by James Axler
“Willow bark, chamomile and bee balm by the smell. Traditional herbals.” Doc looked askance as Vava and Eva began chewing mouthfuls of herbs both fresh and dried and then packing the dripping green chaw against Ryan’s hand and side. “I shudder to guess what that may be but I suspect it is the most effective treatment available until we can reacquire Mildred and Krysty.”
The goo stung. Ryan gritted his teeth as Eva and Vava pushed his broken rib into place and bound it with strips torn from their shifts. Eva shoved the steaming pot beneath Ryan’s nose. It smelled like a swamp and tasted about the same. Ryan drained it and sat back on the pallet. Vava undid the stained bandage on his hand, then washed the wound and took an iron needle and sinew and began to sew it. The sting and tug felt far away, and Ryan knew there was something in the brew stronger than chamomile and bee balm. It was cozying up to the bucket of beer he’d drunk.
“Doc, keep watch. I’m gonna shut my eye for a while.”
Doc laid his LeMat revolver in his lap. “You may rest assured.”
Ryan was asleep as his head hit the straw.
Chapter Four
Ryan awoke with his blaster in his bandaged hand. Dawn was rising gray out the open door of the hut. Vava and Eva were gone. Doc sat snoring in his sentry position. The one-eyed man checked his pack and found none of his belongings had been messed with. He sat up and did a quick self-assessment. His side and hand ached but far less than he’d imagined, and no infection or fever had set in. His stomach was growling, and he took that as a good sign. Checking the loads in his blasters, Ryan warily stepped out into the morning.
Ago, Nando and another man were standing around the coals of the previous night’s fire, passing around another huge bowl. They waved Ryan over and he took his turn slurping down leftover millet gruel that had been mixed with some kind of watery goat yogurt. Doc came out with a sheepish look on his face, painfully aware that he had fallen asleep on guard duty. Ryan simply handed him the bowl. “Tell Ago we need to get to the big island.”
The old man took a few swallows and handed the bowl to Ago. He pointed toward the big island said some words. Ago started talking excitedly and pointing inland instead.
“What’s he saying, Doc?” Ryan asked.
“I believe he wants to show us something.”
Ryan nodded. “Tell him we’re amenable.”
Ago nodded. He whistled, and Vava and Boo came out of a hut across the way. They spoke for a moment. Vava looked unhappy but she nodded, and they began walking inland. Ryan and Doc followed. The wind blew strong across the rolling hills and whipped the grassland as they came out of the vale. They walked for a quarter of an hour through fields and vales and passed more villages. They stopped in a gully. Ago and Vava began pulling apart a deadfall of twisted branches to reveal a skiff. Ryan ran his hand across the graying wood. The little rowboat had been sitting there for some time. The oarlocks were rusted and the oars themselves were warping. “What do you think, Doc?”
“I believe we would be safer building a raft.”
Ryan stood and shook his head at Ago and Vava. The two islanders looked crestfallen but Ago pointed farther inland. Doc rose from the rotting skiff. “I believe there is more they wish to show us.”
Ryan and Doc followed the islanders through more rolling hills and came upon an overgrown gravel path and followed it through another little valley. As they came out, they stopped and stared at the structure at the top of the hill in front of them. It was taller than it was wide. Four slender, two-story spires encompassed a high, peaked roof. The central spire was three stories. It was made of ancient gray stone that was worn but intricately carved. Ryan noted the wrought-iron fence with spear tips was of more recent manufacture and unrusted. “What’s that? A castle?”
“In a sense,” Doc said. “It is a church. God’s fortress on Earth. Sixteenth-century Gothic architecture, I would say.”
“Haven’t seen a church ever like that.”
Doc smiled wryly. “Well, they do not build them like they used to.”
Vava plucked at Ryan’s sleeve and spoke rapidly, first pointing at the church and then pointing out to sea. Ago nodded and appeared to agree with everything she was saying.
Ryan sighed inwardly. “What’s she saying, Doc?”
“I’m not sure. Something about Pai Joao and danger.”
“Pai Gao?” Ryan scratched his chin. “That’s a card game. They got a gambling house in the ville we need to avoid?”
