‘So they’re still around,’ said Moore, the Senior Field Commander.
Buck McDonnell leaned forward. ‘Any idea of numbers?’
‘Hard to say, sir,’ said Kazan. ‘A few hundred, certainly. It was a big settlement. The cropfields are quite extensive.’
‘Which is an indication that the clan is a strong one,’ said Hartmann.
Kazan nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Those recent intelligence reports indicated we could run into clans able to field a thousand warriors.’
Gus White nudged Steve. ‘More than enough to give everybody a piece of the action.’
Kazan tapped the map with her finger. ‘I have a hunch they could be holed up in these woods.’ She checked off the distance with the plotting ruler. ‘Two miles…’
‘Close enough for them to run for cover when they see us coming,’ said the F.O.O. He saw Steve’s frown. ‘Mutes have terrific eyesight,’ he explained. ‘They can pick up a Skyhawk at over five miles.’
‘Which means,’ said Kazan, ‘that they’re off and running before you get anywhere near them.’
‘So how do we catch ‘em?’ asked Gus.
‘With great difficulty,’ said the F.O.O.
‘You’ve got to draw them out,’ growled Buck McDonnell. ‘You’ve got to lay ground bait. A downed Skyhawk. A patrol that looks like it’s lost its way. You sucker them out into the open, get round the back of ‘em so they can’t run, then you hit ‘em hard.’
‘We may be in luck with this batch,’ said Kazan. ‘It’s too late in the year to start in with new planting. A few firebombs should bring ‘em out into the open.’
The F.O.O. nodded in agreement. ‘Right.’ He turned expectantly to Hartmann.
The wagon master looked carefully at the map and weighed up the options open to him. He didn’t take long to reach a decision. ‘We’ll begin a search and destroy operation in the area of Rock River tomorrow morning – starting with a napalm strike on those cropfields and the forest.’ He turned to Baxter, the Flight Operations Officer. ‘The attack on both targets will be made simultaneously using all nine aircraft.’
Baxter stiffened to attention. ‘With your permission, sir–’
‘Yes?’ said Hartmann.
‘I’d like to fly one of the reserve aircraft and take part in the attack.’
Hartmann eyed Jodi Kazan and saw there was no conflict. ‘Very well. Five aircraft under Section Leader Kazan will make the attack on the cropfields. You will lead the others against the forest.’
Baxter, the F.O.O., saluted. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Sonofabitch! This is it!’ crowed Gus. He pummelled Steve’s arm.
Buck McDonnell, the Trail-Boss straightened up from the table and slapped Gus hard across the face. The force of the blow snapped his head sideways and rocked him on his heels. Recovering, he leapt to attention, his swelling lips drained of colour. Steve braced himself at the ready.
McDonnell poked the polished gold top of his switch-stick under Gus White’s trembling nose. ‘This is the operations room of The Lady from Louisiana, Mister – not some third rate base canteen full of zed-heads! Don’t ever let me catch you mouthing off like that again in front of the Commander! D’ya hear me?!’ he thundered.
‘Loud and clear, SAH!’ cried Gus, in a cracked voice.
As darkness fell, the wagon train turned round on itself, parking nose to tail with its sixteen cars forming a circle. Secure behind The Lady’s formidable defences, the crew pulled down their folding bunks and went to sleep. A small guard detail in the front and rear command cars manned the tv screens linked to the wagon train’s electronic sensing devices.
Despite their sophistication, they did not reveal the presence of Mr Snow and a large posse of M’Call Bears studying the wagon train from the stony ridge of the nearest ground.
Mr Snow turned to Motor-Head. ‘The iron snake sleeps. We will go south. Bring Cadillac.’
Motor-Head nodded silently and disappeared into the darkness with eleven of his clan-brothers.
Taking care to avoid high ground, Mr Snow and the rest of the posse made a wide detour south and then westwards until they picked up the trail left by the giant steel-clad tyres of the wagon train. They found some cover and squatted patiently until Cadillac arrived with his heavily-armed escort.
Mr Snow took Cadillac by the arm and led him to the trail left by the wagon train. ‘This is the path of the iron snake. Walk along it and search for a seeing-stone. If you find one the snake has passed over, take it into your mind and tell me what you see.’
