by James Axler
“Pragmatism. I could not do it by myself, and I could see that you have your own reasons to be self-motivated.”
“Ah, yes, greed. A fine thing. After all, if you don’t look out for number one, no one else will.”
Mildred felt herself being lifted off his shoulder. Knowing he would drop her with little regard for pain, she allowed herself to relax and to not anticipate her landing. It was hard and painful. She hit the ground on her back, her head bouncing on the ground. She figured they had to be near the river, for the ground was softer here and there was the sound of running water nearby. Had they carried her down to where the treasure was hidden? How the hell had they found out about it? From their conversation, she had assumed that they were aware of both its existence and its whereabouts. She was about to find out how, as they continued their conversation, as if oblivious to the fact of her even being there.
“It is not a noble sentiment, but I can only concur with your somewhat crude way of phrasing it. I had read the legends of the old treasures of the whitelands in the archives of our people, but I had thought the secret lost forever until I heard Barras tell this bitch about it. To know that he had kept the secret for long enough was bad, but to know that he was imparting it to an outsider and for pale ones was intolerable. It belongs to the Pilatans.”
“And of course you’ll be giving your half to them,” Elias said with heavy sarcasm.
“You know perfectly well that I will not,” Chan returned with an unexpected fire. “They do not understand what it is to be black. You do not. You think that it is acceptable to mix with outsiders. You think that it is so terrible to want to keep ourselves pure? And yet those fools and morons treat me as different because I am an albino. They treat me with contempt…worse, with pity. Because I have no skin pigment, they do not think of me as being black. You sought power for your views by marrying the baron’s daughter, and so did I—although a high yellow beauty like her would not condescend to the likes of me, still I had my brother. He, at least, they all see as a black.”
“Uh, excuse me, but strictly speaking, if you have no pigment, then you aren’t actually black, are you?” Elias said mildly.
“Of course I am!” exclaimed the albino. “Being black is not about the skin pigment!”
“Then why do you object so strongly to whitelanders?”
Mildred listened to the silence. Elias’s mocking tone elicited no verbal response from the albino but heavy breathing as he fought to contain his temper. If she was lucky, they might actually kill each other at this rate, and save her the worry of having to escape. Yeah, as though she should be that lucky. Desperately she sought some way of gaining an advantage over them once she had used the surprise card.
Their argument continued.
“You will use your half of the money to squander,” the albino said, sneering, “whereas I intend to set up a community where those such as myself can live in peace, apart from whitelanders and cartoon blacks such as yourself.”
“Interesting definition of squander, I would say,” Elias commented wryly. “But I really feel that we’re wasting time now.”
“Something I have been saying to you for some time,” the albino snapped.
“So I’ve suddenly grown weary of your tattle,” Elias commented. “I feel it’s time to complete step one. Once she’s chilled, we’ll get the treasure out and leave her corpse there. By the time anyone figures out that she’s a little more than just missing, we’ll be well away from this accursed island.”
There was a pause.
“So who’ll do it?” Chan said nervously.
Elias sighed. “Oh, really, do I have to do everything for you?”
The taunt worked. “No, damn you. I’ll see to it,” the albino snapped.
On her back, eyes still closed, Mildred heard him move near. She thanked her luck that it was the lighter and less competent of the duo that was approaching. He would be easier to take by surprise and to overpower. She could get his blaster and perhaps use him to shield herself to make a difficult shot for Elias. It was a slim chance, but the only one she had.
As the albino leaned over her and she felt the muzzle of the blaster rest against her forehead, she opened her eyes suddenly, ignoring the searing pain of the daylight—even shielded as it was by the albino’s body—and looked Chan straight in the eyes.
He gasped and started back, the blaster pointing away from her. Before Elias had a chance to ask him what was wrong, or for him to answer, Chan found himself kicked sideways as Mildred swung her leg up with as much force as she could muster. There was little momentum she could give it, and she was still weak from her head wound, but the kick was strong enough to catch him in the ribs and to catapult him sideways. She rolled after him, feeling the breeze of the first shot from Elias as it threw up splatters of damp earth where her thigh had been moments before.
