give an appalling amount of suffering.

  The door opened very slowly and very quietly, on well-oiled hinges. The spreading rectangle of light grew broader, filling with the lean silhouette of a man, then shrinking again to blackness. The tumblers in the lock clicked shut.

  "You are a most welcome visitor to Fort Security, Ryan Cawdor."

  It was worse than the punch to the guts. If they knew his name, then there had to be a traitor in Drowned Squaw Canyon. Nobody else in the South­west would have recognized him. Unless it was some wandering mercie, hiring out himself and his blaster, who might have met Ryan when he rode with the Trader.

  "I've waited some time to see you again."

  Not a traitor. Someone from one of a thousand bloody yesterdays.

  The voice was dry and taut, like old parchment, and there was the hint of an impediment, as though the man had suffered some sort of injury to his jaw or palate. The prison room muffled the voice, distorting it.

  "You have nothing to say, Ryan Cawdor? Your one eye still works?" A sudden hint of doubt crept into the voice. "My gallant troopers have not harmed you? If they have then I'll… No, I see you are not hurt. Ex­cept, perhaps, your pride. You thought the General would fall like a ripe apricot into a maid's hand! Triple-stupe, Ryan Cawdor!"

  Ryan kept silent. The more Yellowhair talked, the more might be learned. Ryan's night vision had been impaired by the light from the passage, when the door was opened. Now it was returning.

  The General was extremely tall, the top of the flow­ing hair scraping at the low ceiling of the cell. The light was too dim for Ryan to make out the face, but it seemed to be gaunt and almost skeletal, with a heavy mustache blurring its details.

  "Still dumb, Ryan?"

  The man moved closer. "What if I was to pluck out that other eye? What then?"

  "Better men than you tried that threat, Yellowhair. They're dead, and I'm still seeing."

  "Good, good." Gloved hands clapped softly to­gether.

  "Why don't you go shag a dead mutie sheep, Yel­lowhair!" Ryan taunted.

  "No, Ryan. If I shag anyone, then it might well be you."

  The threat was delivered in the same dry, calm voice, and was infinitely more frightening for that.

  "But time is wasting. You still don't know me, do you? No, of course you don't. Let me take off this foolish wig… There. Now I turn up the light and…"

  It was the nightmare figure of Cort Strasser.

  All hope vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  BACK AT THE RANCHERIA Man Whose Eyes See More was drinking clear spring water from an old cup. He staggered suddenly, as though a high-velocity bullet had smashed into his brain. The mug dropped from his limp fingers and burst into a thousand jagged shards, the liquid splashing into the dry earth and vanishing in a dozen heartbeats.

  At the same moment, Krysty ran from the shad­owed interior of the wickiup, hair trailing in a stream of fire. Her mouth hung open in a soundless cry of despair, and her green eyes were turned toward the abandoned ghost town in the hills.

  The shaman's eyes locked with the girl's, and he nodded very slowly. Then he knelt to pick up the sharp pieces of broken pottery.

  "I THOUGHT YOU MUST HAVE DIED—hoped you'd died—back there in Mocsin."

  Cort Strasser perched himself on the edge of the ta­ble, pushing away some ivory-handled tools with ob­scenely curved steel blades. Now, in the light, Ryan couldn't understand why his memory had been so treacherous. The former sec boss from Mocsin had changed little since their last meeting. The skin was still taut across the planed bones of the high, thin skull, a sickly color, like rain-sodden straw. Strasser was nearly bald; only a wispy fringe of dark hair cir­cled his head, just above the narrow ears.

  With the exception of the full, curling mustache, everything about Strasser was thin. The eyes, black as jet, were like deep razor cuts. The nose was hooked like a vulture's beak, and the mouth seemed etched with dark acid. In the gaunt face, it was the mouth that had changed the most.

  The upper lip was crooked and swollen, the jaw not seeming to connect properly. As the sec leader grinned wolfishly at his victim, it was obvious that he had lost teeth and some of those that remained were jagged.

  Strasser noticed the way Ryan was studying his face. "You know me now?"

  "Sure. A piece of mutie shit like you sticks in the mind like dog crap on a man's boots."

  "Good. Good, Ryan. I have followed your name for months. Paid informers to keep track on you."

  "Yeah?"

  The long, angular skull nodded slowly. "Indeed, I have. But… one of the matter
s that we must talk together about is where you've been. I've heard word of you from all over Deathlands. Unless there is an­other one-eyed crazy with some strange compan­ions… unless there is, then you have moved fast and far."

  "Can't rightly understand you, Strasser. Seems like there's something wrong with your mouth."

