by James Axler
A child, with golden hair and the sweetest smile, was herding along a flock of bedraggled sheep, aided by two slavering hounds. If any of the bleating creatures attempted to delay, or go to the side of the track and nibble the rank grasses, the dogs would pounce on them, rip open their bellies and claw out greasy loops of intestines, letting them dangle in the dust.
And all the time, the little boy smiled innocently and whistled a merry tune.
"Ryan. You…"
Two ragged men, sitting on a slope, were both staring at Ryan as he swayed with exhaustion. They were in the shade of a stump of a tree bearing only a handful of curling leaves. One of the men had his boots unlaced, and the other was nibbling on the end of a scrawny carrot. Eventually they looked away from him and carried on with their own waiting.
"Come on, Ryan. Wake up… Come on.... Open your eye, brother."
In his shuddering nightmare, he was running along a darkened corridor in an old castle. Rotting tapestries hid gaping holes in the walls, which were covered in a shimmering veil of iridescent beetles. Behind him Ryan could hear the murmur of voices and the pounding of boots on stone flags. The tapestries blew across the passage in front of him, and he had to run through them, wincing as they slapped at his face.
"Ryan! By Ysun, giver of all life, wake up! If I slap you any harder my hand'll fall off the end of my arm."
Slowly and painfully, Ryan eased open his right eye.
The pain was so severe that he closed it again. Fighting against the desire to throw up, he drew in several deep, slow breaths, his head swimming. After a few moments he tried again, squinting around him.
He could see the mantis figure of Donfil crouched at his side. They were in a small room, no larger than a broom closet, with chinks of light peeking through slits around a door in the ceiling.
Ryan's brain was still utterly befuddled. "Why's the door in the ceiling?" he croaked, aware that his throat was painfully dry and his voice was feeble.
"Come on, Ryan," the Apache urged, chafing his friend's wrists, trying to bring him to full consciousness a little more quickly.
"No. Why's the door…and why are we moving, and what's that smell like tar and fish? The creaking noise is… Oh, fireblast! Now I know. I can remember it all, Donfil. That fucking bastard Rodriguez!"
He sat up, moaning as the side of his head came smartly into contact with a protruding oaken beam. Donfil leaned back, folding his legs under him. "Yeah. We're at sea. The rad scum sold us out."
"Who… ? You don't think… ?"
Ryan got the answer to his incomplete question. Overhead they both heard the hollow sound of something rapping wood at regular intervals. Something that could only be the iron ferrule on the end of a walking stick.
"Captain Pyra Quadde," Donfil said, his face a pale oblong blur in the dim light.
The Indian had only come around himself a handful of minutes before Ryan, so neither of them had any idea how long they'd been prisoners aboard the Salvation. Both of them felt appallingly sick, a condition not helped by the cramped, stuffy locker where they were being held and the tossing of the vessel. Ryan knew little about the ocean, but it seemed as though the ship were breasting long rollers, rather than the choppy, short waves encountered near the coast.
"What about the others?" Ryan asked.
"They didn't drink."
"If you'd gone up with them, then you'd have been safe. It was me that the old gaudy bitch wanted. Not you."
"Unless she wanted me for my skill with the whaling spear."
"Likely the others have been thrown out of the ville by now. Or set to forced slave work. Doubt they'll have been harmed."
"No. You reckon she'll chill us?"
Ryan nodded, finding that the nauseating swimming across his temples was easing. "Sure. Do stickies love fires? She'll mebbe work me first. No place to run on a ship, is there?"
"No. Not much hope in fighting. Must be twenty or more men riding here."
"Just keep quiet and do like we're told. That's about the best plan I can think of right now."
Locked away, Ryan was forced to take stock of his situation, and to try to find what hopes there might be for himself and his companion.
There wasn't much on the plus side. They'd both been stripped of their own clothes and roughly dressed in thick cotton breeches and dark blue woolen sweaters. Because of Donfil's inordinate height, his pants barely reached his knees and the sleeves of his sweater finished just below his elbows. Both men were barefoot and both had been relieved of their weapons.
