Jak was riding a great alligator, fully sixty feet long, with mutie jaws and teeth. Somehow it skimmed above the surface of a vast swamp, covered with rich, waxy flowers in unearthly shades of purple and green.
Lori was wandering naked along swept corridors of gray stone, turning corners, walking and turning more corners. Always the corridors stretched ahead of her, limitless and featureless. Yet she knew that she must keep walking. She was cold, but if she could only find it, there was warmth somewhere for her. Her feet were sore and bleeding and she cried. In her dream, the girl cried.
J.B., his glasses neatly folded and tucked into the protective top pocket of his coat, was immersed in a common and repetitive dream. His lips parted in a faint smile of enjoyment.
He had fieldstripped a Stechin machine pistol and laid the parts out, all clean and oiled, on a cloth of white velvet. He ran his eye over them, naming each part.
"Barrel, recoil spring, slide, barrel bracket, extractor, tip of firing pin..." and all the way through the field manual.
The Armorer sighed with pleasure.
Krysty was dreaming of her childhood, back in the ville of Harmony. She was running through a field of poppies, red as spilled blood, feet bare, a ribbon holding back her vermilion hair. The sun was as bright as a newly minted copper coin. Around her she could hear the laughter of children, pealing sweet and hard like small bells of platinum.
The laughter was getting closer and closer to Krysty.
The sun disappeared behind clouds.
The poppies withered and died.
But the laughter came closer and closer.
When Krysty jerked awake, she was sweating and trembling.
Doc Tanner slept shallow and often, like many old people. His dreams were of the long-gone past, lost and beyond recall.
He was in a book-lined room, which was lit with the soft glow of a brass oil lamp, the background resonant with the regular, measured heartbeat of a walnut grandfather clock.
Doctor Theophilus Algernon Tanner was reading, occasionally pausing to make a note with his quill pen, dipping it into the ornate ormolu inkwell.
Through the open doorway, he could see his wife, Emily, suckling little Jolyon, while baby Rachel, swathed in layers of lace petticoats, played with a plump puppy by the fire. It was a scene of intense domestic happiness, and the old man mumbled to himself, smiling on his bed of dry leaves and soft moss, two centuries away from his dream.
Ryan dreamed of a dagger.
When they awoke, they readied themselves for the journey to Front Royal, leaving their long winter coats in the wag. J.B. reluctantly laid his mini-Uzi on a shelf, and Ryan pushed his precious G-12 and its ammunition under one of the bunks.
It was dusk, a fresh spring kind of an evening with a flock of pigeons wheeling above the tops of the trees. The air tasted green, and already the beginnings of dew lay slick on the folded tops of the boulders.
"That way," Ryan said confidently, pointing to the south.
"Wait," Krysty ordered.
"I hear dogs," Jak said, brushing his hair back from the side of his head.
"Yes," Krysty agreed. "Pack of dogs, coming this way. Fast. Listen. You'll all hear them soon. They're hunting."
Lori heard them next, then Ryan and the other two a high keening that rose and fell as the animals ran into hollows or over hills in their hunt. Ryan felt the hair on his nape rise at the sound. It was a familiar noise from his childhood. He had heard it when he'd ridden to the hounds after boar, galloping behind his father, stirrup to stirrup with his oldest brother, Morgan.
"What do we do?" the Armorer asked. "I'll get the Uzi out the wag."
"Wait," Ryan urged. "If it's a full pack, then blasters won't be much use. There'll be forty or fifty curs, trained to go for throat or groin. The only chance is to get in the wag and shut the door."
"Then whoever's running the dogs'll take us like rats in a trap," Krysty argued.
"Better than being ripped apart."
"Guess so, lover," she said.
But the pack veered away, heading east. While the six friends stood huddled together, they heard the hunting animals finally catch up with their prey and make their kill.
The screaming went on and on for what seemed like long minutes but probably only lasted for thirty seconds or so. It was a shriek of purest agony. And it was undeniably human.
Chapter Nineteen
"The memories are flooding back and filling my brain with the past," Ryan said vehemently.
They'd been walking through the evening and into the night, traveling on a twisting network of narrow footpaths. They heard the sound of the pack of hounds, called back by a blaring horn, gradually fading away to the south, toward the ville.
Jak led the way with his good night sight, and at one point spotted the far-off glow of cooking fires. Ryan recalled that there were many small hamlets or settlements scattered around the area.
"They all owed work and land to the ville," he said. "The baron had almost total power over them."
"Almost?" Doc questioned.
Ryan grinned, his teeth white in the moonlight. "Yeah, Doc. Almost. Ville couldn't stop you chilling yourself." He paused. "But your family'd suffer if you took that road out."
One thing had changed in the years since Ryan had fled the region, half-blind and nine parts crazed. There had been a steady infiltration of mutie raiders from the west, and all the small communities now had armed patrols out every night, all local men who knew every twist and turn of the dense forests.
Jak and Krysty heard them coming almost simultaneously. But it was too late.
Short of a full-fledged firefight, Ryan and his group had no way of escape.
The villagers must have heard them coming, or seen them through the trees. There were six men, all armed with a variety of handblasters, ranging from an old English Enfield to a target .22 Colt with sawed-off sights. All of them handled the pistols as if they knew how to use them. They had come in on opposite sides, calling out a warning from cover.
"One step and you're all chilled!"
Jak was the only one who went through with a draw, hefting the gleaming Magnum from his belt and waving it threateningly at the trees surrounding them. Ryan snapped out an order for him to holster the gun.
"Don't, Jak. Not now."
"Do like the one-eye says," came the voice, soft and calm.
"Okay, Ry... Floyd!" The albino nearly blew the pseudonym, just remembering it in time.
"Like to see all the blasters by your feet, real slow 'n' easy."
Ryan glanced around. He spotted the six men easily enough, but saw that they were well protected by the trunks of the sycamores. He felt angry with himself for allowing the double-poors to come and take them as easy as that. The only consolation was that they hadn't opened fire on them.
There was also the odd feeling that he didn't need to take any precautions. He was Ryan Cawdor, son of the old baron and brother to Harvey Cawdor, ruler of Front Royal ville and the thousands of acres around it. Why should he not feel safe? And that same feeling had somehow communicated itself to Jak and to the rest of the group.
"Put the guns down," he ordered. He raised his voice to address the leader of the patrol. "We're traders. Our wag ran dry three days back. Been wandering around these forests ever since. Where are we, friend? We were heading for the ville of Front Royal to trade in fish and fruit."
"Baron Cawdor's ville has no need of fruit or fish, friends. So you've wasted your journey."
"Are we near the ville?" Krysty asked.
"You mutie? You and the snow-hair kid? Baron don't welcome muties, lady."
"We aren't muties. None of us."
"Step back from the blasters. Now take some care. One at a time you step forward and we'll search you. Make sure there's nobody holding on to a hideaway. That'd be a mistake."
Ryan was impressed with the man's control. It was impossible to make him out clearly, but he sounded only in his late teens or early twenties. He had handled the ambush with an almost ridiculous ease, plucking them all into his net like ripe fruit.