Storm Breakers (5 page)

“Yeah, you did. But that’s okay. Look, kid,” Ryan said, “we let you in, so you can speak your piece. Long as you squeak sense, squeak what you like.”

Baron Frost nodded. “A perceptive question, young man,” he said. “We lack the strength to dislodge the slavers by force. But we can do what you encountered us doing today—harrying their raiding parties. They have taken some of my people. And we have taken them as casualties. None alive yet, sadly—so we can get no further information as to where they might have sent our daughter.

“They do what they do, of course, not merely out of the darkness of their souls, but for gain. We are at least ensuring they reap more cost than profit, which will in due time force them to withdraw.”

Krysty and Ryan exchanged glances. Mebbe, she could feel him thinking. And mebbe they’ll reinforce to teach you and your people a lesson that the surviving baronies’ll never forget.

But it wasn’t their place to say such a thing, here and now. Looking from bearded face to drawn and icy near-perfection, Krysty suspected the baron and baroness knew the risks as well as they did.

They played the hands fate dealt them, like everybody else in the Deathlands. And barons didn’t always get the best cards.

“So you want us to take off south in pursuit of your daughter,” Ryan said. “Beyond that—flying blind.”

“Substantially so,” Frost said. “Though not entirely blind. We’ll provide you with a guide. A reliable person who knows this coast well. And who knows combat—you’ve seen her in action already.”

Her? Krysty thought. She recalled the young horsewoman who had ridden with Frost, with her hair almost as pale as Jak’s flying out behind her from beneath her fur cap.

“You will help us, won’t you, Mr. Cawdor?” the baroness asked.

In the look the woman shot Ryan, Krysty saw
hunger
. Yet it didn’t strike her as a sexual thing. At least, not primarily.

She never worried about competition for Ryan’s love. Any more than Ryan felt challenged by Ricky’s obvious infatuation with Krysty. As if any man worthy of the title, much less a man worthy of being the life-mate of Krysty Wroth, could feel threatened by a horny sixteen-year-old.

Ryan showed no sign of sexual interest in the baroness. Krysty could hardly have blamed him if he had. Though she was clearly into middle age, probably early fifties—which for many in the Deathlands, of course, was wretched and ragged old age—she showed a striking beauty, with just a hint of pink flush in her cheeks rescuing her from ice-sculpture frigidity.

Still, there was something...not right about Baroness Frost. Krysty’s intuition told her that the baroness harbored no ill intentions toward Ryan and the companions. All Krysty could sense in her was the overwhelming desire for them to save her daughter and return her safely home.

But something about her appearance and her manner—perhaps just a hint of greenish pallor in the shadows of her fine face—rang a discordant note in Krysty’s mind.

Ryan sat back in his chair, chin sunk to clavicle, thinking. Krysty’s heart went out to him, seeing how tired he was.

He polled the others with his eyes. Krysty nodded once, trying not to be too emphatic.

She glanced around. Doc shrugged and smiled vaguely, as if concurring; Krysty hoped he was still focused enough to realize what he was agreeing to. Jak looked skeptical.
That
wasn’t anything unusual for the albino youth. Had he felt any serious misgivings—beyond the ones he knew the others shared—he would have spoken up pretty briskly, as little as he liked to talk.

Ricky nodded so vigorously Krysty was half-surprised he didn’t sprain his neck.

“Fine,” Ryan said. “We’re in.” He rubbed his jaw. “Reckon it’s a better deal than we usually get.”

Chapter Seven

“This is the coast road, clearly.”

Ricky watched keenly as Baron Frost tracked the blunt tip of a finger from northeast to southwest down an old USGS contour map by the light of a combustion lamp. By smell Ricky could tell it was fueled by some oil other than kerosene. Nonetheless, it burned brightly. Or enough to do the job.

