by James Axler
It had been almost comical to hear the alternating curses and imprecations of the trader when Ryan told him they were leaving his employ. Almost as blackly funny as the look on the face of the quartermaster as the convoy set to head out of Hawknose. It didn’t need to be said out loud that the chances of the convoy having a new trader by the time they hit the next ville were roughly the same as those of a stickie beating the crap out of a mutie bear in a shitstorm.
Yeah, it had seemed like the best option. But nobody was thinking that after a few days of the monotony and rigor of life in Hawknose. Even Ryan was hoping that the next convoy would roll in during the middle of the night.
The people of Hawknose looked the same, and they had attitudes to match. Sharp-faced and suspicious, they were dour and ground down by generations of just about keeping body and soul together. Sure, they had the conviction of their destiny, but it was nothing they took joy from. Rather, it was as though they felt they had to suffer this life to find that state. Both Doc and Mildred could identify this with the attitudes of religious communities in their day, and although the people of Hawknose believed in a redemption that came in this world, not the next, it was as though they believed it was always just out of reach.
It made them hard—hard in the manner of their lives, and hard in their attitudes to each other. And particularly in their attitude to outlanders. That much was obvious from the moment that the convoy pulled away without the companions. There was no welcome for the newcomers—not that they expected it—but neither was there hostility. Instead there was a kind of grudging and grim acceptance. They were there in Hawknose—fine. But now they had to work and fit in. Or leave. Convoy or no convoy to carry you out.
Baron Valiant was a hands-on baron. Unlike the rulers of larger villes who surrounded themselves with a sec force and whatever wealth they could secure, using the one to enable themselves to indulge the other, Valiant was one of his people in a very real sense. He worked and lived alongside them. They showed him deference, but that seemed to come from a genuine respect and belief in his birthright. The ville of Hawknose was inherited, and he was merely following the footsteps of his forefathers. They were believers in tradition. They believed in order. That was evident by the fact that in their short time thus far in the ville, Ryan and his companions had seen no need for sec except in the rare case of a person who couldn’t hold his or her brew. The sec seemed to be there purely for when convoys or outlanders passed through.
Maybe the law-abiding nature of the ville dwellers was more due to exhaustion than to any innate desire to walk a straight line, for life in the ville was hard. It soon became apparent that convoys weren’t as regular as Ryan would have hoped when he made the decision to pull out of sec duty. Supplies of food that were bought from any convoy were stored and carefully rationed. Water was plentiful, and as a result so was brew. Anything that could be made to ferment was stored and used. Any roots, rotting crop, or plantlife that could be harnessed in such a way was thrown into vats that bubbled as the alcohol was boiled and distilled from the resultant sludge. It seemed that most of the people in Hawknose spent their evenings in the bar, which was as much a communal meeting area as one to get drunk and carouse. Even in their pleasures they were a dour people.
Dour, but hardened to the potent brew that resulted from their thrifty approach. They were hard drinkers, and their ability to rise with the sun the following morning and work just as hard was something that Ryan and the companions soon found they couldn’t keep pace with.
The old service station and diner around which the ville was constructed lay in a valley, a bowl shaped by a landscape that had once been a series of gentle inclines but had been disturbed by seismic shifts as skydark hit. Pushed and pulled by nature, the land had risen to form a steeply sided bowl that required the convoys that passed through to have sharp brakes. The freeway that had once passed this way had long since been reduced to ribbons by the seismic shifts, and little evidence of it remained. Instead a carefully hewn and beaten track ran close to the site of the old road and was marked by the rubble that had been cleared in making the new path. It guided any traffic down the incline and through the ville before gently guiding it up the opposite slope and out.
That left the ville in a basin. Was it simply that the land surrounding had risen, or had the ville itself dropped? It was impossible to say, but whatever the truth, it had left the people of Hawknose with a problem that they hadn’t foreseen when they had taken possession of the old station and buildings and started to build around them.
The problem was that the land around had a high water table, and no matter what time of year it was sodden once you dug down a few feet. Any crop would rot. The land never really dried out, as the high ground around mean that the ville was in constant shadow. It was always damp and cold, even when the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. There was never enough to keep both the people and the livestock fed. Little grew wild. Both livestock and man were reliant on food brought in by convoy. Despite this, the people broke their backs on the land.
Belief in destiny was a powerful driving force. The people of Hawknose felt that in their very bones. They were in this place for a reason, not just because it happened to be the first place that was habitable that their forefathers stumbled across. And until that reason revealed itself, they would stay here. They would make it work, even if it would break the back of each person in the process. The one thing it could never break was their spirit.
Which was all very well if you lived there, and your roots were there. But, Ryan reflected as he settled on the hard bedding that had been supplied for them by Travis, it was bastard hard to get used to if you didn’t give a shit about the ville and were just waiting for the chance to move on.
