by James Axler
He grinned right back at her.
The preacher and Harold were no-hopers in any plan, not even of any potential use as a diversion. He wondered if chilling them would be a good or a bad move, then decided to let that lie awhile. They had at least two more days, according to Charlie.
Dorina Leonard slept most of the time, occasionally muttering under her breath in what sounded to Ryan like some sort of a Mex dialect. If it came to placing a narrow-bladed dagger in a man's groin while he was dreaming, then he guessed the waiflike woman would be a prime choice.
But she was so physically tiny and frail that her value in a knockdown drag-out fight was going to be a touch limited. And it didn't look as though she had the stamina to travel any distance cross-country if they made a break.
Red and his brother were prime candidates to enlist in any escape plan.
But when he managed to have a few private moments with each of the trappers, he found he hadn't been entirely right.
Bob Leonard shook his scarred head at Ryan's overture.
"Nope. Couldn't leave me wife. Dorina'd like die if I was to get went. Lost our little 'uns. She was wed before."
"How old is she?" Ryan couldn't believe that this woman-child was more than sixteen, tops.
"Near twenty, she figures, Ryan." His mutilated mouth tried for a smile and didn't miss it by much. "Don't look it, does her?"
"No."
"She wed. Lawman up in Kansas. July Randall. He was took by a breed in a knife fight. Blindsided him in the dark."
"No more children?"
"Sure did. One was dead-birthed. Other was four and the breed cut off its head."
Ryan whistled soundlessly between his teeth. "That does beat all, Bob. And I understand about Dorina. Not wanting to try anything without her."
One eye squinted at him, from under the furrowed mass of tumbled scar tissue. "Thanks, Ryan. Good on you."
There was also an unexpected problem with Red Folsom.
As soon as Ryan started to talk, very casually, about what their hopes might be of escaping, the tough red-head grabbed him by the arm, jerking on the links of the cuffs that joined him to Harold.
"Hey, why do…" The complaint was stillborn as his neighbor glared at him.
"Get away from me, Harold. Far as you can."
"Why pick on me, Red?"
"Because you're the best there is, fat boy."
The one-time candy seller shuffled away, until his chained arm was out straight, nearly four feet along the ledge from Folsom.
"Trust him far as I can piss into a hurricane, Ryan. Get me?"
"Sure. Think he'd betray us to Charlie?"
"Do barons screw virgins?"
"If he did, Charle'd chill him just the same. Wouldn't make any difference."
Folsom grinned. "You know it. I know it. But does Harold know it?"
Ryan nodded. He'd already picked Lord as one of the two possible traitors. The Very Reverend Joe-Bob Jarman was the other.
"What is it you don't want him to hear?" he asked the big man.
"We know that the strawhead stickie bastard got plans to send us off to buy the farm with a big bright bang. Couple of days. Got his men watching us." Folsom made the word "men" sound like something he'd picked up on his front fender.
"So? Sooner we get a plan worked out, the better it is."
Folsom shook his head. "Sorry, Ryan. Not much of a man for other folk's plans. Just take you a good long look at the others. You might be fine, and your woman seems like she'd swim most rivers and climb most mountains. But Danny's lost. Abe's old, and his breath's not good. Helga might not go without Danny. My partner won't move unless Dorina goes too. Minister and fat boy are out. Never was good at numbering. But it seems to me that if you take nine away from ten you get one. Comes down to me."
Ryan wasn't surprised. Nor could he honestly pick many holes in Folsom's thinking. A man alone would often have the edge on a group.
"Sorry to hear that," he said finally, staring out across the rain-swept camp.
"Way it is." Flat and final.
"Sure. Figured we might get our blasters back and do some damage. That way we might—only might— have a chance of getting the others sprung."
Folsom spit. The white globule landed in the slippery mud and immediately vanished in the pitted, orange slime.
"Hear what you say, Ryan."
"You got yourself a plan?"
