He would have a wait ahead of him, but it meant that he could move with ease right now. His mouth curling into a grin of satisfaction, Jak slipped around the edge of the rocks and melted into the mouth of the cave. Once in the darkness, and with a good view of the area along the riverbank, he took the Colt Python from his inner pocket, unwrapped it before restoring the plastic to another pocket, lest it should prove useful, and checked the blaster. It was as dry as a bleacher bone. From habit, he checked that the blaster was fully armed. Satisfied, he holstered it before hunkering down to wait, eyes trained on the bank, the only sound his shallow breath. There was no movement at all.
Over on the bank, Markos had been watching the whole while. Despite the fact that Jak had relaxed himself when moving around the rock, Markos hadn't seen him. All he'd noticed had been the slightest flicker of movement that may have been nothing more than the scuttling of a cloud across the moon.
ELIAS AND CHAN HAD BEEN in hiding for most of the afternoon, bickering with each other. The giant couldn't resist goading the albino, and for his part Chan would always rise to the bait, unable to understand how the giant could be so casual when everything seemed to be going wrong.
"Tell me something—would your brother believe two outsiders? Would Sineta be upset about her father saying nothing to her about the legends? Of course not, and of course, if you were paying attention. So listen to me. We go back tonight. Mebbe they'll be waiting for us and mebbe not. If that bitch has got her whitelander friends to get the treasure out, then we just chill them."
"How the hell do we do that when we've only got one blaster between us?" Chan had demanded.
Elias fixed him with a glare. The sardonic humor that always seemed to be in his eyes had suddenly faded. "We would have more than one blaster if you hadn't been so damned useless. And we'll do it because we have to. We have no choice now, no going back. I do not intend to travel to the whitelands knowing that Mildred and her little friends have that knowledge as power over me. Is that clear?"
Chan had nodded, his throat too tight and dry to speak. As with many others on Pilatu, he had always thought of Elias as untrustworthy but harmless, too laid back to be of any danger.
The look in the giant's eyes told him that he had been wrong. And the thought of being alone in the woods with this revelation was a more frightening prospect than taking on the companions.
So now, as the night hit its stillest and darkest watch, he found himself stumbling after the giant as Elias made his way through the woods, from the copse where they had taken shelter to the riverbank by the outcrop and caves, where the whiteland treasure lay hidden.
They followed the same path as they had taken that afternoon, only traveling in reverse. It wasn't long before they gained the riverbank, with the crop a few feet out into the water, rising to a peak with a cave beneath.
"There it is, just sitting there waiting for us," Elias said with a chuckle. "See, my cowardly little friend. It's not that hard, is it?"
"I CAN HEAR SOMETHING," Markos mouthed at Mildred and Sineta as the sound of the two men thrashing through the woods reached their hiding place.
Mildred nodded and pointed in the general direction of the sound. Markos assented.
"Wait till they are in the open," he said softly. "Wait until Jak moves," Mildred amended. Markos looked puzzled. "But surely—" Mildred shook her head. "Just do it." She looked around at Sineta. Even in the dim light of the half moon it was plain to see that the woman was anxious and hyped up in anticipation. Despite Sineta's willingness to be here, Mildred found it obvious that the woman had never been in a fighting situation before, and she was terrified, even though prepared to fight.
Let's hope her nerve holds, Mildred thought, taking in the tight grip that Sineta had on her blaster.
She looked back in the direction of the sound. They were nearing the clearing that delineated the riverbank and would soon come into view. Now was the moment of truth. Looking at Markos's face, intent but impassive, prepared for combat, she wondered how he would take it when his beloved brother came into view.
The brush at the edge of the woods was swept aside and Elias strode out onto the riverbank, looking around him. His eyes—even at this distance—blazed, and Mildred sucked in her breath. It looked like the giant had cracked under the strain and was quite mad, which would make him completely unpredictable.
