Hanging Judge

by James Axler

  The man threw down the weapon and launched himself at Ryan’s midriff. The man was a good six inches shorter than the Deathlands warrior but low-slung and wide across the shoulders. Ryan reckoned he didn’t outweigh his attacker by much.

  He didn’t like not knowing where the man’s older partner was, but right now he had his hands too full to distract himself with side issues.

  The guy was trying for a takedown, not a stab. The angles were all wrong for that, anyway. Ryan, on the other hand, wasn’t in position to hack with the panga. Instead, he threw himself to meet the other, bringing his left hand and the butt of weapon down on his shoulders.

  The sprawl defense worked. The Indian slammed to the hard clay of the trail with Ryan’s stubbled cheek rasping his. He grunted as air was driven out of his body.

  The attacker had put his hands down to break his fall. Now he pushed furiously upward to throw Ryan off. The move didn’t take Ryan by surprise. He was already pushing off himself, stealing momentum from his enemy to thrust himself up to a crouch and on over onto his butt. As the shorter man got to his knees, Ryan rolled hard left again, swinging up his right leg. His shin caught the side of the man’s head and knocked him sideways off the trail.

  The downhill slope wasn’t steep there, and the scrub that had helped the scout sneak up on Ryan slowed him. He rolled over twice before he caught himself and sprang back up.

  But Ryan was ready for him. He leaped down and was swinging his panga in an overhand arc as the Indian rose.

  The wide, heavy blade of the knife caught the upper-right-hand side of the man’s head. It split his skull clear to the left eyebrow with a crack and a moist crunch. Brown eyes rolled up in the scout’s head, and he collapsed, an instant chill.

  Ryan wrenched the panga free as he slumped. He straightened to stand over his opponent, breathing heavily.

  Not twenty feet away, as if magically materializing out of the smoke-laden air, a figure rose from the weeds beside the trail.

  A figure holding a longblaster.

  * * *

  EDWARDS LAY IN a clump of skunk bush and watched the remnants of the Second Chance sec force head east, between the Red Wall and the Wild.

  A heartbeat after Yonas got his stupe head blown off, Edwards had uttered a grunt as if hit and flopped to the ground. He thought he’d done a good job of acting, but as far as he could tell nobody had so much as glanced in his direction. So that was wasted.

  For some stupe reason they’d kept right on charging, when it was plain as a mole on a gaudy-slut’s cheek that the whole nuking endeavor was snake bit on the ass and going to fail, anyway. But no, they had to go racing across the mostly clear ground toward the slope that led up to the enemy position. That, at least, was easy to spot now, since there were three longblasters blazing away at them from there.

  He climbed to his feet and dusted himself off.

  “Well, that worked for shit,” he said disgustedly. Even he wasn’t sure if he meant the chief marshal’s cunning sure-fire plan to bring down the elusive fugitives, or his whole entire career as a so-called U.S. Marshal.

  Both, he reckoned.

  “Screw a bunch of this,” he said, and set off walking briskly west into the rising sun. The deathbirds wouldn’t bother him, he knew. They hated to leave the cover of the thorn thicket.

  All he knew was, whichever way the rest of the sec men were going, he wanted to go the opposite direction.

  * * *

  “EASY,” THE NEWCOMER said in an age-cracked voice.

  Ryan caught himself as he was about to start a desperate dive for the dirt. It had penetrated his awareness that the longblaster was cradled across the man’s chest, not aimed at Ryan. And anyway, if the man had wanted to blast him, he would have. It was as simple as that.

  “You’re the other scout,” he said, straightening again. If he wasn’t going to dive for cover, draw his SIG and start blasting, he was nuking well going to show a little dignity.

  “I am,” the oldie said. He had iron-colored hair hanging from under a green turban to frame a deeply furrowed face. He wore a well-kept Remington Model 1858 Army revolver, presumably a replica, in a flapped cavalry holster diagonally before his left hip. At his right hip a steel hatchet rode in a carrier. Its fancy beadwork told Ryan which weapon the man favored.

