by James Axler
The Trader was at his elbow, looking out through the armaglass shield. "Toll collectors," he said. "Must be on the edge of Towse ville."
"We'll pay," J.B. said. It wasn't really a question. Trails and bridges into villes were commonly subject to toll payments.
"Sure. Long as it isn't too much."
How much was too much tended to vary from ville to ville, and also depended on how many blasters the toll keepers could muster.
Ryan gave Peachy the order to drive forward slowly, watching the tiny figures of the four sec-men grow larger until one of them held up a hand as a warning sign.
"Stop," Ryan whispered, and the war wag came to a smooth halt.
"Talk to them, Ryan," the Trader told him.
The door was already half-open and Ryan jumped down, feeling the heat of the sun striking at the left side of his face. He saw, for the first time, that the gorge was spectacularly deep. As he walked toward the guards, boots crunching on the sand, he was also making a mental appraisal of the probable strength of the bridge. He decided, once he was close enough, that it was sturdily built and would easily carry the two war wags, as long as they took it one at a time.
"Hi," said the tallest of the waiting quartet.
"Hi. Heading for Towse."
"Baron Carson controls the ground you're walking on, outlander."
There was a confidence and arrogance that Ryan didn't take to. Nowadays he managed to control his razored temper better than when he was younger, but he could feel the scar on his face beginning to burn with the pale beginnings of rage. With an effort he swallowed and steadied his breathing.
"That so? How much does he want to let us come and trade with him?"
"Cross the Gorge Bridge? Two big wags like them two? Whole lot of jack."
Ryan knew that the Trader wanted to avoid any argument and offered a lowish figure, which the sec-man promptly tripled—and Ryan halved.
"Baron Carson don't like to hear about outlanders fucking with his regs."
"We got enough weaponry on those wags to take out any ville in the Deathlands," Ryan replied. "But we come in peace. Want to trade for gas and ammo. So I'll pay the last figure I named and add another ten percent on top."
The man glanced at his colleagues, who were all carefully studying the distant white peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Eventually he nodded to Ryan.
"You settle when you get into the ville. I give you this ticket—" he wrote slowly and laboriously on it with a worn stub of green crayon "—and you show it and pay."
Ryan took it, checking that the amount of jack was what they'd agreed. "We go across the bridge now," he said.
"Sure. Try it both at once." The guard grinned, showing that most of his teeth were missing. "Long way down and no way up. I'd like it real good if that happened."
"I see you on the way out of here, and I'll break both your knees," Ryan said with a friendly grin. "Remember that."
Fifteen minutes later, War Wags One and Two drove along the well-maintained blacktop and found themselves within sight of the adobe buildings that made up the ville of Towse.
Within the hour they made the acquaintance of the baron and his lady.
Chapter Fifteen
BARON ALIAS CARSON of Towse was an inch or so over six feet in height. He was somewhere around the middle forties, lean, and wore a lightweight gray suit and a homburg hat. His horn-rimmed glasses had thick lenses that showed up the weakness of his pale blue eyes. His face was skinny and weathered by the New Mexico sun into deep furrows around the mouth, nose and eyes. Baron Carson's voice placed him somewhere to the east of Towse, a slow, nasal, Texas kind of a drawl.
Under the instructions of two more of the laconic sec-men the wags were parked in the square of what had once been the Indians' pueblo. The burned-out shell of a church stood stark at one end, the adobe smeared with long streaks of soot. A narrow river ran through the middle of the ville, spanned by a slender wooden bridge.
Baron Carson, with his wife and a dozen heavily armed sec-guards, came striding out of the largest building on the east side of the open plaza.
"You're Trader. Heard you was coming to pay a call on us. Welcome."
Ryan took an instinctive dislike to the skeletal figure, despite the apparent friendliness of the greeting. "Come to deal for some gas and some ammo. Word south was that you had some stocks."