The room seemed to be a study of some sort. The walls were lined with shelves crowded with books, folios and rolled papers, some of which were maps, judging by the one the baron had unrolled on a drafting table. Ricky found the whole scene, made more mysterious by pervasive shadow, fascinating, though not as interesting as if it had been a workshop where things were actually
made
.

Ryan and Krysty stood across the table from the baron. Doc sat beside them. Ryan leaned on the table on the knuckles of one hand. Ricky, who sat in another chair a few feet away while Jak lounged against some shelves looking bored, tried not to stare at the redheaded woman’s rear end. It was hard.

He knew it was unwise. If Ryan ever bothered to notice the attention Ricky paid to Krysty, the one-eyed man might cut him loose from the group. For her part, Krysty treated his admiration with amused indulgence. Which, in a way, was worse.

Not that he would do anything to impede or disturb the lives of the two. And certainly those who
did
tended to wind up with dirt hitting them in the eyes in short order.

Ryan and Krysty formed a pantheon of living, walking gods for him—along with J.B., of course. The rest were important to him, too—the often vague yet often incisive Doc Tanner; the brusque yet deeply compassionate Mildred; his new best friend, Jak. But they couldn’t compare to the Big Three.

And now J.B. was hurt and fighting for his life. And they were finding out how they could buy it back—if that was even possible.

“The coast road’s pretty decent,” the baron was saying. “The baronies along the way tend to maintain it, and it’s mostly far enough inland that the eroding shoreline hasn’t encroached on it. But it’s not used as much as it might be. Travelers frequently prefer to make their ways along back trails farther inland, even though they’re not as good and it takes longer.”

“Weather?” Krysty asked.

“Storms,” Frost stated. “And raiders from the sea. Not just the slavers, of course, though they’re our biggest menace now.”

Doc, who had been sitting with head back and eyes half-closed, as if wandering through the often-tangled pathways inside his head, shook himself, drew his brows together and leaned forward with his sky-blue eyes no longer unfocused.

“It is curious to me, Baron,” he said, “how the economics of the slaver raids work. They themselves appear to be many. By the very nature of predation in all its forms, they need to acquire far more numerous victims than their own host in order to thrive. How is it possible that they do so?”

“Good question,” Ryan said, straightening.

Baron Frost frowned and nodded ponderously, as if feeling the weight of the situation on the back of his neck. “Their numbers have grown markedly in the last ten years or so, all up and down the coast.

“As for how they make profit enough to sustain their growing operations, Dr. Tanner, I can’t really say. They haven’t exactly opened their books to me. I can say that, despite the fact that the enormous population concentrations along the Eastern Seaboard were hardest hit of anywhere in North America, and the plagues and starvation reduced the population to lesser numbers than in many areas originally far more sparsely settled, some of the same factors that led to the area being so thickly settled in the first place have led to a substantial rebound in the population, especially over the last fifty years or so. Not to anywhere near former levels, of course. And while trade across the Lantic’s no real factor—it’s far too rare and sporadic—the relative fertility of the environment here, along with the enormous amount of scavvy available in the ruined cities, has more than sufficed.”

He shook his head. “Not that life here is easy, by any means. Though we are far from the most desolate of areas, they still call these the Deathlands, and for good reason.”

The door opened. Caine looked a question to Frost, who nodded. The white-haired butler bowed Mildred into the room.

The stocky woman seemed shrunken and subdued.

“How is he?” Krysty asked.

Mildred lowered her head further for a moment. Then she drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and raised her head.

Ricky clutched the silver crucifix he wore inside his shirt. He tried to feel guilty about avidly watching the rise and rebound of her enormous breasts as she breathed. He didn’t.

“Better than I expected,” the healer said in a voice frayed around the edges. “Their facilities here are surprisingly good. Better than I’d expect outside—outside some predark hospital.

“And while I almost hate to admit it,” Mildred went on, “this healer knows her stuff. She’s...well-schooled for the time. Remarkably so.”

“We have found her so,” Frost said, nodding.

Mildred stepped forward to the map table. “What’s going on here?”

