by James Axler
They walked a few paces down what seemed to be the main drag of Tavern Bay. Ahead of them several blocks opened a square, around which were set the biggest and most pretentious-looking buildings. According to the instructions reluctantly doled out by the older bridge guard, that was indeed where they’d find the ville’s town hall and whatever help or otherwise the ville could offer them.
Krysty reached out, found Ryan’s hand and squeezed it. It wasn’t just to reassure herself; he did need it sometimes, which would surprise most of their companions, let alone the rest of the Deathlands that had One Eye Chill’s boot-prints on it. But while she doubted there was anything here to make Ryan more than normally wary, she also felt curiously on edge at how deserted the streets were during the waning daylight.
Apparently Tavern Bay had resisted the wave of modernization that had risen and spread throughout the twentieth century. The main street of the ville was only two lanes wide, though generous for that. Some of the side streets, even narrower with buildings that seemed to lean together conspiratorially over them, looked like cobblestone.
They were in mostly good repair, better than many of the buildings. Also the streets were mostly cleared of snow, though gray slush gathered in the gutters and the alleyways and on the sidewalks, which were less well tended. Krysty smelled the snow and the slush, cold wet concrete and stone, mildew and rot, and fish, the seemingly inevitable stink of decaying sea life.
Though the air was quiet here at street level, a wind seemed to whistle among the peaked roofs. She heard random creaks from the structures that they passed, and groans, as if the ville itself felt disquiet in its guts and in its bones.
Krysty was not as allergic to urban settings as Jak was—especially not as allergic as he pretended to be. Still, she preferred the direct sense of connection to Gaia that even the roughest sketch of civilization seemed to impair. And here in a ville that seemed to have escaped the ravages of the war, less those of time and neglect, the disconnect was especially strong. But the unease she felt now, like small animals running along her nerve on tiny clawed toes, was more than that.
She glanced up at Ryan again. Though he frowned, that was a common expression. They were headed toward something unknown, and that always meant danger.
And so did the known, as a general thing. She smiled and inwardly laughed at herself. Where isn’t a certain amount of apprehension the appropriate thing to feel? she asked herself.
“You see,” their guide said, speaking with her head down and not looking at the others, “when I was a small girl, my family...did not treat me well. I don’t even know if they were my real family. They told me a dozen different stories. All I know is that the adults, my supposed parents and a few uncles, or so they called them, who drifted in and out of our shack, treated me as a slave from the time of my first memory. As they did my brothers and sisters, who also seemed to come and go mysteriously—and those who went were usually never heard from again.
“The man who called himself my father...used me. Again, from the time I was very small. He didn’t even bother to hide the fact from the woman, or anybody else. He didn’t have to. When I cried, the woman beat me with a heavy wooden ladle and withheld my food, calling me an ingrate and a whiny brat.”
“That’s awful,” Mildred said quietly.
Krysty glanced at Ryan. His rugged face was unreadable behind the stubble, dusted with gray, that darkened his jaws. It wasn’t exactly the norm in the Deathlands, that sort of thing. But it was common enough. And Krysty had to agree with Mildred’s twentieth-century scruples: it was awful.
“When I was perhaps twelve—for I never knew my real age, either—a patrol attacked the shack. Apparently my so-called father and ‘uncles’ were bandits. I heard later they robbed a farmhouse a couple of miles down the road, killed four people and left a fifth for dead. She was found beside the burning house, and before she died she told the baron’s men who had committed the crime.
“The baron himself led the assault. My father and two of my uncles were caught and hanged from trees nearby. My mother cut the throats of one of my brothers and one of my sisters. She had me with the kitchen knife at my throat, blade still running with the blood of Natasha and Jack, when the baron himself strode into the house. He called to her to let me go. She laughed. The blade bit my neck—”
She touched her throat, drawing down the wolf-fur collar aside far enough for Krysty to see a thread-thin white scar she hadn’t noticed before.