Carson nodded. "Word's right. Living here I'd be a terminal fool if I didn't keep supplies. There's some relatives of the Indians who used to live here that'd be real glad to come and visit one dark night."
"You drove them all out?" Ryan asked. The baron turned his incurious, dull eyes in his direction. "Didn't catch your name, young man," he drawled.
"Didn't throw it, Baron. But I'm Ryan Cawdor. War captain to the Trader."
"Really. How very interesting," Carson replied, the tone of his voice making it clear as a slap in the mouth that he meant the opposite.
The tall, gray man folded his hands in front of him like a priest at prayer, and Ryan noticed that the tip of the little finger on the left hand was missing. It looked as though it had been neatly severed, many years ago. "You chill the folks that lived in the ville, Baron?" J.B. asked.
"They don't live here anymore. That answer the question?"
The Trader tried to take the abrasive edge from the conversation. "This your lady, Baron?"
Alias Carson stared impassively at him, his face totally without emotion. "Well, she sure as shit isn't a camel, mister."
The baron ran a finger round the inside of his collar. Despite the ferocious heat in the square, he wore a vest under his jacket, and a tightly knotted tie that was so dark a blue that it was almost indistinguishable from black.
After an uncomfortable pause, the woman spoke up for herself.
"I'm Sharona Carson. Like to welcome you all to Towse ville."
"Thanks, ma'am." The Trader bowed stiffly from the waist, in a strangely old-fashioned gesture that Ryan had never seen him use before.
But Sharona Carson, woman to Baron Alias, wasn't like any female that Ryan had seen before.
She looked as though she'd stepped straight out of the pages of a prenuke clothing magazine. Ryan's guess put her within an inch or so of six feet, but it was difficult to tell because of the spike heels on her open-toe shoes, highly polished and the color of crushed lapis lazuli.
Her dress was some kind of lightweight cream wool that clung to the gentle contours of her body like it was made for them. A slim gold chain was buckled around her waist, and a thinner version was clipped about her left ankle. She wore a gold wrist-chron and every finger carried a fine gold ring. Ryan wasn't particularly an expert on gems, but he recognized the ruby and the emerald, the sapphire and the huge fire opal, and a tulip-cut diamond that caught the sun and threw it back in myriad knives of rainbow brilliance.
Around Sharona Carson's elegant throat was a single strand of perfectly matched pearls. Her hair was cornfield blond, tumbling in sinuous curls to her shoulders.
She was stunningly beautiful. Her eyes, an unusually pale lilac, were breathtaking. It was rare in Deathlands to see a lady wearing makeup, let alone the state-of-the-art perfection of Sharona Carson. Sluts in gaudies might daub some black around their eyes and smear some crimson grease on their lips, but here was a delicate and subtle use of shades and textures and tints.
When Baron Alias Carson had come to meet them with his bodyguards, his woman had been standing among the sec-men. Now she stepped forward so that they could all see her.
Ryan had never seen such a walking example of enormous wealth. The jewelry alone would have kept an entire frontier ville in supplies for ten years.
"Is something wrong with your one-eyed friend, Trader? "she asked.
Ryan started and looked away, embarrassed that she'd caught him staring at her, openmouthed.
"Young men nowadays, lady," the Trader replied with a grim smile. "All gall and no backbone."
"Thought he was try
ing to catch swallows in his open mouth," Baron Carson said without the faintest trace of a smile.
Ryan was relieved when the conversation shifted to a dinner invitation for himself, J.B. and the Trader.
The armed sec-men were everywhere. The Trader had insisted that the wags should be guarded only by his own people, keeping the baron's heavies away from them.
There was a table of scrubbed pine that was large enough to seat thirty people, but it held only six place settings. The baron was at the head, with the Trader on his right and Ryan on his left. Sharona Carson sat next to Ryan and opposite J.B. Between the Armorer and the Trader there was an empty chair.
"For my sec-boss," the Baron said. "Ferryman's out on business for me. He radioed in that he'd be a little late. The business didn't quite go according to plan."