“Don’t fire, for the Lord’s sake, don’t fire,” Chan yelled, his voice pitched high with fear.
“Then get out of the damned way,” Elias snorted as he tried to take a clear aim.
With one hand, Mildred grabbed the blaster that had fallen from Chan’s hand when he’d been pitched sideways as she grabbed the albino around the throat with the other. It was a difficult maneuver, and the albino was slippery, but at least she had the blaster.
“You dimwit, you didn’t even have the safety off,” she yelled at him as she flicked the catch.
Elias fired again, the shot whistling past both of them at head level.
“What are you doing?” Chan yelled. “For the Lord’s sake.”
“Not so loud,” Elias ordered. “There are still security patrols—”
He was cut short by a blast from Mildred that tore up a clod of earth to his left. Her usually deadly aim had been spoiled by the albino’s movements, which she still sought to contain.
This was a stalemate, and one that couldn’t continue for long. Sooner or later Elias would tire of this and just fire through Chan, or the albino would wriggle free and she would be an open target.
What she needed was a miracle. What she got was something close.
“Mildred! Duck!”
Mildred didn’t think about what was happening, or where Jak had sprung from. She just threw herself to the ground.
The explosion from behind her was a signal that Jak’s .357 Magnum Colt Python had been called into play. It was lucky for Chan that he had also reacted to Jak’s call, as the slug would have hit him if he had stayed on his knees instead of flinging himself away from Mildred when she released her grip. The slug tore a great chunk out of the ground in front of them.
Elias had already turned and begun to run for cover. Jak sighted and loosed another shot, which took a chunk out of a tree to the left of the giant’s shoulder as he ducked behind it. The wood cut into his shoulder, making him scream but doing nothing to delay his progress. Chan was close behind him, scuttling for cover as Mildred had just a short while before.
Mildred sighted with the blaster she had taken from Chan and fired. But at the last she pulled the shot and it flew wide of the intended mark. Now wasn’t the time to take them out.
Jak had stopped firing. He had appeared on the far side of the shallow river and was wading across, unable to stop to take aim if he wished to reach the other side rapidly. His main concern was Mildred’s safety, and that had been assured. However, he couldn’t understand why she had pulled the only shot she had loosed, and asked her as much as soon as he reached her.
Mildred shook her head. “If I chilled Markos’s brother, whether or not it was with Elias, then there would be a whole shitload of explaining to do, and I’m not sure that Markos would want to hear it straight off. And when we get those bastards, I want it to be clear what they’ve been up to.”
“You be safe till then?” Jak asked.
“I figure they’ll go to ground, maybe thinking we’ll go straight to Markos or Sineta. Which also means they’ll have to act fast. I reckon they’ll be back tonig
ht to try to get the stuff out of the rocks and make a break for it. But what the hell are you doing here?”
Jak shrugged and smiled. “Was on errand to livestock, getting stupe measurements for crates and boats ’cause of fuckup…lucky fuckup. Saw Chan and Elias on roof. Not trust one, and seeing other with him made curious. Then blasters out. Didn’t know firing on you till followed them when you picked up. Followed out here and kept tail. Didn’t know how bad you injured, or if you making out unconscious—body not quite loose enough,” he added with a hunter’s grin. “Anyway, saw you move and figured time right.”
“Sure as shit was,” Mildred agreed. “I was never more pleased to see you.”
She hugged the albino with sheer relief.
When she let him go, he said, “So if they come tonight, we tell sec?”
Mildred grimaced. “Can’t tell them outright. I figure I should make sure Markos is out here at that time and he can stumble on it. But there’ll have to be backup.”
