Haven's Blight

by James Axler

  “You pay and pour, sure. Thanks.”

  Bouvier chuckled as he splashed two fingers into a heavy tumbler. “Here,” he said, pushing it toward Ryan. He poured himself a shot.

  Ryan studied it a moment. “Not used to drinking the strong stuff from a clean glass.”

  Bouvier laughed. “Whiskey like this, you clean a glass special if you got to.”

  The heavyset man picked up his own glass and looked interestedly at Ryan. Without hesitation the one-eyed man raised his glass and took a sip.

  “Smooth,” he announced.

  Bouvier took a sip of his own and sat back grinning. “You’re a man who knows his way around good whiskey. Sip instead of slam.”

  Ryan shrugged. “Good things are few and far between in this life. A wise man learns to appreciate them.”

  Reckon he really wonders if I was worried he was trying to dose me, he thought.

  “I won’t step all around the blaster’s muzzle, Cawdor,” Bouvier said. “I’ll get right to the trigger and not waste your time. What did you think of today’s little production?”

  Somewhere right outside the structure an owl hooted softly. “Seen worse,” Ryan said. “Could have lived without watching it anyway.”

  “And the sentences? You think they were just?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Those men put my people and me in harm’s way, who’d never done a thing to them. Anyway, I’d already chilled some of them myself. So I’d be a bit crazy to gripe about it.”

  Bouvier regarded him a moment with shrewd gray eyes. Ryan crossed his legs, sipped his whiskey and remained silent. He thought he had this deal scoped already, but he wanted to hear it confirmed from the man’s own mouth.

  “Did you think the punishment went far enough?”

  “Torture a bad man, you’re just as bad as him,” Ryan said. “A man needs chilling, chill him clean and have it done.”

  Bouvier nodded. “Laudable, laudable. Yet what would you say if I told you that it was excessive softness that necessitated that whole unpleasant business in the square today?”

  “I’d say I’d need to hear more to know what mark you’re shooting at.”

  “Fair enough! Simply put, Tobias coddles his subjects disgracefully. The inevitable result?” Bouvier slapped his beefy palm on the desk. “They take advantage!”

  He leaned forward. His big face, already glossed with sweat, flushed redder and redder as he warmed to his subject. “Tobias talks about the cost of defending us properly. But there are plenty of idle hands in this ville, let me assure you. For one thing, we have wagloads of these backwoods squatters who don’t contribute anything to the common good. They should be compelled to give back, rather than continue to take and take. Don’t you agree?”

  Who aren’t forced to live on your pay so you control them, more like, Ryan thought. “I hear that,” he said.

  “But Tobias won’t crack the whip when it’s called for. He wants the people to love him. Realists, Mr. Cawdor—men like you and me—realize it’s better to be feared than loved.”

  Ryan raised his tumbler to sip so he wouldn’t have to respond. The word “loved” went through his belly like a needle point. He thought about how good it would feel to smash this man’s fat face for profaning a word whose true meaning he had no idea of.

  “And that’s what caused the attack last night,” Bouvier said. “Sheer lack of discipline among the people of this ville.”

  “I thought it was men who let fear of the Beast get so deep in their bones they lost all sense,” Ryan said. “That and an ambitious man with more power and wealth than sense or loyalty.”

  “Huh?”

  Bouvier blinked. He didn’t seem angry, just a bit lost that the script had been deviated from. Ryan decided he wasn’t used to listening to any voice but his own.

  “Well, of course, of course,” the big man said. “And that poor fool Franc was only able to rouse those sorry dirtbags to suicidal folly because Tobias hadn’t seen to it that they feared their baron more than their boss.”

  “Likely.”

  Bouvier nodded emphatically, as if he’d just won a major concession in some big business negotiation. “So, just between you and me and the wall, Haven needs a strong baron. Don’t get me wrong. Tobias is a fine man. A great warrior. He means well. But he’s too nice, and being nice and having good intentions grease the chute to hell.”

  He dropped his voice low. “Do you see where this is going, Mr. Cawdor?”

  “You want to be baron?”

