by James Axler
And clearly Doc did feel at home, sitting with one storklike leg crossed over the other in a floral-embroidered chair, smiling pleasantly and nodding his white-haired head into the steam rising from his teacup.
The stout walls of granite reinforced by concrete muffled the brutal buffeting of the wind, and left its angry howl an impotent whisper. The fire crackling with lunatic cheerfulness in the hearth made the life-sucking cold outside a mere memory. But Krysty could feel the Earth itself, through its very bones in which the roots of the castle were sunk, despite the fact that the rock below was honeycombed with basements and bunkers—mentioned by their hosts in passing as they returned from the infirmary.
Gaia, the Earth Mother, was strong here. Krysty felt it in the sense of well-being and invigoration she felt, despite exertion and exhaustion, post-adrenaline letdown and worry for her friend.
“She’s fourteen now, and showing streaks of rebellion. As both her parents did at her age—hard as that might be to imagine from our absurd appearance of respectability now.”
She cast a smiling look at her husband, who smiled back and nodded. His strong, bearded face was harshly shadowed in its hollows and crannies despite the cozy light. The lines of tension were deeply etched around mouth and eyes. He was a man much worn by care—much more so than most barons Krysty had known.
“In order to teach her more fully and properly than we can here,” Katerina said, “we sent her south to Miss McBurnie’s Finishing School and Commando Academy for Girls, in the barony of Candlewick. It’s down the coast a hundred miles. They’re all a bit more...Draconian there. We were hoping she might be tamed a bit by the experience, at least.”
She stopped, smiling. Krysty saw tears glimmer in her pale blue eyes.
“Ah, thank you, Caine,” she added hastily, as the gaunt, silent butler with the lank fringe of mouse-gray hair poured fresh tea into her upraised cup.
“They took her,” Baron Frost said. He rose and went to stand by his wife, taking her free hand in his. “Slavers did. Charlie, a member of her sec man escort, came back within hours of their setting out. Despite being terribly wounded, he gasped out a tale of ambush and slaughter just a few miles south of here, along the coast road. The slavers had attacked.”
“They took her,” Katerina said, with a combination of stark despair and ferocity. “They took our baby.”
“There, there, Katya,” the baron murmured, patting her shoulder. She laid her head briefly against his forearm. A single tear escaped the gleaming pools of her eyes and ran down one cheek.
Then she patted his arm and nodded to him. He nodded back, walking with grace remarkable in such a powerfully built man, and resumed his own seat a few feet away.
“Poor Charlie died before he could finish the story,” the baron said. “Lindy said it was a miracle he’d survived as long as he had. He did tell us they had taken her south.”
“Not to that base we almost blundered into?” Ryan asked.
“No. As I mentioned before, it’s only a forward operating base. There is a vast and powerful network of slavers at work here on the Northeast coast. Indeed, what we learn from other baronies and from travelers suggests that either it stretches clear across the continent, or is tied into other such networks clear across the Deathlands. To whatever extent that distinction matters, I suppose.”
“Don’t the barons have enough peasants to suppress?” Krysty asked. Her own vehemence surprised her.
Ryan shot her a warning look. As action-centered as he was—as impulsive as he could be—he was still a baron’s son. He feared no man, but he respected power that could snuff out his life and the lives of his lover and his friends like the flame of a candle.
Such as the power of their host and hostess.
She shook her head. Her sentient hair was curled close to her head in reflection of her dismay. She hoped they’d think it was just a ’do.
“I mean, other baronies—”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Wroth,” Katerina said. “We are not easy to offend. There are surely those among our subjects who find us unreasonable. Sometimes even harsh. Though we try to rule as...decently as we can.”
Ryan’s look was a combination of surprise and skepticism that mirrored what Krysty felt inside.