“And then there was a blinding flash and deafening noise. The blade fell from my throat. I heard something heavy hit the planks of the floor. Then I was being cradled in the strong arms of the baron.”
She sighed.
“When I turned and saw the woman who said she was my mother lying right beside me with the right side of her head blown off by Baron Frost’s pistol shot, I felt nothing at all. Not triumph. Not relief. Certainly not sadness.
“I was taken in by a family of carpenters who lived near the castle. They were good people, kind even when it wasn’t easy—as opposed to my former family, who were cruel even when it took effort. They were the Korns. I took their name proudly.
“And since then I have devoted my life to serving Baron Ivan Frost and his barony of Stormbreak. He and his wife, Lady Katerina, have always treated me well. Although they treat everyone well, except for evildoers.”
Mildred turned back and mouthed the words daddy issues to Krysty. Despite herself, Krysty smiled. She certainly could find little blame in her heart for Alysa’s devotion to the strong man who had saved her in person from horror, degradation and death. And, for a fact, Ivan and Katerina seemed almost too good for a baron and his lady.
They reached the square. It had grass that may have been tended, although it wasn’t easy to tell, given that it was winter-yellow and sparse and partly covered by old snow. A dead fountain stood in the middle of it, a concrete basin surrounding an oblong of concrete that had probably served as pedestal to some statue or other, long since pulled down and scavvied for its bronze. Krysty could see the remnants of a plaque from one hundred feet, a discolored square on gray. The fountain basin was oddly swept clean of detritus, although a few leaves showed around the inside edges of the bottom.
They found themselves facing a building wider than others in the ville, with soot-and-grime-streaked pillars and a dome whose green color suggested it was at least copper sheathed. Either the inhabitants hadn’t been able enough to scavenge that or the rulers of the ville had been strong-handed enough to stop them.
“This takes me back,” said Doc, drawing himself up to his full height and dusting the lapels of his frock coat. “The sort of pretension that characterized town halls in the small villages of the New England of my youth. I daresay we shall find those whom we seek within.”
Ryan had stopped. His frown deepened as he eased the strap of his Steyr Scout longblaster onto his right shoulder. As usual the carbine rode beside his backpack on his right, muzzle-down for quick access.
He surveyed the square. So did his friends. There were no wags in sight, and no people.
To the left of the town hall was an equally large building that looked to have fallen in on itself. The tops of some pillars stood against the empty sky. Krysty wondered if it had been a library or museum of some sort. An important public building, anyway. To the town hall’s right was a church, only slightly smaller and less ostentatious than either of the other buildings. Its steeple was broken off jaggedly halfway up above the colonnaded portico. Its doors and windows were boarded over. A bizarre figure had been scrawled on the plywood that covered the big double doors: it looked like a face with two huge, staring eyes, surrounded by eight wriggly arms, all in rusty brown.
“Is that dried blood?” Ricky asked breathlessly, looking at the image with wide eyes.
“Nonsense,” Mildred said. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”
“Looks like blood to me,” Ryan replied. He squinted at the sky, whi
ch was purpling like a bruise. “And speaking of blood, time’s blood, and it’s running out on us. So let’s shake the dust off our boots and go talk to the man.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Trader sat at an angle with one knee crossed over the other. The fingers of his left hand drummed the top of the map table fixed to the floor of War Wag One’s briefing compartment. Given that Trader didn’t like to waste motion any more than fuel, jack or blood, that tic, along with the double-hard set of the man’s stark features, would have been enough to tell J. B. Dix that he was in shit up to his neck.
Except he already knew all that.
“You screwed up, kid,” he said. “You got three of my people killed.”
J.B. ground his jaws shut so hard his teeth squeaked. Any reply he made aloud would only deepen the hole he was in.
The battle hadn’t lasted long. The Science Brothers’ big play had been their intended flank attack. War Wag Two’s flank counterattack nixed that. After that, they saw no reason to stand and fight. The Brothers cut their losses and fled, leaving a dozen dead.
