ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  Now they were close enough for Ryan to be able to make out what the silver badge was that both men wore on their chests. It was a cross, with another crooked cross laid over it, one that he knew was called a swastika, making it into a strange sort of a double-cross.

  He could also now make a reasonable guess at the revolvers in the matching holsters. They were unusual blasters, very powerful Hawes Western Marshals, .357-caliber, single action, holding six rounds. Then the sun glinted off the brass-grip frame, and he slightly changed his opinion. The revolvers were actually the Montana Marshal model.

  "Seen enough, outlander?" Owsley snapped, catching him staring at the weapons.

  "Yeah. Nice blasters. Look in real fine condition, too. Like to see such good weapons well cared for. Where did you all manage to find them?"

  Steele answered him. "Brother Joshua came across them in a hidden closet at the back of a burned-out blaster store. Out beyond Muir Pass. Years back. There were the long blasters, as well as two dozen of the Hawes hand blasters."

  "Anything else?" asked J.B., unable to conceal his own interest.

  Steele shook his head. "Guess not. We got a few blasters that we've gotten… sort of acquired over the years. Few self-mades and patch-ups from the Mescalero."

  The trail rose slowly over the next hundred yards, then reached a point where the massive trees had been cleared well back on both sides. Beyond the crest the whole area opened right out into a very large, sunlit clearing, a good three hundred yards across, roughly circular.

  "This is called Hopeville," Steele said, holding his arms out wide to encompass the settlement of various timber buildings. "Welcome."

  Ryan made a quick count of the scattered ville, making it around thirty of what looked like basic log cabins, rather similar to Mom's Place. They weren't laid out in any particular pattern, jumbled with no recognizable layout of streets. There was also what looked like a frontier church, though the windows had heavy, barred shutters that were clearly designed to be used as fire ports. Ryan also spotted a much larger, fortified house, near the center of the colony.

  Most of the buildings had short chimneys, all with covers to stop any attacker gaining access that way. And roughly one-third of them showed smoke.

  About a dozen men were visible. A couple carried rifles and seemed to be on a regular patrol, on the northern flank of the camp. One was chopping wood while another was skinning a large pig that had been slung up on a makeshift scaffold over a vat of boiling water. Two more were leading a pair of plow horses through the heart of the ville.

  Ryan also spotted about five women, every one of them busily engaged in washing or cooking activities. None of them took much notice of the arrival of the group of outlanders. A few lean dogs scavenged around the backs of the houses, several of them hanging around the man working on the pig's carcass.

  He noticed immediately that there were no children at all to be seen in Hopeville.

  "How you defend the place against any hostiles, like the Apaches?" J.B. asked.

  Jim Owsley ignored the question, walking on toward the largest of the houses. But Josiah Steele seemed happy to answer anything that was asked.

  "I wasn't here back in the early days of the Children of the Rock." Ryan saw the sec man's fingers stray to touch the silver double-cross on his chest as he mentioned the name of the community. "But I know that Brother Wolfe tried to build a wall, defensive to the ville. But it was impossible."

  "Why?" said Ryan.

  Owsley stopped and swung on his heel. "You ask too many fucking questions, outlander!"

  Steele held up a cautionary hand. "Now, now," he said quietly. "A friend in Hopeville is worth an hundred enemies. You know that's what Brother Wolfe preaches."

  "Sure."

  The taller of the men grinned at Ryan, turning to allow his smile to take in everyone in the party. "Impossible because of the terrain here. Too many trees. Too big to man a perimeter. Too few of us."

  "Heard that there was about a hundred of you," Krysty said.

  Steele looked worried for the first time. "I don't think Brother Wolfe would like—"

  "Fuckin' sure he wouldn't," Owsley interrupted grimly. "I'd button the flap, Josiah."

  "Not trying to spy on you," Ryan said calmly. "Just interested."

  Steele sniffed. "I guess—" He stopped speaking as Doc suffered another of his violent sneezing, coughing fits. "Hope he's recovered for the testing," he said.

  "What's the testing?" Mildred asked. "Brother Wolfe'll tell you all about that. I was saying about defending the ville. I reckon that we're sort of out of the way up here."

