by James Axler
Ryan chuckled. “I reckon we got some people here inclined to be a lot more helpful.”
He nodded to the slaves, whom Krysty and Mildred were still in the process of cutting free and examining. Ricky and Jak were on guard. Doc stood to one side. Clearly when the brief, one-sided fight had ended, he had retreated back into the sad, confused memory-mists in his mind.
“What do you mean to do with us?” called the most assertive-looking of the bunch, a tall, strongly built brown-haired woman wearing tattered overalls.
“Let you go,” Ryan said. “We’re not slavers. But we’ve got some questions we’d like to ask before you go.”
“Narda, where will we go?” whined a slight, balding man with myopically blinking eyes and a lame left foot. He had to have been a drag on the coffle on the march here from whenever he’d been caught.
She waved a callused hand at him. “We’ll get to that, Husker,” she said. “Reckon we owe these folks. And in case you didn’t notice, we’re still at their mercy. They got blasters. We don’t.”
“When we go you can help yourself to what the slavers had,” Ryan said. “We took what we needed off them. They still got knives, a hatchet, stuff to make fire. Blasters, too. You should make out.”
Mildred shot him a look. He ignored it. His bunch didn’t need to load themselves down with spare blasters on this mission. And the slavers’ blasters didn’t use the same ammo as any of theirs did.
“I’ll talk,” Narda said. “Not like I owe these bastards any favors.”
A corner of her mouth quirked up, then. She laughed.
“Now that I think of it, what we owe them is to help you folks any way we can. Because I’m judging your notion is to fuck these taints good and hard? I don’t believe you just freed us out of the goodness of your hearts.”
“We hate slavers and look to cut them down anytime we can,” Ryan said. “But, yeah. We got more reason that that to take it to these bastards. We need to know what you know about their operations.”
“Ask away,” she said. The others agreed. Even Husker, reluctantly.
Ryan did. Alysa joined in, using her knowledge of the country plus her own experience of the slavers to know what questions to ask. Doc and Krysty participated, too.
Ricky kept glancing toward them from where he stood at a corner of the ruin where he could keep an eye up and down the road. Ryan knew he was itching to ask about his sister Yami, who’d been kidnapped from their home island of Puerto Rico by slavers. He knew she’d been sold to other slavers here on the mainland.
The youth could ask if he wanted. Ryan doubted a random group of captives would know anything about a slave taken a few thousand miles away. He didn’t mean to waste the air.
Mostly what they got confirmed what Baron Frost had initially briefed them with, plus their own impressions. The slaver operation was big—hundreds of men, spread out in units large enough to cause problems for any ville sec force, spread out across New England and up to Canada, too. They set up a temporary base and send out raiding parties.
Sometimes they put their captives on small boats, like fishing craft, to run them down the coast. Others, like this group, got marched overland.
As to what such a big operation was doing reaping such a large harvest, no one knew for sure, although the liberated slaves had several differing positions. Narda heard that some important baron needed plenty of labor down the coast toward Hatteras. Others said the labor was needed for sugar plantations in Cuba or tobacco ones on the Gulf Coast—both crops that could readily be sold for profit, or what passed for such in the present world.
A gaunt man with gray hair hanging over a gray face, who seemed dwarfed by his big tattered overcoat, said he’d heard some baron over cross the Lantic needed miners. Or maybe an army. Or an army and miners and other laborers to equip them.
“Did the slavers themselves talk about who needed so many slaves and why?” Krysty asked.
Narda shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “Plenty. Reckon that’s where most of the slave-barracks rumors got their start. Problem is, slavers themselves didn’t seem to have no better notion what it was all about than we did. Mebbe the higher-ups did. Do. But if so, they didn’t tell the grunts. I believe the ‘big baron down the coast needs warm bodies’ story for the most part. I’d say he’s somebody who wants to start a war.”
One thing they were in no doubt about was that the slaves were being gathered at a spot on the coast not far south and west of their current position. There they were put aboard an old freighter, a big oceangoing ship, for transport to...wherever they were going. And the word was the ship was on its way back from its latest run to fill up again. If it wasn’t lying at anchor already.
