Ryan Cawdor couldn’t sleep. He sat crosslegged on the ground beside Mildred and J.B. Though they were curled up side by side, they weren’t asleep, either. In the starlight he could see that their eyes were open. He figured they were thinking about the same thing he was, and feeling the same extreme sense of urgency.
The whole camp was dark. The baron had ordered no fires. Even though they were settled in a hollow, the combined glow would have lit up the surrounding hilltops and given away the position to Haldane’s force in Sunspot. Darkness presented a perfect opportunity for the companions to slip away. All that kept Ryan from organizing an escape was Doc Tanner, who hadn’t returned from his involuntary spy mission, yet. As soon as he showed up, they could sneak past the perimeter guards, moving in ones and twos so as not to attract attention, and join up somewhere to the west well after dawn.
There was of course a possibility that Doc wouldn’t return from Sunspot at all, not by choice, but due to circumstances beyond his control. If that happened, Ryan vowed before he’d let the others get spiked he’d take out the baron personally. Shoot the horse out from under him and empty the rest of the SIG’s mag into the side of his head. Before he was shot down in turn, he’d rip off that black leather mask just to see what was crawling underneath.
The mask, the man of mystery, the black gear, the big horse, the legendary cruelty and ruthlessness was the kind of stagey, cornball shit that worked on dirt-farmer audiences in a carny show.
But in real life there was a downside to theatrics.
The sudden death of the seemingly invincible commander would leave a power void that would send his army into chaos. Fighters would turn on one another to avenge old scores. Norms versus muties. Norms versus norms. Sec men without axes to grind would hightail it for their homes. Without Malosh’s presence the officers couldn’t maintain control. Ryan figured his companions could even get away in the resulting confusion.
The sound of rapid footfalls from the summit above broke Ryan’s train of thought. Whatever it was, it was coming downhill full-tilt. As he looked up, the sentries opened fire.
By the light of flickering muzzle-flashes, he saw a lone, shadowy figure running with arms raised through a withering hellstorm of slugs.
The figure only managed a few steps before crumpling and falling, then driven by gravity and its own momentum, it rolled head over heels down the slope.
“Hold your fire!” Ryan shouted.
Although they were unsure who had given the order in the dark, the guards did the safe thing and stopped shooting.
“We got him!” one of them said.
“Nailed that sneak-ass piece of shit,” said another.
Ryan was already dashing over to the still form. When he got close, he was relieved to see that the man lying on the ground was the Redbone swineherd and not Doc. He rolled the man over onto his back, expecting him to be shot full of holes and stone dead. He was surprised to see the barrel chest heaving and the button eyes blinking.
The stammered sounds “whuh-whuh-whuh-whuh” came out of the swineherd’s mouth.
Ryan turned to shout for Mildred, but she and J.B. were already beside him.
Mildred quickly, expertly, checked his body for bullet wounds and, finding no evidence of serious injury, made him sit up. “It doesn’t look like he’s hit except for his hand,” she said.
“Luck of the dimmie,” was J.B.’s wry comment.
“Come on, let me see your hand,” Mildred coaxed Young Crad. She carefully opened his balled fist, and held it that way while she poured a little water from her canteen on the wound to soften the congealed blood and dirt. Then she started to gently clean it with scrap of rag.
Behind them, the whole camp was on its feet, blasters out, adrenaline pumping. Malosh the Impaler had burst from his tent and was calling for his officers.
“Where’s Doc?” Ryan growled through clenched teeth. “Where’s the man who went to Sunspot with you?”
When Young Crad didn’t answer, Ryan took hold of his baby-smooth chin, squeezed until the first two joints of his fingertips disappeared into the fleshy cheeks, and repeated the question. “Where’s Doc?”
“A thing chased us…”
“What kind of thing?”
“Big. It was hunting on the old road. He told me to run and he went back to chill it.”
“Did you see him chill it?”
“No.”
“Did you see it chill him?” Mildred asked.
“No. He shot and shot and shot, then it got quiet. I was running hard as I could.”
“You didn’t go back?” Ryan said.
Young Crad shook his head. “He said to come here.”
“Ryan, we don’t know that he’s dead,” Mildred said.
“That’s true, but if he was okay, he would have caught up with the droolie. He’d be here by now.”
“Mebbe he’s hurt?” J.B. said. “Mebbe he’s down?”
Ryan swore in frustration.
“This isn’t a bullet wound,” Mildred told them as she poured more water over the swineherd’s open palm.
At that moment Malosh stepped up behind them, accompanied by his cadre of staff officers. The baron held a burning torch that cast a ring of weak, flickering light on the ground around the companions and gave off a steady hiss. He leaned down in all his black-masked, black-caped glory. “What did you find out?” he demanded of the seated swineherd.
Crad looked up at the baron. He swallowed hard, he opened his mouth, but no sound came out. There was blind panic in his eyes.
“You’d better have found out what I asked you to. Or it’s gonna be heinie-stretching time.”
Crad responded by making desperate little squeak. He didn’t have a clue what the baron wanted of him. But it was clear he remembered the heinie stretching.
Some things were unforgettable.
“Look!” Mildred exclaimed, raising the swineherd’s palm up to the torchlight for them to see. “Look, it’s the number 76! Doc must’ve done this. He knew Young Crad wouldn’t remember it. He cut it into his hand so he couldn’t lose it. So we’d have to see it.”
“Smart geezer,” the baron said.
“Triple smart,” Ryan said.
“If there’s only seventy-six soldiers in Haldane’s garrison,” one of the officers said, “we can overwhelm them with main force.”
“Where’s that scout?” Malosh said. “Get him over here.”
When the scout approached, Malosh held the burning end of the torch close to the sand. “Draw the defenses for me again,” he ordered.