  Ryan gestured at the longblaster, a Winchester lever-action carbine. “He was carrying that blaster.”

  “He was.”

  “Why’d he jump me with a knife, then, instead of blasting me?”

  “He wanted to count coup on his opponent.” He patted the Winchester. “Even left his piece with me.”

  Ryan raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  The oldie shrugged. “Boy never did have good judgment. That’s why he’s here, pretty much.”

  Something about his tone and manner made Ryan ask, “He yours?”

  “My daughter’s son. His name was Mort. They call me Old Pete.”

  “We got a beef over this?”

  The oldie shook his head. “There is no blood between my family and yours, Ryan Cawdor.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “I know many things, One Eye Chills. It’s my job.”

  “So, why not a blood debt? Not that I’m complaining. I’ve got problems enough on my hands.”

  He gave the panga a couple of hard, quick shakes to the side. He didn’t feel quite right standing there talking to a man with his nephew’s blood and brains drying on the blade.

  “We were not willingly helping the sec men from Second Chance,” Old Pete said. He waved a hand down the slope, where the sec men who had been attacking Ryan’s friends were running east in an obvious rout. “My nephew performed an indiscretion. He ran up debts gambling at a gaudy owned by a man from there named Myers.”

  “Is he was one of the fat cats who run the place?”

  “He is one who thinks they do. Santee is true baron in Second Chance. He rules the others. He lets them help out, so long as they serve his interests. But yes. That is Myers.”

  “I would’ve thought Santee was too uptight to let gambling go on in his ville.”

  “He is. Myers operates a roadhouse south of Second Chance. Santee knows of it, of course, but he permits it to continue for his own reasons.”

  Old Pete shook his head. “He is a bad man, and a mad one. Anyway, the game was probably rigged. But a debt of honor is a debt of honor, and Mort’s parents warned him many times about what he was getting himself into.”

  “So he got stuck working for Cutter Dan whether he wanted to or not?”

  “He most certainly did not want to, but he also did it to prevent bad blood between our people and Santee’s. That Judge is crazy and evil, but very powerful. My nephew came late to a sense of duty. But he did.”

  “What about you, then? You along to look out for him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I was asked to accompany my sister’s son to help him find a warrior’s death.”

  He gazed down sadly at his nephew, lying on his back with his brains leaking into the grass, staring up at the pink-streaked blue sky.

  “Struck down by the hand of One Eye Chills himself,” he said. “A death any warrior might envy.”

  “And you don’t?” Ryan asked cautiously. The scout’s story made sense, and very little else did, given that he hadn’t shot Ryan. But Ryan didn’t feel like making any assumptions, here.

  “It is not my path to be chilled by you, nor you by me. Our paths diverge here. I shall return my nephew’s body to his people, and tell Bluebird the glad news of her son’s death.”

  Even Ryan had to blink his eye at that. Trying not to sound as nonplussed as he felt, he said, “So what about Cutter Dan and Second Chance?”

  Old Pete stood and silently thought about that for what seem
ed like a whole minute. Ryan kept his head turning from side to side, in case any bitter marshals might be taking advantage of their palaver to creep up for a shot at a little vengeance.

  “Fuck them,” the old man said, at last.

  * * *

  DRIVEN BY HATE, sustained by the last of the foul air trapped in the small pocket with him, Cutter Dan struggled to break free of the grave that enveloped him. The weight of the world seemed to by lying on his back. His whole body ached, and his lungs felt as if they were being shredded by the struggle to breathe.

  By some instinct, or simply by blind luck, a hand broke free. The open air was like a warm kiss after the cold, enclosing earth.

  His failing strength renewed, he clawed away the clay and rocks until the air flooded down into his upturned face to fill his nose and lungs. Even though it was rank with the fumes of spent explosives, smoke and the stench of burned bodies, it was the sweetest smell he’d ever known.