“Where is this base, or port, or whatever?” Mildred asked. She was antsy. She wasn’t usually the most patient woman. Worry about her lover, J.B., clearly set her teeth on edge.
Ryan didn’t like it, either. He just did his best to put it from his mind. The only thing he could do for J.B. now was to get this kidnapped girl back to her parents as soon as possible and hope the tiny, dark, fierce Healer Rao knew her shit the way the Frosts thought she did.
“Down past a ville called Tavern Bay,” said the largest person in the group, a powerfully built man called Givens. He looked like a blacksmith to Ryan; he had arms like most strong men had legs.
He also had an angry red burn, scarcely healed though not infected, on one bearded cheek. It looked about the right size and shape to be made by a red-hot iron. He didn’t offer an explanation. Nobody asked for one.
“They dock it at this bay?” Ryan asked.
Givens shook his head. “No. That’s just the nearest ville. The anchorage lies mebbe five, ten miles farther down, or so I heard. Next to some high granite cliffs where people can’t climb up and down triple-easy.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan said.
“What about a young girl?” Alysa asked. “She would be fourteen. She would clearly appear...privileged.”
“Skinny, kind of broad, high cheekbones, black hair cut short, pale green eyes?” Narda asked. “Lots of mouth on her?” She sighed. “Yeah. We seen her.”
“Lyudmila,” said the gray man. “Daughter of my baron, of Stormbreak, and his wife. They are good people. Scarcely like barons at all. They did not deserve such loss.”
Alysa was now looking at him. It was clear that she had regarded the slaves as objects of pity rather than individuals and had paid little attention to them as anything other than potential information sources.
“You’re Grave Loomis, from Winter Creek!” she said.
He nodded. “And you’re the Korn girl, serves the baron and his lady. They sent you to bring her back, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” she said excitedly. “I apologize, I did not recognize you. You were a stout man.”
“Long walk on short rations,” he said.
A troubled look crossed his haggard face, making him look even more tired and worn-down than he had. He was another meal meant for the Bears, Ryan reckoned.
“She has spirit,” he said. “Too much for her own good. And—for others.”
“Yeah,” Narda said. “Everybody knew her. Knew of her, anyway. She was kept at the same staging camp we were, ten, twenty miles back. For a while. She really gave the slavers what for. For a while.”
“How so?” Doc asked.
“Well, she fought them as much as she could, which wasn’t much, really. She’s just a skinny little thing. But an obvious tomboy and had some pretty fast fists and feet on her. Hard ones, too.”
“Baron Ivan and Lady Katerina trained her in combat,” Alysa said proudly.
“Not well enough,” Mildred muttered.
“Stand down, Mildred,” Ryan said without looking at her. “A kid like that isn’t going to do much against hardened slavers.”
“Nope,” Narda agreed. “But she was uncooperative. Plus, she cursed them at every opportunity. Even encouraged others to resist their captors.”
&n
bsp; “Well, good for her,” Mildred commented.
“I get the feeling there’s a ‘but’ here,” Krysty said apprehensively. Her concern didn’t stop her from eating a dried apple from the Bear family’s winter stores, which had mostly survived the blaze.
“Of course there is,” Ryan said.
Narda nodded. “First they stripped her naked, tied her spread-eagled on a kind of wood X thing stuck in the ground, and whipped her with branches. They didn’t want to leave any deep marks, you see.”
Alysa gasped. “They didn’t—”
“Rape her? No. Slaver bosses made it clear that anybody who laid hand on her without permission would lose that hand and his balls. To a sledgehammer and a flat rock. But they wanted to humiliate her as well as cause her pain.”
“How’d that work?” Ryan asked.
“She was kinda subdued for a couple days. Then she waylaid a slaver bringing food, kicked him in the balls and made a break for it. They caught her, of course.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “What they do then?”