"You'll like Ferryman, Ryan," Sharona said. "You and he have something in common."
"What?"
"Wait and see," was all she would say.
The earlier inordinate affluence and ostentation of the woman's clothes and jewelry were repeated at the meal.
Baron Alias wore the same clothes as before, sitting ramrod straight, narrowed eyes darting behind the thick lenses to whoever was speaking. He occasionally interjected a comment in his slow, nasal drawl.
Sharona had changed.
Her hair had been piled on top her head and secured with a pin of beaten silver, holding in its clawed end a large bead of rough amber. Her necklace was also of unmatched lumps of soft amber. A bolero jacket of light cream suede was draped over her shoulders, pinned at the front across her breasts with small silver clips. Every time she leaned forward to help herself to one of the dishes of food, Ryan was aware that he could very nearly glimpse the nipple on her left breast.
Sharona's skirt was dark green leather, buffed to a dull sheen, its hem reaching to her knees. Her shoes were of matching green leather.
The plates and dishes were of fine china, with a delicate floral pattern etched around the edges. The glass was crystal that rang like a bell if tapped with a fingernail. The cutlery was plain steel, unadorned, but with handles of carved bone.
The food was ornate and was served in tiny portions, surrounded by artistic little pools of bright sauces, and vegetables carved to resemble flowers.
Ryan craved a decent hunk of meat that he could get to grips with, and a realistic helping of potatoes. He helped himself to some honest gravy instead of the endless array of sweet and sour sauces that spoiled every dish.
He and J.B. made some effort to follow the example of their hosts, who picked at their food, constructing color-keyed mouthfuls for themselves. The Trader didn't bother. He simply picked up his spoon or fork and attacked every course with them, scraping up the meat or fish or game and jamming it into his mouth along with the frail florid vegetables. He used a hunk of bread to mop up the sauces.
"You seem very hungry, Trader," Sharona observed, not bothering to hide the patronizing note in her voice.
"I'd need to be to keep eating these double-small portions of overdressed duck, wouldn't I?" he replied, picking at his teeth and hardly bothering to smother a belch.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, the servants cleared away the last dishes and brought in a silver samovar resting over a blue spirit flame. They settled it in place, ready to make coffee. And at a signal from Sharona, they withdrew.
"Your sec-boss, Ferryman, looks like he's not going to join us," J.B. said.
"He'll be here. Probably attending to the burying first," the baron replied.
"The business cost some?"
"All business costs, Ryan," Sharona replied. "It's a question of whether the price is worth the paying."
"Or the prize worth the having," the Trader added, leaning back in the antique oak chair.
"Oh, yes. How true, Trader. But if you truly want a thing, then no price is too high. What do you think, Ryan?"
The candles in their silver sconces were beginning to gutter and flare, making the rectangular room shrink in the gloom. Ryan wasn't sure how well Baron Alias could make out the faces of his wife and guests.
He hoped that his own face was impassive and his voice pitched normally as he replied to the woman's question.
"There's times that the price could be out of reach," he said.
Her fingers tightened on his thigh. As the meal had worn on, the woman had gradually eased her chair a little closer to Ryan's, until she could rub her right foot up and down the calf of his left leg. It had been during the array of biscuits and fruit ices that her right hand had dropped beneath the level of the linen cloth. She started at his knee and feathered higher.
And higher.
Her fingers caressed the top of his thigh, feeling his raging erection. Then they cupped his balls and squeezed firmly.
At that moment Ryan had dropped his spoon onto his plate with a resounding clatter, receiving curious glances from both the Trader and J.B.
It was the Trader who changed the subject. During the meal he'd made several attempts to steer the conversation around to business, but the baron had always insisted on keeping the talk to other matters—the recent warm weather, the fortifications of the old Indians' pueblo to make it a secure ville, the difficulty of training the local peasants to serve at table.
Now, with the thick, sweet coffee poured into tiny cups of thin porcelain, the baron was ready to discuss business matters with his visitors.