People had to work for their living. You eat, you put something back. There was nothing wrong with that. Except that these people drove themselves so hard… Ryan thought it was little wonder that the ville folk drank themselves into oblivion every night. Even the children worked like pack animals. It was a fair bet that you didn’t make old bones in this ville. Travis looked as ancient as Doc, Ryan mused, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to have learned that he was younger than he was.
The one-eyed man’s head grew heavy as weariness overtook him. He could feel his mind slipping into oblivion as the fatigue of the day overwhelmed him.
RYAN WAS JOLTED back to consciousness by the sudden lurch of the wag. His attempt to recall how they had reached this point had driven him into a lapse of consciousness. It was only the whiplash of his neck and the sharp, painful crack of his head against the wag’s bulkhead that had brought him back.
Everything was rambling, unfocused. There was a reason why they were here, and he had to remember what it was before they reached their destination. It was important that he knew why.
Ryan flexed his neck muscles. Thoughts were starting get blurred once more. Through a hooded eyelid, he took another look around. He was becoming accustomed to the gloomy light in the interior of the wag. Now he could pick out his fellow travelers with a greater ease. Doc was still out cold. His physical state was always precarious, despite his inner strength. It was impossible to know how his heavily buffeted body would cope with anything thrown at it.
Jak was conscious and, like himself, was seeking to conceal it. Ryan, though, knew the albino youth too well. There was something about the set of his body. He was poised, keeping balance perfectly as the wag swayed and dipped over the rutted ground beneath. Jak was scoping out his opponents, and was perhaps even now thinking the same things that Ryan was thinking about him.
Mildred and Krysty were still out. Ryan was only too familiar with every aspect of the Titian-haired beauty’s body language. Her head lolled too loosely on her shoulders, and her sentient hair was limp rather than full or curled tight. As for Mildred, her body was jerking in muscle spasms. Her feet kicked in tiny arcs, her shoulders jerking uncontrollably. She was fighting the effects of the drug, and it was refle
cted in her body language.
That left J.B. The Armorer had his fedora pulled down over his eyes, at an angle that made it hard to see much of his face. But from the set of his jaw—a small sign but a telling one in a man that Ryan and known most of his adult life—it was certain that J. B. Dix had lifted himself from the depths of unconsciousness and was now observing his surroundings. Even as Ryan watched, the man moved slightly—a twist of the hip, shifting his weight on the floor of the wag. Caught from the corner of a guard’s eye, it would have seemed to have been nothing more than a result of his being jolted by the movement of the wag. But to a careful observer, which J.B. obviously hoped Ryan was, it could be seen that he moved contrary to the shift of the wag.
Ryan responded by signaling back. He lifted his right foot as far as it would go without dragging his left. Which, in truth, wasn’t much given how tightly they were bound. He then let if fall so that the heel struck the floor of the wag. He did this in short succession, paused, then again. Unless they were listening carefully, it was doubtful that the guards would catch this. But any of his companions would understand.
It was a code they had worked out in the past: a J and a B.
Ryan watched carefully, and saw the Armorer’s fedora dip in assent. Switching his attention, he saw that Jak also moved in acknowledgment.
That made three of them who were recovering. Not that it did them much good right now. But at least when they reached their destination, they should be clearheaded enough….
Fireblast! If only they had been clearheaded enough when they were back in the ville. They should have seen it coming. There had been warning signs, after all.
“WORK IS ALL. Without it we are nothing. And it will be rewarded my friend. When the time comes…”
“Mebbe we don’t want to hang around that long,” J.B. murmured as he slammed the blade of the shovel deeper into the mud.
For a moment Hardy stared at him with incomprehension on his long, lean face. Then he began to laugh, a dry, crackly sound as though it were being forced out of his lungs through layers of rustling leaves. His jowls shook, and his eyes ran with tears. He put down his shovel and took out a length of rag from his pocket, using it to blow his nose with a mighty honk before wiping his eyes.
J.B., too, stopped digging. He wouldn’t need much of an excuse, as they had been attacking the same patch for three backbreaking hours. At least, that was what his wrist chron told him, though it seemed much longer by the ache in his back.
“What’s so bastard funny about that?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. If anything, he would have expected the tall, skinny ville dweller to be angered by his dismissive comment. It had slipped out before he’d had a chance to bite his tongue.
“It’s just what any of us would expect from an out-lander.” Hardy wheezed when he could speak. “You people are all the same when you first arrive. You can’t see the bigger horizon, just what’s in front of your nose. Then you get it, and stay.”
J.B. was still puzzled. He knew that any kind of humor or levity seemed in short supply in Hawknose, but this?
“What about those of us who do move on?” he countered.
Hardy shrugged. “Well, who cares what you think when you’re gone?”
J.B. furrowed his brow. There was a kind of logic in there, he supposed.
Hardy took up his shovel once more and gestured for J.B. to do likewise. “Listen, son, it works like this. Big work gets big reward. We make this ville into something, and we get the riches that will bring with it. But on a smaller scale, it works like this. We put in a hard day here and we grow stuff in a land that don’t want to grow. So we, the workers, get rewarded by the baron, who oversees our homes and feeding. You don’t work—don’t pull together for the common cause—and you get jackshit. That’s how life should be. You put in and you get given in return.”