“The baron’s giving us the rundown on the tactical situation,” Ryan said.

For a moment, the woman frowned down at the map, then she looked up at Frost.

“Okay, now, this is too good to be true!” she blurted. “Ryan, you always say we can’t rely on the gratitude of barons. What’s the deal here, really?”

“Mildred—” Krysty began.

Ryan cut her off by raising a hand.

“Might as well let her say her piece,” he said. “If what she says is going do damage, it’s done now already.”

“No damage,” Frost said. “You are prudent to want to understand the terms of our agreement fully.”

“I like to know where everybody stands,” Mildred said, not at all mollified. “In particular, I like to know for sure what the other side looks to get out of a deal. Isn’t this the Deathlands, where everybody’s always out for himself and eats the weak?”

“In the...circumstances in which you and I lived our early lives,” Doc said, “people were also out primarily for themselves, dear lady. They could simply afford to act more genteelly, owing to generally less brutal circumstances.”

“But what are you getting out of this?” Mildred asked the baron. “You’re already spending lots of resources on J.B. Your healer is prepping for surgery—that’s why I left, to get out of her hair. Why are you trusting us? What’s the catch?”

For a moment, no one spoke. Ricky waited for the baron to assure them there was no catch. Instead, he continued to look at Ryan with calm, somber eyes.

Ryan vented a gusty sigh. “You’re right, Mildred. I do know better than to rely on a baron’s gratitude. But a baron’s vengeance—that’s like sunrise.”

“But they don’t have any guarantees we can get this girl back from the slavers! Or even that we’ll try.”

“As for what can be done,” Frost said, still in a perfectly calm and even voice, “whether she...can be rescued depends largely on fate. This my wife and I know. As for your capabilities, we know them, for we have seen them in action. And as for your exerting all your formidable abilities to return Milya safely to us, I believe we have all the guarantees we need.”

“Are you going to walk away and leave J.B. here?” Ryan asked Mildred. Her eyes went wide. Her face went pale. “Or do you reckon I am?”

She turned away, tight-lipped
.

“Come,” the baron called.

The door opened. A woman stood there. Or maybe a girl. On the tall side for a female, an inch or so taller than Ricky, an inch or two shorter than Krysty. She stood as straight and slim as a bayonet, and wore a drab uniform tunic and trousers closely cut to her frame. She wore a handblaster in a flap-covered holster in front of her left hip, with butt reversed for a right-hand cross-draw. Ricky thought it was a CZ-75 semiauto, which would have made it a 9 mm weapon.

He felt his own brows rise as he recognized her as the girl who’d ridden to their rescue, knee to knee with the baron himself, shooting and sabering slavers with cold ferocity.

She didn’t show much of a figure, but he liked her already.

“Ah, Alysa,” the baron said, brightening.

“Baron,” she replied, stepping into the room.

Ricky caught himself staring. He blushed and moved his eyes back to the lamp-lit contour lines of the map.

Then they strayed back to her as if magnetized.

When the baron’s men had rescued the party from the slaver ambush, the girl had slaughtered with a fierce and fearsome joy. Now her posture and face were stiff, as if she was not just uncomfortable but trying to keep some powerful emotion in check. Fear? He wasn’t sure.

“My friends, permit me to introduce Lieutenant Alysa Korn. Despite her age, or lack of it, she’s earned the rank among our baronial defenders.”

Frost didn’t seem to care for the universal Deathlands term “sec men.” Not that Ricky saw how that made much difference.

Frost finished introducing Ryan’s group with Ricky. He stammered some nonsense he hoped sounded polite. She barely flicked him a glance with her pale green eyes. She might as well have been a lizard on a rock. Or
he
might.

“Alysa will be your guide on your journey,” the baron stated.

Ricky looked at Ryan. The one-eyed man frowned.

“You know the area we’ll be searching in?”

“I have some familiarity with it,” she said.

Her already hard face hardened another degree. Oddly it made her look younger and more vulnerable to Ricky, somehow.

