Pony Soldiers

by James Axler

  The tape machine seemed to be losing power, the voice slurring. It wasn't possible to catch any sound from the tortured Mescalero. Ryan guessed that he must have finally, and mercifully, succumbed to his injuries.

  "Sleeping?" came Strasser's gentle, flat tones. "You didn't answer any of my questions. Perhaps you're trying to trick me. Let's… poke this and cut along and then reach and pinch the… No? Then you must be dead. Yeah, why not? Useless alive, you red-skinned bastard. Find a use for you now…"

  There was a sigh of contentment. With a sharp click the tape machine switched itself off, and the room was suddenly awash with welcome silence.

  IN THE SHADOWED CANYON, Krysty sat alone, refus­ing the offers of food, fighting to clear her mind and link it with Ryan. She used every arcane skill that Sonja Wroth had taught her daughter. She knew that Ryan thought he had recognized the tall, skinny leader of the sec men. And she, too, thought… But the memory was blocked.

  "Thin, with thin eyes. Tall and triple-bad. Some­one that maybe I know as…"

  Suddenly, with the violence of a chem storm, Krysty remembered.

  "Gaia! It's Cort Strasser!"

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "CORT STRASSER!" Doc Tanner began to tremble, licking his lips nervously. "That cacodemon! No, Krysty, it surely cannot be he?"

  She had joined the others around the bright fire, telling them her dreadful suspicions about their en­emy.

  "It all makes sense, Doc."

  "He died back in Mocsin. Surely the man died! It is more than a soul can bear to think Strasser still breathes the same air. No. I can't…" He waved his gnarled hands helplessly. Lori patted the old man on the arm, trying to comfort him. Krysty thought that Doc had aged fifteen years in the past five minutes. Recalling the way that the former police chief of Mocsin had used Doc Tanner for his plaything, it wasn't surprising that Doc was so deeply shocked at the news.

  "You can't be certain," J.B. said, pensively draw­ing on one of the Apache pipes as it was passed around.

  "Oh, I'm sure enough, J.B.," she replied. "It all fits. Strasser on the run after Mocsin was burned out. Ryan had hurt him bad, remember. He runs south and west, and finishes here. He finds the renegades that Cuchillo talked about and takes them over. When he learns about the legend of General Custer he becomes the General. Times fit."

  "He was the right build," Doc muttered. "Skinny as a stock whip."

  "And the way he went for Ryan. Only Ryan. Not you or Cuchillo," Krysty insisted.

  "This Strasser, mean bastard you spoke 'bout?" Jak asked, leaning forward, his hair tinted a vora­cious pink in the light of the fire.

  "Yeah, that's him," J.B. said, turning to face Krysty again. "But are you sure! Sure that it's him?"

  The girl nodded. "I saw him in my mind, like a homicidal animal. That dead skin and dead voice. And he's got…" Her voice tailed off into silence, and she buried her head in her hands. Her crimson hair curled protectively around her face.

  Cuchillo drove his golden cinqueda deep into the earth between his feet, clear up to the hilt. His face showed his anger and his frustration.

  "Ryan Cawdor is a friend of the people. He is an Anglo, but he is a brother to us. For him to be taken as prisoner by Yellowhair brings nothing but shame to the Mescalero. If he dies, then we are without honor."

  "And Ryan is without life," Lori added. "Which seems badder to me."

  "But we can do nothing. They have guns and the fortress. If we attack they will cut us down like corn before the scythe."

  "And they have blaster with many mouths that spits fire and lead very quickly," Stones in Face said.

  "Gatling?" J.B. asked interestedly. "Bastard can jam on you, but while it works… Yeah, they could do some good work against your warriors on horseback, Cuchillo."

  "We are not able to come at them in any other way. The place where old clothes and blasters are kept is under the hang of a mesa."

  "Couldn't we try and squeak in?" Jak asked. "At night, mebbe?"

  J.B. sucked on his front teeth. "Strasser knows me. Knows Doc. Knows Krysty."

  "Cort Strasser knows me, and I know Cort Stras­ser," Doc agreed. "A man who smiles and is a devil. A hellhound that will not turn. A wolf in wolf's clothing. Eyes as smooth and hard and black as Apache tears. The knife in the groin, the cold in the night, the shark beneath the polished surface of the limpid ocean. By the three Kennedys! Strasser is the walking death!"