His companion stayed hidden while the giant looked up and down the bank and across to the outcrop, where Jak remained silent and still in the shadows. Elias saw nothing and assumed that the cave was empty. He turned to the brush, where his companion stayed hidden, and laughed loud and harsh, gesturing with his blaster.
"Come out, you cretin. She has done nothing as yet and we have all the time in the world."
Mildred looked at Markos, whose eyes were intently trained on the scene.
"Now we'll see who his accomplice is," the sec boss whispered, cradling his H&K.
From the brush, peering out as though disbelieving of his compatriot, Chan cautiously emerged.
Mildred braced herself, watching Markos's face. The sec boss appeared to pay the revelation no heed whatsoever—although if she could have seen in clearer light, Mildred would have noted a hardening and tightening around his jaw.
"This is too easy," Chan said in a voice that, although not loud, carried across the space between himself and his brother in hiding. "She must have said something, if not to her pale friend then to that cretinous Sineta and my fool brother."
"What? You dare to mock your wonderful brother?" Elias chided.
Chan spit on the ground. "He pretends to love me, but he is like the others. He cannot see me as anything other than freak because of this. He is the hero, stupid as he is, because he has a black skin, and he is the one who would have a chance of marrying the baron's daughter, even though they would produce brainless cretins."
"Markos, no!" Mildred hissed as she felt the sec boss brace beside her, his calf and thigh muscles propelling him upward, the catch on his H&K snapping off.
"Let him," Sineta said, also scrambling to her feet, her tension unleashed by his action.
"Shit, this is not good," Mildred muttered to herself as both Markos and Sineta broke cover, running for the riverbank.
SILENT IN THE CAVE, Jak watched as Elias and Chan bickered on the bank and then Markos and Sineta— without Mildred—broke cover and walked openly toward the two bandits.
Although no one could ever have told as much from his still-impassive expression, Jak was amazed at what was happening. Mildred hadn't broken cover, which suggested that the other two hadn't listened to her. That was their choice, but it was a choice that was likely to get them chilled. Jak couldn't see for sure, but it looked to him as though only Elias was armed. That cut down on the odds, but it still meant that both the sec boss and the baron's daughter were offering the giant a clear shot on either or both of them.
Cursing inwardly, Jak uncoiled from his position and began to move toward the lip of the cave.
It looked as if he'd have to make his move before he would have wished.
MILDRED WATCHED them walk into the open in sheer disbelief. She, too, had moved out of cover, but was keeping low. Something that Markos and Sineta were failing to do. She would have expected this from the baron's daughter, but not from the sec boss.
"Stop right there. Don't move a muscle or twitch an eyelid, unless you want to join our ancestors."
Markos's voice was firm and carried over the distance despite not being loud. It made his brother turn and gasp, falling to his knees as the shock and his accumulated fear finally got the better of him. Elias, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff.
On hearing the voice, the giant whirled and fired. The shots echoed across the last few words uttered by the sec boss. He laughed maniacally as he fired, falling sideways to avoid being a sitting target for any return fire.
One of the shots hit Markos in the shoulder, throwing him backward, his H&K falling from ne
rveless fingers. He stared wide-eyed at his shoulder, the shock of seeing his brother followed by his rash action and his injury throwing him into a paralyzed confusion.
"Oh, fuck it," Mildred muttered under her breath as she moved forward, breaking into a run. The tableau in front of her eyes presented her with two distinct problems. First, Chan was scrambling toward where Markos's H&K had landed, with the intention of laying hands on it. That would make him a threat, which he hadn't been up to that point. Second, Elias was standing with a blaster in his hand, sizing up a shot at Sineta. For her part, the baron's daughter was facing the same dilemma as Mildred. She stood between the two threats, not knowing which one to go for. Her Glock was uselessly pointed somewhere between the two. Mildred could make a snap decision and act. In fact, if she had been standing in Sineta's position she would have had no hesitation in taking out Elias first, then pivoting and taking out Chan with a second shot. But she wasn't in that position. From where she was, running, there was no way she could do both. And Sineta, for all her raw courage, had no idea of which to go for first, and no experience to guarantee a good shot.
