Haven's Blight

by James Axler

  One of the juveniles, who Ryan had been assured had battle experience, provided the propulsion for the small flat-bottomed boat he shared with them. In the next pirogue Mildred sat alongside Rameau, a dignified yet easy-humored black man of about J.B.’s size and stature, who added to the piratical cast of his dark, rakish ax-blade features with a neat beard, a gold ring in one ear, and a red bandanna tied around his long dreadlocks. He bossed the Havenite contingent.

  Rowing was Rameau’s taller shadow Bluebottle, just as lean as the boss, with big harsh cheekbones and a bronze cast to him that suggested American Indian blood. A seasoned mutie fighter, he was one of a pair of guides Blackwood had insisted on sending along.

  The second was Terance, another frontiersman type and guide. A squint-eyed rawboned redhead, he had almost grotesquely huge and powerful hands stuck on the ends of his snake-wiry arms. He occupied the final boat with J.B. and Ferd, who rowed. Ferd was clearly along for muscle. He was about six and a half feet of it, built like a stump, and about as communicative. He had a face like a ham and big tufts of brown hair sprouting from his saucer ears.

  “We’d best find us a nice dry place to haul the boats ashore and get settled for the night,” Rameau said. “This is no place a body wants to get caught careless by night.”

  Chevrons and wings of night herons flapped majestically overhead, interspersed with the occasional outsize great blue heron, their spear-beaked heads tucked back against their bodies on their long necks, their legs trailing all stilty behind. Flying higher, the other way, were flocks of pink Roseate spoonbills, heading for their nests in the saline mangal along the coast. Smaller birds flicked and squabbled in the underbrush close by on both sides.

  “Whatever you say,” Ryan called back. Blackwood had generously placed him in overall command of the expedition. “You know the country. I always try to listen to the man who knows.”

  Rameau grinned a startlingly bright grin and nodded. “That’s the way to enjoy a long life,” he said. “Peel your eyes for a suitable landing, generic blond boys! Justify your existence on this Earth.”

  “SO, RYAN, you must love this woman much, to walk into the open jaws of an alligator for her as you do.” Rameau’s dark eyes glittered in the light of the campfire.

  Big bats fluttered around the fringes, feasting on bugs drawn by the dancing light. Overhead Chuck-will’s-widows wheeled and cried out, occasionally visible as dark cruciform shapes against the stars, or when the firelight touched their speckled breast feathers. The crickets and the tree frogs sang their nightly songs. Somewhere out there Bluebottle prowled on sentry duty.

  Ryan grunted. Then he realized he owed Krysty more than that. “Yes,” he said clearly. “Yes, I do.”

  Rameau nodded sagely. “She must be much woman.”

  “She is,” Mildred said, “though maybe not how you mean.”

  Rameau laughed, as he often did. “Dear healer lady, you wrong me! I hear about heroic deeds with Tech-nomads. Krysty Wroth must be a woman of great smarts and wisdom, as well as beauty.”

  “I hear she has big old boobs,” Cody announced. Or Cole. Even though he knew it was a failure of a key command skill, Ryan was damned if he could tell one from the next. He wondered about their allegedly respective daddies, and if they were really as unrelated as their mommas apparently assured them they were.

  The white-blond kid oofed as Terance, who squatted on his haunches next to him turning several small carcasses that sizzled and crisped on spits over the fire, gave him an elbow in his ribs.

  “Hey!” the kid yelped. “What you do that for? Cochon!”

  “Teach you some respect, boy,” the gaunt and somewhat mad-eyed man said. “Call me a name again, and you’ll be eating your meat with about four less teeth.”

  “Insulting the woman of a man like Ryan,” Rameau said, “losing teeth should be the least of your fears.”

  The boy lapsed into sullen silence. His clone, sitting on the other side from Terance, tittered. The boy shot him an evil glance.

  “No roughhousing,” Rameau said.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Captain Rameau,” said Doc, who had hung the appellation on the Havenite, not that Rameau appeared to mind, “I think the real question is, what motivates you and your comrades to accompany us, given that you all seem convinced we march directly to our doom?”