  The light blinded him. He struggled into it anyway.

  Then he fell to lie exhausted on the mound of soil.

  When Cutter Dan regained some strength, he raised his head to utter devastation. A fifty-yard section of the Red Wall had fallen, burying his entire force. Only because he was in the very lead, at the western fringe of the fall, had he survived.

  To the east a dozen or so bodies lay scattered between the Wild and the Wall, or rather the bizarre blackened-wire sculpture that the burned-over thorn vines resembled now.

  The rest of that group, the ones who hadn’t died in the flames or the blasterfire, were gone, as completely as if they, too, were chills.

  If nothing else, not a man jack of the yellow bastards wanted to run the risk of Santee’s marshals ever laying eyes on them again. They knew the fate that awaited deserters.

  The chief marshal stood. He still had his handblaster and his trademark Bowie knife. They had been safely holstered when the boobie charges went off.

  His legs weren’t very steady beneath him. His body felt like one big bruise, his head as if a blacksmith was hammering it on an angle. His left ear heard only faintly. The right, the one nearer the shattering explosions, could hear nothing at all. A quick exploration of his fingertips came away with a mix of red mud and congealed blood that told the story: burst eardrum.

  None of which mattered a hot steaming dump on a fresh tortilla.

  I’m alive, he thought. That’s all that counts.

  That’s all I need.

  All that he had left was vengeance, and he knew just where to go to get it.

  “I’m not done yet. You’re gonna see me again, One Eye,” he told the red risen sun. “And when you do, it’ll be the very last thing you ever see!”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “We have a pretty sparse turnout this morning, it looks like, Judge,” Marley Toogood announced.

  He stood at the rear of the scaffold, behind the four miserable hostages awaiting execution. Though there were at least a hundred ville folk clustered before the gallows, that was nothing like the turnout such an event should have drawn.

  It was not as if Toogood cared. Stir the pot, stir the pot, he thought.

  “My employees weren’t turning out for work this morning, either,” Gein complained from the VIP box behind the platform. “My mills won’t run themselves.”

  Seated while the two rich folk with him preferred to stand for the moment, Judge Santee uttered a caw of laughter.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll have plenty of object lessons to teach them. If the ringleaders and coldhearts who broke out of my jail do turn themselves in, we can still keep hanging our hostages until their friends and relatives come out of the woodwork to do their civic duty and watch.”

  Myers made a face as if someone had smeared fresh shit on his red mustache. “That’s a good way to deplete our workforce,” he stated.

  “No matter,” Santee said. “We can execute every last shiftless, ungrateful ne’er-do-well in this whole ville, come to that.”

  “What do you mean, Your Honor?” Toogood asked, feeling genuine alarm.

  “I expect Cutter Dan to return directly with those fugitive coldhearts he’s been pursuing. And then we can commence to rapidly expand the rule of these re-United States!”

  “Where will you get the men,” Myers asked, his piping voice sour, “when we’ve already sent so many marshals out of Second Chance for this manhunt? And please allow me to remind you that Chief Marshal Sevier reports taking numerous casualties.”

  “That’s funny,” Gein said. “There’s at least a score of sec men in view. Not all of them even have armbands, I see.”

  He looked sideways at the Judge. “I can only presume they haven’t been issued them yet? Since otherwise, of course, the sworn marshals would arrest them on sight for bearing arms.”

  “They are mercenaries,” Santee said, “as well as recruits. More are on the way.” He sounded pleased to the point of smugness. “Many more are on their way, I can assure you, gentlemen.”

  “What on earth?” Myers asked. “I knew the chief marshal put out a call for extra manpower for the final phase of his manhunt, but mercies and untried outlanders guarding Second Chance and our fortunes? How can they be trusted?”

  “My marshals keep keen eyes on them,” Santee said. “Beyond that—the promise of being handsomely armed themselves. And paid.”

  “Armed?” Toogood asked nervously.

  He glanced at the sky. It hadn’t begun to lighten yet, but the deadline for the rebels to turn themselves in was fast approaching.