“At least,” she said, as if the words were being pulled from her mouth like teeth, “I know whom to ask for information.”

Ryan stared at her a moment more. She didn’t wither under the blue flame of his glare. Ricky sure would have.

He nodded. “More than we’d know,” he said.

He looked back at Baron Frost. “What else can you give us?”

Chapter Eight

Through half-open lids J.B. saw a dark, concerned face hovering over his. It was mostly covered by a surgical mask, but what he could see of it seemed nicely engineered. Good eyes, big and dark.

He wished it were Mildred, all the same.

The face frowned. “He’s still not all the way under,” she said. “We need more chloroform.”

“That’s all right, Miss—” he started to say. But he realized he didn’t have the breath to spare to make words.

And then he was swirling down, down into the dark depths.

Of remembering...

* * *

“S
O
, T
RADER
,
YOU
signed on a new guy?” a woman called out from the doorway of a spectacular vehicle. A pristine fedora was cocked to one side of her head, and she smoked a long black cheroot.

“That I did.”

“Welcome aboard War Wag One, sonny,” the woman said. She was a rangy-looking specimen, with baggy olive-drab pants covered in pockets bulging with gear and a rust-colored tank top hugging a none-too-generous chest.

“Go easy on him, Rance,” said the bearded man who followed a step or two behind J.B., prodding him along by sheer force of personality.

The woman blew blue-gray smoke out of her upturned nose.

“Skinny little guy,” she said. “Why’d you bother, Trader?”

“Because he has skills we need and shows promise.”

The woman nodded. “Shows promise.”

“I just said that.”

The woman left the vehicle and walked up to J.B., stopping several feet away. She looked him up and down with hands on narrow hips. Her boobs weren’t anything to write home about, J.B. thought. Neither was her face, long, a bit mannish and sporting a couple of pale scars beneath a shock of straw-colored hair held up by a grimy yellow bandanna. She had an M1911 handblaster holstered at her right hip.

Normally, J.B. would only have noticed the blaster—which, from what little he could see, was well-worn but well-kept. But she was a woman, after all. One who was actually pretty presentable, having all her teeth, eyes and limbs.

And as much as young J.B. may have preferred tinkering with gadgets—especially the chilling kind—to dealing with people, he was still male.

“So what good are you, kid?” the woman demanded.

“J.B., this is my chief wrench, Rance Weeden,” Trader said.

“Short for ‘Rancid,’” said a skinny man with a luxuriant mustache and long dark hair tied up into a horsetail at the crown of his head. He strode past them and headed for the vehicle.

Rance shot the man the bird. “It’s Ransom. As well you know, Abe, you skinny dog turd.”

“Known far and wide for her tact,” the Trader said, deadpan. “And her skill. So feel free to speak right up and answer her, J.B.”

“I know my way around blasters, some machines,” J.B. told her. “Locks, too.”

She grunted. “Well, it happens that I can use another mech.”

He frowned. “I’m better with blasters,” he said pointedly, looking at Trader.

“We’ve got a weapons master,” Trader said. “Ace DeGuello. And he doesn’t need a helper right now.”

“Helper? I know I’m better.”

“You might be,” the Trader said.

“You’ve seen my work!”

“You roll with me,” Trader said, “you do what I need you to do. Right now I need you to help Rance. You’ll work with Ace when there’s an opening.”

Rance walked closer to him.

“Listen, kid,” she said, not unkindly. “You work with me, odds are double-good you’ll get a chance to show your chops with blasters. We keep this snorting warthog rolling, after all. And, anyway—if you’re really mechanical, then a machine’s a machine.”

She stuck out her hand. It was grease-stained and visibly strong, but somehow feminine.

After a moment he grinned and took it. Her grip was as strong as it looked like it’d be.

“You’re on,” he said. “I’m J. B. Dix. And I’m gonna show you how good I am!”

“You better,” she said, and walked away.