Baron Titus Cawdor was a tall, broad-shouldered man with fierce eyes and a ready temper. He married the daughter of the baron of a neighboring ville, joining the families. He took over the other ville when his wife's father — an excellent horseman — died in a mysterious riding accident. His wife, Lady Cynthia, was never physically strong, and after the birth of the third child — all boys — she sank into a decline and a wasting sickness, accompanied by a bloody flux that carried her off less than a year later. She was buried in the marble Cawdor family mausoleum.
Morgan Cawdor was the firstborn of the baron's sons. Tall and as straight as a tree, he was everything that his father wished for. He could outride, run, wrestle, shoot or swim any of his fellows. He was kind where his father was cruel, considerate where the baron was a thin-lipped autocrat. Morgan took care to watch over his youngest brother, Ryan, protecting him from any danger.
And the main danger was the second of the Cawdor sons.
Harvey Cawdor.
"Harvey," Ryan said, his voice cold and far away. "Two years younger than Morgan and two years older than me."
"Why didn't your father do something to check him?" Krysty asked.
"Harvey was my bane. He was wicked. Fireblast! But such a bitter, evil bastard!"
Harvey Cawdor was everything that his older brother was not and lacked every one of Morgan's virtues. His sole strength was an overweening ambition, coupled to an iron will to garner what he believed to be his right. His mind was warped and twisted, dwelling in dark corridors that were rank with the lust for power.
"They told me that his birthing ruined him. He was breeched, they said. One leg trailed, like this... and his shoulder was hunched and crook'd up."
Ryan limped around the clearing, his right leg dragging a deep furrow, gouged from the soft green moss. His right arm was lifted, and twisted, giving him the lopsided walk of a hunchback. Krysty watched him, face solemn.
"I recall an old tape we had in Harmony. An actor from Europe. The paper was torn and the name was gone, but there was a picture on the label of a warped, bent man, long black hair, and a chain of gold. It was a play about a baron from olden times. Most had been wiped by the pulse. But the start was left."
Ryan dropped his shoulder, sighing as he sat down once more by Krysty's side. "Was this baron like Harvey? Blood-eyed bastard?"
"Uncle Tyas McCann knew the play. He said this baron killed old men and children and married the wife of one of the men he killed. How he could smile and smile and still be a villain."
"Harvey smiled like that. If'n he could find some puppy to blind or a kitten to drown and save and drown again, that was when he smiled a whole lot. I learned early, Krysty, that when brother Harvey smiled it was time for little Ryan to get the fuck out of his way."
The sound of the waterfall seemed to be changing, matching the somber mood of Ryan's tale. It no longer chuckled brightly over the stones. Now it seemed to whisper and mutter of dark plots and inductions dangerous. The afternoon was becoming colder.
Krysty shivered.
"What is it, lover? Want to go back to the others? I can smell woodsmoke. Jak must be getting his fish ready."
"I'm okay, Ryan. Go on."
"What happened to this crookback baron?" he asked.
"Got chilled."
Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Be good if... Where was I?"
"Morgan and Harvey."
She noticed that twice already, unconsciously, Ryan's right hand had reached and touched the scar that seamed the side of his face, jagged from eye to mouth.
"Morgan and Harvey," he repeated. "Morgan always tried to guard his back. Tried to warn our father against Harvey, but his mind was poisoned already and he refused to believe anything bad about him. One day Morgan went out in his hunting wag, with only one servant. It was found bombed out. Stickles did it. But they found boot tracks afterward."
"And stickies don't wear..."
"...boots. Right. The body was torn apart by the explosion. Not enough left to fill the long wooden box. I went and peeked. They put dirt in, Krysty, to make the weight. Dirt, for my fucking brother!"
"Ryan, love, if you don't..."
"No!" he almost shouted. "No. I've got to talk this out with someone. Never had anyone before I could tell. If we go back there... to Front Royal, I want you to know everything about it."
"Goon."
"I tried to tell Father. But he was old, shaken by what was happening. He wouldn't listen. But Harvey heard what I'd been saying and marked me for an early grave."
'"So wise, so young, will ne'er live long, it's said.' That's from that play. Was your brother married then?"
"Morgan? Yes. Guenema was her name. A strange mutie girl. Eyes like jet. I liked her. I... I suppose I loved her. I was fourteen. Jak's age."
"What happened to her?"
"She disappeared. Nobody would talk about it. A great wall of fucking silence! They said she was carrying a child and she lived out in Deathlands. But... I doubt it. Harvey would have set his dogs on her trail."
For a few moments there was silence between them, broken only by the hurtling water as it rushed over the lip of the falls. Krysty leaned back on an elbow, glancing behind them, noticing, at the edge of the trees beyond the clearing, a small cluster of jack-in-the-pulpits, the white spikes bravely erect in the green cup.
Harvey had made his play the day after Ryan's fifteenth birthday. Using bribed and terrified servants he arranged for Ryan's evening meal to be drugged. Then he and half a dozen of the ville's sec men planned to take the sleeping boy. The body would then be weighted and dropped into the moat that circled the main house of Front Royal.
"Not all the servants were in Harvey's pay, and not all loved him. An old armorer called Kenny Morse caught wind of the plan from a kitchen maid. I didn't take the food, and I was ready for them."
Even before Morgan's murder Ryan Cawdor had begun to try to safeguard himself. Kenny Morse had stolen an old .45 Colt from the castle armory for him. Ryan cleaned and oiled it, and spent hours practicing until he could use it with expertise. He was instructed by the diminutive Morse, who risked at best a beating from the baron for breaking his orders that his youngest son was not to have a blaster.
That night Ryan was ready.
"I waited just inside the door of my room. A narrow crack showed me the corridor. It was gloomy. On his way out Morse had removed two of the light bulbs from their sockets. The ville had vast supplies of gas and generators for power. It was midnight when Harvey and his butchers came for me."
The first two shots, booming out of the darkness, killed two of the sec men, warning Harvey and the others that their plan had failed and that Ryan was no lamb, waiting patiently for the slaughterer. The men went crashing back, blood springing from chest and throat, soaking through their trim uniforms.
Knowing that he must now take the offensive, Ryan jumped out, gun braced in both hands, firing twice at the nearest guard. The first round from the old blaster ripped through the upper arm as the man dived sideways, the second hitting him through the side of the face, taking away half of the back of his skull with the force of the impact.
Harvey snapped off two shots with his laser pistol, tracer bullets scything through the blackness and exploding off the wall by Ryan's left shoulder.
"I called him the bastard killer he was. Screamed it, my voice breaking. I was so fucking angry that I'd have torn his face off his skull if'n I could have reached him. Another sec man was flat on the floor, blocking off the exit to the stairs. He was hiding behind the corpse of the second man I'd chilled." Ryan's voice dropped in remembrance of the charnel house scene of death and blood. "His arms and legs were still twitching and jerking."