Folsom laughed. "I've known Bob Leonard there for around seven years. Spent some hard winters and harder times with him. I haven't told him what I intend, Ryan."
And that was just about the end of the conversation between them
CHARLIE PADDED OVER near late afternoon, the Uzi kept dry under a long slicker. He was bareheaded, the water flattening his hair to his scalp.
"Had a good day, pilgrims?" he asked cheerily.
Helga gave him the finger. "Stick it in your ass, freak."
"I'm going to think of something special in the way of lonely, humiliating, agonizing deaths, lady," Charlie said, smiling, his tongue darting out to lick his lips.
Most of the cooking fires had been extinguished by the torrential rain, but several of the Anasazi dwellings now had the scent of cooking drifting from their openings.
"Going to be a hard night." Charlie laughed. "Those kivas are all around three feet deep in water. You norms come on like gods. See how you are at floating off to sleep!"
He walked away, shoulders shaking with merriment at his own joke.
Danny shifted, trying to get more comfortable. "Still aren't real used to a fucking stickie with a sense of humor," he said.
BY THE TIME THE LIGHT began to fade the gloom of late afternoon to the darkness of early evening, everyone was utterly miserable.
Though the massive cliff gave them shelter from the direct force of the rain, the wind had blown it into a fine, drizzling spray, which had seeped through to every corner of the camp.
A thin veil of water lay on top of the stew, cooling it. The wrist cuffs were taken off for them to eat, with a ring of guards watching carefully.
"Them muskets can't be too reliable in weather like this," Folsom said to Ryan. "Flash in the pan they will, even if they tried to keep their powder dry."
Ryan wasn't about to risk his life on that possibility.
Once the huddled meal was over, the ankle cuffs were also removed and the stickies started to shepherd them away from the shelter, along the raised walkway, toward the row of kivas. Ryan and Folsom helped Danny along, supported between them.
They stopped near the entrance to the partly flooded kiva, while Krysty led the rest down inside.
Folsom looked across at Ryan. "So long," he whispered.
And made his break.
Chapter Twenty-Four
HE DIDN'T EVEN make twenty steps.
Folsom let go of Danny's arm, allowing Ryan to take his full weight. The injured man screamed in pain and toppled sideways, dragging Ryan down into the mud with him.
As he fell, the one-eyed man squinted through the spray, watching the pathetic failure of Folsom's escape attempt. In dry weather, he might just have had a chance, as stickies were far from the most agile creatures and ran about as well as pigs climb trees.
He had the advantage of surprise, as the sodden guards were already, mentally, back in the warmth of their own homes. And Danny's yell, combined with the two men collapsing into the mud, threw the stickies off balance.
Folsom jumped down off the walkway, punching one of the patrol in the groin, managing to snatch a knife from his belt as the stickie folded over.
He was only thirty yards from the narrow bridge over the stream—now a river—that raged down the valley. Beyond that was good cover provided by the trees and the sheets of rain.
It wasn't a bad try.
An unlucky try.
Two of the muskets fired, the sound flat in the teeming open space. Another misfired, with a sullen click.
Folsom was dod
ging, his plaid shirt darkened with the rain, feet kicking up gouts of red-orange spray around him.
The ground was rippled from centuries of feet pounding across it. In dry weather you were hardly conscious of how uneven it was. In wet weather it simply appeared like a smooth lake of featureless mud. But in places the mud was a half-inch deep.
In other places, a yard away, it might be nine inches deep.
Folsom found one of the pockets where the clammy ooze came halfway up his calf. It trapped his boot, wrenching his ankle, while his other foot skidded away, out of control.
He crashed down on his side, trying to take the impact with his right hand. But Folsom was lost. His elbow struck first, with a sickening crack of bone. The large knife, his only weapon, went spinning from nerveless fingers, skittering through the slick mud, over the brink of the central drop and into the brown water of the river.
By the time he got onto his hands and knees, shaking his head like a bullock under the poleax, it was all over.