  The light in the cell was strong enough for Ryan to see the flush of anger on the thin cheeks.

  The sec man forced a narrow smile. "I'll soon tell you what I'm going to do to you, Ryan, my old, old friend."

  "Can't wait." Ryan tried to bluff it out, but he could hear it, at the back of his voice, the hollow fear that comes to all men when they face the grim cer­tainty of a harsh passing.

  "I hear of you among the swampies. I hear of you in the wastes of snow to the far north. Then you are wriggling with the worms that live in your roots. A ville in the Shens. But all in such a short time, Ryan? How? Or are they lies? Where have you been since last we met?"

  "Here and there."

  "There is some trick you know about, something that is linked to the past. I've followed you, Ryan. Followed the stink of your running. Tracked the slime you leave behind you. And there is always a wall at the end of the trail. You are there and then—" he snapped his bony fingers together "—then you're gone again."

  "Now I'm here. How come you got away from Mocsin? Thought you might have stayed on as baron."

  "I'd wanted that. I was about to chill that stinking tub of guts, Jordan Teague. I was sec boss for him. Then you come riding in with the Trader, and it all goes up in fire, the whole ville wiped out like snow on a griddle."

  "Always did have a way with words, Strasser."

  "You got that old prick away. Doc. And the mutie girl with red hair. And that little bastard with eye­glasses, Dix. You all still together?"

  "Just the four of us." There was no real reason to lie to Strasser, but if he didn't know about Lori or Jak, then there wasn't any point in telling him.

  "You know, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted you on that ridge. Thought you'd been deliv­ered to me. The answer to my prayers. Then those sons of bitches come on their ponies and save you. Now, here you are."

  "How come you're General Yellowhair, Strasser? Animal like you, running at the head of a pack of other animals?"

  Strasser stood and walked around the room, slightly stooped beneath the low ceiling. "Had me some small difficulty in Kansas. The local baron had more blast­ers than I'd figured, so I chilled his wife, sister and all his mewling daughters and lit out south and west. Came across these good ol' boys sporting around the old museum. Read up some. General George Arm­strong Custer. Yellow wig. Wasted one or two who thought they should run the show. Now I run it. Easy as that. Just as fucking easy as that."

  "Now what?"

  "You mean with you and me?"

  "What do you plan to do, now you run this? You're the bastard baron of nothing, Strasser. Just a handful of dry, red dust."

  "Go a few days east, Ryan, and there's some seri­ous power and jack. I got me nearly half a hundred sec men who do what I tell 'em. This cavalry crap works, Ryan. Would you believe it, but it fucking well works?"

  Strasser threw back his head and laughed, an eerie, howling noise that sounded like a rabid wolf. The ob­sidian chips of his eyes closed in ecstasy, and he hugged himself with the long, thin arms.

  Ryan eased his wrists against the crushing steel of the cuffs.

  "What about the Apaches?"

  "Little red bastards? Been doing some work on old maps they got in the museum that show water runs in this part. In another few days I'll find where their wa­ter supply comes from. I know they got a canyon hole-up, someplace, and I got me some paraquat additives from the redoubt yonder. Pour it in, goodbye to the little red fuckers. Neat, huh, Ryan?"

  "Then you and your sec army moves out and grabs a bigger piece of action. Yeah, Strasser, I figure I get it."

  There was the distant sound of a bugle outside, the notes rising and falling.

  Strasser heard it and stopped pacing the chamber. "Meeting of sec officers, Ryan, my old, old comrade. We have a patrol going out this evening to try to track down the canyon where the Apache live. I must give them their orders. But I shall return later. This is a moment that I've anticipated for such a long time, Ryan. I don't want to spoil it by being in too much of a hurry. Later we can talk some more. You talk, and I'll listen. Then you can tell me how to get to the In­dian rancheria and all about that old imbecile, Doc. There's something 'bout him that I'd… Later."

  The hugely tall and lean figure paused, adjusted the flowing blond wig, so that the golden locks tumbled over his shoulders. "I won't leave you alone. Got an old reel-to-reel audio recorder. Temperamental, but I use it for a kind of memory of folks I've had in here for a talk. I'll play you the last one. He was an Apache."

  The machine, layered in dust, stood on a low shelf beyond the brazier. It had twin spools of tape, and a thick, primitive wire running to a socket, connecting it with the generator supply to the fort.

  It took a great deal of poking and fiddling before Strasser could bring the aged machine to crackling life. He turned up the volume control, listening with his head cocked to the loud hissing.

  "There," he said, approaching Ryan. The feral skull stooped, and the sec boss inhaled deeply, face inches from Ryan. "Ahh… The stench of mortal fear. How much I love it. The one thing that I love more, my dear Ryan, is the taste of other people's agony."

