"What chills you?" Jak asked, displaying a ghoulish interest in the mechanics of how a crucifixion actually worked.
Nathan pointed. "See the way the head falls forward on the chest? Whole body leans out. Closes up the chest so you can't breathe. You pull yourself up straight. Then the strain's too much so you slump. Goes on until you choke."
"Bastard hard," Ryan said.
"Indeed, Master Thursby," the tall young man agreed. "But the baron and his... his lady have less kind ways."
"Worse than that!" Krysty exclaimed, shaking her head in disgust.
"A man who spit at Lady Rachel Cawdor, for what she'd done to his family, was taken and stripped and his wrists bound tight with whipcord. Then he was placed on a large wooden spike that tapered, becoming wider and wider."
Jak looked puzzled. "Placed? How d'you mean? How?"
"Point up his ass, Whitey," Tom explained. "He gripped with his feet. But he got tired, didn't he, mates? Slipped down a bit. Then there was all the blood and stuff on the spike. He went down farther. And in the end it came clean out through..."
"Enough!" Doc Tanner shouted. "By the three Kennedys! This is monstrous." He turned to Ryan, whose heart sank at the suspicion that the old man, in his rage, was about to call him by his real name. And possibly destroy them all.
"Don't glare at Floyd, Doc!" Lori shrieked, hanging onto his arm and nearly pulling him clear off-balance.
"Who? Don't what, child? Who is..." The light of reason seeped back into the eyes. "I swear I was near the brink of... But let it pass. Master Thursby, I fear that I cannot, nay, will not, spend a night in the shadow of these poor curs."
"Where can you go, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"Back to wag. I knew the trails," Lori said. "I could have found it easy.''
"You said it was days off," Tom interrupted, suspicious. "Didn't yer?"
"There's a cache of food," Krysty said quickly. "Mebbe it'd be safer for them, Floyd."
"If'n that's what you want, Doc."
"I can lead you back," Nathan Freeman offered. "Know these woods from a child. On the morrow I can trail and make sure all's well."
"No need, thanks," J.B. said. "We know where the wag is."
"Sure," Ryan added, taking the old man by the arm and leading him out of earshot of the others, Lori following closely.
"We'll be fine, Ryan," the old man whispered. "Be good cover if'n there should be trouble. Don't trust them."
"The young man, Nathan, seems a straight. But I know what you mean. So much fear of the ville. We'll stay there for the night and then leave early morning. Stay at the wag and we'll pick you both up before noon. Is that okay?"
Doc gripped him by the hand. "Ryan... I mean, Floyd. I don't have the power of a doomie to see the future. But I fear that this promises ill. Will you abandon the venture, come back to the gateway and let us go elsewhere?"
Ryan sighed. "No, Doc. Thanks for the warning. But I've come too far, too far to turn back now. Take care. And you, Lori. See you tomorrow."
The slim young girl led the way back along the trail, Doc Tanner walking more slowly, stumbling a little, after her. In a very short time they'd both disappeared into the darkness, leaving Ryan to wonder whether he should have let them go.
Or whether they should all have gone with them to the wag.
You could almost taste the fear when Nathan Freeman led the strangers into the hamlet. Many of the inhabitants were asleep, but most of those were quickly awakened by the noise that greeted Ryan and the other three.
Nathan brushed aside any discussion about whether the baron should be told, and Ryan did what he could to reassure everyone that they would be leaving early in the morning. They were taken to a barn, clean and dry, with ample fresh straw for all four of them to sleep in comfort.
A woman carried in a tray that held cups of warm goat's milk and four wooden bowls containing thick vegetable soup. Her hands trembled as she served them.
They all fell asleep quickly. Ryan awoke only once, around two, when he thought he heard the sound of a horse's hooves, muffled. Though he lay and listened, the sound wasn't repeated, and he was soon asleep once more.
Chapter Twenty
They rose early in Shersville, and had breakfast by eight o'clock. Ryan had risen earlier, only a few minutes after a pale dawn. He'd pulled on his high combat boots and tucked his pistol and panga in their sheaths. As he walked out of the barn, he nearly bumped into the tall well-built figure of Nathan Freeman, who stood patiently in the deep shadow of the wooden building.
"Good morrow, Master... Thursby." The hesitation before the name was so slight that most men wouldn't have noticed it at all.
Ryan noticed.
"Morning, friend," he said.
"The others awake?"
"No."
"I'd like a chance of a talk, Floyd."
Ryan looked at the young man, noting the peculiar dark shade of his eyes, so dark it was almost black.
"Now?" the older man asked.
"Too many would wonder. After we've eaten. There's bread and there's eggs... and everyone is about their own business. Then we could walk to the river and talk together. Yes?"
Ryan nodded. "Okay, Nathan." He wondered whether he should ask him about the horse he'd heard leaving the village during the night, but decided it wasn't worth it.
The bread was newly baked, crusty and delicious, its top covered with small, crisp seeds that burst with flavor. The eggs were scrambled with butter and a mix of herbs. Even Jak Lauren, who was not normally a sturdy trencherman so early in the morning, devoured three helpings, wiping grease from his chin and looking longingly at the platter that crackled and spit over the open fire with more eggs.
"Fucking good," he said, belching, earning a reproof from the middle-aged woman who'd been serving the breakfast. She rapped him over the back of the head with the heavy wooden ladle.
"A loose tongue is an affront to an honest woman," she said.
"Where's this fucking honest woman?" he retorted, grinning impishly at her, delighted to see the hectic spots of angry color that sprang to her rounded cheeks.
"By the Blessed Ryan, I'll...!" she began, then put her hand over her mouth and turned away from them, gathering her long skirts and darting into one of the huts.
The four friends sat in silence, looking at one another. It was Jak who broke the stillness.
"Hear that, Mr. Thursby? Hear what old crone said?"
Ryan nodded slowly. Somehow, it didn't surprise him. He knew from plenty of other primitive double-poor Deathlands communities that odd religions were the norm. If Harvey Cawdor was the obscene tyrant he seemed, it made a kind of bizarre sense that some of the older locals might still cherish the name of the vanished son. It was something he needed to think about. And maybe talk to Nathan Freeman about. He stood and went to join him.
They sat side by side, on the bank of the narrow, twisting river. Nathan had said that it didn't have a name. It was just "the river." That was all it had ever been. As there was only the one, it didn't need to be called anything.
The water gurgled over round moss-green stones, forming small pools where delicate silverfish weaved and darted. Ryan watched them, leaning back against the sun-warmed bole of a toppled beech tree.
"Good feeling, Nate," he said.
"Not many of those within a country mile of Front Royal and the Cawdors. Father, mother and devil brat."
"Tell me a bit 'bout the ville and the Cawdors. I don't know this region well."
"Don't you, Master Thursby?" Freeman asked with an odd insistency. "Sure 'bout that, are you?"
"Course. You lived here all your life?"
"Yeah. Father was a local man. My mother came to Shersville when I was around three years old. Never rightly found where we'd been till then. Traveling some was all she'd tell me. Died when I was still a boy. Neighbors raised me."