  "What's altitude?" Jak was staring around him with undisguised interest.

  "Varies around here. Average about twelve thousand. Some serious up and downing during skydark and through the long winters after."

  Owsley was moving on again. Now they were in the middle of the ville, approaching the large building that stood at its core. Ryan walked with Steele, the others close on his heels, all of them finally stopping a few paces from the open front door of the main house.

  A figure loomed from the shadows inside, and an echoing voice carried out to them.

  "By the blessed saints! It's my old friend, One-Eye Cawdor. I always swore that I'd chill you next time I saw you. And here you are!"

  Chapter Nineteen

  Suddenly Ryan was aware that they were surrounded by armed men.

  There were at least twenty, most in clothes similar to those worn by Steele and Owsley. Most were clean shaved, though Ryan spotted a couple with neatly trimmed mustaches. He thought one of them was the youngest of the trio that they'd run into back at Mom's Place, but he had other things to worry about.

  They had been waiting for their arrival, setting them up. That was all too obvious.

  The men, mostly looking middle-aged, were in doorways of houses, some with the barrels of their Winchester 94 rifles protruding from windows. Others had circled behind the outlanders, standing in a rough skirmish line. Most with long blasters, a few with revolvers.

  "Don't even think about it, Cawdor," urged the voice from the darkness.

  "Wasn't thinking about a thing. Except that this was a fireblasted sort of a welcome to the Children of the Rock. Not friendly, Brother Wolfe."

  The man still lingered just inside the doorway of the house. "It's Brother Wolfe, is it now, Cawdor?"

  "What else should it be?"

  The laugh was warm and friendly, the kind of laugh that sent a finger of ice down the spine.

  "What else should it be? I can recall the names that I got called by Trader and his renegades."

  So. That was it. The Trader had ridden the length and breadth of Deathlands, and for many of those years he had been accompanied by his two lieutenants, John Dix and Ryan Cawdor. Some of the time they'd left good, warm feelings behind them in the villes they'd visited. Some of the time they hadn't. Ryan blinked away the thick red mist of half-remembered blood and sighed. "Times long past, Wolfe."

  "Not worth forgetting," Doc added in his usual runic, inconsequential manner.

  "Don't know you, old man," the voice said. "I heard word of all of you, here and there."

  "You going to show yourself? Or just give the sign to have us gunned down?" J.B. asked.

  "Hold your tongue, Armorer. Think I don't know you, Dix, with your gleaming glasses and your favorite hat? Carrying an Uzi, I see."

  "Take some of you whoreson bastards with me, Wolfe. If it comes to that."

  "Not the place for a firefight, outlanders," Owsley said at their side. "Be your blood spilled in the dirt. Best way with strangers. Dead man won't betray you."

  Ryan looked coldly at him. "Any shooting and I swear I'll take you with me."

  "Big talk for an old one-eyed man," said the voice from the doorway, followed by the laugh again.

  Ryan was suddenly angry, irritated by the ambush they'd walked into like wet-eared stupes and not ready to play games any longer with the hidden man.
>
  "You come out now, Wolfe, or I promise you we'll start shooting."

  "You've come to talk, then talk. If you've come to shoot…"

  It was one of the Trader's favorite sayings.

  A spavined, brindled mongrel had crept, belly down, toward the group of strangers, sidling in closer to Ryan. Its teeth were broken and jagged, its eyes red rimmed, panting jaws dripping clotted foam. When it considered it had crept in near enough for its sneak attack, it snarled its hatred and lunged toward the groin of the one-eyed man.

  Ryan had been watching it, readying himself for the attack. His SIG-Sauer was safely holstered, the Steyr rifle slung across his shoulders. The hilt of the panga was close to his left hand.

  It didn't look like he'd have a chance of fending off the vicious animal.

  There was a blur of sudden movement, the pallid sunshine blinking off the honed and polished steel, the whisper of the eighteen-inch blade as it flickered into sight from the soft leather sheath. The hiss of whirring metal overlaid the growl of the charging dog.

  There was a dull thunk, like a swung ax blade biting deep into a thick log of sodden wood.