Doc smiled tolerantly. “No, I believe Pai in Portuguese means ‘Father,’ as in Father Joao, a priest. I believe we are being warned against him.”
Ryan stared at the forbidding structure of the church and what appeared to be statues of winged muties standing guard over the eaves. In the Deathlands everything was a survival situation, and most things were negotiable through barter, jack or the threat of violence. But Ryan had seen book pounders with motivated congregations who could convince themselves of anything, and once they made up their minds about right and wrong the only thing that got through their skulls was lead. “We’ll keep an eye out for Father Joao.” Ryan did a little sign language of his own. He pointed at Ago and Vava, pointed at the church and shrugged. Ago and Vava both nodded and pulled out little hand-carved wooden crosses from beneath their tunics. Ryan refrained from rolling his eye. “They’re book pounders, Doc.”
“I believe they are illiterate, but I take your meaning. However, I would point out that they seem to be book pounders who are afraid of their priest,” Doc countered, “and willing to help strangers not of their faith.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Ryan unslung his longblaster and slowly began to circle the base of the hill. He found a little cottage nestled up against the back of the church. Unlike the villager huts, the cottage was of plank and beam construction with a shingled roof and glass windows. No smoke came from the chimney and the windows were dark. Ryan approached the cottage from the side and peered in one of the windows. It consisted of a single, sparsely furnished room. A cross hung over a simple rope bed in one corner and a small desk, an armoire and the fireplace filled the others. He beckoned, and Doc and the two islanders followed. Ryan rounded the cottage and came to a shed. There was no lock on it and inside were some axes, hatches, shovels, coils of rope, hand tools and several buckets of different size nails.
“Doc, ask them where Father Joao is.”
Doc asked and Ago and Vava pointed toward the sea and the bigger island out in the distance. Doc pondered. “Well, by my reckoning today is Tuesday. If the priest ministers to these people but prefers to live on the main island, and they are on the same calendar as us, and still practicing Catholicism, then he may not be back until Friday for Mass.”
Ryan nodded to himself. With Captain Roque’s boat lost at sea with all hands and Father Joao not expected back until Friday, they had a little time. He looked at the Gothic building and the two islanders. “You think they’re going to get angry at us if we go in?”
“I suspect not,” Doc replied.
Ryan went to the front of the church and unlatched the gate. He kept his eye on the stone muties over the lintel and pushed open the high, narrow double doors. The inside was dim and shot through with shafts of light coming from the high narrow windows. It smelled vaguely of incense and beeswax. Two rows of benches led to the altar. On the wall above it was a crucifix and below it the painting of a man. The man sat back in an ornate chair. He was as chill pale as Roque and his crew, with aristocratic features, his long black hair shot through with silver, and he was dressed all in black clothing. He had the same kind of black eyes as a shark or a stickie, and they seemed to follow you wherever you went in the room.
Doc pointed at the painting. Ago, Vava and Boo hovered in the doorway. Vava nodded and said, “Barat.”
Doc grunted unhappily. “I believe I detect something of a theocracy going on in these islands.”
Ryan swept the rest of the church. There were a couple of antechambers. One was full
of barrels and sacks of supplies. The other led to an empty cell with iron bars and chains on the wall. Ryan came back and stepped past Ago and Vava. “Wait here.”
Ryan went to the shed and ladened himself with axes, hatches, saws, rope and hammer and nails. He came back and handed a hatchet to Doc. Doc looked at the implement. “And what is this for?”
“The skiff is useless.” Ryan surveyed the church. “But barrels and benches would make a decent raft.”
Doc sighed as he glanced around the ancient Gothic architecture and the antique appurtenances. “Yes.”
“We don’t have time to go chopping down trees.” Ryan’s eye narrowed. “You got a problem with busting up a church, Doc?”
“Well, I was taught men’s highest spiritual goal was to establish truth, righteousness and love in the world.” Doc smiled wryly. “Nevertheless, I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that few things would have pleased several of my Oxford companions more than to observe their learned colleague taking an ax to a Papist establishment.” Doc hefted his hatchet. “Lay on, Macduff.”