Mildred could only take one of the options, and she knew which one it had to be when she glanced across toward the outcrop and saw Jak emerge.
The albino hunter jumped nimbly from the mouth of the cave and into the river, hitting the bottom with a stride that already propelled him across nearly half the distance to the shore. As he jumped and landed, he unholstered his Colt Python and extended his arm, the heavy blaster dwarfing his small, scarred white hand. His arm was at full extension, rock-solid as he took another stride. He saw Elias bring the blaster up toward Sineta to get a clean shot.
Jak didn't hesitate. In a fraction of a second he sighted along the barrel of the Colt as he strode forward and squeezed the trigger, almost with a caress. The recoil from the powerful blaster didn't even jolt the tensed muscles of his forearm and bicep, the arm remaining rock-solid.
Elias didn't know what hit him. One second he was shaping to blast Sineta, whose hand he had once sought in the pursuit of power; the next he knew nothing as he was despatched to join his ancestors.
Sineta saw Elias level the blaster and tried to turn to fire, but she knew she was too slow and was preparing to meet her forefathers when she saw the giant's head suddenly explode in front of her. One second his malevolent glaring eyes and vulpine grin framed her imminent demise, the next they had disappeared as his skull split open and a spray of blood, brain and bone splinters spewed out around his head, mostly to her left. The corpse, now with just half a head, tumbled sideways.
Sineta screamed.
Mildred had ignored the shot from Jak and the woman's scream, concentrating her attention instead on Chan. If she had stopped and taken aim, she could probably have chilled him before he reached the H&K, but her momentum was such that it would have taken a fraction of a second too long to actually come to a complete halt. Her best bet was to keep running and to throw herself at the albino, stopping him gaining the weapon.
Chan was reaching for the H&K when he felt Mildred cannon into him. He hadn't looked up to see her coming, so had taken no evasive action when she threw herself across the last couple of yards. He was kneeling, but she pitched herself low and he was flung back—and away from the blaster—by her sudden appearance and impact. Unfortunately for Mildred, the momentum of her flight carried them back toward the woods. As they landed she hit the side of her head on an upraised tree root.
Desperately, Mildred fought to cling to her faculties, even though stars exploded inside her head and the world turned upside down. She felt her limbs grow heavy and unresponsive, refusing to react and allowing Chan to squirm out from under her. Her ZKR slipped from her grasp and before she had a chance to drunkenly fumble for it, the albino had seized it and taken hold of her arm, twisting it up behind her and holding the blaster to her head, dragging her to her feet.
Mildred's vision cleared with the sudden lurch of fear that greeted her realization of her position. In the brief moment that she had been knocked almost senseless by the tree root, she had enabled Chan to gain the upper hand, the very thing she had hoped to avoid.
In front of her she could see the chilled Elias; Sineta, on her knees and gasping for breath; Jak emerging from the water, still holding the Colt Python, and Markos, one arm hanging uselessly to his side, the other grasping the recovered H&K.
The sec boss scrambled to his feet and looked behind him.
"Jak, no!" he exclaimed. "He's my brother—leave him to me."
"Okay, but if Mildred chilled, you next," Jak said, letting the Colt drop to his side.
Markos turned back toward Mildred and Chan, taking a slow step forward. Mildred felt Chan's grip tighten, the barrel of the ZKR press into her temple.
"Don't think you can appeal to any familial sentiment," Chan blurted. "I cannot be swayed by that which I do not feel."
"You mean that our lives were a sham? That they meant nothing? Do you really believe that I cared for you, protected you, for nothing?"
"Yes, for something—to make you feel good, to make you feel big. The big, strong brother to look after the weakling freak. How good that makes you, my brother…and how small that makes me."
"It is what you do now that makes you small," Markos replied sadly, leveling the H&K.