  The first deadline.

  “I have just concluded a deal with Mohandas the Merchie, in Broken Arrow,” Santee said. “An arms caravan is on its way to us as we speak.”

  My word, Your Honor, Toogood thought. You have been busy, behind even my back. It did not seem to portend anything good.

  “Arms caravan?” Gein asked in surprise.

  “Where will all this jack come from?” Myers demanded. “To buy a whole caravan of weapons, not to mention paying men to use them?”

  “From Bates’s estate, to start with,” Santee said.

  “But it was meant to be paid out equally among the four of us!” Myers exclaimed. “That was our agreement!”

  “Circumstances have dictated a change of arrangements. Opportunity has shown its shy face and must be seized by the neck! Bates’s holdings are forfeit. And while we’re on the subject, your contribution to ville security has been doubled, effective immediately.”

  “What?” Toogood yelped.

  Myers and Gein jumped to their feet. “Absurd! Obscene! We won’t sit still for it!” Gein exclaimed.

  A throat was cleared. The men in the box with Santee looked around to note it was the impressive bullfrog throat of Suazo, acting chief marshal in Cutter Dan’s absence.

  It struck Toogood that he and his fellow local magnates were surrounded by armed men whose loyalty to the tall, cadaverous old man in black might safely be presumed to have been reinforced by a promise of increased pay.

  “You can pay as you’re told, gentlemen,” Santee said, “and continue to sit here. Or you can refuse—” he stretched a long, black-sleeved arm toward the scaffold, past the mayor to where the first four victims stood on the traps with hands bound and nooses looped around their necks “—and stand there!”

  They sat. Toogood took a handkerchief from his vest pocket and mopped his brow. Though the morning was by no means warm, his face ran with sweat.

  Suazo leaned forward to murmur in the Judge’s ear. No easy feat, since his paunch was even more impressive than his thick throat.

  Santee rapped knuckles briskly on the rail before him.

  “Gentleman!” he declared, his eyes fever-bright in his pale, withered old face. “It is time! Mr. Toogood, proceed w
ith the executions.”

  The executioner cleared his own throat. “Uh, boss...” he said to Toogood.

  A murmur ran through the crowd. The sec men hemming them in started to look over their shoulders.

  Up the street from the right came a crowd of people. Down the street from the left came another crowd.

  They seemed far more resolute than the usual miserable flocks herded to the courthouse by sec men to watch the hangings.

  “What’s this?” Gein demanded, craning forward in his seat and blinking near-sightedly.

  “It’s all right,” Toogood announced heartily, to cover his dawning, horrid suspicion it was anything but. “Perhaps they’re coming to watch the executions as they ought. Better late than never, right, Your Honor?”

  But Santee was glaring furiously east, then west. “They are carrying implements!” he declared. “That’s counter to regulations! And—wait, are some of them actually armed?”

  He sprang to his feet. “Marshals! Take these mobs under fire at once. Show them that such disobedience will not be tolerated.”

  The sec men turned to face the two approaching groups. They started drawing handblasters to augment the truncheons they already held in their hands.

  Suddenly onlookers who were clustered around the gallows started jumping on the sec men from behind and wrestling with them. Six or seven others began to clamber onto the gallows itself. Toogood shrank back in shocked disbelief.

  “Shoot them!” Myers cried in a quavering tenor voice. “Shoot them all down like the rad-scum they are!”

  “Wait!” Toogood said, turning and frantically waving his arms at the marshals in the box with Suazo. They were raising blasters toward the scaffold. Toward him. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Get me to safety first, Suazo!” Santee almost screamed. “It’s an insurrection.”

  Suazo boomed orders to his men. They surrounded the Judge and started moving him bodily toward the steps at the rear of the box.

  “Then shoot the rebels!” the Judge cried, shaking his fist. “But first—hang the prisoners!”

  The executioner reached for the lever that would spring the traps beneath the condemned.