But Ace DeGuello had died instantly in the 20 mm blaster emplacement. His assistant gunner, Earl Vore, had been so terribly injured that he had to be written off, and the only help that could be given him was a 9 mm painkiller. Ace’s loader, Betty Lou Mirelli, had been blown out of the nest by the TOW warhead’s blast. The patches of skin on her back and the backs of her hands were expected to grow back sometime, but she was basically intact.
Ace’s assistants had been part of the bunch that had gang-stomped J.B. when he was a newbie what seemed a lifetime ago. And what really was, for Ace and Earl. It surprised J.B. even to remember that now. In a matter of weeks they had accepted him as a valued comrade. And him them.
Which made what happened hurt.
There had been two more minor injuries. And another wag-driver had taken a shot through the head and died. He felt bad about that, too, though less. He hadn’t known the dude to talk to. Close-knit as they were, Trader’s crew was large, and there was a certain amount of turnover. The things that mostly held them together were the sheer magnetic force of Trader’s personality and his legend.
J.B. glanced to the side. Rance Weeden sat on the third side of the table with her arms folded beneath her small breasts and her chin sunk to her collarbone. The diffuse gray-white light that shone up through its translucent top underlit her features, making them look harsh and haggard, and her hazel eyes sunken. But those eyes were fixed on him without a hint of softness. They were currently almost brown. The only hint of color in her face.
He looked back to Trader. That was easier, somehow.
Trader looked down at his hand on the table as if not sure what triple-stupe bastard it belonged to. The finger-drumming stopped. He raised the hand to scratch at his chin.
“Then again,” Trader said, “you tripped the Science bastards’ trap before they were ready. That saved lives.”
“But you knew it was a trap,” J.B. stated. “That was why you set War Wag One up on top of the bluff. And sent around War Wag Two on the counter-flank maneuver.”
Trader cracked a brief lopsided grin. “They don’t call me ‘the man who never was taken’ for nothing, kid,” he said. “Still—you spotted their scam smart-quick. That showed your tech chops and your quick eye. That shows value to me. And again, you helped nuke their timing—which on balance probably helped us get away clean as we did.”
“I still don’t get why they’d bother trying to scam us with junk if they intended to jack us all the time,” Rance said.
“That’s because you’re a straightforward bastard, Weeden, not a sneaky one like me. They probably reckoned to lull us without risking their real ace stuff to a firefight. Or mebbe they hoped we’d get hotter than nuke red and start a fight, giving them an excuse to take us down. Just not so early as J.B. here did.”
He turned his weathered face back to J.B. “What came near blasting us all was the way you did it. Letting your temper get the best of you.”
J.B. looked down at the tabletop. He knew the ax was fixing to fall. The only question was what it would chop off.
“The other thing in your favor is, you managed to make that tank-killer gunner flinch, when he had War Wag One dead to rights. Saved my mainstay machine as well as some of my best people. Those are solid ticks to the positive side of your ledger.”
Trader swung his leg down, swiveled his chair to face J.B. Then he laid clasped hands on the map table and leaned his bearded face out over them. The highlights made him look like some kind of devil from campfire stories kids told to scare each other.
“I pay my debts, son,” he said. “The whole Deathlands knows that. One day I’ll pay the debt the Science Brothers incurred. With blood interest. But not this trip.
“So. The good news, I let you live. That’s your payment for one service you did me, and us.
“The second one is, you still have a job.”
Rance sucked in a sharp breath. J.B. cut his eyes to her. She didn’t meet them.
“If Rance’ll still have you, you stay with her,” Trader said. “Turns out Ace’s people don’t blame you for getting your boss chilled. Be that as it may, you did, and I’m sure as shit’s brown not gonna reward you by putting you on his crew. No matter how much talent you have for that work.”
J.B. opened his mouth to protest.
