"What's your name and where are we?" Ryan called.
"Hamlet of Shersville, friend. Name's Nathan Freeman. Sec head of our small ville. That's 'nough talk. Old man first."
The search was thorough, and sec men found the knives that Ryan, J.B. and Jak carried, but missed the sword-stick that belonged to Doc Tanner.
"Seems okay," Freeman said, still keeping cautiously out of sight. "You can pick up the blasters and come with us. Stay in Shersville a day or two. Then be on your way."
A skinny hunched man called from the other side of the clearing. "Gotta let baron know. Strangers, Nate. Gotta tell him."
"Baron wants to know any danger, Tom. These six won't topple Front Royal. I believe what they say. Let 'em be."
"Cause trouble, Nate. Trouble for you is trouble for Shersville. Trouble for one is trouble for all."
"Damn that fear, Tom!" the leader shouted, suddenly vehement. "The shadow is fucking long. All knows that. But it's not forever. One day there'll be change."
"You speak treason, Nathan," came another voice, older and calmer. "There's many loves you but there's those in Shersville'd see you fall and the chance of wolfs-head jack from th'Baron."
"Shersville don't need such as them. One day we can stand and fall as we are. Not 'cause of fear of the baron and that sluttish..."
"Nate!" Tom shouted. "Watch your tongue, you stupe. Or we'll all dance on cold air for it."
Ryan found the conversation utterly fascinating. There was obviously some deep-rooted and bitter feelings against his brother and Lady Rachel. But there was also intense fear of the chilling power of the ville. The barons Cawdor of Front Royal had always had long arms.
"Said we should report strangers, Nate."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! I hear you. I say let 'em have their blasters and come with us. Day Shersville can't offer shelter and food to lost strangers is the day Shersville loses all it ever had."
"We are obliged to you, young man," Doc Tanner said as courteous as ever. His hand moved to his sparse silver locks to sweep the stovepipe hat off in an elegant bow, but he let it fall again to his side as he remembered that the ancient hat was now part of the flotsam and jetsam off the New Jersey shore.
"Yeah, we're grateful, Master Freeman," Ryan said. "From what we heard, it sounds like there could be trouble from this baron if you give us shelter. Wouldn't want that."
"Tom speaks over the top. Baron demands we watch the borders for muties and hire-killers. You aren't the first. As for the second... Like I said, six won't take Front Royal. So what's to tell the good Baron Cawdor?"
Nathan Freeman turned and led the way through the bright silvered night, following the trail as it gradually became broader, blending with other tracks until they were on a well-preserved blacktop.
The rest of the villagers straggled along in the rear, talking quietly and urgently together.
"You worried them," Ryan said.
Freeman shook his head. "My mother used to say something about dying on your feet mebbe being better than living on your belly. The ville's been too powerful for too long since Baron Harvey stole it."
"Stole?" J.B. asked.
"Long story. I wasn't even born when it began. We'll get to Shersville and get some food down you. Then I'll tell you."
Ryan had noticed that the man had been staring curiously at his eye patch. When the question finally came, he was ready for it.
"Best I know your names," Freeman said, "so's I can say I made proper inquiries. And I wonder 'bout that wound to your face."
"I'm Floyd Thursby. This is J.B. Dix, Krysty Wroth, Lori Quint, Doc Tanner and Jak Lauren. This?" He lifted a hand to touch the leather patch over his left eye. "Don't much like talking about it. Double-stupe way to lose half your sight."
"How?"
"Rabbit."
"How's that?"
"I was in my twentieth summer, out west, where I was born. Been trapping with my uncle. Both my parents died when I was three. There was a big buck caught in a snare around its foreleg. The wire had bitten deep to the bone and the creature seemed like it was nearly chilled."
Everyone had stopped, gathering around to hear the conclusion of the story. Ryan wasn't a natural-born liar, and he struggled to keep the tale as short and as simple as possible.
"Stooped over it, skinning knife in my right hand. Been a bad chem storm and it was dark, under some trees. Bent low. Fucker wasn't near dead, and it kicked out at me. Hooked this eye out from its socket neat as a stone from a plum. Gouged this down me at the same time." He touched the jagged cicatrix that seamed his cheek from eye to mouth on the right side of his lean face.
"Coney blinded you!" The villager called Tom laughed. "If that don't take the biscuit! A coney spoiled the stranger's looks."
Ryan turned slowly and stared at the man, the moon catching his good eye, giving it a glint of ferocious anger. It checked the laughter so quickly that Tom nearly choked on his tongue.
"No harm meant, Master Thursby," he stammered out, taking a stumbling half step back, stepping on the toes of the man behind him.
"No harm done, friend." Ryan smiled.
"There's strange fruit, lover," Krysty whispered as they came within sight of the hamlet of Shersville, a quarter hour later.
Ryan looked where she pointed. Ahead of them, fringing the road, were five corpses. Three had been hanged and two had been crucified on crude crosses.
"Baron Harvey's orchard," one of the older men with them cackled.
"Pour encourager les autres," Doc Tanner muttered.
"How's that, Doc?" Jak asked.
"It means, my dear boy, that the baron believes in visible lessons to those who might consider crossing him."
Ryan stopped in front of the first of the bodies. It was a woman, naked, aged around fifty by the look of the dried, wrinkled flesh. There wasn't enough left of the face to be more certain. Strands of ragged, graying hair still clung to the gnarled bone of the skull. The lower jaw had become detached and fallen to the earth. The eyes were long gone, pecked out by the crows that they'd seen near where they had parked the wag. The hempen rope around the scrawny throat was stained black with ancient blood.
The next dangling corpse was a man. But it was only by the torn ribbons of breeches and jerkin that you could guess it. The body had obviously hung there longer than the old woman; the flesh had turned to crisp leather, tanned and gleaming in the bright moonlight. The hands were bound behind the back, and the ankles were also tied together. One foot was missing.
The third body was smaller, younger and fresher. The eyes were missing, as well as the lips and part of the soft flesh of the cheeks. It was a teenage boy, flaxen-headed and slightly built. Both hands were gone, obviously cut off before the lynching. Smears of thick tar around the stumps showed where a crude effort had been made to stop the lad from bleeding to death before he could be strung up.
"Found a boar with broken legs out in the wild Shens, south of here," Nathan Freeman said, voice as cold as death. "Beast was done and he slit its throat and took a haunch for food for his family. Live on the edge of Shersville. Someone leaked word to the baron and..." The sentence drifted away into the silence of the night.
Both of the crucified corpses were men.
"See this on every road around Front Royal," Tom mumbled almost apologetically, as though he needed to give the six strangers some sort of an explanation for the horrors.
"Been up for weeks, them two," added the oldest of the villagers. "Both gotten catched hoarding food meant for Lady Rachel's horses."
"That's a high price," J.B. said, staring up at the tortured corpses.
"Bad way't'go," Nathan commented. "The hunk of wood for your feet makes it longer. Ropes around the wrists and ankles. Baron wanted nails used, but Lady Rachel said nails made it quicker. Through the tendons and bones at wrist and ankle. Ropes is more cruel, she said. So it was ropes."