"Fireblast," Ryan swore quietly, reaching to help Danny to his feet again. Harold came to his assistance. Krysty also did her best to aid the fallen man.
The others were watching, faces stricken at the disaster.
One of the guards kicked Folsom in the ribs, a dull, vicious blow that rolled him onto his back, one hand covering his eyes against the teeming rain. The rest of the stickies clustered around him, their muskets hefted by the long muzzles, ready to beat the man to death.
Ryan glanced around, wondering with a flash of intuition whether this might be a good moment to try his own break. But Krysty was caught, half-in the flooded pit, trying to support the injured Danny. There was no way she could get out fast.
The moment passed.
Charlie appeared and shouted a warning to his men not to injure Folsom, warning them in the same breath to keep a better eye on the other nine captives.
The men drew back reluctantly from the prostrate figure.
"Get him up and imprison him away from the other norms!"
"Leave him alone!" Helga called, but the lack of hope in her voice rode over every word. She knew. They all knew.
THE RAIN EASED an hour or so later and finally stopped around eight o'clock that same night.
By nine the skies had cleared, and the air tasted fresh, green and very cold.
The fires were lighted again, heaps of dry wood piled on until the darkness seemed to be filled with cascades of crackling sparks.
The first hour or so in the kiva had been difficult and dangerous.
The water was draining very slowly, even after the heaviest of the torrent had ceased. It took three of them to keep Danny's head high enough to save him from drowning, which meant that all of the others were cramped into chillingly cold and uncomfortable corners.
It was the Very Reverend Joe-Bob Jarman who complained most.
"I'm the tallest, so I should be in the center," he said, trying to push Krysty out of his way with his bony elbows—which turned out to be a big mistake.
Krysty turned on him, lifting her foot and scraping the side of the leather sole down the front of his shin as hard as she could, finishing by grinding her heel into his instep.
"Fuckin' bitch!" he moaned, only just avoiding slipping under water.
"I call that serious bad language from a man of God," Krysty said, doubling her fingers and jabbing Jarman with all her strength on the outside of the thigh muscle on the undamaged leg. The blow paralyzed it, so that he suddenly collapsed and slithered out of their sight, reappearing coughing and choking, hands flailing for a grip on the smooth walls of the kiva.
"Watch your tongue, Reverend," Ryan warned, "or you might not be able to come up for air next time."
A little later Dorina fainted and had to be supported until she came around again. Her eyes had rolled back in their sockets, and she was moaning and trembling uncontrollably.
Around ten o'clock a posse of guards came to unbolt the metal grille from the pit and order them out into the open. They were visibly on edge, pushing with their blasters and shouting inarticulate and incomprehensible commands.
"What do they want this late?" Helga asked. "Still, at least it means we can get out of this dreadful damp hole."
Ryan glanced at Krysty, whose hair was soaked and hung limply over her shoulders, and got a hurried shake of the head in response.
She felt the same as he did.
That what was about to go down wasn't going to be good news.
They were both right.
FOLSUM WAS STRIPPED completely naked, his pale body showing the livid bruises of the beating that the stickies' leader had interrupted. Blood was caked around his nose and mouth, trickling down over his chest, etched black in the dancing firelight.
His eyes were closed, though Ryan suspected that he was a good deal more conscious than he was letting on.
There was a gash across the top of his head, and his red hair was thickly matted. His hands had been tied behind him with thin wire, which had forced more blood to seep from under his now-purple fingernails.
"Stand the others over there and chain their ankles," Charlie ordered. "Let the norms see how we treat their kind."
There was no point in struggling against such overwhelming, armed force.
While the shackling took place, Folsom stood silent and still. Occasionally there would be a ripple of movement in the crowd of watching stickies, and words were called out. But Ryan couldn't make out what was being shouted.
Charlie turned to one of his lieutenants and said something. The mutie went immediately into the throng and was clearly handing out some sort of a warning.
There was no more shouting.