  “Me?” Bouvier sounded genuinely surprised. “Oh, no. No, that wouldn’t work at all. To be sure, I’m a skilled manager, and I possess many of the attributes necessary for true leadership. But Haven in its current sad state needs a leader type, if you know what I mean. A hero whom the people can rally around!”

  I’ve seen Tobias fight, Ryan thought. He looks like enough of a hero for me, swinging those two swords of his. He didn’t say it. The truth was, he was enjoying the conversation.

  “Where do we fit into this?” he asked instead.

  “Haven’t I made my meaning plain, Mr. Cawdor? I want you to step up and be baron of Haven.”

  “Mighty kind offer, there, Bouvier.” Ryan rose. “But I’m not looking to be the baron of anyplace. Even if I was, if I was the kind of a man who repaid a man’s hospitality by stabbing him in the back and throwing him out of his own house, what kind of man would I be?”

  Bouvier looked up as if he didn’t understand what Ryan was saying. “You mean, you won’t do it?”

  “You catch on fast, Bouvier. Anyhow, I suspect the way things would really work out is, I’d only be your puppet. And I don’t crave having your hand shoved up my ass to work my jaws.”

  Bouvier’s face went purple, then white. “How dare you?”

  “Easy.”

  A sickly grin spread across Bouvier’s heavy face. “So you think I’ll let you talk to me like that and just walk out of here free and clear? You know a bit too much to be allowed to wander around loose now, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Ryan said, “I don’t think. See, a little while back you may have heard an owl hoot. But that was no owl. It was my friends letting me know the coldhearts you had waiting outside to put the hard arm on me if I didn’t play along have been taken down and tied up safely. They can all be glad they don’t all have second mouths to whistle through. You can, too, if you care about them.”

  Bouvier laughed, a bit too brassily and loud. “You really expect me to believe that?”

  A scratching sound came from the window. “Move your eyes right, Bouvier,” Ryan said. “Easy, now. Don’t want to make any sudden moves.”

  Bouvier looked that way and gasped. Jak’s ghostly face was leering in at him—over the vented rib and front sight of his Colt Python handblaster, whose muzzle he’d dragged down the screen to get Bouvier’s attention.

  “But that wall hangs out over the water!” Bouvier exclaimed, almost indignantly.

  “My friend Jak there, he climbs like an old wall lizard. See, we been wandering the Deathlands for years, my friends and I. You think this is mebbe the first time some small-time schemer tried to muscle us into backing their little ville power play? Not that it ever makes any kind of sense but bad.”

  Bouvier looked thunderstruck. “What do you mean?”

  “You try to sign us on because you reckon we got strong arms and cold hearts. You say you think I might make a good baron because I’m strong. Well, yeah, I am, and worse, I’m smart. And as hearts run, none run colder than mine when business needs getting done.

  “All of which leads up to—if we’re so hard and bad and mean, how is it anything but stupe to go out of your way to step on our shadows by threatening us?”

  He started to leave. “Wait, Cawdor!” Bouvier called.

  Ryan stopped.

  “If you tell the baron—” Bouvier said. He had his bluster back. He either had bigger balls than Ryan gave him credit for, or was a bigger stupe.

&n
bsp; Ryan cut him off. “Don’t sweat that. Blackwood may be out of the usual line of cut from a different kind of metal than your standard-issue baron, but if he gets to smelling sufficient smoke, even he’s going to reckon there’s a fire. So I just plain don’t want to know.”

  He grinned as an idea struck him. Leaning over the desk, he snagged the half-full whiskey bottle by the neck.

  “This’ll pay me for my time. If you’re half as smart as you think, you’ll call us square. I’m going to walk away now, Bouvier. You’ll be happier if you do likewise.”

  “Please, wait,” the hog-sweating merchant cried. But as usual, Ryan was as good as his word.

  Once out the warehouse’s front door he cut quickly left, once again to get him out of the fatal funnel. Before he walked ten paces upslope J.B. fell in beside him.

  “Any trouble?” Ryan asked.

  The Armorer grinned. “Not a bit.”