“How you get him out here?” Jak asked. It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but it made Mildred feel awkward. The flare of attraction between herself and the sec boss had been secret, and she wanted it to stay that way.
“I’ll figure that out,” she said lamely.
If Jak was surprised by that, he didn’t betray the fact. Instead he continued. “We tell Ryan, and all of us get here—surround it and ready to help if necessary.”
“No,” Mildred said emphatically, “I don’t want that. This is a Pilatan legacy, and if it comes out because of two blacks who are stopped by outsiders—and pale outsiders at that—then it’ll divide the people when they really need to pull together. Half of them won’t want to believe that either Chan or Elias are behind this, and if whites are there…”
Jak nodded. “Just me, then. That work?”
Mildred nodded. “You’re an albino. You’re acceptable in that sense. Yeah, I figure you and me can give Markos the backup he needs.”
“Okay, but should fill others in anyway,” Jak pointed out.
“Yeah, that’s fair. Let’s do it.”
As they made their way back to the ville, Mildred realized that her doubts about both J.B.—and by implication, the rest of the companions—and Markos had been proved wrong. Both were good men in their separate ways. Chan had obviously been her initial attacker. He was of a similar build to the Armorer and had adopted J.B.’s limp to aid his disguise. Both he and Elias had used their moralistic stances to hide their real selves until revealed this day—and then only to Millie and Jak. It may prove harder than she thought to convince the sec boss and to convince Ryan that she should handle this with so little manpower.
Something that Markos and Ryan shared was their complete integrity. She knew the one-eyed man would understand why she and Jak would have to do this alone.
Chapter Eleven
“You want to what!” Ryan exclaimed when Mildred had outlined her plan.
“I want it to just be me and Jak,” she reiterated. “It can’t be any other way.”
“But, Mildred, it’s going to be—”
“Are you saying that we can’t handle it?” She bristled.
Ryan sighed. “Of course I’m not saying that. You know better. But we always play the odds. That’s why we’re still here and the people we’ve had to come up against have mostly long ago bought the farm. Seven is better odds than two, that’s all.”
Mildred paused. “Yeah, I know that’s what you’re saying. And you know, most of the time I’d agree with you. But this has to be different, and I’ve explained why.”
There was a long silence. The companions were grouped in their quarters, Mildred having dragged them away from their work—allegedly under the auspices of Sineta—in order to have this conference. They were all fully armed, having reclaimed their weapons from the armory that morning. That was why Jak had been carrying his Colt Python. The only exception was Ryan, who was incensed when Mildred and Jak revealed to him where his SIG-Sauer had found a new home. The rearming was part of final preparations, as the armory was now crated ready for transportation. The loading was the task from which they had been pulled by Mildred.
The late-afternoon shadows were long over the street where they were housed and without any lamps the inside of the adobe hut was dark. Jak and Dean were acting lookouts at the front and back, still keeping an ear on the proceedings.
Finally, Ryan said, “Okay, I’m with you on this, but I still don’t like it that you’re not playing the odds.”
“Mebbe there’s a way that you could stack them a little,” Krysty mused thoughtfully.
“There is?” Mildred responded. “How?”
Krysty shrugged. “You’re planning to stop Elias and Chan and then present it as a fait accompli to Sineta and Markos, right?” She waited for Mildred to agree, then continued, “So why don’t you let them see it going down? Take them with you.”
“But, Krysty, how the hell can I explain to Markos about his brother?” Mildred asked. “Sineta, I could handle. She’ll understand why Barras didn’t tell her, and trusted me to do it for her at this time. But Markos is too proud, too stubborn.”
“So don’t tell him it’s his brother who’s involved. Just tell him about Elias, and say you didn’t get a look at the other man involved as he was masked.”
“You really think he’ll go for that?” Mildred asked skeptically.
“Think about how much he dislikes Elias,” Krysty pointed out.
“I can understand that—look how he had us deceived,” J.B. commented. “Markos was aware of how he was, but prove it when you’re that blunt and he’s Mister Nice Guy all the time.”