  The deep-throated bark was cut off into instant silence. The dog's lean skull dropped in the dirt, washed with a gout of bright arterial blood. The body, paws still scrabbling, fell alongside it, moving a couple of yards nearer Ryan, with the impetus of that final charge.

  "Holy shit!" Steele breathed.

  "Shep!" cried a woman, standing on the other side of the big smoldering fire at the center of the open square. "That stinking bastard outlander's slaughtered poor old Shep!"

  The man in the house clapped one hand against the frame of the door, in sarcastic applause. "Fast as ever, One-Eye. Age hasn't wearied you."

  Finally, as though sensing Ryan's building rage, Brother Joshua Wolfe stepped out into the morning air.

  Ryan recognized him, the years flooding back at the sight of the man.

  "I remember you," he said.

  "Me, too," J.B. muttered. "Yeah. Me, too."

  "And I remember both of you, oh, so very well. This is always here to remind me, should my memory become lax. With this I can never forget."

  The man held out both arms, like a huckster displaying his wares—two arms, but only one hand.

  The left hand was missing, ending in a neat stump, just above the wrist.

  Ryan looked up from the mutilation, recalling the man who now called himself Brother Joshua Wolfe. He was around six feet three inches in height, weighing close to 240. He was broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, wearing the same kind of uniform as most of the men in the ville. His hair was graying, where it had once been as black as a raven's wing.

  His black cord pants tapered down into a pair of mirrored black Western boots with a silver rattler embroidered across the toes. He had a Mexican rig, ornately worked in silver-and-gold thread, strapped low on the right thigh, holding a revolver like most of the men carried, the big .45 caliber Hawes Montana Marshal. Only Wolfe's had gleaming pearlized grips.

  "Remember, One-Eye?"

  He turned toward J.B. "Remember me, Four-Eyes?"

  "Sure. Didn't have the Hawes back then. If I recall it right, you had a matched pair of Iver Johnson Cattleman pistols, .357s. And a hideaway? Now, what…? Dark night! I remember it. Shoulder rig. Harrington and Richardson vest-pocket model. Smith & Wesson .32. Five rounds. Real short barrel. Pretty little toy."

  Wolfe shook his head admiringly. "By the saints… You sure got a memory for a blaster, Dix."

  The Armorer nodded, unsmiling, the muzzle of the Uzi covering the leader of the Children of the Rock. At his side Doc gave a raucous sneeze, tugging out his swallow's-eye kerchief to blow his nose.

  Ryan's memory was carrying him back. How long? Good ten or fifteen years? Could even be as long as twenty years. Memory for things like that was notoriously unreliable.

  But he recalled where it was that the Trader had run into Joshua Wolfe.

  "Near Spearfish, up in the old Dakotas. We'd been trading on the site of the old Little Bighorn battlefield. Then we were heading along toward the east. Beaver skins, collected from the Oglala. Ville where you lived was called…" He hesitated a moment. "Pine Fork."

  Wolfe nodded, smiling broadly. "Good, very good, my old friend. Go on. Let the memories flow free as fine-graded flour under the millstones."

  "You were the sec boss."

  "They had shirts the same color as your men's jackets," J.B. said.

  Ryan nodded. "Right, they did. Baron was called Tsin Lao. Way-back Chinese warlord."

  "Leper," Wolfe said. "You remember that? Tough old bastard had half his face gone."

  "That's right." He'd had no nose, just a snuffling hole, fringed with a ragged cuff of snot-dripping gristle. One eye had been pulled down toward the ravaged cheek. His upper lip had been missing, showing his tombstone teeth, like houses in a ghost town.

  "You tried treachery," J.B. said accusingly. "Drugged the meat for supper. One of our dogs ate some first. Died right there and then, in front of us. Trader had you questioned."

  "Baron let it happen. Scared of losing his whole ville. Trader in his pomp was a shit-scaring sight."

  Ryan grinned mirthlessly at the memory. "Most folks he asked questions got around to answering them."

  "Sometimes I wake in the small hours of the night and I'm crying." Wolfe reached up and touched the network of old scars that seamed his face around both eyes. "He used a needle, heated up white. Held it in thick gloves and threatened to blind me. Why'd he do that to me, Ryan?"