J.B. looked around and was dubious about the truth in that. They were about a half mile outside the main part of the ville. All around, for a distance of about three miles, spread across the rubble-and-rock-strewed landscape were fenced-off areas that were used for farming. Herds of scraggy livestock grazed on the perfunctory meadow that had been created for their use. The paddocks were waterlogged for much of the time, and the creatures looked out with doe-eyed and weary stares, the smell of decay palpable from the diseases that were engendered by the damp conditions.
Between the livestock meadows, protected by wild dogs that were housed in kennels on each corner, secured by long, rusting chains, lay the crop fields. J.B. stood in one of them, casting a weathered eye on his surroundings. What should have been fields of green and gold waving in the chill breeze that swept along the sheltered valley became nothing but stumpy pastures of brown, battered and rotting stalks. The root crops were immured in mud, and the wheat and grasses that were supposed to climb high were stunted and decaying at their base.
This was what they worked so hard for? And hard work it most certainly was. He and Ryan had been working on the farming detail for only a few days, but already he felt as though he had been a fight with an opponent who wouldn’t give up. His ribs and neck ached, while the muscles down his spine felt as though they had been unnaturally stretched. His arms felt as though they had been pummeled with the shovel that he wielded. Looking down at the clods of damp earth that were matted to the blade of his shovel, he tilted and watched as the mud slid off with a squelch, revealing the paltry growth of root crop that lay beneath the discolored greenery that topped it.
The soil was a sea of mud, barely able to sustain any growth without rotting it. The root crops and wheat were ill-nourished and dying before they were even harvested. J.B. wouldn’t be at all surprised if it transpired that the majority of what they used for food came from traded supplies.
In which case, why the hell did they put them themselves through this? Was it really because they had an almost preternatural belief in the value of their work to gain their prize?
He looked at Hardy, who had returned to attacking the unyielding, sludgy earth that just sucked at the shovel blade. There was a determination in the man’s face that was unnerving. Given the right circumstances, there was little doubt that the people of Hawknose could be dangerous. Was there anything they wouldn’t do for the good of their ville?
Meantime, J.B. felt that he should get back to work. Hardy had said nothing, but his silent return to his task had spoken volumes. As long as J.B. and the rest of the companions were in the ville, they would have to abide by the code of the ville, or risk the consequences.
The next convoy couldn’t come along quickly enough for the Armorer.
As he continued to toil, he noticed the regular sec patrols came nearer and nearer to the spot where he was digging. There had to be some kind of pattern to how they worked. For nothing more than to relieve the boredom that threatened to crush his spirit, he tried to work out this route based on what he had observed on the previous few days.
Something nagged at J.B. as he continued to dig. Thinking back, it seemed that the sec patrols were sent out to scare off any kind of wildlife that may stray too close during the hours of daylight, and to scout for any approaching wags or travelers on foot. To do this, they sped through the areas that were used for farming, and were several miles from the ville before beginning their proscribed circuit.
But this day was different. For a while it was hard for him to pin down exactly why this was bugging him. Then as he tugged at the handle of his shovel, trying to free it from sludge that was almost like quicksand, it came to him. The sound was different. Sure, he’d seen them occasionally, out of the corner of his eye, but mostly his head had been turned down, facing his task. And the noise he had heard had been distant, a buzzing in and out of focus, as the wags came and went on their circuit, farther out and then closer in.
But this day they were much closer, and the sound was louder. They were coming into the area where farming was carried out, and from the revs of the engines as they passed it was as if they w
ere slowing at various points.
So why were they coming in so much? And why were they slowing at certain points?
A tingling of apprehension prickled at the Armorer’s scalp. There was something that worried him about this, something he’d have to mention to Ryan and Jak, if only to see if they had noticed anything similar.
J.B. ANGLED HIS HEAD BACK so that he could see from beneath the brim of his fedora. The guards were still unaware that he was conscious. Having Ryan’s signal, and seeing Jak’s response, he knew that he wasn’t the only one conscious. He hurt like hell, but that wouldn’t matter when the adrenaline started to pump. He was angry at himself for not realizing what was happening earlier. He should have known. It was all there in the attitude of men like Hardy.
The people of Hawknose would stop at nothing to further the cause of their ville.
Nothing.
Chapter Two
“This sucks. The sooner we can get out of this place, the better,” Mildred grumbled as she and Krysty added another sack of meal to the pile that was growing in the dark shed used as a warehouse. They were at the back, unloading a cart so heavily laden that it had taken the two of them a great deal of time to pull it over the rutted planks of the floor.
Concrete lay beneath the wooden base. They could see the gray through the slats of the floor, and in places the planks had broken to show patches of the hard surface beneath. They had managed to avoid the worst of them, but in so doing had always seemed to run into a groove formed by two worn pieces of wood, causing the trolley to buck and stick, wrenching their arms and backs as it did.