Mildred turned to the Armorer and smiled. Of course J.B. would understand Markos. “Yeah, maybe if I play on that, I won’t have to let on about Chan until he can see for himself.”
“Markos good fighter,” Jak chipped in quietly from his position near the window. “Night make hard for two on two. Could be better bet.”
“Okay,” Mildred affirmed. “Let’s do it.”
MARKOS LOOKED PUZZLED when he entered Sineta’s quarters to find Mildred and Jak waiting for him, along with the baron’s daughter.
“You sent word that there was an urgent matter to be settled between ourselves,” he began. “I fail to see—”
“It is,” the fine-boned woman interjected, “but as of yet, I have no idea as to its substance. That is what Mildred and Jak have to tell us.”
Markos sucked in his breath. “Why do I get bad feelings that the two of them are involved?” he murmured. “Particularly when I see another injury on you,” he added, indicating the crease on Mildred’s forehead. Although it had been dressed by Krysty, even under a bandage it suggested nothing but trouble.
“Because it’s not a pretty story,” she said simply before going on to outline the attempt on her life, and how Jak had saved her at the side of the river.
“There is one thing that is a mystery to me,” Markos mused, interrupting her. “Why they did not chill you when they had the chance, and why they took you to the river.”
“Because they wanted to hide my corpse,” Mildred explained. “And as for why they took me down to the river…” She turned to the baron’s daughter. “Sineta, there’s something I have to tell you. Something that happened between your father and me. And I need to tell you why he did what he did.”
And she began to tell her about the legend of the whitelands treasure and why the baron had entrusted her with the information. Sineta stayed silent and listened carefully, but Mildred could see that Markos was almost bursting with anger and indignation that the baron should trust Mildred and her friends and not his own people. A view he expressed when Mildred had finished.
Sineta waited for him to finish before speaking.
“Can you not see that my father was right? At such a time as this, when there is upheaval and the disparate elements that make a community have to be pulled together in both spirit and physical being, the gathering
of the old treasure would be a distraction that would pull us apart. People like your brother would wish us to remain and not take this back to the ones from whom it was originally plundered. And yet, right now, they have acquiesced to the need to journey on and are working together with the rest of us. To have this treasure taken from hiding and presented once we are on the whitelands is the only way to proceed. Of course I am hurt that my father chose one other than myself to impart this knowledge, but my feelings do not matter when set against the needs of the community that I must serve. If I can live with that, cannot you?”
Markos sighed. “You are right, of course. The post I hold, and of which I am proud, dictates that the community must come first, and that is how it should be.”
Let’s hope that you still see it that way in a couple of hours, Mildred thought.
Jak walked toward the door.
“Dark falls. Mebbe should go.”
THE WOODLANDS along the river were in darkness by the time that Mildred, Jak, Sineta and Markos reached the riverbank. The night sky above was clear, the moon illuminating the woods enough for them to be able to find their way. Jak took the front, surefooted and able to see in the gloom. He returned at intervals to report that the way ahead was clear. Although there were paths scored through the woods by the activities of the tree fellers, Mildred guided them through thicker patches, wanting to keep the party as hidden as possible. As the rest of the companions had regained their weapons just that day, so Mildred had claimed her Czech-made ZKR target pistol, which she held loosely, feeling the familiar grain of the butt against her palm. Jak had his .357 Magnum Colt Python, and Markos his H&K, which he held across his body, loose but firm in his grip. Sineta was the only one who concerned Mildred when it came to weapons. The baron’s daughter carried a Glock, which was gripped tightly in her fist. The tension in her grip revealed that she was unfamiliar and ill-at-ease with blasters.
If it came to a firefight, as it undoubtedly would, could the woman look after herself? Mildred figured that she’d have to keep an eye out for the soon-to-be baron of Pilatu, otherwise she could find herself buying the farm before her father.