When every captive was safely in bondage, Charlie turned again to face them, holding a triumphant right fist in the air, like a victorious fighter.
"Now you shall see it!" he shouted. "Now we shall show you." There was a roar of pleasure, like animals scenting their evening meat.
At his side there stood a young woman, holding a rusty iron bowl.
"What's in that?" Bob asked. Nobody answered him. Nobody knew.
A NUMBER OF IRON BOLTS had been driven deep into the cliff at the distant end of the camp, beyond the last of the small houses. Folsom was drawn up against them, one hand fixed to a ring level with his head, the other strained out sideways, chained to another circular bolt. He stood there, skin fluttering across his stomach with cold and fear.
Charlie approached the naked man, the woman close at his elbow. He had drawn a short-bladed knife from his belt.
Helga called out in the quiet. "God go with you, Red Folsom."
But there was no response. The man's eyes stayed tight shut, his mouth an etched line.
When Charlie beckoned another of the young stickie women to join him, Ryan guessed. She was holding a small cooking ladle in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.
"Black powder," he whispered to Krysty.
Charlie was closer to Folsom, the knife dancing like a living flame in the reflected light of the camp fires.
"Why black powder?" Krysty asked, puzzled. "What's he going— Gaia!"
THE FIRST CUT WAS a slow, considered slice across the center of the chained man's stomach. The stickie was careful not to push the knife in too deep and cause any terminal wound. Just deep enough to peel back a flap of skin and muscle, five or six inches long. He pulled it wider with his fingers until it resembled the pouch of a kangaroo.
Harold Lord began to vomit copiously.
At an impatient gesture from Charlie, the girl tipped a ladleful of the fine, gritty powder into the oozing wound.
There was a buzz of excitement around the camp, almost loud enough to drown out Folsom's anguished moaning.
At a nod from Charlie the young stickie dipped the end of the torch toward the brimming gash in the man's stomach.
There was a roar of delight from the dozens of watching muties as first a fountain of sparks, then flame and
smoke gushed out with a barely audible whooshing sound.
Folsom's scream rose way above the noise, harsh and high enough to shatter a crystal goblet.
Helga was weeping and the Very Reverend Joe-Bob Jarman was struggling to pray in a faltering, self-important voice.
Ryan was simply confirmed in his belief that Charlie, despite his undoubted skills and intellect, was just another vicious, maniac stickie underneath the polished veneer.
The next forty minutes were bloodily predictable and vile.
In the past Ryan had traveled through the deserts of the Southwest, and he'd witnessed firsthand the ingenious tortures of some of those peoples. What Charlie was doing to ensure the doomed Red Folsom an appalling and delayed passing was nothing new.
The stickie couldn't even contrive to carry out the protracted execution with any particular style or skill.
Folsom passed out at least four times and had to be recovered with water. The result of this was to make the incisions filled with black powder difficult to ignite.
And one cut, below the left knee, was so deep and held so much powder that the resulting explosion blew the lower part of the leg completely off, so that the wound had to be hastily cauterized with the torch and a clumsy tourniquet applied to prevent the trapper from dying off too quickly.
The blackened thing that hung against the blood-splashed cliff bore little resemblance to a human being.
Around the stickies' camp initial rippling pleasure had gone, to be replaced by boredom. Stickies had a very limited attention span. A few of the youngsters still greeted each puff of flame and smoke with a ragged cry, but the rest were quiet.
Charlie sensed that he was losing his audience and brought the proceeding to an abrupt ending.
Using the point of the knife he probed both eyes from their sockets, where they dangled onto the mutilated cheeks.
Taking a wedge of wood, Charlie forced open Folsom's bloodied lips, jamming the jaws apart, grinning as he encouraged the girl to fill the mouth with black powder.
"Adios!" the stickie screamed, sheathing his knife and taking the smoldering torch from the woman.
He waved it around his head, the mane of golden hair dancing in the light. The flame roared into life and he pushed it toward Folsom's face.