  Ryan tossed him the bottle, which J.B. caught one-handed.

  “What’s this?”

  “Payout,” Ryan said. “You won the bet. He really was that stupe.”

  “I TELL YOU, there was nothing I could have done!” the fat man blubbered. “No power on Earth was going to sway him.”

  “I’m disappointed, Mr. Bouvier,” the man who stood in deeper shadow next to one of the big house’s outbuildings said. “Really, I expected better of you.”

  The man didn’t raise his voice. He’d long ago learned he seldom had to. Plus, of course, it was useful for these little conspiratorial tête-à-têtes. While they were behind the house, on the far side from the rooms belonging to the baron, Elizabeth, and those ever-so-troublesome guests of theirs, it never paid to take things for granted.

  Indeed, his entire career depended on not taking things for granted.

  Bouvier shook his head. “You don’t understand. He was a raging beast! There’s no controlling him.”

  “Now, somehow I find it in myself to doubt that, Mr. Bouvier. Ryan Cawdor strikes me as a man entirely in control of himself.”

  “Well, mebbe it was just the, the animal feel of the man. He would have snapped my neck like a twig if he could.”

  “That I believe.”

  He uttered a short sigh. “It appears we have ourselves a problem.”

  “I’ll say! He’s got to be gotten rid of. He’s dangerous, I tell you! He’ll be the ruin of us all.”

  “Put your mind at rest, Mr. Bouvier. I will attend to the matter. Cleaning up other people’s messes is my specialty.”

  Bouvier worked his mouth in and out several times, making his jowls wobble. Finally he decided the best course was neither bluster nor blithering gratitude.

  “Right,” he contented himself with saying. He turned and bustled off toward his own holdings on the ville’s far side.

  Tall and slim and elegant as a riding crop, the other man stood on the lawn watching the broad figure recede into the night. The crickets and the tree frogs sang counterpoint in the ever-present woods.

  He heard a soft step on the damp grass behind him.

  “So another of your clever schemes amounts to nothing, St. Vincent.”

  He turned to where the slim woman stood. “Amélie. How convenient of you to arrive at this juncture.”

  “I listened,” she said. “You knew I was in the house, looking in on Elizabeth.” She spoke the last word with quiet, venomous intent.

  “Oh, indeed. And the outlander woman.”

  “Her, too.”

  St. Vincent felt the lines of his face deepen as he looked back to where the night had at last swallowed Bouvier’s bulk.

  “These continuing tensions are aging me prematurely,” he complained. “I know it. Still, this man Cawdor would make a far better horse to ride to unlimited power and wealth than that milksop Tobias. He’s a man of decision as well as action. I know it!”

  “Tobias’s ambitions are all for building up Haven,” Mercier said, a note of defensiveness creeping into her quiet voice.

  “And I lust to be the power behind a greater throne than Haven can ever encompass.” He shook his head, jutting his lean chin with its narrow beard. “Every man has his price. I just have to ascertain what Ryan’s is. And I will.”

  “I fear these newcomers.”

  St. Vincent laughed. “Don’t, my dear. That which you fear in them is the very thing what will bring us what we want.”

  He turned to her. “And now, I believe there’s a certain little task that you should be about performing.”

  The shoulders rose and fell in a petulant, theatric sigh. “If I must.”

  He allowed a hint of asperity into his voice. “You agreed to the plan. Now is no time to hang back.”

  “Tobias must not be hurt,” Mercier said. “You promised.”

  “And so I did.” He made fussy shooing gestures with the backs of his fine hands. “Quick, now! Off you go, child.”

  “STUPES,” BOUVIER muttered as he made his way through deep, dark woods.

  The flame of the lantern he was carrying was turned up all the way. But it barely made an impression on the bottomless shadows under the trees, or the black branches that seemed to stretch down toward his face like tentacles. It was fortunate that he knew his own way home so well the lantern itself was but a convenience. A luxury almost.

  “Fools. Ungrateful bastards.”

  He was surrounded by mental and moral midgets. He had thought Ryan Cawdor to be of altogether different stuff. Different stature. A man to bestride history’s stage and own it.