“She had a servant girl with her. Not much older than she was. Mebbe eighteen. Blond hair but dark brown eyes. Pretty girl. Sweet.”
“Darya Wilkes,” Alysa said. “Her maidservant.”
She looked at Ryan. “We never found her body. Nor did she come home to her family. We surmised she was taken with her mistress.”
Ryan grunted. “Nice of Ivan and Katerina to tell us that little bit of info.”
She looked genuinely pained. “I am sorry, Mr. Cawdor. They—they must have thought it would have little use for you.”
He waved it off. “That’s spilled blood. So, this girl, Darya—they made an example of her, didn’t they?”
Narda pressed her mouth shut tight.
“They made Milya watch,” Husker said in a hollow voice. “They made everybody watch. They staked her nude on the ground and gang-raped her. Five men. They weren’t gentle. Then, when they were done, they hung her by the heels from a strong tree limb and beat her with heavy clubs until she died.”
Krysty drew in a sharp breath.
“Shit,” Mildred said.
Alysa uttered a sharp cry of “Oh!” She turned and walked several steps away. Glancing after her, Ryan could tell her hands were over her face by the position of her elbows. Her shoulders shook with the effort of trying to hold in sobs. Which his ears told him was not a double successful effort.
Girl mostly acts like she’s cased in tool steel, Ryan thought. That shot went right through her armor like it wasn’t there.
He wondered why. But he didn’t have the luxury to wonder much.
Krysty went quickly after the stricken sec woman. She put her arm around Alysa’s narrow waist and cradled her head against her shoulder.
“After that,” Husker said, “Lady Milya became far more cooperative.”
Ryan let go a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Yeah. Well, at least it sounds like they’re taking good care of Milya. She still at that staging camp you came from?”
Narda shook her head. “No. They took her away in a wag, a couple days ago.”
That didn’t sound good. “You know where?” Ryan asked.
“Same place,” Narda said. “They just reckoned they could take better care of her there. Or keep a closer eye on the goods.”
He turned to his friends and saw Ricky staring with wide eyes at the liberated slaves. He looked as if he badly needed to pee.
Ryan knew he was fighting an urge that was almost as strong. And longer-lasting.
“Okay, kid,” he said. “Say your piece.”
“Have any of you seen a young girl? Beautiful, with long black hair?”
They stared at him. Finally Grave Loomis said, gently, “They’re slavers, kid. They specialize in capturing beautiful women. Those are their big-ticket items. Not like us.”
“What he’s saying is,” Narda said, “yeah. Lots. What good does this do you?”
“I mean—I mean, with dark eyes and olive skin like mine. Puerto Rican. About eighteen. Her name is Yamile—Yami, we call her. She’s my sister.”
The captives looked at each other. “Puerto Rico,” Narda repeated dubiously. “Not ringing any bells.”
“Monster Island,” said Husker. “It’s in the Carib. The Caribbean. People there are mostly Spanish.”
“Like the Mex?” Narda asked. “My grandmother was a Mex, from outside the Shy-Town rubble. But no. Nobody Spanish. Bunch of Frenchies from Kay-beck, couple of Portugee sailors off a ship that went down in a storm. That’s it.”
Ricky seemed to deflate.
“Thank you,” he said, sounding as if he had a bellyful of broken glass.
“Okay, people,” Ryan called. “Time to saddle the horses and get going. How far away’s this Tavern Bay again?”
Their Stormbreaker escort had recovered her composure and detached herself from Krysty. Now she came back to the conversation. Ryan noticed her eyes were red. But dry.
“We can make it by tomorrow afternoon,” she said, then frowned. “It is not a good place.”
“How so, Alysa?” Krysty asked.
“They have a dark history. The town was built by slavers—long ago, many centuries, when such things were legal. When that was banned, it was said they turned to smuggling and another form of buying and selling human souls—kidnapping men and selling them to sailing ships in need of crew.”
Mildred had started looking pretty thunderous at the mention of old-days slavery. Now, she shook it off like a buffalo trying to shed a horsefly.