The scout knelt and started making a sketch in the dirt with the point of his knife. Ryan had to squint his good eye to see it. First, the man drew the circular oblong of Sunspot’s berm. On the south side, he put in the gorge with the interstate running through it. He crosshatched a section of highway directly below the ville, indicating a major break in the road. On the north side of the berm, and parallel to it, he sketched some narrowly spaced contour lines, which were meant to describe the steep back of the hill on which Sunspot sat. He added a path on the gorge side running from the interstate up to the ville and out the other side, bypassing the disrupted section of highway.
When the scout put in the heavy machine gun positions, Malosh said, “They’ve moved the emplacements since we were there last.”
Together, the gun positions provided overlapping fields of fire, nearly 360 degrees of kill zone. On the south or gorge side of the berm, two widely spaced emplacements controlled the western, uphill approach from the interstate and the westernmost path leading to the ville. The path leading from the ville to the east was controlled by two more emplacements. A fifth machine gun was positioned on the north side of the berm, defending the steep hillside approach.
Malosh stuck a gloved finger in the sand, pointing out the weakest point on north side, the widest stretch of undefended berm wall.
It was the very spot Ryan would have picked.
“The main force attacks here at first light,” the baron said. “On my signal, the norm fighters will breach the berm and take out the two gun posts on the west, here and here. The muties and dogs will follow them through the breach and contain any resistance inside the ville. Before I call for the main attack, I’ll lead troops up the gorge in a feint, to draw the garrison’s fire. Once the berm is breached and the defending gunposts are knocked out, I’ll take the western path and break through on that side. Any questions?”
There were none.
Apparently it looked like a piece of cake to the officers. Ryan didn’t consider five machine guns and seventy assault rifles a dessert course.
“Assemble my army,” the baron said.
When the three-hundred-odd fighters stood packed in a solid mass before him in the hollow, Malosh mounted his horse and walked it a short way up the slope, far enough so he could look down on them all. On his command, the big chestnut reared up on its hind legs, slashing its forelegs in the air. The two of them formed a stunning black silhouette in front of the starry field of sky.
A carny act, Ryan thought.
An opinion that only grew stronger when Malosh began to address his troops.
“They say life is cheap in my barony,” Malosh shouted to the crowd. “They say it’s thrown away on a madman’s whim. They say that I’m a monster without conscience. I say that’s all lies. Life is the most precious thing, that’s why we fight and chill and die. To preserve it.
“We have the right and the obligation to those we hold dear to take what the rich barons in the east are too weak or too careless or too stupid to protect. The wealth of their baronies is waiting for us, but first we must conquer Sunspot. We must take it and hold it. With Sunspot in our control, we can bleed the bastard rich barons dry, and convoy the food and the loot back to our home villes and our families.
“Some of you here have not come of your own free will. Even now you are thinking about escaping before the fighting starts. I say there is no escape from death for any of us. And the only brief victory that death allows is glory, glory while we still live and breathe. I offer you the chance for that glory, the chance to carve your own bloody mark on this land, to take what is yours from it. Follow me and I will lead you into that place where the bullets whine and men scream. My glory is there, too, in the teeth of that howling gale. If a baron isn’t afraid of what’s to come, why should you be? You have nothing left to lose. I have everything to lose, but I won’t hide from the reaper’s blade.”
The crowd stirred and shifted on its feet, unsure where Malosh was headed, but mesmerized by his physical presence.
“Show no mercy to any of Haldane’s fighters,” Malosh said. “With bullet or blade or club, dispatch them straight to hell. But let the Sunspot folk who drop their weapons and surrender live. They can fight alongside us in the battle for Nuevaville.
“The norms and the muties will follow my officers. As for those I have consigned to be cannon fodder, I would never ask another to do something I would not do myself. I will proudly lead the cannon fodder into battle.”
The revelation drew an astonished gasp from the crowd.
Even Ryan was taken aback by it.
Leading a suicide squad was the last thing anyone would expect of a Deathlands baron. As a rule, barons delegated the really dangerous work to the highly expendable, easily replaceable and utterly despicable muties under their command. If barons rode into battle at all, they did so only after the conflict was well under control, to exercise their backhands by hacking off a few enemy heads, maybe emptying a few banana clips of 7.62 mm rounds into rows of bound captives.
Around him, Ryan saw awe in the faces of the new Redbone conscripts, the wounded and the young and the old and the lame. The seasoned cannon fodder, those who had marched behind Malosh before and survived, sent up a raucous, jubilant cheer at the news. When the newcomers realized it wasn’t some kind of sick joke being played on them, they joined in the celebration.
With a single, totally unexpected gesture, the Impaler had turned the tide of sentiment from dread and fear to something that approached real enthusiasm for the coming battle. He held them, not just the fodder, but the entire three hundred in his gloved fist.
Malosh was no sham of a carny master, Ryan realized at that moment. He was something infinitely more dangerous.
The coldheart bastard was a rad-blasted hero.
“Nuking hell!” J.B. exclaimed in disbelief. “Most of the fodder don’t even have sticks to swing. What the fuck is he up to?”
“He’s trying to convince Sunspot that the main attack is coming from the west, up the interstate,” Ryan said.
“No better way to do that than to ride at the head of the force himself,” Mildred added. “He’s a little hard to miss in that outfit.”
“And he said I had some balls,” Ryan said.
“Don’t tell me this rah-rah stunt changes your opinion of the Impaler,” Mildred said.
“A big set of balls doesn’t make him a sweetheart.”
“Any more than it makes you one?”
“Exactly.”
M
ALOSH
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S ARMY DIDN
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break camp as much as they walked off and abandoned it. They left behind everything that wasn’t vital to the battle—the tents, carts, mules and food supplies.