"No, J.B., I don't figure so. You see how bad he looks. Walks stiff. Loses his balance. I guess the guy knows his own body. He says weeks if it goes well. Only some days if not."
It had never even occurred to Ryan not to tell Krysty and the Armorer the bitter news about Rick. Screw honor when it came to hiding things from friends your life could depend on their knowledge. In many ways the news didn't make a whole lot of difference.
They still had to get the gateway door and the linked triggering device repaired. To have any chance of returning to the Deathlands, they had to make a jump. The alternative was to cover thousands of miles across country, over a bitterly hostile land through bitterly hostile people. With no idea of the language.
All of them wore the swaddling coats and hats of mixed furs that served the dual purpose of keeping them warm and concealing their identities. Ryan and J,B. had left their long-barreled guns behind, as well as all the ammo. If the mansion should come under attack, Jak and Doc would need the long-distance firepower.
The companions also carried packages of dried meat and fish, and a canteen of water, though with so much snow around it would be hard to die of thirst.
Their farewells had been brief. There was no possible way of knowing how long they might be gone, or even if they would return. Living in the Deathlands taught a man that partings had a habit of becoming permanent.
Walking was difficult. The layering of snow was much deeper than it had been the day before. In the exposed open spaces the wind had swept the ground clear and bare, but in the dips and hollows it had banked up in drifts, often two or more feet high.
Ryan led the way, retracing their steps toward the cabin of the old woman and her monstrous son. Or husband. That was something they'd never know. The woman's body had disappeared from where Jak had killed her. From spoor around the place, Ryan guessed that it had been wolves. A little scattered blood marred the pristine whiteness of the snow, and a few gnawed splinters of bone poked upward from the ground.
When they reached the hut, they discovered that the three ponies had disappeared. But the corpses of the men remained, jumbled under a kindly shroud of snow. And the body of the giant was still wedged in the doorway.
"We figure the ville has to lay over there." J.B. pointed toward the faint smudge of a trail behind the cabin.
Ryan clapped his hands together, trying to sustain circulation. To his disappointment the biting cold air had sought out the cavity in his tooth, making every breath a sharp pain, and the empty socket of his left eye was weeping copiously in the cold, tears trickling over the numbed skin of his cheeks.
He was also concerned about the language problem. Any stranger or outlander in the Deathlands was regarded as a suspicious threat. But at least a person could hope to talk his way out of a dangerous situation. He'd asked Rick to try to teach him a few useful phrases, but the freezie had pointed out a little knowledge could well be worse than none at all. Once someone started to speak, then there would be pressure to continue. They'd do better to fake deafness or pretend to be mutes.
The morning brightened into afternoon. The curtain of gray lifted, folding away toward the south and leaving a sky of pale blue behind. The clouds didn't seem to have the livid chem colors of clouds in the Deathlands, looking more like clouds in the few surviving old vids that Ryan had seen.
"Feeling warmer," J.B. panted as they slogged along, forced to lift their boots high to keep them clear of the crusted snow.
"If the time of year's right, then I figure this could be the spring. Maybe it'll start thawing real soon."
Krysty nodded her agreement, pushing back the hood of her gray-speckled cloak, shaking out her long red hair. "Definitely warmer. Look. It's melting off the branches of the trees. In another couple of hours we'll be plowing our way through mud."
A belt of tall pines soon appeared in the northeastern horizon, in the general direction of where they believed the remains of Moscow lay. And they encountered fresh tracks of horses.
"Smoke," Krysty announced, sniffing the air.
Ryan couldn't detect it, but he didn't doubt that Krysty was correct.
"That way?" he guessed, pointing to the northeast.
"Right. Wood smoke. Not cooking. Although..." She hesitated. "I think there's also bread at the baking. Yeah, bread. Could be the ville."
J.B. drew his blaster and worked the action, relishing the oiled click as it moved. Ryan knew that the Armorer would already have checked the action before going to sleep the previous night, and once again before leaving that morning. It was as much a habit as breathing to J. B. Dix.
"How far off, lover?" Ryan asked.
"Difficult to tell. Wind's veering and dropping all the time. I'd guess it's around three to four miles off."
As the breeze fell away, the temperature began to rise. Within the next half hour it climbed at least a dozen degrees, making the walking slightly easier but much more unpleasant.
The dry frozen layer on top of the drifted snow was melting, softening and losing its pristine sheen. As the companions stepped through it their boots sank into a watery mush like cold oatmeal that rose above the knee if someone was unlucky enough to hit a deep hollow. The path meandered alongside a narrow stream. As they'd joined it, the water had been fringed with a delicate tracery of cobwebbed ice, stretching out from both the banks to meet in the middle.
Now that was gone, broken up and whirled away. The stream widened and ran faster, swelling with the inrush of meltwater. By the time the three friends came within sight of the ville the noise made conversation difficult, and the narrow stream had become a full-blooded river.
The trail had also widened into a horse trail, well trampled and thick with a sticky orange mud.
There was a sparse belt of trees ringing the hamlet. The houses appeared to be made mainly of packed earth with a roof of some kind of thatch. Ryan crouched behind a stunted larch, cursing as its branches dripped water down the back of his neck. Krysty and J.B. knelt on either side of him, all staring intently at the afternoon activity in the small ville.
The well at the center of the cleared patch of dirt, which seemed to be the village's square, was clearly the social focus for the community. Women, all seemingly identical in ragged furs and filthy boots, gathered there, drawing water and engaging in chitchat. A few men appeared every now and again, as well as a scattering of muddied children. A number of scrawny mongrel dogs slunk about the place, nuzzling for scraps, occasionally bickering noisily among themselves.
"Bastard dogs," J.B. hissed. "One of them scents us and goodbye'll be all she wrote."
Ryan nodded. It was true that animals around a strange ville were a difficult obstacle to try to overcome.
"Which way to Moscow?" Krysty whispered. "Looks like a wider road out the far side there. It's in the right direction."
J.B. pulled out the miniature sextant and compass, angling it to the light that filtered through the branches of the trees. He read off the direction. "Northeast by a half east. That could be about right. Yeah."
While they watched and waited, Ryan considered what scant knowledge he possessed of Russia, realizing that it was abominably little. After sky-dark, as far as he knew, there had been no communication at all between what remained of the Russians and the survivors of Deathlands. The only thing that was certain was that there was a bone-deep hatred of each other's country.
Having traveled around the edges of the rad-blasted devastation that had been New York, he figured Moscow wasn't likely to be a whole lot better. But there had to be suburbs. From his experience around the rebuilt villes of Deathlands, Ryan knew that most life flourished in what remained of the old suburbs.
"Nothing here," Krysty said.
"Nope. Nothing. Lot of dirt and stink and suspicion. Nothing we need."