  With a cry of anguish, Doc rose clumsily to his feet and stumbled away toward the wickiup, followed by an anxious Lori.

  Jak broke the silence. "Strasser don't know me. Never met me. Didn't see in firefight."

  "So what?" J.B. asked. "You going to go and spring Ryan on your own?"

  "Why not?"

  "Come on, kid—"

  "Don't call me…"

  The Armorer held up both hands, palms out, of­fering his apology. "Sorry, but come on, Jak. They got four or five dozen sec men, well trained. You fig­ure you got a chance?"

  "You figure got better one?" the boy retorted, eyes blazing.

  The Armorer didn't reply, all watching him, wait­ing for him to speak. Cuchillo spoke, ending the si­lence. "Eyes of Wolf speaks with the tongue that is straight."

  The albino looked around at the others. "Any got better idea? No? Then I go."

  "Then we'd best give some time to talking this one through, Jak," the Armorer suggested, the dancing flames reflected off his glasses.

  "Sure. How get there. How get in. How get out. How get back. Easy."

  The Mescalero veterans all smiled appreciatively at the confidence of the young warrior.

  Later that evening Krysty ticked off the points that Jak had raised. "Get there on a pony. We'll come as close as we can with you. Get in by pretending to be a mercie. A gun for hire. You got the balls to carry that one through. Last survivor from a train of land wags massacred by the Apache. Say you want to join up with the sec men."

  Jak nodded at J.B.'s words. "Find Ryan. Free him. Steal horses."

  Krysty finished it off. "And we'll be around to try and escort you back here, hold off any pursuit."

  "When?" Doc asked. The old man had finally re­covered his nerves and had joined the rest of the small group in their own low hut.

  "Tomorrow," Jak insisted. "Ryan mebbe chilled now. Sorry, Krysty, but true. If too late try and get out. Must go soonest."

  "Boy talks like a bothersome telegram." Doc sighed. "Incidentally, young fellow-my-lad, you bet­ter watch out for Mr. Strasser and his not so pleasant tricks."

  "What tricks, Doc?"

  "Man's a damnable ass-bandit, Jak. Just don't drop the soap in the showers when Cort Strasser's anywhere close."

  From the boy's expression, Krysty realized that Jak hadn't any idea what Doc was trying to say.

  "Jak," she said.

  "Yeah."

  "Doc's telling you that Strasser's a double-perve. He likes boys."

  "Why didn't say so, Doc?" Jak grinned. "I'll chill Strasser if I can."

  "In Deathlands let it ne'er be said that I slew a sleeping man," Doc muttered, shaking his head and looking very puzzled.

  Lori led him away to their end of the wickiup, tak­ing him behind the blanket, pausing to throw a daz­zling smile over her shoulder.

  J.B. sighed. "Times it seems Doc's on the road back to us. And times it's like he's lost his field manual to living."

  Krysty nodded in agreement. "But when he's good he's very good, J.B., isn't he?"

  "Yeah. Listen. I gotta strip and clean my blasters. Early start again tomorrow."

  "Sure. I'm tired. Doubt I'll sleep easy without Ryan, but you got to try. Wake me in good time if I'm not up."

  "Sure." J.B. went to his own section of the hut.

  "Got to see 'bout things," Jak mumbled, heading for the door.

  "What about having your bandages changed? Isn't Man Whose Eyes See More going to do that for you, Jak?"

  "No. Got to…" But the words trailed away and Krysty c
ouldn't hear what he said.

  "What?"

  "Steps Lightly Moon'll do 'em."

  "The bandages, Jak?"

  "Yeah. Why not?"

  "Come on, don't snap at me like that. I only asked you."

  "Sorry, Krysty. Know bad feel 'bout Ryan. Me too. But you know I've never… kind of… and she's real nice to me."

  She watched, fascinated, wondering whether the white-faced teenager was capable of blushing. But his cheeks remained as muted as alabaster.

  "Jak. Just don't get hurt. And don't hurt Steps Lightly Moon, either."

  "Wouldn't."