There were coils of rope in the locker, stowed neatly away, and several small anchors, but nothing that could conceivably be used to fight with. Ryan felt his way around the darkness, on the off chance that someone might have dropped a knife. But there was nothing of any use. And every rope he touched felt slimy and slippery, from the whale oil that Doc had been talking about, he guessed.
"There's no point, Ryan. It's the way of my people to make the best of what is. And not to weep over what is not. We're trapped. If they want to chill us, then they'll chill us. We can maybe take a couple with us to the shadowland beyond. But they might not chill us. So, we'll live."
Ryan couldn't think of a smart answer, so he crawled to his corner and sat huddled on a coil of thick rope.
Every now and again a wave of the drug would come surging up in his throat, like an extra high wave on a sloping beach, and it would suck him back into the dimness of half sleep. As Donfil had said, there was little point in trying to speculate on what might happen to them in the next few hours.
When it happened, then it would happen. The only thing that worried him at all was what might have happened at the Rising Flukes, once he and the Apache had failed to join the others.
IT WAS KRYSTY who'd found out that life had dealt a hand filled with spades and clubs.
While waiting in the bedroom, watching condensation trickling down the cold panes of glass, she'd begun to worry about Ryan and the Indian taking so long in their private word with the landlord. Like many people in the Deathlands, Krysty carried mutie blood in her. One of the effects of this was that she could sense certain things—see the future in a limited way, sometimes be aware of the presence of good.
And evil.
She'd rolled over on her side and sat, still fully clothed, waiting for them to begin their planned escape. She could see J.B., sitting cross-legged on his own bed, staring at her.
"I'm thinking…" the girl began, but the Armorer interrupted her.
"Yeah. Me an' all. I reckon I heard men moving in the alley. You see anything?"
Krysty closed her eyes. "I felt real bad down in that drinker there. Men by the door were waiting for…and Rodriguez was nearly shitting his pretty, tight trousers. Only… Oh, Gaia! I can see it now! Come on!"
By the time she'd reached the top of the stairs, weapon in her hand, it was all over.
The bar was filled with sec men, all armed, muzzles of rifles and scatterguns pinning her in place. Rodriguez was behind the bar, wiping sweat from his face. Ryan's weapons and white silk scarf were on the bar, as were Donfil's Smith & Wesson Distinguished Combat .357 Magnum and mirrored sunglasses. Both men were gone.
"Don't move, outlander. Place is covered tighter than a sea gull's shit hole." The voice came from the sec man who'd first stopped them on the road into Claggartville. It was a calm, gentle voice, with no anger or arrogance. Just a man doing his job with a quiet efficiency. "Thou and thy friends had best come down and leave us your blasters. Then ye can all go back to your own quarters until morning. Nobody will harm ye."
"Ryan?" she said hesitantly, conscious of her four friends at her shoulder, frozen by the sec men's overwhelming force.
"Gone to seek the works of the Lord, outlander," intoned Rodriguez. "And His wonders in the deep." He paused. "And may the good Lord Jesus, our Redeemer, have mercy on his soul."
Chapter Eighteen
RYAN AND DONFIL both jerked awake at the grating sound of bolts
being kicked open. The hatch was lifted, and they were blinded by a flood of bright sunshine.
Callused hands reached down and tugged them out of the rope locker. First the Apache, then Ryan Cawdor, were heaved into the sunlight, onto the scrubbed white planks of the deck.
Ryan stretched, drawing in deep breaths of the bitingly fresh air, feeling it clear away the last shreds of the knockout drug. There was a boisterous wind blowing, and he could see the gray-green waves as they rolled under the bow of the ship. There were men all around, but Ryan ignored them, looking beyond their heads, over the bulwarks, scanning the horizon slowly, checking out the vessel.
Donfil was doing the same, straining on the tips of his toes, using his extra foot of height, both of them reaching the same conclusion.
There wasn't even a blur of land to be seen anywhere. The sea stretched in all directions, marred only by an occasional white horse of tossed spray. From the angle of the sun, it was toward the evening side of the afternoon, the shadows spreading out from their bare feet.