  The door opened and closed behind Strasser, and Ryan was once more alone.

  J.B. AND CUCHILLO ORO had returned to the rancheria, with Ryan's horse trotting behind them.

  Krysty, Doc and the others were waiting for them near the neck of the canyon. The girl called out first. "They got him. They've taken Ryan, haven't they? Tell us."

  The Armorer slid wearily from the saddle, handing the reins to a young boy wearing a leather breech-clout.

  "Yeah, Krysty. How d'you know? You see it?"

  "Yeah. It was like a mainline hit of the best golden jolt the world ever knew, like a fist clenching inside my skull, like having my brain scooped out and replaced with ice. Yeah, J.B. I saw it."

  J.B. knew that Krysty carried a strain of mutie blood in her. Not just the hair, or her unusually sharp sight and hearing. Krysty could sometimes "see," but not like a doomie who saw only the bad future. It was as if she could feel when something was happening, or was going to happen.

  Doc was trembling. "Krysty said she felt some­thing, around three, four hours ago. And the shaman said the same. He said he closed his eyes and saw an eagle falling down to the earth, and it had been slain by a shadow. That's what he said. That the eagle had been vanquished by a dark, enveloping shadow."

  Cuchillo also seemed near to exhaustion. "I knew that it was not a good day. The yellow sky was a bad warning to us. But he said we must go."

  "What happened? Sec men? Yellowhair? Let's go help." Jak was looking around for a pony, quite ready to set off immediately to rescue Ryan.

  "No, Eyes of Wolf," said the Mescalero war chief. "First must come words. And much care."

  "Trail showed a lot of horses, all shod in iron," J.B. said. "Must have second-guessed us. Smarter than we thought. Waiting at top of rise. Soon as they got him, they split. Never even looked for us. First we knew was the noise of galloping, and by the time we'd gotten ourselves up the main street, they were a cloud of dust heading toward their fortress."

  "Is Ryan dead?" Lori asked.

  "I see him waiting by the gate to the land of dark spirits," said Man Whose Eyes See More, looming over everyone, his mirrored glasses reflecting the bright sun.

  "We don't need all that spirit shit," J.B. said an­grily. "If Yellowhair's got him, then any double-stupe knows he'll kill him. What matters is when. And if we can get to mebbe save him. That's all that matters."

  Krysty walked away from the others, finding a quiet corner near the still pool. Cuchillo had announced that he would hold a council
after the evening meal had been served by the women, and that all of the Anglos would attend it, as well as all of the older warriors of the people.

  J.B. had gone with Jak, Doc and Lori to rest in their wickiup. Krysty had sensed the feeling of bleak fail­ure that hungover the entire camp. If General Yellowhaircould capture Ryan as easy as that, then what hope could there be for any of them?

  She felt close to tears.

  OVER THE MONTHS since he'd first met her, Ryan had been trying to learn some of Krysty's techniques for self-control, ways that she had been taught to take herself out of her own body at times of great danger or pain. Though he was becoming better at it, he still couldn't shut off the outside world in the way that his lover could. The crackling, indistinct sounds of Cort Strasser at his play seemed to grind on and on, into his mind, filling it with a dark horror.

  The voice of the Apache being questioned by Stras­ser was mainly inaudible. Ryan guessed that the man had been gagged by Strasser for much of the time. The snatches from the whining old recorder were more than enough to feed Ryan's anticipation of what was to come.

  The running commentary was provided by Cort Strasser himself.

  "Good strong body, young man. Muscles like iron. But soft here…" Laughter and a muffled groan of distress on the tape. "Hurts, doesn't it? Yet such gentle pressure, really. And if I get this a tad hotter and then push it as far as it'll go… Can you hear the steam as it hisses? Now, a long, shallow cut along the line…elbow, where we can hook this under the ten­don and scrape… shaving the bone."

  There came the sound of splashing water and Strasser laughing to himself. "So many guests fall asleep when they should be talking to me. Now you're awake again, and so am I. Very awake, Indian. If I place this wedge in your mouth…so much easier now the teeth and tongue are out of the way, and screw this to make it wider. Wider. There."

  Ryan heard a vile, choking sound that told its own story. Strasser's cruelty had been a legend clear across Deathlands.

  What was particularly horrific was that the sec boss wasn't actually making any effort at all to interrogate his prisoner. He wasn't bothering to ask him where the entrance was to the rancheria's canyon, or how many fighting warriors were in the band of Cuchillo Oro. All that interested him was the further levels of torture for its own bloody sake.