Cadillac wandered up and down both sets of tracks. Mr Snow followed at a discreet distance. After sighing heavily several times and throwing up his arms in supplication and to express varying degrees of despair, Cadillac found a seeing-stone. He picked it up and showed it to Mr Snow.
The stone, which had – as far as Mr Snow could see – nothing to distinguish it from those around it, was about the size of a baby’s head. Mr Snow examined it reverently. ‘Is this really ringed with a golden light?’
Cadillac took the stone back. ‘Don’t mock me, Old One.’
‘I was never more serious,’ said Mr Snow. ‘This is a great power that you have. One that I have longed for all my life. Let us hope that you will master it quickly and become skilled in its use. What knowledge does the stone hold?’
Cadillac knelt on the ground between the tracks. He closed his eyes, cupped the stone in his hands and placed it against his forehead. After a while he lowered the stone, letting his hands rest against his thighs, ‘What knowledge do you seek?’ he asked in a far-away voice. His eyes opened but they were blind to the outside world.
‘I would know the iron snake,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Tell me how it is fashioned. Tell me what lies within its belly.’
Cadillac closed his eyes and gripped the stone tightly. ‘Many things,’ he said, distantly. ‘Strange things. I have no words to say what they are.’
‘Use the words you have,’ said Mr Snow. ‘The Sky Voices will help me see beyond them.’
Motor-Head and the posse of M’Call Bears split into two groups, one on each side of the trail, and crouched alertly, their eyes and their heightened senses, probing the enveloping darkness.
Cadillac stood up and retraced his steps up and down the track of the wagon train, the seeing-stone clutched tightly in his hands. Mr Snow followed. Cadillac stopped and looked upwards with unseeing eyes, lips drawn back over his teeth, his face contracted with fear. ‘The iron snake passes over me. It is full of hate… death… its belly is full of warriors who thirst for our blood.’
‘How many warriors?’ asked Mr Snow.
‘A great number. They lie in every part of the snake.’
‘Count them,’ ordered Mr Snow.
Cadillac frowned. ‘It is difficult. I cannot–’
‘Don’t argue,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Just do it.’
Cadillac knelt again and pressed the stone against his forehead. ‘I can see nothing. The stone is clouded with the blood of our southern brothers.’
‘Wash it clean and start again,’ said Mr Snow patiently. He squatted down beside his pupil.
Cadillac sighed heavily. He lowered the stone and held it level with his waist, gazing at it fixedly. After several minutes of silence, punctuated by sighs of frustration, he said, ‘The chief warriors sit in the head and the tail of the snake.’
‘Find me the capo,’ said Mr Snow quickly.
‘I see him,’ said Cadillac. ‘He has pale hair under his nose.’
‘Fix his face and his soul in your mind,’ said Mr Snow. He moved around on his knees until he was facing Cadillac.
‘I hold him,’ said Cadillac.
Mr Snow reached out and placed his hands on either side of Cadillac’s head. ‘Give him to me. Pass the image of his being into my mind.’ He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Good. Well done.’ He dropped his hands and gripped Cadillac’s shoulders briefly. ‘You have true power. Read the snake. I would know more.’
Cadillac’s sightless eyes rolled up under his lids. ‘The snake has two bellies filled with pipes that roar with hunger and are full of flame. These are also at the head and tail of the snake where the chief warriors live. The sand-burrowers feed grey dirt to the snake. It turns into bad air and is sucked down the pipes through rows of red-hot flashing teeth. These flame-pipes are also its heart. They send power through its veins to make its body work. A power like the white fire from the sky. It gives life to the snake, it makes its eyes see, and turns its great iron feet.’
‘Wheels,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Probably powered by electric motors.’
‘I do not know of these things,’ said Cadillac.
‘More words from the Old Time,’ muttered Mr Snow. ‘Don’t worry about them. Just keep going.’