“We need bench seats, four of them to make a square. We nail them together and then lash a barrel beneath each one. We’ll take the oars from the skiff and chop them down to paddles.”
“As sensible a plan as any,” Doc agreed. “I will take the saw and try to carve us a rudder.”
Ago and Vava gasped as Ryan’s first ax stroke kneecapped the closest pew, but they made no move to stop them or to run away. Ryan and Doc worked throughout the day. They nailed together four lengths of pew and bound them with rope. One of the barrels in the storeroom was filled with water, one with wine and two with oil that Doc said came from a whale. The wine was thin and sour, but they emptied it last and Doc dosed himself liberally from it as they worked. The wine and the exertion brought color to his cheeks and he worked with a will. Vava left and came back with dried meat and an earthen pot of goat curds. Ago watched almost unblinkingly as the hours passed and the grand construction came together. Ryan and Doc lashed the last barrel in place and surveyed their handiwork. They had a four-foot by four-foot square supported by barrels at each corner and had nailed a pair of planks across the square to sit on while they paddled. Doc had sawn out a bench back into a rough fin that they roped in place to form a rudder.
Ryan wiped his brow on his forearm. “Doc, tell Vava to go get the oars from the skiff. Tell Ago we’re going to sail for the big island at sunset and that we need four men to help us carry down the raft and launch it.”
Doc went through some complicated hand signals.
Ago suddenly seized Ryan’s wrist and shook his head as he spoke in rapid-fire Portuguese. Only the desperate earnestness in the young man’s face kept Ryan from snapping Ago’s arm at the elbow. “Doc?” Ryan said quietly. “Tell Ago to let go.”
Doc spoke a few words and pointed at Ryan’s wrist. Ago reddened in sudden shame and stepped back, looking at his feet. Ryan took pity on the young man and clapped him on the shoulder with his left hand. “Tell him it’s all right. Ask him what’s wrong.”
Doc and Ago had a very long conversation that didn’t seem to go anywhere fast. Ago was trying to get something complicated across, and hand gestures and common verb roots weren’t enough. Ryan sighed. “Doc you get anything out of all that?”
“Only a few basic concepts,” Doc admitted.
“Such as?”
“There is danger on the big island.”
“Figured that.” Ryan nodded. “Anything else?”
Doc frowned unhappily. “It is possible I am misinterpreting.”
“Best guess, Doc.”
“Ago wants us to go to the big island during the day.”
Ryan shook his head. “They’ll see us coming.”
“I tried to explain that to him. But when he learned our plan was to make landfall at night? That was when he grabbed your arm.”
Ryan was fairly sure Ago had their best interests at heart, but he was loathe to give up the element of surprise. “Can you figure out why?”
“He has been trying to tell me, but he is using words that have no classical Latin base to tell me.” Doc shook his head in failure. “I am sorry to say that Latin is a dead language. Ago’s Portuguese on the other hand is a living, breathing entity that has continued to grow and evolve to this day. The two languages were far apart in my time and have only grown further in the intervening centuries. There is danger on the big island, but the day is safer, of that I am fairly sure. The nature of this danger I cannot determine, though it is clear Baron Barat and Father Joao are to be feared regardless.”
Ryan gave Doc a long hard look. The scholar had been more lucid for the past couple of days than Ryan could remember. Maybe the sea air was doing him good, or being more useful than usual was helping him focus, as well. “What do you think?”
Doc shrugged. “These people have shown us nothing but kindness and hospitality. They were also clearly willing to hide us, quite possibly at risk to themselves. Ago is adamant, we must not go to the island at night.”
“Fireblast.” Ryan wanted to go now. He had a very grim feeling that time wasn’t on their side. But he could tell that Doc needed rest. Ryan felt the ache of his own wounds. If they left now there wouldn’t be much left of them to meet whatever awaited on the big isle. “Fine, we leave at first light, but under one condition.”
Doc blinked. “What would that be?”
The die was cast. “You’re a baron until I tell you different.”