Ryan's guess was that they must have sailed before the dawn, slipping their moorings and sliding, ghostlike, through the misty harbor of Claggartville.
"Seen enough?"
The speaker was one of the men who'd been sitting near the door of the Rising Flukes the previous evening. He held a short, knotted length of rope in his right hand, and he was swinging it against his left palm, eliciting a solid thwacking sound.
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"Thou didst take the life from Jonas Clegg, didst thou not?"
"Yeah," Ryan repeated, sizing up the quality of the opposition. It looked as if most of the crew had gathered to haul them out of their prison. There were more than twenty men there, with a fair mix of sizes, ages and races. The one thing they all had in common was they were tough, weathered men.
Ryan wouldn't really have expected any different. He guessed that a whaling ship, especially with Pyra Quadde as skipper, was probably about as hard as a war wag.
"Jonas had sailed many leagues with us."
"Way I heard it, he's still sailing. Around the harbor. Less he's sunk into the mud by now."
"Think that's funny?"
"No." Ryan shook his head. "I don't think a chilling's ever funny."
Donfil was staring up at the mast, watching its slow, pitching roll. His face was completely blank, almost as if he'd put himself into a kind of trance. Ryan had seen Krysty do something similar.
A short man with a white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth poked Ryan in the back with the end of a belaying pin. "Know what thou'rt here for, outlander?"
"To give Pyra Quadde a chance of revenge."
It wasn't the reply that the sailor had expected, and his voice showed it, "Oh, yeah. That's right. But it's Captain Quadde, or ma'am, or you'll get chilled quicker than yesterday."
"Very dim, it be. Very dim," another man said in a tiny chattering voice. He was well over six feet in height, but his head seemed only the size of a large apple, so out of proportion was it. "The body'll rot, but the soul rolls along. Like the fifth wheel upon a wagon, shipmates."
"Ignore him," said the man with the rope's end in his fist. "Jehu has but one oar in the water, if thou takest my meaning."
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the tapping of a cane on the deck. Ryan could hear the far-off crying of gulls that trailed in the wake of the whaling ship. The whole vessel creaked as timber chafed against timber, spars moving, cords and cables tugging. The wind was whistling gently through the rigging of the Salvation.
Ryan wondered whether these might be the last sounds he would ever hear.
"Get 'bout thy guttin' business." The harsh croaking voice was memorably that of Pyra Quadde, invisible behind the row of men.
"What if they try on—"
"Thou hast fewer brains than Jehu! Why I made thee second mate after Clegg turned in his seaboots I swear I'll never know. Get the men moving, Mr. Walsh."
"Aye, ma'am," he said, turning and jostling the crew to move them off the deck, and out of the captain's way. Ryan noticed that none of the men showed any desire to hang around. In moments the planks were bare of other life. Only Donfil remained, still smiling at the limitless ocean, and Ryan.
And Pyra Quadde.
"Well, well, well. See how the wheel spins and the ship turns to the helm. Not so proud now, Ryan Cawdor?" She waited, but he said nothing. She laughed, showing her hideous, carved-bone teeth. "Well, aren't ye a fine pair? A ragged couple, and no mistake. I never asked for the harpooneer, thou knowest."
"Just me, huh?"
"Triple strike, cully. Just thee. And now I've got thee."
"An evil woman is a swollen boil in the armpit of the Almighty," Donfil said, finally unfixing his eyes from the horizon and staring intently at the captain of the whaler.
"What's that thou… Best keep thine oilskin closed, or there might be a squall to take thee away. If thou dost not take my meaning, I suggest thou talkest less. Thou canst return to port a rich man, Donfil More. Think on that."
"What lay would you give me? A tenth?"
She laughed, turning away a moment, trying to ease the hatred from her eyes before she faced the Apache again. "A tenth, thou sayest? Not even the finest ironsman sailing from old Nantucket ever got such a lay."
"No ironsman from old Nantucket ever struck the mark ten casts from ten, Captain."
"Thou speakest truth there, my lofty harpooneer. Ten from ten I heard said. If thou works and earns thy biscuits and ale, then I'll give thee—" she pondered a moment, head on one side, looking like a gut-shot walrus "—one-fifteenth lay, Donfil More."