‘The snake has eyes on all sides of its body. Some for looking at things close by, some for far-seeing – like eagles. The sand-burrowers have many boxes of frozen water which show them pictures of what the snake sees.’ Cadillac paused to decipher a new set of images. ‘There are both men and women in the snake’s belly. The women are like our She-Wolves. They also thirst for our blood. They have… strange sharp iron. Things that throw bolts like our crossbows but filled with a great wind. Not bows… hollow reeds that spit out bolts like iron rain. At the head and the tail of the snake there is more sharp iron. Things which send out long shafts of sunlight that burn like the white-hot brands at the heart of a fire.’
‘Look again,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Do they use these things to make the darkness like day?’
‘No,’ replied Cadillac. ‘They have no need. They have lanterns that send out red light which we cannot see but which fills our body and draws our image into their magic picture boxes.’
Even though he knew many things of the Old Time, Mr Snow did not understand Cadillac’s attempt to describe the infra-red nightscopes carried by The Lady. Undeterred, he kept plugging away until Cadillac had sent his mind’s eye into every part of the wagon train and come up with a head-count of the crew.
Three hundred sand-burrowers. Mr Snow considered the problem. If it came to the crunch, the M’Call clan could field over a thousand Bears and She-Wolves. But that combined total would include everyone; from fourteen-year-old fledgling warriors who had not chewed bone to the elders aged fifty and over. The courage of the very young would not compensate for their inexperience and despite their agility, Rolling-Stone and the elders would no longer be the equal, in single-handed combat, to the warriors in the belly of the iron snake.
Pressed for more information, Cadillac described the deadly, invisible, breath of the snake that hissed out of holes in its belly, and told Mr Snow of the multi-layered hull, impregnable to Mute crossbow bolts. The hatches in the underbelly and sides were sealed from within and protected by the all-devouring breath of the snake. Mr Snow was forced to admit that – as his Southern brothers had already found out – a wagon train was a tough nut to crack.
Cadillac pulled more pictures from the stone. This time of the arrowheads; the twelve Skyhawks, neatly racked with folded wings in the flight compartment and, in the adjacent car, the ten cloud warriors and their ground crew-men.
‘It is strange,’ said Cadillac. ‘Their faces are shrouded in darkness. All except one. Him I see. His face and heart are strong but Death sits on his shoulder. Is he the cloud warrior the Sky Voices prophesied?’
‘He may be,’ replied Mr Snow. ‘If you have been shown his face when those of the others around him are hidden, the vision must have some purpose. Mark him well, then break your bond with the seeing-stone and return to the time of this present earth.’
Cadillac appeared to make an extra effort of concentration then his head sagged backwards. His fingers opened limply; the stone rolled forwards over his knees onto the ground. Mr Snow picked it up and examined it again but could see nothing. He tossed it aside with a frustrated sigh, stood up and hauled Cadillac to his feet.
Cadillac’s eyelids fluttered open. He seemed unable to focus on his surroundings; his legs were like rubber. ‘What happened?’ he gasped, making an unsuccessful attempt to stand upright.
Mr Snow got his shoulder under Cadillac’s left arm and held him around the waist. ‘You did well. You drew many pictures from the stone.’
Cadillac smiled unsteadily. ‘Truly?’
‘Why do you keep asking me that?’ snapped Mr Snow. ‘When you were a child, you accepted everything I said without question. Now you believe nothing and you make me repeat myself. At my time of life I don’t have time to fill my mouth with empty words.’
‘I am sorry, Old One.’
‘And don’t start saying “sorry”,’ grumped Mr Snow. ‘That’s an even bigger waste of time.’
‘My tongue wanders, Old One. The stone has loosened the bond between my mind and my body.’
‘It happens,’ said Mr Snow. He patted Cadillac on the back. ‘Take it easy. For the first time out that was a good trip but you are going to have to work on it.’
‘What must I do?’ asked Cadillac, sagging in Mr Snow’s arms.
‘Well, it’s no good waking up and asking me what happened,’ said Mr Snow. ‘I may not always be here. You’re the one that sees the pictures. From now on you’re going to have to try and remember them.’
‘It is difficult,’ said Cadillac.
‘It’s never been any other way,’ replied Mr Snow.
Motor-Head strode over to them. ‘It is time to run, Old One. The sun wakes under his grey sleeping furs by the eastern door.’