To Ryan's relief, his wife needed her right hand to hold her coffee, and he was able to relax.
"We need ammo and gas."
"And we have ammo and gas," the baron replied, placing the tips of his fingers together like a cathedral steeple.
"Any caliber?"
"Within reason—.22 up to .45. We also have a supply of grens. Mainly frags and a few implodes, I believe."
J.B. shook his head. "We got plenty of grens. Low on 9 mill and .38."
The baron nodded. "Lots of men know what they don't want, Mr. Dix. Refreshing to meet a man who knows what he does want."
"Good octane gas?"
"Process it ourselves," Sharona said. She'd finished her coffee and, to Ryan's alarm, her right hand was crabbing its bejeweled way to the edge of the table.
"Price?" the Trader asked.
Baron Carson sighed. "Always the talk comes around to jack. That isn't the way we choose to deal with such matters here in Towse."
"How come you got so much silver and stuff?" Ryan asked. They had been served a rich red wine that tasted of summer fruit, glowing in tall crystal goblets. And it had loosened his tongue.
The woman turned to face him, shrugging her shoulders and giving him another glimpse of the dark tip of her breast.
"Alias stumbled on a redoubt years ago that was filled with old paintings and stuff. Like a place where treasure had been sent for safety. Then the long winters came and nobody remembered it. The jewels and clothes and all… sealed airtight. And some of the blasters the sec-men use. Once you have plenty of jack, Ryan, then it's childishly simple to use it to obtain more jack. And then more. Now you have come to force still more upon us for gas and ammo."
The way the Trader had talked about Towse, it had sounded a darker story, a story whose pages were dappled with spilled blood.
Ryan was aware of the scent of Sharona Carson's body, a feral, musky odor, with her perfume overlaying the flavor of her skin. He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted any woman.
The door at the far end of the room swung open, interrupting his dangerous train of thought.
"That you, Ferryman?" Baron Carson asked, peering into the shadows.
"Yes, Baron."
Boot heels rang on the old flags of the dining room, and a burly figure approached the table, gradually assuming features.
"Had trouble. Everything was going to plan, then we got interrupted. Another five minutes and we'd have had—"
The baron stopped him with a raised hand. "Before you go on, Ferryman, we have visitors. Two war wags a
nd the Trader himself."
"War wags!"
The draft from the door made the candles flicker more brightly, illuminating the face of the sec-boss.
And revealing the black patch that covered the socket of his left eye.
Chapter Sixteen
FERRYMAN DIDN'T speak as he took his place at the table, but he nodded to the baron and to Sharona. He poured himself a glass of the red wine and drained it in a single draft.
"Ah! That cuts the dust better than a gallon of mule's piss."
Ryan and J.B. waited, ready to hit leather and draw their blasters, waiting for the word from the Trader.
But the older man didn't speak for some time, sipping at his own glass of wine. Eventually it was the baron himself who broke the tension.
"How many chilled, Ferryman?"
"One from the outlanders. Lucky shot. Bullet hit Kendo clean through his left eye. Then the war wags came along and we lost us another five. Six if you count Shel. Got three rounds in the middle of his belly, and he won't make it through the night. Call it seven chilled in all."
"It's not a piece of arithmetic that I much care for, Ferryman," Carson said, dragging the words out.
"Me neither, Baron."
Alias Carson tapped his index finger on the table, six sharp raps. Then he waited and looked around the room.
"Six, Ferryman. And what's the profit? These war wags drove you off and inflicted casualties among my sec-men."
"That's right, Baron."
Ferryman was smiling. Ryan put his age around thirty, with a dark skin that whispered something about Indian blood someplace in his background.
Ryan was starting to get a bad feeling. It was like a game where everyone knew the objective, but only one person knew the rules.
"And why were you out there beyond the gorge trying to stop a convoy of wags?"
Ferryman hesitated, as though he were waiting for some sort of guidance. And the baron gave it to him.