"Vanishing up its own..." Mildred began, shutting her mouth as she caught Ryan's glance.
The crone nodded. "That's correct, masters. Not enough thralls. So bad a murrain for the steading these past weeks. So many gone."
"What'll happen," Krysty asked, "if there aren't girls to sacrifice?"
"Oh, the wisewoman has a plan for that. Young godling there..." she grinned gap-toothed at Jak, "...he'll provide what... Oh, Freya's tits! I wasn't to speak of that. I'll be given a good beating if they find out I spoke what I shouldn't."
"We won't tell anyone. But what did you mean about Jak?" Ryan asked.
But the slave woman had terrified herself by her indiscretion. Nothing could persuade her to open her mouth again, and she darted from the hut in a flurry of torn skirts and ragged shawl. The door was closed firmly behind her by one of the young sentries outside.
It was almost midnight. Ryan and J.B. sat close together, one on each side of the single candle they kept burning. They talked about old times, half-remembered, part-forgotten: good times and bad; friends dead and lost; women they'd known in a hundred frontier gaudies; men they'd fought and chilled; men they'd fought who'd then become friends. Sometimes the silences crept in from the corners of the hut, bearing fragments of memory.
They kept their voices quiet, to avoid disturbing their sleeping companions. Eventually the talk came reluctantly back to the present.
"Not good, Ryan."
"No."
"I figure they'll chill us all. Except, mebbe, the kid." J.B. looked around from habit, knowing how much Jak hated being called "kid". But the boy was still locked deeply in sleep.
"Wish now I'd never gotten us into this crock of shit."
J.B. waved a dismissive hand. "Black dust! Not like you to worry about what you might have done." He pushed the fedora back from his temples, the candlelight playing on his narrow, sallow face. His eyes were invisible behind the polished lenses of his spectacles. "No jack in that, Ryan."
"Sure." He sighed. "But there's been chances, times I could've pulled the trigger and I didn't. Odds weren't really good enough. But now..."
"Now we'll have to move with the odds stacked against us. Rad-blast it, Ryan! You think you and me haven't done that before? A whole load of times before. Sure."
"Yeah. Late. Reckon to get some sleep now, and then we..." He was interrupted by the sound of the bolts of the hut door being slid quietly across.
Without a word, both men drew their knives. J.B. padded silently to the side of the room near the door. Ryan blew out the candle and crept to flatten himself against the opposite wall.
The door opened, admitting a rectangle of watery moonlight.
"Ryan Cawdor? Outlander One-Eye? Are you awake in there?"
It was the voice of Jorund Thoraldson. Ryan, staying where he was, whispered his reply. "What d'you want?"
"To speak with you."
"Me? Or all of us?"
"You. You're the leader of the outlanders. Just you."
"Now?"
"Yes. Out here. Just the two of us. You have my word you will not be harmed while we speak."
In the darkness, Ryan could just make out the pale blur of J.B.'s face. Since the Armorer wasn't shaking his head, Ryan figured he must think it would be okay to go out.
"Coming," he said.
Tall though he was, Ryan felt dwarfed by the giant figure of the baron. The two sentries closed the door when he left the hut and slid the bolts across. The baron beckoned to Ryan and the two men walked together through the sleeping ville, toward the beach and the calm, mirrored expanse of the lake.
Neither spoke until they stopped a couple of yards from the tiny, breaking waves.
"This is a hard talk, outlander," Thoraldson began, "yet I must speak it."
"Go ahead."
"The first fight against the evil ones. You aided us. And on the water, you all fought bravely. And in the tests, you did much to shame the finest warriors of this steading."
"But?" Ryan could still smell blood and sweat on the massive Norseman at his side and almost taste an odd kind of nervousness.
"But... the wisewoman has been warning for weeks that there was a plague coming toward us. When the first child became sick of the bloody flux she said it would be worse. Now she swears the omens blame you and your friends, particularly the black-skinned woman."
"You believe her?"
Jorund's shaggy head swung slowly toward him. "No. I think you and your brothers are true fighting men of courage. But since you came, there have been so many deaths. I cannot stand against the wise-woman and all the steading."
"She wants us all dead?"
"Truly. All but the white-haired one. She says we must adopt him into our family, and he will lead us from the darkness."
"The darkness is what I've been trying to tell you about. Along the coast we found undeniable evidence of a dreadful rad leak, and that's what's chilling your folks. The rashes and the sickness and..."
"No, no! I must not listen to this. She made me swear to speak only as she had told me."
"She runs this? She's the fucking baron is she?" Ryan felt his anger misting his mind, and he tried to control it. "You're the baron, aren't you?"
"Aye. I am. Yet the wisewoman has the minds and souls of my people. But I have spoken against her. I have tried. And she has agreed that I shall make you this offer."
"Go ahead."
Ryan felt the faintest tremor from the restless earth beneath his boots. But Jorund said nothing, and Ryan wondered whether he'd even noticed it.
"The outlander you call Jak Lauren?"
"Sure. With the white hair. What about him?"
"If you will agree to this, then he must stay with us."
"And the rest of us go free?" Ryan had enough confidence in Jak's cunning to be certain that the teenager would find a way of escaping within a day or so.
"No. All but one of you."
"Mildred?"
"This is the only hope I can give. You refuse this, and you will all pay the price."
"Jak stays. Mildred dies. The rest of us walk?"
"Aye. And Jak will sacrifice the black woman to our gods before you go free."
Chapter Thirty-One
"You said what?" Krysty shouted, raising her hands to her forehead to try to calm herself. "What did you say to him, Ryan?"
"I told him I'd think about his suggestion and give him my reply before noon."
His short conversation with Jorund Thoraldson had ended a quarter of an hour ago. He'd gone straight back into the hut and been locked in. It hadn't taken long to shake the others from sleep and tell them what had happened.
"You'll think about it!" Mildred exclaimed. "Terrific, Ryan."
"You think I should have looked him in the eye and told him to fuck off? Think that would have been a real clever idea?"
"I guess not. No. Sorry."
"What else did he say?" J.B. asked.
"Said that any more attempts to escape by any of us would mean flying eagles all around. One chilled, all chilled."
The Armorer nodded. "It'll be harder to make the break this time. Lot harder."
"Sure. But that's the only choice we have."
"Does it sound dipshit stupid to suggest you could always do like the big guy says? That way I go up the Hudson, one-way, and the rest of you walk clear."
There was a long silence, while everyone thought about it.
If Jorund Thoraldson kept his word, then the death of one man would buy the lives of five. It was a lot better arithmetic than most you got in Deathlands.