  “For glory, of course,” Rameau instantly declared, then laughed as if he’d told a wonderful joke.

  “Glory’s not much use to a body when dirt’s hitting your face,” observed J.B., squatting across the fire, next to Mildred.

  “Au contraire, my friend! That is when it is of most use. If you have fame, that is the only thing that distinguishes you from the billions and billions who have lived and died and been instantly forgotten.”

  “If you say so,” the Armorer said. “I mainly value what I can shoot, eat or—” he noticed Mildred giving him a raised eyebrow “—hold on to,” he finished lamely.

  She patted his thigh. Ryan thought his thin cheeks flushed slightly. Mebbe a trick of the firelight, he thought.

  “Baron say I go,” Ferd announced in a voice like a boulder rolling down a wooden chute. “I go.”

  Even his local companions stared at him in surprise. Those were as many words as Ryan had heard him say in the whole journey so far.

  “Baron Tobias says he’ll pay us!” Cody said.

  “And we can count on him in the future for jobs and rewards and stuff!” Cole added.

  “Mebbe it’s peering down the bore of a gift blaster,” J.B. said, “but remember what they say about barons and gratitude.”

  “Ah, but Tobias is different,” Rameau said. “I admit myself that the fact he asked me specifically to go, made it hard to say no.” He grinned. “And the promised reward for guiding you into swampie territory didn’t hurt, either, eh?”

  “I notice you don’t say anything about bringing us back alive,” Mildred said sourly.

  Rameau shrugged expressively. “Baron Tobias asks much of his people, which we give freely because he gives much to us. But he doesn’t ask us to perform miracles, my dear lady!”

  “Nutria’s done,” Terance announced.

  “WHAT COULD YOU possibly have been thinking?” Though it never got loud, St. Vincent’s voice rose to a squeak of outrage. “Did you deliberately betray me?”

  The confounded woman had the audacity to smirk at him, he thought.

  “Your way wasn’t working,” Amélie Mercier said. “So I decided to get the intruders out of the way for a time myself and leave us both an open field once again.” She shrugged artlessly. “Perhaps for good.”

  “So you bribed that wretched long-haired mountebank who lives in a tree to spin a fanciful tale for Tobias and his guests?”

  He had his voice under control again. It was his baseline prudence, no more that had kept him alive through two barons—and the bloody transition between them, in which he had played such a key role. Tobias lay asleep three stories up, exhausted. His sister slept like someone well drugged, which she was. He feared no servants overhearing. He had personally chased them all off to their beds in their quarters in the building behind the main house. He had taught them to fear the consequences of crossing him.

  If only he could have done as much for Tobias’s whitecoat.

  “Mais non. I decided on the spot to take advantage of what she said. After all, I could as well have ended it all with the proper words. Tobias trusts my judgment on scientific affairs.”

  “And we know how prudent he is to trust you, eh, my dear?”

  “I would never hurt him!”

  Then suddenly the veneer of scholarly reserve, and any hint of civilization, peeled back like lips from a snarling wolf’s teeth. “That bitch sister of his is another question! How I wish I dared put her out of the way!”

  “Damn fool woman!” St. Vincent exclaimed. “Don’t you know Elizabeth is no threat to you that way? Tobias’s love for her is purely brotherly.”
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  He was horrified the instant the words were out of his mouth, although he understood well that a bullet would never go back in the blaster. That they were true made the outburst all the more inexcusable, not less. St. Vincent was a man who held a high regard for the truth. It was why he was most economical in giving it away.

  But from the woman’s sly look, which, though she doubtless thought it concealed, was an open book to such a master of manipulation as St. Vincent, he knew at once his foolish candor wasn’t going to be punished after all.

  “Even if that’s true,” Mercier said, “her condition obsesses him. He’ll never look at me as long as she’s around.”

  “So why not just inject her with air, cause a fatal embolism, and be done with it?” St. Vincent had read extensively; even as a lad he had understood instinctively what potential power that gave him over a population most of which couldn’t read, and of those who could, most didn’t care to.