J.B.’S HEAD SHOT UP as the comp in the control room chimed. He was sitting guard duty while the rest of the party slept and almost didn’t hear it over the moans, coos and shrieks of the stickies as they pressed themselves against the door and reached for him. He’d chilled two of the muties with head shots as they had tried the contortionist routine; but luckily full-body dislocation didn’t appear to be a universal stickie skill set, at least not yet. He perked an ear and realized the comp was no longer peeping. “Jak!” J.B. called. “Watch the door.”
Jak was awake, on-station with Colt Python drawn in an eyeblink.
Krysty and Mildred roused themselves wearily as J.B. examined the comp screen. Mildred pushed at her face sleepily. “What’s up?”
“The mat-trans.” Data no longer scrolled down the screen. J.B. checked his chron and then the comp screen again. “It’s been seventy-two hours. I’m pretty sure to the second. I’m thinking the mat-trans is enabled again.”
Krysty leaped to her feet. “We’re out of here.” She shouted into the corridor “Jak! We’re leaving!”
Jak trotted into the control room. Krysty surveyed her friends. “We leave the food and half the water we got here. There’s a chance there’ll be supplies on the other side. Here there’s none, and if J.B.’s right on the timer, anyone left behind will have another three days before the mat-trans cycles again.”
The party put down their canteens, water bottles and stacked their meager store of provisions on the main console of the control room. One by one they filed past and took their seats on the mat-trans floor. Krysty went and put her hand on the lever. Ryan was always the last man in. He was always the one to pull the lever and the first one to step out of the chamber. Watching him do it had always given Krysty confidence. She felt very nervous now but kept it off her face. “Everyone ready?”
J.B. nodded. “Let’s go.”
Krysty shut the door and quickly sat on the floor disk as a mist began to fill the chamber. The lights began to flicker and the sucking darkness started to pull her in into oblivion. Krysty screamed in rage rather than fear this time as the lightning suddenly sledgehammered behind her eyes. She wasn’t going to meet Ryan. Krysty screamed on in agony as she felt the savage wrenching for the second time as the universe seemed to pull every last fiber of her being in a separate direction but stopped just short of ripping her apart.
Krysty collapsed face-first into a puddle of her own bile and lay shuddering for long moments. Locks of her mutant h
air snapped and twisted like beheaded snakes. Her battered brain knew she had been left behind again and she was still in the same redoubt. Instinct curled her fingers around the grips of her snub-nosed blaster. She pushed herself to her hands and knees and another wave of nausea ran its course through her. A clinical part of her noted dark, internal blood mixed in with the mess that had nothing to do with her bleeding nose. J.B. lay a few feet away, clutching his Uzi like an anchor as he was racked by his own gastrointestinal fireworks. Krysty could have wept.
Jak and Mildred were gone.
Krysty reeled onto her knees and mentally bucked herself up as she stood. Her hand shook as she pressed the lever and the chamber door hissed open. The comp was peeping. Data was scrolling. The supplies were still there. The corridor outside echoed with the sounds of besieging stickies.
Three more days.
Chapter Five
Ryan’s broken rib stabbed and sawed at his side with each stroke of the oar. The sea was calm and the current slight, but they were still pushing a craft shaped like a brick across several klicks of open ocean. Doc was clearly no longer invigorated by the call of the sea. Each dip of the paddle was a groan and each return was a wheeze of effort, and Ryan felt his injured and exhausted body falling into the rhythm. The only good news about the journey was the morning fog. The big island was a dark smudge in the distance, and it would take a keen eye to make out the little makeshift raft in the vastness.
“I was on the rowing team…when I attended university…you know,” Doc gasped. “I fear…I have since…lost…my wind.”
“Save your wind for the sea, Doc.” Ryan dug his cut-down oar into the Lantic. “We’re getting close.”
Waves boomed and hissed ahead of them as the ocean met the land. Both men instinctively dug down and dug harder as the big island loomed ahead of them like Leviathan in the fog. Doc suddenly gave a little sigh, and Ryan felt the sea change beneath them, as well. They had passed some invisible barrier in the waters and now rather than fighting the ocean current they were being pulled in by the tide. Ryan had scanned the beachheads the previous late afternoon and seen little in the way of obstacles, but he worried about the rocks and reefs he couldn’t see. “We’re coming in.”