"It's not—"
Pyra Quadde rapped her cane on the deck angrily. "Don't push thy luck, Indian! I'm not just giving thee thy flensing fifteenth lay!"
Donfü turned to Ryan, puzzled. "What does she mean by…" he began.
Ryan grinned. "She means that you also get to live, brother. That's what she means."
The woman nodded slowly. "Ryan Cawdor is not the fool he seems, Indian. He marks well what I say. Thou shouldst do the same."
"What lay do I get, Captain?" Ryan asked, tugging mockingly at his forelock of curling black hair.
Once more the stick lifted and the ferrule touched him on the throat, pressing him two steps backward, until he felt the raised rail against his spine. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the surging waves hissing by just below him. The cold metal pushed harder, and he knew that his life could be snuffed out like a candle if Pyra Quadde chose that moment. The gamble was that she wouldn't.
Not yet.
She laughed in his face, and he could taste the sourness of her breath. The point of the cane moved from his throat, traced a line down his sternum, over the flat wall of muscle across his stomach. It brushed lightly across his groin, making him shrink back, which drew a delighted chuckle from the woman.
"All men fear for their cocks. Perhaps that might be my revenge, Ryan Cawdor—have thee gelded with a flensing knife. Cock and balls over the side for the gulls. Hot tar to check thy bleeding, then keep thee around for a servant."
"You know I'd kill you."
She nodded. "I know that, outlander. Course I know that. Is't not true that any man on board the Salvation would open me from gob to gut? Yet, I live. Why?"
"Fear," Donfil said from behind her.
"And greed," Ryan added.
"I'm the best, yes, the best. Every year I bring wealth to the town. And those fawning bastards fall over at my shadow and kiss my ass. But they'd all see me dead. I can find the whales. Scent 'em across the miles. Hunt and kill them. Every year. Ye'll see it. The Indian could even live and become rich. But to throw an iron at an old door on a cobbled quay…" She laughed again, banging her stick on the deck. The man at the wheel looked over his shoulder as though he feared something coming up behind them. "Ten from ten," Donfil reminded. "These frail boats that line the ship—" she pointed to the five-oared whaleboats on either side of the ve
ssel "—they go in the wildest white water and chase the leviathan. Ye hear me, heathen? Thou must look the whale in his age-old eye and grin in his jaws. Drive the iron trough to the deeps of his soul and follow as he trails across the ocean. The whale can be a hundred feet in length and crush a boat with a waltzing touch of his tail. Blood laid over the seas, outlanders. Ten from ten against a door… This will be no sport."
"Why not have me chilled? Easier than this?" Ryan stared down the stocky, muscular woman.
"Cheaper, as well. Have thee gutted and dumped in the cut for a finger of jack. Not that I paid that puking brownholer Rodriguez much. Just said I wouldn't break all his fingers and slice off the lids of his eyes if he had thee black-sleeped. Heathen harpooneer comes as a surprise."
"Still doesn't answer the question. Why not have me chilled?"
She hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spit it over the leeward side of the ship. "Why art thou here, outlander? Because thou didst strike at me by chilling that mindless fool, Clegg. He was of use. I found times to use him." To Ryan's disgust, the woman hiked her skirts up with her right hand, showing pallid, muscled thighs—showing as well that she wore no underwear. She rubbed her fingers into the tangled mat of curling hair, licking her lips greedily as she watched Ryan's face. "Aye, thou seest what I mean. I used him well, and he never failed to rise to me. No man fails me, outlander. Or he's hauled from bow to stern and the barnacles rip him to salted pork."
"You stinking, murderous slut." Ryan took a half step toward her. Instantly the tunnel mouth of her .44 Astra was drilling into the air between them.
"I stink because I don't bother washing. I murder because it gives me power and pleasure. And I'm a slut because I… That thou canst find out when I need to use thee, Ryan Cawdor."
"Never," he gritted.
"We sail for many a month. Never is a flensing long time, cully. Don't say 'never.'"