“Our relationship to our people is close, my friends,” the baron said. “Though, like any family, we have our disagreements. Some more heated than others. But we—the family now called Frost, who have ruled Stormbreak for generations—have always managed to remember that we spring from the people, are of the people. And that we are for them as much as they are for us. It seems that, contrary to what one might expect, our...peculiar origins as a barony knit us closer together, rather than the opposite.”
He had leaned forward intently as he spoke. Now he sat back and waved an almost airy hand.
“But that’s a matter for another time. And now—would you care for more refreshments, my friends?”
Ryan sipped and made a face. “Tea’s fine and all,” he said. “But it could use something with a little kick.”
“Ryan!” Krysty admonished.
Baron Frost chuckled. “A man after my own heart,” he declared, with more heartiness than he’d shown in a while. “High time to add a shot of vodka to our cups! Caine, if you please. You’re sure you’re not part Russian yourself, Mr. Cawdor?”
He shrugged and laughed. “Sure as I can be of anything happened long before I was born.”
“I thought Russians preferred to take their vodka neat, Baron,” Doc said.
Frost laughed. “No doubt they do. In that I suppose I’m showing my Amerikantsy side. I can’t actually abide the stuff straight. It smells like kerosene and tastes about the way it smells. Still, it adds a punch to tea. And some warmth. Much needed on a night like this one, yes?”
* * *
“SO,” RYAN SAID, sipping at his newly fortified cup of tea. “Why haven’t you gone after your daughter? Or at least overrun the slaver camp and gotten some answers?”
Krysty waved away the impassive Caine and his bottle of clear fluid. She agreed with the baron as to how vodka tasted. The thought of blending it with her green tea—which was delicious—turned her stomach.
The baron sighed. “We lack the strength, Mr. Cawdor. My sec men—and women—are brave and capable. We maintain both the skills and standards of certain of our ancestors. They are also few. And while our people tend to possess arms and know how to use them, they do so to protect their homes and one another. They lack the temperament to sally forth to attack others. That is not our way and never has been. Leave us in peace, and we leave you in peace. Bring war and suffering to our land, and we shall crush you.
“As we shall these slavers. Indirectly, I fear, unless my overtures to some of our neighboring villes bring fruit in the form of a military alliance. But our neighbors have their hands full with this latest slaver incursion, as we do.”
“How do you mean, indirectly, Baron?”
Everyone turned to look at Ricky. He sat in a chair behind the adults, who occupied chairs set in a semicircle facing their host and hostess. His eyes were wide and his cheeks first dead-pale beneath their natural olive, then bright pink.
“Oh—sorry—I didn’t—”
“Yeah, you did. But that’s okay. Look, kid,” Ryan said, “we let you in, so you can speak your piece. Long as you squeak sense, squeak what you like.”
Baron Frost nodded. “A perceptive question, young man,” he said. “We lack the strength to dislodge the slavers by force. But we can do what you encountered us doing today—harrying their raiding parties. They have taken some of my people. And we have taken them as casualties. None alive yet, sadly—so we can get no further information as to where they might have sent our daughter.
“They do what they do, of course, not merely out of the darkness of their souls, but for gain. We are at least ensuring they reap more cost than profit, which will in due time force them to withdraw.”
Krysty and R
yan exchanged glances. Mebbe, she could feel him thinking. And mebbe they’ll reinforce to teach you and your people a lesson that the surviving baronies’ll never forget.
But it wasn’t their place to say such a thing, here and now. Looking from bearded face to drawn and icy near-perfection, Krysty suspected the baron and baroness knew the risks as well as they did.
They played the hands fate dealt them, like everybody else in the Deathlands. And barons didn’t always get the best cards.
“So you want us to take off south in pursuit of your daughter,” Ryan said. “Beyond that—flying blind.”
“Substantially so,” Frost said. “Though not entirely blind. We’ll provide you with a guide. A reliable person who knows this coast well. And who knows combat—you’ve seen her in action already.”
Her? Krysty thought. She recalled the young horsewoman who had ridden with Frost, with her hair almost as pale as Jak’s flying out behind her from beneath her fur cap.