“Before you go and run your face any further, Junior,” Trader said, “you’d best hear the bad news, which is that you are stone out of chances. Fuck up again in any way, shape, or form—if I even suspect you seriously might fuck up—you’re out. For good. And I won’t guarantee you won’t end your employment staring up at the stars.”
He stopped and stared hard at J.B.
“Now, do you still got anything to say to me?”
“No, sir!”
He nodded. “You may be stupe, but you’re not triple-stupe. Do you hear me? And do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir!”
Trader stared at him with eyes like tungsten carbide bits.
“Yes, sir!”
Trader nodded and sat back.
“So what do you say, Rance?” he asked.
She glanced at J.B. as if she’d found him on the bottom of her boot walking out of a gaudy-house crapper.
“As long as he does he job,” she said in a voice as flat as an anvil.
Trader stood up. “That’s it,” he said.
With no further words he left, heading forward into the command compartment.
J.B. looked at his boss. He moistened his lips.
“Rance—”
“Shut it,” she said in a voice that would’ve been hostile had it seemed she cared. “From here on, talk to me only when I talk to you first. Or you got something important to say to me. Work important.”
He shook his head. His eyes stung.
“I don’t understand,” he said, promptly violating her instructions. “What— I mean—you and me—!”
“There is no you and me.”
She stood up. He gaped at her. He felt his jaws working like a carp on a ditch’s bank. He shut them.
“I hoped to help make you a man,” she said in a voice that was almost soft. The way mild steel was to stainless, say. “Now I see I undertook a task beyond my power to achieve.
“You know steel. If it’s triple-hard, it’s brittle. It breaks easy unless it’s tempered right. No one can temper you but you, John Barrymore.”
He kept shaking his head as if he could make her words unsaid.
“I don’t understand,” he said again.
“A man controls his temper,” she said. “Not the other way around.”
A sense of hurt unfairness bubbled up inside him like acid vomit scalding his throat. She didn’t understand. He had to be that way! His willingness to throw himself at the face of anybody who got in his was the only way he’d ever survived to here and now. Couldn’t she see?
He started to explain it. But the t
errible urgency made him try to explain it all at once. The words, which had never come triple-easy to him to start with, all tried to get out at once. So all that he got out was a flock-of-geese stammer.
To her back. She was already walking out.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU want in Tavern Bay?” the mayor asked.
“Information,” Ryan said.
The mayor’s office was a circle of light cast by fish-oil lamps in the center of the echoing emptiness of the building’s rotunda. Mayor Augustus Thrumbull sat behind a large desk of some kind of hardwood, possibly oak, and looked across it at his visitors. It was finely finished, with only a few nicks and scratches in it, and polished to a bright shine. It held only a few writing tools. Ryan wondered where the mayor found an inexhaustible supply of green blotters. Unless he never actually used this one as such.
A windup clock stood by the mayor’s right hand. It was a kind that Ryan reckoned was familiar to Doc from his former life, with a big round face and brass bells on the outside. It ticked loudly and remorselessly.
Thrumbull turned his large head, his jowls with their side-whiskers like gray wings spilling over the top of his stand-up collar.
“Cosgrove,” he demanded of the man who stood invisible in the dimness beyond the ragged circle of illumination. Echoes of the syllables chased each other up the dome overhead like bats. “What do you mean, bringing them here?”
“Remember, Mayor,” the aide said smoothly, “commerce is the life’s blood of Tavern Bay. That’s our tradition, after all.”
The aide did everything smoothly, so far as Ryan could tell on their brief acquaintance. He had met them at the big double doors, opening to Ryan’s knock. He acted as if he expected them, introducing himself as Morlon Cosgrove in an oil-on-water voice and inviting them inside out of the evening chill before even asking their names. He was small and slim and neat, like a weasel in a brown suit. But an immaculately groomed weasel with chiseled, almost too-handsome features not spoiled by receding dark brown hair slicked back from them. He seemed to be in his middle thirties.