  “Because Tobias would suspect something was wrong. He’s so brilliant. And it would take no genius to figure out I’m the one in charge of her care.” She smiled. “Besides, I rely upon your cunning to dispose of Elizabeth. You are the Devil.”

  The healer, the committed rationalist, spoke the words with simple conviction.

  He smiled. “Yes, dear child,” he said, “I am the Devil, which you would do well to remember should it come into your powerful but unduly focused mind to cross me again.”

  She left. He stood glaring after her, realizing his pulse was elevated.

  Calm yourself, man, he told himself sternly. Just because we’re entering the endgame doesn’t give you license to get worked up and lose your self-control.

  The pieces and plans were in play. The many tentacles he had cast forth were converging. If one failed, another wouldn’t.

  The outlanders’ departure was a setback, but it was only that. Whether or not Ryan Cawdor and his friends joined with him—whether or not they ever came back from Papa Dough’s domain—Haven would have a new baron soon. A strong, vigorously ambitious baron.

  And St. Vincent would be the true power behind the throne.

  “Naive child,” he said, shaking his head as he thought again of Amélie Mercier, “do you really believe I’ll simply let you sail away safely into exile with Tobias once I supplant him?”

  He smiled thinly between his immaculately manicured beard and mustache.

  “But then, I suppose you really do.” And he took himself off to bed, thinking happy thoughts about the folly of the wise.

  SOMEWHERE IN THE MORNING’S black hours, a bloodcurdling scream yanked Ryan from sleep.

  All they found of Ferd was his big footprints in damp soil beneath a tree, with a double-size pile of human excrement between them, and some blood splashed at the base of the tree he’d squatted to relieve himself under.

  “Where could he possibly have gone?” Mildred demanded. She had her ZKR blaster in her hand and a wild look in her eyes by the light of torches of resin-rich loblolly pine. “He was a huge, powerful man. He couldn’t just have vanished.”

  The nearest water was a good fifty, sixty feet away, Ryan noted. There were no drag marks.

  “Here,” Jak said, squatting fifteen feet away from the base of the live oak. He brought his torch low to the spongy ground. “Jaguar.”

  Bluebottle hunkered down beside the albino youth. “Oui,” he said. “Tigre.”

  “You have got to be joking,” Mildred said. “How could a cat do that? Make a big man disappear?”

  Ryan walked over to examine the print. The tracks were round and surprisingly big.

  “He was a big boy, that cat,” Rameau told Mildred. “Two hundred fifty pounds easily.”

  “But Ferd was enormous. He must’ve weighed more than that, easy!”

  “The African leopard, a much smaller animal, can carry a dead antelope several times its own weight up into a tree,” Doc declared. “And the jaguar has exceedingly powerful jaws.”

  Jak had stood. First he looked up into the branches, then he prowled around behind the heels of the footprints, swinging his torch a foot above the ground.

  “Here how went down,” he declared. He raised his torch. “See claw marks?”

  The others gathered around, being careful not to get too close and track up the spoor Jak had found. Only Terance remained back by the embers of the fire, guarding the camp and their gear.

  As he frowned up at the heavy branch jutting lowest from the oak tree on this side, maybe ten feet off the ground, Ryan saw fresh gouges in the bark. The moist wood underneath was yellow in the torchlight.

  “Cat climb down behind while Fred squatted,” Jak said. “Jump on back.”

  Next he brought the torch toward where some fallen oak leaves were mashed into the ground. “Cat kill quick. Bit through skull.”

  “Through the skull?” J.B. said. “Rad-blast.”

  “The spotted leopards,” Rameau said. “Their jaws can bite through shells of turtles.”

  “Here cat went ground,” Jak said. “Went up tree there.” He held the burning splinter near the big bole to show more gouges, vertical this time.

  If everybody held their torches up high enough they’d have endangered the leaves if they weren’t moist with dew. They craned their necks, half fearful, half expectant of what they’d see.

  “Reminds me of that scene from Predator when they find the bodies hanging from a tree,” Mildred said.