  "In the next few days we'll know which way the knife landed. Point or hilt. Point and we're likely all chilled. Hilt and we'll likely move on, somewhere else. Where does that leave you and the girl, Jak? Think about it."

  "Can't live on what might happen, Krysty," he said, slipping out through the door. She wondered whether Ryan still lived.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  STRASSER WASN'T TAKING any chances with his pris­oner.

  He didn't reappear himself, but after a few hours the cell door opened again. No less than six sec men came jostling in, all with handguns, Colt Navy repli­cas from the late 1990s.

  "General says you gotta be fed," said one of them, with the twin stripes of a corporal on his sleeve.

  Ryan felt the tiniest rise in his spirits. If Strasser was giving him food then he wasn't likely to begin the butchering process for a while yet. And time was life.

  While the troopers ranged themselves around the cell, with one on each side of the heavy sec door, the corporal sidled toward the manacled prisoner. There was a bunch of keys hanging on a hook to the left of the entrance, and he used one of them to snap open the cuffs.

  "Blink out of place and you get chilled, Indian-lover," he said. Ryan pulled a face, turning away from the man's rank, stinking breath.

  One of the sec men backed into the corridor and came in with a tray, which held a battered metal bowl and a drinking mug. He put it down in front of Ryan and moved away.

  "Eat it," the senior sec man ordered, pointing at the tray with the barrel of his Colt.

  "What is it?" Ryan asked, sniffing at the brown sludge in the bowl, noticing that the spoon they'd given him was of soft plastic. Strasser being careful again, he thought.

  "Don't mind what it is, you bastard. Just eat it like you're fucking told."

  "Six blasters at your shoulder makes even a prickless little bastard like you into a hero, doesn't it?" Ryan sneered, aware that feeling was flowing into his hands and arms now that the cuffs were off.

  The troopers glanced at one another, waiting to see what the noncom did. A vein began to throb over his right eye, across the temple. He swallowed hard be­fore saying anything.

  "I seen big talkers like you, Cawdor, you one-eyed filth. Them Indians all come here filled with piss and importance." He shook a menacing finger at Ryan. "You can say what you like now. General's busy for the night. But he'll come see you on the morrow, Cawdor. I seen big men, strong men, crawling on this floor here, weeping like babies. Blood pouring from empty eyes, their own guts tangled around them. Weeping and begging. Your time'll come, Cawdor, and it'll be me here watching you at your lousy end­ing."

  "You still didn't tell me what this crap is." Ryan held up the bowl threateningly, as if he might throw it at them. He smiled grimly as they all winced away from the threat.

  "Beans," said a runty leather-faced man with a dropped shoulder.

  "Always beans, stranger," a second man added.

  "Fried beans. Boiled beans. Beans over easy. Beans well done. Beans medium rare."

  "Forgot something," another of the watchful sec men put in.

  "What's that?"

  "You forgot the fucking beans."

  For a moment the hostility seemed to have been forgotten, but the corporal restored it, shouting at the laughing troopers.

  "Stop the flap-trapping! Grindly, General wants him chained. Neck collar, and link it to that wall ring."

  At least Ryan was able to sit down. His feet and hands were left free, but the heavy iron collar bit into the skin of his throat. After the sec men had left him, Ryan tugged a few times at the chain, testing its strength, realizing that it was utterly immovable.

  The bunch of keys dangled on the hook across the room, taunting him with their nearness.

  The beans tasted terrible, and the water was brack­ish, but he finished it all, knowing the value of keep­ing his strength up.

  The chain was cinched too short for him to be able to stretch out and sleep on the pile of straw in any kind of comfort, but he found a position where he could doze.

  Normally Ryan Cawdor managed to sleep without any dreams that he could remember, but that night in Fort Security was different. Twice he woke sweating, jerked from sleep by horrific nightmares.

  In the first he was sitting by a deep, still pool of wa­ter that was similar to the lake that backed up Drowned Squaw Canyon. The sky was a velvet pur­ple with soundless slashes of pink and silver chem-lightning torn across it.

  Tall saguaro lined the edge of the pool, their long spines decorated with the corpses of little reptiles and birds. Somewhere in the distance Ryan could hear mocking laughter that went on and on.

