Above him there came a loud thump and a crackling noise.
Blade glanced higher, and froze in shock at seeing a large boulder rolling down the slope toward them. “Take cover,” he shouted, and glanced right and left, spotting an even bigger boulder he could use as a shelter.
The five-ton projectile rapidly gained momentum, flattening brush in its path and bouncing off other boulders, but hurtling on a relatively straight course.
Dashing behind the boulder he’d selected, Blade grinned at his companions and saw them similarly taking cover. Then the rockly cannonball rumbled past his sanctuary and kept on going, careening off another boulder on its way to the bottom of the hill. When it hit, the entire hill seemed to quake and a dust cloud swirled into the cool air.
Hickok stepped from concealment. “A few more seconds and we would have known what it feels like to be a flapjack.”
“Was that an accident?” Geronimo inquired, stepping out.
Blade speculated on the same question. He rounded the boulder and scanned the slope above, but saw no one. Still uneasy, he climbed as fast as he could.
“Wait for us, pard,” Hickok urged.
Motioning for them to hurry, Blade ascended to the spot where he’d first beheld the large boulder, and went an additional five yards. There he found what he’d suspected he would: a barren circular depression on the rim of an earthen knob and beside it a long, sturdy, straight limb. He deduced the boulder had been precariously balanced, and the woman had used the limb to rock it loose and send it clattering downward.
What was that?
Blade tensed, hearing a peculiar sound, a soft, fluttering whine. He hustled even higher, the whine becoming louder, until he saw her.
Isabel Kauler was on hands and knees, breathing in exhausted, ragged gasps, her fingers digging into the earth as she desperately tried to claw her way to the summit. When a huge shadow fell across her she recoiled in stark fear and curled into a fetal position, crying hysterically.
Blade gazed down at her, his emotions in turmoil. His fellow Warriors joined him and neither spoke a word.
Cringing and hiding her face with her hands, the woman trembled violently.
“Isabel?” Blade said softly.
“No!” she screeched. “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! Let me go!”
The unadulterated, almost palpable fear in her voice brought goose bumps to Blade’s skin. “Isabel, please,” he said, and squatted to touch her on the shoulder.
Shrieking, Isabel reacted as if touched by the hand of death. She tried to scramble rearward, but bumped into a boulder. “Don’t kill me! I don’t want to die!” she pleaded, tears gushing down her cheeks.
Blade glanced at his friends, noting their somber expressions, and bowed his head.
Isabel cried for several minutes, sniffling and mewing like a lost kitten.
Gradually her hysterics lessened.
“We need to talk,” Blade informed her when he felt she was capable of listening and understanding. “I have an offer to make.”
“Offer?” Isabel repeated, blinking up at him and dabbing at her moist eyes with her right hand. Her left, on her far side, moved back and forth as if rubbing the ground.
“How would you like to come live with us at our Home?” Blade inquired. “There are about one hundred men, women, and children there and they’d welcome you gladly.”
Isabel stopped sniffling, a crafty gleam in her eyes. “They would, huh?”
“Yes. You could forget all about your past and start a new life.”
“Liar.”
“What?”
Sneering, Isabel pointed at the gunfighter. “You’re a liar! I heard him talking. You plan to kill me.”
Blade fixed a reproachful stare on Hickok.
At that instant, when the giant’s attention was diverted, Isabel struck, whipping around the six-inch-long pointed piece of quartz that had been partially imbedded in the dirt until she tugged it loose with her left hand.
She grinned as she swung, knowing the giant couldn’t possibly evade her blow, relishing the thought of rupturing his throat. Her slender arm was an arrow, the quartz nearly to his neck, when the last sound she would ever hear fell on her ears.
A Colt Python revolver boomed once.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As the twin Cy-Hounds bounded toward Yama he fired, sweeping the Dakon II in a semicircle to catch both brutes full in the chest. The biochemical marvels reacted instantaneously, moving almost too fast for the human eye to follow, one darting to the left, the other the right, lowering their squat bodies to the floor as they ran. The rounds passed over their rushing forms without so much as nicking their skin.
The four scientists were less fortunate. Standing as they were directly behind the Cy-Hounds and lacking their creations’ reflexes, the quartet took the brunt of the fragmentation bullets head-on. They were all hurled backwards, their torsos exploding, spraying gore all over the floor. Two of the men screamed horribly as they went down.
Seated in the chair, the Minister never exhibited a hint of emotion as the men died. He simply sat and watched the tableau unfold.
Yama swung to the left, tracking the one Cy-Hound, his shots ripping up the floor just behind it as it ran in a tight loop. Fleetingly engrossed in nailing the beast, he failed to stay aware of the second, and realized the gravity of his mistake a millisecond later when the equivalent of a convoy truck doing 60 miles an hour hit him squarely between the shoulder blades.
Knocked forward over eight feet by the impact, Yama crashed onto his elbows and knees, losing his grip on the Dakon II. The rifle skidded off to the left.
Behind him the Minister vented a sinister laugh.
The Cy-Hound executing the loop abruptly changed direction and came straight for the Warrior.
Yama barely rose to his knees and the dog was there, slamming into him, bearing both of them to the carpet. He wedged his left forearm under the beast’s mouth as they went down, preventing it from ripping his face off, and rolled to the right, striving to prevent it from gaining a purchase.
Its claws tore into his body, causing intense pain that he ignored.
The second canine came to its fellow construct’s aid, dashing in close and nipping at the big man’s legs.
Still rolling, Yama grimaced at the agony, his right hand dropping to the survival knife and whipping the blade clear. He drove it up and in, sinking the gleaming tip deep into the Cy-Hound’s left eye, burying the knife in the socket.
As if jolted by fifty thousand volts of electricity, the brute arched its spine and furiously tore away from the Warrior, scrambling several feet to the right and halting while shaking its head and appearing dazed.
The other Cy-Hound pounced.
Yama had his palms on the floor, about to shove upright, when the beast used its head as a battering ram and sent him flying rearward. He crashed into a chair, jarring his left shoulder, wincing in torment. Lunging to his feet, disoriented and bleeding from a dozen deep cuts, he tried to draw the Browning.
Again the other brute bore down, this time going for the big man’s left leg and sinking its teeth into his thigh. Its jaws locked on and held fast.
Tottering to the left, Yama rained a flurry of punches on the Cy-Hound’s head but couldn’t dislodge it. He went for the Browning, and detected movement to his right before he could clear leather. Belatedly he saw his second bestial adversary leaping at his throat, and threw his right arm up to ward off the canine’s fangs.
Even with the survival knife jutting from its ravaged socket, the Cy-Hound fought on. Out of the air it hurtled to bury its teeth in the Warrior’s arm.
Now Yama had a dog on his leg and one on his arm. They were working in concert, using their combined weight and savage might in an effort to pull him down where they could finish him off in seconds. Blood coursed from his forearm and thigh, streaking their lips and jaws red.