“You will help us, won’t you, Mr. Cawdor?” the baroness asked.
In the look the woman shot Ryan, Krysty saw hunger. Yet it didn’t strike her as a sexual thing. At least, not primarily.
She never worried about competition for Ryan’s love. Any more than Ryan felt challenged by Ricky’s obvious infatuation with Krysty. As if any man worthy of the title, much less a man worthy of being the life-mate of Krysty Wroth, could feel threatened by a horny sixteen-year-old.
Ryan showed no sign of sexual interest in the baroness. Krysty could hardly have blamed him if he had. Though she was clearly into middle age, probably early fifties—which for many in the Deathlands, of course, was wretched and ragged old age—she showed a striking beauty, with just a hint of pink flush in her cheeks rescuing her from ice-sculpture frigidity.
Still, there was something...not right about Baroness Frost. Krysty’s intuition told her that the baroness harbored no ill intentions toward Ryan and the companions. All Krysty could sense in her was the overwhelming desire for them to save her daughter and return her safely home.
But something about her appearance and her manner—perhaps just a hint of greenish pallor in the shadows of her fine face—rang a discordant note in Krysty’s mind.
Ryan sat back in his chair, chin sunk to clavicle, thinking. Krysty’s heart went out to him, seeing how tired he was.
He polled the others with his eyes. Krysty nodded once, trying not to be too emphatic.
She glanced around. Doc shrugged and smiled vaguely, as if concurring; Krysty hoped he was still focused enough to realize what he was agreeing to. Jak looked skeptical. That wasn’t anything unusual for the albino youth. Had he felt any serious misgivings—beyond the ones he knew the others shared—he would have spoken up pretty briskly, as little as he liked to talk.
Ricky nodded so vigorously Krysty was half-surprised he didn’t sprain his neck.
“Fine,” Ryan said. “We’re in.” He rubbed his jaw. “Reckon it’s a better deal than we usually get.”
Chapter Seven
“This is the coast road, clearly.”
Ricky watched keenly as Baron Frost tracked the blunt tip of a finger from northeast to southwest down an old USGS contour map by the light of a combustion lamp. By smell Ricky could tell it was fueled by some oil other than kerosene. Nonetheless, it burned brightly. Or enough to do the job.
The room seemed to be a study of some sort. The walls were lined with shelves crowded with books, folios and rolled papers, some of which were maps, judging by the one the baron had unrolled on a drafting table. Ricky found the whole scene, made more mysterious by pervasive shadow, fascinating, though not as interesting as if it had been a workshop where things were actually made.
Ryan and Krysty stood across the table from the baron. Doc sat beside them. Ryan leaned on the table on the knuckles of one hand. Ricky, who sat in another chair a few feet away while Jak lounged against some shelves looking bored, tried not to stare at the redheaded woman’s rear end. It was hard.
He knew it was unwise. If Ryan ever bothered to notice the attention Ricky paid to Krysty, the one-eyed man might cut him loose from the group. For her part, Krysty treated his admiration with amused indulgence. Which, in a way, was worse.
Not that he would do anything to impede or disturb the lives of the two. And certainly those who did tended to wind up with dirt hitting them in the eyes in short order.
Ryan and Krysty formed a pantheon of living, walking gods for him—along with J.B., of course. The rest were important to him, too—the often vague yet often incisive Doc Tanner; the brusque yet deeply compassionate Mildred; his new best friend, Jak. But they couldn’t compare to the Big Three.
And now J.B. was hurt and fighting for his life. And they were finding out how they could buy it back—if that was even possible.
“The coast road’s pretty decent,” the baron was saying. “The baronies along the way tend to maintain it, and it’s mostly far enough inland that the eroding shoreline hasn’t encroached on it. But it’s not used as much as it might be. Travelers frequently prefer to make their ways along back trails farther inland, even though they’re not as good and it takes longer.”
“Weather?” Krysty asked.