  "You got a strange memory, Wolfe. Kind of picks and chooses, doesn't it?"

  "How's that?"

  "You planned to murder everyone on War Wags One and Two."

  He turned toward J.B., his eye not moving from Wolfe. "We have Two in those days?"

  The Armorer sniffed. "Can't remember. Think so. Either way, it was a coldheart plan to butcher us all. Trader needed to know who was behind it. So, you ask the sec boss."

  "And I told him it was me." Wolfe took a long shuddering breath, his dark eyes closed. "He hurt me bad. Then, when I'd admitted what I'd done, he had me held fast and took a cleaver. Took it and swung it and hacked off my left hand, clean as whistling. And I swore I'd have revenge if I ever got the chance. And here you are. Both of you. Plucked chickens on my table. Delivered by the good Lord."

  Ryan had always known, in his heart, that it might end like this.

  The years with the Trader had been awash with blood. So many dead. So many left living, hearts filled with a bitter grudge against the Trader and the men who'd ridden with them.

  Deathlands wasn't big enough to expect to run and hide for all your life. In the end you'd bump into someone at the turning of a dark corridor, in a narrow alley in a frontier pesthole, at a desert watering hole, in the kitchens of a gaudy or on a mountain pass above tumbling meltwater.

  In a quasi-religious, military commune among the tall trees of the Sierras.

  "It's me and J.B. you want," Ryan said. "The others had nothing to do with Trader."

  Wolfe smiled at him. "Now then, One-Eye, I never thought to hear you talk stupe. We all know that you ride with someone, then you live and die with them. No division of that. Even the boy, who by the looks of him is your kin."

  "We take them out and let them have it, Brother Wolfe?" Owsley asked, licking his dry lips eagerly. "Or mebbe peddle them all to Mom?"

  Wolfe shook his head and sighed. "From that smoke we saw, I'd be astonished to find that Mom's Place is still functioning."

  He turned to Ryan. "No point in asking if you knew anything about that?" When there was no answer, he smiled his glacial smile again. "Now, why am I not surprised at that?"

  "Let's get on with it," J.B. said, half turning so that the Uzi pointed directly at the leader of the ville.

  Ryan sensed that a lot of the men of the Children of the Rock weren't comfortable at the standoff.

  There were enough of them, and they
were well enough armed to be confident of massacring the handful of strangers. But unless they were blindly stupid, they had to have also realized that Ryan and the others wouldn't go on into the dark land alone and unprotesting.

  Wolfe stepped forward, holding up his mutilated hand in a kind of benediction. "No," he said.

  "No, what?" Ryan's hand rested flat on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

  "It says in the Good Book that to err is human and that to forgive is to follow in the steps of Our Savior. It is truly to be divine."

  "So?"

  "So, my dear Ryan Cawdor. Long years ago you and others erred. Caused me great grief. But I wish for divinity. So I propose to forgive you. All of you. Both the guilty and those plagued with guilt by association."

  Ryan was ready to trust Wolfe just about as far as he could have thrown him. "So, what's that mean?"

  The first few words of the religious baron's reply were almost smothered by a fit of coughing from Doc. "It means that you are welcome here. If the testing goes well, as I am sure it will, then you will be accepted and may stay here, in total safety, under my personal protection, for as long as you wish."

  Chapter Twenty

  "So, what's testing?"

  Josiah Steele had been appointed by Joshua Wolfe to show the newcomers to their accommodation, a hut that smelled like it had been empty for several months, but was dry and spacious. There were seven single beds and a table and several upright chairs. A decent little kitchen was located out back, as was an outhouse at the bottom of the overgrown garden.

  Krysty had run her finger across the table, holding up the gray smudge of dirt. Steele had sniffed, promising to get some women in to scrub and clean it, as well as provide them with some fresh-laundered bedding.

  He had also told them a midday meal would be served up, communally, around one in the afternoon, and supper would be at seven.

  Now he stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the late-morning sun, his shadow spilling across the dusty planks.

  "What is testing?" Jak asked.

  The sec man shrugged. "Nothing to worry about for the likes of you."