‘Okay, let’s move,’ said Mr Snow. ‘Can you carry your clan-brother?’
Motor-Head hoisted the unprotesting Cadillac into the air and dumped him over his shoulder like a side of beef.
‘The stone has drained his strength,’ explained Mr Snow.
Motor-Head snorted disdainfully. ‘Magic…!’
‘Don’t knock it,’ said Mr Snow. ‘If that Mother in the sky delivers, it may save your gravelly hide.’
When Steve and the other wingmen woke with a tingle of anticipation to the electronic bugle blast at six am, they found that there had been a radical change in the weather. In contrast to the clear, heat-laden skies of the previous weeks, the temperature had dropped sharply overnight. A heavy mist now surrounded the wagon train cutting visibility to less than thirty yards.
Hartmann unwound The Lady, parked her in a straight line ready to begin the advance north then called Kazan and the Flight Operations Officer up to the saddle.
‘What do you think, gentlemen?’
Jodi Kazan grimaced. ‘It’s not good, sir. I’ve been up on the flight deck. You can’t even see the front and rear command cars from the middle of the train. It’s really weird. I’ve seen mist this thick but never at this time of year. On the other hand–’
‘– we’ve never been this far north before,’ said Baxter, the F.O.O.
‘Local variation, perhaps?’ suggested Hartmann.
You weren’t supposed to shrug in response to questions from the wagon master but Kazan let one slip. ‘It’s just possible that it could be some kind of off-beat temperature inversion. But–’
‘Weather is weather, right?’ said Hartmann.
‘Right,’ agreed the F.O.O. He knew what Hartmann was getting at. Three hundred years of meteorological data had been fed into COLUMBUS since overground operations began. The computer’s vast memory bank also contained a pre-Holocaust model of global weather patterns. By observation of the terrain and the prevailing atmospheric conditions it should always be possible by reference to the stored data to come up with a reasonably accurate forecast. Experience told them that heavy morning ground mists at this time of the year usually burned off as the sun’s heat built up.
‘We’ll give it an hour,’ grunted Hartmann. He told the First Engineer to hold the turbines at tick-over, ordered a half-watch and put the rest of the crew on make-and-mend. Steve, and the other new wingmen, all of whom had been unable to sleep properly because of the exci
tement, fretted at the delay. Gus White’s face now sported an ugly bruise where McDonnell’s back-hander had caught him. The old hands in Kazan’s section quietly checked their survival equipment. The ground crew tested the operation of the racks fitted to either side of the cockpit that would each carry three canisters of napalm.
An hour later, The Lady was still enveloped in thick mist. Steve and Gus went up onto the flight deck with Jodi Kazan. The air was cold and damp on their faces. There was no sign of the sun. The wagon train was enveloped in a leaden grey nothingness; the camouflaged metal hull was coated with a thin beaded film of moisture which ran in dark rivulets down the steeply sloping sides.
Kazan put on her visored crash helmet and adjusted the mask inside the chin guard so that it fitted comfortably. Wingmen’s ‘bone-domes’ resembled the helmets worn by pre-Holocaust racing drivers and motor-cyclists. All that had been added were earphones, two small mikes inside the chin guard and an anti-radiation air filter. Like the others, she was dressed in black, brown and red camouflaged flight fatigues and lightweight combat boots.
On the forward section of the deck, her Skyhawk stood hitched to one of the two steam catapults with its engine running. A three-barrelled high-velocity 25 calibre air rifle that could be switched from triple volley to full auto, hung from the flexible mounting above the cockpit. A ground-crewman checked the two racks inside the cockpit filled with 180-round magazines, that Kazan had loaded herself. It was a tradition among wingmen. That way, if you got a jammed round at a vital moment, you had nobody to blame but yourself.
Kazan fastened the neck strap of her helmet. ‘I’m just going to check how thick this crap is. If it’s half-way flyable, we’ll put up a forward patrol.’ She jabbed a finger at Gus. ‘Tell Booker and Yates to stand by.’
Gus snapped to attention. ‘Yess-SUR!’ He saluted then leapt off the deck into one of the duck-holes – the balconies built into the sides of the flight car around the access hatches.
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