“Storms,” Frost stated. “And raiders from the sea. Not just the slavers, of course, though they’re our biggest menace now.”
Doc, who had been sitting with head back and eyes half-closed, as if wandering through the often-tangled pathways inside his head, shook himself, drew his brows together and leaned forward with his sky-blue eyes no longer unfocused.
“It is curious to me, Baron,” he said, “how the economics of the slaver raids work. They themselves appear to be many. By the very nature of predation in all its forms, they need to acquire far more numerous victims than their own host in order to thrive. How is it possible that they do so?”
“Good question,” Ryan said, straightening.
Baron Frost frowned and nodded ponderously, as if feeling the weight of the situation on the back of his neck. “Their numbers have grown markedly in the last ten years or so, all up and down the coast.
“As for how they make profit enough to sustain their growing operations, Dr. Tanner, I can’t really say. They haven’t exactly opened their books to me. I can say that, despite the fact that the enormous population concentrations along the Eastern Seaboard were hardest hit of anywhere in North America, and the plagues and starvation reduced the population to lesser numbers than in many areas originally far more sparsely settled, some of the same factors that led to the area being so thickly settled in the first place have led to a substantial rebound in the population, especially over the last fifty years or so. Not to anywhere near former levels, of course. And while trade across the Lantic’s no real factor—it’s far too rare and sporadic—the relative fertility of the environment here, along with the enormous amount of scavvy available in the ruined cities, has more than sufficed.”
He shook his head. “Not that life here is easy, by any means. Though we are far from the most desolate of areas, they still call these the Deathlands, and for good reason.”
The door opened. Caine looked a question to Frost, who nodded. The white-haired butler bowed Mildred into the room.
The stocky woman seemed shrunken and subdued.
“How is he?” Krysty asked.
Mildred lowered her head further for a moment. Then she drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and raised her head.
Ricky clutched the silver crucifix he wore inside his shirt. He tried to feel guilty about avidly watching the rise and rebound of her enormous breasts as she breathed. He didn’t.
“Better than I expected,” the healer said in a voice frayed around the edges. “Their facilities here are surprisingly good. Better than I’d expect outside—outside some predark hospital.
“And while I almost hate to admit it,” Mildred went on, “this healer knows her stuff. She’s...well-schooled for the time. Remarkably so.”
“We have
found her so,” Frost said, nodding.
Mildred stepped forward to the map table. “What’s going on here?”
“The baron’s giving us the rundown on the tactical situation,” Ryan said.
For a moment, the woman frowned down at the map, then she looked up at Frost.
“Okay, now, this is too good to be true!” she blurted. “Ryan, you always say we can’t rely on the gratitude of barons. What’s the deal here, really?”
“Mildred—” Krysty began.
Ryan cut her off by raising a hand.
“Might as well let her say her piece,” he said. “If what she says is going do damage, it’s done now already.”
“No damage,” Frost said. “You are prudent to want to understand the terms of our agreement fully.”
“I like to know where everybody stands,” Mildred said, not at all mollified. “In particular, I like to know for sure what the other side looks to get out of a deal. Isn’t this the Deathlands, where everybody’s always out for himself and eats the weak?”
“In the...circumstances in which you and I lived our early lives,” Doc said, “people were also out primarily for themselves, dear lady. They could simply afford to act more genteelly, owing to generally less brutal circumstances.”
“But what are you getting out of this?” Mildred asked the baron. “You’re already spending lots of resources on J.B. Your healer is prepping for surgery—that’s why I left, to get out of her hair. Why are you trusting us? What’s the catch?”
For a moment, no one spoke. Ricky waited for the baron to assure them there was no catch. Instead, he continued to look at Ryan with calm, somber eyes.
Ryan vented a gusty sigh. “You’re right, Mildred. I do know better than to rely on a baron’s gratitude. But a baron’s vengeance—that’s like sunrise.”
“But they don’t have any guarantees we can get this girl back from the slavers! Or even that we’ll try.”