  Krysty Wroth was swimming in the pool, naked, floating on her back a few yards out from where he sat. In the dream Ryan stood up, and he saw that the water was clear as any crystal. He could see his lover as she swam, deep down, over the sandy floor of the lake. And he could also see the fish that were moving toward her.

  Thin as sword blades, with shimmering iridescent scales that gleamed turquoise, blue and green, they swam with a peculiar, undulating movement, more like snakes than fish. Their mouths were long, lips peeled back off triple rows of saw-edged teeth. The biggest of the fish was about four feet in length.

  Ryan waved and yelled, but his mouth felt as if it were filled with cotton. Krysty still twined and waved to him, oblivious to the menace that was approaching her.

  He was about to plunge into the pool when he stopped and touched the surface with his hand. It was as hard as glass, and hot. So hot that the skin on his fingers puckered and blistered.

  The creatures closed on Krysty, and Ryan saw blood clouding the water. But she continued to swim and frolic under the lake, still smiling up at him as the saurian fishes tore great strips and chunks of living flesh from her body.

  That was the first time during the long, restless night that Ryan Cawdor woke to a deep, guttural cry in the jail cell, realizing that the noise was torn from his own throat.

  His second dream was different.

  He was driving, peering through the ob-slit at the front of a heavily armored war wag, lumbering along endless roads that stretched out ahead of him. The barren and gray landscape totally lacked features.

  Nobody else was in the vehicle with him. Every now and again, Ryan saw someone standing at the side of the highway, patiently waiting. The face and the body were shrouded in a dusty brown sacking robe that hung loosely about the figure. None of them made a move as he drove past, and they were utterly unrecog­nizable.

  And yet he seemed to know them.

  Out of the side viewers Ryan would occasionally glimpse something moving, always on the periphery of his vision. It seemed to be a loping animal that ran, sometimes on its hind legs and sometimes on all fours. It was a dull brown, blending into the flat landscape. In the dreariness it was inexpressibly menacing.

  There was a rectangular wire grille in front of the steering wheel on the war wag and at intervals a tinny voice came out of the speaker.

  "Without a judge there is no jury," it said.

  "All play and no work makes Ryan a dead jerk."

  "No man for debt shall go to jail."

  "You are born into a grave."

  Ryan tried to ignore the voice, fighting to control the wag on a road that was becoming more and more uneven. The figures came closer and more frequently, and the animal va
nished from the horizon.

  Past a dip in the highway, a single figure stood di­rectly in front of him, only fifty yards or so from the fender of the war wag. Ryan jammed on the brakes, yet nothing happened.

  The veiled person held up a hand, the cloth reveal­ing sere skin, the nails on the bent fingers cracked like horn. Ryan realized that he knew this hidden person. The war wag drove remorselessly onward. The brakes had failed.

  At the last second, before the crushing impact, the figure lifted its other hand and began to strip the veil off its face.

  Once more Ryan yelled out in his sleep and ripped himself awake, shivering in the cell, his mind blanked of what the face had been beneath the rotting mate­rial of the shroud.

  JAK WONDERED WHETHER the bandages around his broken ribs had somehow become much tighter. It was odd that he was finding it so difficult to draw a clear breath.

  Steps Lightly Moon had led him away from the wickiup of the other Anglos, picking her way be­tween the scattered stones that lined the floor of the canyon, leaving the sinking fires behind her.

  "There is a wickiup against the cliff," she said to Jak, who ghosted along in her footsteps. "Where girls go before a practice of the way of becoming a woman."

  "Yeah," the albino boy said, puzzled.

  "It is deserted now, Eyes of Wolf. There has not been such a way for six moons. The last time it was for me. When I ceased to be a girl and was given my woman's name."

  The adobe hut was almost invisible in the dark­ness, lurking against the towering wall of the cliffs like some slumbering animal, the windows seeming blackened eye sockets.

  "Come inside, Eyes of Wolf."

  The girl fiddled with something in a niche by the door, and a little clay lamp flickered into a pallid glow. Jak saw well in the darkness and could make out a ta­ble, two seats and a mound of sweet-smelling dried grass near the ashes of the fireplace.