“That was a long time ago,” she said. “Even by my— That is, it’s ancient history. What about now?”
“The people there...are strange,” the blonde woman said. “They still have a reputation for sharp practice. People still talk about hidden ways and hint at midnight disappearances.”
“Sounds like any ville with a gaudy,” Ryan said, rubbing his cheek with a gloved hand and hearing the bristles rasp the tough fabric. “Or with a baron, for that matter.”
“And some say certain of the people of Tavern Bay conduct strange rituals.”
“Great,” Mildred said. “Cultists. The way our luck has run lately, they’ll probably be cannies, too. Like our late hosts from last night.”
Alysa shook her head urgently. “No, you must not think that! There are good people there. Very good. Our baroness herself comes from one of the ville’s leading families. She is beyond reproach. Others, though—”
“Ryan’s right,” Krysty said. “That sounds like anyplace.”
“Not that that’s encouraging,” Mildred said.
“So we’ll be pushing off,” Ryan told the freed captives.
“Thank you,” Narda said.
“What do we eat?” Husker said.
“There’s a root cellar next to where the house was,” Krysty said. “We replenished our food stocks. There’s plenty left. They did well by themselves. Bread, vegetables, dried fruit, cheese, smoked fish.”
“Don’t recommend you go for any of the meat, though,” Mildred said. “You never know who it’s been.”
Chapter Nineteen
By the blue-white light of a spotlight powered by a growling portable generator, J.B. squinted down into the tray of parts on the folding table and frowned. We’ve got a problem here, he thought.
“Trader,” he said. “You need to come look at this.”
Part of him, not too deep down, either, felt a thrill to be talking to the great man that way. Then again, that was implicit in the thrill of being put in a position, too.
Trader stood at one end of the table talking to the representative of the Science Brothers, who through some perverseness that bothered J.B.’s sense of rightness, was a woman. Her two companions, like the other Science Brothers who could properly be called Brothers, had shaved their heads egg-bald and wore round wire-rimmed specs whether they needed them or not.
The woman had hair. And not just hair—hair piled up on her head in a s
ort of swirl with what was probably a dyed-in white streak running up from the left side of her forehead. She also had outrageously made-up eyes and dark lipstick that might have been black. Or it may’ve been green, as the odd highlight struck off her hair suggested her’s was.
She scowled dangerously at his interruption, but Trader came right over.
J.B. was doing the very job Trader had brought him along for, which was why he was so swelled-up with pride it felt as if his chest and gut would just burst.
His skills and his resourcefulness at employing them—whether in improvising repairs and replacement parts out of damn near nothing or his diabolical booby traps—had won the respect of most of Trader’s hard-bitten, cynical crew. And even the cautiously qualified approval from The Man himself.
He was doing. That was the key thing. He always felt good when he did things—made things, fixed things.
Even better—he was learning. Though a stern taskmistress, Rance Weeden was an excellent teacher, always willing to show J.B. where he’d gone wrong—and give him just enough information to figure out the right way to do something on his own.
And Ace DeGuello also proved a master worthy of following. After actually working under the man on the long and winding run across the Deathlands, J.B. had abandoned thoughts of supplanting Trader’s weapons master. At least, anytime soon. More patient than Rance, Ace showed a breadth and depth of knowledge of metalworking and just plain weapons that made J.B.’s breath run short just to think about. And he treated J.B. as a sort of prize pupil.
To cap it off, tonight Ace had suggested J.B. go in his place to meet with the Science Brothers and evaluate their offerings as pertained to blasters and rocket launchers. Ace himself was tied up putting the last touches on Trader’s new pet 20 mm quick-firer, the recently installed hardpoint atop the prow of War Wag One.
And Trader had agreed without a pause. So here he was, glasses pushed in tight over his eyes and his heart in his throat, conscious that he held the literal future of Trader, his convoy and his people in his hands.
J.B. held a thin dark-silver metal object up to the light. Everyone looked at him, including Marsh Folsom, who was inspecting the high-value wares the Brothers and Sister had set on the folding table.