"Think before you do that," Chan yelled. Mildred could almost smell the fear on the albino as his breath rasped in her ear. "Think, my beloved brother. You would have to be a fine shot to chill me before I could fire on the bitch…the bitch you want more than anything. You think I do not know that? And you think that does not disgust me more, to know that you would go with someone degraded by the whitelander? So think—fire on me and you will lose her, for if I do not chill her then your shooting will not be good enough to take me without going through her."
"Are you willing to wager your life on that?" Markos asked quietly. The H&K was still raised and the sec boss was as still as a standing stone. His eyes were barely visible in the wan moonlight, but Mildred could see that there was a fire in them. He would not back down; did his brother know him well enough to realize that?
Chan began to pressure the trigger on the ZKR.
The shot was single and loud in the quietness of the night. Mildred closed her eyes and waited for her brain to explode as Chan pulled the trigger of the ZKR.
It didn't happen. She felt his grip relax and heard the ZKR clatter on the roots at their feet. She let her jaw drop. She was so startled that there was nothing she could do. Hardly daring to turn, she slowly pivoted to see the albino at her feet, a hole in the middle of his forehead, a spreading dark pool at the back of his skull indicating the size of the exit wound. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in shock, much like her own. But unlike her, his were eyes that would see no more in this world.
Turning back, she could see Markos calmly standing, his blaster still leveled.
"He should have tried to appeal to me as a brother. That worked all our lives, and I never realized how he really felt. Fear and danger are strange things, are they not, in the manner of which they betray the truth."
Jak rushed past the sec boss to Mildred.
"You okay?" he asked, bending to retrieve the ZKR, which she took from him without thinking.
"Yeah, at least I think so. Shit, Jak, I think I might actually be in shock," she said in amazement.
Jak led her back to the edge of the riverbank, where Sineta now stood, shaking her head.
"What do we do with this carnage?" the woman said quietly.
"Figure we leave these for carrion, come back in daylight and get the treasure for your father," Jak said.
Sineta nodded with an air of finality. "Yes. It should be done like that."
Mildred walked back to where Markos was standing, looking down on the corpse of his brother. "You hear that?" she asked gently.
"Yes…yes, I have no business here. Not now," he said softly.
Mildred took his arm and they wal
ked back to Jak and Sineta. The baron's daughter was trying not to look at Elias's mutilated corpse. Jak indicated that they should leave and gently guided her past the corpse. Markos didn't look back.
The moon was beginning to wane, sunrise only an hour or less away.
IN THE COLD LIGHT of morning, it was easier for both Sineta and Markos to return to the riverbank. Jak, Ryan and J.B. preceded them with three of the sec force to bury the corpses of Elias and Chan, which showed signs of investigation from the predators of the woods. By the time the main party had arrived, the bandits were beneath the soil. Markos didn't speak of them as he asked Mildred for all the information regarding access to the treasure that she had been told by Barras.
Going across to the cave, Markos entered with two of his men and Ryan, J.B. and Jak. The wiry albino hunter was the one chosen to take the pothole route into the inner cave where the treasure had been secured. When he triggered the entrance mechanism and the party gained entrance, it was easy to see why the baron had wished the treasure to be recovered before the Pilatans left their island home. Carefully wrapped to provide as much protection as possible, there were precious metals and jewels both loose and in settings. There was also paper jack, which was now useless in a post-skydark world. In any case, the damp of the cave had permeated the coverings and the paper had rotted and mulched.
It took little more than an hour to remove the treasure from the cave and to take it across the short distance to the shore, where Sineta and Mildred watched as it was unwrapped. Some of it would be useful on the mainland, but it seemed very little for Elias and Chan to risk—and lose—their lives over. And very little for Markos to lose much of his life over. For the sec boss had been subdued since the previous night. It was as though all he had believed had been proved to be false. His ideals had been fired by the words and ideas of his beloved brother, just as his actions had been directed toward the protection of Chan and all that he believed. Protection of a brother who he thought had loved him, but had used that belief as a mask behind which there was only loathing and manipulation.
Axler, James - Deathlands 66 - Separation Page 19