  But a man of action, withal. Not of contemplation or pondering high strategy. That was where a man of Bouvier’s unique talents could best serve a vibrant, powerful ville and baron.

  Yet somehow he had misjudged his man.

  “I made a mistake,” he muttered. “Yes, admit it—a mistake! I have to face fact and move on. Now Cawdor will be dealt with. And I’ll just have to keep looking for the right man.”

  He shook his head, feeling regret. Actual regret. A waste, he thought, such a terrible waste.

  A soft rustle came from the woods to his left.

  He stopped. Inside hot skin, his blood was ice.

  He knew every sound that came from these woods, in every season and weather condition. Just as he knew the path that brought him home most directly through the woods surrounding the ville, instead of taking the corduroyed road the long way around. What he had heard didn’t belong.

  Something was moving softly to his left.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded, reaching for the butt of the pistol he’d stuck through his waistband when he’d stopped by his office in the Heights to pick up the lantern. “Come out! Show yourself!”

  Another rustle came from the brush. Something pale flashed through the edges of his vision, crossing his backtrail, now on his right.

  He turned that way. The sound continued, rhythmic, like quiet steps.

  Coming toward him.

  His hand fell away from the butt of his pistol. All bravado was forgotten. Here was a horror he couldn’t fight.

  He turned and ran. His legs were short and his weight was large, but he made good time along the winding path, leaping over roots that humped across the path as though to trip him, slipping on fallen and decomposing leaves.

  But he couldn’t outrun doom.

  He had gone no more than thirty yards when he heard it rushing on him. Squealing in terror, he turned.

  It was smaller than he expected. A pale creature of wide eyes, fangs and claws, with a wild dark mane of coarse hair.

  But when the jaws closed on his face, he felt his own bones crunch like crisp pastry crusts. Claws tore through his shirt, through the fat of his belly, the muscle and the tough membrane of his body wall like a crow’s talons through a writhing grub.

  The agony as the monster began to dig his living guts right out of him almost made him forget the pain in his bitten face.

  Almost.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Ryan.”

/>   He stirred on his cot and tried to burrow deeper into his pillow. Normally he snapped awake as if spring-loaded. Not this time. News of the brutal murder and evisceration of the merchant Bouvier, quite unmistakably by the Beast, had roused the house in the early hours. Ryan had tramped out with the baron, his men, and J.B. and Jak on a fruitless search for the monster. He had only slunk back to bed as false dawn stained the eastern sky above the trees like spilled spoiled milk.

  It was the final anvil piled atop days of fatigue amassed through worry, stress, healing, and of course, mortal combat.

  “Ryan, get up.” It was Mildred’s voice. “We have a visitor.”

  Grumbling, he sat up. He rubbed both hands over his face, reflexively careful not to dislodge the patch that covered his left eye. Running hands back through his long, dense, slightly curly black hair, he blinked his good eye wearily at the intruder.

  “Mildred, is that any way to wake a man?”

  “You think I’m nuts? I don’t want you to come awake and start choking me because you think I’m a stickie or a mutie bear. Be glad I don’t do what I normally would, and stand back even farther and chuck pebbles at you.”

  Her words finally percolated into his befuddled mind. “What do you mean, we have a visitor?”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  “MUTIE!” JAK Lauren stressed between his teeth.

  “Is not,” Mildred said, biting into a chunk of reasonably fresh papaya. Despite the on-again off-again blockade by Black Gang pirates, the barony had obtained a lot of fruit grown in the Caribbean and Central America through its sea trade. “Just a dwarf.”

  “What that?” the albino teen asked.

  Ryan stood on the porch with Mildred, Jak, J.B. and Doc. The porch roof offered shade from the early-morning sun, already inclined to stick to the skin and burn like boiling sugar. The smell of flowers in the beds along the house front, the ones that had escaped trampling in the other night’s battle, was strong and sweet in Ryan’s nostrils. Blackwood, his sister, his aide Barton and his sec boss, Guerrero, stood out on the lawn near the gazebo talking to a man dressed in a long linen smock and dungarees.