  “What’s that?” Ryan asked.

  She shook her head firmly. “Not worth explaining. Trust me on that.”

  “Whoa,” Cole said. “So it ate him?”

  “Hell of a way to die,” Ryan said.

  “Ah, friend Ryan,” Doc said, “can you think of a better way to die than quickly?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Terance and Bluebottle led them deeper into the endless swamp, through ever more claustrophobic channels that now and again widened unexpectedly into broad calm pools, or gave way to expanses of low grass on either side. The heat grew more intense, more crushing. Humidity thickened the still air until Ryan felt he could hack a path through it with his panga.

  At least the sweat they all swam in seemed to make it hard for the mosquitoes and flies to bite them.

  “We can take you into lands claimed by those pasty devils,” Rameau said. “We cannot take you to the stronghold of Papa Dough himself. You must find your own way there.”

  He stood in the rear of the lead pirogue, pushing the boat along against the slow current with a long pole. The water in the narrow twisty channel was too shallow for paddling. He and Bluebottle had taken over for the non-twins in the lead craft with Ryan and Jak. Cody and Cole took turns poling the middle boat where today Mildred rode by herself, looking sour and out of sorts with a well-crushed camou boonie hat crammed down on her plaited head. Doc helped J.B. hold down the rear guard while Terance propelled the last boat.

  Ryan reckoned Team Heart of Darkness was too afraid to guide them deeper than a certain point in swampie land. He didn’t hold it against them. As it was, he thought they were pretty crazy to accompany the friends this far, no matter what was promised. Dead men spend no rewards.

  “We can handle that,” he told Rameau.

  “Not there yet,” Bluebottle said, crouching in the bow with a cocked and loaded crossbow on his thighs. “We can take you a day closer, mebbe.”

  They came to a drowned grove on the right, where cypresses thrust straight up from green-scummed water. A dozen or so saplings had been chewed off eight or ten inches above the surface by beavers, so that they resembled so many miniature impaling stakes. To the left scrub formed an impenetrable green screen around the base of more widely spaced trees.

  “We’ll take whatever you give us with thanks,” Ryan said.

  He burned with impatience to help Krysty. Although that made his first impulse to rage at anything that hinted of setback or delay, Ryan was used to keeping short rein on his emotions when the rad-storm hit. The sheer pr
essure of desire and need, that twisted his guts and crawled beneath his skin like an army of biting ants, actually distracted him enough it was fairly easy to do the smart thing not the stupe one. And especially not do something triple-stupe like alienate their guides and allies.

  If by some mad as Fire Day chance he got the cure for Krysty, they were going to need help getting back to her. Alienating their only allies for miles around would strand them in deep dreck.

  “By the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed from the trail boat. He leaned perilously over the low portside gunwale, making the pirogue tip and drawing an angry rebuke from Terance, which he ignored. “What a remarkable specimen of an immature Scaphirhynchus albus!”

  J.B. grabbed his Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun with one hand and adjusted his hat on his head with the other. He looked wildly around. “Where?”

  “Think you mean to ask ‘what,’ J.B.,” Ryan called. “Once more in English, Doc. And does it mean we go red?”

  “What? What?” With his scarecrow body still leaned outward, Doc turned his face to blink uncomprehendingly at his leader. “It’s no threat, no, of course not. It is a pallid sturgeon.”

  “A pallid what?” J.B. palmed his forehead and slumped back on his bench. “A fish. Dark night, you got me going over a fish, Doc?”

  “That’s what you get for dozing off in the middle of the day, John,” Mildred called. Indeed, Ryan had already noticed that when J.B. snapped to, his fedora had been tipped well forward to shield his eyes from the merciless noonday sun.

  “I was only resting my eyes, Millie!”

  “It is highly unusual,” Doc said. “The pallid sturgeon was rare in my time. I cannot help but suspect their population was further depleted by the ravages of the twentieth century. We may hope that like so many wild species, they have made a strong comeback. Also, it is unusual to see them in slow, shallow water such as this. Their usual preference is for more rapid currents.”